A collaborative study between Texas A&M University’s School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed) and Houston Methodist Hospital’s Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery is the first comprehensive look into how space travel affects sinonasal health. Drawing on nearly two decades of astronaut medical records in partnership with NASA’s Johnson Space Center, researchers found that out of 71 astronauts from 2000 to 2019, 60 reported having at least one sinonasal medical issue during their missions, and 75% of the ISS astronauts reported nasal congestion.

A multidisciplinary team of undergraduate students from three different universities has designed and built a mini satellite, known as a CubeSat, that will launch into space to gather data in collaboration with NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission. The small-but-mighty satellite is set to launch on a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California no earlier than Nov. 10, 2025 at 10:19 a.m. PST. It will head to the outer reaches of the atmosphere to study the solar wind which will help scientists in their quest to improve space weather forecasting and better protect technology in space and on Earth— such as communication networks, power grids and GPS —from potentially damaging large solar flare events.

Sounds can alter the way the brain interprets what it sees. This is the key finding of a new study by SISSA researchers in Trieste, Italy. The research shows that, when sounds are paired with moving visual stimuli, the latter are perceived differently by rats. In particular, auditory cues systematically alter vision by compressing the animals’ “perceptual space”. Derived from the integration of behavioural experiments and computational modelling, the researchers’ findings indicate that auditory signals exert an inhibitory influence on visual perception. The study thus provides a new perspective on how the senses communicate within the brain, revealing that even direct connections between primary sensory areas — not only integration within higher-order association cortices — can profoundly influence perceptual experience.