The 46th COSPAR Scientific Assembly brought together experts from astronomy, the satellite industry, policy and law to examine one of the most important challenges arising from the rapid growth of activities in space: how to preserve dark and quiet skies while enabling satellite systems to continue delivering valuable services to society. The meeting was chaired by Marco Tavani. 

Researchers have developed a directly synthesized p-type PbS quantum dot (QD) ink that can form uniform short-wave infrared imaging films on 6-inch silicon wafers. The ink avoids a common post-treatment step (ligand exchange process) that can crack films and make pixels uneven. Prototype imagers made with the ink produced more uniform images and helped vehicle recognition under foggy conditions.

For the first time, scientists have observed a three-dimensional woven structure forming naturally inside a crystal, revealing a previously unknown way in which matter can organize itself.

Locating small lung tumors located deep within the lungs remains challenging, as they need to be navigated through a complex network of tiny airways. Existing AI systems trained on incomplete human annotations may also fail to identify peripheral airways that were omitted from the training labels. Researchers from Pusan National University developed a novel AI framework, ASTRA-Net, which helps recover previously overlooked peripheral airways—potentially enabling more accurate bronchoscopy maps for better lung cancer diagnosis.

Although robot-assisted surgery (RAS) gives surgeons remarkable precision, little is known about how their stress levels fluctuate during challenging procedures. In a recent study, researchers from Japan monitored surgeons’ brain, muscle, and heart activity during live RASs and linked these physiological signals to the surgeons’ own stress ratings. The team identified objective physiological markers of stressful moments, which could be leveraged to improve surgical training, operating-room design, and surgeon well-being.