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Polish scientists and students rally in campaign for 3% funding target

Polish scientists and students have been flooding social media with calls on the government to raise research and development spending as part of 3% for Science, 100% for Poland, a campaign born earlier this month out of frustration with chronic underfunding in the academic sector. On May 27, thousands took the slogan on to the streets.The EU has been trying to convince member states to raise their R&D expenditures to 3% of GDP for more than two decades, but the idea has never gained traction in capitals. Finance ministers were too busy plugging budget holes created in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, then the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and now the war in Iran.Critics say that countries missed or ignored the target because it is voluntary, but also because research communities have rarely raised their voice to put pressure on national governments. The European Commission hopes to make the target legally binding in the upcoming European Research Area Act, an EU-wide regulation that should be announced by the end of the year. Academia in Poland has been faced with a funding crisis for years, often leaving its members with no other choice but to work abroad in order to access better resources, or leave the sector altogether in the hope of earning a decent living. The risk, in the long-term, is that brain drain stifles local innovation capacity and technological competitiveness.In just a few weeks, the movement rallied nationwide support, including from major academic bodies and trade unions such as the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland and the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Its public petition collected more than 23,000 signatures. On May 27, it formed the first large protest for science in Poland, gathering thousands of people in front of the parliament building in Warsaw.Ilona Uryga-Bugajska, representative of the Marie Curie Alumni Association Poland Chapter, was there. “The protest was peaceful, with no incidents reported, and the entire event took place in a respectful and calm atmosphere,” she said. Banners she saw in the crowd carried slogans such as “A little longer and I’ll be teaching in a supermarket,” “National culture, starvation salary,” “Stop the destruction of science,” “Passion will not pay the rent,” “Without action, don’t expect a better future,” and “Pull science out of the hole.” She also observed a strong presence of young researchers, who are on the frontline of Poland’s academic crisis.“Academics are usually people who prefer discussion, analysis, dialogue and compromise. We are not a group that protests easily,” said Katarzyna Marzec, professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Jagiellonian University Medical College and AGH University of Krakow, who also took part. “But many of us feel that we have been pushed against the wall.”Aleksandra Rutkowska, translational neuroscientist and research group leader at the Medical University of Gdańsk, agreed. “Frustration in the scientific community is very high,” she said. “Science is often used politically as a symbol of innovation and modernity, but the everyday reality inside many institutions is much more difficult. There is a large gap between the public narrative and the actual condition of the sector.”Maria Wiktoria Górna, head of the structural biology group at the University of Warsaw and one of the organisers of the movement, told Science|Business that the campaign would continue without proven results. This might involve another strike in the autumn, she said. “Empty promises are not enough by now.”Campaign demandsAccording to Uryga-Bugajska, the organisers officially presented their demands and concerns to representatives of the government present at the event. These included Marek Gzik, deputy minister of science and higher education, and Karolina Zioło-Pużuk, secretary of state of that same ministry.The headline demand, for the government to increase national spending on R&D to 3% of GDP by 2030, should be within Poland’s economic capacity, Rutkowska said. “The real question is whether there is genuine long-term political commitment to treating science as a strategic priority rather than a slogan.”In 2024, R&D expenditure in Poland stood at 1.41% of GDP, which is slightly above the average for central and eastern Europe, with countries such as Czechia recording 1.82%, Hungary 1.31% and Romania 0.46%. However, it falls noticeably short of the EU average of 2.24%, which just a handful of countries exceed, including Germany, Belgium and Sweden.Campaigners are also asking for fair wages for scientific staff, including PhD stipends and junior academic salaries, which are widely considered uncompetitive. Starting doctoral scholarships amount to some €843 gross per month, when the statutory minimum wage stands at €1,135. By pushing early-career researchers out of Poland, growing precarity has caused a generational gap in the academic workforce, with just 25% of lecturers aged under 40. In this context, the movement fears that scientific careers could soon be accessible to a privileged minority only.Grzegorz Spólnik is a case in point. After 15 years working in mass spectrometry at the Polish Academy of Sciences, he decided to leave partly “to earn enough money to live a normal life,” he said. “At that time, my earnings were similar to those of people working in grocery shops, and the work-life balance is something that does not exist in science, or is very hard to achieve.”Now a senior field service engineer for Polish laboratory equipment supplier Bioanalytic, he would consider going back to research, “but never in the public sector, maybe some start-up or a big private company with ambitious R&D.”The campaigners want to see more support for basic research and have called for €236 million to be added to the budget of the National Science Centre (NCN) in 2027 so that the average grant application success rate does not fall below 25%.“At the protest, there was a banner I particularly liked: ‘NCN is not a lottery.’ Unfortunately, for many researchers, it increasingly feels exactly like one,” Marzec said. “Personally, I am one of the lucky ones. I work at two of the strongest institutions in the country, where the research standards are very high. I know that in many other institutions, the situation is much worse and obtaining funding for research at an early-career stage is becoming nearly impossible.”Rutkowska also considers herself fortunate. After studying abroad and holding a postdoctoral position, she returned to Poland, where her pay was supported through an NCN-funded project linked to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. “This also made me very aware that good research conditions in Poland often depend on external competitive funding rather than on stable support from the system itself,” she said.Long-term strategyBeyond the lack of funds for both salaries and grants, scientists believe that the issue is structural. “The biggest problem at the moment is the complete lack of a clear long-term strategy for the development of science and research from the current government,” Marzec said. “Everything ends with declarations and promises that are never truly followed by concrete actions or structural reforms.”Rutkowska agreed, citing a lack of infrastructure, continuity and long-term institutional support.“Running a research group in Poland often means functioning as an entire institution at once,” she said. “I am a principal investigator, a mentor, a recruiter, a project administrator and, when needed, still someone who returns to the lab bench to help with experiments,” she went on. “This creates a large hidden workload that takes time and energy away from actual science. At times, it feels as though scientists are no longer expecting extra help; we simply hope the system will stop creating additional obstacles that make research unnecessarily difficult.”Related articlesStrategic thinking: Germany funds joint research with Poland and FrancePoland to transfer €30M of regional funds to boost Horizon Europe participationPoland is funding fewer basic research grants as high inflation hitsIn short, “academics are expected to teach, publish papers, apply for grants and conduct high-quality research, while funding and salaries remain very limited,” said Uryga-Bugajska, who returned to her home country after 13 years in the UK.According to Marzec, another issue is the way that research institutions are evaluated. Previously, this took place every four years, with a clear differentiation between stronger and weaker institutions. “The current government, perhaps to avoid political backlash, effectively concluded that everyone is doing well, so in practice no meaningful evaluation took place,” she said.But in her view, “some form of serious assessment is necessary” to ensure the excellence and international competitiveness of Polish institutions, and to determine how to best use public resources and where institutional structures need reform. “Some institutions may need to rethink hiring practices in order to attract ambitious young researchers who are capable of obtaining competitive grants and building internationally visible research groups.” Rutkowska has already had to adapt. “When hiring PhD students, I often have to combine different funding sources creatively to make positions attractive enough for talented people to stay in science,” she said. “Many young researchers do not see a stable future in academia in Poland, and that is deeply worrying.”

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May 28 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
Polish scientists and students rally in campaign for better conditions

Polish scientists and students have been flooding social media with calls on the government to raise research and development spending as part of 3% for Science, 100% for Poland, a campaign born earlier this month out of frustration with chronic underfunding in the academic sector. On May 27, thousands took the slogan on to the streets.The EU has been trying to convince member states to raise their R&D expenditures to 3% of GDP for more than two decades, but the idea has never gained traction in capitals. Finance ministers were too busy plugging budget holes created in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, then the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and now the war in Iran.Critics say that countries missed or ignored the target because it is voluntary, but also because research communities have rarely raised their voice to put pressure on national governments. The European Commission hopes to make the target legally binding in the upcoming European Research Area Act, an EU-wide regulation that should be announced by the end of the year. Academia in Poland has been faced with a funding crisis for years, often leaving its members with no other choice but to work abroad in order to access better resources, or leave the sector altogether in the hope of earning a decent living. The risk, in the long-term, is that brain drain stifles local innovation capacity and technological competitiveness.In just a few weeks, the movement rallied nationwide support, including from major academic bodies and trade unions such as the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland and the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Its public petition collected more than 23,000 signatures. On May 27, it formed the first large protest for science in Poland, gathering thousands of people in front of the parliament building in Warsaw.Ilona Uryga-Bugajska, representative of the Marie Curie Alumni Association Poland Chapter, was there. “The protest was peaceful, with no incidents reported, and the entire event took place in a respectful and calm atmosphere,” she said. Banners she saw in the crowd carried slogans such as “A little longer and I’ll be teaching in a supermarket,” “National culture, starvation salary,” “Stop the destruction of science,” “Passion will not pay the rent,” “Without action, don’t expect a better future,” and “Pull science out of the hole.” She also observed a strong presence of young researchers, who are on the frontline of Poland’s academic crisis.“Academics are usually people who prefer discussion, analysis, dialogue and compromise. We are not a group that protests easily,” said Katarzyna Marzec, professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Jagiellonian University Medical College and AGH University of Krakow, who also took part. “But many of us feel that we have been pushed against the wall.”Aleksandra Rutkowska, translational neuroscientist and research group leader at the Medical University of Gdańsk, agreed. “Frustration in the scientific community is very high,” she said. “Science is often used politically as a symbol of innovation and modernity, but the everyday reality inside many institutions is much more difficult. There is a large gap between the public narrative and the actual condition of the sector.”Maria Wiktoria Górna, head of the structural biology group at the University of Warsaw and one of the organisers of the movement, told Science|Business that the campaign would continue without proven results. This might involve another strike in the autumn, she said. “Empty promises are not enough by now.”Campaign demandsAccording to Uryga-Bugajska, the organisers officially presented their demands and concerns to representatives of the government present at the event. These included Marek Gzik, deputy minister of science and higher education, and Karolina Zioło-Pużuk, secretary of state of that same ministry.The headline demand, for the government to increase national spending on R&D to 3% of GDP by 2030, should be within Poland’s economic capacity, Rutkowska said. “The real question is whether there is genuine long-term political commitment to treating science as a strategic priority rather than a slogan.”In 2024, R&D expenditure in Poland stood at 1.41% of GDP, which is slightly above the average for central and eastern Europe, with countries such as Czechia recording 1.82%, Hungary 1.31% and Romania 0.46%. However, it falls noticeably short of the EU average of 2.24%, which just a handful of countries exceed, including Germany, Belgium and Sweden.Campaigners are also asking for fair wages for scientific staff, including PhD stipends and junior academic salaries, which are widely considered uncompetitive. Starting doctoral scholarships amount to some €843 gross per month, when the statutory minimum wage stands at €1,135. By pushing early-career researchers out of Poland, growing precarity has caused a generational gap in the academic workforce, with just 25% of lecturers aged under 40. In this context, the movement fears that scientific careers could soon be accessible to a privileged minority only.Grzegorz Spólnik is a case in point. After 15 years working in mass spectrometry at the Polish Academy of Sciences, he decided to leave partly “to earn enough money to live a normal life,” he said. “At that time, my earnings were similar to those of people working in grocery shops, and the work-life balance is something that does not exist in science, or is very hard to achieve.”Now a senior field service engineer for Polish laboratory equipment supplier Bioanalytic, he would consider going back to research, “but never in the public sector, maybe some start-up or a big private company with ambitious R&D.”The campaigners want to see more support for basic research and have called for €236 million to be added to the budget of the National Science Centre (NCN) in 2027 so that the average grant application success rate does not fall below 25%.“At the protest, there was a banner I particularly liked: ‘NCN is not a lottery.’ Unfortunately, for many researchers, it increasingly feels exactly like one,” Marzec said. “Personally, I am one of the lucky ones. I work at two of the strongest institutions in the country, where the research standards are very high. I know that in many other institutions, the situation is much worse and obtaining funding for research at an early-career stage is becoming nearly impossible.”Rutkowska also considers herself fortunate. After studying abroad and holding a postdoctoral position, she returned to Poland, where her pay was supported through an NCN-funded project linked to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. “This also made me very aware that good research conditions in Poland often depend on external competitive funding rather than on stable support from the system itself,” she said.Long-term strategyBeyond the lack of funds for both salaries and grants, scientists believe that the issue is structural. “The biggest problem at the moment is the complete lack of a clear long-term strategy for the development of science and research from the current government,” Marzec said. “Everything ends with declarations and promises that are never truly followed by concrete actions or structural reforms.”Rutkowska agreed, citing a lack of infrastructure, continuity and long-term institutional support.“Running a research group in Poland often means functioning as an entire institution at once,” she said. “I am a principal investigator, a mentor, a recruiter, a project administrator and, when needed, still someone who returns to the lab bench to help with experiments,” she went on. “This creates a large hidden workload that takes time and energy away from actual science. At times, it feels as though scientists are no longer expecting extra help; we simply hope the system will stop creating additional obstacles that make research unnecessarily difficult.”Related articlesStrategic thinking: Germany funds joint research with Poland and FrancePoland to transfer €30M of regional funds to boost Horizon Europe participationPoland is funding fewer basic research grants as high inflation hitsIn short, “academics are expected to teach, publish papers, apply for grants and conduct high-quality research, while funding and salaries remain very limited,” said Uryga-Bugajska, who returned to her home country after 13 years in the UK.According to Marzec, another issue is the way that research institutions are evaluated. Previously, this took place every four years, with a clear differentiation between stronger and weaker institutions. “The current government, perhaps to avoid political backlash, effectively concluded that everyone is doing well, so in practice no meaningful evaluation took place,” she said.But in her view, “some form of serious assessment is necessary” to ensure the excellence and international competitiveness of Polish institutions, and to determine how to best use public resources and where institutional structures need reform. “Some institutions may need to rethink hiring practices in order to attract ambitious young researchers who are capable of obtaining competitive grants and building internationally visible research groups.” Rutkowska has already had to adapt. “When hiring PhD students, I often have to combine different funding sources creatively to make positions attractive enough for talented people to stay in science,” she said. “Many young researchers do not see a stable future in academia in Poland, and that is deeply worrying.”

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May 28 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
Cumberland's Jha takes home fourth place in international science competition

CUMBERLAND – A 9th-grade student at Cumberland High School secured a fourth-place win at an international competition that brought together the top young science and engineering students from around the

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May 28 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • valleybreeze.com
Marc Benioff said Salesforce is still hiring more in one department

Marc Benioff discusses the role in Salesforce that AI agents are yet to be able to replace, and it's not that of an engineer.

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May 28 • 12:09 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Meta Launches New Enterprise Push to Boost Business Adoption of Its AI Tools

Meta Platformsplans to place engineers and product managers inside large corporate customers as part of a new unit at the social-media giant to push businesses to use its AI tools and services. In an internal memo, senior executive Naomi Gleit said the new organization, called Enterprise ...

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May 27 • 6:09 PM EDT • Business • theinformation.com
How a health clinic in South Africa is navigating Trump's cuts to HIV funding

Community health programs in South Africa have been heavily impacted by U.S. cuts to global aid. Which means there are fewer community and health workers to support low-income people with HIV and AIDS.We recently visited one of those programs, called We Care, to learn more about the experiences of the few employees who still remain.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.This episode was produced by Matt Ozug, Karen Zamora and Elena Burnett, with audio engineering by Peter Ellena.It was edited by Patrick Jarenwattananon and William Troop.Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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May 27 • 5:00 PM EDT • Health • npr.org
High-Signal Publisher
AI tool helps remote monitoring clinics explore patient data

The new AI-enabled resource works like a search engine and delivers answers in seconds.

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May 27 • 4:16 PM EDT • Business • cardiovascularbusiness.com
Google’s AI Search is pushing users away, and Bing has a rare opening it has not seen in years. What happens next is up to Microsoft.

As competitor search engines surge on Google's AI obsession, Microsoft should exploit the situation. But it'll go against everything it's been doing up until now.

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May 27 • 3:02 PM EDT • Technology • windowscentral.com
How AWS SMGS uses an AI-powered conversational assistant to transform business management with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

In this post, we share how we built NarrateAI using Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to deliver business intelligence at scale for the AWS SMGS (Sales, Marketing and Global Services) organization. You will learn about: the two-layer architecture that separates batch processing from real-time interaction, the specialized AI agents that power intelligent routing and validation, key engineering patterns for production deployment, and how to build similar solutions with AWS services.

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May 27 • 2:51 PM EDT • Business • aws.amazon.com
STEM Expo brings science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to students, families
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May 27 • 10:24 AM EDT • Science • cbsnews.com
High-Signal Publisher
Chinese Startup Fires 'Blazing' Oxygen-Rich Engine for Deep Space Missions

The liquid propulsion system can be reused with variable thrust and multiple restarts.

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May 27 • 10:20 AM EDT • Technology • gizmodo.com
Licensable picture: Graduates process out during the A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School graduation at the Bell Auditorium in

Graduates process out during the A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School graduation at the Bell Auditorium in Augusta, Ga., on Wednesday, May...

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May 27 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • reutersconnect.com
Licensable picture: Graduates process out during the A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School graduation at the Bell Auditorium in

Graduates process out during the A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School graduation at the Bell Auditorium in Augusta, Ga., on Wednesday, May...

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May 27 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • reutersconnect.com
Blu Ocean Innovations Introduces AI Visibility Strategy As User Habits Shift

With a majority of consumers from all generations reporting using AI as a search engine, Blu Ocean Innovations, LLC announces the launch of the ...

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May 27 • 2:34 AM EDT • Business • markets.businessinsider.com
Nanoparticles genetically modify several human cell types

In a demonstration that helps pave the way for gene therapies with fewer side effects, several human cell types were genetically modified with protein nanoparticles designed at University of Michigan Engineering and Michigan Medicine.

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May 26 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • uofmhealth.org
Man's Girlfriend Put His Backpack in What She Thought Was the Trunk of a C8 Corvette. The Hot Engine Nearly Caught Fire

A brand-new Chevrolet Corvette C8 and a melted backpack have become the latest viral combo on X after one owner claimed his girlfriend accidentally placed his bag directly on the car’s hot mid-mounted engine. The ... Read more

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May 26 • 12:28 PM EDT • Technology • autos.yahoo.com
School of Business, CLAS, and College of Engineering Host MIP 2026 Research Conference at UConn Stamford

Google, Nvidia, Uber and other tech companies attended

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May 26 • 11:26 AM EDT • Business • today.uconn.edu
Leading the shift in liquid dietary supplements through science and delivery

Uroš Gotar, Chief Innovation Officer at TOSLA, explains how scientific validation, flavour engineering, and liquid delivery are shaping the next phase of growth in nutraceuticals

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May 26 • 5:17 AM EDT • Science • nutraceuticalbusinessreview.com
Reservations Requested For FONS Annual Meeting To Include Pig Roast-Picnic Dinner, Live Entertainment

The 2026 Friends of Newtown Seniors Membership Meeting will be conducted Thursday, June 11, at 5 pm, at Newtown Community Center, 8 Simpson Street. The event is open to Newtown residents age 55 and ov...

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May 26 • 3:30 AM EDT • Entertainment • newtownbee.com
Leo International Precision Health AG builds a Synchronised, End-to-End Precision Healthcare Engine Across the Entire Patient Journey

LIPH AG introduces a synchronised “Precision Health Engine” designed to transform healthcare from reactive treatment into predictive, personalised and continuous care. Planegg / Martinsried, Germany, May 26, 2026 – Leo International Precision Health AG (“LIPH AG” or the “Company”, ticker symbol: LEOW), a holding company building a global AI-driven healthcare ecosystem and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, continues to expand its precision health platform integrating Healthcare Services, Me

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May 26 • 3:00 AM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com
Loyola’s Data Science in Everyday Life

Loyola University Maryland will hold “Data Science in Everyday Life: Applicability, AI, and Other Trends,” a networking and panel event exploring data science from a range of perspectives across industry and government.A keynote address delivered by data science industry expert David Norton, MBA ’95, will begin the event. Norton is the chairman and chief marketing officer of GALE Partners, a digital and analytics-based branding agency. He was named Chief Marketing Officer of the Year in 2010 and wrote “The High Roller Experience,” a book about data-driven marketing.Norton will moderate the panel discussion, which includes:• Elise Beisecker, senior data scientist in the U.S. Government Accountability Office• Amanda Muller, Ph.D., chief of responsible technology at Northrop Grumman• Franklin Hernandez, MBA ’13, M.S. ’20, senior lead machine learning engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton• Joseph Girsch, M.S. ’21, machine learning analyst at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory• Mark Wicks, retired vice president of data science, data scientist, machine learning engineer and software developerHernandez and Girsch each earned an M.S. in Data Science from Loyola.The event is free and open to the public. Networking and appetizers will begin at 5:30 p.m. followed by the keynote address and panel discussion at 6:30 p.m. and audience questions and closing remarks at 7:30 p.m. To learn more and register to attend or stream the event online, visit the event webpage.

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May 25 • 10:51 PM EDT • Science • wypr.org
These Are 11 Of The Most Powerful Semi-Truck Engines Ever Built

Hauling heavy cargo requires serious power, and these semi-truck engines deliver.

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May 25 • 4:45 PM EDT • Technology • jalopnik.com
Epic Games reveals a first look at Unreal Engine 6 with a Rocket League makeover

We still don’t have a release date for the new game engine.

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May 25 • 2:06 PM EDT • Technology • engadget.com
Tesla Teases the Possibility of Tri-Motor, Model 3 Plaid

Tesla's VP of Engineering Lars Moravy reveals that he thinks "all the time" about putting carbon-sleeved motors into a tri-motor Model 3 Plaid.

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May 25 • 12:03 PM EDT • Technology • notateslaapp.com
From garage startup to community staple: Greener Good opens new ‘creative reuse hub’ in Arlington Heights

Amanda Moller can hardly believe the business she co-founded with her mom in her garage nearly seven years ago has grown tenfold. Now, Moller and her mother, Beth Parsons, have shifted their operation...

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May 25 • 12:00 PM EDT • Business • dailyherald.com
Semiconductor decoupling. Powell's politics. Industrializing Ogaden. Free trade and the Magna Carta.

Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Feliks Topolski, 1907-1989 8th Army’s Front, Italy 1944 Semiconductor decoupling Source: FT One thing that Jerome Powell deeply understood is that chairing the Fed under current conditions is a deeply political job. “Powell has successes and mistakes to his name. But he stands out as having thought more carefully about the Fed’s democratic legitimacy than any chair since Paul Volcker,” said Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor at the Bank of England, referring to the Fed chair who successfully fought the great inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. … While Powell was at the Treasury in the early 1990s, he watched Alan Greenspan build relationships within the government. That convinced Powell he needed to follow the former Fed chair’s lead and spend more time in Congress than his predecessors Yellen and Bernanke. “The accountability for the Fed runs through Congress,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed official who is now chief economist at New Century Advisors. “That’s not just about having people on speed dial — it’s answering questions, explaining policy and getting feedback.” Source: FT Ethiopia’s PM Abiy and Nigerian business tycoon, with Chinese engineering, are driving industrialization in Ogaden/Somali region of Ethiopia. - Michael Masri’s reporting for Africa Report if fascinating. Ethiopia has launched a cluster of large industrial schemes in the Somali region, laying foundation stones for a urea plant and an oil refinery in Gode while opening the first two phases of the Ogaden LNG project. Abiy Ahmed framed the push as part of a broader strategy to link energy, agriculture and industry. “These projects embody more than industrial growth,” he said. “They represent our shared responsibility to harness opportunities, strengthen co-operation and promote peace.” The Gode urea plant, backed by Dangote Group and Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH), is designed for 3m tonnes a year. Dangote owns 60%, while EIH holds 40%. Officials say Dangote’s equity totals about $2.5bn, while the state provides land and implementation oversight. Gas from the Calub fields will be piped 108km to the site. Construction is slated for 40 months, with operations targeted for 2028. Ethiopia imports most of its fertiliser, spending more than $1.2bn a year for 1.5m–2m tonnes. Usage was roughly 1.7m tonnes in 2023, almost half of it urea, and demand for 2024–25 is put above 2.4m tonnes. If delivered on time, the Gode plant could cover domestic needs and allow exports to neighbours. Brook Taye, chief executive of EIH, called the venture “a significant milestone in the journey toward industrial self-sufficiency”. Dangote told the groundbreaking crowd that the complex would be integrated with gas supply and a polypropylene unit to support local inputs. He pointed to Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), with a capacity of more than 5,000MW, and noted his group’s cement operations and expansion plans. The Gode refinery is being developed by Golden Concord Group of China. It is designed to process 3.5m tonnes a year of crude and condensate from the Hilala field, with associated storage. Backers say it will ease foreign-exchange pressure from fuel imports and anchor further industrial activity, including a proposed steel smelting site in Dire Dawa. GCL’s chair, Zhu Gongshan, cast the project as “a key step in Ethiopia’s path to energy sovereignty”, underscoring the Beijing–Addis ties. Financing details are still being finalised, but the refinery is central to the government’s energy-security narrative. Source: The Africa Report Dangote’s Ethiopian vision: Dangote began with cement. His crown jewel, Dangote Cement, dominates Nigeria’s market and has 10 operations in other nations in Africa. The formula has been consistent: identify sectors with chronic shortages – cement, fertiliser, sugar – commit massive local investments, and scale up to serve regional demand. Ethiopia was a natural extension of that model. In 2015, Dangote launched the Mugher Cement Plant outside Addis Ababa at a cost of $600m, with an annual capacity of 2.5 million tonnes. The investment gave him a firm foothold in one of Africa’s fastest-growing construction markets. But success came with risks. In May 2018, violent unrest led to the killing of Dangote’s country manager and temporary shutdowns at Mugher. While other investors might have retreated, Dangote doubled down. Today, he is preparing to spend $400m to expand Mugher’s capacity to 5 million tonnes, alongside a new grinding unit near Addis Ababa. Cement is just one market Dangote is targeting. Ethiopia’s enormous state-controlled sugar industry, long plagued by inefficiency and debt, has struggled for years to reform. Its Omo Kuraz Sugar Development Project, touted as one of the continent’s largest initiatives, continues to face delays and mismanagement. … The most ambitious venture of all is the planned fertiliser production complex in Gode, Somali region. Publicised on 28 August 2025, the Dangote Group and Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH) deal plans one of the world’s largest single-site urea manufacturing plants. The project costs an estimated $2.5bn and has an estimated capacity of 3 million metric tonnes annually, a rate that would not only render Ethiopia independent, but even a net exporter of fertiliser. EIH, the state wealth fund of Ethiopia, will hold 40%, while 60% is held by Dangote Group. … For Dangote, Ethiopia is a trifecta: Cement demand is projected to grow by 10% annually, its sugar consumption is growing with rapid urbanisation, and fertiliser demand is all but insatiable, given that farming supports the livelihood of 70% of Ethiopians. Source: The Africa Report The stakes for Abiy are high: For Addis Ababa, the $4bn fertiliser project in Ethiopia’s Somali region is no longer simply a manufacturing investment. It is increasingly being framed as a strategic state project tied to food sovereignty, import substitution and the government’s broader attempt to build economic resilience under mounting fiscal pressure. “Becoming self-sufficient in food is our main agenda,” Abiy says during the visit. “Land is needed; we have it. Water is needed; we have it. Human resources are needed; we have it.” The scale is enormous even by African industrial standards. Once operational, the plant is expected to produce three million metric tonnes of urea annually, potentially making it one of the continent’s largest fertiliser complexes. Ethiopian officials say the project now includes a 110km gas pipeline, a 120MW power plant, a polypropylene packaging facility and a two-million-tonne NPK blending plant. For a government grappling with chronic foreign exchange shortages, ballooning import bills and pressure on agricultural productivity, the numbers matter politically as much as they do economically. The decision to anchor the project in Gode is deliberate. Long viewed as peripheral to Ethiopia’s industrial economy, the Somali region is now being repositioned by the federal government as a future irrigation and agro-industrial corridor. Officials argue that the area’s vast land reserves and access to water could eventually support large-scale commercial farming capable of reshaping Ethiopia’s food economy. The government is simultaneously building housing infrastructure for about 5,000 residents near the plant, while officials project broader industrial expansion along the corridor. Abiy goes further, comparing the long-term revenue potential of the Gode development zone with Ethiopia’s flagship state enterprise. “The investments we are making in this Gode area, combined, will generate high revenue for Ethiopia, at par with Ethiopian Airlines,” he says. Source: The Africa Report Feliks Topolski 1907-1982 Topolski’s Chronicle, ‘Nazi Revival’, Vol. 8, Is. 1-2, 1960 HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. Photo by Jakub Dziubak on Unsplash If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Grim vision of drone warfare by Sylvie Kaufmann For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe The state of the art in Colbert-studies. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was Louis XIV chief minister from 1661 to 1683 and traditionally seen as an architect of absolutism and mercantilism. Alexander Hamilton later cited him as an inspiration in 1782. Now his legacy is disputed. Daniel Dessert, the chief critic, sees Colbert as the orchestrator not so much of an absolutist state as of an elite cabal. Would be great to have a good English-language review of this important debate. Source: lhistoire Didn’t know that the Magna Carta included free trade provisions Fighting for the right to the beach in Oregon in 1967: Source: Research Gate RAF Station – British and Polish Flags, c. 1940-45, The Ingram Collection Feliks Topolski, 1907-1989 ink and wash If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe

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May 25 • 6:23 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com
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Unreal Engine 6 Revealed By Epic Games, Will Likely Power Lots Of Project Helix Titles

An early look at next-gen tech?

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May 25 • 6:00 AM EDT • Technology • purexbox.com
Computer Science Colloquium Series Presents Cybersecurity Research at the Nelson Mandela University: The Centre for Research in Information and Cyber Security (CRICS)

Abstract:This presentation provides an overview of the Centre for Research in Information and Cybersecurity (CRICS) at Nelson Mandela University and its role within the South African higher education context and cybersecurity landscape.

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May 25 • 1:27 AM EDT • Science • engineering.ucdavis.edu
Charter School Makes Waves in Science, Tech, and Engineering

Three 8th grade teams were selected from BFCCPS following an in school STEAM student showcase.

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May 25 • 12:53 AM EDT • Science • franklinobserver.town.news
Epic Games Tips Unreal Engine 6 Timeline With Rocket League Reveal, Targeting UE5’s Multithreading Wall

Epic Games hints at Unreal Engine 6 through Rocket League. Tim Sweeney's earlier comments point to a multithreaded future for the engine.

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May 24 • 2:30 PM EDT • Technology • wccftech.com
Unreal Engine 6 announced with Rocket League reveal

Psyonix revealed a “new era” of free-to-play vehicular soccer game Rocket League at Rocket League Championship Series 2026: Paris Major, which showcased the game running on Unreal Engin…

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May 24 • 1:01 PM EDT • Technology • gematsu.com
Rocket League On Unreal Engine 6 Announced At Paris Major

Epic Games and Psyonix have announced the future of Rocket League in Unreal Engine 5.

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May 24 • 12:23 PM EDT • Technology • thegamer.com
Overnight Science Digest: Our ‘mere presence in a landscape’ affects wildlife behaviors

When Humans Went Away, the Wildlife Strayed – NY Times Massive butterfly swarm becomes the talk of Santa Cruz – SF Gate Scientists reversed memory loss by recharging the brain’s tiny engines – Science…

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May 23 • 11:56 PM EDT • Science • dailykos.com
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An egg-cellent activity

Local fifth-graders learn about science, engineering through project

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May 23 • 3:00 PM EDT • Science • sanduskyregister.com
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Scientists just found a faster, cleaner way to extract lithium for EV batteries

A breakthrough lithium-extraction method could help solve one of clean energy’s dirtiest problems. Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a fast new technique that pulls lithium directly from salty underground brines using a temperature-sensitive solvent, avoiding the giant evaporation ponds that can take years and drain precious water supplies. Even better, the method works on low-quality lithium sources that current technologies struggle to use.

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May 23 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Budget conference: Florida State nets $174M in PECO funding

The sum includes nearly a $92M investment in the joint FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.

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May 22 • 9:03 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
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Bellevue teens targeting salmon die-offs and mental health win big at international science fair

Lakshmi Agrawal, a senior at Interlake High School, and Anusha Arora, a sophomore who also attends Interlake, were among more than 1,700 students from roughly 60 countries who competed at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix.

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May 22 • 12:50 PM EDT • Science • geekwire.com
iOS 26.5.1 Update for iPhones is Coming Soon

Apple's software engineers are testing iOS 26.5.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. iOS 26.5.1 will almost certainly be a minor update that fixes bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, and it will likely be released by the end of next week. The logs show that Apple has ramped up testing of iOS 26.6 as well, with a first beta of that update likely to be released at some point in June.

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May 22 • 12:23 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Seven Florida State University faculty members elected to the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida

Seven distinguished faculty members from Florida State University have been elected as new members of the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of

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May 22 • 12:01 PM EDT • Science • news.fsu.edu
‘Go for toilet’: Artemis II’s out-of-this-world plumbing problem

Investigate the engineering behind space toilets and discover how Artemis II’s crew solved a surprising plumbing problem in microgravity.

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May 22 • 11:33 AM EDT • Science • sciencefriday.com
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Infrasound: In 1998, Vic Tandy's Lab Appeared To Be Haunted. To Work Out What Was Going On, He Brought A Sword To Work

When an engineer experienced a spooky phenomenon in the lab, he did what any scientist would – wrote a paper about it.

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May 22 • 10:32 AM EDT • Science • iflscience.com
MICRO Summit Returns to Northwestern

Led by Professor Cécile Chazot, the program brought undergraduate researchers from across the country together for three days of scientific exchange, career development, and mentorship in materials science and engineering.

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May 22 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • mccormick.northwestern.edu
Charter School Makes Waves in Science, Tech, and Engineering

Three 8th grade teams were selected from BFCCPS following an in school STEAM student showcase.

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May 22 • 5:02 AM EDT • Science • franklinobserver.town.news
Learning to teach, learning to discover

Nik Sandu, an MIT materials science and engineering major and student teacher, combines research in earth sciences and magnetic materials with classroom teaching and community involvement as she prepares for a PhD.

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May 22 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • news.mit.edu
A local student is doing award-winning research on trees

Leif Speer, a freshman at Terre Haute South Vigo High School, placed in the top 25 percent of the International Science and Engineering Fair for his project on using tree rings to determine climate ch...

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May 21 • 7:27 PM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
UC Davis Undergraduates Take Top Prize at Big Bang! Business Competition

UC Davis Mike and Renée Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship awarded nearly $100,000 at the 26th annual Big Bang! Business Competition, with the top prize going to First Bite, a biomedical engineering student team developing a safer device to secure breathing tubes for infants.

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May 21 • 7:02 PM EDT • Business • engineering.ucdavis.edu
Six search engines worth trying now that Google isn’t really Google anymore

Google is about to look really different, and if you're not a fan of the AI overview feature, then you're not going to like what's coming.

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May 21 • 3:19 PM EDT • Technology • techcrunch.com
Suzuki Wins Awards at Science and Engineering Fair

Bedford High School sophomore Hanna Suzuki earned national recognition for her “Audio Augmented Reality for Celestial Objects” research project.

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May 21 • 2:28 PM EDT • Science • thebedfordcitizen.org
President Daniels in WSJ op-ed: Get the federal science money flowing

JHU president, University of Kansas chancellor urge federal agencies to release congressionally appropriated funds to fuel America's research engine

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May 21 • 1:40 PM EDT • Science • hub.jhu.edu
UNK invites high school students to explore space science this summer

Participants will gain hands-on experience in physics, astronomy and engineering.

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May 21 • 12:24 PM EDT • Science • unknews.unk.edu
Lancaster Country Day School senior wins Chemistry competition at prestigious international science fair

A Lancaster County Day senior won top honors at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, AZ, the school announced Thursday. Kienle, who has spent his junior and senior years at the ...

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May 21 • 12:04 PM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
The Great Pyramid of Giza is surprisingly earthquake-proof

Seismologists found yet another benefit to ancient Egyptian engineering.

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May 21 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • popsci.com
2026 International Science and Engineering Fair Winners

Posts Details/Default Board Post Page - Plano Independent School District

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May 21 • 10:55 AM EDT • Science • pisd.edu
Liberty Science Center Genius Gala raises record $3.2M (photos)

Liberty Science Center raised a record $3.2 million at its Genius Gala in Jersey City to support STEM education and expansion plans.

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May 21 • 9:00 AM EDT • Science • njbiz.com
Could microscopic spheres of silica help cool the planet?

Private money is bringing new ideas—and new concerns—to solar-geoengineering research

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May 21 • 8:47 AM EDT • Science • economist.com
Stellantis to launch $70 billion business plan to 2030 with 60 new model offensive

Stellantis set out a new 60 billion euro ($70 billion) business plan on Thursday that includes 60 new car models ​by 2030 - from combustion engine to fully electric vehicles - new investments ‌in technology, joint ventures with other carmakers and better use of its manufacturing capacity.

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May 21 • 7:45 AM EDT • Business • reuters.com
Stellantis launches $70 billion business plan to 2030 including 60 new models

AUBURN HILLS, Michigan, May 21 () - Stellantis set out a new 60 billion ‌euro ($70 billion) business plan on Thursday that ‌includes 60 new car models by 2030 - from combustion ​engine to fully electric vehicles - new investments in technology, joint ventures with other carmakers and better use of its manufacturing capacity. The Franco-Italian carmaker ‌said it ⁠would also refocus its sprawling 14-brand portfolio, with 70% of brand and ⁠product investments going to Jeep, Ram, Peugeot and Fiat, a

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May 21 • 7:35 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado calls for exploration of Entertainment Zone for DTLA

“Downtown Los Angeles is one of the strongest economic and cultural engines of our city, but our local businesses, hospitality workers, restaurants, bars and cultural corridors are still recovering from years of disruption,”…

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May 20 • 9:10 PM EDT • Entertainment • dailynews.com
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Q&A: The path to a PhD in computational science and engineering at MIT

MIT student Emily Williams describes her experience as the first to earn a doctorate via the PhD program in MIT's Center for Computational Science and Engineering.

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May 20 • 3:40 PM EDT • Science • news.mit.edu
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Xbox expands leadership team with major hires

Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions. The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business. His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector. Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co. Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope. His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results. For more breaking stories, sign-up to The Game Business today Subscribe In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox. The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. “These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.” Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.

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May 20 • 11:47 AM EDT • Technology • thegamebusiness.com
Xbox expands leadership team with major hires

Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions. The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business. His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector. Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co. Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope. His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results. For more breaking stories, sign-up to The Game Business today Subscribe In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox. The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. “These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.” Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.

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May 20 • 11:47 AM EDT • Business • thegamebusiness.com
How San José State leaped to No. 2 in national computer science ranking

San José State's computer engineering and software engineering programs have risen to second place in a national assessment of programming and software engineering skills, surpassing top-tier universities such as CalTech, UC Berkeley and Stanford

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May 20 • 3:05 AM EDT • Science • edsource.org
We asked US researchers how the Trump administration's science policies have affected them

The American academic research engine has long been the envy of the world. Generally well-funded, labs in the United States have been able to attract the best minds who generate breakthroughs and train ...

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May 19 • 11:20 PM EDT • Science • phys.org
Materials scientist gains valuable research experience

The opportunities at the College of Engineering and Applied Science are what attracted Ananth Balasubramanian to the University of Cincinnati. He came to UC as a master's student and after two years, transitioned to a direct PhD program in materials science and engineering. Here, he works in the Digital Fabrication Laboratory and recently was named Graduate Student Engineer of the Month by CEAS.

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May 19 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • uc.edu
ROSEN Wins Business Innovation Award for NIPA at the Gas Industry Awards 2026

The ROSEN Group is proud to announce that its “Non-Intrusive Pipeline Assessment” (NIPA) service has been honored with the Business Innovation Award at the prestigious 2026 Gas Industry Awards. The awards ceremony, organized by the Institution of Gas Engineers & Managers (IGEM) and the Energy & Utilities Alliance (EUA), took place on May 13, 2026, in London.

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May 19 • 8:00 PM EDT • Business • rosen-group.com
2026 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Award

Undergraduate senior biochemistry student Lillian Ott (Mohanty group) has been awarded the 2026 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, one of the country’s most prestigious honors for graduate students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The program, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, supports doctoral students across a broad range of scientific and technological fields of strategic importance. This highly competitive fellowship provides full tuition, fees, and a monthly stipend for three years. In 2026, only 102 fellowships were awarded nationwide. Lillian also received an honorable mention for the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Studying biochemistry at UCLA, Lillian became excited about how her physical science background could be applied to solve environmental issues. She joined the Subsurface Engineering Analysis Laboratory (SEA Lab) led by Professor Sanjay Mohanty in the Samueli’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In the SEA lab, she has studied the fate and transport of per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS are ubiquitous “forever chemicals” and known carcinogens that impact water quality worldwide. This fall, she will begin her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University with Professor Nina Zhao. Her research will be focused on metabolomics and the discovery of unrecognized chemical determinants of environmental and human health. “I have seen the serious and unforeseen environmental and health consequences from man-made chemicals like PFAS and microplastics, which are often only appreciated after the damage has been done. I hope that my research can lead to more sustainable chemical design and inform policy and solutions-based innovation in public health and water quality engineering,” Lillian said. Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.

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May 19 • 5:20 PM EDT • Science • chemistry.ucla.edu
Google to release smart glasses and add AI ‘agents’ to search engine

CEO Sundar Pichai says features powered by new Gemini model will close gap with Anthropic and OpenAI

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May 19 • 4:47 PM EDT • Technology • ft.com
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...

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May 19 • 12:34 PM EDT • Science • ktxs.com
Gresham juniors Alexandra Harpole, Zoey Mattingly join international science fair

A pair of Gresham High juniors participated in an international science fair Alexandra Harpole and Zoey Mattingly joined the week-long Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, which was held May […]

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May 19 • 11:45 AM EDT • Science • theoutlookonline.com
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.

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May 19 • 9:35 AM EDT • Health • news.cornell.edu
Jaelyn Hammersley Earns Global Prize at International Science Fair

OPRF junior Jaelyn Hammersley has earned a fourth-place award at the 2026 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world’s largest and most prestigious international high school science and engineering competition.

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May 19 • 9:21 AM EDT • Science • oprfhs.org
Prominent PS5 Podcaster's Account Hacked, Social Engineering Concerns Amplified

Is nothing sacred?

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May 18 • 8:30 PM EDT • Technology • pushsquare.com
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.

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May 18 • 1:32 PM EDT • Science • mainepublic.org
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Trump eyes new White House lawn project that could reshape presidential travel

President Trump is weighing whether to install a helipad on the White House South Lawn to protect the grass from newer Marine One helicopter engines.

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May 18 • 1:21 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
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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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May 18 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov
23 student researchers receive 2026 NSF fellowships

The National Science Foundation awarded work in STEM-related fields such as artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and marine ecology.

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May 18 • 8:27 AM EDT • Science • unc.edu
2027 BMW M3 CS Handschalter Goes RWD And Gets A Manual Only For America

This new limited-run model is 42 pounds lighter than a base manual M3, and it has unique tuning for its chassis, engine, steering and six-speed transmission.

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May 18 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • jalopnik.com
Illinois Wesleyan to Launch Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Quantum Science and Engineering Program

Illinois Wesleyan University announced the creation of the Fisher Center for Interdisciplinary Quantum Science & Engineering.

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May 18 • 7:32 AM EDT • Science • thequantuminsider.com
How Carle Illinois College of Medicine is changing the health care innovation ecosystem

Carle Illinois College of Medicine blends medicine, engineering and AI to speed health care innovation from concept to patient care.

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May 18 • 7:00 AM EDT • Health • chicagobusiness.com
Target RWE and NoviSci Rebrand as Pedestal Health and Headwater Science

DURHAM, N.C., May 18, 2026--Target RWE and NoviSci, two leaders in evidence generation, today announced they will rebrand as Pedestal Health and Headwater Science. These two distinct companies will work to build a modern evidence-generation engine for life sciences organizations, navigating the most complex and consequential research challenges.

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May 18 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • finance.yahoo.com
How Carle Illinois College of Medicine is changing the health care innovation ecosystem

Carle Illinois College of Medicine blends medicine, engineering and AI to speed health care innovation from concept to patient care.

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May 18 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
Illinois Wesleyan University to launch first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary undergraduate Quantum Science, engineering program

BLOOMINGTON – Illinois Wesleyan University today announced the creation of the Fisher Center for Interdisciplinary Quantum Science & Engineering, a first-of-its-kind undergraduate program that brings together multiple areas of study to better prepare students for careers in this emerging field. The Fisher Quantum Center will make Illinois Wesleyan the first undergraduate liberal arts university in…

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May 17 • 7:00 PM EDT • Science • timestribunenews.com
A prayer festival calls for more religion in politics, not less

A prayer festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC was partially organized and funded by the federal government. Its evangelical Christian messaging and call for more religion in politics not less, aligns with the Trump administration's fusion of faith and governance. NPR's Emily Feng went to the event to understand the audience for this approach, and she spoke with author Eric Metaxas, a speaker at the Rededicate 250 festival.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.This episode was produced by Henry Larson, with audio engineering by It was edited by Sarah Robbins and Daniel Burke.Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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May 17 • 6:45 PM EDT • Politics • npr.org
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5 Lexus Engines You Should Steer Clear Of

Discover which 5 Lexus engines you should steer clear of. We detail reliability issues with the 1MZ-FE, 4GR-FSE, 1UR-FSE, and the twin-turbo V35A-FTS.

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May 17 • 3:15 PM EDT • Technology • slashgear.com
GM's LS7 V8: The Corvette Engine That Defied Small-Block Limits

The GM LS7 is the biggest-displacement small-block V-8 ever in a production car, and it only ever featured in the Corvette C6 Z06 and the fifth-gen Camaro Z/28.

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May 16 • 11:25 PM EDT • Technology • jalopnik.com
Scientists reverse Alzheimer’s in mice with breakthrough nanotechnology

A new nanotechnology treatment reversed Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice by restoring the brain’s natural cleanup system. The specially engineered nanoparticles helped clear toxic amyloid proteins from the brain and repair the blood-brain barrier, which normally protects and regulates the brain’s environment. In one striking experiment, elderly mice treated with the therapy later behaved like healthy younger mice.

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May 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Congolese report constant burials as deaths in new Ebola outbreak reach 80

BUNIA, Congo — At least 80 deaths have been reported in Congo's new Ebola disease outbreak in the eastern Ituri province, authorities said, as health workers raced Saturday to intensify screening an...

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May 16 • 6:53 PM EDT • Health • dailyherald.com
Band of tech entrepreneurs sounds alarm on Colorado’s business climate

By Vince Bzdek It’s really not a headline you want to see in the national press: “Entrepreneurs Flocked to Colorado. Now Red Tape Is Driving Some Away” warned a recent Wall Street Journal article. “A vocal band of Colorado software engineers and venture capitalists,” wrote the author, “are increasingly grumbling that their tech haven in […]

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May 16 • 9:28 AM EDT • Business • gazette.com
Band of tech entrepreneurs sounds alarm on Colorado’s business climate

By Vince Bzdek It’s really not a headline you want to see in the national press: “Entrepreneurs Flocked to Colorado. Now Red Tape Is Driving Some Away” warned a recent Wall Street Journal article. “A vocal band of Colorado software engineers and venture capitalists,” wrote the author, “are increasingly grumbling that their tech haven in […]

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May 16 • 9:28 AM EDT • Business • denvergazette.com
Band of tech entrepreneurs sounds alarm on Colorado’s business climate

By Vince Bzdek It’s really not a headline you want to see in the national press: “Entrepreneurs Flocked to Colorado. Now Red Tape Is Driving Some Away” warned a recent Wall Street Journal article. “A vocal band of Colorado software engineers and venture capitalists,” wrote the author, “are increasingly grumbling that their tech haven in […]

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May 16 • 9:28 AM EDT • Business • gazette.com
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Scientists reversed memory loss by recharging the brain’s tiny engines

Researchers have shown for the first time that malfunctioning mitochondria — the cell’s energy generators — may directly cause cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases. By creating a new tool that temporarily boosts mitochondrial activity in the brain, scientists restored memory performance in mouse models of dementia. The discovery hints that energy failure inside neurons could happen before brain cells die, potentially offering a new target for future Alzheimer’s treatments.

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May 16 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Ferrari's New Supercar Is An Homage To The Twin-Turbo V8

Based on the F8 Spider, the new Ferrari HC25 offers a unique take on the mid-engined V8 spider.

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May 15 • 5:00 PM EDT • Technology • motor1.com
She Turned a ‘Devastating’ Business Blow Into a ‘Content Engine’ — Making $30K In a Day With a Product Sold Every 70 Seconds

Kelly Bozigian tapped into what sets her business apart.

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May 15 • 11:55 AM EDT • Business • entrepreneur.com
UCF Materials Science Student Earns Notre Dame Undergraduate Research Fellowship

Jeonghyun Song traded the arts for engineering, where he found beauty in chemistry. Now, his pursuit of more sustainable materials is taking him to the University of Notre Dame to advance his research.

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May 15 • 9:30 AM EDT • Science • ucf.edu
EY AI leader says 3 engineering roles are converging

Dan Diasio, EY's consulting CTO of Americas, said that the work of data, software, and AI engineers is overlapping much more today.

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May 15 • 5:22 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
FDA Blocked Melanoma Drug as Confusion Reigned Under Makary

A third of patients in a clinical trial had tumors shrink while taking a genetically engineered treatment known as RP1.

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May 15 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • kffhealthnews.org
Yoshi And The Mysterious Book Game Engine Seemingly Revealed

Unreal news

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May 14 • 9:05 PM EDT • Technology • nintendolife.com
Illinois Wesleyan to Launch First-of-its-Kind Interdisciplinary Underg

Illinois Wesleyan University announced the creation of the Fisher Center for Interdisciplinary Quantum Science & Engineering, a first-of-its-kind undergraduate program that brings together multiple ar

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May 14 • 5:01 PM EDT • Science • iwu.edu
Grad Student and Undergrad Win National Science Foundation Research Fellowship

Chemistry master’s student Samantha “Sammie” Ellis and undergraduate astrophysics major Jesus Poblano recently received one of the most competitive and prestigious awards for students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

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May 14 • 1:59 PM EDT • Science • newsroom.csun.edu
Buckle Up for Two Weeks of Motor Madness in GTA Online

Rev your engine and get ready for two weeks of automotive mayhem as Los Santos is engulfed in the high-octane, nitrous-infused action of Motor Madness.

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May 14 • 9:56 AM EDT • Technology • rockstargames.com