Tootfinder

Since I did not get to take part in the Oslo Enhjulssykkelrunde (Unicycle Tour of Oslo) this year (I was busy with the kids), I decided to do my own little varient of it as part of my commute on the way into work today.
Distance 23.91km [14.86 miles], moving time 1h36m, 175m [574ft] elevation gain, average speed 14.9km/h [9.3mph]
FWIW, I actually only live about 5km [3.1 miles] from my office 🤷 😆

Four years after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas would be the first state to build its own border wall, lawmakers have quietly stopped funding the project, leaving only scattered segments covering a small fraction of the border.
That decision, made in the waning hours of this year’s legislative session,
leaves the future of the state wall unclear.
Just 8% of the 805 miles the state identified for construction is complete, which has cost taxpayers more than $3 billion to dat…

With only 8% built, Texas quietly defunds state border wall program
Texas officials suggested the federal government could pick up construction. However, during President Trump’s first term, his administration built about one-third of what the state was able to put up in the same amount of time.

The MUSE view of the Sculptor galaxy: survey overview and the planetary nebulae luminosity function
E. Congiu, F. Scheuermann, K. Kreckel, A. Leroy, E. Emsellem, F. Belfiore, J. Hartke, G. Anand, O. V. Egorov, B. Groves, T. Kravtsov, D. Thilker, C. Tovo, F. Bigiel, G. A. Blanc, A. D. Bolatto, S. A. Cronin, D. A. Dale, R. McClain, J. E. M\'endez-Delgado, E. K. Oakes, R. S. Klessen, E. Schinnerer, T. G. Williams

The MUSE view of the Sculptor galaxy: survey overview and the planetary nebulae luminosity function
NGC 253, the Sculptor galaxy, is the southern, massive, star-forming disk galaxy closest to the Milky Way. In this work, we present a new 103-pointing MUSE mosaic of this galaxy covering the majority of its star-forming disk up to 0.75xR25. With an area of ~20x5 arcmin2 (~20x5 kpc2, projected) and a physical resolution of ~15 pc, this mosaic constitutes one of the largest, highest physical resolution integral field spectroscopy surveys of any star-forming galaxy to date. Here, we exploit the mo…

A Tale of Two Systems: Characterizing Architectural Complexity on Machine Learning-Enabled Systems
Renato Cordeiro Ferreira (University of S\~ao Paulo, Jheronimus Academy of Data Science, Technical University of Eindhoven, Tilburg University)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11295

A Tale of Two Systems: Characterizing Architectural Complexity on Machine Learning-Enabled Systems
How can the complexity of ML-enabled systems be managed effectively? The goal of this research is to investigate how complexity affects ML-Enabled Systems (MLES). To address this question, this research aims to introduce a metrics-based architectural model to characterize the complexity of MLES. The goal is to support architectural decisions, providing a guideline for the inception and growth of these systems. This paper brings, side-by-side, the architecture representation of two systems that …

A NICER view of the 1.4 solar-mass edge-on pulsar PSR J0614--3329
Lucien Mauviard, Sebastien Guillot, Tuomo Salmi, Devarshi Choudhury, Bas Dorsman, Denis Gonz\'alez-Caniulef, Mariska Hoogkamer, Daniela Huppenkothen, Christine Kazantsev, Yves Kini, Jean-Francois Olive, Pierre Stammler, Anna L. Watts, Melissa Mendes, Nathan Rutherford, Achim Schwenk, Isak Svensson, Slavko Bogdanov, Matthew Kerr, Paul S. Ray, Lucas Guillemot, Isma\"el Cognard, Gilles Theureau

A NICER view of the 1.4 solar-mass edge-on pulsar PSR J0614--3329
Four neutron star radius measurements have already been obtained by modeling the X-ray pulses of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars observed by the Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER). We report here the radius measurement of PSR J0614$-$3329 employing the same method with NICER and XMM-Newton data using Bayesian Inference. For all different models tested, including one with unrestricted inclination prior, we retrieve very similar non-antipodal hot regions geometries and radii.…

The Cosmological Constant from a Quantum Gravitational $\theta$-Vacua and the Gravitational Hall Effect
Stephon Alexander, Heliudson Bernardo, Aaron Hui
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14886

The Cosmological Constant from a Quantum Gravitational $θ$-Vacua and the Gravitational Hall Effect
We provide a new perspective on the cosmological constant by exploring the background-independent Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of general relativity. The Chern-Simons-Kodama state of quantum gravity, a generalization of the Hartle-Hawking and Vilenkin states, has a striking structural similarity to the topological field theory of the quantum Hall effect. As a result, we study the gravitational topological $θ$-sectors in analogy to Yang-Mills theory. We find that the cosmological constant $Λ$ i…

“Minister Melissa Depraetere bevestigt dit: ‘Het capaciteitstarief in zijn huidige vorm is op sommige momenten inderdaad een drempel om flexibiliteit aan te bieden wanneer dit gewenst is. Op een zonnige zondagnamiddag met negatieve prijzen is het naar marktwerking toe niet ideaal dat men zou worden afgestraft om het eigen vermogen af te nemen om bijvoorbeeld een elektrische wagen te laden aan vol vermogen.’”

Minister Depraetere: capaciteitstarief botst met flexibele energiecontracten
Minister Depraetere heeft in het Vlaams Parlement erkend dat het huidige capaciteitstarief op gespannen voet staat met de nieuwe, flexibele energiecontracten die onder meer gebruikmaken van dynamische stroomprijzen.

Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning against Malicious Clients Based on Verifiable Functional Encryption
Nina Cai, Jinguang Han
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12846

Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning against Malicious Clients Based on Verifiable Functional Encryption
Federated learning is a promising distributed learning paradigm that enables collaborative model training without exposing local client data, thereby protect data privacy. However, it also brings new threats and challenges. The advancement of model inversion attacks has rendered the plaintext transmission of local models insecure, while the distributed nature of federated learning makes it particularly vulnerable to attacks raised by malicious clients. To protect data privacy and prevent malici…

Tracing the Milky Way: Calibrating chemical ages with high-precision Kepler data
G. Casali, J. Montalb\`an, A. Miglio, L. Casagrande, L. Magrini, C. Chiappini, A. Bragaglia, M. Matteuzzi, K. Brogaard, A. Stokholm, V. Grisoni, M. Tailo, E. Willett
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15546

Tracing the Milky Way: Calibrating chemical ages with high-precision Kepler data
Chemical clocks offer a powerful tool for estimating stellar ages from spectroscopic surveys. We present a new detailed spectroscopic analysis of 68 Kepler red giant stars to provide a suite of high-precision abundances along with asteroseismic ages with better than 10 percent precision from individual mode frequencies. We obtained several chemical clocks as ratios between s-process elements (Y, Zr, Ba, La, Ce) and alpha-elements (Mg, Ca, Si, Al, Ti). Our data show that [Ce/Mg] and [Zr/Ti] disp…

Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning against Malicious Clients Based on Verifiable Functional Encryption
Nina Cai, Jinguang Han
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12846

Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning against Malicious Clients Based on Verifiable Functional Encryption
Federated learning is a promising distributed learning paradigm that enables collaborative model training without exposing local client data, thereby protect data privacy. However, it also brings new threats and challenges. The advancement of model inversion attacks has rendered the plaintext transmission of local models insecure, while the distributed nature of federated learning makes it particularly vulnerable to attacks raised by malicious clients. To protect data privacy and prevent malici…