Evolution in space: experimental pathways to understanding life’s adaptability beyond Earth

Maintaining intact cognitive performance is a high priority for space exploration. This review seeks to summarize the cumulative results of existing studies of cognitive performance in spaceflight and analogue environments. We focused on long-duration (>21 d) studies for which no review has previously been conducted. There were 11 published studies identified for long-duration spaceflight (N = 42 subjects) as well as 21 shorter spaceflight studies (N = 70 subjects). Overall, spaceflight cognitive studies ranged from 6-438 d in duration. Some 55 spaceflight analogue studies were also identified, ranging from 6 to 520 d. The diverse nature of experimental procedures and protocols precluded formal meta-analysis. In general, the available evidence fails to strongly support or refute the existence of specific cognitive deficits in low Earth orbit during long-duration spaceflight, which may be due in large part to small numbers of subjects. The studies consistently suggest that novel environments (spaceflight or other) induce variable alterations in cognitive performance across individuals, consistent with known astronaut experiences. This highlights the need to better quantify the magnitude and scope of this interindividual variability, and understand its underlying factors, when predicting in-flight cognitive functioning for extended periods.

To the Editor: Widrick et al. ([18][1]) have published data from a 12-day unilateral lower limb suspension (ULLS) study conducted in 1994 using the methods originally published by Berg et al. in 1991 ([3][2]). Analyses included the morphology and contractile behavior of skinned skeletal muscle

Nutritional Status Assessment in Semiclosed Environments: Ground-Based and Space Flight Studies in Humans

Spaceflight bioreactor studies of cells and tissues

Since 1998, comprehensive housing marketization has led to a more complex urban residential space structure in China, as evidenced by the changes in new commercial housing. The current stage is critical for China in its pursuit of high-quality and sustainable urban development, with the spatial structure of housing being a key aspect in achieving this goal. In order to clarify the characteristics of the urban residential space in China and grasp the spatio-temporal changes of new commercial housing, this study takes the data of new commercial housing projects in Xi’an, northwest China, from 2006 to 2022 as the basis, and uses the GIS method to explore the characteristics of the spatio-temporal evolution of the urban residential space and to investigate the factors influencing it. The results reveal changes in the number, size, and spatial distribution of new commercial housing in Xi’an. The evolution of residential space is influenced by cultural and social changes, population, and economic factors, in addition to the main influence of national policies. The renewal of urban villages into commercial housing projects is a prominent feature of changes in urban residential space, which saves construction land and improves residents’ living conditions. Finally, the expansion of urban residential space parallels the urbanization process, showing a pattern of ‘external expansion accompanied by internal renewal’, and the evolution process and property rights management are different from those of other countries.

PurposeThis paper aims to propose a model of teamwork effectiveness in space and analog environments (SAE).Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review was conducted to examine the state-of-the-art of teamwork literature in SAE. A total of 37 research papers were reviewed and the results were organized according to the input-mediator-output-input (IMOI) framework.FindingsBased on 37 empirical research papers, the findings suggest that the teams working in SAE are challenged with contextual (e.g. time, isolation and confinement), collective (e.g. autonomy, culture) and individual (e.g. personality) attributes. These are inputs to team processes (e.g. interpersonal processes; communication) and emergent states (e.g. climate; emotions), which mediate team (e.g. performance; cohesion) and individual (e.g. psychological well-being) outputs.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the review nature of the manuscript, the final proposed model depicting empirical findings lacks validation evidence when considered in its entirety, although pieces have been validated. Additionally, the focus only on papers that included team-level empirical SAE research (excluding individual-level studies), undoubtedly contributed to a smaller number of papers extracted.Originality/valueThis paper integrates empirical findings regarding the factors impacting team performance in SAE into a proven framework (IMOI). This integration can provide a common baseline, using a widely accepted methodology and framework, that serves to guide future research, identify gaps and guide practice.

Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) space environment model of the orbital targets with a size above 10 cm was established according to the amended data and space density. The situation of satellite explosion on GEO is simulated, including the number of fragments generated by the explosion, the size distribution as well as the corresponding mass distribution of the fragments. Under the conditions of selecting fragments of different size for analyzing, the area to mass ratio, discrete velocity, and apogee-perigee distribution can be obtained. By simulating the collisions of targets in different size and mass, and the evolution of the space environment when different size thresholds are selected, the necessity of establishing the GEO space environment and evolution model with the threshold size of 10 cm is demonstrated. The feedback collision caused by the fragments generated by the GEO satellite explosion is simulated under the conditions of different collision probability thresholds. The results show that the explosion fragments would cause a high collision risk environment for other GEO orbital targets, and the risky circumstance would last for hours. The impact of explosive debris on the security of the future space environment is analyzed

The block represents one of the main structuring elements of urban form, serving as a point of connection between public and private spaces. In various approaches and morphological concepts, the block is identified as a fundamental component and can be analysed at different scales, from the city to the building, considering its architectural typology. This article aims to investigate the morphological patterns of blocks in the city of Patos, Paraíba, Brazil. The research problem is centred on the discussion of the types of blocks that have been built in the process of evolution and occupation of urban space. The methodology consists of modelling georeferenced data on morphological elements and calculating the length and connectivity of block segments, area, compactness and occupancy rate of blocks. The findings indicate a morphological pattern of the blocks associated with the centre-periphery dichotomy: the central area of the city has a higher building density, smaller and more compact blocks, with a greater human scale and public-private interface, while the more peripheral zones have smaller, less compact and dispersed blocks, generating more sprawling areas with less direct relationship between public and private spaces. These results help us to better understand how the process of urban evolution has moulded the city's blocks, associating them with different socio-spatial phenomena.

Our study of human and societal evolution has helped us to capture and understand the evolutionary story of our species and appreciate the intricate way evolution has worked in the evolutionary design space. In the course of working through the chapters, you have acquired evolutionary consciousness that lead you to grasp the role we have to play in guiding the continuing evolution of our species. Up to this time the evolutionary forces that have been working in the evolutionary design space were beyond our control. But now that we have acquired evolutionary consciousness we have the opportunity to enter the evolutionary design space and guide our own evolution. So, the crucial questions are: What is this guiding role? What is the evolutionary process we have to master in order to engage in self-guided societal evolution? Who should be involved? KeywordsEvolutionary InquirySystem ThinkingEvolutionary DesignDiscipline InquiryDesign ThinkingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Skill maintenance in extended spaceflight: A human factors analysis of space and analogue work environments

Increasingly frequent launch activities, as well as the development of mega constellations, would cause a drastic increase in the number of space objects, which will then alter the evolution of outer space. To reveal this long-term change, an accurate space-environment model is required. There are two main approaches to building this model, one of which is to track the state of space objects individually, which will use significant computing resources; the other is to take macroscopic variables, such as spatial density, as the state variable to depict a group of space debris, which requires less computational effort. In this study, a space debris environment evolution model with spatial density as the state variable is established, which considers the nonzero eccentricity of the debris orbit and utilizes the NASA breakup model to ensure accuracy. In addition, the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is applied to take the uncertainty of launch activities into account. The long-term impacts of mega constellations and their post-mission disposal (PMD) on the debris environment are discussed based on the evolution model. It was found that constellations with high orbit altitude, such as OneWeb, will lead to an exponential increase in space objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). In addition, deorbit time is the main factor affecting the PMD efficiency, followed by deorbit strategies.

Mountain regions are characterized by a spatial geomorphic heterogeneity that confers on the environment a significant geomorphodiversity. A methodology based on a different scale/spatial/resolution approach is proposed to evaluate the relationship existing among geomorphodiversity, geomorphological processes. and sediment connectivity. Starting from the geomorphological mapping of the Veglia Devero Natural Park (Lepontine Alps), indexes of fragmentation (IFrm) and geomorphodiversity (IGmf) were computed. The results were used to select a meaningful sub‐area (Buscagna stream catchment) for calculating the index of connectivity (IC). The relationships among these three indexes are discussed, using a semi‐quantitative approach including descriptive statistics (i.e., box plot) and analysis of the different geomorphoconnectivity sectors, testifying to the role of geomorphic processes in regulating sediment fluxes and, consequently, controlling landscape units. IGmf turned out to be more conservative than IFrm and more management‐oriented for protected areas, while IC was confirmed to be particularly suitable to characterize connectivity in small mountain catchments featuring different geomorphic processes and a complex topography. This study suggests that coupling the sediment connectivity with the geomorphology and geomorphodiversity of a given area represents a quite novel approach that could be usefully applied in the framework of protected areas to investigate also biodiversity patterns and consequently environmental evolution in space and time.

The evolutionary robotics field offers the possibility of autonomously generating robots that are adapted to desired tasks by iteratively optimising across successive generations of robots with varying configurations until a high-performing candidate is found. The prohibitive time and cost of actually building this many robots means that most evolutionary robotics work is conducted in simulation, but to apply evolved robots to real-world problems, they must be implemented in hardware, which brings new challenges. This paper explores in detail the design of an example system for realising diverse evolved robot bodies, and specifically how this interacts with the evolutionary process. We discover that every aspect of the hardware implementation introduces constraints that change the evolutionary space, and exploring this interplay between hardware constraints and evolution is the key contribution of this paper. In simulation, any robot that can be defined by a suitable genetic representation can be implemented and evaluated, but in hardware, real-world limitations like manufacturing/assembly constraints and electrical power delivery mean that many of these robots cannot be built, or will malfunction in operation. This presents the novel challenge of how to constrain an evolutionary process within the space of evolvable phenotypes to only those regions that are practically feasible: the viable phenotype space. Methods of phenotype filtering and repair were introduced to address this, and found to degrade the diversity of the robot population and impede traversal of the exploration space. Furthermore, the degrees of freedom permitted by the hardware constraints were found to be poorly matched to the types of morphological variation that would be the most useful in the target environment. Consequently, the ability of the evolutionary process to generate robots with effective adaptations was greatly reduced. The conclusions from this are twofold. 1) Designing a hardware platform for evolving robots requires different thinking, in which all design decisions should be made with reference to their impact on the viable phenotype space. 2) It is insufficient to just evolve robots in simulation without detailed consideration of how they will be implemented in hardware, because the hardware constraints have a profound impact on the evolutionary space.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">For long-duration exploration missions where re-supply is not a viable alternative for human crews, sustainable strategies based on integrated bioprocesses and physical-chemical systems are required. Bioregenerative life support elements enabling human exploration systems require microbial communities that are physiologically diverse, functionally stable, and non virulent. Given the potential for rapid change in microbial populations through processes that may be accelerated in space (<i>i.e</i>., mutation, recombination, and natural selection), multi-generation experiments are required to understand the pattern and process of microbial community assembly and evolution in the space environment. In order to advance the technology readiness level of biological systems for exploration missions, these studies should enable independent examination of gravity and radiation effects in the space environment at multiple levels of organization from individual cell growth to ecosystem ecology. One requirement for these studies is a cell cultivation unit with low mass, volume, energy, and crew-time requirements for the multi-generation growth of microbial populations in the space environment. Passive Observatories for Experimental Microbial Systems (POEMS) are an integrated flight-ready unit to support multi-generation microbial studies. The POEMS cultivation unit integrates the OptiCell™, a small sterile growth chamber sealed between optically clear gas-permeable growth surfaces, with modified BRIC (Biological Research in a Canister) flight hardware. Each BRIC-Opti canister provides mechanical support for four replicate OptiCell™ chambers, a captured volume of atmosphere for microbial metabolism, gas sampling capability, and autonomous temperature data logging during the mission. The POEMS experiment will enable analyses of microbial growth and evolution in a microgravity environment on STS-121 during ULF1.1 and on ISS during Increment 11.</div>

The phase transition of crystalline ordering is a general phenomenon, but its evolution in space and time requires microscopic probes for visualization. Here we report direct imaging of the transformation of amorphous titanium dioxide nanofilm, from the liquid state, passing through the nucleation step and finally to the ordered crystal phase. Single-pulse transient diffraction profiles at different times provide the structural transformation and the specific degree of crystallinity (η) in the evolution process. It is found that the temporal behaviour of η exhibits unique ‘two-step' dynamics, with a robust ‘plateau' that extends over a microsecond; the rate constants vary by two orders of magnitude. Such behaviour reflects the presence of intermediate structure(s) that are the precursor of the ordered crystal state. Theoretically, we extend the well-known Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov equation, which describes the isothermal process with a stretched-exponential function, but here over the range of times covering the melt-to-crystal transformation.