Molecular clouds contain a wide range of densities and temperatures, challenging our ability to characterize the initial conditions of star formation. Fortunately, several new submillimeter continuum and molecular line detectors have provided new insights into the large-scale and small-scale structures of molecular clouds, expanding our understanding of star formation. This presentation describes how we utilize these new instruments to identify a link between the dissipation of turbulence and the onset of molecular gas freeze-out toward a single object in a very young, core-forming region. Moreover, we demonstrate that consistent values of the dust emissivity index can be found toward an active, high-mass, star-forming filament at resolutions of ~ 15 000 AU (0.08 pc) as with the low-resolution Planck data, with one dense core being a notable exception. Thus, observed changes to the initial conditions of star formation appear to only occur in isolated regions, and future, higher-resolution studies are needed to probe the effect of these localized variations.