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Michigan Matters: Detroit Grand Prix returns and Science Center's celestial focus
'Representation matters': Majority of Florida's DNC members slam Debbie Wasserman Schultz's CD 20 run
Under Gov. DeSantis' new map, Florida's longest-serving Democratic Congresswoman is running in a Black plurality district.
Bellows rules trans athlete petition falls short
A judge sent the matter back to Bellows’ office to investigate claims that signature gathers left petitions unattended and in some cases, signed voters’ names without their knowledge.
Mental Health Matters: Three Stress Strategies For Women In Leadership
Burnout among women leaders is at a 5-year high. Three stress-management strategies to enhance clarity, confidence and steadiness under increasing pressure.
Now that we know Jaxson Dart’s politics, let’s just focus on his football
In this forum, the football is the only thing that matters.
Could a cosmic uncertainty principle help explain dark matter?
The universe may have its own version of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, according to a new theory.
Get up to speed fast on the California election with our guide for the undecided
Californians are voting on a wide-open governor's race in a June 2 primary election. Xavier Becerra, Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer are leading in polls.
Apple To Release iOS 26.5.1 iPhone Update In Coming Days, Report Says
Apple iOS 26.5.1 is on its way, it seems, and is likely to land in a matter of days, while iOS 26.6 may hit first beta soon.
'As big a shambles as it is possible to imagine'
Now the curtain has come down on the 2025-26 Premier League campaign, here is my end-of-season review - with a look back to what I predicted in August. The job proved too much for Thomas Frank, who found the expectations and dysfunction of Tottenham a sharp contrast to the stability of Brentford. Just when you thought it could not get worse, matters hit a new low with the bizarre appointment of Igor Tudor, an arrival that posed serious questions of CEO Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange.
Nvidia CEO discusses AI impact on education and future jobs
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the same skills that mattered before AI will still matter in the future.
Inhaled fine particulate matter travels beyond the lungs to the brain
A research team led by Drs. Byung-Yong Yu and Gwan-Ho Lee at the Advanced Analysis and Data Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST; President Sang-Rok Oh) announced that it has developed a new analytical platform that can precisely measure the accumulation of fine particulate matter in individual organs, overcoming the limitations of existing analytical technologies.
What is forest bathing? Why it may help your health
Forest bathing may help reduce stress naturally, according to a Mass General Brigham doctor. Here’s what it is and why it matters.
One type of sitting may pose greater dementia risk than another, study suggests
New research suggests the type of sitting matters for dementia risk, with mentally engaging activities linked to a significant reduction in risk.
Apple To Release iOS 26.5.1 iPhone Update In Coming Days, Report Says
Apple iOS 26.5.1 is on its way, it seems, and is likely to land in a matter of days, while iOS 26.6 may hit first beta soon.
🚨 BREAKING | Allegri at Milan, sacking close! 😱
The earthquake at Milan now seems close to shaking the Rossoneri bench as well. After last night’s heavy debacle against Cagliari, according to Matteo Moretto, Massimiliano Allegri’s future is ha...
Lawmakers stripped the Board of Equalization of power. Now they're fighting to join it
The Board of Equalization has very little power, but it's a launching pad to statewide political office in California.
Sponsored: Women’s Health at Every Age | Why Gynecologic Visits Matter
Women’s health is supported through education, prevention and early detection. From your first visit as a teen to ongoing care as an adult, having a trusted gynecologist can make a
Reform MP refuses to say whether Farage should produce evidence for Russian hack claim
Danny Kruger says matter is ‘private’, after party leader claimed hack was behind Guardian story about £5m gift
Semiconductor decoupling. Powell's politics. Industrializing Ogaden. Free trade and the Magna Carta.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Feliks Topolski, 1907-1989 8th Army’s Front, Italy 1944 Semiconductor decoupling Source: FT One thing that Jerome Powell deeply understood is that chairing the Fed under current conditions is a deeply political job. “Powell has successes and mistakes to his name. But he stands out as having thought more carefully about the Fed’s democratic legitimacy than any chair since Paul Volcker,” said Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor at the Bank of England, referring to the Fed chair who successfully fought the great inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. … While Powell was at the Treasury in the early 1990s, he watched Alan Greenspan build relationships within the government. That convinced Powell he needed to follow the former Fed chair’s lead and spend more time in Congress than his predecessors Yellen and Bernanke. “The accountability for the Fed runs through Congress,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed official who is now chief economist at New Century Advisors. “That’s not just about having people on speed dial — it’s answering questions, explaining policy and getting feedback.” Source: FT Ethiopia’s PM Abiy and Nigerian business tycoon, with Chinese engineering, are driving industrialization in Ogaden/Somali region of Ethiopia. - Michael Masri’s reporting for Africa Report if fascinating. Ethiopia has launched a cluster of large industrial schemes in the Somali region, laying foundation stones for a urea plant and an oil refinery in Gode while opening the first two phases of the Ogaden LNG project. Abiy Ahmed framed the push as part of a broader strategy to link energy, agriculture and industry. “These projects embody more than industrial growth,” he said. “They represent our shared responsibility to harness opportunities, strengthen co-operation and promote peace.” The Gode urea plant, backed by Dangote Group and Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH), is designed for 3m tonnes a year. Dangote owns 60%, while EIH holds 40%. Officials say Dangote’s equity totals about $2.5bn, while the state provides land and implementation oversight. Gas from the Calub fields will be piped 108km to the site. Construction is slated for 40 months, with operations targeted for 2028. Ethiopia imports most of its fertiliser, spending more than $1.2bn a year for 1.5m–2m tonnes. Usage was roughly 1.7m tonnes in 2023, almost half of it urea, and demand for 2024–25 is put above 2.4m tonnes. If delivered on time, the Gode plant could cover domestic needs and allow exports to neighbours. Brook Taye, chief executive of EIH, called the venture “a significant milestone in the journey toward industrial self-sufficiency”. Dangote told the groundbreaking crowd that the complex would be integrated with gas supply and a polypropylene unit to support local inputs. He pointed to Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), with a capacity of more than 5,000MW, and noted his group’s cement operations and expansion plans. The Gode refinery is being developed by Golden Concord Group of China. It is designed to process 3.5m tonnes a year of crude and condensate from the Hilala field, with associated storage. Backers say it will ease foreign-exchange pressure from fuel imports and anchor further industrial activity, including a proposed steel smelting site in Dire Dawa. GCL’s chair, Zhu Gongshan, cast the project as “a key step in Ethiopia’s path to energy sovereignty”, underscoring the Beijing–Addis ties. Financing details are still being finalised, but the refinery is central to the government’s energy-security narrative. Source: The Africa Report Dangote’s Ethiopian vision: Dangote began with cement. His crown jewel, Dangote Cement, dominates Nigeria’s market and has 10 operations in other nations in Africa. The formula has been consistent: identify sectors with chronic shortages – cement, fertiliser, sugar – commit massive local investments, and scale up to serve regional demand. Ethiopia was a natural extension of that model. In 2015, Dangote launched the Mugher Cement Plant outside Addis Ababa at a cost of $600m, with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tonnes. The investment gave him a firm foothold in one of Africa’s fastest-growing construction markets. But success came with risks. In May 2018, violent unrest led to the killing of Dangote’s country manager and temporary shutdowns at Mugher. While other investors might have retreated, Dangote doubled down. Today, he is preparing to spend $400m to expand Mugher’s capacity to 5 million tonnes, alongside a new grinding unit near Addis Ababa. Cement is just one market Dangote is targeting. Ethiopia’s enormous state-controlled sugar industry, long plagued by inefficiency and debt, has struggled for years to reform. Its Omo Kuraz Sugar Development Project, touted as one of the continent’s largest initiatives, continues to face delays and mismanagement. … The most ambitious venture of all is the planned fertiliser production complex in Gode, Somali region. Publicised on 28 August 2025, the Dangote Group and Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH) deal plans one of the world’s largest single-site urea manufacturing plants. The project costs an estimated $2.5bn and has an estimated capacity of 3 million metric tonnes annually, a rate that would not only render Ethiopia independent, but even a net exporter of fertiliser. EIH, the state wealth fund of Ethiopia, will hold 40%, while 60% is held by Dangote Group. … For Dangote, Ethiopia is a trifecta: Cement demand is projected to grow by 10% annually, its sugar consumption is growing with rapid urbanisation, and fertiliser demand is all but insatiable, given that farming supports the livelihood of 70% of Ethiopians. Source: The Africa Report The stakes for Abiy are high: For Addis Ababa, the $4bn fertiliser project in Ethiopia’s Somali region is no longer simply a manufacturing investment. It is increasingly being framed as a strategic state project tied to food sovereignty, import substitution and the government’s broader attempt to build economic resilience under mounting fiscal pressure. “Becoming self-sufficient in food is our main agenda,” Abiy says during the visit. “Land is needed; we have it. Water is needed; we have it. Human resources are needed; we have it.” The scale is enormous even by African industrial standards. Once operational, the plant is expected to produce three million metric tonnes of urea annually, potentially making it one of the continent’s largest fertiliser complexes. Ethiopian officials say the project now includes a 110km gas pipeline, a 120MW power plant, a polypropylene packaging facility and a two-million-tonne NPK blending plant. For a government grappling with chronic foreign exchange shortages, ballooning import bills and pressure on agricultural productivity, the numbers matter politically as much as they do economically. The decision to anchor the project in Gode is deliberate. Long viewed as peripheral to Ethiopia’s industrial economy, the Somali region is now being repositioned by the federal government as a future irrigation and agro-industrial corridor. Officials argue that the area’s vast land reserves and access to water could eventually support large-scale commercial farming capable of reshaping Ethiopia’s food economy. The government is simultaneously building housing infrastructure for about 5,000 residents near the plant, while officials project broader industrial expansion along the corridor. Abiy goes further, comparing the long-term revenue potential of the Gode development zone with Ethiopia’s flagship state enterprise. “The investments we are making in this Gode area, combined, will generate high revenue for Ethiopia, at par with Ethiopian Airlines,” he says. Source: The Africa Report Feliks Topolski 1907-1982 Topolski’s Chronicle, ‘Nazi Revival’, Vol. 8, Is. 1-2, 1960 HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. Photo by Jakub Dziubak on Unsplash If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Grim vision of drone warfare by Sylvie Kaufmann For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe The state of the art in Colbert-studies. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was Louis XIV chief minister from 1661 to 1683 and traditionally seen as an architect of absolutism and mercantilism. Alexander Hamilton later cited him as an inspiration in 1782. Now his legacy is disputed. Daniel Dessert, the chief critic, sees Colbert as the orchestrator not so much of an absolutist state as of an elite cabal. Would be great to have a good English-language review of this important debate. Source: lhistoire Didn’t know that the Magna Carta included free trade provisions Fighting for the right to the beach in Oregon in 1967: Source: Research Gate RAF Station – British and Polish Flags, c. 1940-45, The Ingram Collection Feliks Topolski, 1907-1989 ink and wash If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
Scientists may have found the source of the most powerful neutrino ever detected
A mysterious particle from deep space has scientists buzzing after the most energetic neutrino ever detected slammed through the Mediterranean Sea. Now, researchers think they may have identified the cosmic “culprits” behind it: blazars — supermassive black holes blasting jets of matter straight toward Earth.
Sponsored: Women’s Health at Every Age | Why Wellness Visits Matter
Women’s health is supported through education, prevention and early detection. From your first visit as a teen to ongoing care as an adult, having a trusted gynecologist can make a
We can now track animal panic from space. Here's why it matters
The new Icarus satellite is tracking signals hidden in animal behaviour – which could save the lives of cheetahs, rhinos and elephants.
Novak Djokovic Won't Participate In French Open Boycott
Some of the top players in men's and women's tennis are expected to boycott the media at this year's French Open. With the tournament set to begin Sunday, the legendary Novak Djokovic offered his stance on this matter. Charlie Eccleshare and Ava Wallace of The Athletic reported earlier ...
Here is who Epstein’s longtime assistant accused of sexual abuse
Lawmakers investigating the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are turning their attention to three men who Epstein’s longtime assistant accused of sexual abuse in closed-door testimony this week, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Senior Walmart executives depart amid reshuffling under new CEO, WSJ reports
At least two senior Walmart executives - COO of warehouse chain Sam's Club, Tom Wardn and head of store operations for the retailer's U.S. business - are leaving, marking a major reshuffle under CEO John Furner, WSJ reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The IX Sports Podcast | Why Caitlin Clark’s injury scratch matters and early reactions to the Toronto Tempo
On today's podcast the hosts discuss injury transparency related to Caitlin Clark's late scratch and the current state of the Toronto Tempo.
Tulsi Gabbard is resigning as Director of National Intelligence
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is resigning, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Michigan Matters: Detroit Grand Prix returns and Science Center's celestial focus
Op-Ed: State policies matter for taxpayers and the business climate
I start each workday by reviewing the latest economic and government reports for Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming. It doesn’t take long to see a trend. Those states that prioritize
Scientists warn that current vitamin B12 guidelines may be putting your brain at risk
Getting enough vitamin B12 to meet current health guidelines may not actually be enough to protect the aging brain. Researchers at UC San Francisco found that older adults with “normal” but lower levels of active B12 showed signs of slower thinking, delayed visual processing, and more damage to the brain’s white matter — the communication highways that help different brain regions work together.
China calls for APEC cooperation as commerce minister skips opening over ‘urgent official business’
China's international trade representative Li Chenggang said he was chairing Friday's meeting as Commerce Minister Wang Wentao had urgent matters to attend to.
‘You are nasty’: Former mental health counselor charged with child seduction at Jeffersonville middle school
A former mental health therapist contracted at a Clark County middle school has been charged with child seduction and dissemination of matter harmful to minors after police say she groomed a student during extended therapy sessions that lasted months.
The Science That Saves Lives
As vaccine hesitancy and misinformation grows, Kris Ehresmann ’84 is using her decades of experience as a public health leader to teach new generations of Oles why following the science matte…
Carida Capital Group announces Mattel Wonder Indoor Waterpark coming to North Carolina as part of new entertainment district
ROANOKE RAPIDS, N.C. — Carida Capital Group announced today that Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina will be home to one of the first Mattel Wonder Indoor Waterparks, becoming a key attraction within th…
National Democrats said they'd stay out of this California race. Then they picked a side
National Democrats said they wouldn’t endorse in California's 22nd Congressional District. Then they backed the moderate over the progressive.
Rachel Reeves tells foul-mouthed Reform UK heckler good manners matter
Chancellor wins support from Conservative Mel Stride, while Farage says he’d ‘like to buy man a pint’
Blacksburg business owner: AI policy must work for small businesses
Policy discussions have not fully caught up to how small businesses are using AI today. That disconnect matters.
‘The Testaments’: Mattea Conforti Explains That Major Death Ahead of Finale
Mattea Conforti breaks down Episode 9 ahead of 'The Handmaid's Tale' spinoff's season finale.
Exclusive: British theatre group ATG Entertainment readied for sale, sources say
British West End theatre operator ATG Entertainment is in the early stages of being prepared for a possible sale by its private equity owner, four people familiar with the matter said.
Xbox expands leadership team with major hires
Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions. The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business. His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector. Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co. Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope. His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results. For more breaking stories, sign-up to The Game Business today Subscribe In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox. The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. “These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.” Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.
Xbox expands leadership team with major hires
Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions. The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business. His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector. Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co. Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope. His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results. For more breaking stories, sign-up to The Game Business today Subscribe In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox. The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. “These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.” Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.
Even while courting moderates on voter ID, GOP leaders still push debunked fraud narrative
Republicans call their voter ID ballot measure ‘common sense’ to appeal to moderate voters, while alienating liberals with election conspiracy theories
T. rex’s tiny arms may have evolved for a surprisingly brutal reason
Why did T. rex have such tiny arms? Scientists now think it’s because its giant head became the ultimate hunting tool. Across multiple dinosaur groups, stronger skulls and crushing jaws evolved alongside shrinking forelimbs, especially in predators hunting enormous prey. In other words, once the bite became deadly enough, the arms may have stopped mattering.
Can you trust that post about Tom Steyer? How paid influencers are flooding into the governor's race
Billionaire Tom Steyer is paying influencers to boost his California governor campaign. State law requires they disclose it, but offers little accountability
'A wave of enthusiasm' for 'another fresh start'
Part of the recipe for football's incredible popularity is the way that a summer break of buying and selling players and changing things around behind the scenes can convince any fanbase that things are set to improve in the season to come, no matter how badly the previous one ended. Chelsea are a perfect example right now. A big injection of hope can make all those intractable issues feel manageable again, and that is what the news about Xabi Alonso being appointed as the club's new manager has done.
Google to Create AI Cloud Business With Blackstone, WSJ Says
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is set to create an artificial intelligence cloud business with Blackstone Inc., aiming to compete with companies like CoreWeave Inc. in a burgeoning market, according to people familiar with the matter.
A strange ripple in spacetime could be the first fingerprint of dark matter
Black holes crashing together may be revealing clues about dark matter hidden across the universe. Physicists created a new model predicting how dark matter could subtly distort gravitational waves produced during black hole mergers. When they tested the method on real LIGO data, one signal stood out as potentially carrying a dark matter imprint.
Arborist urges Shasta County residents to monitor tree health as fire season nears
We're hearing from experts about keeping Shasta County trees healthy and why this matters for fire season.
Nancy Pelosi puts thumb on the scale in race for her successor. Here's who she endorsed
Pelosi’s surprise endorsement comes just two weeks from Election Day, six months after the former speaker announced she would retire
Why Business Communication Still Matters in a Fast-Moving Digital World
As businesses adopt more tools and platforms, communication also helps ensure that new systems are used clearly and consistently rather than creating additional confusion.
Why the WakeMed - Atrium Health hospital merger matters
Hospital execs worked in secret on the deal for two years.
New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science
From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. The resulting system already significantly outperforms general-purpose AI tools like GPT-4 at predicting material properties, and the team hopes it can accelerate scientific discovery by serving as a robust research partner that provides grounded insights and generates step-by-step instructions for synthesizing novel materials. A paper describing this work was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. “Traditional simulations can provide the physical rigor required for materials science, yet their computational cost remains prohibitive for high-throughput screening. Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Soundbar Vs. Speakers: Which Is Better For Your TV's Audio?
Soundbars will improve dialogue clarity, while a speaker system will be more immersive, so deciding between the two is a matter of preference and budget.
Elliott Builds Stake in Life-Science Firm Bio-Rad, WSJ Says
Activist investor Elliott Investment Management has built a sizable stake in Bio-Rad Laboratories to boost the firm’s underperfoming stock price, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Decoding chirality at the nanoscale with momentum-space polarimetry
Light: Science & Applications - Schematic illustration of Fourier-domain Mueller matrix polarimetry probing light-matter interactions in gammadion nanostructures, and enabling extraction of...
Concert to feature Vivaldi, Biber, Handel, Matteis
The Baroque Orchestra of Maine will perform at the Bar Harbor Congregational Church on Sunday, May 24, at 4 p.m.
Free Mind Matters Brain Health Summit in Lexington (Adults 55+)
The University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging will host its 18th annual Mind Matters Health Summit to connect brain health experts with the community.
God, The Science, The Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution
In effect, therefore, this book is a call for a return to the medieval vision of a rational God who created rational creatures equipped to discover the verities of nature. In other words…
The 20 best game shows you can stream right now
You’re a winner no matter which one you decide to watch.
Dark Matter May Have Been Detected by Accident, Scientists Reveal
A signal hiding in the data.
EY Pays Over £100 Million to Settle NMC Health Legal Claim
EY UK has paid more than £100 million ($133 million) to the administrators of NMC Health Plc to settle claims it was negligent in its audits of the failed firm, according to people familiar with the matter.
California colleges are seeing a rise of conservative voices. Some classes are tense
Turning Point USA chapters are growing on California campuses after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, as tensions rise both in and out of the classroom.
Michigan Matters: Power Panel Dissects Huge Political Year
Ted Wu’s Eye for Design and Business Acumen Have Found a Home at Mattel
We sat down with Mattel’s Ted Wu, known for his leadership of the Hot Wheels and Matchbox brands, to discuss design, leadership, and inclusivity.
Your Baby’s Gut Health: What Matters Most in the First Weeks of Life
A baby’s gut microbiome starts developing from the moment they’re born, and those early days can have a lasting impact on immune health and development.
California governor debate: Rivals gang up on Democratic frontrunner Becerra
Xavier Becerra was attacked from all sides in California's final governor debate. His response? 'This is what happens when you take the lead.'
California legislators kill new spending programs and blame Trump for funding cuts
The biannual ‘suspense file’ hearing is the Legislature’s most efficient tool for killing costly or controversial proposals without fanfare
Trump officials hit California with ‘largest ever’ freeze on Medicaid funds
The Trump administration suspended $1.1 billion in California Medicaid funds over fraud claims, threatening home care for 900,000 seniors and people with disabilities.
Apollo’s West Technology Is in Talks to Sell Remaining Business
Apollo Global Management Inc.-backed West Technology is engaged in exclusive talks to sell its remaining operating business to a counter-party, according to people familiar with the matter.
Taming UK yields depends on economics not politics
Long-term government borrowing costs above 5% are higher than other developed economies and more sensitive to shocks. It’s tempting to blame political upheaval, but structural factors matter more. The solution is to shrink macroeconomic imbalances and revive capital markets.
Scientists Create “Living” Materials That Crawl, Walk, and Dig on Their Own
Physicists studying active matter — materials that can use their own internal energy to respond to forces — have uncovered surprising behaviors that challenge conventional ideas in mechanics.
Exclusive: Acting AG Todd Blanche was told last year to recuse from Justice Department matters involving Trump
It was less than two weeks after Todd Blanche took on his role of deputy attorney general in March 2025 when the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer delivered some straightforward yet inconvenient news: His recusal from legal cases that involved President Donald Trump in his personal capacity was necessary.
Browns’ schedule advantages: Impact or just talk?
Cleveland Browns schedule offers many benefits for the 2026 NFL season. Do they matter?
California governor frontrunner Xavier Becerra's playbook: Never say you're sorry
While other California governor candidates apologize for past mistakes, Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra has a different strategy: dodge and dismiss.
Sleep and diet may matter more than exercise for buffering the health toll of chronic stress
A 10-year study of nearly 3,000 Canadian workers finds that sleep quality and diet do more to protect health under chronic work stress than exercise.
Time matters: circadian genetics and the molecular logic of human health and disease
Nature Reviews Genetics - The circadian clock controls transcriptional and signalling networks across tissues to maintain homeostasis, with pathological consequences to its disruption. Kuo et al....
Apple Explores Ways to Welcome AI Agents in the App Store
Apple is exploring ways to better incorporate AI agents into its App Store so it can benefit from the tech industry’s hottest trend while ensuring that the software in its store continues to play by its rules, according to people briefed on the matter. So far, the widespread embrace of agentic ...
What Lil Nas X has to do with a debate over CA mental health law
Supporters of a California mental health law are pointing to singer Lil Nas X as an example of someone who benefited from treatment rather than incarceration.
Californian criminal suspects can trade prison for psychiatric care. Is it working?
Californians accused of crimes can receive mental health treatment rather than prison time. Lawmakers are revamping the rules following reports of violent offenses.
Why America’s Family Businesses Are The Quiet Engine Driving The Economy
Byron D. Trott, chairman and co-CEO of BDT & MSD Partners and advisor to many billionaire-owned companies, discusses why Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s top family companies matters now more than ever.
Young People & Politics
What issues matter to younger voters, and how is their generation shaping America's political parties?
Duterte vs. Marcos: Inside the Impeachment Shaking Philippine Politics
Political dynasties have long shaped the Philippines, where alliances can matter as much as policy. So when the country’s two most powerful families joined political forces in 2022 — with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as president and Sara Duterte as vice president — a new era of stable politics looked promising.
The First Atomic Bomb Made a Crystal Scientists Had Never Seen Before
Trinitite still holds strange matter forged in seconds by the Trinity blast.
Trump says he’s not thinking about Americans’ finances ‘even a little bit’ in Iran talks
Trump said the “only thing” that matters is Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
80 years after the Trinity nuclear test, scientists identify new molecule-trapping crystal formed in the blast
Matter behaves strangely under extreme conditions, and often, remnants of these behaviors are left behind even when conditions return to normal. The Trinity nuclear test in 1945 left behind such remnants, ...
Panicked California Democrats are pushing a risky strategy: Wait 'til the last minute to vote
Liberal California activists are urging Democrats to wait until the last minute to vote in the race for governor, then support the frontrunner in the polls.
The Apprentice: Boafo fills coffers with support from Hoyer’s political network
It’s no secret that Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-5th), the dean of Maryland’s federal delegation, is working hard to elect Del. Adrian Boafo (D-Prince George’s) to succeed him. But the full extent of Hoyer’s investment in Boafo’s campaign is only now coming into focus.
"My fear doesn't matter" - Troy Baker reflects on recreating the opening to Raiders of the Lost Ark as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle arrives on Switch 2
Troy Baker looks back on recreating the opening to 1981's Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Great Circle's tutorial.
Main Street Matters: credit card swipe fees eating profits
Small business concerns highlighted at Main Street Matters tour at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School.
Trump pushed DOJ to subpoena reporters over alleged Iran war leaks, sources say
President Donald Trump personally pushed the Justice Department to issue subpoenas to reporters covering the war in Iran in an effort to flush out their sources, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Election results 2026: Why welfare policies aren't winning polls in India like it used to
India's welfare politics still matters, but voters increasingly want jobs, growth and dignity too.
It’s Only a Matter of Time Until the Supreme Court Cracks on the 14th Amendment
The president has upped the pressure on conservative Justices. Something tells me they won’t be able to handle it.
Govee’s new portable smart lamp is on sale for the first time
The colorful lamp also supports Matter.
Elon Musk Set to Join U.S. Business Delegation for Trump's China Visit
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be part of a U.S. business delegation for President Trump's upcoming visit to China, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk, who also runs SpaceX, is expected to be among at least a half dozen CEOs and business leaders traveling to China to represent American bu
California corrections budget benefits more than inmates from prison sports expansion
California lawmakers want to expand organized sports at prisons. An incarcerated journalist says the only winner would be the prison budget.
With more money than ever, California’s biggest pension funds are a political battleground
Should California pension funds invest in fossil fuels? How about Tesla and Palantir? Those debates are playing out at CalPERS and CalSTRS.
John Cornyn’s Inexplicably Deep-Lore Campaign Against Ken Paxton
Are there enough persuadable Texas-politics junkies for the U.S. senator’s obscure posts to matter?