Tootfinder

Join us today for 'Relational Ecologies of Knowledge and Practice: A Workshop of the Epistemic Justice Network', following from the UNESCO Chairs Forum in Dakar.
UKFIET Conference in Oxford, Wednesday, 17 September, 13:30-15:00
We will brainstorm actionable ideas for achieving epistemic justice as we face broader global challenges of opposition, to imagine visions and learn from lived experiences of reparative partnerships for research and knowledge co-creation.

🔥 Novel way to 'rev up' brown fat burns calories, limits obesity in mice
#biology

Novel way to 'rev up' brown fat burns calories, limits obesity in mice
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a novel way brown fat—an energy-burning form of fat—can rev the body's metabolic engine, consuming cellular fuel and producing heat in a way that improves metabolic health. The study, in mice, reveals new avenues to exploit brown fat to treat metabolic diseases, such as insulin resistance and obesity.

Russischer Oppositioneller verliert Staatsbürgerschaft
Dem im Exil lebenden russischen Oppositionellen Ilja Jaschin ist nach eigenen Angaben die Staatsbürgerschaft aberkannt worden. Sein Anwalt habe ein Dokument erhalten, das ihn (Jaschin) als "staatenlose Person" einstufe und ihm die Einreise nach Russland verbiete, erklärte Jaschin im Onlinedienst X. In anderen Worte heiße das: "Mir wurde die russische Staatsbürgerschaft en…
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Ukraine-Liveblog: ++ Russland greift ukrainische Energieanlage an ++
Das russische Militär hat ukrainischen Angaben zufolge bei neuen Luftangriffen ein Wärmekraftwerk in der Region Kiew attackiert. Außenminister Wadephul betonte, Deutschland werde sich an Sicherheitsgarantien für die Ukraine beteiligen.

Beyond the Binary: The System of All-round Evaluation of Research and Its Practices in China
Yu Zhu, Jiyuan Ye
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08546 https://arx…

Beyond the Binary: The System of All-round Evaluation of Research and Its Practices in China
The lack of a macro-level, systematic evaluation theory to guide the implementation of evaluation practices has become a key bottleneck in the reform of global research evaluation systems. By reviewing the historical development of research evaluation, this paper highlights the current binary opposition between qualitative and quantitative methods in evaluation practices. This paper introduces the System of All-round Evaluation of Research (SAER), a framework that integrates form, content, and …

Gavin Newsom signs AB 1043, which requires device makers and app stores to verify user ages; Google and Meta supported the bill while Netflix and MPA opposed it (Tyler Katzenberger/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/13/california-law-online-age…

Learning Social Navigation from Positive and Negative Demonstrations and Rule-Based Specifications
Chanwoo Kim, Jihwan Yoon, Hyeonseong Kim, Taemoon Jeong, Changwoo Yoo, Seungbeen Lee, Soohwan Byeon, Hoon Chung, Matthew Pan, Jean Oh, Kyungjae Lee, Sungjoon Choi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12215

Learning Social Navigation from Positive and Negative Demonstrations and Rule-Based Specifications
Mobile robot navigation in dynamic human environments requires policies that balance adaptability to diverse behaviors with compliance to safety constraints. We hypothesize that integrating data-driven rewards with rule-based objectives enables navigation policies to achieve a more effective balance of adaptability and safety. To this end, we develop a framework that learns a density-based reward from positive and negative demonstrations and augments it with rule-based objectives for obstacle a…

Byte by Byte: Unmasking Browser Fingerprinting at the Function Level Using V8 Bytecode Transformers
Pouneh Nikkhah Bahrami, Dylan Cutler, Igor Bilogrevic
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09950

Byte by Byte: Unmasking Browser Fingerprinting at the Function Level Using V8 Bytecode Transformers
Browser fingerprinting enables persistent cross-site user tracking via subtle techniques that often evade conventional defenses or cause website breakage when script-level blocking countermeasures are applied. Addressing these challenges requires detection methods offering both function-level precision to minimize breakage and inherent robustness against code obfuscation and URL manipulation. We introduce ByteDefender, the first system leveraging V8 engine bytecode to detect fingerprinting op…

😮‍💨 Carbon 'offsets' aren't working: Researchers offer a 'roadmap' to improve nature-based climate solutions
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-carbon-offsets-roadmap-nature-based.html

Carbon 'offsets' aren't working: Researchers offer a 'roadmap' to improve nature-based climate solutions
A lot of the climate-altering carbon pollution humans release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels gets drawn into the Earth's oceans and landscapes through natural processes, mostly through photosynthesis, as plants turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass.