SAN ANTONIO — October 14, 2025 — Dr. Chris Thomas of Southwest Research Institute’s Mechanical Engineering Division has been named an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

The research described in this paper gives proof of the assumption, previously made by other researchers, that blocks of CO2 ice can play a role in the creation of dune gullies on Martian dunes. However, how these blocks carved the peculiar dune gullies remained unknown. Experiments performed by the authors showed, for the first time, how blocks of CO2 can indeed create such gullies – a process that does not occur here on Earth and that had never been observed before. One of the reasons that this research is so important is that it shows the importance of having facilities with which these kinds of phenomena can be studied – phenomena that we do not know on Earth and that may occur, in different forms, on other planets with conditions even more different from ours than those on Mars. Furthermore, by better understanding the seasonal processes that shape landscapes on Mars, we are also better prepared for future Mars missions.

Any life on Mars in the past, present, or future would have to contend with challenging conditions including, among others, shock waves from meteorite impacts and soil perchlorates—highly oxidizing salts that destabilize hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions. Purusharth I. Rajyaguru and colleagues subjected Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a widely used model yeast, to shock waves and perchlorates. Yeast exposed to 5.6 Mach intensity shock waves survived with slowed growth, as did yeast subjected to 100 mM sodium salt of perchlorate (NaClO4)—a concentration similar to that in Martian soils.

An AI system that can predict what a patient’s knee X-ray will look like a year in the future could transform how millions of people with osteoarthritis understand and manage their condition, according to research by the University of Surrey. 

Kyoto, Japan --  White dwarfs are the compact remnants of stars that have stopped nuclear burning, a fate that will eventually befall our sun. These extremely dense objects are degenerate stars because their structure is counterintuitive: the heavier they are, the smaller they are.

White dwarfs often form binary systems, in which two stars orbit one another. The majority of these are ancient even by galactic standards, and have cooled to surface temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Kelvin. However, recent studies have revealed a class of short period binary systems in which the stars orbit each other faster than once per hour. Contrary to theoretical models, these stars are inflated to twice the size as expected due to surface temperatures of 10 to 30 thousand degrees Kelvin.

This inspired a team of researchers, led by Lucy Olivia McNeill of Kyoto University, to investigate the theory of tides and use it to predict the temperature increase of white dwarfs in short period binary orbits. Tidal forces often deform celestial bodies in binary orbits, determining their orbital evolution.

Pietro Milillo, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Houston, and an international team, found that structures in North America are in the poorest condition and propose monitoring bridge stability from space.