Tootfinder

Can a Sam Darnold-led team win a Super Bowl? QB has a chance to prove worth vs. Rams https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6891377/2025/12/16/nfl-qb-stock-report-sam-darnold-seahawks-patrick-mahomes-philip-rivers/

Influence of Platinum Thin Films on the Photophysical and Quantum Properties of Near-Surface NV Centers
Joachim P. Leibold (Department of Chemistry, School of Natural Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany), Lina M. Todenhagen (Walter Schottky Institute, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany), Matthias Althammer (Walther-Mei{\ss}ner-Institute, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Garching, Germany), Nikhita Khera (Department of Physics and Resea…

Influence of Platinum Thin Films on the Photophysical and Quantum Properties of Near-Surface NV Centers
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are optically addressable spin defects with great potential for nanoscale quantum sensing. A key application of NV centers is the detection of external spins at the diamond surface. Among metals, platinum thin films - widely used in spintronics, catalysis and electrochemistry - provide a particularly interesting system for such studies. However, the interaction between NV centers and metals is known to affect their quantum sensing capabilities. In this w…

Eleven Local Volume dwarf galaxies in the FASHI survey
Aleksandra Nazarova, Dmitry Makarov, Igor Karachentsev, Chuan-Peng Zhang, Ming Zhu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12828 https:…

Eleven Local Volume dwarf galaxies in the FASHI survey
We determined HI parameters for eleven nearby late-type dwarf galaxies using FASHI data cubes, despite the fact that the first version of the FASHI catalog does not list any radio sources that could correspond to these galaxies. Four of them are probable peripheral satellites of the bright spiral galaxies: NGC 3556, NGC 4258, NGC 4274, NGC 4490, while others are isolated objects. The considered sample has the following median parameters: a heliocentric velocity of $V_\mathrm{h} = 542 \ km/s$, a…

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading

Not all flowers are colorful -- here are the flowers of a sedge deep in the Monkey Run Natural Area
#photo #photography #flowers

50 years ago tonight, the jerry garcia band returns home to keystone #berkeley following their east coast tour. a nice audience tape by castelli & menke. https://archive.org/details/jg75-11-0…

Observation Matrix Design for Densifying MIMO Channel Estimation via 2D Ice Filling
Zijian Zhang, Mingyao Cui
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08887 https://arxi…

Observation Matrix Design for Densifying MIMO Channel Estimation via 2D Ice Filling
In recent years, densifying multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has attracted much attention from the communication community. Thanks to the subwavelength antenna spacing, the strong correlations among densifying antennas provide sufficient prior knowledge about channel state information (CSI). This inspires the careful design of observation matrices (e.g., transmit precoders and receive combiners), that exploits the CSI prior knowledge, to boost channel estimation performance. Aligned with t…

Please watch @…’s latest video about the upcoming rains being forecast for Gaza, what it means for the people there who are attempting to exist in makeshift tents, and what you can do to help.
Also, if you’re not already following her, please do.
She’s part of our team at Gaza Verified and, this week, will be running verification calls alongside

Towards High-Efficiency Particle Detection Using Superconducting Microwire Arrays
Christina Wang, Cristi\'an Pe\~na, Adolf Bornheim, Shuoxing Wu, Alexander Albert, Thomas Sievert, Artur Apresyan, Emanuel Knehr, Boris Korzh, Jamie Luskin, Ludovico Mori, Sahil Patel, Guillermo Reales Guti\'errez, Manish Sahu, Ekkehart Schmidt, Matthew Shaw, Elise Sledge, Maria Spiropulu, Towsif Taher, Si Xie

Towards High-Efficiency Particle Detection Using Superconducting Microwire Arrays
We present a detailed study of an 8-channel $1\times1$ mm$^{2}$ WSi superconducting microwire single photon detector (SMSPD) array exposed to 120 GeV hadron beam and 120 GeV muon beam at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron H6 beamline. Following up on our first detailed characterization of the efficiency and response of an SMSPD fabricated on a 3 nm WSi film, we report measurements of enhanced particle detection efficiency using a sensor fabricated from a thicker 4.7nm-thick WSi film. We also rep…

'He let Patrick into his world': Inside the decision that's fueling the Chiefs' dynasty https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46504157/kansas-city-chiefs-built-dynasty-patrick-mahomes-travis-kelce-mnf