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The Politics Hour: A tightening D.C. Mayor's race and Virginia Governor Spanberger's vetoes
City Cast DC's Michael Schaffer talks a tightening mayor's race and VA Del. Paul Krizek on why retail cannabis is stalled again in the Commonwealth. Plus, Prince George's County Councilmember Jolene Ivey.
NASA Highlights 2025 International Space Station Science Results
To dive deeper into the International Space Station research achievements from the past year, browse the 2025 Annual Highlights of Results, which NASA
Google launches Gemini for Science AI tools | ETIH EdTech News
AI in education and edtech research shift as Google launches Gemini for Science, with Google Labs tools for literature insights, hypothesis generation, computational discovery, and Science Skills in Google Antigravity. ETIH edtech news looks at Google DeepMind, Google Cloud, NotebookLM, Co-Scientist
SpaceX Sees a Huge Market for Its Business. Most of It Isn’t Space-Related.
SpaceX said in its IPO filing yesterday that it estimates a “TAM,” or total addressable market—a business term for potential revenue opportunities—of $28.5 trillion. The figure includes: $370 billion in Space from space-enabled solutions and $1.6 trillion in Connectivity, including Starlink Bro
WNBA's Nneka Ogwumike has unfinished business in Los Angeles
After helping deliver a new CBA, the forward is back where she became a WNBA star and looks to lead the Sparks to the playoffs.
‘Still shakes me’: Contractor recounts finding human skull in S.C. business
A contractor found human remains on Tuesday in the crawl space of a South Carolina business.
'Live Music Doesn’t Seem To Have A Ceiling Right Now': Q's With Proactiv Entertainment MD Nicolas Renna
Proactiv Entertainment, is one of Spain’s leading promoters and producers of large-scale live entertainment, operating across three main business divisions:
Scientists Found the Biggest Factor in How Long You’ll Live. There’s Not Much You Can Do About It.
Genetics were thought to play only a secondary role in determining lifespan—turns out, it’s quite the opposite.
Student Spotlight: Samuel Roubin | Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy
Samuel Roubin, MAS is a Graduate Student Research Assistant at the Spatial Science for Public Health Center
Scammers are abusing an internal Microsoft account to send email spam
The loophole allows spammers and scammers to send emails from a legitimate Microsoft email address typically used for sending genuine account alerts.
The Banks That Won a Piece of SpaceX’s Colossal I.P.O.
Across Wall Street, bankers have been clamoring to lead what is expected to be the biggest-ever initial public offering.
How to cover a Legislature that does its business in private
Minnesota Legislature transparency questions: when do the lines between political performance and consequential legislation intersect?
New study shows drinking water filtration systems may add months to lifespan
As more than two billion people worldwide still lack access to safely managed drinking water, new research from the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW–Madison investigates the effects of early-life ...
Syensqo to Review Performance and Care Unit to Focus on Specialty Materials
The chemicals company is seeking to become a pure-play specialty materials and tech company, increasing its exposure to aerospace and defense, electronics, healthcare, energy and advanced mobility applications.
Here are SpaceX's most important deadlines from its S-1 filing
SpaceX's S-1 filing includes timelines for when the company expects Starship to begin payload deliveries and deploy its next-gen Starlink satellites.
Both sides say 'politics' being injected into Alex Murdaugh's retrial
Death penalty debate sparks political debate, as both sides are accusing the opponent of \
Maternity care deserts are common in Louisiana. Compare states, parishes
Nearly one-third of Louisiana parishes face limited or no access to maternity care, impacting maternal and infant outcomes. Figures from Tulane University's Newcomb Institute reveal stark disparities across the state.
Ebola case sparks stricter health checks in Goma
Residents entering the eastern Congolese city of Goma from government-controlled areas were subjected to tighter health checks on Wednesday (May 20) as authorities sought to contain the spread of Ebola after one confirmed case was detected in the city, which remains under M23 occupation. Blanch Ancla has more.
Legal expert unleashes on Spanberger's new executive order targeting ICE: 'Political theater'
Gov. Abigail Spanberger signs executive order citing concerns that Trump administration could use immigration enforcement to intimidate Virginia voters.
⚖️ Referees' union denounces Florentino Pérez and Real Madrid
The Spanish Association of Football Referees (AESAF) has taken a firm step in defense of the group. The union has filed two complaints with the Anti-Violence Commission, aimed directly at Florentino P...
Opinion: Youth mental health must be a defining issue for Colorado’s next governor
Colorado can be a national leader in supporting young people’s mental health. A new coalition of state advocates and organizations is a start.
Actor Noah Wyle Leads Rally for Health Care Workers
Actor Noah Wyle leads a rally for health care workers featuring bipartisan lawmakers and other stakeholders.
Mangione supporters spark debate over press credentials
City Council Speaker Julie Menin says “the process is flawed.”
Musk’s SpaceX discloses massive losses ahead of expected record-breaking IPO
The company, whose initial public offering is expected to attract record investment, had nearly $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025 but overall lost $4.9 billion.
SpaceX IPO filing reveals Elon Musk's space economy vision
SpaceX IPO filing reveals Elon Musk's vision for Mars factories, asteroid mining, and space tourism.
AMD Announces Ryzen AI Halo, the Compact DGX Spark and Mac Mini Rival
AMD today released Ryzen AI Halo, a compact AI development computer designed by AMD to serve as a nearly full-stack machine for AI development, inferencing, and generative AI content creation. Ryzen AI Halo is designed to strike a unique balance of price, performance, and capabilities that rival App...
Why Is Space So Fascinating?
We all tuned in when the Artemis II crew splashed down off the San Diego coast. Planetary scientist and academic leader Meenakshi Wadhwa shares her thoughts on why space captures our imaginations so well.
Where do citizen science data come from?
Citizen science projects are playing an increasingly important role in ecological and conservation research worldwide. In these programs, members of the public support researchers by submitting photographs, audio recordings, observations, or even by contributing to data analysis. In Hungary, no fewer than 17 such initiatives combined their datasets in a joint study. The authors aimed to understand which socio-economic and environmental factors influence participation patterns in Hungary. By comparing the spatial distribution of citizen science data with an independent administrative dataset (municipality level data on income, education, demography, density and protected areas), the researchers identified several general trends as well as numerous project-specific relationships. For example, they found more per capita observations from municipalities with higher proportions of protected natural areas and lower population densities. Furthermore, excluding Budapest, the capital, both the proportion of people with diplomas and the proportion of elderly people showed a positive correlation with participation activity. In contrast, no consistent general pattern emerged regarding wealth or the proportion of children, although several project-specific relationships were observed. The study not only reveals how citizen science data are distributed across Hungary, but also provides robust support for the view that various biases must be taken into account when analyzing such data. The authors hope that their findings will help researchers in other countries design more effective projects and produce more accurate analyses by accounting for some of these or similar biases.
SpaceX warns that Grok's NSFW AI is risky business
SpaceX listed the chance that Grok could generate "potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery" as a risk factor in its pre-IPO paperwork.
Space debris is forcing satellites to dodge more often — costing us vital science. 'Things will get worse before they get better'
"Each time a satellite has to maneuver to avoid a potential collision, it uses fuel which is a finite and precious resource."
Anthropic is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion a month for AI compute
SpaceX and Anthropic have a major compute power deal valued at $1.25 billion a month, utilizing SpaceX's Colossus data centers for AI growth.
New obesity treatment may help preserve muscle during weight loss
Gwyneth Paltrow and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman explore retatrutide, a new triple-agonist GLP-1 therapy said to reduce side effects and spare muscle.
SpaceX IPO filing gives first look at Musk rocket company finances
SpaceX's S-1 paperwork, which pulls back the curtain on the rocket company's finances, is a required step ahead of its hotly anticipated IPO.
Cancer, Blood Research Tops Science Schedule as Spacewalk Preps Continue
The Expedition 74 crew continued exploring ways to advance cancer treatments and prevent excessive bleeding aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday. The orbital residents are also unpacking a U.S. cargo spacecraft while preparing spacesuits for an upcoming spacewalk.
‘Still shakes me’: Contractor recounts finding human skull in crawl space of Rock Hill business
The remains were discovered around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday at a business along Oakland Avenue near North Trade Street.
Jeff Bezos calls Amazon’s documentary about Melania Trump ‘a good business decision’
Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin founder and Amazon executive chair, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the wealth disparity in America, addressing the affordability gap, the controversy surrounding Amazon’s documentary about Melania Trump, and more.
PLOS One marks 20 years of advancing rigorous, multidisciplinary open science
PLOS One, the multidisciplinary open access journal published by PLOS, is marking 20 years of publishing research grounded in scientific rigor, transparency, and ethical practice. Since its launch in 2006, PLOS One has provided a platform for research to be shared, examined, and built on, across disciplines and around the world.
Ebola Crisis Sparks Debate Over Global Health Double Standards
To some Africans, the claim that the continent’s largest health agency had already bungled its response scratched a familiar wound.
A Physical Warp Drive Was Supposed to Be Impossible. Then These Scientists Found a Loophole.
Humans are one (small) step closer to traveling at faster-than-light speeds.
Interstellar's most-discussed scene is treated as exotic science fiction, but the family-separation problem it dramatises is one of the more actively studied subjects in long-duration mission planning.
The scene that has stayed with most viewers of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is not the wave-planet, or the visualised black hole, or the climactic library of moments. It is the one in the middle of the film where Matthew McConaughey’s character, Cooper, watches twenty-three years of his children’s recorded video messages, having lost that span […]
Mars shines in ethereal photo from Psyche space probe
NASA's asteroid explorer is on a 2-billion-mile mission.
HBJ wins 6 national business journalism awards, earns top newspaper honor
The Hartford Business Journal won six national editorial excellence awards from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers, including a gold award for best newspaper in the medium-sized tabloid category. The […]
The Wellness Conversation: Sexual Health - Changes, Comfort & Connection
For many women, sexual health changes throughout life, but conversations about those changes don’t always happen openly.“Sexual health is such a large part of women’s overall health,” said Cassandra Gray, MD, OhioHealth OBGYN on The Wellness Conversation. “But it’s not always something people feel comfortable talking about.”Sexual ...
Industry Experts Testify on Rise of Sports Betting & Prediction Markets
A Senate Commerce subcommittee holds a hearing on the expansion of sports betting and prediction markets.
Thrillz Atlanta indoor amusement park opens in June: What to expect
Thrillz Atlanta, a new indoor amusement park in metro Atlanta off of Spaghetti Junction, offers attractions like a 35-foot slide and airbag obstacle courses.
Frank Mitloehner named UC Davis animal science chair
His appointment is effective June 1.
Scientists bring crop protection research to local science classes
As the world’s population continues to grow, farmers across the globe are working hard to feed more than 8 billion humans. Agriculture at that scale requires interventions, including herbicides and pesticides to keep crops healthy and free from disease and insect infestations. Chemical herbicides and pesticides were, and are, a common solution...
NASA’s Fermi Glimpses Power Source of Supercharged Supernovae
An international team studying data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope concludes the mission detected a rare, unusually luminous supernova. The
3 festivals kick off Memorial Day weekend in Columbus
Columbus is hosting three big festivals this Memorial Day weekend. Get the scoop on what, when, where, and the attractions at each event.
Sharks are helping scientists improve weather forecasts
Forecasters already rely on satellites, buoys and hurricane hunter aircraft to monitor ocean conditions. Sharks, however, may offer a way to fill gaps in places where traditional tools are sparse or expensive.
Astrolab's FLIP rover to carry NASA science, supporting Artemis moon base
Astrolab's FLIP rover, launching from Kennedy Space Center this year, will carry NASA science and tech to the moon, all in support of the moon base.
UNMC's NE SciFest spawns 'incredible celebration of science'
Take a look at some of the scenes from around the popular month-long science festival, presented by UNMC.
Pep Guardiola’s future plans after leaving Manchester City
Pep Guardiola will reportedly leave Manchester City at the end of the season.The Spaniard’s contract doesn’t expire until June 2027, but he has decided the time is right to step down from his role...
‘Cockroach Janata Party’: Top Indian judge’s comment sparks satire, protest
Controversial remark by Supreme Court chief justice triggers a political movement, with thousands of Gen Z signing in.
Fells Point bar owner warns vacant storefronts signal strain on Maryland businesses
Sitting inside Max’s Taphouse in Fells Point, owner Gail Furman discusses the stretch of vacant spaces near one of Baltimore’s most recognizable bars.
Jack Davis, the most feared and loathed man in San Francisco politics, dies at 79
How a kid who grew up in a Pennsylvania funeral parlor went from gay rights activist to S.F. political kingmaker
Scientists found a giant magnetic “twist” hidden inside the Milky Way
Astronomers have uncovered a strange magnetic “flip” hidden inside the Milky Way. Using a new radio telescope, researchers mapped the galaxy’s magnetic field in unprecedented detail and discovered that a mysterious reversal in the Sagittarius Arm cuts diagonally across space. The finding could reshape how scientists understand the structure and future evolution of our galaxy.
Google and Xreal's 'Project Aura' XR Smart Glasses Are Legit
The spatial computing experience isn't as immersive as an XR headset, but maybe it doesn't need to be.
Possible human remains found in crawl space of Rock Hill business
Officers were called around 11:30 a.m. to a business in the 300 block of Oakland Ave. after workers renovating the property found the remains in the crawl space.
Possible human remains discovered at Rock Hill business: Police
The Rock Hill Police Department is investigating the discovery of possible human remains in the crawl space of a business on Oakland Ave.
Google’s AI future demands trust — and your personal data
Gemini Spark is giving Google a whole new level of access to your data.
"I'll buy 10 of those"—NASA science chief yearns for mass-produced satellites
How in the hell do I get more science into space? That is my goal."
Shakira's eight-year tax fraud nightmare ends with acquittal in Spain
Shakira has maintained her innocence for eight years as Spain filed three separate tax fraud cases against her. With an acquittal on Monday, she cleared her name.
Environmental Science Classes Earn Eco-Educator Award — Central Catholic High School
Central Catholic’s AP Environmental Science classes recently earned the Eco-Educator Award from the S.A.V.E. (Science Alliance for Valuing the Environment) Foundation. The S.A.V.E. Eco-Educator Award is a regional honor celebrating Toledo-area teachers who exhibit a strong commitment to en
Docs Live and voice AI in Google Keep let you talk to create, ‘Google Pics’ announced
Google at I/O 2026 announced AI voice features for Docs and Keep. The company also unveiled “Google Pics” as the newest Workspace app.
Gemini app rolling out ‘Neural Expressive’ redesign, 3.5 Flash, 24/7 Spark agent, & Daily Brief
At I/O 2026, Google announced major updates for the Gemini app, starting with a new 3.5 Flash model that offers...
Google Unveils New Gemini AI Agent for Personal Tasks
The tech firm highlights both Spark and Omni, a video-creation tool, at its annual developer conference.
Mango founder’s son arrested in connection to father’s plunging death
Jonathan Andic, the son of the late founder of Spanish fashion giant Mango, was arrested Tuesday in connection with his father’s death in 2024.
Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame snub sparks political bias debate
OutKick founder Clay Travis discusses Bill Belichick’s NFL Hall of Fame rejection and weighs in on LIV Golf’s reported money struggles on ‘Varney & Co.’
Spark Science Center ignites curiosity with interactive exhibits and hands-on fun
The new Spark Science Center is full of exhibits that feature STEAM; science, technology, engineering, arts, and math...
How political parties took control of the EU Parliament’s bureaucracy — and sparked a staff rebellion
The Parliament’s administrative staff are supposed to be non-political, but unions say that’s not the case.
UT Health San Antonio researcher awarded $2.1M award to study cellular structures - UT Health San Antonio
Like a busy restaurant kitchen, our cells depend on well-organized working spaces to assemble the “recipes” that keep the body healthy. When these spaces are disrupted, important functions like gene regulation and DNA repair can go awry, promoting diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. UT San Antonio scientist David Libich, PhD, associate professor in […]
Garden Grows into Therapeutic Space at Kettering Health Behavioral Medical Center
To boost the behavioral health experience of patients, a therapeutic garden was created at Kettering Health Behavioral Medical Center.
Stark County warns ATV riders to stay away from 'orphan' landfill
Stark County officials are warning trespassers and ATV users to stay off the 'orphan' Exit C&D Landfill in Osnaburg Township.
Retirees are worried about the cost of healthcare — and who can blame them?
The increase in Medicare Part B premiums has sparked concerns about out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
Grad hopes to advance women’s health in space
Duffield Engineering graduate Priya Abiram ’25 is working toward a future where space travel is designed to support all bodies.
Vast Launches Satellite Bus Business Line
The commercial space station company announced this morning that it would start selling satellite buses, specifically targeting the low-cost, high-volume, high-power niche for missions from comms, to EO, to national-security programs.
XTI Aerospace's Drone Nerds Business Adds Agremo Crop Monitoring and Field Analytics Platform to Enterprise Software Portfolio
/PRNewswire/ -- XTI Aerospace, Inc. (Nasdaq: XTIA) ("XTI Aerospace," "XTI," or the "Company"), an aerospace and advanced technology platform and parent company...
VIDEO: NFIB’s Josh McLeod Discusses Top Small Business Issues on C-SPAN
WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 19, 2026) – NFIB Director of Federal Government Relations Josh McLeod joined C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Monday to discuss the current state of the small business economy and the top issues that are impacting Main Street. McLeod explains how the 20% Small Business Deduction
MICC kicks off 2026 small business engagement, offers one-on-one sessions
The U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command kicks off its 2026 Advanced Planning Briefing for Industry May 18, bringing together contracting professionals, small business representatives and industry partners for a week long engagement focused on transparency, innovation and Army readiness. Hosted May 18-22 virtually by MICC’s Office of Small Business Programs, the 2026 APBI began with day one briefings from senior Army and MICC leaders, including MICC Commanding General Brig. Gen. Freddy Adams and MICC Deputy to the Commanding General Clay Cole. Attendees also heard from the Department of the Army Office of Small Business Programs, representatives from MICC’s Office of Small Business Programs and leaders from the 418th Contracting Support Brigade, 419th Contracting Support Brigade, the Field Directorate Office at Fort Eustis and the Field Directorate Office at Fort Sam Houston.
Europe's oldest science park could be redeveloped
Cambridge Science Park submits plans which could create 20,000 jobs and new public spaces.
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.
Cambridge Science Park plans create '20,000 new jobs and public spaces'
Cambridge Science Park submits plans which could create 20,000 jobs and new public spaces.
WATCH: A Spacecraft Is Launching to Study How Earth Survives Solar Storms
The first-ever X-ray observations of our planet's magnetic field.
Seager to the injured list
Corey Seager has landed on the injured list due to back spasms
A strange ripple in spacetime could be the first fingerprint of dark matter
Black holes crashing together may be revealing clues about dark matter hidden across the universe. Physicists created a new model predicting how dark matter could subtly distort gravitational waves produced during black hole mergers. When they tested the method on real LIGO data, one signal stood out as potentially carrying a dark matter imprint.
Hidden GI struggles in children with autism spark $12.9M Duke-UNC Health study
A Raleigh fourth grader is helping researchers highlight a hidden struggle for many children with autism: chronic GI issues. Duke Health and UNC Health are launching a $12.9 million national study aimed at improving treatment options.
Trucking insurance: How to make underwriters fight for your business
An Overdrive 2025 Small Fleet Champ's flatbed biz makes good on growth goals with a transparent promise to owner-operators: 15% of the gross for costs, no insurance chargebacks. "We had companies fighting over our business" this year, he said, with similarly transparent ELD data engagement.
Ask Pinstripe Alley: Yankees mailbag questions request
A lot went wrong for New York in a week’s span. What can they do about it?
NASA Spaceline Current Awareness List #1,200 15 May 2026 (Space Life Science Research Results)
NASA Spaceline Current Awareness List
Four NASA payloads to fly on Astrolab’s first lunar rover
Astrolab’s first lunar rover will carry four NASA payloads on a mission planned to launch later this year.
To help boost Indigenous enrollment in science majors, UMaine Machias is adding Native perspectives
The number of Native Americans enrolling in college has declined by 40% in the last decade and a half. The disparities are particularly noticeable in science and engineering, where Native American students are underrepresented at all higher education levels.
NASA Selects Next Class of Space Health Postdoctoral Fellows
The NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) has selected two early‑career scientists for its next class of postdoctoral fellows.
Trump’s Taiwan ‘negotiating chip’ remark sparks alarm over how far he'd shift US-China policy
Trump suggests $14 billion Taiwan weapons package could be used as leverage in China negotiations, drawing swift pushback from Taiwan's president.
Viewers Are Dragging This Show Online But Are Also Secretly Obsessed With It
A new season of a beloved series is already sparking intense reactions online, with viewers calling it everything from painfully relatable to full-on “rage bait.” See what all the chatter is about here.
Google is rolling out its redesigned Workspace app icons
Google’s Workspace icons got an ombre makeover.
Ford Europe plans five new vehicles to turn around passenger business
Although it has leadership in commercial vehicles on the continent, the Blue Oval has struggled with market share in the retail space.
Yakima Symphony Orchestra launches summer chamber series
The Yakima Symphony Orchestra will take Beethoven beyond the concert hall this summer with a new chamber music series featuring performances at libraries, wineries and community spaces across the Yakima
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.