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President Eyring, Gov. Cox among dignitaries celebrating completion of University of Utah's Applied Science Project
While still a young man, President Henry B. Eyring was challenged by his father — the renowned chemist Henry Eyring — to explore the hard sciences in college. 'He said that we would need that foundation to be effective in the rapidly changing world,' recalled President Eyring at Wednesday's ceremony at the University of Utah celebrating the completion of the school's Applied Science Project. Just weeks after claiming a physics degree from Utah's flagship university, the younger Eyring was serving as a newly commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. To his surprise, he was assigned to a military special weapons project. 'The only information that the (Air Force) had about me was that I had graduated from the University of Utah two weeks earlier,' said President Eyring, the second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 'In the two years I served in that assignment, I saw my father's promise fulfilled as I found myself able to resolve problems and make judgments which had the potential to affect the lives of people and nations across the world.' Folks across the University of Utah campus — and throughout the state — are certain that all who study, teach and conduct scientific research at the school are being prepared to make similar contributions in the global science community. Utah's Crocker Science Complex: A scientific discovery hub Wednesday's ribbon cutting ceremony marked the official completion of the $97 million Applied Science Project — which combines the newly built L.S. Skaggs Applied Science Building with the renovated historic William Stewart Building and the Crocker Science Center. Together, the three facilities form the Crocker Science Complex — a 275,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art locale for scientific study and research. The project was funded by a $67.5 million state appropriation — combined with a $10 million gift from ALSAM Foundation (Skaggs Family) and $8.5 million from Gary and Ann Crocker ($19.7 million total for the Crocker Science Complex). The new Applied Science Building 'provides a 56% increase in the capacity of undergraduate physics labs,' Peter Trapa, Vice Provost/Senior Dean of the University's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, told the Deseret News. Almost every STEM student at the University of Utah will learn, collaborate and even conduct research at the building at some point during their time on campus, he added. Meanwhile, the Crocker Science Complex will serve 37 different STEM degree programs — meaning every future nurse, chemist, engineer, statistician and software developer at the university will take classes in its buildings. 'It is truly a momentous day for science at the University of Utah,' Trapa said Wednesday. Gov. Cox: Investing in science = Investing in people In his remarks at Wednesday's ceremony, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox saluted the individuals and organizations that donated to the university's science complex project. 'It's an honor to stand in this atrium today and talk about the brick and mortar spaces that lead to boundless opportunities and possibilities of discovery, innovation and education,' he said. 'This building represents Utah's bold investment in the future — a future driven by research technology and the next generation of thinkers and doers. The classrooms and labs that are here will ignite curiosity, a characteristic that is sadly missing far too much in our public discourse these days." The facility, Cox added, was built with 'a strong partnership between state leadership, the university and the community. 'The same values that we use to teach science correlate perfectly to how we do things here in Utah: Collaboration and creativity with a commitment to putting the greater good in the forefront, and always seeking truth. 'When we invest in science, we invest in people.' Cox added that at a time when the federal government is cutting back on funding for scientific initiatives, Utah is doing the opposite. 'We can be fiscally responsible and we can invest,' he said. 'In fact, it is fiscal responsibility that requires us to invest in the future. Otherwise, all of those things that we enjoy today will be gone. 'We have to invest in the next generation.' A place where 'dreams will happen' In his remarks, President Eyring spoke of how science has helped define his educational, professional and ecclesiastical experiences. He spoke of his appreciation for teachers and professors who 'help us to see the vastness of the physical world and the beauty of understanding it and the power that it gives us. 'I am grateful for teachers who strengthen my confidence that there is order in the physical world — which has and will be continuously better understood." President Eyring then saluted the generosity of donors and university leaders who have made the Crocker Science Complex a reality. 'My hope is that those who study here may follow your example to use whatever powers and resources they gain to lift and to bless others in future generations.' In his remarks, University of Utah President Taylor Randall noted the essential role faith-driven educators such as W.W. Phelps, Orson Pratt and Henry Eyring played in establishing the school's science bona-fides and global reputation. 'This is actually a place where students' dreams will happen,' said Randall. 'Whether they are undergraduates or graduate students, they will happen here. And many of the individuals that enter applied areas later on, will begin in this college with physics and mathematics.' The University of Utah's College of Science, he added, leads the country with its science research initiative. 'That means that freshmen — over 700 — start in the labs on projects that actually have real world application," he said. 'And then if they stay with it to the end, they get to work with our biotech industry, performing experiments that will lead them on to those great, great things. 'This is a place where dreams will come true.' Donors express faith in science and research Gary Crocker, the president of Crocker Ventures, spoke of he and his family's decades-long relationship with the University of Utah's science education community — and his gratitude for Utah's elected leaders. 'I want to thank and acknowledge the leadership and the vision, persistence and the advocacy of Governor Cox,' said Crocker. 'It's been exceptional what he's been able to do with the State Legislature in making this complex a reality.' Crocker also saluted the Eyring family and the generosity of the religious organization in which he serves. 'The pivotal difference that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes in our community is literally impossible to measure — and its impact ripples through lives, worldwide." The new L.S. Skaggs Applied Science Building, Crocker added, is going to 'ripple through the lives of tens of thousands of students. 'They will become our future physicians and our future nurses, our future scientists, our future pharmacists and astronomers and environmental scientists. 'They will form the core of this state's industrial and commercial complex over the next 60 or 70 years.' Mark Skaggs of the ALSAM Foundation spoke of his family's belief in and continued commitment to the power of education. 'We are big believers in this community and in this state and in this love this university.' Skaggs admitted to being fearful amid today's politically-charged debates over the future of higher education. 'I'm actually afraid of where we're headed,' he said, before referencing the slogan: 'Make America Great Again. 'Explain to me how we do that when we cut the NIH budget by half and when we close program after program after program at key universities?" Skaggs concluded saying he could not think of a better recipient of his foundation's gift than to the university's Applied Science Building. 'Thank you for believing in what we believe in and what we've always believed in — and what hopefully will be a brighter future in this country." Helping Utah's science students 'identify their passions' College of Science Interim Dean Pearl Sandick concluded Wednesday's ceremony envisioning the research and educational possibilities now afforded by the new Applied Science Building. 'Our programs in physics, astronomy and atmospheric sciences are internationally recognized in research and education, and they will now have the advantages of these modern facilities — making it possible for us to address scientific questions and societal challenges in new ways," Sandick said. Lives and industries will be improved by the research happening at the University of Utah's science complex. 'The work done here will directly affect energy, water resources, public health and natural disaster preparedness.' Universities play a vital role in society as hubs of scientific research and discovery. 'Institutions like ours are where curiosity meets capacity; where ideas are explored, tested and transformed into knowledge that shapes our world.' Utah students, Sandick added, remain the school's central priority. 'This state of the art facility is going to provide them with new opportunities that will help them identify their passions, learn new techniques in modern laboratories, work side-by-side with faculty and prepare them for careers that are both rewarding and critical for our economy and national interests.' Solve the daily Crossword
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Top AI Researchers Concerned They're Losing the Ability to Understand What They've Created
Researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta have joined forces to warn about what they're building. In a new position paper, 40 researchers spread across those four companies called for more investigation of AI powered by so-called "chains-of-thought" (CoT), the "thinking out loud" process that advanced "reasoning" models — the current vanguard of consumer-facing AI — use when they're working through a query. As those researchers acknowledge, CoTs add a certain transparency into the inner workings of AI, allowing users to see "intent to misbehave" or get stuff wrong as it happens. Still, there is "no guarantee that the current degree of visibility will persist," especially as models continue to advance. Depending on how they're trained, advanced models may no longer, the paper suggests, "need to verbalize any of their thoughts, and would thus lose the safety advantages." There's also the non-zero chance that models could intentionally "obfuscate" their CoTs after realizing that they're being watched, the researchers noted — and as we've already seen, AI has indeed rapidly become very good at lying and deception. To make sure this valuable visibility continues, the cross-company consortium is calling on developers to start figuring out what makes CoTs "monitorable," or what makes the models think out loud the way they do. In this request, those same researchers seem to be admitting something stark: that nobody is entirely sure why the models are "thinking" this way, or how long they will continue to do so. Zooming out from the technical details, it's worth taking a moment to consider how strange this situation is. Top researchers in an emerging field are warning that they don't quite understand how their creation works, and lack confidence in their ability to control it going forward, even as they forge ahead making it stronger; there's no clear precedent in the history of innovation, even looking back to civilization-shifting inventions like atomic energy and the combustion engine. In an interview with TechCrunch about the paper, OpenAI research scientist and paper coauthor Bowen Baker explained how he sees the situation. "We're at this critical time where we have this new chain-of-thought thing," Baker told the website. "It seems pretty useful, but it could go away in a few years if people don't really concentrate on it." "Publishing a position paper like this, to me, is a mechanism to get more research and attention on this topic," he continued, "before that happens." Once again, there appears to be tacit acknowledgement of AI's "black box" nature — and to be fair, even CEOs like OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have admitted that at a deep level, they don't really understand how the technology they're building works. Along with its 40-researcher author list that includes DeepMind cofounder Shane Legg and xAI safety advisor Dan Hendrycks, the paper has also drawn endorsements from industry luminaries including former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and AI godfather and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. Though Musk's name doesn't appear on the paper, with Hendrycks on board, all of the "Big Five" firms — OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI — have been brought together to warn about what might happen when and if AI stops showing its work. In doing so, that powerful cabal has said the quiet part out loud: that they don't feel entirely in control of AI's future. For companies with untold billions between them, that's a pretty strange message to market — which makes the paper all the more remarkable. More on AI warnings: Bernie Sanders Issues Warning About How AI Is Really Being Used Solve the daily Crossword
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Astronomers See Planet Formation ‘Time Zero' in an Alien Solar System
Peering through a cosmic keyhole at distant baby star, astronomers may have opened a new window on the deep past of our own solar system. Using combined observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, an international research team has glimpsed the earliest moments of planetary creation around the protostar HOPS-315, which lies in a giant star-forming region that is located about 1,400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. Their findings appear in a study published on Wednesday in Nature. Weighing in at 0.6 solar mass, HOPS-315 should someday grow to become a star much like our own sun; this makes it a promising stand-in for studying the first stages of our solar system's history. For now, however, it's shrouded by a vast and obscuring envelope of inflowing material—baby food for a hungry stellar newborn. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] But JWST's infrared and ALMA's radio observations have pierced this veil, peering through a gap in the envelope to probe other structures around HOPS-315 in unprecedented detail—most notably a whirling halo of hot gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk. Such disks are wombs for embryonic worlds; in them, clumps of rock called planetesimals coalesce and eventually build up into full-fledged planets. Yet no planetesimals can form without smaller grains of crystalline minerals first condensing within the disk, which occurs as the disk's gas cools. For generations, astronomers have been literally in the dark about this process, as the enveloping clouds that nourish a protostar typically obscure its intimate details. Planetary scientists studying our own solar system haven't fared much better because more than four and a half billion years lie between them and the birth of our own star and its retinue of worlds. What little evidence we have from that distant era mostly comes in the form of calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) preserved in ancient meteorites. Precise radiometric dating has shown these to be the oldest solid objects to arise around the sun, suggesting CAIs may be the primordial seeds from which future planets would grow. Scientists set the clock for everything around the sun using CAIs, marking their emergence as 'time zero' in our solar system's history. Presumably the CAIs were formed by mineral grains showering from the slowly cooling disk of hot gas that must have once surrounded our infant sun. But exactly how, where and when they came into being, no one really knows. Short of having a time machine to go back and look, the only way to solve this mystery is to study what we can see of this process around other infant stars—which, until these observations of HOPS-315, hasn't been very much. 'Most of what we've seen is colder, older protoplanetary disks,' says the new study's lead author Melissa McClure, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands. 'The period [for the formation of mineral grains and CAIs] is really short, like 100,000 years. Blink, and you'll miss it. And these young protostars are still enveloped in dense molecular clouds, which are hard to see through.' HOPS-315, however, is not only very young but also tilted at a certain angle with respect to our solar system—a position that lets astronomers see deeper and closer to the protostar. 'This system is a unicorn,' says Fred Ciesla, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago, who peer-reviewed the Nature paper and penned an accompanying commentary. 'It has a hot inner disk that's still going through this early phase, and it's oriented so we can actually see it. That makes it very special, and I expect we still have a lot to learn from it.' Another critical contributor was JWST; earlier observations by other facilities, such as NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, had flagged the system as a promising target yet lacked the capability for thorough follow-up. 'It was Webb's massive improvements in sensitivity and spectral resolution that allowed this to happen,' McClure says. With the stars literally and figuratively aligned, McClure and several colleagues observed HOPS-315 with JWST in March and September 2023. A painstaking analysis of the data revealed the molecular fingerprints of gaseous silicon monoxide, as well as a mix of crystalline silicates—all telltale signs of solid mineral grains condensing out as the hot gas in the protoplanetary disk cools. HOPS-315 is also burping up an outflowing jet of material as it feeds, however, which the researchers worried might be the source of those signals. Subsequent observations with ALMA in November 2023 helped to confirm the mineral grains were present not in the jet but rather in a region of the protostar's disk that spans twice the distance between the Earth and the sun—and that is located at the equivalent orbit around our star of our solar system's main asteroid belt. The churning of the disk or intense stellar winds from the growing protostar may help the grains accumulate there. Although the JWST and ALMA observations did not directly detect CAIs, the ratios of the detected minerals and their location around HOPS-315 are consistent with many models' predictions of the conditions for the emergence of CAIs at 'time zero' in the very early solar system. 'This new work strongly suggests that, for [HOPS-315], conditions suitable for CAI formation occur within about [one Earth-sun distance] at an early time—a fraction of a million years' after a protostar's formation, says Phil Armitage, a planet-formation theorist at Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute in New York City, who was not involved in the new work. This isn't necessarily surprising, he adds, although 'you could certainly imagine other possibilities' in which CAIs would form significantly earlier or later in a protostar's evolution. Consequently, 'it will be interesting to see if similar signatures can be detected in systems of different ages.' Ilaria Pascucci, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, who was also not part of the new study, emphasizes that the result is so fundamentally profound that it demands very careful investigation and follow-up. 'It would be extremely important to detect CAIs in protoplanetary disks because it would allow us to connect the evolution of these disks with that of the solar system,' she says. 'But in this paper, the authors clearly state they haven't detected CAIs; they've [instead] detected crystalline grains that could have formed in an environment where CAIs could form, too. It's a very interesting link.' Observations of protostars such as HOPS-315, she adds, can be very difficult to interpret. 'There is the star, the disk, the wind, the jet, the envelope—these are very complex objects,' she says. 'The authors have done a really nice job of teasing out all the information they can from their observations [of HOPS-315], but this is a challenging object, so we definitely need to find and look at more.' One protostar in particular, Pascucci notes, is HOPS-68. Other astronomers observed it with Spitzer in 2011 and found similar features in the lower-resolution data that was available then. At the time, they interpreted those features as part of the protostar's obscuring envelope rather than its inner protoplanetary disk, she says, yet this new result suggests it may be time to revisit that object with JWST for another, deeper look. As for HOPS-315, McClure speculates that the system may still hold surprises. Her team's JWST data, she says, show that the outflow jet that complicated their analysis is conspicuously depleted in silicon—which happens to be the most important element for making the silicates that serve as planetary building blocks. Perhaps, then, instead of feeding the jet, the silicon has been locked away elsewhere—such as in reservoirs of dust or even larger rocky objects that are deeper in the disk. 'Our estimates suggest that something like 98 percent of the silicon we'd expect relative to the carbon we see [in the jet] is missing,' she says. 'That may be a hint that planetesimals are already forming there in a similar way that they must have in our solar system.' Solve the daily Crossword
