Tootfinder

Forest fire near 'Putin’s palace' extinguished after four days following Ukrainian drone crash: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/31/forest-fire-near-putins-palace.html

Shutdown near certain after Senate again rejects funding bills (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/30/shutdown-near-certain-after-senate-again-rejects-funding-bills-00589136
http://www.memeorandum.com/250930/p160#a250930p160

After trading barbs online with former Russian leader Dmitri A. Medvedev,
Donald Trump ordered nuclear submarines to be positioned in “the appropriate regions” near Russia “just in case.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mar…

Nuclear Submarines Moved Near Russia On Trump’s Order
Trump’s online war of words with Russia’s Dmitri Medvedev led to military action on Friday.

ORACLE: A rigorous metric and method to explore all near-optimal designs for energy systems
E. M. Turan, S. Moret, A. Bardow
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26452 https://

ORACLE: A rigorous metric and method to explore all near-optimal designs for energy systems
Optimization models are fundamental tools for providing quantitative insights to decision-makers. However, models, objectives, and constraints do not capture all real-world factors accurately. Thus, instead of the single optimal solution, real-world stakeholders are often interested in the near-optimal space -- solutions that lie within a specified margin of the optimal objective value. Solutions in the near-optimal space can then be assessed regarding desirable non-modeled or qualitative aspec…

Panic, Terror, and Near Drowning: Ban the Forced Swim Test #AnimalRights

Panic, Terror, and Near Drowning: Ban the Forced Swim Test
Pharma giant Novartis supports putting mice and rats in water-filled containers from which they desperately try to escape.

Near-Optimal Simultaneous Estimation of Quantum State Moments
Xiao Shi, Jiyu Jiang, Xian Wu, Jingu Xie, Hongshun Yao, Xin Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24842 https://

Near-Optimal Simultaneous Estimation of Quantum State Moments
Estimating nonlinear properties such as Rényi entropies and observable-weighted moments serves as a central strategy for spectrum spectroscopy, which is fundamental to property prediction and analysis in quantum information science, statistical mechanics, and many-body physics. However, existing approaches are susceptible to noise and require significant resources, making them challenging for near-term quantum hardware. In this work, we introduce a framework for resource-efficient simultaneous…

Tidal disruption of a neutron star near a naked singularity
Ashok B. Joshi (Charotar Uni.,Ahmedabad Uni., India), Pankaj S. Joshi (Ahmedabad Uni., India), Sudip Bhattacharyya (TIFR, India,MIT, USA)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26108

Tidal disruption of a neutron star near a naked singularity
We investigate the tidal disruption of a neutron star (NS) near a black hole (BH), and for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, near a naked singularity (NaS). For a BH with a mass greater than about $10 M_{\odot}$, the tidal disruption of NS should occur within the event horizon, and hence neither can the stellar material escape nor a distant observer observe the disruption. Since NaS does not have an event horizon, a significant portion of the NS's material can escape, and the tidal …

Concrete Jungle III 🏗️
水泥丛林 III 🏗️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Sabre rattling but fresh from watching a reshowing of The War Game, I am very uneasy about this.
These fools could easily do the stupid thing and accelerate Armageddon from decades to hours.
Trump orders nuclear submarines to be moved near Russia over 'foolish and inflammatory statements' | ITV News

Ukrainian forces liberate village near Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/31/ukrainian-forces-liberate-village-near.html

Approximation of the Range Ambiguity Function in Near-field Sensing Systems
Marcin Wachowiak, Andr\'e Bourdoux, Sofie Pollin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22423 https://…

Approximation of the Range Ambiguity Function in Near-field Sensing Systems
This paper investigates the range ambiguity function of near-field systems where bandwidth and near-field beamfocusing jointly determine the resolution. First, the general matched filter ambiguity function is derived and the near-field array factors of different antenna array geometries are introduced. Next, the near-field ambiguity function is approximated as a product of the range-dependent near-field array factor and the ambiguity function due to the utilized bandwidth and waveform. An appro…

RIS-Assisted XL-MIMO for Near-Field and Far-Field Communications
Xiaomin Cao, Mohammadali Mohammadi, Hien Quoc Ngo, Hyundong Shin, Michail Matthaiou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23284

RIS-Assisted XL-MIMO for Near-Field and Far-Field Communications
We consider a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) downlink system, where an XL-MIMO array serves two groups of single-antennas users, namely near-field users (NFUEs) and far-field users (FFUEs). FFUEs are subject to blockage, and their communication is facilitated through the RIS. We consider three precoding schemes at the XL-MIMO array, namely central zero-forcing (CZF), local zero-forcing (LZF) and maximum ratio tran…

Morning Jams Continue
As near as I can tell, I did the first of these morning jams on January 27, 2025. If I search on "jam" in my project folder I get 230 tracks, of which I would say about 200 or so are morning jams. They started out as just guitar, then over time I starting adding a drum groove, then a bass part, then synth.

How Massive Star Clusters Form and Evolve: A Near-IR Survey of the W51 Complex
Aden Dawson, Adam Ginsburg, Carlos Roman-Zuniga
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23112 https://

How Massive Star Clusters Form and Evolve: A Near-IR Survey of the W51 Complex
We present near-infrared JHKs and narrow-band H2(1-0) photometric observations of the W51A region, obtained with GTC EMIR, aiming to characterize its young stellar population and provide mass estimates for individual cluster members and the proto-clusters. Our observations reveal over 3000 new sources, out of which 88 are located in the proto-clusters, W51 IRS2 and W51 Main. The average extinction (AV), measured from the J-H color, of sources is 19 AV in W51 IRS2 and 14 AV in W51 Main. We docum…

A Near-Real-Time Reduction-Based Algorithm for Coloring Massive Graphs
Chenghao Zhu, Yi Zhou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23606 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.23…

A Near-Real-Time Reduction-Based Algorithm for Coloring Massive Graphs
The graph coloring problem is a classical combinatorial optimization problem with important applications such as register allocation and task scheduling, and it has been extensively studied for decades. However, near-real-time algorithms that can deliver high-quality solutions for very large real-world graphs within a strict time frame remain relatively underexplored. In this paper, we try to bridge this gap by systematically investigating reduction rules that shrink the problem size while pres…

Trump orders nuclear submarines moved near Russia (Ryan Patrick Jones/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-orders-nuclear-submarines-moved-near-russia-2025-08-01/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250801/p74#a250801p74

Experimental Study of Magnetic Near-Field Microstrip Electronic Probe for PCB EMC Emission Measurement
Hongchuan Jia (NUIST), Fayu Wan (NUIST), Vladimir Mordachev (ICB), J\'er\^ome Rossignol (ICB), Glauco Fontagalland (PIMENT), Nour Murad (PIMENT), Blaise Ravelo (NUIST)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24944

Experimental Study of Magnetic Near-Field Microstrip Electronic Probe for PCB EMC Emission Measurement
An experimental study on magnetic near-field (NF) scanning of printed circuit board (PCB) emission radiation is developed in this paper. The design and installation of the electromagnetic (EM) NF scanner is introduced. The test bed of magnetic NF emission in the microwave frequency range is described. The methodology of the microstrip magnetic NF probe is discussed. The probe calibration process was performed following the IEC 61967-1 NF scanning standard. The NF scanner functioning is tested w…

Stabilizing the singularity swap quadrature for near-singular line integrals
David Krantz, Alex H. Barnett, Anna-Karin Tornberg
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23881 https://

Stabilizing the singularity swap quadrature for near-singular line integrals
Singularity swap quadrature (SSQ) is an effective method for the evaluation at nearby targets of potentials due to densities on curves in three dimensions. While highly accurate in most settings, it is known to suffer from catastrophic cancellation when the kernel exhibits both near-vanishing numerators and strong singularities, as arises with scalar double layer potentials or tensorial kernels in Stokes flow or linear elasticity. This precision loss turns out to be tied to the interpolation ba…

Analysis: wholesale electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did in 2020 in US areas located near significant data center activity (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/
…

Towel's haunted

A Near-Infrared Extinction and Reddening Map Towards the Galactic Bulge Using UKIRT
Aiden S. Zelakiewicz, Samson A. Johnson, B. Scott Gaudi, Geoffrey Bryden, David M. Nataf, Yossi Shvartzvald
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25440

A Near-Infrared Extinction and Reddening Map Towards the Galactic Bulge Using UKIRT
The Galactic bulge is one of the most information-dense regions to study resolved stellar populations, variables, and transients, such as microlensing events. Studies toward the Galactic bulge are complicated by the large and variable extinction along the line of sight. We measure the near-infrared $A_{K_S}$ extinction and $E(H-K_S)$ reddening in this region using $H$- and $K$-band photometry obtained with the 2017 UKIRT microlensing survey. We fit the apparent magnitude and color distribution …

Near-the-Axis Universality in Last Passage Percolation
Sam McKeown, Xinyi Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25059 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.25059

Near-the-Axis Universality in Last Passage Percolation
This note establishes a universal directed landscape limit for last passage percolation models in an intermediate scaling regime. We find as a quick consequence the transversal fluctuations for geodesics taken near the axis. We extend the technique of Bodineau and Martin, who in arXiv:math/0410042 have already shown universal one-point fluctuations in this regime.

Ultracompact Wide-FOV Near-infrared Camera with Wafer-level Manufactured Meta-Aspheric Lens
Chuirong Chi, Qichao Hou, Guangyuan Zhao, Qiang Song, Shengyuan Xu, Yanling Piao, Mengjie Qin, Yanan Hu, Chaoping Chen, Weiwei Cai, Yuan Chen, Xin Yuan, Huigao Duan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23599

Ultracompact Wide-FOV Near-infrared Camera with Wafer-level Manufactured Meta-Aspheric Lens
Overcoming the trade-off between wide field of view (FOV) and compactness remains a central challenge for integrating near-infrared (NIR) imaging into smartphones and AR glasses. Existing refractive NIR optics cannot simultaneously achieve ultra-wide angles above 100° and ultrathin total track length (TTL) below 5 mm, limiting their use in portable devices. Here, we present a wafer-level-manufactured meta-aspheric lens (MAL) that achieves a 101.5° FOV, 3.39 mm TTL, and F/1.64 aperture within …

Observation of a resonance-like structure near the $\pi^ \pi^-$ mass threshold in $\psi(3686) \rightarrow \pi^{ }\pi^{-}J/\psi$
BESIII Collaboration, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23761

Observation of a resonance-like structure near the $π^+π^-$ mass threshold in $ψ(3686) \rightarrow π^{+}π^{-}J/ψ$
Based on the $(2712.4\pm14.4)\times 10^{6}$ $ψ(3686)$ events collected with the BESIII detector, we present a high-precision study of the $π^+π^-$ mass spectrum in $ψ(3686)\rightarrowπ^{+}π^{-}J/ψ$ decays. A clear resonance-like structure is observed near the $π^+π^-$ mass threshold for the first time. A fit with a Breit-Wigner function yields a mass of $285.6\pm 2.5~{\rm MeV}/c^2$ and a width of $16.3\pm 0.9~{\rm MeV}$ with a statistical significance exceeding 10$σ$. To interpret the…

First (real) ride on the new bike. So chuffed! Also, found a dollar on the way home so yeah, biking really pays off!
#biking #bikeTooter #mke

Coming to a Apotheke near you:
#impfen #covid

A Near-Cache Architectural Framework for Cryptographic Computing
Jingyao Zhang, Elaheh Sadredini
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23179 https://arxiv.org/pdf/250…

A Near-Cache Architectural Framework for Cryptographic Computing
Recent advancements in post-quantum cryptographic algorithms have led to their standardization by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to safeguard information security in the post-quantum era. These algorithms, however, employ public keys and signatures that are 3 to 9$\times$ longer than those used in pre-quantum cryptography, resulting in significant performance and energy efficiency overheads. A critical bottleneck identified in our analysis is the cache bandwidth. This…

Universal critical dynamics near the chiral phase transition and the QCD critical point
Yunxin Ye, Johannes V. Roth, S\"oren Schlichting, Lorenz von Smekal
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26355

Universal critical dynamics near the chiral phase transition and the QCD critical point
We use a novel real-time formulation of the functional renormalization group (FRG) for dynamical systems with reversible mode couplings to study Model G and H, which are the conjectured dynamic universality classes of the two-flavor chiral phase transition and the QCD critical point, respectively. We compute the dynamic critical exponent in both models in spatial dimensions $2

Breaking Universality in the Lower Order Terms in the 1-level and 2-level Density of Holomorphic Cusp Newforms
Lawrence Dillon, Xiaoyao Huang, Say-Yeon Kwon, Meiling Laurence, Steven J. Miller, Vishal Muthuvel, Luke Rowen, Pramana Saldin, Steven Zanetti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21691

Breaking Universality in the Lower Order Terms in the 1-level and 2-level Density of Holomorphic Cusp Newforms
The Katz-Sarnak density conjecture states that, as the analytic conductor $R \to \infty$, the distribution of the normalized low-lying zeros (those near the central point $s = 1/2$) converges to the scaling limits of eigenvalues clustered near 1 of subgroups of $U(N)$. There is extensive evidence supporting this conjecture for many families, including the family of holomorphic cusp newforms. Interestingly, there are very few choices for the main term of the limiting behavior. In 2009, S. J. Mil…

RARR : Robust Real-World Activity Recognition with Vibration by Scavenging Near-Surface Audio Online
Dong Yoon Lee, Alyssa Weakley, Hui Wei, Blake Brown, Keyana Carrion, Shijia Pan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21167

RARR : Robust Real-World Activity Recognition with Vibration by Scavenging Near-Surface Audio Online
One in four people dementia live alone, leading family members to take on caregiving roles from a distance. Many researchers have developed remote monitoring solutions to lessen caregiving needs; however, limitations remain including privacy preserving solutions, activity recognition, and model generalizability to new users and environments. Structural vibration sensor systems are unobtrusive solutions that have been proven to accurately monitor human information, such as identification and act…

How to fix a post-secondary sector in crisis, forced by decades of shrivelling provincial funding to rely on high international tuition paid by students who can no longer enrol in anywhere near the same numbers since the feds decided to play the facile and xenophobic card of blaming them for a housing crisis they had nothing to do with and to slash student permits? Marketing!!!!*
*Aimed, of course, at potential international students not governments.

Canada's education sector has a new idea to lure international students back. Here's what it is
Canadian Bureau for International Education is leading an effort to try to save Canada's reputation as a top destination in the face of drastic cuts.

When you have so many watches and straps, it does get hard to pick a combination! 🤔
#WristCheck

not very nice picking up the offspring from holiday club this pm
nasty weather
and wow the traffic going into cambridge on huntingdon road is terrible
lots of big lorries, some even going through girton village
looks like a fuckup near the a14 / m11 junction

The Near-Infrared Spectral Characteristics of Water Ice, Epsomite, and Halite Mixtures Relevant to Europa
Jodi Berdis, Carlie Wagoner, Akemi Takeuchi, Karl Hibbitts
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22927

The Near-Infrared Spectral Characteristics of Water Ice, Epsomite, and Halite Mixtures Relevant to Europa
We publish the first NIR spectra of grain particulate mixtures of water ice, epsomite, and halite at cryogenic temperatures. Furthermore, we perform a quantitative assessment of the ability of both intimately- and linearly-mixed models to reproduce laboratory data of different grain mixtures of water ice, as well as water ice mixed with epsomite. We find that smaller grains of water ice impart a stronger influence than larger grains of water ice on the 2.0 μm spectral feature in epsomite, and …

We have always been at war with Eastasia.
"President Donald Trump on Friday fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, hours after the agency reported that job growth in the U.S. had slowed to a near-halt."
#Politics #USPolitics #USPol

In or near Brighton, UK? There's a Spanish galleon moored at Shoreham Port until 8th September:
https://www.shoreham-port.co.uk/need-to-know/events/galeon-andalucia-visit

That picture is a crime against nature, specifically the laws of physics that determine the color of the sky. HDR is the top suspect. https://mastodon.social/@livelakehuron/115293655619180792

Lake Huron! Live! (@livelakehuron@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Current* conditions near Owen Sound, ON:

Typical me:
1. You're waiting for something at dayjob, so you start doing some TODOs from #Gentoo.
2. In the meantime, new kernels are releases, so you do them instead.
3. Back to dayjob, busy for the whole day.
4. Near evening, you recall that you've started a bunch of things for Gentoo, so you take a break and start doing them instead.
5. You are so tired you defer the rest of dayjob to tomorrow.
6. You recall it's #BandcampFriday, and you were supposed to buy something.
But duty fulfilled!
I just now need to remember to unpack them when they're finally done downloading, because of course I'm fetching to /tmp.

I sense a depressing level of incompetence after reading this. And a near religious faith that AI will reduce burdens on us - but no understanding that if the data set is bad (cf city records) the AI becomes GU (Genuinely Useless) if not AD (Actually Damaging)
https://missionl…

San Francisco’s latest answer for RV dwellers? An AI chatbot.
The San Francisco Mayor's Office is testing a new solution for RV dwellers' pressing questions on an upcoming parking ban, sources say.

I sense a depressing level of incompetence after reading this. And a near religious faith that AI will reduce burdens on us - but no understanding that if the data set is bad (cf city records) the AI becomes GU (Genuinely Useless) if not AD (Actually Damaging)
https://missionl…

San Francisco’s latest answer for RV dwellers? An AI chatbot.
The San Francisco Mayor's Office is testing a new solution for RV dwellers' pressing questions on an upcoming parking ban, sources say.

I told these hikers that I was out with my new lens because I'd always struggled to capture the experience of what it's like to hike in Shindagin Hollow State Forest and they said that was a noble mission
#photo #photography

Inferring local quasar IGM damping wing constraints
Timo Kist, Joseph F. Hennawi, Frederick B. Davies
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21812 https://arxiv.org/pd…

Inferring local quasar IGM damping wing constraints
Lyman-$α$ damping wings towards quasars are a highly sensitive probe of the neutral hydrogen (HI) content in the foreground intergalactic medium (IGM), not only constraining the global timing of reionization but also the \textit{local} ionization topology near the quasar. Near-optimal extraction of this information is possible with the help of two recently introduced reionization model-independent summary statistics of the HI distribution in the IGM \textit{before} the quasar started shining, …

Russian units surrounded near Dobropillia, Ukraine's military says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/30/russian-units-surrounded-near-dobropillia.html

Dear #Apple ... how did you manage to make the #Screenshot.app near impossible to capture SOUND and Video?
In the past the ability to record a video with the sound was simple click, record. It boggles the mind. What just used to be "it just works" manga it has now become... "i…

Neural-Model-Augmented Hybrid NMS-OSD Decoders for Near-ML in Short Block Codes
Guangwen Li, Xiao Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25580 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

Neural-Model-Augmented Hybrid NMS-OSD Decoders for Near-ML in Short Block Codes
This paper introduces a hybrid decoding architecture that serially couples a normalized min-sum (NMS) decoder with reinforced ordered statistics decoding (OSD) to achieve near-maximum likelihood (ML) performance for short linear block codes. The framework incorporates several key innovations: a decoding information aggregation model that employs a convolutional neural network to refine bit reliability estimates for OSD using the soft-output trajectory of the NMS decoder; an adaptive decoding pa…

Strong-coupling superconductivity near Gross-Neveu quantum criticality in Dirac systems
Veronika C. Stangier, Daniel E. Sheehy, J\"org Schmalian
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25318

Strong-coupling superconductivity near Gross-Neveu quantum criticality in Dirac systems
We study two-dimensional massless Dirac fermions at neutrality, coupled to bosonic modes through a Yukawa interaction. We then examine the intriguing possibility that such a system, devoid of carriers at zero temperature, might nevertheless exhibit superconductivity. Remarkably, we find that superconductivity emerges in the vicinity of Gross-Neveu quantum criticality, provided the fermions cease to behave as well-defined quasiparticles, that is, once their anomalous dimension in the normal stat…

We’re living in a simulation and the operator is about to drop a swimming pool near me!

Trump Orders Nuclear Submarines Near Russia After Medvedev’s Warning https://ground.news/article/trump-says-us-moved-nuclear-submarines-in-response-to-russia

First-principles study of Rh- and Pd-based kagome-layered shandites
Luca Buiarelli, Turan Birol, Brian M. Andersen, Morten H. Christensen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23329 https:…

First-principles study of Rh- and Pd-based kagome-layered shandites
The shandite structure hosts transition metals arranged in kagome layers stacked rhombohedrally, and interspersed with post-transition metal ions and chalcogens. The electronic states near the Fermi level are dominated by the transition metal $d$-orbitals and feature saddle points near several of the high-symmetry positions of the Brillouin zone, most notably the F and L points. Combining symmetry considerations with ab initio methods, we study the electronic and structural properties of these …

🌍 The climate crisis demands urgent action. But which actions are best?
Decision makers face tough trade-offs:
Policy A lowers emissions at home but increases reliance on imports.
Policy B cuts emissions long-term but raises unemployment short-term.
Policy C boosts jobs now but increases emissions in the near term.
None of these choices are simple. A policy that looks good locally may increase global emissions, or its effects may depend on what other countries d…

On the Deployment of Multiple Radio Stripes for Large-Scale Near-Field RF Wireless Power Transfer
Amirhossein Azarbahram, Onel L. A. L\'opez, Petar Popovski, Matti Latva-aho
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21640

On the Deployment of Multiple Radio Stripes for Large-Scale Near-Field RF Wireless Power Transfer
This paper investigates the deployment of radio stripe systems for indoor radio-frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) in line-of-sight near-field scenarios. The focus is on environments where energy demand is concentrated in specific areas, referred to as 'hotspots', spatial zones with higher user density or consistent energy requirements. We formulate a joint clustering and radio stripe deployment problem that aims to maximize the minimum received power across all hotspots. To address t…

8.5 mile bike ride Rockland to Camden. 1/2 mile hike / climb up mount Battie. 1/2 mile hike / slide down. 8.5 mile bike ride Camden to Rockland. No injuries! When we returned the bikes, the 20 something employee asked what we did. When we told him, he said “you crushed it.” Totally worth it without the comment but the comment was very much appreciated!

Demonstration of an optical microwave rectification by a superconducting diode with near 100% efficiency
Razmik A. Hovhannisyan, Amirreza Lotfian, Taras Golod, Vladimir M. Krasnov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21696

Demonstration of an optical microwave rectification by a superconducting diode with near 100% efficiency
Superconducting electronics offer significant advantages in speed and power efficiency for next-generation computing and communication systems. However, their practical deployment is limited by the absence of simple, efficient, and scalable superconducting counterparts to key semiconductor components. In this work, we investigate diodes based on planar Josephson junctions fabricated from a conventional niobium superconductor. The nonreciprocity in these diodes arises from the self-field effect …

Magnon squeezing near a quantum critical point in a cavity-magnon-qubit system
Gang Liu, Gen Li, Rong-Can Yang, Wei Xiong, Jie Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24295 https://

Magnon squeezing near a quantum critical point in a cavity-magnon-qubit system
Preparing magnon nonclassical states is a central topic in the study of quantum magnonics. Here we propose to generate magnon squeezed states in a hybrid cavity-magnon-qubit system by engineering an effective Rabi-type magnon-qubit interaction. This is achieved by adiabatically eliminating the cavity mode and driving the qubit with two microwave fields, of which the driving frequencies and amplitudes are properly selected. By operating the system around the critical point associated with the gr…

Near-Optimal Experiment Design in Linear non-Gaussian Cyclic Models
Ehsan Sharifian, Saber Salehkaleybar, Negar Kiyavash
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21423 https://

Near-Optimal Experiment Design in Linear non-Gaussian Cyclic Models
We study the problem of causal structure learning from a combination of observational and interventional data generated by a linear non-Gaussian structural equation model that might contain cycles. Recent results show that using mere observational data identifies the causal graph only up to a permutation-equivalence class. We obtain a combinatorial characterization of this class by showing that each graph in an equivalence class corresponds to a perfect matching in a bipartite graph. This bipar…

🎯 Real-world validation through extended #CCBench testing with human evaluators completing multi-turn tasks in isolated #Docker containers across frontend development, tool building, data analysis, testing & algorithms
🔧 Near parity with

PMODE: Theoretically Grounded and Modular Mixture Modeling
Robert A. Vandermeulen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21396 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.21396

PMODE: Theoretically Grounded and Modular Mixture Modeling
We introduce PMODE (Partitioned Mixture Of Density Estimators), a general and modular framework for mixture modeling with both parametric and nonparametric components. PMODE builds mixtures by partitioning the data and fitting separate estimators to each subset. It attains near-optimal rates for this estimator class and remains valid even when the mixture components come from different distribution families. As an application, we develop MV-PMODE, which scales a previously theoretical approach …

VisualOverload: Probing Visual Understanding of VLMs in Really Dense Scenes
Paul Gavrikov, Wei Lin, M. Jehanzeb Mirza, Soumya Jahagirdar, Muhammad Huzaifa, Sivan Doveh, Serena Yeung-Levy, James Glass, Hilde Kuehne
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25339

VisualOverload: Probing Visual Understanding of VLMs in Really Dense Scenes
Is basic visual understanding really solved in state-of-the-art VLMs? We present VisualOverload, a slightly different visual question answering (VQA) benchmark comprising 2,720 question-answer pairs, with privately held ground-truth responses. Unlike prior VQA datasets that typically focus on near global image understanding, VisualOverload challenges models to perform simple, knowledge-free vision tasks in densely populated (or, overloaded) scenes. Our dataset consists of high-resolution scans …

Some Russian units encircled near Dobropillia in Donetsk Oblast, Syrskyi says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/29/some-russian-units-encircled-near.html

Exact Bias of Linear TRNG Correctors - Spectral Approach
Maciej Skorski, Francisco-Javier Soto, Onur G\"unl\"u
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26393 https://

Exact Bias of Linear TRNG Correctors - Spectral Approach
Using Fourier analysis, this paper establishes exact security bounds for linear extractors in True Random Number Generators (TRNGs). We provide the first near-optimal total variation security characterization by interpolating between optimal $\ell_{\infty}$ and $\ell_2$ norm results, expressed through code weight enumerators and input bias parameters. Our bounds improve security assessments by an order of magnitude over previous approximations. By scanning ~20,000 codes, we reveal fundamental…

Trump orders two nuclear submarines moved near Russia
after ‘foolish and inflammatory statements’ from Medvedev – live
US president says his decision comes after the former Russian president said Trump should remember Moscow had Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities

Moody Urbanity 🟩
情绪化城市 🟩
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️ Lucky SHD 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

A near real-time #bolide detection software suite ingests data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and applies anomaly detection algorithms to distinguish between bolide events and the many lightning detections GLM was originally designed to characterize: https://www.usu.edu/today/story/space-dynamics-lab-shares-open-source-software-to-detect-potentially-dangerous-meteors - the GLM sensor takes 500 images of Earth every second, and StarFall analyzes the meteors’ light curves, or changes in brightness over time, as they pass through the atmosphere.

Don’t monkey about now.

NFL Week 9 early odds: Chiefs headline group of nine road favorites; Lions near double-digit favorite

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-wee

Impact of near-degeneracy effects on linear rotational inversions for red-giant stars
F. Ahlborn, J. M. Joel Ong, J. Van Beeck, E. P. Bellinger, S. Hekker, S. Basu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26319

Impact of near-degeneracy effects on linear rotational inversions for red-giant stars
Accurate estimates of internal red-giant rotation rates are a crucial ingredient for constraining and improving current models of stellar rotation. Asteroseismic rotational inversions are a method to estimate these internal rotation rates. In this work, we focus on the observed differences in the rotationally-induced frequency shifts between prograde and retrograde modes, which were ignored in previous works when estimating internal rotation rates of red giants using inversions. We systematical…

Channel Estimation for 6G Near-Field Wireless Communications: A Comprehensive Survey
Wen-Xuan Long, Shengyu Ye, Marco Moretti, Michele Morelli, Luca Sanguinetti, Rui Chen, Cheng-Xiang Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23526

Channel Estimation for 6G Near-Field Wireless Communications: A Comprehensive Survey
The sixth-generation (6G) wireless systems are expected to adopt extremely large aperture arrays (ELAAs), novel antenna architectures, and operate in extremely high-frequency bands to meet growing data demands. ELAAs significantly increase the number of antennas, enabling finer spatial resolution and improved beamforming. At high frequencies, ELAAs shift communication from the conventional far-field to near-field regime, where spherical wavefronts dominate and the channel response depends on bo…

Submillimeter Class II methanol masers near the massive protostar S255IR NIRS3: evolution and excitation of the $J_1 -J_0$ A$^{- }$ series and a new maser line at 345.919 GHz
I. I. Zinchenko (Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences), S. V. Salii (Astronomical Observatory, Ural Federal University), A. M. Sobolev (Astronomical Observatory, Ural Federal University), I. A. Zaichikova (Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences), S. -Y. Liu (Inst…

Submillimeter Class II methanol masers near the massive protostar S255IR NIRS3: evolution and excitation of the $J_1 -J_0$ A$^{-+}$ series and a new maser line at 345.919 GHz
We present the results of the further investigation of the Class II methanol maser emission in the $14_1 - 14_0$ A$^{-+}$ transition at 349.1 GHz discovered in 2016 in the remarkable core S255IR-SMA1, harboring a $\sim$20 M$_\odot$ protostar NIRS3, which exhibited a disk-mediated accretion burst in 2015. The present study is based on the observations of this object with ALMA in Band 7 at the largest baselines, which provide the angular resolution of $\sim$15 mas. We estimated physical condition…

Honestly, equating "#PC" = #Windows today is just shameful. Not only because everyone and their psychologist realized that there are other operating systems by now, but simply because modern Windows versions are nowhere near what "PC" used to signify.

🔐 UK phone retailers lock shop doors while trading to tackle rising thefts
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/06/phone-retailers-lock-doors-tackle-rising-thefts

The Construction of Near-optimal Universal Coding of Integers
Wei Yan, Yunghsiang S. Han
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23180 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.23180

The Construction of Near-optimal Universal Coding of Integers
Universal Coding of Integers (UCI) is suitable for discrete memoryless sources with unknown probability distributions and infinitely countable alphabet sizes. The UCI is a class of prefix codes, such that the ratio of the average codeword length to $\max\{1, H(P)\}$ is within a constant expansion factor $K_{\mathcal{C}}$ for any decreasing probability distribution $P$, where $H(P)$ is the entropy of $P$. For any UCI code $\mathcal{C}$, define \emph{the minimum expansion factor} $K_{\mathcal{C}}…

An elderly Asian woman was mauled to death by a pair of large dogs in San Bernardino County, California, last week.
Soon Han, 80, was out for a morning walk on Friday when two Dogo Argentinos attacked her near the intersection of Vinton Street and Mesa Road in Baldy Mesa.
Sheriff’s deputies arrived after 11 a.m. and found Han unresponsive along the roadway. She had suffered major injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene

Elderly woman mauled to death by Dogo Argentino dogs while on morning walk in California
An elderly Asian woman was mauled to death by a pair of large dogs in San Bernardino County, California, last week. The Dogo Argentino is a large, white and...

Diversity of Cold Worlds: Predicted Near- to Mid-infrared Spectral Signatures of a Cold Brown Dwarf with Potential Auroral Heating
Genaro Su\'arez (American Museum of Natural History), Jacqueline K. Faherty (American Museum of Natural History), Ben Burningham (University of Hertfordshire), Caroline V. Morley (University of Texas at Austin), Johanna M. Vos (Trinity College Dublin), Brianna Lacy (University of California Santa Cruz, NASA Ames Research Center), Melanie J. Rowland (Ame…

Diversity of Cold Worlds: Predicted Near- to Mid-infrared Spectral Signatures of a Cold Brown Dwarf with Potential Auroral Heating
Recent JWST/NIRSpec observations have revealed strong methane emission at 3.326 microns in the $\approx$482 K brown dwarf CWISEP J193518.59$-$154620.3 (W1935). Atmospheric modeling suggests the presence of a $\approx$300 K thermal inversion in its upper atmosphere, potentially driven by auroral activity. We present an extension of the retrieved spectra of W1935 with and without inversion spanning 1--20 microns, to identify thermal inversion-sensitive spectral features and explore the origin of …

Double Wick rotations between symmetries of Taub-NUT, near-horizon extreme Kerr, and swirling spacetimes
Aimeric Coll\'eaux, Ivan Kol\'a\v{r}, Tom\'a\v{s} M\'alek
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22309

Double Wick rotations between symmetries of Taub-NUT, near-horizon extreme Kerr, and swirling spacetimes
We explicitly show that certain 4-dimensional infinitesimal group actions with 3-dimensional orbits are related by double Wick rotations. In particular, starting with the symmetries of the spherical/hyperbolic/planar Taub-NUT spacetimes, one can obtain symmetries of the near-horizon extreme Kerr (NHEK) geometry or swirling universe by complex analytic continuations of coordinates. Similarly, the static spherical/hyperbolic/planar symmetries (i.e., symmetries of the Schwarzschild spacetime and o…

The Sound of Electrons Shattering: Current Noise Composition Laws for Electron Fractionalization
Adarsh S. Patri, Josephine J. Yu, Yi-Ming Wu, T. Senthil, Hart Goldman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25322 …

The Sound of Electrons Shattering: Current Noise Composition Laws for Electron Fractionalization
We develop a theory of the non-equilibrium current response for metallic systems near quantum critical points where electronic quasiparticles fractionalize, such as systems near continuous metal-insulator transitions or composite Fermi liquid to Fermi liquid transitions. Applying a generalized response theory within a Keldysh path integral framework, we derive a non-perturbative current noise composition law, wherein the total noise is the sum of the noise of each fractionalized constituent (bo…

Critical photoinduced reflectivity relaxation dynamics in single-layer Bi-based cuprates near the pseudogap end point
T. Shimizu, R. Tobise, T. Kurosawa, S. Tsuchiya, M. Oda, Y. Toda, V. V. Kabanov, D. Mihailovic, T. Mertelj
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21298

Critical photoinduced reflectivity relaxation dynamics in single-layer Bi-based cuprates near the pseudogap end point
A comprehensive study of photoinduced transient reflectivity dynamics in heavily overdoped single-layer cuprate (Bi,Pb)$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CuO$_{6+δ}$ (Pb-Bi2201), across the end points of the pseudogap and superconducting phases, has been conducted using optical ultrafast time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy. In the Pb-Bi2201 just before reaching the pseudogap end point, the transient reflectivity dynamics above $T_{\rm c}$ resemble the pseudogap response observed in optimally doped La-Bi2201. At …

Ultrafast nonlinear dynamics of indium tin oxide nanocrystals probed via fieldoscopy
Andreas Herbst, Anchit Srivastava, Kilian Scheffter, Soyeon Jun, Steffen Gommel, Luca Rebecchi, Sidharth Kuriyil, Andrea Rubino, Nicolo Petrini, Ilka Kriegel, Hanieh Fattahi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21518

Ultrafast nonlinear dynamics of indium tin oxide nanocrystals probed via fieldoscopy
Scalable, high-speed, small-footprint photonic switching platforms are essential for advancing optical communication. An effective optical switch must operate at high duty cycles with fast recovery times, while maintaining substantial modulation depth and full reversibility. Colloidal nanocrystals, such as indium tin oxide (ITO), offer a scalable platform to meet these requirements. In this work, the transmission of ITO nanocrystals near their epsilon-near-zero wavelength is modulated by two-cy…

Sequential 1-bit Mean Estimation with Near-Optimal Sample Complexity
Ivan Lau, Jonathan Scarlett
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21940 https://arxiv.org/pdf/250…

Sequential 1-bit Mean Estimation with Near-Optimal Sample Complexity
In this paper, we study the problem of distributed mean estimation with 1-bit communication constraints. We propose a mean estimator that is based on (randomized and sequentially-chosen) interval queries, whose 1-bit outcome indicates whether the given sample lies in the specified interval. Our estimator is $(ε, δ)$-PAC for all distributions with bounded mean ($-λ\le \mathbb{E}(X) \le λ$) and variance ($\mathrm{Var}(X) \le σ^2$) for some known parameters $λ$ and $σ$. We derive a sample c…

Ukrainian drone сauses fire near Vladimir Putin's Black Sea palace and winery, media reports: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/29/ukrainian-drone-auses-fire-near.html

Cognition releases SWE-1.5, a new coding model in Windsurf, saying it partnered with Cerebras to serve SWE-1.5 at speeds up to 13x faster than Claude Sonnet 4.5 (Cognition)
https://cognition.ai/blog/swe-1-5

Cognition | Introducing SWE-1.5: Our Fast Agent Model
Today we’re releasing SWE-1.5, the latest in our family of models optimized for software engineering. It is a frontier-size model with hundreds of billions of parameters that achieves near-SOTA coding performance. It also sets a new standard for speed: we partnered with Cerebras to serve it at up to 950 tok/s – 6x faster than Haiku 4.5 and 13x faster than Sonnet 4.5. SWE-1.5 is now available in Windsurf!

For decades, some big polluters were allowed to estimate their emissions using methods the government knew were often unreliable.

Real Pollution Levels: Air monitors at coke manufacturers, chemical plants and other industrial facilities showed far higher emissions than the estimates, records viewed by ProPublica show.

Trump Halts New Rules: The Trump administration has halted rules requiring more than 130 industrial plants to install air monitors and comply with new e…

The EPA Let Companies Estimate Their Own Pollution Levels. We Discovered Real Emissions Are Far Worse.
The Trump administration has put a stop to EPA rules that would have required more than 130 industrial facilities to install air monitors to measure pollution. Millions of people living near these plants face an increased risk of cancer.

On The Road - To Xi’An 🏯
在路上 - 去西安 🏯
📷 Minolta Hi-Matic AF
🎞️Kentmere Pan 200
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

An excess of luminous white dwarfs in the peculiar Galactic globular cluster NGC 2808
Laksh Gupta, Samyaday Choudhury, Annalisa Calamida, Christian I. Johnson, Domenico Nardiello
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26190

An excess of luminous white dwarfs in the peculiar Galactic globular cluster NGC 2808
We study the white dwarf (WD) cooling sequence of the Galactic Globular Cluster (GGC) NGC 2808 by using deep near-UV data from the Hubble Space Telescope and theoretical models, to investigate if this cluster hosts an excess of WDs. Excess in WDs is a rare phenomenon that has been found to exist only in a few GGCs. We compared star counts from different evolutionary phases on the near-UV color-magnitude diagram to evolutionary times predicted by BaSTI models. The investigation was carried out o…

Relativistic Quantum Simulation under Periodic and Dirichlet Boundary Conditions: A First-Quantised Framework for Near-Term Devices
Jaewoo Joo, Timothy P. Spiller, Kyunghyun Baek, Jeongho Bang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22579

Relativistic Quantum Simulation under Periodic and Dirichlet Boundary Conditions: A First-Quantised Framework for Near-Term Devices
We present a new recipe for relativistic quantum simulation using the first quantisation approach, under periodic (PBC) and Dirichlet (DBC) boundary conditions. The wavefunction is discretised across a finite grid represented by system qubits, and the squared momentum operator is expressed using the finite-difference method based on quantum translation operations. The relativistic kinetic energy is approximated through a perturbative expansion of the total kinetic Hamiltonian, incorporating hig…

Sharpness of Minima in Deep Matrix Factorization: Exact Expressions
Anil Kamber, Rahul Parhi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25783 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.25…

Sharpness of Minima in Deep Matrix Factorization: Exact Expressions
Understanding the geometry of the loss landscape near a minimum is key to explaining the implicit bias of gradient-based methods in non-convex optimization problems such as deep neural network training and deep matrix factorization. A central quantity to characterize this geometry is the maximum eigenvalue of the Hessian of the loss, which measures the sharpness of the landscape. Currently, its precise role has been obfuscated because no exact expressions for this sharpness measure were known i…

Ukraine damages dam near Belgorod, cuts off Russian troops near Vovchansk, military reports: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/27/ukraine-damages-dam-near-belgorod.html

A Deep Neural Network Codebook Approach for Near-Field Nulling Control Beam Focusing
Mohammadhossein Karimi, Yuanzhe Gong, Tho Le-Ngoc
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22204 https://

A Deep Neural Network Codebook Approach for Near-Field Nulling Control Beam Focusing
This paper proposes a deep neural network (DNN) codebook approach for multi-user interference (MUI) mitigation in extremely large multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) systems operating in the near-field region. Unlike existing DNN-based nulling control beamforming (NCBF) methods that face scalability and complexity challenges, the proposed framework partitions the Fresnel region using correlation-based sampling and assigns a lightweight fully connected DNN model to each subsection. Each mod…

Ukrainian military: Russian forces encircled near Dobropillya after overconfident push: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/30/ukrainian-military-russian-forces-encircled.html

Russian army left without electronics – factory near Bryansk attacked #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/29/russian-army-left-without-electronics.html

Urban Diaspora 7️⃣
城市放逐 7️⃣
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️Ilford FP4 Plus, expired 1994
buy me ☕️ ?/请我喝杯☕️？
#filmphotography

Ukraine slows Russian advance on the Pokrovsk axis near Myrnohrad: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/31/ukraine-slows-russian-advance-on.html

Right now! WHAT’S HAPPENING in POKROVSK? Battles near KURSK — Russians still suffer LOSSES!: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/31/right-now-whats-happening-in.html

Moody Urbanity - Paces 🏃‍♀️
情绪化城市 -配速 🏃‍♀️
📷 Zeiss IKON Super Ikonta 533/16
🎞️ Ilford HP5 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Ukrainian forces mopping up remaining Russian infantry groups near Dobropillya, military official says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/31/ukrainian-forces-mopping-up-remaining.html

Ukrainian forces say HIMARS strike destroyed Russian armored column near Pokrovsk: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/01/ukrainian-forces-say-himars-strike.html

Civilian ship damaged after hitting unidentified explosive device in Black Sea near Odesa: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/31/civilian-ship-damaged-after-hitting.html

Russian breakthrough near Dobropillya contained as Ukraine thwarts Kremlin gambit: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/25/russian-breakthrough-near-dobropillya-contained.html

Life near the front line: rules for survival #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/26/life-near-the-front-line.html

Ukraine hits Russian cruise missile carrier near occupied Crimea, intelligence claims: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/ukraine-hits-russian-cruise-missile.html

Lithuania closes airspace near Belarus ahead of joint Russian-Belarusian military drills: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/21/lithuania-closes-airspace-near-belarus.html