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A look at the auction for the Oscars' TV rights, as sources say Netflix is out, NBCUniversal gains ground, and YouTube and ABC remain active bidders (Matt Donnelly/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/oscars-tv-rights-nbcuniversal-a…

Oscar TV Rights Auction: NBCUniversal Leads Charge to Nab Telecast
NBCUniversal is in the lead to nab TV rights to the Oscars starting in 2029 as the Motion Picture Academy shops around for a new deal.

HeatMat: Simulation of City Material Impact on Urban Heat Island Effect
Marie Reinbigler, Romain Rouffet, Peter Naylor, Mikolaj Czerkawski, Nikolaos Dionelis, Elisabeth Brunet, Catalin Fetita, Rosalie Martin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22796 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.22796 https://arxiv.org/html/2601.22796
arXiv:2601.22796v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, defined as a significant increase in temperature in urban environments compared to surrounding areas, is difficult to study in real cities using sensor data (satellites or in-situ stations) due to their coarse spatial and temporal resolution. Among the factors contributing to this effect are the properties of urban materials, which differ from those in rural areas. To analyze their individual impact and to test new material configurations, a high-resolution simulation at the city scale is required. Estimating the current materials used in a city, including those on building facades, is also challenging. We propose HeatMat, an approach to analyze at high resolution the individual impact of urban materials on the UHI effect in a real city, relying only on open data. We estimate building materials using street-view images and a pre-trained vision-language model (VLM) to supplement existing OpenStreetMap data, which describes the 2D geometry and features of buildings. We further encode this information into a set of 2D maps that represent the city's vertical structure and material characteristics. These maps serve as inputs for our 2.5D simulator, which models coupled heat transfers and enables random-access surface temperature estimation at multiple resolutions, reaching an x20 speedup compared to an equivalent simulation in 3D.
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Prefrontal scaling of reward prediction error readout gates reinforcement-derived adaptive behavior in primates
Tian Sang, Yichun Huang, Fangwei Zhong, Miao Wang, Shiqi Yu, Jiahui Li, Yuanjing Feng, Yizhou Wang, Kwok Sze Chai, Ravi S. Menon, Meiyun Wang, Fang Fang, Zheng Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09761 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09761 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.09761
arXiv:2512.09761v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) enables adaptive behavior across species via reward prediction errors (RPEs), but the neural origins of species-specific adaptability remain unknown. Integrating RL modeling, transcriptomics, and neuroimaging during reversal learning, we discovered convergent RPE signatures - shared monoaminergic/synaptic gene upregulation and neuroanatomical representations, yet humans outperformed macaques behaviorally. Single-trial decoding showed RPEs guided choices similarly in both species, but humans disproportionately recruited dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Cross-species alignment uncovered that macaque prefrontal circuits encode human-like optimal RPEs yet fail to translate them into action. Adaptability scaled not with RPE encoding fidelity, but with the areal extent of dACC/dlPFC recruitment governing RPE-to-action transformation. These findings resolve an evolutionary puzzle: behavioral performance gaps arise from executive cortical readout efficiency, not encoding capacity.
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