Energy
The Belief-Desire-Intention Ontology for modelling mental reality and agency
Zuppiroli, Sara, Longo, Carmelo Fabio, Lippolis, Anna Sofia, Paolillo, Rocco, Giammei, Lorenzo, Ceriani, Miguel, Poggi, Francesco, Zinilli, Antonio, Nuzzolese, Andrea Giovanni
The Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model is a cornerstone for representing rational agency in artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences. Yet, its integration into structured, semantically interoperable knowledge representations remains limited. This paper presents a formal BDI Ontology, conceived as a modular Ontology Design Pattern (ODP) that captures the cognitive architecture of agents through beliefs, desires, intentions, and their dynamic interrelations. The ontology ensures semantic precision and reusability by aligning with foundational ontologies and best practices in modular design. Two complementary lines of experimentation demonstrate its applicability: (i) coupling the ontology with Large Language Models (LLMs) via Logic Augmented Generation (LAG) to assess the contribution of ontological grounding to inferential coherence and consistency; and (ii) integrating the ontology within the Semas reasoning platform, which implements the Triples-to-Beliefs-to-Triples (T2B2T) paradigm, enabling a bidirectional flow between RDF triples and agent mental states. Together, these experiments illustrate how the BDI Ontology acts as both a conceptual and operational bridge between declarative and procedural intelligence, paving the way for cognitively grounded, explainable, and semantically interoperable multi-agent and neuro-symbolic systems operating within the Web of Data.
DDTime: Dataset Distillation with Spectral Alignment and Information Bottleneck for Time-Series Forecasting
Li, Yuqi, Ding, Kuiye, Yang, Chuanguang, Wang, Hao, Wang, Haoxuan, Duan, Huiran, Liu, Junming, Tian, Yingli
Time-series forecasting is fundamental across many domains, yet training accurate models often requires large-scale datasets and substantial computational resources. Dataset distillation offers a promising alternative by synthesizing compact datasets that preserve the learning behavior of full data. However, extending dataset distillation to time-series forecasting is non-trivial due to two fundamental challenges: 1.temporal bias from strong autocorrelation, which leads to distorted value-term alignment between teacher and student models; and 2.insufficient diversity among synthetic samples, arising from the absence of explicit categorical priors to regularize trajectory variety. In this work, we propose DDTime, a lightweight and plug-in distillation framework built upon first-order condensation decomposition. To tackle Challenge 1, it revisits value-term alignment through temporal statistics and introduces a frequency-domain alignment mechanism to mitigate autocorrelation-induced bias, ensuring spectral consistency and temporal fidelity. To address Challenge 2, we further design an inter-sample regularization inspired by the information bottleneck principle, which enhances diversity and maximizes information density across synthetic trajectories. The combined objective is theoretically compatible with a wide range of condensation paradigms and supports stable first-order optimization. Extensive experiments on 20 benchmark datasets and diverse forecasting architectures demonstrate that DDTime consistently outperforms existing distillation methods, achieving about 30% relative accuracy gains while introducing about 2.49% computational overhead. All code and distilled datasets will be released.
A Weak Penalty Neural ODE for Learning Chaotic Dynamics from Noisy Time Series
Li, Xuyang, Harlim, John, Chakraborty, Dibyajyoti, Maulik, Romit
Accurate forecasting of complex high-dimensional dynamical systems from observational data is essential for several applications across science and engineering. A key challenge, however, is that real-world measurements are often corrupted by noise, which severely degrades the performance of data-driven models. Particularly, in chaotic dynamical systems, where small errors amplify rapidly, it is challenging to identify a data-driven model from noisy data that achieves short-term accuracy while preserving long-term invariant properties. In this paper, we propose the use of the weak formulation as a complementary approach to the classical strong formulation of data-driven time-series forecasting models. Specifically, we focus on the neural ordinary differential equation (NODE) architecture. Unlike the standard strong formulation, which relies on the discretization of the NODE followed by optimization, the weak formulation constrains the model using a set of integrated residuals over temporal subdomains. While such a formulation yields an effective NODE model, we discover that the performance of a NODE can be further enhanced by employing this weak formulation as a penalty alongside the classical strong formulation-based learning. Through numerical demonstrations, we illustrate that our proposed training strategy, which we coined as the Weak-Penalty NODE (WP-NODE), achieves state-of-the-art forecasting accuracy and exceptional robustness across benchmark chaotic dynamical systems and real-world climate dataset.
Exploring Spiking Neural Networks for Binary Classification in Multivariate Time Series at the Edge
Ghawaly, James, Nicholson, Andrew, Schuman, Catherine, Diez, Dalton, Young, Aaron, Witherspoon, Brett
We present a general framework for training spiking neural networks (SNNs) to perform binary classification on multivariate time series, with a focus on step-wise prediction and high precision at low false alarm rates. The approach uses the Evolutionary Optimization of Neuromorphic Systems (EONS) algorithm to evolve sparse, stateful SNNs by jointly optimizing their architectures and parameters. Inputs are encoded into spike trains, and predictions are made by thresholding a single output neuron's spike counts. We also incorporate simple voting ensemble methods to improve performance and robustness. To evaluate the framework, we apply it with application-specific optimizations to the task of detecting low signal-to-noise ratio radioactive sources in gamma-ray spectral data. The resulting SNNs, with as few as 49 neurons and 66 synapses, achieve a 51.8% true positive rate (TPR) at a false alarm rate of 1/hr, outperforming PCA (42.7%) and deep learning (49.8%) baselines. A three-model any-vote ensemble increases TPR to 67.1% at the same false alarm rate. Hardware deployment on the microCaspian neuromorphic platform demonstrates 2mW power consumption and 20.2ms inference latency. We also demonstrate generalizability by applying the same framework, without domain-specific modification, to seizure detection in EEG recordings. An ensemble achieves 95% TPR with a 16% false positive rate, comparable to recent deep learning approaches with significant reduction in parameter count.
A Reinforcement Learning-Based Telematic Routing Protocol for the Internet of Underwater Things
Homaei, Mohammadhossein, Tarif, Mehran, Di Bartolo, Agustin, Morales, Victor Gonzalez, Vegas, Mar Avila
The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) has a lot of problems, like low bandwidth, high latency, mobility, and not enough energy. Routing protocols that were made for land-based networks, like RPL, don't work well in these underwater settings. This paper talks about RL-RPL-UA, a new routing protocol that uses reinforcement learning to make things work better in underwater situations. Each node has a small RL agent that picks the best parent node depending on local data such the link quality, buffer level, packet delivery ratio, and remaining energy. RL-RPL-UA works with all standard RPL messages and adds a dynamic objective function to help people make decisions in real time. Aqua-Sim simulations demonstrate that RL-RPL-UA boosts packet delivery by up to 9.2%, uses 14.8% less energy per packet, and adds 80 seconds to the network's lifetime compared to previous approaches. These results show that RL-RPL-UA is a potential and energy-efficient way to route data in underwater networks.
Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Water Management
Osika, Zuzanna, Rฤdulescu, Roxana, Salazar, Jazmin Zatarain, Oliehoek, Frans, Murukannaiah, Pradeep K.
Many real-world problems (e.g., resource management, autonomous driving, drug discovery) require optimizing multiple, conflicting objectives. Multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) extends classic reinforcement learning to handle multiple objectives simultaneously, yielding a set of policies that capture various trade-offs. However, the MORL field lacks complex, realistic environments and benchmarks. We introduce a water resource (Nile river basin) management case study and model it as a MORL environment. We then benchmark existing MORL algorithms on this task. Our results show that specialized water management methods outperform state-of-the-art MORL approaches, underscoring the scalability challenges MORL algorithms face in real-world scenarios.
ISS-Geo142: A Benchmark for Geolocating Astronaut Photography from the International Space Station
Srivastava, Vedika, Singh, Hemant Kumar, Singh, Jaisal
This paper introduces ISS-Geo142, a curated benchmark for geolocating astronaut photography captured from the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS position at capture time is known precisely, the specific Earth locations depicted in these images are typically not directly georeferenced, making automated localization non-trivial. ISS-Geo142 consists of 142 images with associated metadata and manually determined geographic locations, spanning a range of spatial scales and scene types. On top of this benchmark, we implement and evaluate three geolocation pipelines: a neural network based approach (NN-Geo) using VGG16 features and cross-correlation over map-derived Areas of Interest (AOIs), a Scale-Invariant Feature Transform based pipeline (SIFT-Match) using sliding-window feature matching on stitched high-resolution AOIs, and TerraByte, an AI system built around a GPT-4 model with vision capabilities that jointly reasons over image content and ISS coordinates. On ISS-Geo142, NN-Geo achieves a match for 75.52\% of the images under our evaluation protocol, SIFT-Match attains high precision on structurally rich scenes at substantial computational cost, and TerraByte establishes the strongest overall baseline, correctly geolocating approximately 90\% of the images while also producing human-readable geographic descriptions. The methods and experiments were originally developed in 2023; this manuscript is a revised and extended version that situates the work relative to subsequent advances in cross-view geo-localization and remote-sensing vision--language models. Taken together, ISS-Geo142 and these three pipelines provide a concrete, historically grounded benchmark for future work on ISS image geolocation.
Evaluating AI-Driven Automated Map Digitization in QGIS
Map digitization is an important process that converts maps into digital formats that can be used for further analysis. This process typically requires a deep human involvement because of the need for interpretation and decision-making when translating complex features. With the advancement of artificial intelligence, there is an alternative to conducting map digitization with the help of machine learning techniques. Deepness, or Deep Neural Remote Sensing, is an advanced AI-driven tool designed and integrated as a plugin in QGIS application. This research focuses on assessing the effectiveness of Deepness in automated digitization. This study analyses AI-generated digitization results from Google Earth imagery and compares them with digitized outputs from OpenStreetMap (OSM) to evaluate performance.
Instance Configuration for Sustainable Job Shop Scheduling
Perez, Christian, March, Carlos, Salido, Miguel A.
The Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSP) is a pivotal challenge in operations research and is essential for evaluating the effectiveness and performance of scheduling algorithms. Scheduling problems are a crucial domain in combinatorial optimization, where resources (machines) are allocated to job tasks to minimize the completion time (makespan) alongside other objectives like energy consumption. This research delves into the intricacies of JSP, focusing on optimizing performance metrics and minimizing energy consumption while considering various constraints such as deadlines and release dates. Recognizing the multi-dimensional nature of benchmarking in JSP, this study underscores the significance of reference libraries and datasets like JSPLIB in enriching algorithm evaluation. The research highlights the importance of problem instance characteristics, including job and machine numbers, processing times, and machine availability, emphasizing the complexities introduced by energy consumption considerations. An innovative instance configurator is proposed, equipped with parameters such as the number of jobs, machines, tasks, and speeds, alongside distributions for processing times and energy consumption. The generated instances encompass various configurations, reflecting real-world scenarios and operational constraints. These instances facilitate comprehensive benchmarking and evaluation of scheduling algorithms, particularly in contexts of energy efficiency. A comprehensive set of 500 test instances has been generated and made publicly available, promoting further research and benchmarking in JSP. These instances enable robust analyses and foster collaboration in developing advanced, energy-efficient scheduling solutions by providing diverse scenarios.
The Climate Impact of Owning a Dog
My dog contributes to climate change. I've been a vegetarian for over a decade. It's not because of my health, or because I dislike the taste of chicken or beef: It's a lifestyle choice I made because I wanted to reduce my impact on the planet. And yet, twice a day, every day, I lovingly scoop a cup of meat-based kibble into a bowl and set it down for my 50-pound rescue dog, a husky mix named Loki. Until recently, I hadn't devoted a huge amount of thought to that paradox.