After a pedagogical introduction to the main concepts of synthetic photometry, colours and bolometric corrections in the Johnson-Cousins, 2MASS, and HST-ACS/WFC3 photometric systems are generated from MARCS synthetic fluxes for various [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe] combinations, and virtually any value of reddening E(B-V) < 0.7. The successes and failures of model fluxes in reproducing the observed magnitudes are highlighted. Overall, extant synthetic fluxes predict quite realistic broad-band colours and bolometric corrections, especially at optical and longer wavelengths: further improvements of the predictions for the blue and ultraviolet spectral regions await the use of hydrodynamic models where the microturbulent velocity is not treated as a free parameter. We show how the morphology of the colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) changes for different values of [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe]; in particular, how suitable colour combinations can easily discriminate between red giant branch and lower main sequence populations with different [alpha/Fe], due to the concomitant loops and swings in the CMD. We also provide computer programs to produce tables of synthetic bolometric corrections as well as r
The use of synthetic data has emerged as an essential tool in Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) research and applications, providing advantages for optimization of acquisition, software validation, deep learning applications, and enhanced reproducibility. Importantly, synthetic data addresses challenges of limited training data availability, particularly for clinical populations, and offers controlled solutions for investigating uncertainties and unexplained variance with in vivo data. This work provides a review and evaluation of current practices in the use and generation of synthetic data within the MRS field. Conducted by the MRS Synthetic Data Working Group under the Code & Data Sharing Committee of the MRS Study Group of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), this manuscript encompasses existing literature, supplemented by collective experience and in-house methodologies.
Selected applications of novel techniques in Agricultural Biotechnology, Health Food formulations and Medical Biotechnology are being reviewed with the aim of unraveling future developments and policy changes that are likely to open new niches for Biotechnology and prevent the shrinking or closing the existing ones. Amongst the selected novel techniques with applications to both Agricultural and Medical Biotechnology are: immobilized bacterial cells and enzymes, microencapsulation and liposome production, genetic manipulation of microorganisms, development of novel vaccines from plants, epigenomics of mammalian cells and organisms, as well as biocomputational tools for molecular modeling related to disease and Bioinformatics. Both fundamental and applied aspects of the emerging new techniques are being discussed in relation to their anticipated impact on future biotechnology applications together with policy changes that are needed for continued success in both Agricultural and Medical Biotechnology. Several novel techniques are illustrated in an attempt to convey the most representative and powerful tools that are currently being developed for both immediate and long term applicat
Extreme events such as earthquakes pose significant threats to integrated electricity-gas distribution systems (IEGDS) by causing widespread damage. Existing restoration approaches typically assume full awareness of damage, which may not be true if monitoring and communication infrastructures are impaired. In such circumstances, field inspection is necessary. This paper presents a novel adaptive restoration framework for IEGDS, considering dynamic damage assessment and repair. The restoration problem is formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), capturing the gradually revealed contingency and the evolving impact of field crew actions. To address the computational challenges of POMDPs in real-time applications, an advanced belief tree search (BTS) algorithm is introduced. This algorithm enables crew members to continuously update their actions based on evolving belief states, leveraging comprehensive simulations to evaluate potential future trajectories and identify optimal inspection and repair strategies. Based on the BTS algorithm, a unified real-time decision-making framework is developed for IEGDS restoration. Case studies on two distinct IEGDS syste
Within the evolving landscape of deep learning, the dilemma of data quantity and quality has been a long-standing problem. The recent advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) offers a data-centric solution to alleviate the limitations of real-world data with synthetic data generation. However, current investigations into this field lack a unified framework and mostly stay on the surface. Therefore, this paper provides an organization of relevant studies based on a generic workflow of synthetic data generation. By doing so, we highlight the gaps within existing research and outline prospective avenues for future study. This work aims to shepherd the academic and industrial communities towards deeper, more methodical inquiries into the capabilities and applications of LLMs-driven synthetic data generation.
Synthetic power systems that imitate functional and statistical characteristics of the actual grid have been developed to promote researchers' access to public system models. Developing time series to represent different operating conditions of these synthetic systems will expand the potential of synthetic power systems applications. This paper proposes a methodology to create synthetic time series of bus-level load using publicly available data. Comprehensive validation metrics are provided to assure that the quality of synthetic time series data is sufficiently realistic. This paper also includes an example application in which the methodology is used to construct load scenarios for a 10,000-bus synthetic case.
Exploring generative model training for synthetic tabular data, specifically in sequential contexts such as credit card transaction data, presents significant challenges. This paper addresses these challenges, focusing on attaining both high fidelity to actual data and optimal utility for machine learning tasks. We introduce five pre-processing schemas to enhance the training of the Conditional Probabilistic Auto-Regressive Model (CPAR), demonstrating incremental improvements in the synthetic data's fidelity and utility. Upon achieving satisfactory fidelity levels, our attention shifts to training fraud detection models tailored for time-series data, evaluating the utility of the synthetic data. Our findings offer valuable insights and practical guidelines for synthetic data practitioners in the finance sector, transitioning from real to synthetic datasets for training purposes, and illuminating broader methodologies for synthesizing credit card transaction time series.
Massive controlled DC resources (CDCRs), such as battery energy storage systems, are connected to AC power systems through bidirectional inverters for power balance requirements. This study investigates converter-driven stability (CDS) issues in the sub-synchronous frequency range caused by large-scale bidirectional inverter-based stations (IBSs). The impacts of the AC and DC connections of IBSs on subsynchronous oscillations (SSOs) are compared by examining three factors: the number of CDCRs, power flow direction, and control parameters of the inverters. For AC connections, IBSs may induce instability as the number of CDCRs increases, regardless of the power flow direction. To maintain stability, the maximum power amplitude of the IBS is calculated. It is found that switching to DC connections can reduce these instability risks if the DC line resistance is much less than the AC line reactance. Moreover, the method of tuning control parameters is demonstrated to be more effective in improving power-related critical stability under DC connections. Therefore, The DC-IBS is preferred for high-voltage transmission. Finally, the conclusions are validated in power systems connected with
Recognizing pain in video is crucial for improving patient-computer interaction systems, yet traditional data collection in this domain raises significant ethical and logistical challenges. This study introduces a novel approach that leverages synthetic data to enhance video-based pain recognition models, providing an ethical and scalable alternative. We present a pipeline that synthesizes realistic 3D facial models by capturing nuanced facial movements from a small participant pool, and mapping these onto diverse synthetic avatars. This process generates 8,600 synthetic faces, accurately reflecting genuine pain expressions from varied angles and perspectives. Utilizing advanced facial capture techniques, and leveraging public datasets like CelebV-HQ and FFHQ-UV for demographic diversity, our new synthetic dataset significantly enhances model training while ensuring privacy by anonymizing identities through facial replacements. Experimental results demonstrate that models trained on combinations of synthetic data paired with a small amount of real participants achieve superior performance in pain recognition, effectively bridging the gap between synthetic simulations and real-world
Cloud computing and distributed computing are becoming ubiquitous in many modern control systems such as smart grids, building automation, robot swarms or intelligent transportation systems. Compared to "isolated" control systems, the advantages of cloud-based and distributed control systems are, in particular, resource pooling and outsourcing, rapid scalability, and high performance. However, these capabilities do not come without risks. In fact, the involved communication and processing of sensitive data via public networks and on third-party platforms promote, among other cyberthreats, eavesdropping and manipulation of data. Encrypted control addresses this security gap and provides confidentiality of the processed data in the entire control loop. This paper presents a tutorial-style introduction to this young but emerging field in the framework of secure control for networked dynamical systems.
Large language models (LLMs) hold potential for innovative HCI research, including the creation of synthetic personae. However, their black-box nature and propensity for hallucinations pose challenges. To address these limitations, this position paper advocates for using LLMs as data augmentation systems rather than zero-shot generators. We further propose the development of robust cognitive and memory frameworks to guide LLM responses. Initial explorations suggest that data enrichment, episodic memory, and self-reflection techniques can improve the reliability of synthetic personae and open up new avenues for HCI research.
Modern engineering structures exhibit nonlinear vibration behavior as designs are pushed to reduce weight and energy consumption. Of specific interest here, joints in assembled structures introduce friction, hysteresis, and unilateral contact resulting in nonlinear vibration effects. In many cases, it is impractical to remove jointed connections necessitating, the understanding of these behaviors. This work focuses on superharmonic and internal resonances in hysteretic and jointed systems. Superharmonic resonances occur when a nonlinear system is forced at an integer fraction of a natural frequency resulting in a large (locally maximal) response at an integer multiple of the forcing frequency. When a second vibration mode simultaneously responds in resonance at the forcing frequency, the combined phenomena is termed an internal resonance. First, variable phase resonance nonlinear modes (VPRNM) is extended to track superharmonic resonances in multiple degree of freedom systems exhibiting hysteresis. Then a novel reduced order model based on VPRNM (VPRNM ROM) is proposed to reconstruct frequency response curves faster than utilizing the harmonic balance method (HBM). The VPRNM ROM is
Biotechnology Industry 5.0 is advancing with the integration of cutting-edge technologies like Machine Learning (ML), the Internet Of Things (IoT), and cloud computing. It is no surprise that an industry that utilizes data from customers and can alter their lives is a target of a variety of attacks. This chapter provides a perspective of how Machine Learning Security Operations (MLSecOps) can help secure the biotechnology Industry 5.0. The chapter provides an analysis of the threats in the biotechnology Industry 5.0 and how ML algorithms can help secure with industry best practices. This chapter explores the scope of MLSecOps in the biotechnology Industry 5.0, highlighting how crucial it is to comply with current regulatory frameworks. With biotechnology Industry 5.0 developing innovative solutions in healthcare, supply chain management, biomanufacturing, pharmaceuticals sectors, and more, the chapter also discusses the MLSecOps best practices that industry and enterprises should follow while also considering ethical responsibilities. Overall, the chapter provides a discussion of how to integrate MLSecOps into the design, deployment, and regulation of the processes in biotechnology
A long-standing challenge in developing machine learning approaches has been the lack of high-quality labeled data. Recently, models trained with purely synthetic data, here termed synthetic clones, generated using large-scale pre-trained diffusion models have shown promising results in overcoming this annotation bottleneck. As these synthetic clone models progress, they are likely to be deployed in challenging real-world settings, yet their suitability remains understudied. Our work addresses this gap by providing the first benchmark for three classes of synthetic clone models, namely supervised, self-supervised, and multi-modal ones, across a range of robustness measures. We show that existing synthetic self-supervised and multi-modal clones are comparable to or outperform state-of-the-art real-image baselines for a range of robustness metrics - shape bias, background bias, calibration, etc. However, we also find that synthetic clones are much more susceptible to adversarial and real-world noise than models trained with real data. To address this, we find that combining both real and synthetic data further increases the robustness, and that the choice of prompt used for generatin
With the emergence of communication services with stringent requirements such as autonomous driving or on-flight Internet, the sixth-generation (6G) wireless network is envisaged to become an enabling technology for future transportation systems. In this paper, two ways of interactions between 6G networks and transportation are extensively investigated. On one hand, the new usage scenarios and capabilities of 6G over existing cellular networks are firstly highlighted. Then, its potential in seamless and ubiquitous connectivity across the heterogeneous space-air-ground transportation systems is demonstrated, where railways, airplanes, high-altitude platforms and satellites are investigated. On the other hand, we reveal that the introduction of 6G guarantees a more intelligent, efficient and secure transportation system. Specifically, technical analysis on how 6G can empower future transportation is provided, based on the latest research and standardization progresses in localization, integrated sensing and communications, and security. The technical challenges and insights for a road ahead are also summarized for possible inspirations on 6G enabled advanced transportation.
This paper studies the possibility of detecting and isolating topology failures (including link failures and node failures) of a networked system from subsystem measurements, in which subsystems are of fixed high-order linear dynamics, and the exact interaction weights among them are unknown. We prove that in such class of networked systems with the same network topologies, the detectability and isolability of a given topology failure (set) are generic properties, indicating that it is the network topology that dominates the property of being detectable or isolable for a failure (set). We first give algebraic conditions for detectability and isolability of arbitrary parameter perturbations for a lumped plant, and then derive graph-theoretical necessary and sufficient conditions for generic detectability and isolability of topology failures for the networked systems. On the basis of these results, we consider the problems of deploying the smallest set of sensors for generic detectability and isolability. We reduce the associated sensor placement problems to the hitting set problems, which can be effectively solved by greedy algorithms with guaranteed approximation performances.
Synthetic biologists have made great progress over the past decade in developing methods for modular assembly of genetic sequences and in engineering biological systems with a wide variety of functions in various contexts and organisms. However, current paradigms in the field entangle sequence and functionality in a manner that makes abstraction difficult, reduces engineering flexibility, and impairs predictability and design reuse. Functional Synthetic Biology aims to overcome these impediments by focusing the design of biological systems on function, rather than on sequence. This reorientation will decouple the engineering of biological devices from the specifics of how those devices are put to use, requiring both conceptual and organizational change, as well as supporting software tooling. Realizing this vision of Functional Synthetic Biology will allow more flexibility in how devices are used, more opportunity for reuse of devices and data, improvements in predictability, and reductions in technical risk and cost.
Synthetic data (SD) have garnered attention as a privacy enhancing technology. Unfortunately, there is no standard for quantifying their degree of privacy protection. In this paper, we discuss proposed quantification approaches. This contributes to the development of SD privacy standards; stimulates multi-disciplinary discussion; and helps SD researchers make informed modeling and evaluation decisions.
The generation of synthetic data is an essential tool to study complex systems, allowing for example to test models of these in precisely controlled settings, or to parametrize simulation models when data is missing. This paper focuses on the generation of synthetic data with an emphasis on correlation structure. We introduce a new methodology to generate such correlated synthetic data. It is implemented in the field of socio-spatial systems, more precisely by coupling an urban growth model with a transportation network generation model. We also show the genericity of the method with an application on financial time-series. The simulation results show that the generation of correlated synthetic data for such systems is indeed feasible within a broad range of correlations, and suggest applications of such synthetic datasets.
This paper addresses the fundamental problem of non-uniform area coverage in multi-agent systems, where different regions require varying levels of attention due to mission-dependent priorities. Existing uniform coverage strategies are insufficient for realistic applications, and many non-uniform approaches either lack optimality guarantees or fail to incorporate crucial real-world constraints such as agent dynamics, limited operation time, the number of agents, and decentralized execution. To resolve these limitations, we propose a novel framework called Density-Driven Optimal Control (D2OC). The central idea of D2OC is the integration of optimal transport theory with multi-agent coverage control, enabling each agent to continuously adjust its trajectory to match a mission-specific reference density map. The proposed formulation establishes optimality by solving a constrained optimization problem that explicitly incorporates physical and operational constraints. The resulting control input is analytically derived from the Lagrangian of the objective function, yielding closed-form optimal solutions for linear systems and a generalizable structure for nonlinear systems. Furthermore,