Researchers at Texas A&M University model extreme conditions using 3D bioprinting, revealing insights that could make flight and space travel protocols safer while driving new breakthroughs in respiratory disease research and drug discoveries.

Mustafa Aksoy, an associate professor in the University at Albany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, is part of a large research team that was awarded a two-year, $1.1 million grant to develop radio frequency interference detection and mitigation strategies for future U.S. weather and climate satellites.

There’s always a touch of melancholy when a chapter that has absorbed years of work comes to an end. In the case of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), those years amount to nearly twenty — and now the telescope has completed its mission. Yet some endings are also important beginnings, opening new paths for the entire scientific community.

The three papers just published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) by the ACT Collaboration describe and contextualize in detail the sixth and final major ACT data release — perhaps the most important one — marking significant advances in our understanding of the Universe’s evolution and its current state.

ACT’s data clarify several key points: the measurement of the Hubble constant (the number that indicates the current rate of cosmic expansion — the Universe’s “speedometer”) obtained from observations at very large cosmological distances is confirmed, and it remains markedly different from the value derived from the nearby Universe. This is both a problem and a remarkable discovery: it confirms the so-called “Hubble tension,” which challenges the model we use to describe the cosmos.

ACT’s observations also rule out many of the so-called extended models — theoretical alternatives to the standard cosmological model. That’s another “problem,” since it narrows the range of possibilities, but it also represents a new, cleaner starting point: time to stop pursuing these models and look elsewhere.

Last but not least, ACT provides new polarization maps of the cosmic microwave background — the Universe’s “fossil light” — which complement Planck’s temperature maps, but with much higher resolution. “When we compare them, it’s a bit like cleaning your glasses,” says Erminia Calabrese, cosmologist at Cardiff University, ACT collaboration member and coordinator of one of the three papers.

As the number of wireless applications and devices grows, higher standards for the quality of service and navigation performance of mobile networks are required. Numerous critical applications, including unmanned aerial vehicles, internet of things, digital twin, and military systems, require reliable communication and accurate navigation services. To meet these requirements, the development of the sixth generation (6G) network is necessary. 6G networks provide seamless 3-dimensional coverage in space–air–ground–sea area, as well as deep coupling of communication, sensing, and computation. 6G networks will be combined with low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to construct a universal and intelligent integrated system of communication, sensing, and computing by utilizing the benefits of LEO satellites, such as miniaturization, modularity, large bandwidth, low latency, and wide area coverage. One of the critical construction tasks in this system is the integration of communication and navigation (ICAN), which can break the limitations of the global navigation satellite system, provide high-precision, robust navigation capability, and enable high- quality communication services.

Space manipulators play an important role in the on-orbit services and planetary surface operation whose reliability is a key issue. In the extreme environment of space, space manipulators are susceptible to a variety of unknown disturbances. Since it is difficult for the manipulator to be repaired immediately, once it fails, it will mean that it cannot complete the mission as expected, which may cause serious losses and dangers. How to have a resilient guarantee, i.e., the manipulator’s ability to resiliently recover and continue to complete tasks, in failure or disturbance is the core capability of its future development. The motion planning unit is used as the computing terminal of the manipulator’s joint motion trajectory. Compared with traditional motion planning, learning-based motion planning has gradually become a hot spot in current research. However, no matter what kind of research ideas, the single robotic manipulator is studied as an independent agent, making it unable to provide sufficient flexibility under conditions such as external force disturbance, observation noise, and mechanical failure.