Tootfinder

Cowboys fiercest camp battle will be at position they only invested $8 million in https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/06/22/cowboys-running-backs-training-camp-competition-2…

The UK CMA says it has provisionally found Google meets the legal tests to designate it with "strategic market status" in general search and search advertising (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/26aa105f-fabb-4061-bd6d-fd13ba94f691

UK regulator proposes loosening Google’s control of its search engine
Competition and Markets Authority says market should be more open and competitive

If I win the NBA championship tonight, it will be my first victory in any competition since the second grade spelling bee. There were hardly any Asians in our class but a win is a win as far as I'm concerned.

Generalizable Agent Modeling for Agent Collaboration-Competition Adaptation with Multi-Retrieval and Dynamic Generation
Chenxu Wang, Yonggang Jin, Cheng Hu, Youpeng Zhao, Zipeng Dai, Jian Zhao, Shiyu Huang, Liuyu Xiang, Junge Zhang, Zhaofeng He
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16718

Generalizable Agent Modeling for Agent Collaboration-Competition Adaptation with Multi-Retrieval and Dynamic Generation
Adapting a single agent to a new multi-agent system brings challenges, necessitating adjustments across various tasks, environments, and interactions with unknown teammates and opponents. Addressing this challenge is highly complex, and researchers have proposed two simplified scenarios, Multi-agent reinforcement learning for zero-shot learning and Ad-Hoc Teamwork. Building on these foundations, we propose a more comprehensive setting, Agent Collaborative-Competitive Adaptation (ACCA), which ev…

From Generation to Adaptation: Comparing AI-Assisted Strategies in High School Programming Education
Tong Hu, Songzan Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15955

From Generation to Adaptation: Comparing AI-Assisted Strategies in High School Programming Education
This exploratory case study investigated two contrasting pedagogical approaches for LCA-assisted programming with five novice high school students preparing for a WeChat Mini Program competition. In Phase 1, students used LCAs to generate code from abstract specifications (From-Scratch approach), achieving only 20% MVP completion. In Phase 2, students adapted existing Minimal Functional Units (MFUs), small, functional code examples, using LCAs, achieving 100% MVP completion. Analysis revealed t…

Six Fabulous Winners of the National Geographic Photography Competition (LOOK) https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/six-fabulous-winners-of-the-national-geographic-photography-competition-look/

Six Fabulous Winners of the National Geographic Photography Competition (LOOK)
The winners of the National Geographic Photography Competition for amateurs and pros alike highlight the best in travel photography.

NFC North 2025 preview, plus the Colts QB competition https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6430697/2025/06/16/nfc-north-preview-nfl-2025-bears-vikings-packers-lions-scoop-city/

Upstream competition and exclusive content provision in media markets
Kiho Yoon
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15063 https://arxiv.org/pd…

Upstream competition and exclusive content provision in media markets
With a multilateral vertical contracting model of media markets, we examine upstream competition and contractual arrangements in content provision. We analyze the trade of content by the Nash bargaining solution and the downstream competition by the Hotelling location model. We characterize the equilibrium outcomes and the contractual arrangements for various vertical structures. We show that the possibility of exclusive contracts rises when the value of the premium content increases, the degre…

On a reaction-diffusion system modeling strong competition between two mosquito populations
Nicolas Vauchelet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15202 https://

On a reaction-diffusion system modeling strong competition between two mosquito populations
This paper is devoted to the analysis of a reaction-diffusion system with strong competition and spatial heterogeneities modelling the interaction between two species of mosquitoes. In particular, we propose a mathematical model that accounts for the spatial segregation observed between two species of mosquito vectors of numerous viruses. Indeed, it has been observed that, in tropical regions, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are well established in urban areas whereas Aedes albopictus mosquitoes sprea…

„Watchmaker of Light“ by Slayer
Platform: Amiga
Released: 20 September 2014
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 1st in the Riverwash 2014 Oldschool GFX competition
#GFX_Slayer #YR_2014

Raheem Mostert getting stiff competition for Raiders' No. 2 running back role behind Ashton Jeanty https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/news/raheem-mostert-s…

Humanity's Last Code Exam: Can Advanced LLMs Conquer Human's Hardest Code Competition?
Xiangyang Li, Xiaopeng Li, Kuicai Dong, Quanhu Zhang, Rongju Ruan, Xinyi Dai, Xiaoshuang Liu, Shengchun Xu, Yasheng Wang, Ruiming Tang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12713

Humanity's Last Code Exam: Can Advanced LLMs Conquer Human's Hardest Code Competition?
Code generation is a core capability of large language models (LLMs), yet mainstream benchmarks (e.g., APPs and LiveCodeBench) contain questions with medium-level difficulty and pose no challenge to advanced LLMs. To better reflected the advanced reasoning and code generation ability, We introduce Humanity's Last Code Exam (HLCE), comprising 235 most challenging problems from the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC World Finals) and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)…

Self-Balancing of Cell Populations via Martingale Turnover with Amplification
Tomoyuki Yamaguchi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16770 https://

Self-Balancing of Cell Populations via Martingale Turnover with Amplification
The mechanisms underlying adaptive control in biological systems, such as intestinal immune regulation, remain poorly understood, despite detailed knowledge of their regulatory networks. Here, we propose an alternative to traditional deterministic regulation. We theoretically demonstrate that stochastic martingale turnover, in which cells proliferate through mutual competition and decay without component-specific control, naturally converges to an appropriate population balance characterized by…

RAGtifier: Evaluating RAG Generation Approaches of State-of-the-Art RAG Systems for the SIGIR LiveRAG Competition
Tim Cofala, Oleh Astappiev, William Xion, Hailay Teklehaymanot
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14412

RAGtifier: Evaluating RAG Generation Approaches of State-of-the-Art RAG Systems for the SIGIR LiveRAG Competition
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enriches Large Language Models (LLMs) by combining their internal, parametric knowledge with external, non-parametric sources, with the goal of improving factual correctness and minimizing hallucinations. The LiveRAG 2025 challenge explores RAG solutions to maximize accuracy on DataMorgana's QA pairs, which are composed of single-hop and multi-hop questions. The challenge provides access to sparse OpenSearch and dense Pinecone indices of the Fineweb 10BT dat…

Competition Complexity in Multi-Item Auctions: Beyond VCG and Regularity
Hedyeh Beyhaghi, Linda Cai, Yiding Feng, Yingkai Li, S. Matthew Weinberg
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09291 …

Competition Complexity in Multi-Item Auctions: Beyond VCG and Regularity
We quantify the value of the monopoly's bargaining power in terms of competition complexity--that is, the number of additional bidders the monopoly must attract in simple auctions to match the expected revenue of the optimal mechanisms (c.f., Bulow and Klemperer, 1996, Eden et al., 2017)--within the setting of multi-item auctions. We show that for simple auctions that sell items separately, the competition complexity is $Θ(\frac{n}α)$ in an environment with $n$ original bidders under the slig…

The UK CMA launches a probe into the planned $13.25B merger of ad giants Omnicom and Interpublic to assess potential competition reduction in the UK ad market (DhanushVignesh Babu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/…

Can the gate time of Rydberg two-qubit gate be shorten by increasing the strength of Rydberg interaction?
Yan-Xiong Du
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15487 htt…

Can the gate time of Rydberg two-qubit gate be shorten by increasing the strength of Rydberg interaction?
In this manuscript we discuss the relationship between the gate time of Rydberg two-qubit gate and the Rydberg interaction strength. Different from the two-qbuit gates that directly depend on the interactions between the spins (or pseudo spins), the ones in atomic arrays are realized by driving the atoms to the Rydberg states. As a consequence, competition happens between shortening the gate time and decreasing the excitation probability of Rydberg states. For the case of Rydberg blockade, it i…

Jets' Breece Hall says he's 'second-to-none to a lot of backs' https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45506847/new-york-jets-breece-hall-embracing-rb-competition

The European Court of Justice's advocate-general says the EU's €4.12B fine against Google over its dominance of Android should be upheld, a major blow to Google (Barbara Moens/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/cd63dd58-37a6-4af8-8050-40b7405da2bb

Google dealt blow at EU’s top court over record €4.12bn competition fine
Ruling supports Brussels regulators findings over dominance of tech giant’s Android mobile operating system

Found a new place to play Backgammon online, after the old place went towards censorship and irrational behavior.
backgammonhub.com is a friendly community, with a nice and fast gameplay. Also easy to find competition, rather high level players for the most part.
Recommended!
#backgammon #onlinegaming

Vortex-magnetic competition and regime transitions in antiparallel flux tubes
Weiyu Shen, Rodolfo Ostilla-M\'onico, Xiaojue Zhu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10648

Vortex-magnetic competition and regime transitions in antiparallel flux tubes
Vortex-magnetic interactions shape magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, influencing energy transfer in astrophysical, geophysical, and industrial systems. On the Sun, granular-scale vortex flows couple strongly with magnetic fields, channelling energy into the corona. At high Reynolds numbers, vorticity and magnetic fields are nearly frozen into the charged fluid, and MHD flows emerge from the interplay between vortex dynamics and Lorentz forces. To probe this competition in a controlled setti…

Group then Scale: Dynamic Mixture-of-Experts Multilingual Language Model
Chong Li, Yingzhuo Deng, Jiajun Zhang, Chengqing Zong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12388

Group then Scale: Dynamic Mixture-of-Experts Multilingual Language Model
The curse of multilinguality phenomenon is a fundamental problem of multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs), where the competition between massive languages results in inferior performance. It mainly comes from limited capacity and negative transfer between dissimilar languages. To address this issue, we propose a method to dynamically group and scale up the parameters of multilingual LLM while boosting positive transfer among similar languages. Specifically, the model is first tuned on monol…

Antibody Consumption-Driven Dynamic Competition: A Systems Hypothesis for the Transition from Acute Immune Response to Post-Infection Sequelae
Shi Qiru
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06413

Antibody Consumption-Driven Dynamic Competition: A Systems Hypothesis for the Transition from Acute Immune Response to Post-Infection Sequelae
The mechanisms underlying the formation of post-infection sequelae are complex and remain controversial. This hypothesis integrates Bystryn's antibody feedback phenomenon and Imbiakha's immune cost theory, proposing for the first time a "Consumption-Driven Dynamic Competition of Antibody Clones" mechanism. This mechanism posits that the immune system may regulate the proliferation and differentiation of corresponding B cell clones by sensing and responding to the consumption rate of specific an…

CLIP the Landscape: Automated Tagging of Crowdsourced Landscape Images
Ilya Ilyankou, Natchapon Jongwiriyanurak, Tao Cheng, James Haworth
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12214

CLIP the Landscape: Automated Tagging of Crowdsourced Landscape Images
We present a CLIP-based, multi-modal, multi-label classifier for predicting geographical context tags from landscape photos in the Geograph dataset--a crowdsourced image archive spanning the British Isles, including remote regions lacking POIs and street-level imagery. Our approach addresses a Kaggle competition\footnote{https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/predict-geographic-context-from-landscape-photos} task based on a subset of Geograph's 8M images, with strict evaluation: exact match accura…

„Fishy“ by Made
Platform: PC
Released: 19 August 1997
Specification: 640x480px, 256 colors
Note: 1st in the 'Place To Be 1997' 2D Graphics competition
#GFX_Made #YR_1997 #PF_PC

Careem, Uber's ride-hailing MENA arm, will suspend its decade-old Pakistan service on July 18, citing economic challenges, competition, and capital constraints (Ariba Shahid/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific

Rethinking Competition as a Non-Beneficial Mechanism in Economic Systems
Marcelo S. Tedesco, Gonzalo Marquez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11405 https://

Rethinking Competition as a Non-Beneficial Mechanism in Economic Systems
Persistent economic competition is often justified as a mechanism of innovation, efficiency, and welfare maximization. Yet empirical evidence across disciplines reveals that competition systematically generates fragility, inequality, and ecological degradation, emergent outcomes not of isolated failures but of underlying systemic dynamics. This work reconceptualizes economic ecosystems as real complex adaptive systems, structurally isomorphic with biological and social ecosystems. Integrating c…

Michael Irvin blown away by competition created by Cowboys coaching staff https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/michael-irvin-blown-away-competition-created-dallas-cowboys-coaching-staff

> As the Court weighs how to restore competition in the search market, Mozilla is asking it to seriously consider the unintended consequences of some of the proposed remedies, which, if adopted, could harm browser competition, weaken user choice and undermine the open web.
This should be called a Mozilla syndrome!

The future of the web depends on getting this right | The Mozilla Blog
The remedies phase of the U.S. v. Google LLC search case wrapped up last week. As the Court weighs how to restore competition in the search market, Mozilla

"Fixer les prix des livres au détail est une politique commune en Europe, mais comment la prévention de la concurrence affecte-t-elle les libraires et les acheteurs ? Christos Genakos, Lorien Sabatino et Tommaso Valletti constatent que lorsque la possibilité d'offrir des prix plus bas aux clients est limitée, les vendeurs se tournent vers la concurrence sur le service Š la clientèle et la variété des livres - améliorant ainsi l'expérience des acheteurs."

CIRO7.2: A Material Network with Circularity of -7.2 and Reinforcement-Learning-Controlled Robotic Disassembler
Federico Zocco, Monica Malvezzi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11748

CIRO7.2: A Material Network with Circularity of -7.2 and Reinforcement-Learning-Controlled Robotic Disassembler
The competition over natural reserves of minerals is expected to increase in part because of the linear-economy paradigm based on take-make-dispose. Simultaneously, the linear economy considers end-of-use products as waste rather than as a resource, which results in large volumes of waste whose management remains an unsolved problem. Since a transition to a circular economy can mitigate these open issues, in this paper we begin by enhancing the notion of circularity based on compartmental dynam…

Pushing the Limits of Safety: A Technical Report on the ATLAS Challenge 2025
Zonghao Ying, Siyang Wu, Run Hao, Peng Ying, Shixuan Sun, Pengyu Chen, Junze Chen, Hao Du, Kaiwen Shen, Shangkun Wu, Jiwei Wei, Shiyuan He, Yang Yang, Xiaohai Xu, Ke Ma, Qianqian Xu, Qingming Huang, Shi Lin, Xun Wang, Changting Lin, Meng Han, Yilei Jiang, Siqi Lai, Yaozhi Zheng, Yifei Song, Xiangyu Yue, Zonglei Jing, Tianyuan Zhang, Zhilei Zhu, Aishan Liu, Jiakai Wang, Siyuan Liang, Xianglong Kong, Hainan Li, …

Pushing the Limits of Safety: A Technical Report on the ATLAS Challenge 2025
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have enabled transformative advancements across diverse applications but remain susceptible to safety threats, especially jailbreak attacks that induce harmful outputs. To systematically evaluate and improve their safety, we organized the Adversarial Testing & Large-model Alignment Safety Grand Challenge (ATLAS) 2025}. This technical report presents findings from the competition, which involved 86 teams testing MLLM vulnerabilities via adversarial image-…

I'm incredibly proud to report that Pryce Millikin, the current master's student in my lab, has been recognized with an Honorable Mention in this year's NSF Graduate Research Fellowship competition, in a year when NSF gave out just 1,000 GRF awards across every field of science nationwide

Trojan Horse Hunt in Time Series Forecasting for Space Operations
Krzysztof Kotowski, Ramez Shendy, Jakub Nalepa, Przemys{\l}aw Biecek, Piotr Wilczy\'nski, Agata Kaczmarek, Dawid P{\l}udowski, Artur Janicki, Evridiki Ntagiou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01849

Trojan Horse Hunt in Time Series Forecasting for Space Operations
This competition hosted on Kaggle (https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/trojan-horse-hunt-in-space) is the first part of a series of follow-up competitions and hackathons related to the "Assurance for Space Domain AI Applications" project funded by the European Space Agency (https://assurance-ai.space-codev.org/). The competition idea is based on one of the real-life AI security threats identified within the project -- the adversarial poisoning of continuously fine-tuned satellite telemetry fore…

I saw a homeless guy today he asked me for money I said buddy you got to find a different line of work. We all are going to be homeless soon and you are going to have some competition from folks who may be new to your field, but they are really smart and talented. And many of them take Venmo.

✒️ Scientists have found a way to 'tattoo' tardigrades
... I think there will be a lot of competition for Ig Nobels this year
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-scientists-tattoo-tardigrades.html

Scientists have found a way to 'tattoo' tardigrades
If you haven't heard of a tardigrade before, prepare to be wowed. These clumsy, eight-legged creatures, nicknamed water bears, are about half a millimeter long and can survive practically anything: freezing temperatures, near starvation, high pressure, radiation exposure, outer space and more. Researchers reporting in the journal Nano Letters took advantage of the tardigrade's nearly indestructible nature and gave the critters tiny "tattoos" to test a microfabrication technique to build microsc…

Competition at the IHSA boys track and field state meet https://www.dailyherald.com/20250531/article/competition-at-the-ihsa-boys-track-and-field-state-meet/

Welcome onboard Audi Airlines.
#Audi #A6 #Competition

The UK CMA launches a probe into the planned $13.25B merger of ad giants Omnicom and Interpublic to assess potential competition reduction in the UK ad market (DhanushVignesh Babu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/…

Browns' Kevin Stefanski says Shedeur Sanders, Dillon Gabriel are 'doing great' amid heated QB competition

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/…

„Magician Among the Spirits“ by Slayer
Platform: Amiga
Released: 22 October 2022
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 1st in the Decrunch 2022 Amiga Pixel Graphics competition
#GFX_Slayer #YR_2022

Abstract Wikipedia was selected as a finalist for the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change competition.
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/04/30/abstract-wikipedia-is-a-100change-finalist/

Frictions and Welfare in Monopolistic Competition
Francesco Del Prato, Paolo Zacchia
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24460 https://arxiv.o…

Frictions and Welfare in Monopolistic Competition
In a heterogeneous firm economy with monopolistic competition, could informational asymmetries between entrepreneurs and financial intermediaries sometimes improve welfare? We study this question by developing a model where banks finance entrepreneurs under asymmetric information. While aggregate productivity decreases with informational frictions, we find that welfare can be maximized at intermediate levels of information asymmetry due to a trade-off between productivity and product variety. A…

Ukraine to boycott World Judo Championships over Belarus's participation under national flag: https://benborges.xyz/2025/05/29/ukraine-to-boycott-world-judo.html

Subdiffusion from competition between multi-exponential friction memory and energy barriers
Anton Klimek, Benjamin A. Dalton, Roland R. Netz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03036

Subdiffusion from competition between multi-exponential friction memory and energy barriers
Subdiffusion is a hallmark of complex systems, ranging from protein folding to transport in viscoelastic media. However, despite its pervasiveness, the mechanistic origins of subdiffusion remain contested. Here, we analyze both Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics, in the presence and absence of energy barriers, in order to disentangle the distinct contributions of memory-dependent friction and energy barriers to the emergence of subdiffusive behavior. Focusing on the mean squared displacement …

Ising versus infinite randomness criticality in arrays of Rydberg atoms trapped with non-perfect tweezers
Jose Soto-Garcia, Natalia Chepiga
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11985

Ising versus infinite randomness criticality in arrays of Rydberg atoms trapped with non-perfect tweezers
Chains of Rydberg atoms have emerged as an amazing platform for simulating quantum physics in low dimensions. This remarkable success is due to the versatility of lattice geometries achieved by trapping neutral atoms with optical tweezers. On a given lattice, the competition between the repulsive van der Waals potential and the detuning of the laser frequency brings the atoms to highly excited Rydberg states, leading to a variety of exotic phases and quantum phase transitions. Experiments on th…

Study of Venera Spacecraft Trajectories and Wider Implications
Adam Hibberd
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09478 https://arxiv.org/pdf/25…

Study of Venera Spacecraft Trajectories and Wider Implications
Historically, there is no doubt that the early years of the USSR space program put them way ahead of the competition (the USA). Nonetheless, although this was not what the Russians wished to present to the world, the interplanetary campaign, centred around missions to the planet Venus (the Venera program) was also beset with difficulties. Many of the early Venera probes failed, despite making it to a heliocentric orbit, but naturally the success rate improved with time. The result is that there…

"Unique Miami Recycling Company Gives Discarded Shoes New Traction"
#Recycling #Shoes #Clothes

Unique Miami Recycling Company Gives Discarded Shoes New Traction
It was seen as a more environmentally friendly way to do business, but second-hand shoes is a good gig—the only competition is the landfill.

An operatorial view of competition and cooperation in a network of economic agents
G. Giunta, M. Gorgone, F. Oliveri
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22917 https…

An operatorial view of competition and cooperation in a network of economic agents
A network of agents interacting both with competitive and/or cooperative mechanisms is modeled by using fermionic ladder operators. The time evolution of the network is assumed to be governed by a Hermitian time-independent Hamiltonian operator, and the mean values of the number operators are interpreted as a measure of the wealth status of the agents. Besides classical Heisenberg, we use the recently introduced $(H,ρ)$-induced dynamics approach to account for some actions able to provide a se…

Brownian motion with stochastic energy renewals
Ion Santra, Kristian St{\o}levik Olsen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08876 https://arxiv…

Brownian motion with stochastic energy renewals
We investigate the impact of intermittent energy injections on a Brownian particle, modeled as stochastic renewals of its kinetic energy to a fixed value. Between renewals, the particle follows standard underdamped Langevin dynamics. For energy renewals occurring at a constant rate, we find non-Boltzmannian energy distributions that undergo a shape transition driven by the competition between the velocity relaxation timescale and the renewal timescale. In the limit of rapid renewals, the dynami…

The latest LLM models from the major providers continue to come in a rapid fashion. And each is just better and better. Latest model from Anthropic is very fast, and with improved output from everything I have tried.
I will say that "thank goodness" for the competition where it's not only OpenAI that's pushing the tools forward. It's such a powerful arena that one player locking the market down would be super scary. Kind of crazy to think how Google was able to do…

Measuring the co-evolution of online engagement with (mis)information and its visibility at scale
Yueting Han, Paolo Turrini, Marya Bazzi, Giulia Andrighetto, Eugenia Polizzi, Manlio De Domenico
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06106

Measuring the co-evolution of online engagement with (mis)information and its visibility at scale
Online attention is an increasingly valuable resource in the digital age, with extraordinary events such as the COVID-19 pandemic fuelling fierce competition around it. As misinformation pervades online platforms, users seek credible sources, while news outlets compete to attract and retain their attention. Here we measure the co-evolution of online "engagement" with (mis)information and its "visibility", where engagement corresponds to user interactions on social media, and visibility to fluct…

Sources: the US DOJ is reviewing whether Google's planned $32B acquisition of cybersecurity company Wiz would illegally limit competition in the market (Josh Sisco/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

This week: Music, Football, and the Red Fern Fèis
I hung out at an Irish dance competition this weekend.
https://www.bobmuellerwriter.com/this-week-music-football-and-the-red-fern-feis/

This week: Music, Football, and the Red Fern Fèis – Bob Mueller
What possible connection could there be between football, music, and a Fèis? And what the heck is a Feis, anyway?

A new best-speller
https://apnews.com/article/scripps-national-spelling-bee-2025-champion-70f6767e4f30a29b52dfc3dfc77eb553

Faizan Zaki wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee
Faizan Zaki has seized the title of best speller in the English language at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The 13-year-old from Allen, Texas, was runner-up last year after he lost in a lightning-round tiebreaker. He ousted eight other accomplished spellers to win the title on Thursday night, including two that he let back into the competition after his own careless flub. Told to take a deep breath before his final word, “eclaircissement,” he didn’t ask a single question before spellin…

The State-of-the-Art in Lifelog Retrieval: A Review of Progress at the ACM Lifelog Search Challenge Workshop 2022-24
Allie Tran, Werner Bailer, Duc-Tien Dang-Nguyen, Graham Healy, Steve Hodges, Bj\"orn {\TH}\'or J\'onsson, Luca Rossetto, Klaus Schoeffmann, Minh-Triet Tran, Lucia Vadicamo, Cathal Gurrin
https://arxiv…

The State-of-the-Art in Lifelog Retrieval: A Review of Progress at the ACM Lifelog Search Challenge Workshop 2022-24
The ACM Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC) is a venue that welcomes and compares systems that support the exploration of lifelog data, and in particular the retrieval of specific information, through an interactive competition format. This paper reviews the recent advances in interactive lifelog retrieval as demonstrated at the ACM LSC from 2022 to 2024. Through a detailed comparative analysis, we highlight key improvements across three main retrieval tasks: known-item search, question answering, a…

Consciousness via MIPT?
Alexander Gorsky
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04875 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.04875

Consciousness via MIPT?
The measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) is a recently formulated phenomenon in out-of-equilibrium systems. The competition between unitary evolutions and measurement-induced non-unitaries leads to the transition between the entangled and disentangled phases at some critical measurement rate. We conjecture that self-organized MIPT plays a key role in the generative model of cognitive networks and the formation of the state of consciousness in the "newborn-adult" transition. To this aim, …

Disorder and the Robustness of Superconductivity on the Flat Band
Si Min Chan, Beno\^it Gr\'emaud, G. George Batrouni
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07095 …

Disorder and the Robustness of Superconductivity on the Flat Band
We study the interplay between on-site disorder and fermion pairing on the quasi one-dimensional flat band Creutz lattice. Both disorder and flat bands localize particles, but an attractive interaction results in pair formation and delocalization giving rise to superconductivity. In this work, we examine the attractive Hubbard model on the Creutz lattice to study the competition between these two effects and elucidate the properties of the superconducting phase and the localization quantum phas…

Tournament Robustness via Redundancy
Klim Efremenko, Hendrik Molter, Meirav Zehavi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03701 https://arxiv.org…

Tournament Robustness via Redundancy
A knockout tournament is one of the most simple and popular forms of competition. Here, we are given a binary tournament tree where all leaves are labeled with seed position names. The players participating in the tournament are assigned to the seed positions. In each round, the two players assigned to leaves of the tournament tree with a common parent compete, and the winner is promoted to the parent. The last remaining player is the winner of the tournament. In this work, we study the probl…

Neutral theory of cooperators
Jordi Pi\~nero, Artemy Kolchinsky, Sidney Redner, Ricard Sol\'e
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09737 https://

Neutral theory of cooperators
Mutualistic interactions are widespread in nature, from plant communities and microbiomes to human organizations. Along with competition for resources, cooperative interactions shape biodiversity and contribute to the robustness of complex ecosystems. We present a stochastic neutral theory of cooperator species. Our model shares with the classic neutral theory of biodiversity the assumption that all species are equivalent, but crucially differs in requiring cooperation between species for repli…

Joint Optimization based on Two-phase GNN in RIS- and DF-assisted MISO Systems with Fine-grained Rate Demands
Huijun Tang, Jieling Zhang, Zhidong Zhao, Huaming Wu, Hongjian Sun, Pengfei Jiao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02642

Joint Optimization based on Two-phase GNN in RIS- and DF-assisted MISO Systems with Fine-grained Rate Demands
Reconfigurable intelligent Surfaces (RIS) and half-duplex decoded and forwarded (DF) relays can collaborate to optimize wireless signal propagation in communication systems. Users typically have different rate demands and are clustered into groups in practice based on their requirements, where the former results in the trade-off between maximizing the rate and satisfying fine-grained rate demands, while the latter causes a trade-off between inter-group competition and intra-group cooperation wh…

„White dream“ by Prowler
Platform: Amiga
Released: 22 August 2015
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 1st in the Gerp 2015 Graphics competition
#GFX_Prowler #YR_2015 #PF_Amiga

Pending Texans signing could have domino effect on Cowboys RB competition https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/06/09/cowboys-dameon-pierce-potential-fit-nick-chubb-texans/84…

The California State Senate launches an inquiry into whether Paramount's proposed $15M settlement with Trump violated bribery and unfair competition laws (Max Tani/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/05/30/2025/california-opens…

California opens inquiry into Paramount and Trump
The California Senate’s move follows a letter from three US senators to the embattled media company.

Velocity-modulated drag-trapping of nanoparticles by moving fringe pattern in hollow-core fiber
Soumya Chakraborty, Gordon K. L. Wong, Philip St. J. Russell, Nicolas Y. Joly
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04770

Velocity-modulated drag-trapping of nanoparticles by moving fringe pattern in hollow-core fiber
We report optical trapping and transport at atmospheric pressure of nanoparticles in a moving interference pattern in hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. Unlike in previous work at low pressure, when the viscous drag forces are weak and the particles travel at the fringe velocity, competition between trapping and drag forces causes the particle velocity to oscillate as it is momentarily captured and accelerated by each passing fringe, followed by release and deceleration by viscous forces. As a…

3 things to watch at the Raiders’ mandatory minicamp https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/raiders/3-things-to-watch-at-the-raiders-mandatory-minicamp-3382919/

Adobe reports Q2 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.87B, vs. $5.8B est., Digital Media revenue up 11% to $4.35B, and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-12/ado…

Adobe Posts Strong Outlook, Touting Traction for AI Tools
Adobe Inc. gave a strong sales outlook for the current quarter, quieting investor anxieties that the leader in creative software is falling behind in a competition with AI-focused upstarts.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.09337 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

Deep Learning in Business Analytics: A Clash of Expectations and Reality
Our fast-paced digital economy shaped by global competition requires increased data-driven decision-making based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The benefits of deep learning (DL) are manifold, but it comes with limitations that have, so far, interfered with widespread industry adoption. This paper explains why DL, despite its popularity, has difficulties speeding up its adoption within business analytics. It is shown that the adoption of deep learning is not only aff…

Colts' Shane Steichen: Daniel Jones has been doing a 'hell of a job' https://www.nfl.com/news/colts-shane-steichen-daniel-jones-has-been-doing-a-hell-of-a-job

Nematicity in iron pnictides: phase competition and emergent symmetry
Yiming Wang, Changle Liu, Shan Wu, Jianda Wu, Qimiao Si, Rong Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24847

Nematicity in iron pnictides: phase competition and emergent symmetry
The phase diagram of iron-based superconductors contains a host of electronic orders, which are intimately connected with their superconductivity. Here we analyze the fluctuations of one type of nematic order in another. Our analysis leads to an emergent U(1) symmetry at a first-order transition between a nematic phase and a $C_4$-symmetric charge-ordered phase. We characterize the continuous symmetry in terms of a certain hidden Lie algebra that links the different orders. This emergent symmet…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20490 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_nuc…

Simultaneous impacts of nuclear shell structure and collectivity on $β$ decay: Evidence from $^{80}$Ga$_{49}$
The Gamow-Teller strength distribution covering the entire $β$-decay window, up to 10.312(4) MeV, of $^{80g+m}$Ga was measured for the first time in photo fission of UC$_x$ induced by a 50 MeV electron beam. The new data show significant enhancement in the high-energy region with a jump structure. Simultaneously, the $γ$ deexciting behavior of $β$-populated states presents a competition between deexcitation to 2$_1^+$ [$β_2$ = 0.155(9)] and to 2$_2^+$ [$β_2$ = 0.053$_{0.009}^{0.008}$)] in …

Vulnerability and Defence: A Case for Stackelberg Game Dynamics
Azhar Iqbal, Ishan Honhaga, Eyoel Teffera, Anthony Perry, Robin Baker, Glenn Pearce, Claudia Szabo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07316

Vulnerability and Defence: A Case for Stackelberg Game Dynamics
This paper examines the tactical interaction between drones and tanks in modern warfare through game theory, particularly focusing on Stackelberg equilibrium and backward induction. It describes a high-stakes conflict between two teams: one using advanced drones for attack, and the other defending using tanks. The paper conceptualizes this as a sequential game, illustrating the complex strategic dynamics similar to Stackelberg competition, where moves and countermoves are carefully analyzed and…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.07250 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@…

Control, competition and coexistence of effective magnetic orders by interactions in Bose-Einstein condensates with high-Q cavities
Ultracold atomic systems confined in optical cavities have been demonstrated as a laboratory for the control of quantum matter properties and analog quantum simulation. Often neglected, but soon amenable to manipulation in a new generation of experiments, we show that atomic many-body interactions allow additional control in the cavity driven self-organization of effective spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). We theoretically show that a rich landscape of magnetic ordering configurations eme…

„Greg, The Killer Clown“ by Facet and Magic
Platform: Amiga
Released: 15 April 2017
Specification: 320x256px, 29 colors
Note: 3rd in the Revision 2017 Oldskool Graphics competition
#GFX_Facet #GFX_Magic

Sight Guide: A Wearable Assistive Perception and Navigation System for the Vision Assistance Race in the Cybathlon 2024
Patrick Pfreundschuh, Giovanni Cioffi, Cornelius von Einem, Alexander Wyss, Hans Wernher van de Venn, Cesar Cadena, Davide Scaramuzza, Roland Siegwart, Alireza Darvishy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02676

Sight Guide: A Wearable Assistive Perception and Navigation System for the Vision Assistance Race in the Cybathlon 2024
Visually impaired individuals face significant challenges navigating and interacting with unknown situations, particularly in tasks requiring spatial awareness and semantic scene understanding. To accelerate the development and evaluate the state of technologies that enable visually impaired people to solve these tasks, the Vision Assistance Race (VIS) at the Cybathlon 2024 competition was organized. In this work, we present Sight Guide, a wearable assistive system designed for the VIS. The sys…

Motivando el uso y aprendizaje de Bash a trav\'es de concursos de programaci\'on
Luis Costero, Jorge Villarrubia, Francisco D. Igual
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00105

Motivando el uso y aprendizaje de Bash a través de concursos de programación
Command line learning and Bash usage are fundamental skills in systems administration, software development, and data science environments. However, their teaching has been neglected in many curricula, despite its relevance in the professional field. To address this gap, we developed an interactive competition that encourages students to improve their Bash skills through practical and competitive challenges. This gamified approach seeks to motivate autonomous learning and reinforce command line…

Spiderman Meme: Cowboys TE is facing competition from a bunch of hims this summer https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/06/02/cowboys-brevyn-spann-ford-player-profile-2025/8400240900…

„No signal, 1081-head in the glitchy CGA swamp“ by z3k
Platform: Amiga
Released: 1 October 2022
Specification: 320x240px 66 colors
Note: 1st in the Flashparty 2022 Oldschool Pixel Art competition
#GFX_z3k #YR_2022

Daniel Jones has early chance to seize Colts' starting QB role with Anthony Richardson hurt https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45480887/nfl-colts-anthony-richardson-daniel-jones

Epic v. Apple: a US appeals court rejects Apple's request to pause key parts of a federal judge's order requiring it to open the App Store to more competition (Mike Scarcella/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustain…

Deep Retrieval at CheckThat! 2025: Identifying Scientific Papers from Implicit Social Media Mentions via Hybrid Retrieval and Re-Ranking
Pascal J. Sager, Ashwini Kamaraj, Benjamin F. Grewe, Thilo Stadelmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23250

Deep Retrieval at CheckThat! 2025: Identifying Scientific Papers from Implicit Social Media Mentions via Hybrid Retrieval and Re-Ranking
We present the methodology and results of the Deep Retrieval team for subtask 4b of the CLEF CheckThat! 2025 competition, which focuses on retrieving relevant scientific literature for given social media posts. To address this task, we propose a hybrid retrieval pipeline that combines lexical precision, semantic generalization, and deep contextual re-ranking, enabling robust retrieval that bridges the informal-to-formal language gap. Specifically, we combine BM25-based keyword matching with a F…

„Duck It“ by Pal
Platform: C64
Released: 25 October 2014
Note: 1st in the X 2014 Graphics competition
#GFX_Pal #YR_2014 #PF_C64

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.14581 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_qbi…

Non-Markovian Rock-Paper-Scissors games
There is mounting evidence that species interactions often involve long-term memory, with highly-varying waiting times between successive events and long-range temporal correlations. Accounting for memory undermines the common Markovian assumption, and dramatically impacts key ingredients of population dynamics including birth, foraging, predation, and competition processes. Here, we study a critical aspect of population dynamics, namely non-Markovian multi-species competition. This is done in …

Surprising Cowboys UDFA standout getting first-team offensive reps https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/surprising-dallas-cowboys-standout-getting-first-team-offensive-reps

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08425 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…

Interlayer interactions in $\text{La}_3\text{Ni}_2\text{O}_7$ under pressure: from $s^{\pm}$ to $d_{xy}$-wave superconductivity
We investigate the role of \emph{interlayer} interaction terms in the competition between different superconducting gap symmetries in the bilayer nickelate $\text{La}_3\text{Ni}_2\text{O}_7$ under high pressure. We study a two-layer, two-orbital electron model that encompasses both intra- and interlayer Coulomb interaction terms within the matrix random-phase approximation. We find that interlayer interactions favor a $d_{xy}$-wave superconducting pairing symmetry over the $s^{\pm}$-wave symmet…

Limits of Disclosure in Search Markets
Raphael Boleslavsky, Silvana Krasteva
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06319 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2…

Limits of Disclosure in Search Markets
This paper examines competitive information disclosure in search markets with a mix of savvy consumers, who search costlessly, and inexperienced consumers, who face positive search costs. Savvy consumers incentivize truthful disclosure; inexperienced consumers, concealment. With both types, equilibrium features partial disclosure, which persists despite intense competition: in large markets, firms always conceal low valuations. Inexperienced consumers may search actively, but only in small mark…

„Mother of Order“ by The Sarge
Platform: C64
Released: 27 November 2021
Note: 1st in the Syntax 2021 Pixel Graphics (8bit) competition
#GFX_The_Sarge #YR_2021 #PF_C64…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15084 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_eco…

Algorithmic Collusion under Observed Demand Shocks
The growing reliance on AI-driven pricing algorithms has raised antitrust concerns, particularly that third-party use of nonpublic competitor data may facilitate information sharing and undermine market competition. This paper examines a setting in which firms receive demand information from a common third party and incorporate it into their pricing algorithms. Specifically, I analyze the pricing behavior of Q-learning agents when demand shocks are observable. The simulation results show that a…

„Freedom Comes Back“ by Critikill
Platform: Amiga
Released: 10 September 2022
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 1st in the Function 2022 Oldschool Graphics competition
#GFX_Critikill #YR_2022

Don’t count out dark horse RB with ties to new Dallas Cowboys coaching staff https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dont-count-out-dark-horse-rb-with-ties-to-ynew-cowboys-coaching-staff

„Broken Mirror“ by Fairfax
Platform: Amiga
Released: 3 April 1994
Specification: 320x256px, 64 colors
Note: Picture used in Andromeda's Sequential demo that got a 1st in the The Gathering 1994 Amiga Demo competition.
#GFX_Fairfax #YR_1994

This is me and the car I bought on friday. 😍
#Audi #A6 #Avant #Competition

Trade Networks and the Rise of a Global Currency
Tomoo Kikuchi, Lien Pham
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22080 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505…

Trade Networks and the Rise of a Global Currency
We develop a model of strategic competition between global currencies. Issuers choose their commitment levels for currency internationalization, while users -- interconnected in a trade network -- choose their usage of each currency for trade settlement. Our theoretical findings highlight not only the advantage of the status-quo issuer in maintaining dominance, but also the conditions under which an emerging issuer can attract users, potentially leading to a multi-currency payment system. The n…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.20509 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_qbi…

Effective growth rates in a periodically changing environment: From mutation to invasion
We consider a stochastic individual-based model of adaptive dynamics for an asexually reproducing population with mutation, with linear birth and death rates, as well as a density-dependent competition. To depict repeating changes of the environment, all of these parameters vary over time as piecewise constant and periodic functions, on an intermediate time-scale between those of stabilization of the resident population (fast) and exponential growth of mutants (slow). Studying the growth of eme…

„Eden 377“ by Made
Platform: Amiga
Released: 30 December 1996
Specification: 320x256px 128 colors
Note: 2nd in the The Party 1996 Graphics competition
#GFX_Made #YR_1996 #PF_Amiga

„Head With Bubbles“ by Mon
Platform: Amiga
Released: 14 August 1995
Specification: 320x256px, 128 Colors
Note: 7th in the 'Gainful Awesome Summer Party' (GASP) 1995 Graphics competition.
#GFX_MoN #YR_1995