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MATEY: multiscale adaptive transformer models for spatiotemporal physical systems

Accurate representation of the multiscale features in spatiotemporal physical systems using vision transformer architectures requires extremely long, computationally prohibitive token sequences. To address this issue, we propose two novel adaptive tokenization schemes that dynamically adjust patch sizes based on local features: one ensures convergent behavior to uniform patch refinement, while the other offers better computational efficiency. Moreover, we present a set of spatiotemporal attention schemes, where the temporal or axial spatial dimensions are decoupled, to evaluate their baseline computational and data efficiencies and to determine whether adaptive tokenization can improve this performance. We assess the performance of the proposed multiscale adaptive model, MATEY, in a sequence of experiments. Compared to a full spatiotemporal attention scheme or a scheme that decouples only the temporal dimension, we find that fully decoupled axial attention is less efficient and expressive, requiring more training time and model parameters to achieve the same accuracy. The experiments on the adaptive tokenization schemes show that, compared to a uniformly refined model, the proposed schemes achieve comparable or improved accuracy at a much lower cost in the tested two-dimensional settings. While the asymptotic analysis suggests the potential for favorable scaling, empirical validation at substantially longer sequence lengths remains to be performed in future work. Finally, we demonstrate in two fine-tuning tasks featuring different physics that models pretrained on PDEBench data outperform the ones trained from scratch, especially in the low data regime with frozen attention.

adaptive tokenization

An adaptive model-free robotic force control strategy for hydrodynamic real-time hybrid simulation of floating offshore wind turbines

Real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS) - a cyber-physical testing approach - promises to enhance the simulation fidelity of the model-scale experiments used to prototype floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs). In hydrodynamic RTHS (hydro-RTHS), actuators emulate aerodynamic forces on model-scale FOWT specimens subjected to physical waves in a hydrodynamic laboratory. Robotic arms are promising candidates for actuation in hydro-RTHS due to their compact multi-degree-of-freedom (DOF) capabilities. Unlike classical RTHS for seismic applications, which typically relies on displacement control, hydro-RTHS requires 6-DOF force control on newly designed floating prototypes in a model-scale setting, which presents significant challenges, including modeling uncertainties, directional asymmetry, configuration drift, bandwidth limitations, and time-varying delays. To mitigate these constraints without extensive pre-test calibration, this study proposes an adaptive model-free robotic force control strategy that combines task-space explicit force control with a secondary joint-space pose-keeping task. The Adaptive Feedforward Compensator (AFC) is integrated into the force control loop to compensate for time-varying delay. Experimental testing was conducted using a Franka Emika Panda robotic arm with a 1:50 scale FOWT specimen under operational wind and wave conditions. Results demonstrate stable and consistent 6-DOF force tracking. Effective delay compensation was observed, with low-frequency delay reductions ranging from 71.4% to 91.8% and improvements in low-frequency surge force tracking of 25.0% to 52.1%. This study enhances robotic actuation performance in hydro-RTHS and introduces a force control strategy that supports reliable robotic operation in uncertain floating environments. Future work will explore disturbance-observer mechanisms to further enhance wave rejection capabilities under extreme wind and wave conditions.

17 WIND ENERGY

Adaptive Model-Free Vehicle Path-Tracking via Fast-Converging Prescribed-Time Newton-Based Extremum-Seeking Control

Model-free control (MFC) offers a simple and effective approach to automated vehicle path-tracking without requiring an explicit plant model for control law design. However, gain tuning in MFC is typically carried out through trial-and-error, which can be time-consuming and may lead to suboptimal performance. To address this limitation, extremum-seeking-based adaptive MFC has shown promise by enabling real-time adaptation of control gains, without relying on a predefined vehicle model. Nonetheless, existing ESC approaches often suffer from slow convergence. This paper integrates MFC, employing longitudinal and lateral ultra-local models of a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, with a novel prescribed-time (PT) Newton-based extremum-seeking control (ESC) strategy that ensures rapid convergence of control gains within the prescribed time. Unlike conventional gradient-based ESC methods, the PT Newton-based ESC leverages artificial delays and time-periodic gains, not only to guarantee convergence within the specified time, but also to compensate for feedback delays. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves gain adaptation speed and tracking accuracy. This work advances adaptive model-free vehicle control by offering a high-performance, delay-resilient alternative to existing ESCMFC frameworks.

Waleed khan, Muhammad [The University of Texas at

Adaptive anomaly detection for identifying attacks in cyber-physical systems: A systematic literature review

Modern cyberattacks in cyber-physical systems (CPS) rapidly evolve and cannot be deterred effectively with most current methods, which focus on characterizing past threats. Adaptive anomaly detection (AAD) is among the most promising techniques to detect evolving cyberattacks, with an emphasis on fast data processing and model adaptation. AAD has been researched extensively; however, to the best of our knowledge, our work is the first systematic literature review (SLR) on current research in this field. We present a comprehensive SLR, gathering 397 relevant papers and systematically analyzing 65 of them (47 research and 18 survey papers) on AAD in CPS from 2013 to November 2023. We introduce a novel taxonomy considering attack types, CPS application, learning paradigm, data management, and algorithms. Our findings show that most studies addressed either model adaptation or data processing, but rarely both simultaneously. This indicates a research gap in fully adaptive solutions. We also categorize algorithms, datasets, and attack characteristics, and summarize strengths and weaknesses across the literature. Our review provides a structured and accessible reference for researchers and practitioners, offering insights into key trends and highlighting limitations in current approaches. Finally, we outline several future research directions, including the need for integrated real-time processing and adaptive learning, explainability, and uncertainty quantification in AAD for CPS.

Adaptation

Modeling and Calibration of Supplier Selection Problem in Freight Agent-Based Simulations

Freight transportation modeling often struggles with data limitations, especially in accurately representing complex supplier selection processes and their impact on network flows. This research addresses this critical gap by developing a large-scale, calibrated agent-based model for supplier selection, complemented by a probabilistic heuristic for international shipments. Our approach integrates trade relationships between industry sectors, transportation costs, and a supplier-rating model adapted from existing literature. The model’s core objective is to minimize the discrepancy between modeled and observed commodity flows while ensuring a close match to regional shipping distance distributions. Implemented and tested across four major U.S. metropolitan areas—Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Los Angeles—the model demonstrates high fidelity in replicating observed freight patterns. Key findings reveal consistent alignment with national shipping distance trends and highlight significant spatial variations in commodity trade assignments and demand across the study regions. This behaviorally informed and transport-sensitive framework is designed to approximate real-world decision making, providing a robust tool for policymakers and planners to evaluate targeted interventions, assess infrastructure investments, and enhance supply chain resilience in the face of disruptions.

Ismael, Abdelrahman (ORCID:0000000303712110)

Regional-scale soil carbon predictions can be enhanced by transferring global-scale soil–environment relationships

Accurate modelling and mapping soil organic carbon are crucial for supporting soil health restoration and climate change mitigation at both regional and global scales. However, regional soil predictions often suffer from data scarcity and high prediction uncertainty. Utilizing a pre-trained global-to-regional soil carbon predictive model can be a potential solution to address this challenge. Despite its promise, how to construct and apply the global-scale model to enhance regional-scale soil carbon mapping remains largely unexplored. Here, we propose the Global Soil Carbon Pre-trained Model (GSoilCPM), a deep-learning-based domain adaptative model, to enhance regional-scale soil carbon predictions. Based on large amount of environmental covariate data and 106,167 soil samples across the globe, we verify our hypothesis of the effectiveness of this 'global-to-regional' modelling strategy. The pre-trained model can be then transferred and fine-tuned to bridge the regional- and global-scale soil–environment relationships. We applied and validated this modelling strategy in four regional-scale study areas, three in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere, each with distinct environmental background. Compared to traditional modelling approaches as a baseline, four case studies all demonstrated significant improvement in prediction accuracy across diverse environments and varying data availabilities. The average percentage improvement across all regions is 10.93% (absolute values decreased by 1.20 g kg−1 averagely) in MAE and 29.04% (absolute values increased by 0.10 averagely) in CCC. The applicability and future horizons of using GSoilCPM were further discussed. We further reveal that regions with fewer soil samples or lower baseline accuracy benefit more from the pre-trained global model. Our findings highlight the advantages of leveraging the generalized knowledge from global models to enhance specifically localized soil modelling, positioning a potential paradigm shift in digital soil mapping, and far-reaching implications for soil monitoring and land management.

Deep learning

AI Model Benchmarking for Nonproliferation Applications: Steel Thread Benchmarking Task Force Technical Report (Rev. 2)

Steel Thread is a NA-22 venture that seeks to build trustworthy, reliable AI models that can be used in a wide variety of nonproliferation tasks. A key aspect of building these models is developing appropriate benchmarks and evaluation methods, which will enable the venture to identify and adapt models to provide the most value in the nonproliferation domain. Benchmarks must be relevant to key tasks in this domain, such as question answering, information retrieval, document summarization and classification, consensus analysis, and image and data analysis. This report 1) provides an overview of benchmark design, evaluation, and challenges; 2) reviews a variety of open benchmarks, with a focus on language models and tasks; and 3) identifies benchmarks that are most relevant to Steel Thread. This report is intended to serve as a basis for further efforts to classify and evaluate benchmarks and their correlation with success on nonproliferation-specific tasks. The Steel Thread venture has defined benchmarks to be a particular combination of a dataset (or datasets) and a metric (or metrics) conceptualized as representing one or more specific tasks or sets of abilities for a specific modality. It is adopted by a research community as a shared framework for comparing methods.1 It includes 1) Data: Labeled (a designated subset not used for training, which could be all the data), 2) Metric: A way to quantify performance, 3) Task/Ability: What the benchmark is testing, 4) Protocol: A structured and repeatable evaluation process, 5) Baseline/Reference Model: For comparison; could be statistical, rule-based, SME-derived, or another model, and 6) Maintenance Plan: to update with new information over time; important for long-term utility. For further clarity, the definition includes what a benchmark, in this context, is not. It is not a corpus of training data, specific to a model (it is intended to apply to a range of models), a universal evaluation of performance, a guarantee that the ‘top’ model on the leaderboard will be the best fit for every specific use case, an all-encompassing proof of a model’s universal quality, nor is it a one-size-fits-all measure of success. It does not cover every real-world constraint (like operational, ethical, or cost considerations), a systems integration test, or a unit test. This definition was inspired by and resulted from discussions within the Steel Thread Benchmarking Task Force. This group was formed to define what we would mean as a benchmark within Steel Thread but persisted as the need to develop a thorough understanding of the large and expanding existing benchmarking space. This technical report is a result of the group’s divide and conquer approach to exploring this space. The release of benchmarks might not be progressing as quickly as model development, but it is moving very fast, as many benchmarks quickly become saturated, when state-of-the-art models score so close to the benchmark’s ceiling that their results are virtually indistinguishable. At that point, the test no longer differentiates between new systems, so researchers usually stop reporting scores as the benchmark no longer informs about improvements from the next generation of models. In the OpenAI announcement of GPT-5, they reported results on six flagship public benchmarks (AIME 2025, SWE-bench Verified, Aider Polyglot, MMMU, HealthBench Hard, GPQA) but the full system-card covers roughly thirty-five separate evaluations, comprising hundreds of test task items in total. There have been some efforts to summarize benchmarks in specific fields, like for text-to-image generation, but these surveys have had a narrow methodology scope. Therefore, a comprehensive survey of all benchmarks or even all benchmarks that could be relevant to Steel Thread is outside of the scope of this report. We chose some specific benchmarks to investigate in detail.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

Federated Learning for Efficient Condition Monitoring and Anomaly Detection in Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems

Detecting and localizing anomalies in cyber-physical systems (CPS) has become increasingly challenging as systems grow in complexity, particularly due to varying sensor reliability and node failures in distributed environments. While federated learning (FL) offers a foundation for distributed model training, existing approaches lack mechanisms to handle these CPS-specific challenges. This paper presents an enhanced FL framework that introduces three key innovations: adaptive model aggregation based on sensor reliability, dynamic node selection for resource optimization, and Weibull-based checkpointing for fault tolerance. Our framework enables reliable condition monitoring while addressing the computational and reliability challenges of industrial CPS deployments. Experiments on NASA Bearing and Hydraulic System Datasets demonstrate superior performance over state-of-the-art FL methods, achieving 99.5% AUC-ROC in anomaly detection and maintaining accuracy under node failures. Statistical validation using Mann-Whitney (U) test confirms significant improvements (p < 0.05) in both detection accuracy and computational efficiency across diverse operational scenarios.1

Marfo, William [University of Texas at El Paso,Dep

Unraveling fundamental mechanisms of silicon nitride crystallization in microelectronics manufacturing

This research project investigates the fundamental mechanisms of silicon nitride (SiN) crystallization, aiming to enhance the understanding of this critical material in microelectronics manufacturing. Through a collaborative effort between Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Florida, we developed a comprehensive framework that integrates experimental techniques, atomistic modeling, meso-scale simulations, and an integrated multi-scale model to capture this physical phenomenon on multiple time and length scales . The project developed a new machine learning based atomistic potential and utilized advanced phase field modeling to capture the complexities of polycrystalline growth and the influence of mechanical stresses on crystallization dynamics. By employing a grain tracker algorithm, the meso-scale model effectively identified and tracked individual crystal grains, enabling the simulation of anisotropic growth behaviors reflective of SiN’s physical properties. The integration of atomistic simulations with meso-scale modeling created a powerful multi-scale framework that validated atomistic inputs and enhanced predictive accuracy for crystallization dynamics at larger scales, validated experimentally. This adaptable modeling capability not only accelerates development times by informing manufacturing processes but also serves as a valuable starting point for understanding crystallization physics in similar materials. The insights gained from this research unlock new opportunities for the development of advanced materials tailored for future microelectronics and photonics applications. Overall, this project represents a significant advancement in understanding of fundamental physics of SiN and establishes a foundation for future research in material science, bridging the gap between atomic-level phenomena and macroscopic material behaviors for practical applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE

Modeling the impact of structure and coverage on the reactivity of realistic heterogeneous catalysts

Adsorbates often cover the surfaces of catalysts densely as they carry out reactions, dynamically altering their structure and reactivity. Understanding adsorbate-induced phenomena and harnessing them in our broader quest for improved catalysts is a substantial challenge that is only beginning to be addressed. Here, in this work, we chart a path toward a deeper understanding of such phenomena by focusing on emerging in silico modeling methodologies, which will increasingly incorporate machine learning techniques. We first examine how adsorption on catalyst surfaces can lead to local and even global structural changes spanning entire nanoparticles, and how this affects their reactivity. We then evaluate current efforts and the remaining challenges in developing robust and predictive simulations for modeling such behavior. Last, we provide our perspectives in four critical areas—integration of artificial intelligence, building robust catalysis informatics infrastructure, synergism with experimental characterization, and adaptive modeling frameworks—that we believe can help surmount the remaining challenges in rationally designing catalysts in light of these complex phenomena.

catalytic mechanisms

Exploration of an Adaptive Routine for Battery Modeling

The purpose of this document is to explore the use of adaptive routines in battery modeling. The adaptive routines consist of real-time state estimators combined with battery parameter model components that are adjusted in real-time as battery data becomes available. Several aspects are explored. It is shown that model parameter identification is possible for simple battery models using available input/output data measurements. The online system identification used is recursive least squares. Model identification may be combined with a state observer such as the extended Kalman filter or the unscented Kalman filter to form an adaptive model combined with state estimation. However, such a combination is found to be problematic due to uncertainty, observability and stability issues. This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces adaptive routines and possible roles they play in battery modeling. In Section 2 real-time parameter identification is described with results based on battery data. Section 3 reviews various state estimators and results using a simple battery model. In Section 4 parameter identification and state estimation are combined to form an adaptive routine. Finally, in Section 5 conclusions are drawn and future work is suggested.

Adaptive

Legacy Analysis of Milky Way Dwarf Spheroidal Satellite Galaxies: An Update

Studies of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data coincident with dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies (dSphs) of the Milky Way have put the most stringent constraints on models of annihilating dark matter (DM) with candidate masses in the GeV–TeV range. Recent results found the presence of small, local significance excesses from these targets, at the 2σ–3σ level. However, these excesses disagree on the predicted properties of the DM candidate, and their significance vanishes when considering correction factors for the number of trials. In this work, we apply key improvements to the analysis of dSphs. We use stricter cuts on the data, implement a method to adaptively model the background, and assume an updated framework for DM annihilation. We find that our improved background modeling leads to a better agreement between the model and the data. This produces an increase in the local and global significance of the dSph excess compared to previous studies. Finally, we find that the DM properties obtained in this work are less dependent on the sample of dSphs being considered compared to previous studies, while remaining in agreement with the predictions from the Galactic center excess observed by Fermi/LAT and the antiproton excess observed by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02). Considering our improvements, a future significant increase in the number of dwarfs may lead to a definitive confirmation or exclusion of the DM interpretation of the Galactic center excess.

cold dark matter

A comparative analysis of YOLOv8 and U-Net image segmentation approaches for transmission electron micrographs of polycrystalline thin films

Metallic thin films offer a platform to experimentally study the dynamics of microstructural evolution, but the required transmission electron microscopy (TEM)-based imaging generates complex images that are challenging to segment and quantify. This work provides a comparative analysis of a new YOLOv8 model and an established U-Net model for bright-field TEM images of polycrystals, employing a framework leveraging physical observables to evaluate performance against two hand-traced benchmark datasets. This methodology obviates the comparison of large, diversely structured, and manually labeled datasets that are required to assess performance on a per-image/per-pixel basis. It is found that the YOLOv8 model, adapted for real-time instance segmentation, has up to 43× faster inferencing (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090) compared to U-Net and reconstructs hand-traced grain size distributions (GSDs) with excellent fidelity, finding mean diameter within 3% for grains near an optimal magnification; for grains that deviate from the optimal pixel-diameter, the size of small- (large)-diameter grains is systematically over- (under)-estimated. This is partially mitigated by including scale-aware augmentations during training. Moreover, when the bias is corrected post-inference by a rigid shift in distribution, the YOLOv8 model reproduces ground truth GSDs with exceptional fidelity, with statistical tests indicating <5% probability that the distributions are distinct. Based on ground truth data, calibration curves pertaining to this shift can be constructed for a given model. This issue is not present in the U-Net model’s results, indicating that for quantitative measurements where the true size of objects is of interest, special procedures must be implemented for YOLO-based models.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE

Evolving language of pediatric anxiety in electronic health records

Objectives This study aimed to identify and quantify semantic drift (ie, the change in semantic meaning over time) within expert-defined anxiety-related (AR) terminology and compare it to common electronic health record (EHR) vocabulary across longitudinal pediatric clinical notes. Materials and Methods A corpus of pediatric clinical notes from 2009 to 2022 was analyzed using computational methods. Semantic drift for each term was quantified using cosine similarity between annual temporal word embeddings. Contextual meaning was examined through changes in nearest neighbors across years. The Laws of Semantic Change were applied to assess the influence of word frequency and polysemy. Vocabulary terms were categorized as AR or common EHR. Results 98% of AR terminology maintained a cosine similarity between 0.00 and 0.50, indicating moderate semantic stability, whereas 90% of common EHR terms remained between 0.00 and 0.25, showing greater contextual stability overall. Frequent terms exhibited minimal change (Frequency Coefficient = 0.04), whereas highly polysemous or abbreviated terms showed less stability (Polysemy Coefficient = 0.630). AR terminology drifted more slowly than general EHR vocabulary (Type Coefficient = −0.179), further supported by significant year–type interactions (Coef = −0.09 to −0.523). Discussion Although anxiety-related terminology demonstrates slower semantic drift than general EHR vocabulary, subtle contextual shifts still occur that may affect downstream interpretability and retrieval in automated systems. Conclusion Continuous linguistic monitoring and adaptive modeling are essential to maintain semantic fidelity and ensure the long-term reliability of clinical decision support systems as healthcare documentation evolves.

Pediatric anxiety disorders

Exascale Computing and Data Handling: Challenges and Opportunities for Weather and Climate Prediction

The emergence of exascale computing and artificial intelligence offer tremendous potential to significantly advance Earth system prediction capabilities. However, enormous challenges must be overcome to adapt models and prediction systems to use these new technologies effectively. A 2022 WMO report on exascale computing recommends “urgency in dedicating efforts and attention to disruptions associated with evolving computing technologies that will be increasingly difficult to overcome, threatening continued advancements in weather and climate prediction capabilities.” Further, the explosive growth in data from observations, model and ensemble output, and postprocessing threatens to overwhelm the ability to deliver timely, accurate, and precise information needed for decision-making. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers untapped opportunities to alter how models are developed, observations are processed, and predictions are analyzed and extracted for decision-making. Given the extraordinarily high cost of computing, growing complexity of prediction systems, and increasingly unmanageable amount of data being produced and consumed, these challenges are rapidly becoming too large for any single institution or country to handle. This paper describes key technical and budgetary challenges, identifies gaps and ways to address them, and makes a number of recommendations.

Atmosphere

How does drought affect residential water demand and price elasticity?

Urban water scarcity is an important social and economic concern, particularly as the intensity, duration, and frequency of droughts is increasing in many regions. We consider whether drought induces changes to water demand and the price elasticity of demand for water that may last beyond a drought’s official end date. If drought shocks prompt long-term changes in water demand behavior, and these changes occur at broad geographic scale, they could have important implications for modeling adaptive responses to water scarcity. We assemble a novel dataset on residential water demand and pricing in the western United States to test empirically for effects of drought on water demand and price elasticity. We perform our analysis with aggregate quantity, price, and drought data, accounting for endogenous prices under increasing-block water tariffs and using both average and marginal water fees in estimating water demand functions. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that households may become less price-sensitive after exposure to drought. However, we find no systematic evidence of long-run, drought-related reductions in water demand, itself.

demand hardening