A new review brings together research on geopolitical tensions, meteorological disasters, regional environmental degradation, supply chain disruption, systemic financial instability, and technology-mediated societal and institutional risks. It shows how shocks can spread through interconnected political, economic, ecological, technological, and social systems, and outlines a flexible cycle of risk identification, assessment, management, and adaptive monitoring supported by international cooperation.

Medical imaging datasets are essential for training artificial intelligence systems, but sharing brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans can expose patient-specific anatomical patterns. Anonymization must therefore do more than remove identifiers: it must make the overall image harder to link back to a patient while retaining the lesion information needed for segmentation and classification. Existing generative approaches often emphasize global image quality or facial de-identification, leaving lesion-centric utility and re-identification risk insufficiently addressed.

Korean researchers have developed, for the first time, a recyclable flame-retardant composite that overcomes a fundamental limitation of conventional flame-retardant composites, which cannot be recycled once cured, while maintaining excellent flame resistance. A research team led by Dr. Jin Chul Kim, Dr. Ji-Eun Jeong, and Dr. Young-Jae Jin at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) has developed a self-reinforced composite (SRC) fabrication technology that simultaneously achieves improved processability, flame retardancy, and recyclability simply by adding a low-cost, low-molecular-weight polyolefin additive.

With the increasing scale of space infrastructure such as large space telescopes, antenna arrays, and solar power stations, the payload fairing size of launch vehicles has become a critical bottleneck constraining their development. On-orbit autonomous assembly via deployable modules has emerged as an important technical approach to overcome this limitation. Deployable modules typically exhibit high packaging ratios; however, the geometric deviations caused by residual strain, assembly tolerances, and dynamic coupling effects after deployment can significantly affect docking accuracy and structural stability, and may even lead to assembly failure. Nevertheless, existing studies have mostly focused on post-deployment final configuration accuracy optimization, with insufficient attention paid to the cooperative strategies between real-time deformation control and motion control during the assembly process. Moreover, a dynamic modeling method capable of accurately describing the coupling between variable-length flexible components and rigid bodies is still lacking. Therefore, how to achieve active configuration correction and coordinated position–attitude control of deployable modules on orbit has become a key challenge in the autonomous assembly of large space structures.

A new study challenges one of the most deeply rooted assumptions in civil engineering: that using recycled materials in structural concrete inevitably means sacrificing strength. Researchers from Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, in collaboration with University of Surrey, have demonstrated that recycled aggregates can be incorporated into concrete without compromising performance—provided certain technical limits are respected.

With the continuous advancement of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology, L-band SAR has come to play an increasingly important role in Earth observation; however, its imaging, interferometric, and polarimetric performance are susceptible to ionospheric disturbances. In equatorial nighttime data, amplitude streak artifacts induced by equatorial plasma bubbles frequently occur and have traditionally been regarded as interference factors in SAR imaging. Nevertheless, these artifacts essentially carry critical information on ionospheric irregularities and can be exploited to retrieve physical parameters such as scintillation intensity and turbulence spectral indices. Existing methods either rely on comparisons between disturbed and undisturbed images or are limited to preliminary one-dimensional parameter estimation along the track, making it difficult to achieve two-dimensional fine-scale retrieval of scintillation structures, and lacking systematic validation of their spatial correlation with equatorial ionospheric anomalies. Therefore, how to extract the two-dimensional spatial distribution of ionospheric scintillation parameters from amplitude streak artifacts and reveal their intrinsic relationship with regions of enhanced electron density has become an important scientific question in the field of ionospheric remote sensing.

More than 2,000 years ago, massive stone jars were carved from bedrock and placed on a highland plateau in northern Laos. Today, they represent not only an archaeological mystery, but also a series of small, self‑contained ecosystems that now provide researchers from the University of Copenhagen with a unique opportunity to study how nature develops over millennia.More than 2,000 years ago, massive stone jars were carved from bedrock and placed on a highland plateau in northern Laos. Today, they represent not only an archaeological mystery, but also a series of small, self‑contained ecosystems that now provide researchers from the University of Copenhagen with a unique opportunity to study how nature develops over millennia.

Researchers have transformed lightweight balsa wood veneer into a flexible material that generates electricity when pressed. Using two eco-friendly solvent treatments, they removed rigid lignin and added zinc oxide nanoparticles, enabling a 1-mm-thick sample to produce 0.24 V, which over three times the output of untreated wood. Four stacked pieces in series reached 0.92 V, enough to power small smart-home sensors.