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The expansion of a telescope network creates a thirst for more data-handling expertise and infrastructure. The expansion of a telescope network creates a thirst for more data-handling expertise and infrastructure.

Practical science is more than hands-on science. It challenges the student to understand the real world, to create ways to test that understanding and to grasp the significance of statistics and errors in their arguments.

Telescope arrays are receiving increasing attention due to their promise of higher resource utilization, greater sky survey area, and higher frequency of full space-time monitoring than single telescopes. Compared with the ordinary coordinated operation of several telescopes, the new astronomical observation mode has an order of magnitude difference in the number of telescopes. It requires efficient coordinated observation by large-domain telescopes distributed at different sites. Coherent modeling of various abstract environmental constraints is essential for responding to multiple complex science goals. Also, due to competing science priorities and field visibility, how the telescope arrays are scheduled for observations can significantly affect observation efficiency. This paper proposes a multilevel scheduling model oriented toward the problem of telescope-array scheduling for time-domain surveys. A flexible framework is developed with basic functionality encapsulated in software components implemented on hierarchical architectures. An optimization metric is proposed to self-consistently weight contributions from time-varying observation conditions to maintain uniform coverage and efficient time utilization from a global perspective. The performance of the scheduler is evaluated through simulated instances. The experimental results show that our scheduling framework performs correctly and provides acceptable solutions considering the percentage of time allocation efficiency and sky coverage uniformity in a feasible amount of time. Using a generic version of the telescope-array scheduling framework, we also demonstrate its scalability and its potential to be applied to other astronomical applications.

The designs of lossless data compression architectures create a natural trade-off between throughput, power consumption, and compression efficiency, making it difficult for designers to identify an optimal configuration that satisfies all three criteria. This paper proposes a Configurable Dual-Path Huffman/Arithmetic Encoder (CDP-HAE), which offers an architecture that supports the use of shared preprocessing, parallel path encoding using Huffman and Arithmetic, as well as selectable output. The CDP-HAE’s design prevents the waste of excess bandwidth by sending only one selected bit stream at a time. This also enables adaptation to the dynamically changing statistical characteristics of the input data. CDP-HAE’s architecture underwent ASIC synthesis in 90 nm CMOS technology and is implemented on an Artix-7 (A7-100T) using the Vivado EDA tool, confirming the scalability of the architecture to both devices. Synthesis results show that CDP-HAE improves operating frequency by 28.6% and reduces critical path delay by 27.2% compared to reference designs. Additionally, the dual-path design has a slight increase in area; the area utilization remains within reasonable limits. Power analysis indicates that optimizing logic sharing and minimizing switching activity reduces total power consumption by 34.4%. Compression tests show that the CDP-HAE delivers performance comparable to that of a conventional Huffman Encoder using application-specific datasets. Furthermore, the proposed CDP-HAE achieves performance comparable to conventional Huffman encoders on application-specific datasets, while providing up to 10% improvement in compression ratio over Huffman-only encoding.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is increasingly recognized as a critical enabler for sustainable space exploration, offering on-demand fabrication, reduced reliance on Earth-based resupply, and enhanced mission autonomy. Over the past decade, in-space AM has progressed from early polymer extrusion experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to the demonstration of multi-material capabilities involving polymers, metals, ceramics, recycling systems, and in situ resource utilization (ISRU) concepts. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of AM technologies developed for space applications, with emphasis on demonstrated flight heritage, process behavior under microgravity and vacuum conditions, and materials validated in orbit. The paper surveys major AM process families relevant to space, including fused filament fabrication, directed energy deposition, ceramic stereolithography, bioprinting, and closed-loop recycling systems. Key ISS-based platforms—such as the Additive Manufacturing Facility, Ceramic Manufacturing Module, and Refabricator—are reviewed to assess technological maturity and system-level integration. Materials performance across polymers, metals, ceramics, and regolith-based feedstocks is discussed, highlighting the influence of microgravity, thermal transport, and environmental exposure. By comparing in-space results with terrestrial and reduced-gravity studies, this review identifies consistent trends, critical limitations, and remaining knowledge gaps, providing a structured perspective on the readiness of in-space additive manufacturing for future orbital and deep-space missions.

Many drugs have been evaluated to reactivate HIV-1 from cellular reservoirs, but the off-target effects of these latency reversal agents (LRA) remain poorly defined. Transposable elements (TEs) are reactivated during HIV-1 infection, but studies of potential off-target drug effects on TE expression have been limited. We analyzed the differential expression of TEs induced by canonical and non-canonical NF-κB signaling. We evaluated the effect of PKC agonists (Bryostatin and Ingenol B) on the expression of TEs in memory CD4+ T cells. Ingenol B induced 38 differentially expressed TEs (17 HERV (45%) and 21 L1 (55%)). Interestingly, TE expression in effector memory CD4+ T cells was more affected by Bryostatin compared to other memory T-cell subsets, with 121 (107 upregulated and 14 downregulated) differentially expressed (DE) TEs. Of these, 31% (n = 37) were HERVs, and 69% (n = 84) were LINE-1 (L1). AZD5582 induced 753 DE TEs (406 HERV (54%) and 347 L1 (46%)). Together, our findings show that canonical and non-canonical NF-κB signaling activation leads to retroelement expressions as an off-target effect. Furthermore, our data highlights the importance of exploring the interaction between LRAs and the expression of retroelements in the context of HIV-1 eradication strategies.

Sometime in the next decade, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will open its compound eyes - roughly 2,000 radio dishes divided between sites in South Africa and Australia. The radio telescope will then begin staring into supermassive black holes, searching for the origin of cosmic magnetic fields and seeking clues about the young Universe.

In space optical communication, owing to the influence of atmospheric turbulence, optical beams lose focus and become phase-distorted, which reduces the communication quality. Considering the polarization dependence of liquid crystal spatial light modulators and the dispersion effect of liquid crystal materials, the energy utilization rate of liquid crystal adaptive optics systems is low. In this study, a dual liquid crystal spatial light modulator adaptive optics system based on the GS algorithm is used to correct the wavefront distortion of a signal beam under different atmospheric turbulence intensities, and the Strehl ratio (SR) is used as the evaluation index. The simulation results show that the SR of the corrected system can be increased from 0.23, 0.41, and 0.72 to 0.77, 0.89, and 0.95, respectively. The corrected beam spot was more concentrated and the light intensity at the center of the beam spot was stronger. The experimental results show that, after the distortion wavefront is corrected by the dual liquid crystal spatial light modulator, the average gray value of the 10 × 10 pixels in the center of the spot increases from 159.3, 113.1, and 58.4 to 253.4, 247.7, and 198.3, respectively.