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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a research facility under construction in Chile and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, achieved a major milestone on April 27, 2024, with the successful coating of its largest mirror with silver. The now-reflective 8.4-meter primary-tertiary mirror — about as wide as a tennis court — is so-called because it has two optical surfaces with different curvatures.  

The completion of the multi-stage coating operation brings Rubin Observatory closer to its goal of providing the data needed to crack longstanding scientific mysteries — such as the nature of the dark energy and dark matter that make up the majority of the universe and yet cannot be directly seen. In 2025, Rubin Observatory is slated to begin its 10-year mission to carefully watch for changes in the universe by monitoring every visible celestial object in the Southern sky using the biggest digital camera ever made.  

“This milestone represents not just an incredible feat of engineering but also an important step towards a transformative new era of scientific advancement,” says Edward Ajhar, NSF program director for Rubin Observatory.

Rubin Observatory’s primary-tertiary mirror will work with a 3.4-meter secondary mirror and the recently completed Legacy Survey of Space and Time Camera. The camera is being transported from the Department of Energy’s SLAC

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The U.S. National Science Foundation has launched a $9.5 million research funding opportunity in partnership with BASF, Dow, IBM, PepsiCo Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. Sustainable Polymers Enabled by Emerging Data Analytics (SPEED) is part of NSF’s Molecular Foundations for Sustainability program and seeks to accelerate the discovery and manufacture of superior and sustainable polymers to enhance national competitiveness and tackle global challenges such as plastic waste. NSF is providing $7 million, and the five industry partners are collectively contributing $2.5 million in funding and in-kind donations.

“Synthetic polymers are in many products and materials used by our society, from concrete and plastics to paper and rubber,” says NSF Chemistry Division Director David Berkowitz. “Melding frontier chemistry with advanced data science tools to design and commercialize new high-value polymers can reduce pollution and waste — and ultimately enhance the health of our planet and the resiliency of our communities.”

SPEED is one of several NSF efforts to advance fundamental research in sustainable chemistry, a national priority highlighted in the “CHIPS and Science Act of 2022” which called on NSF to support sustainable chemistry research and education by fostering collaborative research and development partnerships among universities, industry and other organizations.

The funding from SPEED will support multidisciplinary teams and convergent research that can enable the accelerated creation of safe, sustainable, high-value molecules on commercial scales.

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The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced a grant of $9 million to Northeastern University for research to investigate how large language models (LLMs) and generative AI operate, focusing on the computing process called deep inference and AI’s long-term societal impacts. 

The research seeks to establish a National Deep Inference Fabric (NDIF), a collaborative research platform. The goal is to provide U.S. researchers with access to cutting-edge LLMs within a transparent experimental platform that reveals the systems’ internal computations — a capability currently unavailable in academia.

“Chatbots have transformed society’s relationship with AI, but how they operate is yet to be fully understood”, said Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the U.S. National Science Foundation. “With NDIF, U.S. researchers will be able peer inside the ‘black box’ of large language models, gaining new insights into how they operate and greater awareness of their potential impacts on society.”

LLMs, such as those behind chatbots like ChatGPT, have emerged as a transformative force in AI with profound capabilities including general-purpose knowledge and language skills. However, their sheer size — often more than 100 billion parameters — poses a significant challenge for researchers investigating how the systems operate, especially without adequate computing resources. 

The NDIF project aims to address that gap by creating a platform for exploring such large-scale AI systems. NDIF will leverage the resources of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications DeltaAI

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Most of us think potholes are something to avoid.

However, some potholes are worth protecting. The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding researchers to study prairie pothole wetlands, which are ecologically and economically important, but under threat from climate change and land use. The team’s short film on its work recently won the 2024 Grand Prize for Environmental Communications from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists.

Prairie pothole wetlands include millions of water pools carved out of grasslands spanning from Canada to the upper Midwestern states. These unique features formed when glaciers retreated during the Pleistocene, or the last Ice Age, and left behind soft clay, silt, and sand, which formed depressions when the area filled with water.

Now, bulrushes and cattails grow on the edges of the potholes while submerged and aquatic plants live in the middle. The potholes are home to more than 50% of North American migratory waterfowl and host diverse reptiles and invertebrates.