Environment Animals Wildlife Sharks Megalodon could become Maryland's official state shark The 66,000-pound prehistoric predator once stalked the Bay State's waters. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In a state better known for its delicious seafood and as the home of the United States Navy, there's a new effort to create the country's first state shark. Earlier this month, Maryland State Senator Jack Bailey and House Delegate Todd Morgan filed SB135 to designate the megalodon () as the official state shark. While the mighty megalodon is not swimming along the shores of the Bay State now, the enormous prehistoric shark relative once dominated the shallow seas that covered Maryland and the rest of the Atlantic coastal plain .

Selecting a college major is a difficult decision for many incoming freshmen. Traditional academic advising is often hindered by long wait times, intimidating environments, and limited personalization. AI Chatbots present an opportunity to address these challenges. However, AI systems also have the potential to generate biased responses, prejudices related to race, gender, socioeconomic status, and disability. These biases risk turning away potential students and undermining reliability of AI systems. This study aims to develop a University of Maryland (UMD) A. James Clark School of Engineering Program-specific AI chatbot. Our research team analyzed and mitigated potential biases in the responses. Through testing the chatbot on diverse student queries, the responses are scored on metrics of accuracy, relevance, personalization, and bias presence. The results demonstrate that with careful prompt engineering and bias mitigation strategies, AI chatbots can provide high-quality, unbiased academic advising support, achieving mean scores of 9.76 for accuracy, 9.56 for relevance, and 9.60 for personalization with no stereotypical biases found in the sample data. However, due to the small sample size and limited timeframe, our AI model may not fully reflect the nuances of student queries in engineering academic advising. Regardless, these findings will inform best practices for building ethical AI systems in higher education, offering tools to complement traditional advising and address the inequities faced by many underrepresented and first-generation college students.

Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel shares his perspective on whether the mosquito-borne virus in China will spread to the United States and how AI can be detrimental to children's and young adults' mental health on'Fox Report.' The first case of a travel-associated human screwworm infection has been detected in Maryland. Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed to Fox News Digital that the patient had recently returned from a trip to El Salvador, a country affected by a screwworm outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked in conjunction with the Maryland Department of Health to investigate the case. The CDC confirmed the diagnosis on Aug. 4 after experts reviewed larvae images. "The risk to public health in the United States from this introduction is very low," Nixon said.

--This paper investigates the application of large language models (LLMs) to financial tasks. Building on Qwen2.5 and Deepseek-R1, we employed techniques including supervised fine-tuning (SFT), direct preference optimization (DPO), and reinforcement learning (RL) to enhance their financial capabilities. The fine-tuned models demonstrated substantial performance gains across a wide range of financial tasks. Moreover, we measured the data scaling law in the financial domain. Our work demonstrates the potential of large language models (LLMs) in financial applications.

At first, in mid-November, the mysterious lights were seen blinking across the night skies of New Jersey. Reports of incandescent flying objects were logged in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Bystanders in Virginia Beach said they saw an aircraft "unlike any other they've seen". Sightings have now come from as far afield as Louisiana, Florida and Arizona. People across the US are looking up.

Former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said Friday that he personally witnessed "dozens of large drones" flying above his home on Thursday evening. Former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland has said that he personally witnessed "dozens of large drones" flying above his home in Davidsonville, Maryland, on Thursday evening as the mystery surrounding the various unexplained sightings continues. "Last night, beginning at around 9:45 pm, I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation's capital)," Hogan wrote on X Friday. "I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes." The former governor said he does not know if these drone sightings are evidence of a threat to public safety or national security, but he called out the federal government for a "complete lack of transparency" in the face of Americans' concerns.

Claire chatted to Pratap Tokekar from the University of Maryland about how teams of robots with different capabilities can work together. Pratap Tokekar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, and an Amazon Scholar. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the GRASP lab of University of Pennsylvania and later, an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech. He has a degree in Electronics and Telecommunication from the College of Engineering Pune in India and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He received the Amazon Research Award in 2022, and the NSF CAREER award in 2020.

An Ohio-based company sells robotic dogs being used by the Ukrainian military against Russia, which have the ability to be outfitted with flamethrowers. Authorities are investigating a mysterious "deep fake" video call that successfully impersonated a Ukrainian high official. Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin announced Wednesday that he had turned over materials to law enforcement after an unknown suspect had tricked him onto a video call via impersonating a foreign official. "In recent days, a malign actor engaged in a deceptive attempt to have a conversation with me by posing as a known individual. After immediately becoming clear that the individual I was engaging with was not who they claimed to be, I ended the call and my office took swift action, alerting the relevant authorities."

What has four legs and can breathe fire? According to Throwflame, an Ohio-based company that manufactures flamethrowers, its latest invention features a 30ft firing range, light detection and range mapping, as well as laser sighting, aboard a battery-powered thing with legs that can jump around. Touted as "your ultimate firepower companion", the robot's uses include wildlife control and prevention, agricultural management, ecological conservation, and snow and ice removal, as well as entertainment and special effects, Throwflame said. For just 9,420 and in the absence of a pet dragon, you can have your own fire-breathing best friend of canine appearance. However, not everyone is onboard.

While it may sound like the plot of a Black Mirror show, Americans can now purchase a flamethrower-wielding robot dog online. Ohio-based Throwflame opened sales for its'Thermonator' Tuesday, selling its 37-pound quadruped machine for 9,420 that is legal in all US states except Maryland. A demonstration video shows a Thermonator creeping and jumping through a forest before torching its surroundings with a 30-foot jet of fire spewing from a flame thrower on its back. The company did not describe its as a new-aged weapon, but touts the flame throwing robot as being used in wildfire control, agricultural management, entertainment and ice removal. Ohio-based Throwflame opened sales for its'Thermonator' Tuesday, selling its 37-pound quadruped machine for 9,420 Throwflame, based in Cleveland, claims to be the oldest flamethrower manufacturer in the US.