In this work, we introduce the Time-Aware World Model (TAWM), a model-based approach that explicitly incorporates temporal dynamics. By conditioning on the time-step size, Δt, and training over a diverse range of Δt values -- rather than sampling at a fixed time-step -- TAWM learns both high- and low-frequency task dynamics across diverse control problems. Grounded in the information-theoretic insight that the optimal sampling rate depends on a system's underlying dynamics, this time-aware formulation improves both performance and data efficiency. Empirical evaluations show that TAWM consistently outperforms conventional models across varying observation rates in a variety of control tasks, using the same number of training samples and iterations. Our code can be found online at: github.com/anh-nn01/Time-Aware-World-Model.

The application of machine learning (ML) algorithms in the intelligent diagnosis of three-phase engines has the potential to significantly enhance diagnostic performance and accuracy. Traditional methods largely rely on signature analysis, which, despite being a standard practice, can benefit from the integration of advanced ML techniques. In our study, we innovate by combining ML algorithms with a novel unsupervised anomaly generation methodology that takes into account the engine physics model. We propose Signature-Guided Data Augmentation (SGDA), an unsupervised framework that synthesizes physically plausible faults directly in the frequency domain of healthy current signals. Guided by Motor Current Signature Analysis, SGDA creates diverse and realistic anomalies without resorting to computationally intensive simulations. This hybrid approach leverages the strengths of both supervised ML and unsupervised signature analysis, achieving superior diagnostic accuracy and reliability along with wide industrial application. The findings highlight the potential of our approach to contribute significantly to the field of engine diagnostics, offering a robust and efficient solution for real-world applications.

The site conditions that make astronomical observatories in space and on the ground so desirable -- cold and dark -- demand a physical remoteness that leads to limited data transmission capabilities. Such transmission limitations directly bottleneck the amount of data acquired and in an era of costly modern observatories, any improvements in lossless data compression has the potential scale to billions of dollars worth of additional science that can be accomplished on the same instrument. Traditional lossless methods for compressing astrophysical data are manually designed. Neural data compression, on the other hand, holds the promise of learning compression algorithms end-to-end from data and outperforming classical techniques by leveraging the unique spatial, temporal, and wavelength structures of astronomical images. This paper introduces AstroCompress: a neural compression challenge for astrophysics data, featuring four new datasets (and one legacy dataset) with 16-bit unsigned integer imaging data in various modes: space-based, ground-based, multi-wavelength, and time-series imaging. We provide code to easily access the data and benchmark seven lossless compression methods (three neural and four non-neural, including all practical state-of-the-art algorithms). Our results on lossless compression indicate that lossless neural compression techniques can enhance data collection at observatories, and provide guidance on the adoption of neural compression in scientific applications. Though the scope of this paper is restricted to lossless compression, we also comment on the potential exploration of lossy compression methods in future studies.

Universal Differential Equations (UDEs), which blend neural networks with physical differential equations, have emerged as a powerful framework for scientific machine learning (SciML), enabling data-efficient, interpretable, and physically consistent modeling. In the context of smart grid systems, modeling node-wise battery dynamics remains a challenge due to the stochasticity of solar input and variability in household load profiles. Traditional approaches often struggle with generalization and fail to capture unmodeled residual dynamics. This work proposes a UDE-based approach to learn node-specific battery evolution by embedding a neural residual into a physically inspired battery ODE. Synthetic yet realistic solar generation and load demand data are used to simulate battery dynamics over time. The neural component learns to model unobserved or stochastic corrections arising from heterogeneity in node demand and environmental conditions. Comprehensive experiments reveal that the trained UDE aligns closely with ground truth battery trajectories, exhibits smooth convergence behavior, and maintains stability in long-term forecasts. These findings affirm the viability of UDE-based SciML approaches for battery modeling in decentralized energy networks and suggest broader implications for real-time control and optimization in renewable-integrated smart grids.

Residual stresses, which remain within a component after processing, can deteriorate performance. Accurately determining their full-field distributions is essential for optimizing the structural integrity and longevity. However, the experimental effort required for full-field characterization is impractical. Given these challenges, this work proposes a machine learning (ML) based Residual Stress Generator (RSG) to infer full-field stresses from limited measurements. An extensive dataset was initially constructed by performing numerous process simulations with a diverse parameter set. A ML model based on U-Net architecture was then trained to learn the underlying structure through systematic hyperparameter tuning. Then, the model's ability to generate simulated stresses was evaluated, and it was ultimately tested on actual characterization data to validate its effectiveness. The model's prediction of simulated stresses shows that it achieved excellent predictive accuracy and exhibited a significant degree of generalization, indicating that it successfully learnt the latent structure of residual stress distribution. The RSG's performance in predicting experimentally characterized data highlights the feasibility of the proposed approach in providing a comprehensive understanding of residual stress distributions from limited measurements, thereby significantly reducing experimental efforts.

Original Manuscript Submitted: 05/05/2025; Final Draft Received: mm/dd/yyyy Federated learning is a machine learning paradigm that leverages edge computing on client devices to optimize models while maintaining user privacy by ensuring that local data remains on the device. However, since all data is collected by clients, federated learning is susceptible to latent noise in local datasets. Factors such as limited measurement capabilities or human errors may introduce inaccuracies in client data. T o address this challenge, we propose the use of a stochastic neural network as the local model within the federated learning framework. Stochastic neural networks not only facilitate the estimation of the true underlying states of the data but also enable the quantification of latent noise. We refer to our federated learning approach, which incorporates stochastic neural networks as local models, as Federated stochastic neural networks. We will present numerical experiments demonstrating the performance and effectiveness of our method, particularly in handling non-independent and identically distributed data. KEY WORDS: Machine Learning, Federated Learning, Neural Network 1. INTRODUCTION The fundamental principles of federated learning can be traced back to earlier advancements in distributed computing and privacy-preserving machine learning techniques. Before federated learning was introduced in McMahan et al. (2016), distributed machine learning primarily focused on executing training processes in parallel across multiple nodes within a data center. Notable frameworks, such as MapReduce (Dean and Ghemawat (2004)) and AllReduce, were designed to aggregate data from different computational units, perform global aggregation using predefined operators, and subsequently redistribute the outcomes to all participating units.

Ferroelectric polarization switching underpins the functional performance of a wide range of materials and devices, yet its dependence on complex local microstructural features renders systematic exploration by manual or grid-based spectroscopic measurements impractical. Here, we introduce a multi-objective kernel-learning workflow that infers the microstructural rules governing switching behavior directly from high-resolution imaging data. Applied to automated piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) experiments, our framework efficiently identifies the key relationships between domain-wall configurations and local switching kinetics, revealing how specific wall geometries and defect distributions modulate polarization reversal. Post-experiment analysis projects abstract reward functions, such as switching ease and domain symmetry, onto physically interpretable descriptors including domain configuration and proximity to boundaries. This enables not only high-throughput active learning, but also mechanistic insight into the microstructural control of switching phenomena. While demonstrated for ferroelectric domain switching, our approach provides a powerful, generalizable tool for navigating complex, non-differentiable design spaces, from structure-property correlations in molecular discovery to combinatorial optimization across diverse imaging modalities.

Agentic UAVs represent a new frontier in autonomous aerial intelligence, integrating perception, decision-making, memory, and collaborative planning to operate adaptively in complex, real-world environments. Driven by recent advances in Agentic AI, these systems surpass traditional UAVs by exhibiting goal-driven behavior, contextual reasoning, and interactive autonomy. We provide a comprehensive foundation for understanding the architectural components and enabling technologies that distinguish Agentic UAVs from traditional autonomous UAVs. Furthermore, a detailed comparative analysis highlights advancements in autonomy with AI agents, learning, and mission flexibility. This study explores seven high-impact application domains precision agriculture, construction & mining, disaster response, environmental monitoring, infrastructure inspection, logistics, security, and wildlife conservation, illustrating the broad societal value of agentic aerial intelligence. Furthermore, we identify key challenges in technical constraints, regulatory limitations, and data-model reliability, and we present emerging solutions across hardware innovation, learning architectures, and human-AI interaction. Finally, a future roadmap is proposed, outlining pathways toward self-evolving aerial ecosystems, system-level collaboration, and sustainable, equitable deployments. This survey establishes a foundational framework for the future development, deployment, and governance of agentic aerial systems (Agentic UAVs) across diverse societal and industrial domains.

Atomistic simulations are essential tools in chemistry and materials science, accelerating the discovery of novel catalysts, energy storage materials, and pharmaceuticals. However, running these simulations remains challenging due to the wide range of computational methods, diverse software ecosystems, and the need for expert knowledge and manual effort for the setup, execution, and validation stages. In this work, we present ChemGraph, an agentic framework powered by artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art simulation tools to streamline and automate computational chemistry and materials science workflows. ChemGraph leverages graph neural network-based foundation models for accurate yet computationally efficient calculations and large language models (LLMs) for natural language understanding, task planning, and scientific reasoning to provide an intuitive and interactive interface. Users can perform tasks such as molecular structure generation, single-point energy, geometry optimization, vibrational analysis, and thermochemistry calculations with methods ranging from tight-binding and machine learning interatomic potentials to density functional theory or wave function theory-based methods. We evaluate ChemGraph across 13 benchmark tasks and demonstrate that smaller LLMs (GPT-4o-mini, Claude-3.5-haiku, Qwen2.5-14B) perform well on simple workflows, while more complex tasks benefit from using larger models like GPT-4o. Importantly, we show that decomposing complex tasks into smaller subtasks through a multi-agent framework enables smaller LLM models to match or exceed GPT-4o's performance in specific scenarios.

The discovery and optimization of materials for specific applications is hampered by the practically infinite number of possible elemental combinations and associated properties, also known as the `combinatorial explosion'. By nature of the problem, data are scarce and all possible data sources should be used. In addition to simulations and experimental results, the latent knowledge in scientific texts is not yet used to its full potential. We present an iterative framework that refines a given scientific corpus by strategic selection of the most diverse documents, training Word2Vec models, and monitoring the convergence of composition-property correlations in embedding space. Our approach is applied to predict high-performing materials for oxygen reduction (ORR), hydrogen evolution (HER), and oxygen evolution (OER) reactions for a large number of possible candidate compositions. Our method successfully predicts the highest performing compositions among a large pool of candidates, validated by experimental measurements of the electrocatalytic performance in the lab. This work demonstrates and validates the potential of iterative corpus refinement to accelerate materials discovery and optimization, offering a scalable and efficient tool for screening large compositional spaces where reliable data are scarce or non-existent.