Industry
Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is a new action RPG from the director of Mass Effect and KOTOR
Casey Hudson is returning to space for a brand new project. The Game Awards kicked off with a bang, showing the world premiere of . It's a brand new action role-playing game that will be directed by Casey Hudson, who previously headed up several notable BioWare games you probably know like and . There's not much to go on in the trailer, but the game simply existing is a pretty great surprise and this cinematic trailer sure looks shiny. Hudson is working with Arcanaut Studios on this project, which is described as "an epic interactive adventure across a galaxy on the brink of rebirth where every decision shapes your path towards light or darkness."
Bradley the Badger looks like Wreck-It Ralph as a real video game
It's from a new studio founded by devs of Red Dead Redemption and Mario + Rabbids. A lot of trailers drop during The Game Awards, but the comedy of stood out from the pack. The conceit is similar to . Bradley, the protagonist of a fictional platforming series, is suddenly transported into the worlds of other unfinished video games; the trailer shows a badger-ified, and . He also has access to a kit of dev tools that let him modify these incomplete projects, getting a taste of making a game.
Trump Signs Executive Order That Threatens to Punish States for Passing AI Laws
The order creates a Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws and directs the Commerce Department to pull future broadband funding from states that pass "onerous" legislation. President Donald Trump signed a highly anticipated executive order on Thursday that sets in motion a plan to establish a national regulatory framework for artificial intelligence while undercutting states' abilities to enact their own rules. The order, titled "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence," creates an AI litigation task force within the Justice Department to directly challenge state AI laws the administration finds to conflict with federal policy. It also directs the Department of Commerce to craft guidelines that could make states ineligible for future broadband funding if they pass "onerous" AI laws. The push for sweeping federal preemption of state AI laws has largely been fueled by AI investors, conservative policy shops, and tech industry trade groups.
Google asks UK experts to find uses for its powerful quantum tech
Google has announced plans to team up with the UK to invite researchers to come up with uses for the tech giant's state-of-the-art quantum chip Willow. It is one of several firms competing to develop a powerful quantum computer - which is seen as an exciting new frontier in the future of computing. Researchers hope they will be able to crack problems in fields such as chemistry and medicine which are impossible for current computers to solve. Professor Paul Stevenson of the University of Surrey - who had no involvement with the agreement - told the BBC it was great news for UK researchers. The collaboration between Google and the UK's national lab for quantum computing means more researchers will get access to the technology.
Rise of the digital threesome: British couples are turning to AI to spice up their sex lives, study reveals
Ghislaine Maxwell's ultimate humiliation: Epstein's sex trafficker girlfriend poses in outrageous outfits and exposes herself in dozens of photos released from the billionaire paedophile's files I was falsely accused of being the Brown University shooter... Silent Trump flees growing storm over Epstein'cover-up' as he jets off for holidays without ANY comment I've spotted something else in this photo of Karoline Leavitt's'injection sites'... every woman you know will say the same thing about it: KENNEDY Why Conan O'Brien'stopped party guests calling 911' on Nick Reiner: Insiders reveal disturbing new details of final hours before Rob and Michele murders After 27 years as a TV anchor I was suddenly pulled off screens. My boss's explanation was a brutal lesson in loyalty Emily in Paris cast left'aghast' and'walking on eggshells' as off-camera drama becomes overwhelming... and whispers swirl about a CURSE Doctors said my hip pain was just tendinitis from sitting all day at work. The real cause may kill me... they had left it far too late Chilling mystery of'toddler's foot' in Pedophile Island snap as the worst of THOUSANDS of new Epstein file photos exposed I was dead for 105 minutes and learned exactly how you get into heaven... then Jesus spoke six words into my mind and sent me back Jake Paul's jaw is broken in Anthony Joshua battering: YouTuber-turned-boxer rushes to hospital Kennedy niece vows to attack Trump's name with a PICKAX amid awkward gaffe in center's new signage Andrew's fury at anyone who doesn't bow and scrape. The expletive-ridden bust-up... and final ignominy revealed The devastating story of'feral child' Genie Wiley whose father tied her up and locked her in a room until the age of 13 - and the scientific tug of war which broke out upon her discovery Trump launches massive airstrikes in Syria as'vengeance' for killing three Americans Reiner family bombshell as insiders reveal who is paying for Nick's celebrity lawyer... their secret motive... and who will REALLY inherit $200m fortune'Donald Trump has given white South Africans hope': Refugee fleeing the country for new life in US details horrific torture being inflicted in farm attacks as president is hailed for'fighting evil' Terrifying maps break down exactly who is at risk of new'super flu' exploding across America... as doctors reveal symptoms to really worry about Brave Epstein victims speak out over'lack of transparency' in Epstein files drop READ MORE: Doctor reveals sex trends including'freak matching' Forget couples counselling or a saucy mini-break - when it comes to spicing up their sex lives, British couples are turning to AI . A new report by Lovehoney has detailed the rise of the'digital threesome' in the UK.
Benchmarking Multimodal LLMs on Recognition and Understanding over Chemical Tables
Zhou, Yitong, Cheng, Mingyue, Mao, Qingyang, Luo, Yucong, Liu, Qi, Li, Yupeng, Zhang, Xiaohan, Liu, Deguang, Li, Xin, Chen, Enhong
With the widespread application of multimodal large language models in scientific intelligence, there is an urgent need for more challenging evaluation benchmarks to assess their ability to understand complex scientific data. Scientific tables, as core carriers of knowledge representation, combine text, symbols, and graphics, forming a typical multimodal reasoning scenario. However, existing benchmarks are mostly focused on general domains, failing to reflect the unique structural complexity and domain-specific semantics inherent in scientific research. Chemical tables are particularly representative: they intertwine structured variables such as reagents, conditions, and yields with visual symbols like molecular structures and chemical formulas, posing significant challenges to models in cross-modal alignment and semantic parsing. To address this, we propose ChemTable-a large scale benchmark of chemical tables constructed from real-world literature, containing expert-annotated cell layouts, logical structures, and domain-specific labels. It supports two core tasks: (1) table recognition (structure and content extraction); and (2) table understanding (descriptive and reasoning-based question answering). Evaluation on ChemTable shows that while mainstream multimodal models perform reasonably well in layout parsing, they still face significant limitations when handling critical elements such as molecular structures and symbolic conventions. Closed-source models lead overall but still fall short of human-level performance. This work provides a realistic testing platform for evaluating scientific multimodal understanding, revealing the current bottlenecks in domain-specific reasoning and advancing the development of intelligent systems for scientific research.
PlanetServe: A Decentralized, Scalable, and Privacy-Preserving Overlay for Democratizing Large Language Model Serving
Fang, Fei, Hua, Yifan, Wang, Shengze, Zhou, Ruilin, Liu, Yi, Qian, Chen, Zhang, Xiaoxue
While significant progress has been made in research and development on open-source and cost-efficient large-language models (LLMs), serving scalability remains a critical challenge, particularly for small organizations and individuals seeking to deploy and test their LLM innovations. Inspired by peer-to-peer networks that leverage decentralized overlay nodes to increase throughput and availability, we propose GenTorrent, an LLM serving overlay that harnesses computing resources from decentralized contributors. We identify four key research problems inherent to enabling such a decentralized infrastructure: 1) overlay network organization; 2) LLM communication privacy; 3) overlay forwarding for resource efficiency; and 4) verification of serving quality. This work presents the first systematic study of these fundamental problems in the context of decentralized LLM serving. Evaluation results from a prototype implemented on a set of decentralized nodes demonstrate that GenTorrent achieves a latency reduction of over 50% compared to the baseline design without overlay forwarding. Furthermore, the security features introduce minimal overhead to serving latency and throughput. We believe this work pioneers a new direction for democratizing and scaling future AI serving capabilities.
Generative Modeling from Black-box Corruptions via Self-Consistent Stochastic Interpolants
Modi, Chirag, Han, Jiequn, Vanden-Eijnden, Eric, Bruna, Joan
Transport-based methods have emerged as a leading paradigm for building generative models from large, clean datasets. However, in many scientific and engineering domains, clean data are often unavailable: instead, we only observe measurements corrupted through a noisy, ill-conditioned channel. A generative model for the original data thus requires solving an inverse problem at the level of distributions. In this work, we introduce a novel approach to this task based on Stochastic Interpolants: we iteratively update a transport map between corrupted and clean data samples using only access to the corrupted dataset as well as black box access to the corruption channel. Under appropriate conditions, this iterative procedure converges towards a self-consistent transport map that effectively inverts the corruption channel, thus enabling a generative model for the clean data. We refer to the resulting method as the self-consistent stochastic interpolant (SCSI). It (i) is computationally efficient compared to variational alternatives, (ii) highly flexible, handling arbitrary nonlinear forward models with only black-box access, and (iii) enjoys theoretical guarantees. We demonstrate superior performance on inverse problems in natural image processing and scientific reconstruction, and establish convergence guarantees of the scheme under appropriate assumptions.
Flexible Deep Neural Networks for Partially Linear Survival Data
Arie, Asaf Ben, Gorfine, Malka
We propose a flexible deep neural network (DNN) framework for modeling survival data within a partially linear regression structure. The approach preserves interpretability through a parametric linear component for covariates of primary interest, while a nonparametric DNN component captures complex time-covariate interactions among nuisance variables. We refer to the method as FLEXI-Haz, a flexible hazard model with a partially linear structure. In contrast to existing DNN approaches for partially linear Cox models, FLEXI-Haz does not rely on the proportional hazards assumption. We establish theoretical guarantees: the neural network component attains minimax-optimal convergence rates based on composite Holder classes, and the linear estimator is root-n consistent, asymptotically normal, and semiparametrically efficient. Extensive simulations and real-data analyses demonstrate that FLEXI-Haz provides accurate estimation of the linear effect, offering a principled and interpretable alternative to modern methods based on proportional hazards. Code for implementing FLEXI-Haz, as well as scripts for reproducing data analyses and simulations, is available at: https://github.com/AsafBanana/FLEXI-Haz
Hybrid Physics-ML Model for Forward Osmosis Flux with Complete Uncertainty Quantification
Ratn, Shiv, Rampriyan, Shivang, Ray, Bahni
Forward Osmosis (FO) is a promising low-energy membrane separation technology, but challenges in accurately modelling its water flux (Jw) persist due to complex internal mass transfer phenomena. Traditional mechanistic models struggle with empirical parameter variability, while purely data-driven models lack physical consistency and rigorous uncertainty quantification (UQ). This study introduces a novel Robust Hybrid Physics-ML framework employing Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) for highly accurate, uncertainty-aware Jw prediction. The core innovation lies in training the GPR on the residual error between the detailed, non-linear FO physical model prediction (Jw_physical) and the experimental water flux (Jw_actual). Crucially, we implement a full UQ methodology by decomposing the total predictive variance (sigma2_total) into model uncertainty (epistemic, from GPR's posterior variance) and input uncertainty (aleatoric, analytically propagated via the Delta method for multi-variate correlated inputs). Leveraging the inherent strength of GPR in low-data regimes, the model, trained on a meagre 120 data points, achieved a state-of-the-art Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 0.26% and an R2 of 0.999 on the independent test data, validating a truly robust and reliable surrogate model for advanced FO process optimization and digital twin development.