Tootfinder

Branched Covers of Open Manifolds
Mark Hughes, Alexandra Kjuchukova, Maggie Miller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09842 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.09842…

Branched Covers of Open Manifolds
For $m=2$ and $m=3$ we prove that any connected, oriented, open manifold $M^m$ admits a simple branched covering map over $\mathbb{R}^m$. When $M$ has $k$ ends and $k$ is finite, the degree of the cover can be taken to be $mk$. Regardless of the number of ends, $M$ admits a branched covering map of countably infinite degree over $\mathbb{R}^m$. We also investigate which compact manifolds are universal bases, that is, are branch covered by all compact manifolds in the same dimension.

London-based Evantic Capital, founded by ex-Sequoia VC Matt Miller, raised a $400M fund, with ~12.5% coming from 135 "legends", including CEOs, a novel strategy (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Understanding Cognitive States from Head & Hand Motion Data
Kaiang Wen, Mark Roman Miller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24255 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.2…

Understanding Cognitive States from Head & Hand Motion Data
As virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) continue to gain popularity, head and hand motion data captured by consumer VR systems have become ubiquitous. Prior work shows that such telemetry can be highly identifying and reflect broad user traits, often aligning with intuitive "folk theories" of body language. However, it remains unclear to what extent motion kinematics encode more nuanced cognitive states, such as confusion, hesitation, and readiness, which lack clear correlates with m…

The Very Faint X-ray Transient 4XMM J174610.7-290020 at the Galactic center
Giovanni Stel, Gabriele Ponti, Nathalie Degenaar, Lara Sidoli, Sandro Mereghetti, Kaya Mori, Tong Bao, Giulia Illiano, Samaresh Mondal, Mark Reynolds, Chichuan Jin, Tianying Lian, Shifra Mandel, Simone Scaringi, Shuo Zhang, Grace Sanger-Johnson, Rudy Wijnands, Jon M. Miller, Jamie Kennea, Zhenlin Zhu

The Very Faint X-ray Transient 4XMM J174610.7-290020 at the Galactic center
Very Faint X-ray Transients (VFXTs) are a class of X-ray binary systems that exhibit occasional outbursts with peak X-ray luminosities (L_X< 1e36 erg s^-1) much lower than typical X-ray transients. On 22nd February 2024, during its daily Galactic center monitoring, Swift-XRT detected a VFXT, 7 arcmin from Sgr A* dubbing it Swift J174610--290018. We aim to characterize the outburst that occurred in 2024, and a second, distinct outburst in 2025, to understand the nature and accretion flow propert…

Experience Level Influences User's Criteria for Avatar Animation Realism
Yudong Huang, Avneet Singh, Mark Roman Miller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15372 https://

Experience Level Influences User's Criteria for Avatar Animation Realism
The sense of realism in avatar animation is a widely pursued goal in social VR applications. A common approach to enhancing realism is improving the match between avatar motion and real-world human movement. However, experience with existing VR platforms may reshape users' expectations, suggesting that matching reality is not the only path to enhancing the sense of realism. This study examines how different levels of experience with a social VR platform influence users' criteria for evaluating …