We prove the consistency of together with the existence of a -definable mad family, answering a question posed by Friedman and Zdomskyy in [7, Question 16]. For the proof we construct a mad family in L which is an ℵ1-union of perfect a.d. sets, such that this union remains mad in the iterated Hechler extension. The construction also leads us to isolate a new cardinal invariant, the Borel almost-disjointness number, defined as the least number of Borel a.d. sets whose union is a mad family. Our proof yields the consistency of (and hence, ).

An open U ⊆ ℝ is produced such that (ℝ, +, ·, U) defines a Borel isomorph of (ℝ, +, ·, ℕ) but does not define ℕ. It follows that (ℝ, +, ·, U) defines sets in every level of the projective hierarchy but does not define all projective sets. This result is elaborated in various ways that involve geometric measure theory and working over o-minimal expansions of (ℝ, +, ·). In particular, there is a Cantor set E ⊆ ℝ such that (ℝ, +, ·, ℕ) defines a Borel isomorph of (ℝ, +, ·, ℕ) and, for every exponentially bounded o-minimal expansion of (ℝ, +, ·), every subset of ℝ definable in (, E) either has interior or is Hausdorff null.