Neural ODEs are a widely used, powerful machine learning technique in particular for physics. However, not every solution is physical in that it is an Euler-Lagrange equation. We present Helmholtz metrics to quantify this resemblance for a given ODE and demonstrate their capabilities on several fundamental systems with noise. We combine them with a second order neural ODE to form a Lagrangian neural ODE, which allows to learn Euler-Lagrange equations in a direct fashion and with zero additional inference cost. We demonstrate that, using only positional data, they can distinguish Lagrangian and non-Lagrangian systems and improve the neural ODE solutions.

From'beef' to'bare', it's safe to say that many members of Generation Z have their own language. Now, a Harvard-trained linguistics expert has revealed how Gen Z (those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s) have started to use video game terms. Just as previous generations have used sports metaphors as part of everyday language, video games are now becoming part of how young people understand the world, according to Adam Aleksic. So whether you're being called an NPC, getting asked'where we dropping?', Thankfully, help is at hand, as we've compiled a list of some of the most common video game terms - and what they mean in Gen Z's modern dictionary. To reduce in power or make worse, usually to make things more balanced.

Misinformation, propaganda, and outright lies proliferate on the web, with some narratives having dangerous real-world consequences on public health, elections, and individual safety. However, despite the impact of misinformation, the research community largely lacks automated and programmatic approaches for tracking news narratives across online platforms. In this work, utilizing daily scrapes of 1,334 unreliable news websites, the large-language model MPNet, and DP-Means clustering, we introduce a system to automatically identify and track the narratives spread within online ecosystems. Identifying 52,036 narratives on these 1,334 websites, we describe the most prevalent narratives spread in 2022 and identify the most influential websites that originate and amplify narratives. Finally, we show how our system can be utilized to detect new narratives originating from unreliable news websites and to aid fact-checkers in more quickly addressing misinformation. We release code and data at https://github.com/hanshanley/specious-sites.

We explored decision-making dynamics in social systems, referencing the 'herd behavior' from prior studies where individuals follow preceding choices without understanding the underlying reasons. While previous research highlighted a preference for the optimal choice without external influences, our study introduced principals or external guides, adding complexity to the decision-making process. The reliability of these principals significantly influenced decisions. Notably, even occasional trust in an unreliable principal could alter decision outcomes. Furthermore, when a principal's advice was purely random, heightened trust led to more decision errors. Our findings emphasize the need for caution when placing trust in decision-making contexts.

Abstract: We study a collaborative multi-agent stochastic linear bandit setting, where N agents that form a network communicate locally to minimize their overall regret. In this setting, each agent has its own linear bandit problem (its own reward parameter) and the goal is to select the best global action w.r.t. the average of their reward parameters. At each round, each agent proposes an action, and one action is randomly selected and played as the network action. All the agents observe the corresponding rewards of the played actions and use an accelerated consensus procedure to compute an estimate of the average of the rewards obtained by all the agents. We propose a distributed upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithm and prove a high probability bound on its T-round regret in which we include a linear growth of regret associated with each communication round.

In 2022, the best games were made for masochists. After several years of boom times for wholesome stories and colorful worlds, 2022 reminded us that sometimes there's no truer form of fun than failing horribly, repeatedly. FromSoftware often leads that charge, thanks to series like Dark Souls. This year, it rose to its own challenge. Elden Ring, maddening in its difficulty and unusually cruel in its creative ways to kill you, took center stage as players picked apart its every secret.

Not long after Elon Musk announced plans to acquire Twitter last March, he mused about open sourcing "the algorithm" that determines how tweets are surfaced in user feeds so that it could be inspected for bias. His fans--as well as those who believe the social media platform harbors a left-wing bias--were delighted. But today, as part of an aggressive plan to trim costs that involves firing thousands of Twitter employees, Musk's management team cut a team of artificial intelligence researchers who were working toward making Twitter's algorithms more transparent and fair. Rumman Chowdhury, director of the ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability (META--no, not that one) team at Twitter, tweeted that she had been let go as part of mass layoffs implemented by new management--although it hardly seemed that she was relishing the idea of working under Musk. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Aliens, astronauts, time travel--you name it, there's a dazzling sci-fi film about it. That makes compiling a list of the best sci-fi nearly impossible. It's almost impossible to know where to start--or where to stop. To understand where sci-fi films came from, you need to head back to the dawn of the cinema age. Right at the beginning, Metropolis, released in 1927, used groundbreaking visuals to create a reference point for all future urban dystopias--it's no fluke, for example, that the aesthetic of Blade Runner bears more than a passing resemblance to Fritz Lang's prophetic city hellscape. Then along came War of the Worlds (1953), a gripping tale of alien invasion adapted from H. G. Wells' classic novel. In 1964, Dr. Strangelove did more than most films before or since to ossify the fear of a nuclear holocaust. Below is WIRED's ever-evolving selection of the sci-fi movies everyone should watch, from the obscure to the hugely influential. You may also enjoy our guides to the best sci-fi books of all time and the best space movies. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. When Alfonso Cuarón wrote the screenplay for Gravity, he wasn't setting out to make a film about space itself. Rather, he was interested in exploring the concepts of adversity and human resilience, with space as a secondary background. But it was hard for audiences to not be wowed by the visuals in this Oscar-winning film about two scientists (George Clooney and Sandra Bullock) who find themselves stranded in space, and what they must endure in order to get safely back to Earth.

Disney has a seemingly endless selection of Marvel movies and plenty of Star Wars and Pixar fare, too. Problem is, there's so much stuff, it's hard to know where to begin. WIRED is here to help. Below are our picks for the best movies on Disney right now. For more viewing ideas, try our guides to the best movies on Netflix and the best movies on Amazon Prime. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. Sam Raimi's sequel to 2016's Doctor Strange isn't the beloved director's first superhero movie, but it is his first foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe style of making movies, which ultimately proves to be both a blessing and a curse. On the plus side, the movie is probably the closest thing the Marvel franchise has gotten to a straight-up horror film, and it's full of Raimi's signature practical effects (plus the ever-important Bruce Campbell cameo). Yet, because the MCU is such a box office powerhouse, the movie never goes full Raimi--which is understandable, but somewhat disappointing for fans of The Evil Dead maestro.

Alan Tudyk is no stranger to the world of sci-fi. The actor made a name for himself in space-heavy projects like Firefly and Serenity before zooming into shows and movies like I, Robot and Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. He's made a web series about fan conventions, and he's even the voice of a Star Wars droid: K-2SO. In other words, Tudyk has sci-fi bonafides. He loves the genre wholeheartedly and is committed to its success--and not just because his currently airing Syfy fish-out-of water-comedy, Resident Alien, just got picked up for a third season.