Tootfinder

Massachusetts water resources body punts on permanently dumping sewage into Charles River https://phys.org/news/2025-11-massachusetts-resources-body-punts-permanently.html

Massachusetts water resources body punts on permanently dumping sewage into Charles River
The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority may have been caught loving that dirty water a little too much, as its board has halted a proposal that clean water advocates fear would dump sewage into the Charles River forever.

SNF (Switzerland) restrictions proposed: only 1 concurrent research grant per PI (plus maybe one coop), only 1 proposal per year.
🔥 Hot take (since I'm not at all operating like this currently): I actually think this might be a good idea? It would curb some of the biggest "research mills", where one PI has a huge pyramid scheme underneath them, and might encourage more careful grant proposals, slower science. And might even put more emphasis back into the basic research funding (instead of the grant lotteries)?
(Maybe naive, I know, and I have no idea how this would be implemented)
#academicChatter #researchGrants
https://www.snf.ch/de/7qymWfJMG1z9XR2S/news/einschraenkungen-in-der-projektfoerderung

By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found
“the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more
A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers
https://www.

A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers
By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found “the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more.

"Tire rubber decays into a potentially dangerous chemical cocktail, research shows"
#Cars #Vehicles #Pollution

Tire rubber decays into a potentially dangerous chemical cocktail, research shows
The small, spongy black beads used as fill material in most artificial turf fields are called crumb rubber, which has long been touted as a major win for recycling. However, conflicting studies have alternately identified crumb rubber as either safe for people to play atop or dangerous to human health.

Researchers demonstrated a major WhatsApp flaw that exposed 3.5B users' phone numbers, with 57% also showing a profile photo; Meta fixed the enumeration problem (Andy Greenberg/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/a-simple-whatsapp-security-flaw-…

A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers
By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found “the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more.

Perovskite solar cells just cleared a major hurdle toward commercialization.
Researchers developed a new two-dimensional interlayer that kept modules running at 95% efficiency after 5,000 hours of brutal light, heat, and UV exposure. The breakthrough uses neutral triazine molecules and co-crystal engineering that slots right into existing manufacturing lines.

Researchers achieve record perovskite solar module stability under light, heat, and UV stress
An international research team has developed a new two-dimensional perovskite interlayer based on a co-crystal engineering strategy for more robust perovskite films. It demonstrated improved performance in small area perovskite solar cells and, in a 48 cm2 module, contributed to retain 95% of initial efficiency after 5,000 h.

The Paper Factory: How Academia Turned Research into Production — From publish-or-perish pressure to the erosion of creativity in modern science https://research-reviewer.blogspot.com/2025/10/publish-or-perish-research.html

The Paper Factory: How Academia Turned Research into Production — From publish-or-perish pressure to the erosion of creativity in modern science
An in-depth reflection on how the ‘publish or perish’ culture, precarious work, and academic metrics have turned research into a paper factory — an...

So far in Russia's hybrid war in Europe, most known acts of sabotage have resulted in minimal damage
— nothing compared to the tens of thousands of lives lost and cities decimated across Ukraine.
But officials say each act
— from vandalism of monuments to cyberattacks to warehouse fires
— sucks up valuable security resources.
The head of one large European intelligence service said investigations into Russian interference now swallow up as much of the agency’…

Russia wants to drain Europe's security resources with sabotage campaign, officials say | AP News
The Associated Press has tracked 145 cases of sabotage and disruption that Western officials blame on Russia since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. They say Moscow wants to drain Europe’s investigative resources.

Q&A with Demis Hassabis on Gemini 3, spending most of his research time on world models, fitting the entire Google search index into Gemini, AI bubble, and more (Alex Heath/Sources)

Demis Hassabis on Gemini 3, world models, and the AI bubble
Q&A with the Google DeepMind CEO on building AGI, compute bottlenecks, and the AI bubble.

Mice can be trained to drink water
as a way to ‘tell’ researchers they see something
https://theconversation.com/gazing-into-the-minds-eye-with-mice-how-neuroscientists-are-seeing-human-vision-more-clearly-…

Gazing into the mind’s eye with mice – how neuroscientists are seeing human vision more clearly
It was once believed that mice had relatively poor vision. Turns out mice are far from blind – and studying how their vision is shaped by their environment and behavior can clarify the same in people.