Tootfinder

Researchers: Tile tags broadcast unencrypted MAC addresses and unique IDs; researchers informed Life360 in November 2024 but it stopped replying in February (Kim Zetter/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/tile-tracking-tags-can-be-exploi…

Tile Tracking Tags Can Be Exploited by Tech-Savvy Stalkers, Researchers Say
A team of researchers found that, by not encrypting the data broadcast by Tile tags, users could be vulnerable to having their location information exposed to malicious actors.

When "AI" search engines look for sources, they go for fringe and not established quality sites. What could possibly go wrong?
(Original title: AI-powered search engines rely on “less popular” sources, researchers find)
https://arstechnica.com/a…

AI-powered search engines rely on “less popular” sources, researchers find
Generative search engines often cite sites that wouldn’t appear in Google’s top 100 links.

"A shift in food taxes could cut emissions and make diets healthier, researchers say"
#Emissions #Food #Health

Can a food tax help fix diets and the climate crisis?
Putting a tax on climate-intensive food could reduce impact, new study shows

Plastic pollution is worsened by warming climate and must be stemmed, researchers warn #environment

Plastic pollution is worsened by warming climate and must be stemmed, researchers warn
Climate change conditions turn plastics into more mobile, persistent, and hazardous pollutants. This is done by speeding up plastic breakdown into microplastics—microscopic fragments of plastic—spreading them considerable distances, and increasing exposure and impact within the environment.

Diamonds,
particularly those with nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers,
are being used to create advanced quantum sensors
that can measure magnetic fields with high sensitivity.
To unlock the full potential of these sensors,
researchers need to understand the behavior of the material at the atomic level.
In a recent study conducted at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME),
Prof. David Awschalom’s team has developed a n…

Exclusive: Russia likely placing new hypersonic missiles at former airbase in Belarus, researchers find | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-researchers-identify-likely-belarus-site-new-russian-nuclear-capable-missile-2025-12-26/

"‘Most people don’t know it exists’: Europe’s last healthy flat oysters at risk, researchers warn"
#Norway #Oysters

The CCGS Amundsen is a Canadian research icebreaker run by the non-profit Amundsen Science at Université Laval and operated by Canadian Coast Guard. This past summer, the ship was able to navigate into areas previously off limits due to very thick multi-year ice (5 yrs, 7 or more metres thick). There is much less of this thick stable ice in the Arctic now due to #ClimateChange, meaning prev…

@… Yeah, it’s unfortunate. And, just to make sure, it’s not just that I don’t like it, but the revised proposal actually wouldn’t be feasible.
I’d say that what we have here is a variation of a frequent problem: when interdisciplinary research gets evaluated by disciplinary researchers, they focus on their discipline and are disappointed when it doesn’t add…

@… Yeah, it’s unfortunate. And, just to make sure, it’s not just that I don’t like it, but the revised proposal actually wouldn’t be feasible.
I’d say that what we have here is a variation of a frequent problem: when interdisciplinary research gets evaluated by disciplinary researchers, they focus on their discipline and are disappointed when it doesn’t add…

🔀 Molecular switch links early-life stimulation to lasting memory changes
#molbio

Molecular switch links early-life stimulation to lasting memory changes
Researchers have identified a molecular mechanism that helps explain why growing up in a stimulating environment enhances memory. In contrast, a lack of stimulation can impair it. The team from the Institute for Neurosciences (IN), a joint research center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH), was led by researcher Ángel Barco.

For the love fuck, this is meaningless. LLM models can't shut themselves off. They're never "on" in the first place. They don't have physicality or permanence.
It's an algorithm that transforms one state of data into another, and for each invocation needs to be fed the whole conversation again.
Perpetuating the unhinged bullshit that LLMs are somehow sentient is harmful.
Dear journalists, for the love of Carl Sagan's sweater vest get some actual experts to vet claims from the industry or indusry-adjacent sources and clarify your reporting.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/ai-models-may-be-developing-their-own-survival-drive-researchers-say

From The Conversation
Canada’s long history with public service media offers a useful model for thinking about how AI could serve the public.
A publicly funded AI system could draw on public-domain materials, government datasets and openly licensed cultural content. It could be offered as an open-source system, making it widely available to researchers, developers and everyday users alike.

Stanford researchers develop a web-based tool that uses an LLM to downrank X posts with antagonistic language in a user's feed, to reduce "partisan animosity" (Stanford University)
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/11/social-m…

Is #AI developing HALitosis?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/ai-models-may-be-develop…

Is #AI developing HALitosis?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/ai-models-may-be-develop…

Functional Encryption in Secure Neural Network Training: Data Leakage and Practical Mitigations
Alexandru Ioni\c{t}\u{a}, Andreea Ioni\c{t}\u{a}
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21497

Functional Encryption in Secure Neural Network Training: Data Leakage and Practical Mitigations
With the increased interest in artificial intelligence, Machine Learning as a Service provides the infrastructure in the Cloud for easy training, testing, and deploying models. However, these systems have a major privacy issue: uploading sensitive data to the Cloud, especially during training. Therefore, achieving secure Neural Network training has been on many researchers' minds lately. More and more solutions for this problem are built around a main pillar: Functional Encryption (FE). Althoug…

LLM Agent Meets Agentic AI: Can LLM Agents Simulate Customers to Evaluate Agentic-AI-based Shopping Assistants?
Lu Sun, Shihan Fu, Bingsheng Yao, Yuxuan Lu, Wenbo Li, Hansu Gu, Jiri Gesi, Jing Huang, Chen Luo, Dakuo Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21501

LLM Agent Meets Agentic AI: Can LLM Agents Simulate Customers to Evaluate Agentic-AI-based Shopping Assistants?
Agentic AI is emerging, capable of executing tasks through natural language, such as Copilot for coding or Amazon Rufus for shopping. Evaluating these systems is challenging, as their rapid evolution outpaces traditional human evaluation. Researchers have proposed LLM Agents to simulate participants as digital twins, but it remains unclear to what extent a digital twin can represent a specific customer in multi-turn interaction with an agentic AI system. In this paper, we recruited 40 human par…

“This is the most complicated thing that you could possibly imagine,” said Mike Williams, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“In fact, you can’t even imagine how complicated it is.”
The proton is a quantum mechanical object that exists as a haze of probabilities until an experiment forces it to take a concrete form.
And its forms differ drastically depending on how researchers set up their experiment.
Connecting the particle’s many faces has …

Estimating average treatment effects when treatment data are absent in a target study
Lan Wen, Aaron L Sarvet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22543 https://arxi…

Estimating average treatment effects when treatment data are absent in a target study
Researchers are frequently interested in understanding the causal effect of treatment interventions. However, in some cases, the treatment of interest--readily available in a randomized controlled trial (RCT)--is either not directly measured or entirely unavailable in observational datasets. This challenge has motivated the development of stochastic incremental propensity score interventions which operate on post-treatment exposures affected by the treatment of interest with the aim of approxim…

I have long felt that liberal/progressive messaging often tended towards not merely hyperbole, but hyperbole that carried far more than the intended message.
Consider the phrase "Defund the police". That carries a clear message that implies near elimination of police based law enforcement. Few of us want that. Police are an important element of an ordered society.
But pretty much all of us see that police are doing too much and that it is better to restructure police…

CSUN Researchers Call for Public’s Help in Documenting Joshua Trees’ Surprise Out-of-Season Bloom
https://newsroom.csun.edu/2025/12/16/csun-researchers-call-for-publics-help-in-documenting-joshua-trees-sur…

Radio Stars in the Era of New Observatories
Lynn D. Matthews
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21467 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.21467

Radio Stars in the Era of New Observatories
An international conference Radio Stars in the Era of New Observatories was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory on 2024 April 17-19. The conference brought together more than 60 researchers from around the world, united by an interest in using radio wavelength observations to explore the physical processes that operate in stars (including the Sun), how stars evolve and interact with their environments, and the role of radio stars as probes of our Galaxy. Topic…

High levels of short-chain PFAS found in blood of residents living near chemical facility #health

High levels of short-chain PFAS found in blood of residents living near chemical facility
In a new study appearing in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers found high levels of ultrashort-chain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in blood samples taken from Wilmington, N.C. residents between 2010 and 2016. Two ultrashort-chain PFAS—perfluoromethoxyacetic acid (PFMOAA) and trifluoroacetic acid (TFA)—were detected at high levels in almost every sample.

Caltech says it built the world's largest neutral-atom quantum computer, with 6,100 qubits, 13 second coherence, 10x longer than the past, and 99.98% accuracy (Jason Nelson/Decrypt)
https://decrypt.co/341716/caltech-builds-worlds-largest-neutral-atom…

Caltech Builds World’s Largest Neutral-Atom Quantum Computer
Researchers kept more than 6,000 qubits coherent while operating with 99.98% accuracy. Here's why that matters for quantum computing.

🤝 Why protests can bring people together across political divides
#protests

Why protests can bring people together across political divides
How can people with diametrically opposed views suddenly stand shoulder to shoulder in protest? Researchers from Copenhagen, Oslo and Mainz have investigated this question. The starting point is the COVID protests, which were driven by three unifying strategies.

'Living off the land' allowed Russia-linked group to breach Ukrainian entities this summer https://therecord.media/russia-linked-breaches-ukraine-living-off-the-land

The Trump administration's travel ban on five Europeans includes researchers working to tackle online disinformation and abuse, like CCDH founder Imran Ahmed (Adam Satariano/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/business/europe-us-onl…

They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship.
The Trump administration said five regulators and researchers who work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet had been barred from entering the United States.

Senators Want Extremism Researchers to Surrender Documents Linked to Right-Wing Grudges (Ali Winston/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/senators-want-extremism-researchers-to-surrender-documents-linked-to-right-wing-grudges/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251122/p37#a251122p37

eXplainable Artificial Intelligence for RL-based Networking Solutions
Yeison Stiven Murcia, Oscar Mauricio Caicedo, Daniela Maria Casas, Nelson Luis Saldanha da Fonseca
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21649

eXplainable Artificial Intelligence for RL-based Networking Solutions
Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents have been widely used to improve networking tasks. However, understanding the decisions made by these agents is essential for their broader adoption in networking and network management. To address this, we introduce eXplaNet - a pipeline grounded in explainable artificial intelligence - designed to help networking researchers and practitioners gain deeper insights into the decision-making processes of RL-based solutions. We demonstrate how eXplaNet can be app…

@… at least, some proof of your existence.
"In a twist, the findings lend credence to the Australian folk hoax of the “drop bear,” a ferocious, carnivorous variety of koala said to fall upon its victims from the canopy. Paleontologists think Thylacoleo was an adept climber and ambush predator that could dive upon its prey from tree branches or roc…

Toward a digital twin of the Great Barrier Reef: impact of extreme model resolution on tidal simulations
Jon Hill, Ana Vila-Concejo, Katherine C. Lee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21957

Toward a digital twin of the Great Barrier Reef: impact of extreme model resolution on tidal simulations
Coral reefs are topologically complex environments with a large variation over small spatial-scales. The availability of high resolution data (metre-scale) to study these environments has increased rapidly such that many researchers are actively engaged in creating a `digital twin' of these environments to aid protection and management. However, as with any model, a digital twin will only be as useful as the data used to create it. Previous numerical modelling work on coral reefs has been carri…

"Scientists Create Durable Biodegradable Bamboo Plastic That’s Stronger Than Petroleum-Based Materials"
#Bamboo #Plastic #Plastics

Scientists Create Durable Biodegradable Bamboo Plastic That’s Stronger Than Petroleum-Based Materials | Happy Eco News
Chinese researchers created biodegradable bamboo plastic with 110 MPa tensile strength that decomposes in soil within 50 days. Published in Nature Communications (October 2025), the material outperforms petroleum-based plastics in terms of strength and stability, while maintaining 90% of its original strength after recycling. This makes it a renewable and recyclable alternative for industrial use.

What?
Researchers from the University of Vienna have quietly compiled a digital directory so vast that it contains the personal details of nearly half the global population by scraping the data of 3.5 billion WhatsApp users.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/whatsapp-da…

WhatsApp Data of 3.5 Billion Users Scraped in Record-Breaking Research Study
Researchers from the University of Vienna scraped data from 3.5 billion WhatsApp users, revealing significant privacy risks and prompting Meta to implement new security mitigations.

Before plants or animals, fungi conquered Earth’s surface #nature

Before plants or animals, fungi conquered Earth’s surface
Fungi’s evolutionary roots stretch far deeper than once believed — up to 1.4 billion years ago, long before plants or animals appeared. Using advanced molecular dating and gene transfer analysis, researchers reconstructed fungi’s ancient lineage, revealing they were crucial in shaping Earth’s first soils and ecosystems.

Concordia researchers are transforming urban living in Montreal by modeling a sustainable solar-powered 15-minute city, enhancing community bonds and reducing greenhouse gas emissions through local agriculture and green transportation.
https://www.enn.com/articles/…

🪡 Machine embroidery encodes skin-like tension lines in textiles, enabling mass-customizable wearables
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-machine-embroidery-encodes-skin-tension.html

Machine embroidery encodes skin-like tension lines in textiles, enabling mass-customizable wearables
A zigzag stitch enables fabric to stretch until the thread is straight. University of Tartu researchers report in Advanced Materials that thread packing can encode fabric stretchability, leading the way to tailoring wearables at an industrial scale.

Project to bring voices of enslaved people to life https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/project-to-bring-voices-of-enslaved-people-to-life/

Project to bring voices of enslaved people to life - The National Archives
  The National Archives is working with international academics to make the largest collection of first-person testimony of enslaved people from the Caribbean in existence – the Reports of the Protectors of Slaves – accessible to researchers anywhere in the world. Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana will digitise, map […]

#Theia, the giant impactor that created the Moon, and Earth were neighbors! Read more about Theia's likely "birthplace" in the inner Solar System here: https://www.mps.mpg.de/theia-and-earth-wer

A new study suggests that #dementia may be driven in part by faulty blood flow in the brain.
Researchers found that losing a key lipid causes blood vessels to become overactive,
disrupting circulation and starving brain tissue.
When the missing molecule was restored, normal blood flow returned.
This discovery opens the door to new treatments aimed at fixing vascular problems in …

Scientists found a way to restore brain blood flow in dementia
A new study suggests that dementia may be driven in part by faulty blood flow in the brain. Researchers found that losing a key lipid causes blood vessels to become overactive, disrupting circulation and starving brain tissue. When the missing molecule was restored, normal blood flow returned. This discovery opens the door to new treatments aimed at fixing vascular problems in dementia.

Slow Radiolysis of Amino Acids in Mars-Like Permafrost Conditions - Applications to the Search for Extant Life on Mars: #Mars? Check the ice, researchers say: https://www.psu.edu/news/earth-and-mineral-sciences/story/are-there-living-microbes-mars-check-ice-researchers-say - intact biomolecules from dormant microbes degrade far slower in pure water ice than mixed soil samples.

Deep learning for interval-censored failure time data from case-cohort studies
Yeyu Xiao, Yonghong Long
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22081 https://arxiv.org/…

Deep learning for interval-censored failure time data from case-cohort studies
Interval-censored data are common in fields such as epidemiology and demography. When the failure event of interest is relatively rare and the collection of covariates is costly, researchers often adopt the case-cohort design to reduce study costs. However, existing studies typically rely on the assumption of linearity in modeling covariates, which may not capture the complex and nonlinear relationships present in real data. To address this limitation, we consider a class of transformation mode…

This Iconic Rocky Mountain Animal Is Vanishing, Researchers Warn
https://scitechdaily.com/this-iconic-rocky-mountain-animal-is-vanishing-researchers-warn/

Indian megacities are sinking putting thousands of buildings at risk: Study https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/indian-megacities-are-sinking-putting-thousands-of-buildings-at-risk-study/

Indian megacities are sinking putting thousands of buildings at risk: Study
Parts of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, India’s largest cities, are slowly sinking, mainly due to overextraction of groundwater, according to a recent study, reports Mongabay India’s Manish Chandra Mishra. Researchers used eight years of satellite radar data and found that 878 square kilometers (339 square miles) of land across the five megacities show […]

🥵 Reservoir thermal energy storage offers efficient cooling for data centers
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-reservoir-thermal-energy-storage-efficient.html

Reservoir thermal energy storage offers efficient cooling for data centers
The rise of artificial intelligence, cloud platforms, and data processing is driving a steady increase in global data center electricity consumption. While running computer servers accounts for the largest share of data center energy use, cooling systems come in second—but a new study by researchers at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), formerly known as NREL, offers a potential solution to reduce peak energy consumption.

MIT researchers have developed a new method for designing 3D structures that can be transformed from a flat configuration into their curved, fully formed shape with only a single pull of a string.
This technique could enable the rapid deployment of a temporary field hospital at the site of a disaster such as a devastating tsunami
— a situation where quick medical action is essential to save lives.
The researchers’ approach converts a user-specified 3D structure into a flat s…

One pull of a string is all it takes to deploy these complex structures
MIT researchers developed a method that converts a user’s design into a flat series of interconnected tiles that can be converted to a 3D structure with one pull of a single string.

🍽️ Can you really be addicted to food? Researchers are uncovering convincing similarities to drug addiction
https://theconversation.com/can-you-really-be-addicted-to-food-researchers-are-uncovering-con…

Can you really be addicted to food? Researchers are uncovering convincing similarities to drug addiction
A consensus is emerging among scientists that certain foods are addictive for some people. But questions remain about which foods, which people and why.

Portugal updates cybercrime law to exempt security researchers
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/portugal-updates-cybercrime-law-to-exempt-security-researchers/

Portugal updates cybercrime law to exempt security researchers
Portugal has modified its cybercrime law to establish a legal safe harbor for good-faith security research and to make hacking non-punishable under certain strict conditions.

The Trump administration's travel ban on five Europeans includes researchers working to tackle online disinformation and abuse, like CCDH founder Imran Ahmed (Adam Satariano/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com…

They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship.
The Trump administration said five regulators and researchers who work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet had been barred from entering the United States.

"Scientists get a shocking glimpse of Arctic climate change"
#Arctic #Climate #ClimateChange

Scientists get a shocking glimpse of Arctic climate change
Researchers who visited Svalbard expected deep snow, but instead they found meltwater pools and thawed ground.

Nasal spray as noninvasive brain tumor treatment developed by researchers
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5663293-nasal-drops-fight-deadly-brain-cancer-research/

🫘 Researchers turn coffee and plastic waste into climate solution
#chemistry

Researchers turn coffee and plastic waste into climate solution
Researchers at the University of Sharjah have patented a technology designed to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from industrial processes before it is released into the atmosphere.

X exposing political accounts' location shows why trust and safety teams mattered: to combat coordinated inauthentic behavior, not "censorship" of viewpoints (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/11/24/xs-new<…

X’s New Feature Reveals Why Trust & Safety Work Was Never About The ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’
For the last few years, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and their allies have spent considerable energy attacking both academic researchers studying disinformation and the trust & safety te…

Any controversy about saturated fat comes from research showing that reducing saturated fat intake can actually be harmful if you replace it with the wrong thing
(processed carbs, sugars.)
But researchers agree that replacing saturated fats with plant based fats, like olive oil, is good for health.
https://

Hannah Harris Green (@whatsitlike.me)
“People don’t eat nutrients. They eat foods. When you ask someone what they had to eat, they don’t tell you: ‘I had fat, or I had carbohydrates, or I had protein.’” — Dr. Cheryl Anderson, an American Heart Association board member.

Italian-made spyware spotted in breaches of Russian, Belarusian systems https://therecord.media/memento-labs-formerly-hacking-team-dante-spyware-russia-kaspersky

Eavesdropping on Internal Networks via Unencrypted Satellites: #SatelliteCommunication: https://www.heise.de/en/news/US-Researchers-Intercept-Unencrypted-Satellite-Communication-10767672.html - US researchers have investigated satellite data traffic using commercial equipment; much of it, including security-relevant data, was unencrypted.

Flexion, which is building a full autonomy stack for humanoid robots, raised a $50M Series A from DST Global Partners, NVentures, and others, after a $7M seed (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/robotic-brain-building-star…

Exclusive: Founded By Ex-Nvidia Researchers, Flexion Lands $50M To Build The 'Brain' for Humanoid Robots
A startup founded by former Nvidia researchers that’s “building the brain for humanoid and human-capable robots,” Flexion has raised $50 million in funding, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.

"Climate change is shrinking children’s height - and humidity is making things worse"
#Climate #ClimateChange #Children

How climate change could stunt millions of children’s growth
Researchers have warned of the unexpected consequences of extremely hot, humid conditions during pregnancy.

Northwest researchers find 6-million-year-old ice
— the oldest on Earth
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/16/all-science-no-fiction-northwest-researchers-6-million-year-old-ice/

Northwest researchers find 6-million-year-old ice — the oldest on Earth
To find the oldest ice on the planet researchers had to go somewhere that’s been cold for a long time — where the ice builds up in layers instead of melting away.

Scientists say this simple diet change can improve sleep fast #nutrition

Scientists say this simple diet change can improve sleep fast
A new study shows that eating more fruits and vegetables during the day can significantly improve sleep that same night. Researchers found a clear link between diet quality and sleep depth, with participants who met the CDC’s daily produce recommendations seeing a 16% boost in sleep quality. The findings suggest that small dietary changes could make a big difference in how well we rest.

"Century-old corals reveal the Pacific Northwest is acidifying faster than expected"
#Climate #ClimateChange #CoralReef

Century-old corals reveal the Pacific Northwest is acidifying faster than expected
In 1888, researchers aboard the R/V Albatross began the world’s first concentrated marine research expeditions off California’s Pacific coast. The team collected untold plant and animal specimens, including orange cup corals, which they carefully preserved and stored in collections at the Smithsonian Institution. These specimens have now become rare physical evidence of ongoing changes in […]

German videos – titled Balaclava Kitchen – started in 2014 and ran for months before YouTube took down the channel for violating its guidelines.
But it offered a glimpse of how far-right groups have seized on cultural production – from clothing brands to top 40 music – to normalise their ideas,
in a process that researchers say has hit new heights in the age of social media.
“It’s frightening, honestly,”
said Katherine Kondor, a researcher with the Norwegian Center fo…

"By examining several widely used AI models designed for cancer detection, the researchers found that performance varied depending on patients’ self-reported gender, race, and age. They also identified multiple reasons why these disparities occur."
What AI Learned From Cancer Slides Shocked Researchers
https://scitechdaily.com/what-ai-learned-from-cancer-slides-shocked-researchers/

Before you start eating more dark #chocolate and drinking more #coffee, know that the study found an association, not a causal link,
and that it didn’t suggest how much you would have to eat or drink to potentially derive an aging-related benefit.
The facts:
The researchers used data from participants…

New study sheds light on a beneficial compound found in coffee and chocolate
Theobromine, an alkaloid found in dark chocolate and coffee, is associated with slower cellular aging, a study suggests.

🏮 'Chinese lantern' structure shifts into more than a dozen shapes for various applications
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-chinese-lantern-shifts-dozen-applications.html

'Chinese lantern' structure shifts into more than a dozen shapes for various applications
Researchers have created a polymer "Chinese lantern" that can snap into more than a dozen curved, three-dimensional shapes by compressing or twisting the original structure. This rapid shape-shifting behavior can be controlled remotely using a magnetic field, allowing the structure to be used for a variety of applications.

Rand Paul, the Senate homeland security committee's chair has requested that multiple academic research centers focused on political extremism
hand over years worth of documentation on
federal watch list programs,
the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol,
vaccine mandates,
the 2020 election,
and Trump supporters,
according to information obtained by WIRED.

Senators Want Extremism Researchers to Surrender Documents Linked to Right-Wing Grudges
The Senate homeland security committee's chair has asked researchers to turn over troves of documents related to the January 6 attack, vaccines, and more, according to a letter reviewed by WIRED.

WHO’s Cancer Research Arm Finds Atrazine Is Probable Human Carcinogen https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/whos-cancer-research-arm-finds-atrazine-is-probable-human-carcinogen-2025-11-21/…

WHO’s Cancer Research Arm Finds Atrazine Is Probable Human Carcinogen
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer found today that atrazine, the second most widely used pesticide in the United States, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The cancer designation was determined by a working group of 22 expert cancer researchers from 12 different countries. The researchers identified evidence from human epidemiological studies, animal studies, and laboratory assessments of whether atrazine exhibits key characteristics of a c…

🧬 HIV mystery uncovered: How the virus reprograms host cells to create perfect hiding places
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-hiv-mystery-uncovered-virus-reprograms.html

HIV mystery uncovered: How the virus reprograms host cells to create perfect hiding places
For over three decades, HIV has played an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with researchers, making treating—and possibly even curing—the disease a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to achieve.

Some experts question Anthropic's claims of cyberattack breakthroughs using its tools, noting that white-hat hackers report modest gains from AI-aided hacking (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/

Researchers question Anthropic claim that AI-assisted attack was 90% autonomous
The results of AI-assisted hacking aren’t as impressive as many might have us believe.

🧁 Tiny sugars in the brain disrupt emotional circuits, fueling depression
#brain

Tiny sugars in the brain disrupt emotional circuits, fueling depression
Depression is a serious disorder that disrupts daily life through lethargy, sleep disturbance, and social withdrawal, and also increases the risk of suicide. The number of depression patients has steadily increased over the years, affecting more than 280 million people worldwide as of 2025. Now, researchers have uncovered a new pathological mechanism that could provide clues for the diagnosis and treatment of depression.

Anthropic announces Claude Life Sciences, a new offering for researchers that integrates Claude AI models with lab tools like Benchling to boost efficiency (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/20/anthropic-claude-life-sciences-research-ai.html

Anthropic launches Claude Life Sciences to give researchers an AI efficiency boost
The announcement marks Anthropic's first formal launch within the life sciences sector

In a California farming region, researchers are mapping rural heat to protect farmworkers
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-california-farming-region-rural-farmworkers.html

Two weeks into the government shutdown
with no resolution in sight,
higher ed associations and researchers say
the inability of scientists to contact federal agency workers
or get new grants approved
is causing harm
https://www.

Researchers, Colleges Face Federal Shutdown Impacts
Two weeks into the government shutdown with no resolution in sight, higher ed associations and researchers say the inability of scientists to contact federal agency workers or get new grants approved is causing harm.

X exposing political accounts' location shows why trust and safety teams mattered: to combat coordinated inauthentic behavior, not "censorship" of viewpoints (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/11/24/xs-new<…

X’s New Feature Reveals Why Trust & Safety Work Was Never About The ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’
For the last few years, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and their allies have spent considerable energy attacking both academic researchers studying disinformation and the trust & safety te…

"No major banks have yet committed to stop funding new oil, gas and coal, research finds"
#Banks #Finance #FossilFuels

Sources: in recent months, Tencent aggressively hired AI researchers from ByteDance, including offering to double their salaries, and reorganized its AI team (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tencent-poaches-bytedance-…

Tencent Poaches ByteDance Researchers as China AI Race Heats Up
Throughout the past couple of years, as AI fever swept China’s technology sector, one giant—Tencent—seemed to mostly be sitting on the sidelines. The company, which owns the hugely popular WeChat app, didn’t seem enthusiastic to win a fierce race in the country to develop cutting-edge AI models, ...

🙋 Is the 'hot hand' real? 'Jeopardy!' offers clues
#psychology

Is the 'hot hand' real? 'Jeopardy!' offers clues
Stanford researchers found that contestants bet bigger on Daily Doubles when they're on a streak—even though their performance barely budges.

Researchers detail popEVE, an AI model to predict the disease-causing potential of unknown human genetic mutations, and says it beats Google's AlphaMissense (Michael Peel/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/bc49e334-776b-41d0-a9be-fb0c29c54853

Tying housing costs to homelessness rates, researchers have identified inflection points:
🔸When rents in a community exceed about a third of the median income, homelessness escalates.
🔸“As the share of low-income households with severe rent burdens grows, so does their risk of homelessness,”
said Thomas Byrne of Boston College, an author of the study.
Gregg Colburn, a housing expert at the University of Washington, found that
Seattle and San Francisco, with so…

Trump Says ‘Housing First’ Failed the Homeless. Here’s What the Evidence Says.
The Trump administration has sought to move away from the model, which supporters call “evidence based” but opponents consider overly permissive.

🔫 Engineers develop spray to make clothes more fire-resistant
#clothing

Engineers develop spray to make clothes more fire-resistant
Researchers at UNSW have developed a novel fire-resistant spray that could slow the rate at which cotton materials catch fire—and reduce the risk of burning.

Beijing-based DP Technology, which develops AI tools used by researchers for tasks like computer-aided drug design and battery design, raised a ~$114M Series C (Eunice Xu/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/ar

AI-for-Science start-up DP Technology raises US$114 million in Series C round
The Beijing-based AI-for-Science firm said the Series C round would fund hiring and R&D, as interest grows in using AI to speed up scientific discovery.

⚠️ An important wetland in Ghana is under siege. Researchers investigate the real issues
https://theconversation.com/an-important-wetland-in-ghana-is-under-siege-researchers-investigate-the-real-issues-269016<…

An important wetland in Ghana is under siege. Researchers investigate the real issues
In Ghana, the degradation of wetlands is widespread and many are in poor condition.

They Seek to Curb Online Hate.
The Trump Regime Accuses Them of Censorship.
Five Europeans who work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet
were barred from entering the United States
after Secretary of State Marco Rubio labeled them
“radical activists”
who undercut free speech.

They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship.
The Trump administration said five regulators and researchers who work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet had been barred from entering the United States.

OpenAI researchers delete X posts claiming a GPT-5 math breakthrough after pushback from Hassabis, others; LeCun says they were "hoisted by their own GPTards" (Matthias Bastian/The Decoder)
https://the-decoder.com/leading-openai

Leading OpenAI researcher announced a GPT-5 math breakthrough that never happened
OpenAI researchers recently claimed a major math breakthrough on X, but quickly walked it back after criticism from the community, including Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis, who called out the sloppy communication.

🌴 Making LAZY plants stand up: Research reveals new pathway plants use to detect gravity
#plants <…

Making LAZY plants stand up: Research reveals new pathway plants use to detect gravity
A study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has revealed a previously unknown pathway plants use to detect gravity and orient the direction they grow in. Publishing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study may one day open the door for improvements in crop cultivation.

The EU accuses Meta and TikTok of violating their obligations to give researchers adequate access to public data on their platforms under the DSA (Eliza Gkritsi/Politico)
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-accuses-meta-tiktok-of-breaching-digital-rules/

EU accuses Meta, TikTok of breaching digital rules
Move comes as EU faces pressure over enforcing its tech lawbooks.

🪮 Powerful and precise multi-color lasers now fit on a single chip
#laser

Powerful and precise multi-color lasers now fit on a single chip
A few years ago, researchers in Michal Lipson's lab noticed something remarkable. They were working on a project to improve LiDAR, a technology that uses lightwaves to measure distance. The lab was designing high-power chips that could produce brighter beams of light.

“Many researchers worry about the long-term effects of throttling the pipeline of trained scientists.
‘If this keeps up, it would be really devastating for the field, bc this is where the next generation of experts comes from,’
says Emily Levesque,
an astronomer at the Univ of WA in Seattle.”
https://

Author Bill Sullivan (@authorbillsullivan.com)
US PhD admissions shrink as fears over Trump’s cuts take hold Some doctoral programmes are admitting no students at all amid uncertainty about federal science funding. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03417-6

Scientists at NeurIPS, which drew a record 26,000 attendees this year, say key questions about how AI models work and how to measure them remain unresolved (Jared Perlo/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-progress-surges-resea…

AI progress surges while researchers struggle to explain It
Academics, start-up founders and researchers representing industrial titans from around the globe descended on San Diego for the top gathering in AI.

🪡 Nanostructured coatings physically puncture bacteria to prevent biofilm formation
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-nanostructured-coatings-physically-bacteria-biofilm.html

Nanostructured coatings physically puncture bacteria to prevent biofilm formation
Bacteria that multiply on surfaces are a major headache in health care when they gain a foothold on, for example, implants or in catheters. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have found a new weapon to fight these hotbeds of bacterial growth—one that does not rely on antibiotics or toxic metals.

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.

🤑 Study reveals how financial pressure shapes NFL officiating
#nfl

Study reveals how financial pressure shapes NFL officiating
A new study from The University of Texas at El Paso has uncovered how financial incentives may subtly shape officiating decisions in one of America's most iconic institutions: the National Football League. By analyzing more than 13,000 penalty calls from 2015 to 2023, researchers found that postseason officiating has disproportionately favored the Patrick Mahomes-era Kansas City Chiefs, coinciding with their rise as one of the NFL's most marketable franchises.

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.

Top AI researchers and executives in SV are working 80 to 100 hours a week, driven by intense competition, as AI's rapid progress compresses product timelines (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-race-tech-w

The COVID-19 mRNA-based vaccines that saved 2.5 million lives globally during the pandemic
could help spark the immune system to fight cancer.
This is the surprising takeaway of a new study published in the journal Nature.
While developing mRNA vaccines for patients with brain tumors in 2016, our team, led by pediatric oncologist Elias Sayour, discovered that mRNA can train immune systems to kill tumors – even if the mRNA is not related to cancer.
Based on this finding…

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines could unlock the next revolution in cancer treatment – new research
The researchers found that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines could potentially help patients whose tumors don’t respond well to traditional immunotherapy.

Chinese toymaker FoloToy suspends sales of its GPT-4o-powered teddy bear, after researchers found the toy gave kids harmful responses, including sexual content (Brandon Vigliarolo/The Register)
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/ai_toys_fmatches_knives_kink/

Happy holidays: AI-enabled toys teach kids how to play with fire, sharp objects
: Consumer advocacy researchers at PIRG tested four AI toys, and none of them passed muster

🫙 Light-triggered process lets 3D printers create custom glass structures without glue or high temperatures
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-triggered-3d-printers-custom-glass.html

Light-triggered process lets 3D printers create custom glass structures without glue or high temperatures
Researchers have developed the first binder-free method for 3D printing glass, using light to trigger a chemical reaction that directly forms silica structures without the need for organic additives or extreme heat. This breakthrough makes glass printing faster, cleaner, and more precise, with the potential to revolutionize fields from optics to medicine by enabling custom, high-performance glass components that were previously impossible to manufacture.

Researchers say Russia-aligned Pravda network is engaging in "LLM grooming", flooding the internet with disinformation to influence chatbots like ChatGPT (Aisha Down/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov