Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly automating tasks like translation, text classification and customer service. But tapping into an LLM’s power typically requires users to send their requests to a centralized server—a process that’s expensive, energy-intensive and often slow.

Now, researchers have introduced a technique for compressing an LLM’s reams of data, which could increase privacy, save energy and lower costs. Their findings are published on the arXiv preprint server.

The new algorithm, developed by engineers at Princeton and Stanford Engineering, works by trimming redundancies and reducing the precision of an LLM’s layers of information...

NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing for the next leg of its journey, a months-long trek to a formation called the boxwork, a set of weblike patterns on Mars’s surface that stretches for miles. It will soon leave behind Gediz Vallis channel, an area wrapped in mystery. How the channel formed so late during a transition to a drier climate is one big question for the science team. Another mystery is the field of white sulfur stones the rover discovered over the summer.

Curiosity imaged the stones, along with features from inside the channel, in a 360-degree panorama before driving up to the western edge of the channel at the end of September.

The rover is searching for evidence that ancient Mars had the right ingredients to support microbial life, if any formed billions of years ag...

A new UC Davis Health study has uncovered how Salmonella bacteria, a major cause of food poisoning, can invade the gut even when protective bacteria are present. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how the pathogen tricks the gut environment to escape the body’s natural defenses.

The digestive system is home to trillions of bacteria, many of which produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that help fight harmful pathogens. But Salmonella manages to grow and spread in the gut, even though these protective compounds are present. The study asks: How does Salmonella get around this defense?

“We knew that Salmonella invades the small intestine, although it is not ...

That ordinary smartphone in your pocket could be a powerful tool for investigating outer space. In a new study, researchers at Google and CU Boulder have transformed millions of Android phones across the globe into a fleet of nimble scientific instruments—generating one of the most detailed maps to date of the uppermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

The group’s findings, published Nov. 13 in the journal Nature, might help to improve the accuracy of GPS technology worldwide several-fold. The research was led by Brian Williams of Google Research and included Jade Morton, professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder.

“These phones can literally fit in your palm,” Morton said...