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Baserunning blunder by JT Realmuto kills Phillies rally in 2-1 loss to Dodgers with disastrous game-ending double play
The Phillies had a chance at a walk-off win with runners on second and third and one out in the ninth. Instead, this happened.
Rams open training camp with high expectations and renewed energy
The Rams opened training camp Sunday at LMU, beginning preparations for the 2026 NFL season under sunny skies and temperatures that climbed into the upper 80s.
Analysis | The politics of the company you keep
The Senate race in Michigan is critical to Democrats, but associations may matter.
2 commercial fires minutes apart damage Lapeer businesses; no injuries reported
Two commercial buildings in Lapeer were damaged in separate fires reported just minutes apart early Sunday, authorities said.
LMU Political Science and International Relations Honors Students Take Their Research on the Road
LMU Political Science and International Relations honors students present research at the WPSA conference in San Diego.
Ike Perlmutter helps James Uthmeier stretch fundraising lead in AG race
The business titan and his wife combined to give half a million dollars to the AG's PC.
Judge orders the Trump administration to cancel taxpayer-funded promotional TV ads
President Donald Trump must cancel any remaining television commercials paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money to promote his political message, a federal judge ordered on Sunday night as the administration said the ad campaign was coming to an end.
Why more patients are paying doctors directly — and what it says about our health system
Patients and doctors are bypassing insurance for faster, simpler care — a trend highlighting a desire for relief from bureaucracy and widening inequities in the health care system.
Potential vote could change alcohol rules in Bardstown Road entertainment district
A political effort is underway that could put the liquor status of the Bardstown Road entertainment district on the ballot this fall, a move that could bring major changes to businesses in the area.
Berry Street, Abbott partner to link Lingo CGM with nutrition coaching
Nutrition care company Berry Street and Abbott inked a partnership aimed at expanding personalized nutrition support. | Through the partnership, Abbott’s Lingo, an over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor, will now feature live nutrition coaching from Berry Street.
One:eight Entertainment Launches Publishing Division
One:eight Entertainment Launches Publishing Division
John Droney Jr., prominent Democrat and lawyer, dead at 79
John F. Droney Jr., a Democratic state chairman under Gov. William O’Neill and a strategist for Joseph I. Lieberman, died Sunday.
Phillies activate catcher J.T. Realmuto from injured list
The Philadelphia Phillies activated catcher J.T. Realmuto from the injured list on Saturday. “He’s back and good to go,” interim manager Don Mattingly said. Protect J.T. from the standpoint of running him out there a lot.
Wait, is Damian Lillard behind this new Portland sports bar?
Honorable Mention is opening soon beneath the Benson Hotel.
Legendary country music band sets date for final show after 60 years together
The legendary group began its farewell tour back in 2024.
Rita Süssmuth, trailblazer in German politics, dies aged 88
She dared to break taboos, advocated for women's rights and took part in a failed attempt to oust Chancellor Helmut Kohl as chairman of the CDU. Former President of the German Bundestag Rita Süssmuth has died aged 88.
Oregon businesses and students join general strike Friday to protest immigration enforcement
Multiple nationwide organizations are calling for businesses to close and people to walk out of school and work to protest mass deportations and violence against demonstrators.
The NFL declines Brendan Sorsby’s supplemental draft request
As of now, the Brendan Sorsby appears to be headed for the 2027 draft
Provident Entertainment Announces Internal Promotions
Provident Entertainment Announces Internal Promotions
Call for a standard framework for triboelectric nanogenerators
Research to boost TENG performance cannot move forward without a standard way to test these devices and report the results.
Music Business 104 Wraps Fourth Edition With Global Growth
Music Business 104 Wraps Fourth Edition With Global Growth
Vail turns up the volume for winter entertainment this season
With the first snowfall on Vail Mountain’s peaks this week and snowmaking efforts underway, anticipation for winter is building fast. This season, Vail is raising the bar with its most ambitious music lineup yet, bringing more live music, more venues...
HHS launches AI-backed health fraud crackdown
The department will use AI to examine audits from states and other federal grant recipients, and potentially withhold funds if they aren’t able to fix errors.
Senators press UnitedHealthcare and other Medicare Advantage giants over denied care
Demand for more information on prior authorization rules follows a federal watchdog report in June and growing pressure on health insurers grows.
2026-27 Season Tickets for LMU Fall and Winter Sports Now on Sale
LMU Athletics has announced that season tickets for all 2026-27 fall and winter sports are now on sale, with packages available for men's and women's soccer, women's volleyball, and men's and women's basketball.
Tempus and NYU Langone Health Announce Strategic Collaboration to Advance Precision Oncology
CHICAGO, January 12, 2026--Tempus, a leader in artificial intelligence and precision medicine, and NYU Langone Health, one of the nation’s premier academic medical centers, today announced a multi-year strategic collaboration aimed at transforming cancer care through advanced molecular profiling and data-driven insights. The collaboration will support NYU Langone Health’s Center for Molecular Oncology at the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, a comprehensive, pan-cancer initiative to more
James Webb telescope spots 'monster stars' leaking nitrogen in the early universe — and they could help solve a major mystery
Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope spotted huge stars leaking nitrogen in an early galaxy, hinting that such 'monster stars' might have been the source of ancient supermassive black holes.
South Carolina Measles Cases Push US Toward Losing Health Title
South Carolina’s measles cases are propelling the US’s outbreak into a second year, which threatens to end the nation’s claim to have eliminated the disease.
Provident Entertainment Announces Return of Todd Stepp as SVP
Provident Entertainment Announces Return of Todd Stepp as Senior Vice President
Too Lost Music Group Strikes Deal with Xelon Entertainment
Too Lost Music Group strikes a deal with Xelon Entertainment, expanding its footprint and growing its reach for artists across Asia-Pacific.
Study Rewrites Cattle Pregnancy Science
A new LMU study found cattle embryos can establish pregnancy without interferon tau, opening new research paths to improve livestock fertility.
Influence Media Unveils $600M Anthem Entertainment Acquisition
Influence Media Partners and BlackRock have announced a $600 million deal to acquire 'substantially all' the IP of Anthem Entertainment.
Provident Entertainment Announces Two New Promotions
Provident Entertainment Announces Two New Promotions
Urban Climate: The Science behind Resilient Cities under Changing Climates
More than 6 in 10 humans now live in cities. As urbanization accelerates and climate change intensifies, cities have become the critical frontier where weather, climate, and human resilience intersect.
Entertainment: First look at Jack Johnsons new film
We have our first look at Jack Johnson's new documentary. It's called "Surfilmusic."
Phillies News: J.T. Realmuto, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino
Welcome to Memorial Day weekend
Judge orders the Trump administration to cancel taxpayer-funded promotional TV ads
A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to cancel any remaining television commercials paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money to promote his political message.
Follow the Money Episode 2: Inside the Sports Media Biz with Sam McCleery and Steve Hellmuth
Welcome to the Sports Video Group’s new interview series, Follow the Money, designed to help SVG members and sponsors have a deeper understanding of ...
Provident Entertainment Named Billboard's Top Christian Label for 2025
Provident Entertainment Named Billboard's Top Christian Label for 2025
Standing Committee recommends adoption of four new business items, discusses relationship of the Church of the Brethren and Eder Financial
The Standing Committee of district delegates to the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference held meetings from Thursday evening, June 25, through Saturday afternoon, June 27, in Fort Wayne, Ind. Annual Conference moderator Don Fitzkee presided, assisted by moderator-elect Dennis Beckner and Conference secretary David Shumate.
Paul S. Morton Inducted Into Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame
Bishop Paul S. Morton Inducted Into Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame
Canada Inc. Is Ready for a Blockbuster Summer: Five Stories to Watch
Also: What’s behind sky-high bank valuations
The 98 Biggest TV Show Flops, Bombs and Misses in the First Half of 2026
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) In July, I updated my look at how the “streaming bubble” popped since 2023, showing the decline in streaming TV shows over time. But after compiling and analyzing and writing about over one hundred TV show flops in the first half of 2026—I counted 99 “nominees” and there are even more honorable mentions—I couldn’t have told you that the number of shows is going down. When it comes to scripted, English-language TV shows, it feels like we have as many bombs as ever. I don’t keep a specific count, but some streamers probably had as many flops as they’ve ever had.1 That’s right, it’s time for part two of my analysis of the biggest flops, bombs and misses on streaming in the first half of 2026. Two weeks ago, I took a look at films. Today, TV shows. If you want to read the full methodology for how I assemble this list, you can find it at the bottom of this article. In short, this list is… ...scripted and unscripted TV shows,...from the nine major streamers,...in the US (using US-only ratings),...excluding true crime, kids and foreign-language shows,...that got no/poor ratings,...from Jan-2026 to the end of June-2026. Reminder: this article does not represent my personal opinion—many of these shows are great!—but I follow the data, and a miss is a miss and a bomb is a bomb. Also, price matters. If a TV show costs north of $100 million, it needs to get lots and lots of streaming viewership to justify that budget. As with past editions, I ordered this list by streamer, going from best (fewest flops) to worst (the most misses)—taking the size of the flops into consideration—and like the last edition, three or four streamers vied to take the win/loss of having the most flops. (But the actual winner is no surprise.) I try to avoid tooting my own horn too much, but seriously, in just under 5,000 words (including the methodology section) I provide a mostly comprehensive overview of the eight major streamers (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and Apple TV) for the first half of the year, mentioning most of their hits and all their misses. It summarizes the entire first half of 2026! If you want to support this work, please subscribe. Subscribe Tubi Big Mood Boarders The Freak Brothers Twenty Twenty Six Honorable Mentions: Busted on Bodycam, Deestroying the Pitch, Destination World Cup 2026 I don’t think that Tubi spends all that much making or (mostly) licensing these original TV shows—Big Mood, Boarders and Twenty Twenty Six all come from the UK—but they’re not free and they didn’t chart anywhere. Winner: The Freak Brothers Have you even heard of this show? It’s an animated comedy...that’s on its third season! And Pete Davidson, Woody Harrelson, John Goodman and Tiffany Haddish all provide voice talent for it. Yes, animated shows don’t cost as much as live action shows, but cheap isn’t free! So a show with this level of talent needs to perform better. Disney+ Daredevil: Born Again Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord Honorable Mentions: Behind the Attraction, Donna Hay Coastal Celebrations, We Call It Imagineering Disney+ doesn’t make all that many original shows anymore. They had two flops, and one was animated. Their one not-a-miss show, Wonder Man, got just good enough viewership to not be considered a “miss”...but it’s since been cancelled. At this point, Disney has pivoted entirely away from making big budget TV shows for Disney+ to making...almost nothing for Disney+? Sure, Disney’s spending circa 2019-2022 was unsustainable, but now they’re pivoting too far in the other direction. At some point, Disney needs to stop shifting strategies so wildly. Really, Disney should have made fewer shows for Disney+ at launch and the shows they did make at that time needed to be made at more reasonable budgets. And they should adopt that strategy now. Winner: Daredevil: Born Again Daredevil, the Marvel Comics character, is on my personal Mount Rushmore of favorite superheroes, so it pains me to give him the win/loss today, but this show deserves it. I’ll repeat my hot take from last spring: “Based on his popularity, Daredevil should be in movies, and probably ones that cost a lot less than the MCU’s usual price tag. Disney/Bob Iger/Ike Perlmutter (who, based on reporting, made the decision) made a huge mistake selling TV shows to Netflix in the 2010s, thus limiting this character to the small screen. Daredevil could have anchored Marvel’s post-Infinity War plans, and if he did, the MCU would probably be in a better place than it is now.” HBO Max We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… What four streamers had the most misses... HBO’s strong start to 2026… The caveat to Peacock’s turnaround this year... Paramount+’s key man problem… What country isn’t delivering hits for Netflix or Hulu... The cavalcade of stars on a streamer where no one is watching their shows... Across nearly 5,000 words of analysis… And a lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you’d like to read more about why you should subscribe, please read this article about the Streaming Ratings Report, why it matters, why you need it, and why we cover streaming ratings best.
Judge orders the Trump administration to cancel taxpayer-funded promotional TV ads
President Donald Trump must cancel any remaining television commercials paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money to promote his political message, a federal judge ordered on Sunday night as the administration said the ad campaign was coming to an end.
Phillies reportedly re-signing catcher J.T. Realmuto to 3-year, $45 million deal after Mets land Bo Bichette
Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe
Key Takeaways The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys map with their own observations to explore our universe and search for rare phenomena. The 2D map serves as the foundation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey to measure the universe in 3D and investigate dark energy. Hold on to your telescopes: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion. The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published. “It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” said David Schlegel, a co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.” Covering roughly 75% of the sky in visible and near-infrared light, the updated map provides a deep view of the extragalactic universe not blocked by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way. Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come. More than 160 scientists contributed to data collection for the project, and a team of 20 produced the final dataset released today. It was built by combining 263,407 telescope exposures from three ground-based sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. That was supplemented by years of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite mission and additional public data. “For our team, these data are fundamental to our investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy,” said Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab. “But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to explore the sky and marvel at its wonders.” Here be galaxies The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally conducted to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. The Legacy Surveys’ 2D map is essentially a deep photograph of the sky; it records where galaxies and stars appear and how bright they appear. This crucial step enables DESI to select objects and measure their light in different wavelengths to determine their distances, building the largest high-resolution 3D map ever made. Scientists study the way galaxies have clustered at different ages of the universe to track dark energy over time. In April 2026, DESI completed its original five-year survey ahead of schedule and with vastly more objects than expected. The early results have shown surprising hints that dark energy’s impact may be weakening over time — a paradigm shift that could potentially shape the predicted fate of our universe. DESI expects to publish improved results using their first five years of data in 2027 and is continuing observations into 2028. DESI was so efficient at observing galaxies, the Legacy Surveys map needed to expand. Early on, “it became clear we might run out of galaxies to look at and run out of sky, and we better start doing something about that,” said Schlegel, who also works on DESI. The new Legacy Surveys map has been used to select DESI targets since June 2026 and will guide the telescope’s operations over the coming years. Computing the cosmos Merging hundreds of thousands of images taken on 2,285 nights, each with unique atmospheric and telescope conditions, was a massive computational effort. It took about a year to develop the computer code and eight weeks to process all the images at the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. Beyond supporting DESI, the Legacy Surveys will be a foundational reference for the next generation of telescopes. As new observatories like the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (jointly funded by NSF and DOE’s Office of Science) and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope come online, researchers can compare their observations with one of the deepest and most comprehensive views of the sky ever assembled. The Legacy Surveys data will also help scientists train artificial intelligence tools to analyze petabytes of astronomical data and accelerate new discoveries. It will be among the datasets used in an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility; the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences; and the partner institutions. DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and NERSC. Additional support for DESI is provided by the NSF; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions. ### 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.
LAist | Justin Levitt Comments on Legal Standing for Prediction Markets and Politics
News from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Our Newsroom highlights students, faculty, and staff who make LMU a brighter community.
Lansing cremation business searched in South Chicago funeral home investigation
A cremation business in Lansing is now part of a broader investigation connected to the South Chicago funeral home where authorities discovered 56 bodies last month.
Big investors hunt for tomorrow's AI winners as capex angst fades
The rally in AI-linked stocks that marked the latest earnings season has shifted the focus of the AI investment story from whether Big Tech's spending spree will pay off to the kind of companies that will deliver returns over the longer term, investors say.
Three at LMU among Los Angeles Business Journal’s “Indispensable” Leaders
News from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Our Newsroom highlights students, faculty, and staff who make LMU a brighter community.
Management Students Explore the Business Ethics of Food in Italy
News from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Our Newsroom highlights students, faculty, and staff who make LMU a brighter community.
Phillies' J.T. Realmuto: Back in Philadelphia lineup
Phillies' J.T. Realmuto: Back in Philadelphia lineup
Phillies News: Dylan Moore, J.T. Realmuto, New Concessions
The Phillies have a roster decision to make, Moore or less. Also, ice cream!
Computer Science Student wins NASA Space Grant
Moo Muhammad, a Computer Science student, is shooting for the stars, rising from a ride-share driver who once lived in his car to become the winner of a highly competitive scholarship. He’s the latest…
Phillies' J.T. Realmuto voices displeasure with Marlins coaching methods
Philadelphia Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto voiced his displeasure with the Miami Marlins use of calling pitches from the dugout, saying, "I'm not a fan."
European science calls for ambitious investment in research: "Current decisions determine Europe's future. We are falling behind China and the USA"
"To remain global leaders, a competitive economic power, and a sovereign actor, Europe needs strong science and innovation." Seven scientific organizations, representing...
LMU Celebrates 15 Years of THR’s Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program - Loyola Marymount University Newsroom
News from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Our Newsroom highlights students, faculty, and staff who make LMU a brighter community.
LMU College of Business Administration Celebrates 100th Anniversary with Students, Alumni, Industry Partners in New York
News from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Our Newsroom highlights students, faculty, and staff who make LMU a brighter community.
LMU Political Science and International Relations Honors Students Take Their Research on the Road
LMU Political Science and International Relations honors students present research at the WPSA conference in San Diego.
Laremy Tunsil sends another message to Commanders
Laremy Tunsil keeps sending messages to the Commanders, making it clear what he wants.
Provident Entertainment Signs Worship Leader Charles Weems
Provident Entertainment Signs Worship Leader Charles Weems
Lilly’s GLP-1 Windfall to Fund Investments in Women’s Health
The pharmaceutical giant has been assembling experts and hunting for new medicines across conditions including bone health and endometriosis, sources told Bloomberg.
LMU Computer Science Professor Hosts National Workshop on AI and Indigenous Language Revitalization
LMU computer science professor Jared Coleman hosted a workshop to explore how AI can be used responsibly to revitalize indigenous languages.
Provident Entertainment Signs Hip-Hop Artist Skema Boy
Provident Entertainment Signs Hip-Hop Artist Skema Boy
J.T. Realmuto hurt — and what we learned in Phillies' sloppy loss
J.T. Realmuto exited early, Cristopher Sánchez battled through defensive miscues and the Phillies’ struggles vs. lefties continued in San Francisco.
Judge orders the Trump administration to cancel taxpayer-funded promotional TV ads
A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to cancel any remaining television commercials paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money to promote his political message.
Provident Entertainment Signs Singer/Songwriter Molly Kate Kestner
Provident Entertainment Signs Singer/Songwriter Molly Kate Kestner
AI Live Entertainment Financial Platform Quantizr Raises $5M
Quantizr, an AI-powered 'financial command center' built with live music in mind, has announced a $5 million seed round.
Judge orders the Trump administration to cancel taxpayer-funded promotional TV ads
A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to cancel any remaining television commercials paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money to promote his political message.
Graham Platner's New Scandal and Authenticity's Limits
He said there wouldn’t be any more scandals, but a new Politico report threatens to end his Senate campaign in Maine.
Gas tax holiday, Tim Ackert, landlord registry: CT politics news
Plus: Eversource and the RWA respond to William Tong and the Senate passes bills on wage theft and homeowners renting out rooms.
Extended HLs: Hull City v. Man United Matchweek 1
Relive full-match highlights from Hull City's showdown with Manchester United at MKM Stadium in Matchweek 1.
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.
Scrolling for science: How a Twitter post discovered a new wasp in Fukuoka, Japan
Researchers at Kyushu University recently identified a wasp species, Eupelmus curvator, in Japan for the first time after citizen scientists posted photos of it on Twitter (now X), marking both a new national record and the first formal description of the male of the species. The discovery highlights the growing role of social media in biodiversity research, allowing scientists to tap into observations from the public that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Phillies' J.T. Realmuto and Jesus Luzardo face brutal reception at Flyers playoff game
Phillies stars booed at Wells Fargo.
Master’s in Management or MBA? Two Graduate Business Degrees, Two Paths Forward
Compare Wilmington University’s MBA and M.S. in Management programs. Find the IACBE-accredited degree that aligns with your leadership and career goals.
Boston security guards could strike over health benefits
Security officers' contracts expired July 31, and the sole issue preventing a new deal is health benefits.