Tootfinder

- I'm a graduate of Harvard University.
- Good for you. I'm a graduate of comedy traffic school.

Cadence Design agrees to plead guilty and pay more than $140M to resolve US charges for selling its chip design products to a Chinese military university (Karen Freifeld/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/cadence-plead-guilty-pay-…

On World Rainforest Day, the world confronts an unprecedented wave of tropical forest loss https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/on-world-rainforest-day-the-world-confronts-an-unprecedented-wave-of-tropical-forest-loss/

On World Rainforest Day, the world confronts an unprecedented wave of tropical forest loss
If tropical rainforests are the lungs of the Earth, then 2024 was a year of respiratory failure. Fires, fueled by climate extremes and human recklessness, tore through vast stretches of forest at an unprecedented pace. According to satellite data from the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute, 6.7 million hectares of tropical primary […]

I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the
sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are
loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
-- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville

Well, there you have it...
The same year, Vance told the National Conservatism Conference that “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” “We live in a world that has been made effectively by university knowledge” and to rebuild the nation along the lines of white Christian nationalism, the universities must be destroyed. Vance told the audience, “the professors are the enemy.”

May 24, 2025
On Thursday the Trump administration told Harvard University that because it had not handed over information on foreign students’ protest activities, violent activity, and coursework, the university had “lost [the] privilege” of enrolling foreign students.

Columbia University to pay over $200 million to resolve Trump probes (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/columbia-university-trump-administration-reach-deal-over-funding-washington-post-2025-07-23/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250723/p167#a250723p167

"An Ivy League university" means "not Harvard."

Like all university rankings, the QS World University Rankings are of questionable value. “In partnership with Elsevier” says it all, really…
But of course, they can be a marketing tool, and the metrics based on perceptions also tell a story. This also goes for their Sustainability rankings. So, while they don’t necessarily tell us about the actual “sustainability" of a university, they certainly tell us about how well they communicate about their efforts.
⇢

Like all university rankings, the QS World University Rankings are of questionable value. “In partnership with Elsevier” says it all, really…
But of course, they can be a marketing tool, and the metrics based on perceptions also tell a story. This also goes for their Sustainability rankings. So, while they don’t necessarily tell us about the actual “sustainability" of a university, they certainly tell us about how well they communicate about their efforts.
⇢

Like all university rankings, the QS World University Rankings are of questionable value. “In partnership with Elsevier” says it all, really…
But of course, they can be a marketing tool, and the metrics based on perceptions also tell a story. This also goes for their Sustainability rankings. So, while they don’t necessarily tell us about the actual “sustainability" of a university, they certainly tell us about how well they communicate about their efforts.
⇢

Good Morning #Canada
This week, in 2022, gold miners in the Yukon discovered a near complete, mummified baby woolly mammoth. The Yukon has a world-renowned fossil record of ice age animals, but mummified remains with skin and hair are rarely unearthed. Geologists, with the Yukon Geological Survey and the University of Calgary, traveled 6 hours to the site and retrieved the remains less than an hour before a storm struck.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Prehistoric
https://youtu.be/jR2ZmvckneQ?si=xD1x0GrlLSelVS5y

The Journey of CodeLab: How University Hackathons Built a Community of Engaged Students
Renato Cordeiro Ferreira (University of S\~ao Paulo), Renata Santos Miranda (University of S\~ao Paulo), Alfredo Goldman (University of S\~ao Paulo)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12840

The Journey of CodeLab: How University Hackathons Built a Community of Engaged Students
This paper presents the journey of CodeLab: a student-organized initiative from the University of São Paulo that has grown thanks to university hackathons. It summarizes patterns, challenges, and lessons learned over 15 competitions organized by the group from 2015 to 2020. By describing these experiences, this report aims to help CodeLab to resume its events after the COVID-19 pandemic, and foster similar initiatives around the world.

🌡️ Global mercury levels in rivers have doubled since Industrial Revolution, research reveals
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-global-mercury-rivers-industrial-revolution.html

Global mercury levels in rivers have doubled since Industrial Revolution, research reveals
Mercury levels in the world's rivers have more than doubled since the pre-industrial era, according to new research from Tulane University that establishes the first known global baseline for riverine mercury pollution.

An Empirical Study of Multi-Agent RAG for Real-World University Admissions Counseling
Anh Nguyen-Duc, Chien Vu Manh, Bao Anh Tran, Viet Phuong Ngo, Luan Le Chi, Anh Quang Nguyen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11272

An Empirical Study of Multi-Agent RAG for Real-World University Admissions Counseling
This paper presents MARAUS (Multi-Agent and Retrieval-Augmented University Admission System), a real-world deployment of a conversational AI platform for higher education admissions counseling in Vietnam. While large language models (LLMs) offer potential for automating advisory tasks, most existing solutions remain limited to prototypes or synthetic benchmarks. MARAUS addresses this gap by combining hybrid retrieval, multi-agent orchestration, and LLM-based generation into a system tailored fo…

While the rare earth market is dominated by China, Canada also has some of the largest reserves in the world.
But new rare earth mining projects have to balance the need for these materials with the environmental impacts that mining has on the land. 
Instead of starting from scratch, the University of Alberta and Calgary-based CVW CleanTech are trying to mine these valuable substances from tailings, a waste product of open-pit oilsands mining.
Previously known as Titanium …

New-age prospectors finding rare earth elements in tailings from Alberta oilsands | CBC News
Rare earth elements are a key part of the transition to a green economy. From magnets in wind turbines to batteries in electric vehicles, they’re needed for technology that is increasingly in demand.

Distributed Interview Selection for Stable Matching in Large Random Markets
Richard Cole, Pranav Jangir
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19345 https://

Distributed Interview Selection for Stable Matching in Large Random Markets
In real-world settings of the Deferred Acceptance stable matching algorithm, such as the American medical residency match (NRMP), school choice programs, and various national university entrance systems, candidates need to decide which programs to list. In many of these settings there is an initial phase of interviews or information gathering which affect the preferences on one or both sides. We ask: which interviews should candidates seek? We study this question in a model, introduced by Lee (…

You know you are burned out when you want to log in to Steam and instead of writing your username you write the institutional email of your university..

"Academic Libraries Need a New Value Proposition" @ Katina magazine:
https://katinamagazine.org/content/article/future-of-work/2025/academic-libraries-need-a-new-value-proposition
"The eli…

The Guardian partners with Cambridge University to launch Secure Messaging in its app, protecting sources by making messages indistinguishable from other data (Katharine Viner/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/20…

Two Chinese scientists arrested for smuggling ‘potential agroterrorism’ fungus into US | The Independent
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/university-michigan-yunqing-jian-zunyong-liu-agroterrorism-fungus-b2763214.html

EVENT: Online event "Jewish-Catholic Relations in a Volatile World: A Conversation on the Legacy of Pope Francis and Future Directions under Pope Leo XIV" (July 24)
https://ift.tt/0LBHupV
REPOSTING: Lecture by Wiebke Denecke (MIT) on ‘How Can We Leverage Our Cultural Wiring Around Nature…
vi…

"New report details global drought impacts"
#Drought #Climate #ClimateChange

New report details global drought impacts
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln's National Drought Mitigation Center and the United Nations' Convention to Combat Desertification have released a report outlining the impacts of drought around the world since 2023.

Lessons Learned from FPF “Deploying AI Systems” Workshop
https://fpf.org/blog/lessons-learned-from-fpf-deploying-ai-systems-workshop/
@…

The Guardian partners with Cambridge University to launch Secure Messaging in its app, protecting sources by making messages indistinguishable from other data (Katharine Viner/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/20…

The average undergrad tuition fee in the 1974/75 academic year in Canada, across all disciplines, was $547 ($3445 adjusted to 2025)
Fees 50 years later in 2024/25 were $7360 ($7496 adjusted)
That is more than double. 117%.
And I *know* from personal experience this is a low ball average. If I could find a breakdown by discipline or by length of study for today, some would be even more obscene.
What has changed? Any occupation outside a minimum wage paying job demands a 2-4yr undergraduate diploma or degree, if not more.
Think about the 1970s and how common it was for people to get good paying jobs, leading to careers, without even high school education. Our free education stops with high school.
My family is a good example.
Mom and Step Dad: teacher college/degree. One got a Masters mid career.
Dad: didn’t complete HS
Father in law: didn’t complete HS
Mother in law: completed HS mid-career
Leadership positions and full careers demand a Masters or PhD requiring 5-10 years of study after HS!
Add in the cost of food and housing and the massive cuts happening at all colleges and universities because of the loss of international student tuition and I am going to go out on a limb and say our students today are going to pay double the price for a far worse experience than possibly any time since the Second World War.
Public education should be free.
Food and Housing should be controlled.
If the only thing government cares about is the economy, then they are setting us up for failure, and have been for decades.
(Don’t get me started on the kinds of “values” Canadian governments demonstrate when International student tuitions are 5x more than domestic students, let alone the inherent revenue risk in that funding strategy that has now come home to roost)
#canpoli #cdnpoli #education #university #college #canada
(
74/75 Source Stats Can: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3710015001&pickMembers[0]=1.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=1972 / 1973&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2006 / 2007&referencePeriods=19720101,20060101
24/25 source stats can: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3710004501
cc: @… @…

Columbia failed to meet accreditation standards, US government says (Jasper Ward/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-education-department-says-columbia-university-violated-federal-anti-2025-06-04/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250604/p120#a250604p120

Optimizing Mesh to Improve the Triangular Expansion Algorithm for Computing Visibility Regions
Jan Mikula (Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague), Miroslav Kulich (Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague)

Optimizing Mesh to Improve the Triangular Expansion Algorithm for Computing Visibility Regions
This paper addresses the problem of improving the query performance of the triangular expansion algorithm (TEA) for computing visibility regions by finding the most advantageous instance of the triangular mesh, the preprocessing structure. The TEA recursively traverses the mesh while keeping track of the visible region, the set of all points visible from a query point in a polygonal world. We show that the measured query time is approximately proportional to the number of triangle edge expansio…

The Guardian has uploaded "coverdrop" to github, embedding a covert secure messaging channel into their phone app.
I've not looked at it, but I imagine it's mostly going to be for text messages, as media uploads don't fit the network profile (upload/download) of news consumption apps.

EVENT: Online event "Jewish-Catholic Relations in a Volatile World: A Conversation on the Legacy of Pope Francis and Future Directions under Pope Leo XIV" (July 24) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcemen…

TeleSim: A Network-Aware Testbed and Benchmark Dataset for Telerobotic Applications
Zexin Deng (University of Warwick, UK), Zhenhui Yuan (University of Warwick, UK), Longhao Zou (Pengcheng Laboratory, China)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04425

TeleSim: A Network-Aware Testbed and Benchmark Dataset for Telerobotic Applications
Telerobotic technologies are becoming increasingly essential in fields such as remote surgery, nuclear decommissioning, and space exploration. Reliable datasets and testbeds are essential for evaluating telerobotic system performance prior to real-world deployment. However, there is a notable lack of datasets that capture the impact of network delays, as well as testbeds that realistically model the communication link between the operator and the robot. This paper introduces TeleSim, a network-…

Bilateral collaboration between Mexico and the United Kingdom for the construction of technical equipment (CHARM) for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT/GTM)
Paulina Carmona Rodriguez, Maria de la Paz Ramos-Lara
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11489

Bilateral collaboration between Mexico and the United Kingdom for the construction of technical equipment (CHARM) for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT/GTM)
The Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT), is the largest millimeter radio telescope in the world, and was founded in 2006. This radio telescope is the final product of a collaboration agreement between Mexico and the United States in the 1990s. It is located on top of an extinct volcano in Mexico at an altitude of 4600 meters above sea level. In 2018, the University of Manchester and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory signed an agreement with the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica Op…

New report details global drought impacts #environment

New report details global drought impacts
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln's National Drought Mitigation Center and the United Nations' Convention to Combat Desertification have released a report outlining the impacts of drought around the world since 2023.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
has been a small-but-mighty source of world-changing scientific research for more than a half-century.
NASA scientists first moved into the building,
which another federal agency leases from GISS’s institutional partner, Columbia University, in 1966.
Last month, at the behest of the Trump administration,
NASA officials told GISS it had to move out before the end of May.
In response, more than 100 staffer…

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Faces Eviction under Trump Plan
Since 1966 NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been at the forefront of Earth and planetary science from its location in upper Manhattan. Now a Trump administration directive is ejecting its scientists to parts unknown

EVENT: Online event "Jewish-Catholic Relations in a Volatile World: A Conversation on the Legacy of Pope Francis and Future Directions under Pope Leo XIV" (July 24)
https://ift.tt/IvwspXq
CFP: Failure: Understanding Art as Process, 1150-1750 (Florence, 15-17 Oct 20) Call for…
via Input 4 REL…

Recent results from MicroBooNE
Holly B. Parkinson (University of Edinburgh), for the MicroBooNE Collaboration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03376 https://

Recent results from MicroBooNE
Modelling and reconstructing neutrino-nucleus scattering is difficult, but it is crucial to do it precisely to enable next-generation oscillation measurements. Liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs), such as MicroBooNE, can be the tool for this job as they are excellent precision neutrino detectors with their ability to produce detailed three-dimensional interaction images and precise energy and spatial resolution. MicroBooNE currently possesses the world's largest neutrino-argon scatt…

Analysis of points outcome in ATP Grand Slam Tennis using big data and machine learning
Martin Illum (Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Richard Petersens Plads, Denmark), Hans Christian Bechs{\o}fft Mikkelsen (Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Richard Petersens Plads, Denmark), Emil Hovad (Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, …

Analysis of points outcome in ATP Grand Slam Tennis using big data and machine learning
Tennis is one of the world's biggest and most popular sports. Multiple researchers have, with limited success, modeled the outcome of matches using probability modelling or machine learning approaches. The approach presented here predicts the outcomes of points in tennis matches. This is based on given a probability of winning a point, based on the prior history of matches, the current match, the player rankings and if the points are started with a first or second. The use of historical public …

CFP> World Genealogy: Knowledge, Kinship and Ancestors in Global and Historical Perspective (June 2026 / Hamburg, Germany) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20069799/world-genealogy-knowledge-kinship-and-…

Out of the Day Job: Perspectives of Industry Practitioners in Co-Design and Delivery of Software Engineering Courses
Gillian Daniel, Chris Hall, Per Hammer, Alec-Angus Macdonald, Hollie Marwick-Best, Emma McKenzie, George Popa, Derek Somerville, Tim Storer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00803

Out of the Day Job: Perspectives of Industry Practitioners in Co-Design and Delivery of Software Engineering Courses
Over more than two decades, The University of Glasgow has co-designed and delivered numerous software engineering focused courses with industry partners, covering both technical and discipline specific professional skills. Such collaborations are not unique and many of the benefits are well recognised in the literature. These include enhancing the real-world relevance of curricula, developing student professional networks ahead of graduation and easing recruitment opportunities for employers. …

World Genealogy: Knowledge, Kinship and Ancestors in Global and Historical Perspective (June 2026 / Hamburg, Germany) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20069800/world-genealogy-knowledge-kinship-and-ancestor…

Way back in 2022, as the world tried to readjust back to "normal" following COVID - I helped to co-organise a bootcamp with sponsorhop from the @… IASC, @… and a generous dollop of help from @… and @… colleagues.
We gathered 10 senior scientist mentors and 22 students in an old torpedo research station (now used by Roskilde University) for 10 days. It was an extremely intense period but the 4th paper produced by this talented group has just come out.
I consider facilitating #EarlyCareerScientists to work on important science problems an extremely rewarding part of my job, and I'm looking forward to the next one already as part of our PISCO project.
In the mean time, go and read this extremely cool work, collecting together a huge number of radiosonde observations going back to the 1950s over the Arctic Ocean and using them to assess how well CMIP6 models represent lower atmosphere.
#CMIP6 #ClimateModels #Arctic #ArcticClimate #SeaIce
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD041412

EVENT: Online event "Jewish-Catholic Relations in a Volatile World: A Conversation on the Legacy of Pope Francis and Future Directions under Pope Leo XIV" (July 24)
https://ift.tt/6GawvTS
CFP: The (After) Lives of Things: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Material Culture, Association of…
vi…

EVENT: Online event "Jewish-Catholic Relations in a Volatile World: A Conversation on the Legacy of Pope Francis and Future Directions under Pope Leo XIV" (July 24)
https://ift.tt/op7dUxT
APPLY: LGBTQ Religious Archives Network Fall Intership—$1500 Stipend Riot Mueller 07/25/2024 -…
via Inpu…

CFP> World Genealogy: Knowledge, Kinship and Ancestors in Global and Historical Perspective (June 2026 / Hamburg, Germany)
https://ift.tt/3R79DJV
When did aliens become a problem? The Mediterranean Association for Marine Biology and Oceanology in…
via Input 4 RELCFP

World Genealogy: Knowledge, Kinship and Ancestors in Global and Historical Perspective (June 2026 / Hamburg, Germany)
https://ift.tt/3as6Lt5
When did aliens become a problem? The Mediterranean Association for Marine Biology and Oceanology in…
via Input 4 RELCFP

Poetics of Embedded Narratives and Images in the Literature and Arts of the English-speaking World: Moving Borders
https://ift.tt/vSnJwZT
updated: Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 9:40amfull name / name of organization: University of Pau…
via Input 4 RELCFP

Is a Better World Possible?- Solidarity as a Conversation across Temporalities
https://ift.tt/C1GPma6
updated: Tuesday, June 10, 2025 - 1:59pmfull name / name of organization: University of…
via Input 4 RELCFP

Is a Better World Possible?- Solidarity as a Conversation across Temporalities
https://ift.tt/52Fpw4J
updated: Tuesday, June 10, 2025 - 1:59pmfull name / name of organization: University of…
via Input 4 RELCFP