With the advances in smart materials and structures, integrated sensors and actuators, and AI technologies, the smart aircraft is becoming a new generation emergent and disruptive aeronautical technology. Based on the international symposium on Smart Aircraft 2019, Chinese Journal of Aeronautics (CJA) organized the first special topic on smart aircraft 1.0 published in 2021.

Powered descent is the make-or-break phase for pinpoint soft landing, yet fuel and mass uncertainties can derail optimized trajectories. A new study, published in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2025.103914), proposes a worst-case robust convex-optimization approach plus receding-horizon closed-loop guidance to keep trajectories feasible and improve landing accuracy under adverse mass variations.

The accelerated evolution of space technology has elevated the importance of high power and lightweight attributes in satellite design. In response to the conflict between the demand for large-scale, high-power payloads and the need for lightweight, compact platforms, flexible space origami membrane structures have emerged as a potential solution. These structures possess the ability to overcome the limitations of traditional deployable mechanisms. Their geometric reconfiguration capabilities, characterized by high folding ratios, effectively satisfy the high-power performance demands.

Acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) is a life-threatening complication after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and clinicians urgently need biomarkers for early prediction and real-time monitoring. In a study published in hLife, Dr. Shunqing Wang’s team at Guangzhou First People’s Hospital longitudinally profiled 111 transplant recipients and identified activated CD38⁺HLA-DR⁺CD8⁺ T cells as a robust predictive and therapeutic biomarker. When this subset exceeded 36.6% in peripheral blood within the first month after transplant, patients were at high risk of developing aGVHD. In an independent cohort of 20 aGVHD patients, dynamic changes in this population closely tracked treatment responses. Mechanistic studies further showed that IL-15 drives bystander activation and NKG2D-dependent cytotoxicity via the PI3K/mTOR pathway, while the anti-CD38 antibody daratumumab selectively depletes these cells and alleviates disease in mouse models.

Bats are critical viral reservoirs that harbor viromes with a high risk of cross-species transmission. However, the diversity of their viromes in the Indochina Peninsula remains underexplored. A study on bat viromes across China’s Yunnan, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Cambodia identified 137 viral strains, including 40 new species. Viral richness was highest in Rhinolophidae bats along China’s southwestern border, and Cambodian bat viruses were more evolutionarily distant from known viruses. A porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV)-related virus was discovered in Cambodia, showing 90.36% genome homology with PEDV CV777, and exhibiting recombinant features between Suidae-adapted ORF1ab and Chiroptera-adapted Spike genes, suggesting that bat coronaviruses could be the evolutionary source of PEDV. Bat virome and deep learning models predict cross-species transmission risks, highlighting the need for enhanced One Health surveillance targeting viral recombination hotspots and human-bat interfaces in this ecologically critical region.