Interconnection studies require solving numerous instances of the AC load or power flow (AC PF) problem to simulate diverse scenarios as power systems navigate the ongoing energy transition. To expedite such studies, this work leverages recent advances in quantum computing to find or predict AC PF solutions using a variational quantum circuit (VQC). VQCs are trainable models that run on modern-day noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware to accomplish elaborate optimization and machine learning (ML) tasks. Our first contribution is to pose a single instance of the AC PF as a nonlinear least-squares fit over the VQC trainable parameters (weights) and solve it using a hybrid classical/quantum computing approach. The second contribution is to feed PF specifications as features into a data-embedded VQC and train the resultant quantum ML (QML) model to predict general PF solutions. The third contribution is to develop a novel protocol to efficiently measure AC-PF quantum observables by exploiting the graph structure of a power network. Preliminary numerical tests indicate that the proposed VQC models attain enhanced prediction performance over a deep neural network despite using much fewer weights. The proposed quantum AC-PF framework sets the foundations for addressing more elaborate grid tasks via quantum computing.

Located in China, Juno is a 17-country collaboration that will try to detect neutrinos and antineutrinos to learn more about their mass. Juno's sphere (bottom left) and photomultipliers (top right) for neutrino detection. Located 700 meters underground near the city of Jiangmen in southern China, a giant sphere--35 meters in diameter and filled with more than 20,000 tons of liquid--has just started a mission that will last for decades. This is Juno, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, a new, large-scale experiment studying some of the most mysterious and elusive particles known to science. Neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the universe with mass.

Bio-inspired algorithms utilize natural processes such as evolution, swarm behavior, foraging, and plant growth to solve complex, nonlinear, high-dimensional optimization problems. However, a plethora of these algorithms require a more rigorous review before making them applicable to the relevant fields. This survey categorizes these algorithms into eight groups: evolutionary, swarm intelligence, physics-inspired, ecosystem and plant-based, predator-prey, neural-inspired, human-inspired, and hybrid approaches, and reviews their principles, strengths, novelty, and critical limitations. We provide a critique on the novelty issues of many of these algorithms. We illustrate some of the suitable usage of the prominent algorithms in machine learning, engineering design, bioinformatics, and intelligent systems, and highlight recent advances in hybridization, parameter tuning, and adaptive strategies. Finally, we identify open challenges such as scalability, convergence, reliability, and interpretability to suggest directions for future research. This work aims to serve as a resource for both researchers and practitioners interested in understanding the current landscape and future directions of reliable and authentic advancement of bio-inspired algorithms.

Neurons communicate through spikes, and spike timing is a crucial part of neuronal processing. Spike times can be recorded experimentally both intracellularly and extracellularly, and are the main output of state-of-the-art neural probes. On the other hand, neuronal activity is controlled at the molecular level by the currents generated by many different transmembrane proteins called ion channels. Connecting spike timing to ion channel composition remains an arduous task to date. To address this challenge, we developed a method that combines deep learning with a theoretical tool called Dynamic Input Conductances (DICs), which reduce the complexity of ion channel interactions into three interpretable components describing how neurons spike. Our approach uses deep learning to infer DICs directly from spike times and then generates populations of "twin" neuron models that replicate the observed activity while capturing natural variability in membrane channel composition. The method is fast, accurate, and works using only spike recordings. We also provide open-source software with a graphical interface, making it accessible to researchers without programming expertise.

Scientific machine learning increasingly uses spectral methods to understand physical systems. Current spectral learning approaches provide only point estimates without uncertainty quantification, limiting their use in safety-critical applications where prediction confidence is essential. Parametric matrix models have emerged as powerful tools for scientific machine learning, achieving exceptional performance by learning governing equations. However, their deterministic nature limits deployment in uncertainty quantification applications. We introduce Bayesian parametric matrix models (B-PMMs), a principled framework that extends PMMs to provide uncertainty estimates while preserving their spectral structure and computational efficiency. B-PMM addresses the fundamental challenge of quantifying uncertainty in matrix eigenvalue problems where standard Bayesian methods fail due to the geometric constraints of spectral decomposition. The theoretical contributions include: (i) adaptive spectral decomposition with regularized matrix perturbation bounds that characterize eigenvalue uncertainty propagation, (ii) structured variational inference algorithms using manifold-aware matrix-variate Gaussian posteriors that respect Hermitian constraints, and (iii) finite-sample calibration guarantees with explicit dependence on spectral gaps and problem conditioning. Experimental validation across matrix dimensions from 5x5 to 500x500 with perfect convergence rates demonstrates that B-PMMs achieve exceptional uncertainty calibration (ECE < 0.05) while maintaining favorable scaling. The framework exhibits graceful degradation under spectral ill-conditioning and provides reliable uncertainty estimates even in near-degenerate regimes. The proposed framework supports robust spectral learning in uncertainty-critical domains and lays the groundwork for broader Bayesian spectral machine learning.

Physics-aware deep learning (PADL) has gained popularity for use in complex spatiotemporal dynamics (field evolution) simulations, such as those that arise frequently in computational modeling of energetic materials (EM). Here, we show that the challenge PADL methods face while learning complex field evolution problems can be simplified and accelerated by decoupling it into two tasks: learning complex geometric features in evolving fields and modeling dynamics over these features in a lower dimensional feature space. To accomplish this, we build upon our previous work on physics-aware recurrent convolutions (PARC). PARC embeds knowledge of underlying physics into its neural network architecture for more robust and accurate prediction of evolving physical fields. PARC was shown to effectively learn complex nonlinear features such as the formation of hotspots and coupled shock fronts in various initiation scenarios of EMs, as a function of microstructures, serving effectively as a microstructure-aware burn model. In this work, we further accelerate PARC and reduce its computational cost by projecting the original dynamics onto a lower-dimensional invariant manifold, or 'latent space.' The projected latent representation encodes the complex geometry of evolving fields (e.g. temperature and pressure) in a set of data-driven features. The reduced dimension of this latent space allows us to learn the dynamics during the initiation of EM with a lighter and more efficient model. We observe a significant decrease in training and inference time while maintaining results comparable to PARC at inference. This work takes steps towards enabling rapid prediction of EM thermomechanics at larger scales and characterization of EM structure-property-performance linkages at a full application scale.

Several video understanding tasks, such as natural language temporal video grounding, temporal activity localization, and audio description generation, require "temporally dense" reasoning over frames sampled at high temporal resolution. However, computing frame-level features for these tasks is computationally expensive given the temporal resolution requirements. In this paper, we make three contributions to reduce the cost of computing features for temporally dense tasks. First, we introduce a vision transformer (ViT) architecture, dubbed ResidualViT, that leverages the large temporal redundancy in videos to efficiently compute temporally dense frame-level features. Our architecture incorporates (i) learnable residual connections that ensure temporal consistency across consecutive frames and (ii) a token reduction module that enhances processing speed by selectively discarding temporally redundant information while reusing weights of a pretrained foundation model. Second, we propose a lightweight distillation strategy to approximate the frame-level features of the original foundation model. Finally, we evaluate our approach across four tasks and five datasets, in both zero-shot and fully supervised settings, demonstrating significant reductions in computational cost (up to 60%) and improvements in inference speed (up to 2.5x faster), all while closely approximating the accuracy of the original foundation model.

The endurance and energy efficiency of drones remain critical challenges in their design and operation. To extend mission duration, numerous studies explored perching mechanisms that enable drones to conserve energy by temporarily suspending flight. This paper presents a new perching drone that utilizes an active flexible perching mechanism inspired by the rapid predation mechanism of the Venus flytrap, achieving perching in less than 100 ms. The proposed system is designed for high-speed adaptability to the perching targets. The overall drone design is outlined, followed by the development and validation of the biomimetic perching structure. To enhance the system stability, a cascade extended high-gain observer (EHGO) based control method is developed, which can estimate and compensate for the external disturbance in real time. The experimental results demonstrate the adaptability of the perching structure and the superiority of the cascaded EHGO in resisting wind and perching disturbances.

Despite the remarkable progress in the synthesis speed and fidelity of neural vocoders, their high energy consumption remains a critical barrier to practical deployment on computationally restricted edge devices. Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), widely recognized for their high energy efficiency due to their event-driven nature, offer a promising solution for low-resource scenarios. In this paper, we propose Spiking Vocos, a novel spiking neural vocoder with ultra-low energy consumption, built upon the efficient Vocos framework. To mitigate the inherent information bottleneck in SNNs, we design a Spiking ConvNeXt module to reduce Multiply-Accumulate (MAC) operations and incorporate an amplitude shortcut path to preserve crucial signal dynamics. Furthermore, to bridge the performance gap with its Artificial Neural Network (ANN) counterpart, we introduce a self-architectural distillation strategy to effectively transfer knowledge. A lightweight Temporal Shift Module is also integrated to enhance the model's ability to fuse information across the temporal dimension with negligible computational overhead. Experiments demonstrate that our model achieves performance comparable to its ANN counterpart, with UTMOS and PESQ scores of 3.74 and 3.45 respectively, while consuming only 14.7% of the energy. The source code is available at https://github.com/pymaster17/Spiking-Vocos.

This work introduces xOffense, an AI-driven, multi-agent penetration testing framework that shifts the process from labor-intensive, expert-driven manual efforts to fully automated, machine-executable workflows capable of scaling seamlessly with computational infrastructure. At its core, xOffense leverages a fine-tuned, mid-scale open-source LLM (Qwen3-32B) to drive reasoning and decision-making in penetration testing. The framework assigns specialized agents to reconnaissance, vulnerability scanning, and exploitation, with an orchestration layer ensuring seamless coordination across phases. Fine-tuning on Chain-of-Thought penetration testing data further enables the model to generate precise tool commands and perform consistent multi-step reasoning. We evaluate xOffense on two rigorous benchmarks: AutoPenBench and AI-Pentest-Benchmark. The results demonstrate that xOffense consistently outperforms contemporary methods, achieving a sub-task completion rate of 79.17%, decisively surpassing leading systems such as VulnBot and PentestGPT. These findings highlight the potential of domain-adapted mid-scale LLMs, when embedded within structured multi-agent orchestration, to deliver superior, cost-efficient, and reproducible solutions for autonomous penetration testing.