Tootfinder

Complex three-dimensional rearing environments amplify compensatory plasticity following early blindness (in opossums) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.02.651847v1 "underscoring the role of experience in directing compensatory plasticity following early s…

AWS shuts down its Shanghai AI research lab, following similar moves by other US tech groups, including Microsoft and IBM, to scale back China-based R&D efforts (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/a7cdb3bf-9c9d-40ef-951e-3c9f5bafe41d

We all have but one single life.... yet some people choose to fill it with hate and making other living beings lifes miserable too, instead of filling this world with beauty and joy.
What a waste.

Before Sunrise (1995)
Before Sunset (2004)
Before Midnight (2013)
I must say I was disappointed there wasn't a sequel to Céline and Jesse's story in 2022.
But maybe… everything that had to be said has been said. That's probably it.
"You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we’re going
Lodged in life
Like two branches in a river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I’ll carry you, you’ll carry me

#Sting 1986, when I was young:
****
In Europe and America
There's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Khrushchev said, "We will bury you"
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children …

Randall Monroe's recent "xkcd What if" video has a Great Lakes connection.
"What if you funneled Niagara Falls through a straw?"
Super cool system where we did fieldwork some year ago.
Kudos for mentioning trouble with the Niagara Board of Control. 🏅
https://youtu.be/pfbzrrcQZjs?featu…

Microstructural and preliminary optical and microwave characterization of erbium doped CaMoO$_4$ thin films
Ignas Masiulionis, Bonnie Y. X. Lin, Sagar Kumar Seth, Gregory D. Grant, Wanda L. Lindquist, Sungjoon Kim, Junghwa Kim, Angel Yanguas-Gil, Jeffrey W. Elam, Jiefei Zhang, James M. LeBeau, David D. Awschalom, Supratik Guha
https://arxi…

Microstructural and preliminary optical and microwave characterization of erbium doped CaMoO$_4$ thin films
This work explores erbium-doped calcium molybdate (CaMoO$_4$) thin films grown on silicon and yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrates, as a potential solid state system for C-band (utilizing the $\sim$1.5 $μ$m Er$^{3+}$ 4f-4f transition) quantum emitters for quantum network applications. Through molecular beam epitaxial growth experiments and electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and reflection electron diffraction studies, we identify an incorporation limited deposition regime that enabl…

So, first off, this is a beautiful video, about #LosAngeles and the #LosAngelesProtests and community.
So, watch this and we’ll move on to the next piece of the story.

We’re on a terrible path that we aren’t even aware exists: collapsing the marine food chain.
The End Permian event did that. It was ugly. Lots of fungal spores in the fossil record, not a lot of bones. Barely anything survived.
We’re having issues with phytoplankton in the #GreatLakes too. Invasive mussels have done huge damage to how the food chain (Esp. in

Phytoplankton, key to ocean life, falling 2% per year in North Atlantic
Two main types of phytoplankton have been decreasing in biomass in the North Atlantic by two per cent each year for the past 60 years, a new study …

In case anyone was wondering how terrorised the RAF is feeling today, there's someone out the back of my house doing loop-the-loops and rolls in a Typhoon.