The performance of machine learning surrogates is critically dependent on data quality and quantity. This presents a major challenge, as high-fidelity (HF) data is often scarce and computationally expensive to acquire, while low-fidelity (LF) data is abundant but less accurate. To address this data-scarcity problem, we develop a probabilistic multi-fidelity surrogate framework based on generative transfer learning. We employ a normalizing flow (NF) generative model as the backbone, which is trained in two phases: (i) the NF is first pretrained on a large LF dataset to learn a probabilistic forward model; (ii) the pretrained model is then fine-tuned on a small HF dataset, allowing it to correct for LF-HF discrepancies via knowledge transfer. To relax the dimension-preserving constraint of standard bijective NFs, we integrate surjective (dimension-reducing) layers with standard coupling blocks. This architecture enables learned dimension reduction while preserving the ability to train with exact likelihoods. The resulting surrogate provides fast probabilistic predictions with quantified uncertainty and significantly outperforms LF-only baselines while using fewer HF evaluations. We validate the approach on a reinforced concrete slab benchmark, combining many coarse-mesh (LF) simulations with a limited set of fine-mesh (HF) simulations. The proposed model achieves probabilistic predictions with HF accuracy, demonstrating a practical path toward data-efficient, generative AI-driven surrogates for complex engineering systems. Email address: David.Barajas-Solano@pnnl.gov (David Barajas-Solano) Introduction High-fidelity (HF) computer modeling using discretization schemes such as the finite elements (FE) method provides a rigorous framework for analyzing and predicting the behavior of complex engineering systems.

The specialized crops could save farmers millions. A swarm of desert locusts fly after an aircraft sprayed pesticide in Meru, Kenya in 2021. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Swarms of locusts devouring a farmer's livelihood might sound apocalyptic, but major locust infestations are a regular problem in agricultural communities around the world. These locust swarms--dense, droning packs of certain grasshopper species--can cover hundreds of square miles, and the insects consume vast amounts of vegetation and threaten global agriculture.

Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. In school, we learn about the Stone Age, the Bronze Age - and we are currently in a silicon age characterised by computers and phones. What might define the next age? Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks a family of materials he helped pioneer in the 1990s has a good shot. They are metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and working out how to make them earned him a share of the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry .

Researchers are urging beachgoers to report the endangered, tagged sea snails. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The black abalone mollusk () is a delicacy in many regions of the world, with fancy restaurant diners doling out as much as $40 per 6 to 8 ounce serving . Although the sea snails are often grown in oyster farms, they are now considered critically endangered due to overdemand and black market harvesting. But while a woman's recent abalone discovery along a beach in Australia is attracting worldwide attention, it's not due to any illegal activity or a lucrative payout.

Stirling Distillery has two years to figure it out. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Scotland's smallest whisky distillery also hopes to be one of the most innovative in time for its first batch's debut. But with only around two years until Sterling Distillery's inaugural liquor matures, it remains to be seen if the company can ditch traditional glass bottles for a material associated more with cheap beer than fine whisky--aluminum. Any serious distillery uses glass bottles for the good stuff.

Javed is a senior editor at TIME, based in the London bureau. Javed is a senior editor at TIME, based in the London bureau. Leaders from Dow Chemical Company, EY, and NTT Data Inc. shared their perspectives on the impact of scaling up new technologies like AI during a TIME100 Talks panel discussion in Davos on Jan. 20. The panel took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, which kicked off on Jan. 19 in Davos, drawing around 3,000 high-level participants from business, government, and beyond, in addition to many more observers, journalists, activists, and others. During the panel, titled "Innovation in a Multipolar Era," the participants discussed the benefits of integrating AI, and its potential in areas such as health care and education, as well as some of the challenges of integrating the technology at scale within businesses.

You've Never Heard of China's Greatest Sci-Fi Novel Thousands of authors. is barely known outside China--but it contains the secret to the country's modernization and malaise. Ma Qianzhu was unsatisfied with Chinese progress. An engineer at a large state-owned enterprise, he belonged to a generation that grew up believing engineering is destiny, that China's future would be built, bolt by bolt, by people like him. Then Ma discovered something extraordinary: a wormhole to the late Ming Dynasty. With more than 500 peers, he commandeered a ship and traveled back in time 400 years, to a preindustrial China wracked by foreign invasion and internal decay. Their mission: trigger an industrial revolution in the past that would, in the future, make modern China great (again).

Trump officials reboot coal council Biden admin shut down, calling previous administration's move 'ignorance and arrogance' as industry fights red tape.

Scientists develop method to convert discarded plastic water bottles into high-performance supercapacitors, potentially reducing pollution while advancing clean energy.

Improved carbon-cement supercapacitors could turn the concrete around us into massive energy storage systems. Concrete already builds our world, and an MIT-invented variant known as electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec, pronounced "e c cubed") holds out the possibility of helping power it, too. Now that vision is one step closer. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black, and electrolytes, ec creates a conductive "nanonetwork" that could enable walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy like giant batteries. To date, the technology has been limited by low voltage and scalability challenges. But the latest work by the MIT team that invented ec has increased the energy storage capacity by an order of magnitude.