Government
'Trump has been explicit about revenge': Asif Kapadia on his new film about the threat to democracy
It was some time in the early 2000s and Asif Kapadia, already a successful film director, a wunderkind whose first feature in 2001, The Warrior, won the Bafta for outstanding British film, was travelling back from New York. I'm in a limo being taken to the airport. And I was taking photos of Manhattan because I was driving over Brooklyn Bridge and it's just all so cinematic and I became subconsciously aware of the driver watching me in the rear view mirror. "I get to the airport and I'm in the Virgin lounge when my name is called out. And I thought: 'Have I left a bag or something?' But then five or six people come: homeland security. And they stop me in the lounge in front of everyone, the only person of colour in there, and empty out my bag, and they say: 'Someone's reported you.' And it's like: 'Who are you? An itinerary of his trip and its purpose proved his credentials and he was eventually allowed to go and boarded his flight. But for nearly a decade afterwards, he found himself on a "watch list". "I would get stopped and interviewed two times before I got on a plane, pulled out in a room.
Biden administration officials downplay concerns about drone sightings: 'Slight overreaction'
New Jersey State Sen. Jon Bramnick joins'Cavuto Live' to discuss his call for a limited state of emergency over unanswered questions about alleged drone sightings. U.S. national security officials appeared to dispel concerns about the mysterious drones flying over the Northeast in a recent call with reporters, one going as far as describing nationwide uneasiness as "a slight overreaction." The call, attended by Fox News Digital Saturday, was hosted by senior Biden administration officials, including representatives from the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD). The senior officials remained tight-lipped about the origins of the drones, which are still being investigated. The mysterious aircraft were first spotted flying above northern New Jersey in mid-November and have been repeatedly seen by thousands of residents over the past few weeks.
Bayesian inference of mean velocity fields and turbulence models from flow MRI
Kontogiannis, A., Nair, P., Loecher, M., Ennis, D. B., Marsden, A., Juniper, M. P.
We solve a Bayesian inverse Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) problem that assimilates mean flow data by jointly reconstructing the mean flow field and learning its unknown RANS parameters. We devise an algorithm that learns the most likely parameters of an algebraic effective viscosity model, and estimates their uncertainties, from mean flow data of a turbulent flow. We conduct a flow MRI experiment to obtain mean flow data of a confined turbulent jet in an idealized medical device known as the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) nozzle. The algorithm successfully reconstructs the mean flow field and learns the most likely turbulence model parameters without overfitting. The methodology accepts any turbulence model, be it algebraic (explicit) or multi-equation (implicit), as long as the model is differentiable, and naturally extends to unsteady turbulent flows.
Monte Carlo Tree Search with Spectral Expansion for Planning with Dynamical Systems
Riviere, Benjamin, Lathrop, John, Chung, Soon-Jo
The ability of a robot to plan complex behaviors with real-time computation, rather than adhering to predesigned or offline-learned routines, alleviates the need for specialized algorithms or training for each problem instance. Monte Carlo Tree Search is a powerful planning algorithm that strategically explores simulated future possibilities, but it requires a discrete problem representation that is irreconcilable with the continuous dynamics of the physical world. We present Spectral Expansion Tree Search (SETS), a real-time, tree-based planner that uses the spectrum of the locally linearized system to construct a low-complexity and approximately equivalent discrete representation of the continuous world. We prove SETS converges to a bound of the globally optimal solution for continuous, deterministic and differentiable Markov Decision Processes, a broad class of problems that includes underactuated nonlinear dynamics, non-convex reward functions, and unstructured environments. We experimentally validate SETS on drone, spacecraft, and ground vehicle robots and one numerical experiment, each of which is not directly solvable with existing methods. We successfully show SETS automatically discovers a diverse set of optimal behaviors and motion trajectories in real time.
Comprehensive Survey on Adversarial Examples in Cybersecurity: Impacts, Challenges, and Mitigation Strategies
Deep learning (DL) has significantly transformed cybersecurity, enabling advancements in malware detection, botnet identification, intrusion detection, user authentication, and encrypted traffic analysis. However, the rise of adversarial examples (AE) poses a critical challenge to the robustness and reliability of DL-based systems. These subtle, crafted perturbations can deceive models, leading to severe consequences like misclassification and system vulnerabilities. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the impact of AE attacks on key cybersecurity applications, highlighting both their theoretical and practical implications. We systematically examine the methods used to generate adversarial examples, their specific effects across various domains, and the inherent trade-offs attackers face between efficacy and resource efficiency. Additionally, we explore recent advancements in defense mechanisms, including gradient masking, adversarial training, and detection techniques, evaluating their potential to enhance model resilience. By summarizing cutting-edge research, this study aims to bridge the gap between adversarial research and practical security applications, offering insights to fortify the adoption of DL solutions in cybersecurity.
Adapting Segment Anything Model (SAM) to Experimental Datasets via Fine-Tuning on GAN-based Simulation: A Case Study in Additive Manufacturing
Tabassum, Anika, Ziabari, Amirkoushyar
Industrial X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is a powerful tool for non-destructive characterization of materials and manufactured components. XCT commonly accompanied by advanced image analysis and computer vision algorithms to extract relevant information from the images. Traditional computer vision models often struggle due to noise, resolution variability, and complex internal structures, particularly in scientific imaging applications. State-of-the-art foundational models, like the Segment Anything Model (SAM)-designed for general-purpose image segmentation-have revolutionized image segmentation across various domains, yet their application in specialized fields like materials science remains under-explored. In this work, we explore the application and limitations of SAM for industrial X-ray CT inspection of additive manufacturing components. We demonstrate that while SAM shows promise, it struggles with out-of-distribution data, multiclass segmentation, and computational efficiency during fine-tuning. To address these issues, we propose a fine-tuning strategy utilizing parameter-efficient techniques, specifically Conv-LoRa, to adapt SAM for material-specific datasets. Additionally, we leverage generative adversarial network (GAN)-generated data to enhance the training process and improve the model's segmentation performance on complex X-ray CT data. Our experimental results highlight the importance of tailored segmentation models for accurate inspection, showing that fine-tuning SAM on domain-specific scientific imaging data significantly improves performance. However, despite improvements, the model's ability to generalize across diverse datasets remains limited, highlighting the need for further research into robust, scalable solutions for domain-specific segmentation tasks.
How Can LLMs and Knowledge Graphs Contribute to Robot Safety? A Few-Shot Learning Approach
Althobaiti, Abdulrahman, Ayala, Angel, Gao, JingYing, Almutairi, Ali, Deghat, Mohammad, Razzak, Imran, Cruz, Francisco
Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming the robotics domain by enabling robots to comprehend and execute natural language instructions. The cornerstone benefits of LLM include processing textual data from technical manuals, instructions, academic papers, and user queries based on the knowledge provided. However, deploying LLM-generated code in robotic systems without safety verification poses significant risks. This paper outlines a safety layer that verifies the code generated by ChatGPT before executing it to control a drone in a simulated environment. The safety layer consists of a fine-tuned GPT-4o model using Few-Shot learning, supported by knowledge graph prompting (KGP). Our approach improves the safety and compliance of robotic actions, ensuring that they adhere to the regulations of drone operations.
INTERACT: Enabling Interactive, Question-Driven Learning in Large Language Models
Kendapadi, Aum, Zaman, Kerem, Menon, Rakesh R., Srivastava, Shashank
Large language models (LLMs) excel at answering questions but remain passive learners--absorbing static data without the ability to question and refine knowledge. This paper explores how LLMs can transition to interactive, question-driven learning through student-teacher dialogues. We introduce INTERACT (INTEReractive Learning for Adaptive Concept Transfer), a framework in which a "student" LLM engages a "teacher" LLM through iterative inquiries to acquire knowledge across 1,347 contexts, including song lyrics, news articles, movie plots, academic papers, and images. Our experiments show that across a wide range of scenarios and LLM architectures, interactive learning consistently enhances performance, achieving up to a 25% improvement, with 'cold-start' student models matching static learning baselines in as few as five dialogue turns. Interactive setups can also mitigate the disadvantages of weaker teachers, showcasing the robustness of question-driven learning.
SoK: On Closing the Applicability Gap in Automated Vulnerability Detection
Shereen, Ezzeldin, Ristea, Dan, Vyas, Sanyam, McFadden, Shae, Dwyer, Madeleine, Hicks, Chris, Mavroudis, Vasilios
The frequent discovery of security vulnerabilities in both open-source and proprietary software underscores the urgent need for earlier detection during the development lifecycle. Initiatives such as DARPA's Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) aim to accelerate Automated Vulnerability Detection (AVD), seeking to address this challenge by autonomously analyzing source code to identify vulnerabilities. This paper addresses two primary research questions: (RQ1) How is current AVD research distributed across its core components? (RQ2) What key areas should future research target to bridge the gap in the practical applicability of AVD throughout software development? To answer these questions, we conduct a systematization over 79 AVD articles and 17 empirical studies, analyzing them across five core components: task formulation and granularity, input programming languages and representations, detection approaches and key solutions, evaluation metrics and datasets, and reported performance. Our systematization reveals that the narrow focus of AVD research-mainly on specific tasks and programming languages-limits its practical impact and overlooks broader areas crucial for effective, real-world vulnerability detection. We identify significant challenges, including the need for diversified problem formulations, varied detection granularities, broader language support, better dataset quality, enhanced reproducibility, and increased practical impact. Based on these findings we identify research directions that will enhance the effectiveness and applicability of AVD solutions in software security.