Mountain permafrost is warming and thawing worldwide due to climate change, with ground temperature being a key control of its mechanical stability. Heat conduction is the dominant mode of heat transfer in frozen ground, and thermal diffusivity governs the rate at which temperature changes propagate…

Airlines on track for the biggest holiday season getaway in history as industry braces for record demand

It looks like the National Space Council won't be cancelled but will be chaired by the President:https://twitter.com/joroulette/status/2001846812869824593

A research team from the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (XAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an interpretable artificial intelligence (AI) framework named Convolutional Kolmogorov–Arnold Network (CKAN), which sheds new light on the properties of dark matter at galaxy-cluster sca…

arXiv:2512.16784v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Datasets are essential to train and evaluate computer vision models used for traffic analysis and to enhance road safety. Existing real datasets fit real-world scenarios, capturing authentic road object behaviors, however, they typically lack precise …

FTAV goes hedge fund headhunting through the ages

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A jury convicted a Milwaukee judge on one count of felony obstruction Thursday, the Associated Press reported, after she was accused of helping a man who was in the U.S. illegally evade federal immigration authorities.

Lynsey Addario is a Pulitzer Prize winning war photographer who has been abducted twice while documenting conflict from Afghanistan to Sudan. She tells The Mishal Husain Show why her job is to "bear witness." This interview contains descriptions of abduction, violence and sexual assault which some v…

arXiv:2512.16250v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Recent multimodal large language models (MLLMs) such as GPT-4o and Qwen3-Omni show strong perception but struggle in multi-speaker, dialogue-centric settings that demand agentic reasoning tracking who speaks, maintaining roles, and grounding events ac…

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said late Thursday the Trump administration will pause the diversity visa lottery program, which she said was used by alleged Brown University shooter Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.

arXiv:2512.15742v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) face a fundamental memory wall: their learned basis functions create parameter counts that impose extreme bandwidth demands, hindering deployment in memory-constrained environments. We show that Vision KANs exhibit a …

arXiv:2512.16101v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In recent years, user generated content (UGC) has become the dominant force in internet traffic. However, UGC videos exhibit a higher degree of variability and diverse characteristics compared to traditional encoding test videos. This variance challen…

arXiv:2505.02500v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: As the automotive industry shifts its focus toward software-defined vehicles, the need for faster and reliable software development continues to grow. However, traditional methods show their limitations. The rise of Generative Artificial Intellige…

Advertising group’s new CEO plans restructuring and says traditional agency model is from a ‘bygone era’

In the Peloponnese mountains, the usually hardy trees are turning brown even where fires haven’t reached. Experts are raising the alarm on a complex crisisIn the southern Peloponnese, the Greek fir is a towering presence. The deep green, slow-growing conifers have long defined the region’s high-alti…

India’s long-awaited package of financial services reforms is setting the stage for a surge of foreign capital into the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

Police said villagers used flaming torches to drive away the elephant, which later died.

Bank of Japan implements quarter percentage point rise to 0.75% in progress to normalise monetary policy

Marijuana’s classification as one of the most dangerous and habit-forming substances has long drawn criticism.

Albanese said Australia has more guns now than 30 years ago, when the country's deadliest-ever mass shooting took place.

Quote from: dxcubfan on Today at 01:22 amDoes this mean all of the segments of B19 are in Mega Bay 1 now?  It looks like SpaceX might just have it ready to test by the end of the month.Welcome to the foru...

Quote from: clongton on 12/18/2025 11:48 pmQuote from: spacenut on 12/18/2025 02:56 pmI do wonder who the 30 people were who didn't vote for him ...https://www.senate.gov...

The yen extended losses against the dollar after the Bank of Japan raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points.

Federal officials gave the clearest timeline yet for when a breakthrough could come in closed-door negotiations over the water supply of 40 million Americans.

arXiv:2512.15305v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The goal of the present work is to propose an agent-based model that originally combines classical Vicsek-like polarity alignments and contact forces, as implemented in the framework developed by Maury and Venel in [Maury, Venel, 2011]. The descriptio…

Inflows to a group of exchange-traded funds tracking the CSI A500 Index surged to a fresh record on Thursday, with the strong activity leaving traders perplexed.

Before the trading day starts we bring you a digest of the key news and events that are likely to move markets. Today we look at:

Are AI tools worth the money? After reviewing my 2025 spending, I've made one big change.

arXiv:2512.15675v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: This paper proposes a training data augmentation pipeline that combines synthetic image data with neural style transfer in order to address the vulnerability of deep vision models to common corruptions. We show that although applying style transfe…

An unlikely partnership could allow Tokyo and Seoul to counter China.

Officials identified a man from Portugal as the suspect in the deadly shooting at Brown University and the killing of an M.I.T. professor. The police said on Thursday he died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

UN estimates that 55,000  families have been affected by rain in enclave where reconstruction is a distant prospect

Quote from: meekGee on 12/18/2025 03:49 pmQuote from: AmigaClone on 12/18/2025 09:06 amQuote from: meekGee on 12/18/2025 01:53 am[quote author=N...

Also in this newsletter: best of Buzzer Round

Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Planning Date: Friday, Dec. 12, 2025 The weekend drive starting from the “Nevado Sajama” drill site brought Curiosity back into the “Monte Grande” boxwork hollow. We’ve been in this hollow before for the “Valle de l…

arXiv:2511.05170v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Nucleus detection and classification (NDC) in histopathology analysis is a fundamental task that underpins a wide range of high-level pathology applications. However, existing methods heavily rely on labor-intensive nucleus-level annotations and s…

Keith Lee took home the highest honors at the first-ever U.S. TikTok awards.

England are pushed towards the precipice of the fastest Ashes series defeat in more than 100 years as a Travis Head century maintains Australia's grip on the third Test in Adelaide.

Restricting Tehran’s growth and water use — however politically difficult — would be more prudent than trying to engineer ever more elaborate workarounds.

Pluribus Episode 8 Review: In the penultimate episode of Season 1, Carol stands at a crossroads even while Manousos' arrival is imminent.

Britt, whose marriage to Davis in 1960 provoked threats due to racism and anti-miscegenation laws in the US, has died of natural causes in Los AngelesMay Britt, the Swedish actor whose marriage to Sammy Davis Jr in 1960 was the subject of controversy due to US attitudes towards interracial marriage,…

CASA and Space Agency formalise cooperationThe agreement formalises cooperation between the two agencies to support efforts to enhance the safety of spaceflight and air navigation.It establishes a framework for stronger regulatory cooperation ...

arXiv:2512.15907v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Evaluating the quality of tables generated by large language models (LLMs) remains an open challenge: existing metrics either flatten tables into text, ignoring structure, or rely on fixed references that limit generalization. We present TabReX, a ref…

arXiv:2306.13273v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Recent research efforts indicate that federated learning (FL) systems are vulnerable to a variety of security breaches. While numerous defense strategies have been suggested, they are mainly designed to counter specific attack patterns and lack ad…

arXiv:2512.15206v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In real-world IoT applications, sensor data is usually collected under diverse and dynamic contextual conditions where factors such as sensor placements or ambient environments can significantly affect data patterns and downstream performance. Traditi…

Things weren’t looking good for Vestas Wind Systems A/S in January, with the return of Donald Trump and his anti-renewables policies after an already difficult stretch for the turbine maker.

Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez and Democratic strategist Joel Payne join CBS News to discuss some of the biggest political stories of 2025.

India’s proceeds from initial public offerings in 2026 may hit a record for a third year, with a strong pipeline and buoyant investor demand supporting momentum, according to top investment bankers.

Medical professionals and some in conservative circles feel argument of Lee Jae Myung may be a bit thinSouth Korean president Lee Jae Myung has instructed his government to consider extending public health insurance to cover hair-loss treatments, arguing that baldness has become a “matter of surviva…

Malaysia’s Sunway Healthcare Holdings Bhd. will start gauging investor interest as soon as January for an initial public offering that may raise around $700 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Productivity Commission recommends waiting three years to establish review into technology after furious response from creative industriesFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe Productivity Commission has abandoned a propo…

arXiv:2512.15825v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Block-Based Programming (BBP) platforms, such as Snap!, have become increasingly prominent in K-12 computer science education due to their ability to simplify programming concepts and foster computational thinking from an early age. While these platfo…

Really? Ask Chuck what he thinks of your "rules"

"This is the closest we have been to realizing the science fiction vision of expanding across the Solar System."

arXiv:2512.16763v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: A complex system comprises multiple interacting entities whose interdependencies form a unified whole, exhibiting emergent behaviours not present in individual components. Examples include the human brain, living cells, soft matter, Earth's climate, e…

Quote from: thespacecow on 12/18/2025 09:24 amRelated: https://x.com/StockSavvyShay/status/2001391832241181103QuoteElon Musk told xAI staff that winning the AI race comes down to surviving the next 2–3 years &amp...

arXiv:2512.15761v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Thrombosis in rotary blood pumps arises from complex flow conditions that remain difficult to translate into reliable and interpretable risk predictions using existing computational models. This limitation reflects an incomplete understanding of how s…

Rambling, badly drafted government proposals are leading to late nights and endless scrutiny

Moderator:Off-topic discussion deleted.  The space policy implications should be discussed in Space Policy. Nighthawk, if you can't post within the forum's rules, don't post!Thank you

Wind farm expansion is threatening Sami land rights, livelihoods and an Indigenous way of life.

The initiative forms part of Laneway’s ongoing Solar Slice fund, which channels $1 from every ticket sold into sustainability and charitable projects.

Atmospheric research should be under NOAA and not under NASA.  NASA should be totally space oriented.  Just my opinion.  NOAA should handle anything under the Karman line.  NASA above.  It is just my opinion.  Many government agencies overlap.

arXiv:2512.16896v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Synthetic 3D scenes are essential for developing Physical AI and generative models. Existing procedural generation methods often have low output throughput, creating a significant bottleneck in scaling up dataset creation. In this work, we introduce S…

arXiv:2401.16764v4 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Witnessing the evolution of text-to-image diffusion models, significant strides have been made in text-to-3D generation. Currently, two primary paradigms dominate the field of text-to-3D: the feed-forward generation solutions, capable of swiftly p…

Ashby donned an "I

CEO turnover at US public companies is running at its highest level since 2010

arXiv:2512.15372v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Vision transformers in vision-language models apply uniform computational effort across all images, expending 175.33 GFLOPs (ViT-L/14) whether analysing a straightforward product photograph or a complex street scene. We propose ICAR (Image Complexity-…

The seams were showing at times at the first TikTok Awards held Thursday night the Hollywood Palladium and live streaming on TikTok and Tubi.  The show got started almost an hour late because the LED screens on the Palladium’s stage malfunctioned. Presenters and winners soldiered on bravely with a t…

https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/sci/press/news/details/1125822?lang=ruhttps://www.nwpu.edu.cn/info/1198/115198.htmhttps://www.stdaily.com/web/gdxw/2025-12/13/content_446925.htmlQuoteKAZNU AND CHINESE UNIVERSITY'S JOINT NANO-SATELLITE LAUNCHED...

arXiv:2512.15414v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Detecting packed executables is a critical step in malware analysis, as packing obscures the original code and complicates static inspection. This study evaluates both classical feature-based methods and deep learning approaches that transform binary …

arXiv:2512.16899v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Reward models (RMs) are essential for training large language models (LLMs), but remain underexplored for omni models that handle interleaved image and text sequences. We introduce Multimodal RewardBench 2 (MMRB2), the first comprehensive benchmark fo…

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Keep your information safe from festive hacks or secret scammers this holiday season.

The yen weakened against the dollar after the Bank of Japan offered no clear guidance on the timing of future monetary tightening, analysts said. While the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to its highest level since 1995 as expected, investors will now turn to Governor Kazuo Ueda’s pr…

arXiv:2512.14746v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Camera-equipped mobile devices, such as phones, smart glasses, and AR headsets, pose a privacy challenge for bystanders, who currently lack effective real-time mechanisms to control the capture of their picture, video, including their face. We present…

Here's the answer for "Wordle" #1643 on December 19 as well as a few hints, tips, and clues to help you solve it yourself.

As mentioned in this post, this new executive order kills the National Space Council:https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63069.msg2744640#msg2744640

arXiv:2512.15038v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: End-to-end paradigms have demonstrated great potential for autonomous driving. Additionally, most existing methods are built upon Transformer architectures. However, transformers incur a quadratic attention cost, limiting their ability to model long s…

The U.S. military struck two alleged drug-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific on Thursday, killing five “narco-terrorists” and bringing the total number of people killed in the Pentagon's ongoing campaign to over 100.  Three people were killed on the first boat and two people were killed in the…

The U.S. military says it struck two more alleged drug-carrying boats on Thursday, bringing the total death toll from the Trump administration's monthslong campaign to upwards of 100.

arXiv:2512.15701v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Evaluations of image compression performance which include human preferences have generally found that naive distortion functions such as MSE are insufficiently aligned to human perception. In order to align compression models to human perception, pri…

It comes as new PM Sanae Takaichi is keen for inflation to fall but also needs low government borrowing costs.

NASA opens the International Space Station for scientists and researchers, inviting them to use the benefits of microgravity for private industry research, technology demonstrations, and more. Today, half of the crew’s time aboard station is devoted to these aims, including medical research that add…

The Bank of Japan raised its short-term policy rate by 25 basis points to 0.75%, the highest in nearly 30 years.

The suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University that killed two and injured nine others was found dead, officials announced on Thursday night. The big picture: The 48-year-old suspect, a Portuguese national and Brown student, "was found dead, with a satchel, with two firearms and evidence in th…

Trump Issues Executive Order to Ensure U.S. Space Superiority:https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/trump-issues-executive-order-to-ensure-u-s-space-superiority/

https://twitter.com/BloombergTV/status/2001789736252313757

Netflix has greenlit a second season of “Last Samurai Standing,” the Japanese period-action series that has become a global streaming hit since its debut. Set during Japan’s Meiji period in the late 19th century, “Last Samurai Standing” follows 292 samurai warriors who gather at Kyoto’s Tenryuji Tem…

TikTok creators donned their best and brightest at the Los Angeles awards show.

There are several ways to optimize your TV's operating system for faster performance. Here are my go-to changes.

arXiv:2508.10021v4 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Learning clients embeddings from sequences of their historic communications is central to financial applications. While large language models (LLMs) offer general world knowledge, their direct use on long event sequences is computationally expensi…

In recent years, members of the Canadian public have witnessed the misrepresentation of Indigenous identities.

In a new paper, a team of researchers explores how non-human species (in this case, fireflies) could inform new approaches in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

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"The skin of tanning bed users appeared decades older."

arXiv:2512.15577v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this paper, we focus on online zero-shot monocular 3D instance segmentation, a novel practical setting where existing approaches fail to perform because they rely on posed RGB-D sequences. To overcome this limitation, we leverage CUT3R, a recent Re…

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that launches a pilot program authorizing Medicare to cover cannabis products for seniors. Why it matters: Trump's embrace of marijuana could be a game-changer for older people who are seeking alternative treatments for common ailments.Driving th…

In a package of confirmations, the U.S. Senate approved Mike Selig to lead the CFTC and Travis Hill to run the FDIC, both with major potential reach into crypto.

A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey demonstrates that measuring nitrogen in stream reaches can identify areas where decreasing nitrogen inputs may improve the water quality of downstream receiving waters.