SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " factory " 236 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
US manufacturing output unchanged in June, but accelerates in second quarter
U.S. factory production was unchanged in June, but grew at a robust pace in the second quarter, driven by an artificial intelligence build-up and businesses accumulating inventory in anticipation of shortages and higher prices due to the war in the Middle East.
Independent Testing Shows Which Business Security Products Actually Hold Up When It Matters
When Iranian-linked hackers breached medical device maker Stryker in March 2026, they did not need a sophisticated zero-day exploit to cause chaos. Once inside, they triggered simultaneous factory resets on more than 200,000 corporate devices across 79 countries, grinding order processing, production and shipping to a halt for days. Two months later, Foxconn confirmed that the Nitrogen ransomware group had stolen an alleged 8 terabytes of data from its North American factories, including project
Independent Testing Shows Which Business Security Products Actually Hold Up When It Matters
When Iranian-linked hackers breached medical device maker Stryker in March 2026, they did not need a sophisticated zero-day exploit to cause chaos. Once inside, they triggered simultaneous factory resets on more than 200,000 corporate devices across 79 countries, grinding order processing, production and shipping to a halt for days. Two months later, Foxconn confirmed that the Nitrogen ransomware group had stolen an alleged 8 terabytes of data from its North American factories, including project
Copa Fest Detroit: Free Soccer Festival Brings Together Sports, Culture, and Entertainment on World Cup Final Day
Detroit Street Soccer will throw a free festival on Sunday, July 19, at the Lincoln Factory. It lines up with the World Cup championship match. Copa Fest Detroit starts at…
Modern slavery is a business decision—not an accident
Modern slavery persists because the way global supply chains are designed allows it to remain hidden, according to new research led by Professor Glenn Parry from the University of Surrey and Dr. Mike ...
Google Pixel Watch Fitbit Sensor Permission Bug Leaves Health Tracking Broken for Some Users
The Google Pixel Fitbit sensor permission bug locks users out of Google Health apps by demanding sensor access already granted. Even factory resets do not fix it.
Best in class creasefree display: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra hands-on video leaked
A Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, apparently straight out of the factory, is being examined from multiple angles including, for the first time, while actually turned on. A leaked hands-on video suggests an almost completely crease-free display in Samsungs upcoming foldable, according to another leaker, this can also be expected from its more compact iPhone Ultra competitor.
Pajama Factory makes list of fastest-growing mission-driven U.S. businesses
The Pajama Factory has been chosen as one of the The Super Crowd’s first PurposeBuilt100 businesses, a listing of high-impact mission-driven businesses that are showing continuous growth.
Inside Rolls-Royce's factory, where custom 6-figure cars are made
At Rolls-Royce's factory in Goodwood, England, customers have tens of thousands of customizations to choose from. For some, it's not enough.
Volkswagen’s Vast Jobs Factory Is Under Threat Like Never Before
The world’s second-largest automaker plans to halve its lineup of cars as part of its second major overhaul in two years.
"Knockoff" browser add-on filters junk brands from Amazon results
Knockoff is "Amazon, without the knockoffs": a browser extension for Chrome that filters out the gibberish factory brands that are typically favoried over quality products in the online retailer's search…
Air pollution may be changing sperm
Harmful nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels could affect fertility and pregnancies.
How Denmark’s ‘Pig Election’ Rewrote Factory Farm Politics
Could animal welfare and clean water motivate American voters?
Sony Already Invested $34 Million To Repurpose Its EU PlayStation Disc Factory
Sony is converting its PlayStation disc factory into a plant for optical microlenses.
Sony has already started repurposing its lone PlayStation disc factory, and the body of physical gaming isn't even cold
The Sony disc-making operation is already planning to retrain its 300 employees to make microlenses.
Sony’s PlayStation disc factory is already being repurposed
All 300 employees will be retrained, Sony says.
Ford sales struggle with no Escape, F-Series woes, less rental business
Ford struggled compared to crosstown competitors General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV.
Joseph LaPalombara, comparative political scientist and leading American scholar of Italy
LaPalombara, who emerged from life as a teenage factory worker on Chicago’s West Side to become a distinguished scholar of politics, died on June 12.
America 250: L.A. Threads its Fabric
A decade ago, fashion newcomer Ari Jogiel turned a hat-making passion project into a one-stop-shop garment factory. At his namesake full-package company,
I Went From Bedside Nurse to Business Owner By Turning a Hobby Into a Home Micro-Factory That Makes Over $100K a Year
Eric Street followed his crafting passion into business.
Factory Entertainment Announces Three More STAR TREK Collectibles, Including Gold-Pressed Latinum Bars
Factory Entertainment today unveiled three more STAR TREK replicas, including bars of gold-pressed latinum and Eline’s necklace from “The Inner Light”
Factory Entertainment Unveils Four 2026 STAR TREK Convention Exclusives, Preorders Open Now
Factory Entertainment’s 2026 convention-exclusive STAR TREK goodies are here, with four new items available for preorder today
A staunch voice in support of science
Jeff Coller, a pioneering RNA biologist, has spent the past year vehemently advocating for the lifesaving promise of research in the face of federal cuts
Trump touts falling oil prices, economy at Pennsylvania rally
The president spoke at a Mack Trucks factory in Macungie on Tuesday
Trump touts falling oil prices, economy at Pennsylvania rally
The president spoke at a Mack Trucks factory in Macungie on Tuesday
Trump touts falling oil prices, economy at Pennsylvania rally
The president spoke at a Mack Trucks factory in Macungie on Tuesday
We must support 'strange' science, RNA biologist Jeff Coller writes in The New York Times
Without federal funding, American researchers can't chase scientific questions that may lead to lifesaving cures, Hopkins RNA biologist Jeff Coller writes in 'The New York Times'
Health inspections in first half of 2026 lead to restaurant closures, warnings in Champaign Co.
CHAMPAIGN COUNTY, Ill. (WCIA) — In the first half of the year, more than two dozen businesses in Champaign County have received less than satisfactory health inspections. These businesses hav…
AORUS RTX 5090 owner checks GPU after higher fan speeds, finds thermal gel mess
A GeForce RTX 5090 AORUS owner has opened the card after more than a year of use (and end of warranty) and found a large amount of factory-applied thermal…
Ori director says Game Pass ‘could’ve worked’ if Xbox didn’t ‘slop out mediocre content like a factory’
The Moon Studios CEO argues Microsoft has not delivered enough hit games…
Ukraine's war robots are surging into the kill zone
Business Insider went inside a Ukrainian factory building ground robots for deadly missions soldiers can no longer risk.
Scientists expected a black hole but found a neutrino factory powered by stars
A distant galaxy nicknamed Shadow Blaster may have revealed a surprising source of cosmic neutrinos: extreme star formation instead of a supermassive black hole. The discovery suggests that hidden, dust-filled starburst galaxies could account for a significant fraction of the Universe’s high-energy neutrinos.
Tata's iPhone parts factory faces India health probe after farmer contamination complaints
An Indian state health authority is investigating how liquid discharged from Apple supplier Tata's iPhone components factory has affected farmers, some of whom complained about skin issues from contamination in their farmlands, according to three officials and a document reviewed by Reuters.
Forty Fort business hits the mark: The Hatchet Factory earns $10,000 award
Denise Ogurkis’ ax-throwing gathering spot earns recognition from Citizens as one of the bank’s 20 recipients, from nine states, of its 2026 Small Business Community Champion Award.
Forty Fort business hits the mark: The Hatchet Factory earns $10,000 award
Denise Ogurkis’ ax-throwing gathering spot earns recognition from Citizens as one of the bank’s 20 recipients, from nine states, of its 2026 Small Business Community Champion Award.
Things to do in Lancaster: explore and experiment at the Lancaster Science Factory
The Lancaster Science Factory, a nonprofit science center, continues to spark curiosity and creativity among children and families with its dynamic, hands-on approach to learning. Featuring more than 80 interactive
Dems press DOD, DOJ on criminals ending up with Army munitions
The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, located near Kansas City, Missouri, is a government-owned but privately operated factory
Johns Hopkins announces major new investment in cutting-edge life sciences research
The Life Sciences Research Initiative will direct $80 million annually over the next two years to fuel breakthroughs and discoveries to improve human health
BOXABL and FG Merger II Corp. Stockholders Approve Business Combination
/PRNewswire/ -- BOXABL Inc. ("BOXABL") and FG Merger II Corp. (Nasdaq: FGMC) ("FGMC"), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, today announced...
New Jersey health inspectors find Delaney Hall food premises ‘satisfactory’
The Democratic governor was also granted limited entry to the immigrant detention center, but remained concerned about conditions.
Inside Intel's AI chip factory where humans are the greatest threat
I visited Intel's massive chip factory in Oregon, where robots outnumber people and a single human hair or skin particle can cause costly damage.
Norm Lewis to headline Studio Tenn’s ‘One Night Only’ gala
Middle Tennessee’s premier nonprofit professional theatrer company, Studio Tenn, welcomes the return of its annual fundraising gala, “One Night Only: Summer Starlight Serenade” to Liberty Hall at The Factory at
Quentin Tarantino rips modern movies from Hollywood's 'flavorless sausage factory,' would 'rather read a book'
Quentin Tarantino slammed contemporary movies, as he called Hollywood a 'flavorless sausage factory' — but named a few recent films he actually liked.
Habits form far faster than science previously thought, research shows
Hopkins team studies whether a region of the brain plays a key role in developing habitual behavior, a discovery that could point to ways to alter entrenched habits
A welcome break from today’s repulsive, glue-factory politics
Lamar Alexander’s new memoir of life in the Senate reveals a craftsman of politics and conservatism.
Holes in the wall and floor mark Ocean County restaurant inspections
Nine restaurants were dinged with health code violations in April and May 2026. See which food establishments received a conditionally satisfactory rating.
Iker Lecuona returns to MotoGP to replace Alex Marquez
The factory Ducati rider in WorldSBK will replace the injured Alex Márquez at Balaton Park this weekend, where Cal Crutchlow will also replace Johann Zarco
Foldable iPhone Ultra design model leaks in hands-on video from Chinese factory
Here is an early look at the design of the upcoming foldable iPhone Ultra through a newly leaked video of a dummy model. The video shows a thin dummy unit, which aligns with rumors of a 4.5mm iPhone Ultra.
Why a Chinese-owned company is bringing factory jobs back to the U.S.
GE Appliances is a poster child for the president’s promised manufacturing revival. But tariffs are making it harder to onshore jobs.
China’s Factory Activity Slows in May, Raising Questions Over Its Economy
BEIJING (AP) — China’s factory activity was flat in May, according to an official survey released Sunday, raising questions about how much further the country’s economy can shield itself from the fallout of the ongoing Iran war and pressure on demand. The official manufacturing purchasing managers ...
The Business of Beauty and Front Row Convene Beauty Leaders in New York
Executives from Kenvue, Olfactory NYC, Soshe Beauty, Weleda, Jane Iredale, YSE Beauty, Odele and more gathered at Sadelle’s in New York City to discuss what it means to build a commerce strategy that connects the dots between discovery, conversion and growth.
Scientists discover a giant “planet factory” beyond Jupiter
Scientists believe a dust-filled ring just outside Jupiter acted like a cosmic “planetesimal factory,” producing multiple generations of early space rocks with very different compositions. The discovery may finally explain the origins of several mysterious meteorite types that have survived since the birth of the Solar System.
Why Trump’s possible Iran deal may be almost as divisive as his decision to wage war
The best hope for ending a poorly planned war started with scant consultation with Congress or the American people may be an unsatisfactory peace that leaves critical issues to be resolved later and deepens Washington strife.
Bond breakout? Big effects of bad data. Immigration and thermostatic politics & dad-chat is coming for dad-books.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Anna Airy, A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918 Bond breakout - John Authers Across the developed markets, bond markets are staging a slow-motion car wreck. Looking at the drastic moves in the US, Japan, the UK and France, Barclays’ Ajay Rajadhyaksha commented: “Last week, long bonds broke. Not in one country. In all of them. Simultaneously. Four countries. Four different political systems. Four different central banks. But the same trade — “get me out of duration!”” Each country has its own contributing political problems, but the uniformity of the shift out of long-term bonds with high duration makes clear that something broader is afoot. For Rajadhyaksha, it is “simple and uncomfortable.” The developed world “has too much debt, too little fiscal discipline, and no political appetite for fixing either.” If there’s a trigger, it has been the Iran war and the resulting shock to oil supply. Source: Bloomberg G7 countries are now borrowing at rates that were enjoyed by EM in the early 2020s For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Trade between China and Russia has grown in recent years For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Big effects of bad data A decade ago nearly nine in ten Americans, when approached, agreed to fill out the Current Population Survey, which is administered to about 60,000 households each month and asks about, among other things, employment. Fewer than seven in ten do so now (see chart 1). For the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which tries to capture 3,700 households monthly, the response rate is down from 68% to 40%. … When the information becomes less reliable, investment decisions get more difficult to make. Some may be delayed, creating a potential drag on the economy. A new working paper by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Erica Groshen, former head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) now at Cornell University, and Duncan Hobbs and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, hazards an estimate. Preserving trust in “the integrity and quality of official statistics”, the authors claim, generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the BLS, the agency with an annual budget of $700m that is responsible for many of these data. To arrive at their conclusion the quartet analysed an ignoble episode in the BLS’s recent history. On August 1st 2025 Donald Trump sacked Erika McEntarfer, appointed as the agency’s commissioner by his predecessor, Joe Biden. The president alleged, without evidence, that the BLS’s steep downward revision to recent jobs numbers had been “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. In fact, it was the wanton dismissal that looked bad in the eyes of many observers. In the following seven days there was a 50% leap, relative to the week before, in the average value of the index of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), which tracks the number of articles mentioning such uncertainty that are published daily in American newspapers. This was a discernible jump even when compared to the chaos caused by Mr Trump’s trade war in April 2025 and his real one in Iran in the past two months (see chart 2). Based on Mr Bloom’s earlier study with other colleagues of the EPU’s impact on business investment, industrial production and employment, the authors estimate that the jump reduced American GDP by over $100bn (0.3%) and non-farm payrolls by 168,000 (0.1%). Source: The Economist Immigration and thermostatic politics (Sarah O’Connor in the FT) A strange thing happened a year and a half ago. No sooner had Americans elected Donald Trump as president on an explicitly anti-immigration platform than US public opinion began to swing much more favourably towards immigration. … to political scientists who study “thermostatic” politics, this development is no surprise at all. Public opinion often moves against the prevailing party, especially if they are perceived to have gone “too far” in one direction. The phenomenon was first explored in the 1990s with reference to fiscal policy, but in recent years it has been particularly evident in the realm of immigration policy. While these swings in opinion polls can make it seem as if people don’t know their own minds, they can be a useful democratic check on governments by sending bright flashing warning lights when policies stray too far from the public’s comfort zone. The problem comes when politicians misinterpret those signals. When people tell pollsters they want less immigration, or think it is bad for the country overall (or the converse), they are often expressing an opinion about how things appear to be going in that moment relative to their preferences, rather than a deep shift in their underlying views. According to Alexander Kustov, a political scientist, most Americans’ views are quite stable and moderate: they support immigration that is controlled and in the national interest, and oppose flows that are disorderly or under-enforced. In the US, he argues the Trump administration over-interpreted dissatisfaction with high immigration under Joe Biden, and implemented policies that went too far for many voters. “People don’t necessarily change their idea about their ideal immigration policy, but they can react to what the government is currently doing,” he told me. “A lot of people are not happy with what the Trump administration are doing — right now we’re not talking about border enforcement, we’re talking about people not just getting harassed, but killed.” But similarly, he added, pro-immigration advocates would be making a mistake to interpret the recent, more favourable swing towards immigration as a deep-seated ideological shift in attitudes. The recent history of UK immigration policy offers another cautionary tale. After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell. This was partly because net migration statistics declined, but also because people felt a sense of catharsis and control, says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think-tank. By 2019, the public ranked immigration as only the ninth biggest issue of concern, according to Ipsos polling. But when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022, that helped net migration to surge. And so, too, did public concern. Today’s Labour government has implemented another sharply restrictive turn in immigration policy. As Kustov and researcher Caitlyn Yates argue, thermostatic public opinion should be a useful check on politicians. Instead it seems to have helped to magnify the pendulum swing in the UK. The government over-interprets and overreacts to a change in public opinion, which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way. Source: Financial Times 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. 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 Anna Airy, Shop for Machining 15-Inch Shells: Singer Manufacturing Company, Clydebank, Glasgow, 1918 Racing for a vaccine … we have been here before! The deadly Ebola outbreak in two African countries driven by a virus species with no vaccine has triggered an urgent search for a potential jab, in a test of troubled global efforts to avert threats posed by emerging diseases. A World Health Organization advisory group is due to would meet on Tuesday to recommend candidate jabs to prioritise for clinical trials, the global health body said. It will assess data including an analysis by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which was set up after failures in the international response to a previous Ebola crisis. The latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has infected hundreds of people and killed more than 80, health authorities say. Cepi’s reaction will be a crucial indicator of its progress towards its wider goal of producing vaccines for pandemic threats in just 100 days, despite steep cuts to international health funding. “If there was ever a time that we could show the world why Cepi is needed and show the world why the 100-day mission is needed, it’s now,” Nicole Lurie, the organisation’s executive director for preparedness and response, told the FT. “We’re happy to accept that responsibility, but obviously we need help from partners — particularly financial help in the long run.” DR Congo and Uganda would make the final decision on whether to press ahead with any vaccine candidates endorsed for clinical trials by the WHO experts, the global health body said. “Other ethical and community acceptability issues will be considered,” said the WHO, which declared the latest outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. “This will be important to make sure that the trial, if it happens, will be adequately communicated to the population.” Lurie said Cepi had provided information from a survey of research teams and companies working on drugs that might be effective against the Bundibugyo virus behind the outbreak. The organisation hoped soon to announce partners in the quest for a jab, she added, although she declined to give a timescale for when one might be developed. Cepi’s Nicole Laurie said global health bodies were ‘getting some live-fire drills’ with hantavirus and the latest Ebola outbreak. The hunt for a vaccine should be helped by scientific advances including the use of artificial intelligence to find drugs active against viruses, Lurie said. Existing jabs against the Zaire Ebola virus responsible for many previous outbreaks might provide a basis for tackling the Bundibugyo species, she added. “We’ll see how far and how fast we can get,” Lurie said, adding that Cepi had done preliminary work recently on a possible jab for the rat-borne hantavirus responsible for a recent fatal outbreak on a cruise ship. “Both with hantavirus and now with Ebola, [we] are getting some live-fire drills.” Source: Michael Peel in the Financial Times Dad-chat is coming for dad-books. (By Pamela Paul and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the WSJ) They were the go-to gifts for Father’s Day: a book about some little-known chapter of World War II, the sweeping narrative of a shipwreck, perhaps the latest presidential biography. These days, dad books are a dying breed. Nonfiction book sales have been in decline for the past four years, and are now the most challenged segment of the print book market. Publishers say certain types of books still fare well—including celebrity memoirs and religious titles. But in recent years, print sales in such categories as biography, current affairs and business and economics—what publishers refer to as “serious nonfiction” and which tend to resonate especially with men—have fallen considerably. Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. Publishing has long been subject to cyclical changes, with trends in format and genre taking over bookshelves in grand sweeps. (Remember the adult coloring-book craze? Or the stratospheric rise of romantasy?) But many in publishing believe the decline in serious nonfiction is more existential. “The trend couldn’t be clearer,” said Jonathan Karp, the former chief executive of Simon & Schuster and publisher of the new Simon Six imprint. “This is a sea change and people should wake up and realize we’re living in a new world.” One culprit for the shift: a new media diet for fans of more serious nonfiction. … Sixty-two percent of men and 54% of women consumed a podcast in the prior month, according to a recent survey by Edison Research at SSRS, up from 46% and 39%, respectively, in 2023. “When we have internal meetings to talk about this problem, it always comes around to podcasts,” said Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of the Harper Group at HarperCollins Publishers. “The man who wants to read American history is now tuning into one of the many good podcasts about history that lends the quiet attention to a serious subject he’s looking for. It makes the idea of sitting down with a 700-page Ron Chernow book less appealing. You’ve scratched that itch.” Source: Wall Street Journal Remarkable report by Novara from the nationalist rally in London in mid May. Anna Airy, Leopard Moth and Plums, 1915 If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
Loss of retail business raises concerns for Euclid City Council members
The recent closure of Burlington’s Coat Factory in Euclid is leaving some City Council members with questions regarding the state of retail businesses in the city. The store, which was located at 22400 Shore Center Drive, closed earlier …
Stellantis unveils $70B turnaround strategy with 60 new models
Stellantis announces a $70 billion turnaround strategy focusing on core brands, external partnerships and more efficient factory capacity use.
President Daniels in WSJ op-ed: Get the federal science money flowing
JHU president, University of Kansas chancellor urge federal agencies to release congressionally appropriated funds to fuel America's research engine
Jeremy Nathans honored at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Four Doctors Awards
Nathans received the inaugural Welch Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research recognizing exceptional leadership and significant contributions to science
Chemist Rebekka Klausen wins prestigious Brown Investigator Award
Klausen will use the award money to pursue basic science that pushes the frontiers of three-dimensional silicon structures
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.
E. coli could be used to make sunscreen
The bacteria can act as a chemical factory
Lexington business owner donating Railbird parking proceeds to charity
Nick Cooper owns The Toy Factory car shop on Curry Avenue. He also founded Project Kids 1st, a nonprofit organization.
Rocket Science Health validates targeted olfactory-cleft deposition in non-human primates ahead of the 4th Nasal Formulation & Delivery Summit
As the pace of modern drug discovery accelerates, the industry is increasingly recognizing that a breakthrough molecule is only as effective as its ability to reach the target site.
Two Johns Hopkins researchers elected to National Academy of Sciences
Ulrich Mueller, Erika Pearce recognized for their groundbreaking work on hearing loss and immune metabolism, respectively
Horrific video shows factory worker being pulled to his death into giant industrial shredder
Experienced Sports Director Dirk Baldinger strengthens Lidl-Trek’s Women's Team
The home of Trek Factory Racing, and all the Trek programs. Whether its road, XC, enduro, downhill, freeride, cyclocross or triathlon, you’ll find a Trek athlete, racing for the win.
Debate to explore whether the U.S. scientific enterprise is too risk-averse
Panelists will consider how longstanding funding structures and institutional incentives shape the kind of research that gets pursued—and the possibilities left behind
My Biz: Marion auto repair business finds a European niche
The staff at EuroCare auto repair shop in Marion, Iowa, includes 6 factory-certified technicians who stay current with the needs of imported cars that tend to be more expensive but have expired warranties.
These Are The 10 Quickest Factory-Stock Porsches Ever Tested
The 918 Spyder and 991.1 Turbo S are iconic cars, but they have some serious company now. Here are the 10 quickest Porsches to ever hit the road.
Factory Entertainment Unveils ‘Masters of the Universe’ Products
Latest slate of MOTU products revealed ahead of film launch.
Alum and film producer Luke Kelly-Clyne talks 'Deepfaking Sam Altman'
As part of the Stories That Matter series, Kelly-Clyne returns to JHU on Thursday, April 30, to screen his new comedy documentary and to share career advice with students
Milkshakes, skin care, local crafts among items at new NJ businesses
Weyward Market is in Pompton Lakes. The Fountain Spa is in Hackensack. Sukoshi is at the Garden State Plaza. Milkshake factory is in Florham Park
2026 Ford Mustang Dark Horse SC Offers GTD-Like Power for a Third of the Price
The new supercharged Mustang will make nearly 800 horsepower from the factory—just don't call it a Shelby.
Acura evaluating future of GTP program
After nine combined seasons of factory racing in IMSA’s DPi and GTP classes, Acura is exploring whether the current season will be its last in the headlining category.
Can defense contracts save VW's Osnabrück factory?
Volkswagen's Osnabrück plant is still building cars, but the order book is drying up quickly. As work fades, could a move into defense manufacturing save 2,500 local jobs? So far, the company is staying tight-lipped.
DGPT Returns to CBS Sports with Big Easy Open Special Airing April 11 - Disc Golf Pro Tour
Tune in at 5:30 PM ET to relive all of the excitement from the MVP Big Easy Open presented by Flight Factory
Oil prices tick up amid doubt on Iran war ceasefire; Chinese factory gate costs increase for first time in four years
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Trump small business admin Kelly Loeffler talks tariffs, taxes, gas prices
Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler was back in Georgia to tour a factory Thursday afternoon.
ACES at Factory 52 acquired by Tri-State’s booming pickleball business
Greater Cincinnati’s fast-growing pickleball business has acquired another location.
Cincinnati business grows with new restaurant at Factory 52’s Gatherall
Some of those menu items include sliders, build-your-own bowls, smoothies and tacos.
Knitting Factory Entertainment and The Finn Group Partner To Operate Baltimore’s Pier Six Pavilion
Knitting Factory Entertainment (KFE) and local promoter/event marketer The Finn Group announced a new partnership managing operations and talent buying
LACLxS Work in Progress Seminar | The River Will Cry Out: Jesuit Politics and Mapuche Diplomacy, or The Spiritual Conquest Across the Biobío River (1612-26)
Ignacio Veraguas, a student in the Spanish & Portuguese Program in the Johns Hopkins Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, will give a talk titled "The River Will Cry Out: Jesuit Politics and Mapuche Diplomacy, or The Spiritual Conquest Across the Biobío River (1612-26)" for the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies.
How one factory supplies NYC's corner store delis
New York City bodegas are fighting to stay alive under rising rents, cutthroat competition, and Zohran Mamdani's city-run grocery initiative.
Ten Johns Hopkins researchers named American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows
The 2025 class of American Association for the Advancement of Science fellows includes 449 scientists, engineers, and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements
How to Turn a Chicken Egg Into a Drug Factory
A biotech start-up is testing a novel way of efficiently producing pharmaceutical drugs.
An Indiana town shows two sides of Trump's factory "boom"
In industrial communities like South Bend, government policies are lifting some sectors while clouding the outlook for others, leaving many manufacturers navigating a patchwork of incentives, tariffs and shifting signals from Washington.
Historical Wigan cotton mill to reopen as entertainment venue.
Factory Floor is set to open in Wigan's Grade II-listed Eckersley Mill following a £3m revamp.
Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they prove they really, really want to
: Chocolate Factory describes concession as an attempt to balance openess with safety
Mississippi Cheese Straw Factory is closing. Store is sold out
The Mississippi Cheese Straw Factory is closing after the Yerger family announced their retirement. All products are now sold out.
Scientists sound alarm over federal plan to dismantle vital weather and climate lab
Hopkins experts warn that dismantling its premiere weather-forecasting resource, NCAR, would leave us more vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather events
LACLxS Work-in-Progress Seminar: The Politics of Everyday Conflict in Refugee Shelters
Fabricio Carrijo, a research affiliate at the Jagiellonian Centre for Migration Studies at Jagiellonian University, will give a talk titled "The Politics of Everyday Conflict in Refugee Shelters: Decolonial Perspectives from the Brazilian Amazon" for the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies.
Paramore—“Misery Business”
Imagine the angstiest, cringiest art you made as a teenager. Now imagine the entire world singing to it in their cars and at karaoke forever. Today, Rob is breaking down the emotionally turbulent emo-bop factory machine that is Paramore. He applauds the incredible and messy lyrics of ‘Riot!,’ which differentiate the album from those of similar bands of the time. Later, he talks to The Ringer’s Rob Mahoney, Paramore’s OG fan, to discuss the exponential improvement between ‘All We Know Is Falling’ and ‘Riot!’ and Hayley Williams’s incredible vocals on “Misery Business.”
CERN Science Gateway celebrates its 1000th science show
CERN Science Gateway has reached another milestone: the delivery of its 1000th science show! Since opening its doors in October 2023, Science Gateway has welcomed nearly 900 000 visitors of all ages to explore the fundamental questions of the Universe. Among its most popular activities are the science shows – dynamic, interactive demonstrations led by CERN guides and tailored to a broad audience of different age levels, including school groups, families and the general public. Designed to make complex scientific concepts accessible and entertaining, these live shows combine spectacular experiments, multimedia elements and audience participation. From the physics of particle collisions to the properties of superconductivity, electromagnetism and cryogenics, the science shows translate the research carried out at CERN into engaging visual experiences. Visitors might see superconductors levitate, follow particles through different detector layers or discover the beauty in phase transitions. Each demonstration is carefully crafted to spark curiosity while maintaining scientific accuracy. Members of the CERN community are of course warmly invited to visit CERN Science Gateway with their family or friends and attend one of the science shows. To register, please visit this page, and don’t forget to check the programme for the coming days. Become a CERN guide and run your own super-cool science show (and more)! To become a CERN guide, you can join the introduction course held every 3–4 weeks, which will give you an overview of what being a CERN guide entails. From there, further courses are available depending on what type of guide you would like to be. Because, of course, CERN guides are needed everywhere at CERN. If you imagine yourself as a more ‘traditional’ guide, you should know that there are currently more than ten exciting visit points in CERN’s visits portfolio, such as the Antimatter Factory, the ALICE experiment (surface), the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) control room, the ATLAS experiment (surface), the CERN Control Centre (CCC), the Data Centre, the LHCb experiment (surface), the Synchrocyclotron (SC), the SM18 test facility and the newly inaugurated Linac2 visit point. Indeed, CERN’s Visits Service and Visual Impact and Exhibitions Section recently collaborated on redesigning the Linac2 visit tour, which has just reopened to the public after several months of renovation work. The new tour offers visitors and guides alike an enriched, more immersive experience, designed to highlight the history and scientific significance of this major facility. So, fancy becoming one of the insiders? Join the introduction course, check the guides website or contact guides.manager@cern.ch. And remember, becoming a guide can benefit you, too.
Amazon Is Widening Its Sway Over the Freight Industry
The one-stop shop for handling freight and packages seems to be a thing of the past, with FedEx Corp. set to spin off its trucking business in June. United Parcel Service Inc. shed its trucking unit five years ago. Full-service brokerages can shepherd goods from the factory to a residential customer’s doorstep, but they do it by cobbling together transportation services of several providers.
Trump’s food industry friends are warning him RFK Jr.’s agenda is bad for business
Processed food manufacturers say there's a conflict between the Health secretary’s plans and Trump’s desire to rebuild factory towns.
Google releases Pixel 10a ‘stallion’ factory images
With the Pixel 10a now on store shelves, Google today released factory images for "stallion.” There are two builds...
South African Factory Outlook Dims as Business Activity Softens
South African manufacturing sentiment soured slightly in February as business activity weakened and employment declined.
Business described as ‘hidden gem’ to expand in small McLean County city
Lexington’s mayor is announcing a longtime business in the small McLean County city is expanding by building a new factory and hiring more workers.
Elon Musk warns Tesla employees over future of German megafactory
Elon Musk said that Tesla would "ideally" expand its only European gigafactory — with one condition.