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MIAC announces 2026 spring sport Elite 22 winners
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) recognized some of its best and brightest spring-sport student-athletes on Tuesday with the announcement of the baseball, softball, tennis, and outdoor track & field Elite 22 Awards.
Gen Z’s Political Gender Divide Is Now Showing Up in Schools
Young men and women split sharply in 2024. Teachers and students say that rift is reshaping classrooms, friendships and dating.
Save COCA: Keep politics out of arts grants process
Grant decisions should not be subject to the shifting priorities, personal preferences, or political pressures of elected officials.
Out of this Prairieville family's hardest moment, a $1M company was born
What began as a deeply personal challenge for Jordanna and Louis Coleman has grown into a fast-scaling logistics business—one built not only on strategy and resilience, but on faith. LC Transport Services, founded in February 2022 and headquartered in Prairieville, started with a single truck, a home office and a determination to create stability for […]
Why CMOs must become enterprise growth leaders
CMOs must reclaim their role as enterprise growth leaders by connecting marketing to business outcomes, proving impact, and embracing AI and analytics.
Quantum science in the heart of Dublin
Trinity College Dublin is at the centre of a burgeoning quantum ecosystem in Ireland, and students on Trinity’s MSc Quantum Science and Technology are right in the middle of it all, not only reaping the benefits but also taking an active part in helping Ireland’s quantum community flourish
Sterling slips after UK jobs data, politics in focus
Sterling dipped on Tuesday after data showed that Britain's employers reined in their hiring and posted fewer job vacancies in April.
Now that redistricting is dead for this year, these are the next 10 questions to ask about Virginia politics
We’re still waiting to see how the relationship between the governor and the General Assembly plays out. Plus, Lynchburg Republicans and, yes, more redistricting fallout.
Sorry, Governor — you are wrong on this one
If you have read even a handful of my several hundred columns during the past few years, you likely ran across me saying nice things about Gov. Jared Polis. I genuinely like the guy, whom I met during our mutual first runs for Congress back in 2008. He was very nice to me, even though, […]
The women leaving the 'New Right'
Defectors from the ‘New Right’ say that sexism is a feature, not a bug of modern-day conservatism.New York Magazine’s Sam Adler-Bell published The Young Women Leaving the New Right, detailing the experiences of conservative women who say that rampant misogyny within the space is pushing them out of a community they helped build. From demanding that women stay home and out of public life to advocating for the repeal of civil rights law - some conservative women have reached their limit. But host Brittany Luse wonders: will this change of heart stick in the voting booths? Or is this just more of the same?To answer that question, Brittany is joined by Editor at Large of the 19th and NABJ President, Errin Haines. Errin helps unpack the link between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ right, white women checkered political history, and how searching for community can sometimes lead people down dark paths. Want more about women and politics? Check out these episodes:Progressive women have 'had it!' And they're fighting back.The political power of Gen Z womenEnough is enough. Is it time to leave America?Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluseFor handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.
Danny Strohm Joins Little Rock as Assistant AD for Sports Performance
Little Rock Athletics has added another experienced piece to its athletics performance staff with the hiring of Danny Strohm as Assistant AD for Sports Performance. Strohm arrives at Little Rock with an extensive Division I background and a reputation for individualized athlete development, bringing experience from multiple successful programs across collegiate athletics.
Northwestern professors navigate politics, pedagogy in Trump-era classrooms
As history Prof. Michael Allen lectured about the Vietnam War in his American Wars class this quarter, he drew a connection between South Vietnamese police tactics and present-day immigration enforcement in the U.S.: that police force can alienate civilians rather than winning them over. He said this comparison was not meant to tell students what...
Powell: Courtroom chaos in Murdaugh case could spill into South Carolina politics
News that the South Carolina Supreme Court had overturned the murder convictions of Alex Murdaugh in the state’s “Trial of the Century” made headlines nationwide.
Sox offense, bullpen suffer jet lag in 6-1 setback
No late-inning heroics were destined on the road trip opener in Seattle
Hungary’s Magyar kicks off his first foreign trip as prime minister to ally Poland
Hungary's new prime minister, Péter Magyar, is visiting Poland, a traditional ally that can offer plenty of lessons on political transformation and restoring democratic norms | WBBM Newsradio 780 AM & 105.9 FM
Dallas Wings respond to coach's public criticism with blowout win over Mystics
The Dallas Wings responded to coach Jose Fernandez's 'selfishness' call-out with a dominant win over the Mystics.
DC politics have arrived in West Virginia
West Virginia politics have taken on a distinctly DC-style edge, brought in by Gov. Patrick Morrisey. While this approach may offer short-term gains for the governor and his allies, the long-term effects of the 2026 Republican Primary could extend well beyond another election cycle with fewer people willing to put their name and reputation on
What to watch in Tuesday's primaries as Trump's endorsement is put to the test
Is there a future in politics for Republicans who buck President Donald Trump
What to watch in Tuesday's primaries as Trump's endorsement is put to the test
Is there a future in politics for Republicans who buck President Donald Trump.
What to watch in Tuesday's primaries as Trump's endorsement is put to the test
Is there a future in politics for Republicans who buck President Donald Trump.
The 2025-26 Clarion Sports Awards
Athletics at the University of Denver had yet another successful year. Highlighted by hockey’s national championship, gymnastics and women’s lacrosse making runs into the NCAA tournament and the
"Pollution over politics" Environmental Advocates NY responds to EPA PFA rollbacks
On Monday, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the repeal of drinking water regulations for four different P
String theory suddenly emerged from simple physics rules
Physicists may have uncovered a surprising new clue that string theory—the idea that the universe is built from unimaginably tiny vibrating strings—could be more than just a mathematical fantasy. Instead of assuming strings existed from the start, researchers began with a few simple rules about how particles behave at extreme energies and discovered that the equations naturally produced the telltale fingerprints of string theory all on their own.
Traditional Medicine Innovation for Health Impact: Financing, Collaboration, and Future Pathways
This session brings together WHO, Member States, innovators, regulators and private sector partners to explore the role of integrating and advancing traditional medicine to improve health outcomes, while accelerating innovation, partnerships and collaboration. Discussions will focus on translating evidence and innovation into implementation, addressing financing and policy barriers, and identifying practical pathways to scale credible, community-rooted traditional medicine approaches to expand access, equity and health impact.Watch live on YouTube
Fund Drive Special Programming: Disinformation, Political Manipulation, Identity Politics, and the Growing threats facing American Democracy
Host Davey D welcomed Jamelle Bouie to Hard Knock Radio for an in depth conversation about disinformation, political manipulation, identity politics, and the growing threats facing American democracy. Bouie, one of the nation’s most prominent political commentators, is a columnist for The New York Times and is widely known for connecting current political events to … Continued
Why Josh Shapiro Isn’t Acting Like Other Potential 2028 Candidates
The Pennsylvania governor’s in-state focus is a contrast with other possible presidential hopefuls.
Trump’s crusade to oust disloyal Republicans underscores the party’s dilemma: From the Politics Desk
Plus, surveying GOP officials for a vibe check ahead of the midterms.
SCI Lab: Finding common ground on divisive science - Morgridge Institute for Research
As a scholar on societal perceptions of scientific research, Dominique Brossard focuses a lot of energy on divisive, challenging and controversial topics. But her ultimate goal is to find the "rock" we all stand together on.
Kudos to Cheer Club, College of Business faculty, Cybersecurity team and more
Becky Cottrell, Ph.D., Department of Social Work, and Bridget Arend, Ph.D., School of Education Becky Cottrell from the Department of Social Work and Bridget Arend, Ph.D., from the School of Education co-authored an article recently published in an international journal. Read the article. Biff Baker, Ph.D., College of Business Biff Baker, Ph.D., received a Best in Track award from the Society for Advancement of Management for research examining bureaucratic inefficiencies within Section 8 subsidized housing programs. The study focuses on how administrative delays and communication breakdowns can create housing instability for families and discourage landlord participation. It also offers recommendations to improve accountability and trust in public housing systems. Brendan Fry, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics and Statistics Brendan Fry, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, co-authored the article “Modeling the Impact of Venous Collapsibility on Retinal Oxygenation,” published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. The interdisciplinary research brought together scholars from the University of Delaware, Indiana University Indianapolis, McGill University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. Access the article. Bridget Arend, Ph.D., School of Education Bridget Arend, Ph.D., professor in the School of Education, co-published the book “Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning: A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective, and Enjoyable College Teaching, Second Edition” with James R. Davis. The book explores practical approaches to improving college teaching and student learning experiences. Buy the book. College of Business Faculty At the 2026 Western Decision Sciences Institute international conference, Sally Baalbaki-Yassine, Ph.D., Debora Gilliard, Ph.D., and David Lynn Hoffman, Ph.D., from the College of Business received the Best Case Study Paper Award for “Oreo: A Global Success Story in Brand Evolution and Market Leadership.” Lisa McVicker, Ph.D., and Apryl Brodersen, Ph.D., also had their paper, “Electronic Performance Monitoring: Employer Panacea or Legal Quagmire?” accepted for publication in the Journal of Business Leadership. Community Engagement Exchange Program Metropolitan State University of Denver was selected to host international Fellow Aleja Henao Espitia of Bogotá, Colombia through the Community Engagement Exchange program funded by the U.S. Department of State. View Espitia's LinkedIn profile. David Varel, Ph.D., College of Letters, Arts and Sciences MSU Denver historian David Varel, Ph.D., has been awarded a 2026 ACLS Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowship program supports outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, and selected just 63 scholars from more than 2,000 applicants this year. Varel’s project, “The Black Chicago School: Academic Activism in the Age of American Apartheid,” explores the work of Black scholars who challenged scientific racism, built alternative institutions and helped lay the foundation for the modern civil rights movement. The fellowship provides up to $60,000 to support full-time research and writing. Learn more about the fellowship. MSU Denver Office of Financial Aid Team Several MSU Denver employees were recognized for leadership and service during the Colorado Association of Financial Aid Administrators (CAFAA) conference held in May in Crested Butte. Don Holtzen, interim associate director of systems, chaired the conference and was recognized for his service as CAFAA conference chair and technology chair during the 2025-26 term. Holtzen also received the Postsecondary Institution Professional of the Year award, which recognizes financial-aid professionals who have made significant contributions to their institutions and to CAFAA. Tori Pacheco, associate director of Student Services, helped design décor and facilitate the conference and was recognized for her service as CAFAA secretary during the 2025-26 term. Destiny Candelaria, call center coordinator, served on the conference planning committee and presented on One Stops during the event. Michael Nguyen, executive director of Financial Aid and Scholarships, assisted as a CAFAA board member and was recognized for serving as president-elect during the 2025-26 term. Richard Balbag, program assistant I, received the Distinguished Support Staff Member of the Year award, honoring staff members who have made exceptional contributions to their financial-aid offices. Military Friendly Recognition Military Friendly has awarded MSU Denver Gold Status as a military-friendly university and ranked the University No. 7 nationally for military spouses. The recognition reflects MSU Denver’s strong support systems for veterans and military spouses, including transfer credit assistance and retention-focused resources. As of 2026, 1,050 military-connected students are enrolled at the University, advancing institutional priorities around serving veterans and supporting student retention. MSU Denver Cheer Club The MSU Denver Cheer Club earned third place in the 4-Year College Small Coed Intermediate division at the USA Spirit Nationals. Celebrate the win on Instagram. MSU Denver Cybersecurity Team An MSU Denver cybersecurity team earned first place in the Strategist category at the 2026 CYBER RECon National Competition hosted at Fort Meade, Maryland, by U.S. Cyber Command. Led by Jeffrey London, Ph.D., and undergraduate student Matthew Bopp, the team competed against universities and law schools nationwide with its 30-page legal analysis on cybersecurity and free speech titled “Freedom of Speech and MDM: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation.” The paper also earned Bopp a personal invitation to apply to the University of Maryland School of Law. MSU Denver Debate Team MSU Denver Debate won the 2026 Sierra Sustainability Summit hosted at Yosemite National Park in April. Students Kat Conte and Simon Bernhard bested teams from George Washington University, Gallaudet University, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the University of San Francisco and Tennessee Tech in the modified present-and-defend style competition. Their proposal recommended adapting Colorado’s Keep Colorado Wild Pass model to support California state parks facing budget constraints. Learn about the summit. MSU Denver Women’s Golf MSU Denver Women’s Golf was represented on the national stage this month as junior Neige Dunn competed as an individual at the NCAA West Regional. She became the first Roadrunner in 10 years to qualify for NCAA Regionals as an individual. Get the details.
Video: Opinion | The End of Reality TV Politics
Reality TV politics is coming to an end because, Sarah Isgur argues, reality TV itself is dying. On “The Opinions,” she explains why she believes voters are now gravitating toward more optimistic, Ted Lasso-style candidates instead.
Neymar Makes Brazil's FIFA 2026 World Cup Squad
Neymar has been called up to represent Brazil at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Politics in the Park conversations in Oshkosh aim to build community
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. On a late April evening, in an Oshkosh park bordering the shores of Lake Winnebago, Nikolas ...
Live Results: Kentucky midterm congressional primaries
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics within the Republican Party, faces a tough primary challenge Tuesday in Kentucky’s state primary. It’s the latest example this primary season of the president trying to purge the party of Republicans he perceives as disloyal. Kentucky voters will also pick nominees for U.S. Senate, five other U.S. House seats and the state General Assembly. Voters in Louisville will winnow down
Lone Star Politics: May 18, 2026
Early voting starts this week, Dallas sees a grudge match between Colin Allred and Julie Johnson. Then an update on congressional maps and the Supreme Courts decision.
How reality TV stars seeking office are changing politics
Discuss how political candidates are capitalizing on name recognition through past exposure from reality TV
The Nature of Political Art - College of the Atlantic
MuMultimedia artist N.B. Aldrich discusses the intersection of art and politics.
WNBA graphic omitting Caitlin Clark shows identity politics still come first
OutKick argues the WNBA once again snubbed Caitlin Clark from a promotional graphic, choosing a player averaging 1.0 points per game over its biggest star.
Politics in park prove positive
More than 30 political candidates descended upon Cody for Politics in the Park, drawing voters from around the basin for the opportunity to meet, learn and voice their concerns.
Whoa! Netflix is Sending Narnia Heading to Theaters...What This Means for the Future of Film
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Here’s a funny thing about the debate over whether streamers should release their movies in theaters first: Both sides think the other side represents the “conventional wisdom”. If you’ve been reading me for any amount of time, or even just scanned my front page, you know I think movies make more money by having a robust theatrical window compared to going straight-to-streaming. I’ve published thousands of words on this topic. And for years, I felt like I was standing up to a wave of opposition. See, while the “put your films in theaters to make money” take was obvious at any point before 2019, post-streaming revolution, most of the trendy thinkers took the opposite point of view. Big names argued that Netflix putting their film straight-to-streaming (“S-to-S” from here on out) actually made more money. Netflix was “disrupting” theaters, just as they disrupted Blockbuster Video, and since innovation is always good, this too was a great idea. This thinking then leaked into the mainstream business outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. I read many articles whose take boiled down to “Netflix makes tons of money from S-to-S releases” and “theaters were in structural decline” anyways. Covid-19 shutting down theaters and the 2023 strikes shutting down film production seemingly justified this point of view, as the box office struggled to return to 2017-2019 heights. Yet I’ve also read folks arguing the opposite point: the conventional wisdom says to put films in theaters! From some writers’ points of view, “everyone” actually agrees/agreed with my “send your films to theaters” take—especially the stodgy traditional studios—and folks still didn’t understand Netflix’s genius. I feel like, for the last two years, many people have argued this point as if it’s conventional wisdom. You know what? I may have been wrong. At this point, the “S-to-S strategy makes money” might be the minority viewpoint. Especially with the news this month that Netflix will put at least one film—Greta Gerwig’s Narnia film The Magician’s Nephew—in theaters in 2027 for a full 49-day run is big news. So that’s the story of the week, but I’ll also explain why they’re making this move now and why Netflix may not completely embrace theaters, along with other topics, like how I don’t buy Disney’s “super app” strategy, the latest good news out of the unions, my take on the latest attacks against free speech, and a whole lot more. Let’s get started. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Netflix Goes to Theaters! Listen, I promise not to victory lap too hard today. As I just wrote, I’ve argued against sending films straight-to-streaming for—checks calendar—eight years now. Since 2018. Yikes. That’s a long time. And for years, others painted my thinking as “conventional” in that I was standing up for the status quo against trendy, cool disruption. And that’s not cool! But math is math, and I never could make the S-to-S numbers work. The only thing that ever enabled that model was Wall Street’s brief exuberance for it. It seems like the heads of Netflix now agree with me. (There were always rumors that former head of film for Netflix Scott Stuber argued internally for theatrical releases as well.) As they announced: “The Magician’s Nephew_—the first film in a Narnia series of films—will open on 12-Feb-2027, with a 49 day theatrical exclusive run.”_ I’m a little surprised at how little coverage this big change actually got. Credit to Bloomberg for leading with it and Matt Belloni’s The Town for highlighting it with the provocatively titled podcast “Hell Hath Frozen Over”. But after that? Instead of getting as much coverage as, say, the FCC’s latest egregious crackdown on free speech, this news story got crickets. But it’s massively more important for the future business of entertainment. So let’s start with the obvious question… Why Put Your Movies in Theaters? So…why should Netflix put (some!) of their movies in theaters? Well, I’ve already written that in a very, very, very long article from 2022: [ ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) [ The Data Is In: Theatrical Films Massively Outperform Straight-To-Streaming Films ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) Entertainment Strategy Guy · April 5, 2023 [ Read full story ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) To summarize, theatrical runs make much more money, especially blockbusters, because they earn more money per viewing,1 and that helps boost home entertainment sales. Theatrical films also perform as well or better than the streaming-only films. Now, partially this is driven by increased marketing for said films, but said marketing ultimately boosts the awareness of the movies and drives improved streaming and library performance as well. Again, I’ve made this case after reviewing the economic models and streaming data for years. Just last week, Emily Horgan also made the case for kids films! Yes, it is probably conventional wisdom, but that’s also because it’s true! I’d also argue we’ve seen a lot of data in the various studios’ behavior. As I’ve noted before, the more a studio needs to make money, the likelier they are to put films in theaters. As such, Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount and Sony all send their major films to theaters. Even if they once made a big S-to-S push (*cough* Disney *cough*), they’ve since relented and returned to theaters. The tech companies don’t need to make money, per se, so it took them years to embrace theaters. Apple doesn’t need to make money because it doesn’t disclose their (likely) Quibi-sized losses each year. (They fear bad press more than losing money.) Amazon announced two years ago that they planned to make Amazon-MGM Studios/Prime Video profitable on its own, and guess what? Now they’re putting films in theaters. That leaves Netflix. They’re in between the “no need to make money at all” and the “desperately need to make money to offset linear TV declines”, so they had less pressure to put some films in theaters. Plus, for years, they were the sexy disruptor, and Wall Street rewarded them for that. (Honestly, they still do.) Yet, even Netflix likely saw the money they were leaving on the table (I’ve estimated it at an easy billion dollars before) so they changed their course. I heard one pundit argue that, because Netflix already makes so much money, they don’t need to make more money, which sort of goes against everything I’ve ever learned about business and economics. Again, to be super-nuanced, sending “films to theaters” does not mean EVERY film. TV movies have been a thing for decades. Lifetime films, Hallmark holiday films, Disney Channel Original Movies, and so on, don’t need theatrical runs. But films above a certain budget level (say $25 to 50 million) almost certainly need theaters to maximize their revenue. The Scenarios (with a Dose of Skepticism) Now time for some skepticism: it won’t surprise me at all if Netflix re-changes course. Specifically, Netflix announced that their Narnia film will go to theaters. And I’d bet anything we see KPop Demon Hunters 2: The Huntering2 also goes to theaters, cause it’s the surest hit outside of a Disney animated sequel right now. But how much does Netflix truly commit to theaters? They’ve already tried to emphasize that this is a one-off move. I see three broad scenarios:
Alexander Rossi Taken to Hospital After Crash in Indy 500 Practice
Alexander Rossi was taken to the hospital for evaluation following a brutal crash during Indy 500 practice.
How teaching the history of science can help equip students to face polarized times
For decades, science educators have been encouraged to "stick to the science" and leave politics at the classroom door. But as disinformation spreads online and public trust in science seems to erode ...
Primary Care Hub Closed After Chemical Spill
Roughly 50 gallons of a coolant chemical called glycol spilled from the second floor to the first floor of a Sargent Drive medical-office building Monday -- leaving the building's health clinics closed for the day and requiring patients to seek care elsewhere.
Big Bets Report: PGA Long Shot Aaron Rai Gives Pays Major Dividends
Aaron Rai's PGA Championship win gave a few bettors big paydays, while the NBA ladder legend struck again. Patrick Everson has the latest.
Murdaugh attorney SLAMMED after retrial ruling: ‘Bald-faced allegations of politics’
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson discusses the state Supreme Court’s ruling in the Alex Murdaugh retrial case and criticism of defense attorney Dick Harpootlian’s past Democratic political leanings.
Southern California gets $4B mega music venue in giant new entertainment district
The concert hall is being built with music in mind, boasting "world-class acoustics" and outstanding stage views for guests.
Abortion Pill Lawsuit Leaves Trump Silent, and in a Political Bind
Louisiana wants the Food and Drug Administration to curtail access to the medication. Doing so could cost Republicans at the polls.
Join us at Arte Américas on June 11 to talk about power in the Central Valley
How can the Central Valley grow its power in California? Join Fresnoland, Zocalo Public Square and local leaders to talk Fresno politics.
Democratic leadership needs to stop with the Goldilocks politics
Despite the current political climate, Democrats are struggling to take a stand on important issues, leading to individual candidates rising in popularity by taking their own stands and calling for…
Children’s Colorado must resume care to transgender plaintiffs, state Supreme Court rules by 5-2
The Colorado Supreme Court, by a 5-2 vote, ordered Children’s Hospital Colorado on Monday to resume providing certain medical services to a group of transgender plaintiffs, which it had ceased in the face of funding threats from the federal government last year. The unusual appeal before the Supreme Court stemmed from a trial judge’s rejection […]
NYC Health and Hospitals says hackers stole medical data and fingerprints during breach affecting at least 1.8 million people
The New York public healthcare system said hackers stole personal and medical data, and scans of biometrics — including fingerprints — in one of the largest recorded breaches of 2026.
'It's kind of a no-brainer': Why pop band MUNA is tackling politics on album 'Dancing on the Wall'
“Dancing on the Wall” is a departure from MUNA’s previous work, trading the sunshine-y pop instrumentals, country influences and sweeping ballads of their self-titled album for gritty, atmospheric tracks influenced by 1990s punk and rave scenes.
Could A Simple Lab Mistake Lead Scientists to Over-Estimate Microplastics?
While microplastics are a very real issue, one new study suggests that the numbers might not be quite as bad as we've feared.
Could A Simple Lab Mistake Lead Scientists to Over-Estimate Microplastics?
While microplastics are a very real issue, one new study suggests that the numbers might not be quite as bad as we've feared.
Leela Gray raises $100K in 10 days after enactment of new Florida congressional map
'This community will not be silenced, and I will not back down.'
Texas politics has a bigger antisemitism problem than District C
Joe Panzarella’s runoff win came despite a late attack over a CAIR endorsement, but other Texas candidates deserve far more serious scrutiny over antisemitism, writes Opinion Editor Evan Mintz.
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.
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One of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics within the Republican Party faces a tough primary challenge in Kentucky’s state primary | 97.3 The Sky
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