Cue the nostalgia, these 1980s home decor ideas are suddenly trending again  Country Living Magazine

Jayhawks trending to land linebacker Quincy Davis  On3

USC Trojans Trending For Five-Star Safety Recruit  Sports Illustrated

6 trending Austin-area stories Dec. 29-Jan. 1: no Kohl's, new laws, data centers strain power grid  Community Impact | News

Trending tickers: latest investor updates on Baidu, TSMC, Orsted and Tesla  Yahoo Finance UK

1. Exclusive: Samsung to double mobile devices powered by Google's Gemini to 800 mln units this year  Reuters
2. Samsung First Look at CES 2026: The biggest announcements from the year's first press conference  Engadget
3. Samsung Unveils New Supersized, Color-Rich TVs With More AI  Bloomberg.com
4. Samsung's Massive Micro RGB Backlit TV Promises Great Color  CNET
5. Samsung Presents ‘Your Companion to AI Living’ at The First Look During CES 2026  samsung.com

1. LG TVs at CES 2026: A stunning Wallpaper set, glorious Micro RGB colors and a better Gallery TV  Engadget
2. LG Rolls Out Its W6 Wallpaper OLED TV With Ultra-High Brightness  CNET
3. LG debuts new MiniLED Gallery TV ahead of CES 2026  Mashable
4. LG officially enters the art TV category with the Gallery TV  The Verge
5. LG’s Wallpaper OLED TV returns to CES, and it’s wafer thin  The Verge

1. Sweekar turns the Tamagotchi into a physical AI pocket pet that won't die on you  Engadget
2. Finally, I've Found a Worthy Successor to the Iconic '90s Tamagotchi  CNET
3. Sorry Tamagotchi Fans, It’s AI Time  Gizmodo
4. CES 2026: Takway unveils Tamagotchi-inspired AI virtual pet Sweekar  TechNode

1. Apple’s Risky Opportunity To Upgrade Every MacBook  Forbes
2. Apple's 2026 iPhone Fold & Budget MacBook Finally Revealed  Gadget Hacks
3. All the new products Apple is expected to reveal in 2026  Business Insider
4. New Foldable Phone Designs Are Setting Up an Ambitious 2026  CNET
5. Top Stories: Apple's 2026 Plans, iPhone Fold Mockup Hands-On, and More  MacRumors

1. Watch The Intel CES 2026 Launch Event Live Here: Panther Lake Official, Refreshed CPUs & New AI Updates Expected  Wccftech
2. How to watch the Intel CES 2026 launch event  Engadget
3. Chip wars: What to expect from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and Snapdragon at CES 2026  PCWorld
4. Intel reportedly ready to announce three new Core Ultra desktop CPUs at CES 2026  PC Guide
5. What is Intel Cooking for CES 2026?  The FPS Review

A sideways spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. Located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo (the Maiden), NGC 4388 is a resident of the Virgo galaxy cluster. This enormous cluster of galaxies contains more than a thousand members and is the nearest large galaxy cluster to the Milky Way.

NGC 4388 appears to tilt at an extreme angle relative to our point of view, giving us a nearly edge-on prospect of the galaxy. This perspective reveals a curious feature that wasn’t visible in a previous Hubble image of this galaxy released in 2016: a plume of gas from the galaxy’s nucleus, here seen billowing out from the galaxy’s disk toward the lower-right corner of the image. But where did this outflow come from, and why does it glow?

The answer likely lies in the vast stretches of space that separate the galaxies of the Virgo cluster. Though the space between galaxies appears empty, this space is occupied by hot wisps of gas called the intracluster medium. As NGC 4388 moves within the Virgo cluster, it plunges through the intracluster medium. Pressure from hot intracluster gas whisks away gas from within NGC 4388’s disk, causing it to trail behind as NGC 4388 moves.

The source of the ionizing energy that causes this gas cloud to glow is more uncertain. Researchers suspect that some of the energy comes from the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole spins gas around it into a superheated disk. The blazing radiation from this disk might ionize the gas closest to the galaxy, while shock waves might be responsible for ionizing filaments of gas farther out.

This image incorporates new data, including several additional wavelengths of light, that bring the ionized gas cloud into view. The image holds data from several observing programs that aim to illuminate galaxies with active black holes at their centers.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Veilleux, J. Wang, J. Greene

247th American Astronomical Society (AAS) Meeting

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3

8:30AM – 6:0PM

NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG)

301D

Josh Pepper, Dawn Gelino, Karl Stapelfeldt, Nick Siegler, Jessie Christiansen

SUNDAY, JANUARY 4

8:30AM – 12:15PM	NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG)		301D
9:00AM – 2:00PM	NASA’s Cosmic Origins Program Analysis Group (COPAG)				Peter Kurczynski
7:30PM – 9:30PM	NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos Program Analysis Group (PhysPAG)				Francesca Civano
	NASA’s Joint Program Analysis Group				Shawn Domagal-Goldman

MONDAY, JANUARY 5

12:45 PM – 1:45 PM	NASA Update		West Building 301AB		Shawn Domagal-Goldman
2:00 PM- 3:30 PM	Beyond the Mid-Decadal: Community Inputs for Space Mission Concepts Toward Astro 2030		335B

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6

9:30AM – 10:30AM	Active Galatic Nuclei SIG		131A
10:00AM – 11:30AM	NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory		224 B		Robert Zellem
10:00AM – 11:30AM	A NICER Look at the Energetic Universe		225 B
5:30PM – 6:30PM	NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory		Exhibit Hall B/C/D
6:00PM – 8:00PM	NASA-DARES Community Update		126 C

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7

9:30AM – 10:00AM	NASA Cosmic Pathfinders Program		127 A/B
10:00AM – 11:30AM	NASA Infrared Science and Technology Interest Group		231 A/B/C
10:00AM – 11:30AM	Introducing NASA’s Astrophysics Cross-Observatory Science Support (ACROSS) Facility		226 B		Brian Humensky
1:00PM – 2:30PM	Get Involved with NASA Citizen Science		226 C
2:00PM – 3:30PM	Meeting of NASA’s Active Galactic Nuclei Science Interest Group (AGN SIG)		TBD
3:00PM – 4:30PM	Get Involved with NASA Citizen Science		Exhibit Hall B/C/D
5:30PM – 6:00PM	NASA Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Interest Group		231 A/B/C

247th American Astronomical Society (AAS) Meeting

Join NASA in the Exhibit Hall (Booth #401) for Hyperwall Storytelling by NASA experts. Full Hyperwall Agenda below.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 4

6:45 – 7:00 PM	Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope	Dominic Benford
7:00 – 7:15 PM	Storytelling with NASA: Eyes on Exoplanets	Anjali Tripathi
7:15 – 7:30 PM	Roman Space Telescope Update	Julie McEnery
7:30 – 7:45 PM	The Search for Life in the Universe with Habitable Worlds Observatory	Giada Arney
7:45 – 8:00 PM	The James Webb Space Telescope Engineering History	Lee Feinberg

MONDAY, JANUARY 5

9:00 – 9:15AM		Galaxies Across Cosmic Time with JWST and Roman	Aaron Yung
9:15 – 9:30AM		The Hubble Space Telescope: Next Era of Discovery	Jennifer Wiseman
9:30 – 9:45AM		Cosmic Pathfinders	Ron Gamble
9:45- 10:00AM		Preliminary Findings from the NASA Technosignatures Database	Nick Siegler
5:30 – 5:45PM		Habitable Worlds Observatory From Gas to Galaxies to Life in the Universe	Kevin France
5:45 – 6:00PM		Space Servicing: From Hubble to Habitable Worlds	John Grunsfeld
6:00 – 6:15PM		Supernova Cosmology with Roman	Rebekah Hounsell
6:15- 6:30PM		What Even is Bayesian Analysis, and Why Do I Care?	Natasha Latouf

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6

9:00 – 9:15AM		Revealing the Faintest Galaxies in the Nearby Universe with Roman	Aaron Yung
9:15 – 9:30AM		Open Science Training for Researchers	Jennifer Wiseman
9:30 – 9:45AM		Universe in 24 hours	Ron Gamble
9:45- 10:00AM		Beyond ADS: SciX as the Next-Generation Platform for Earth and Space Science Research	Nick Siegler
5:30 – 5:45PM		From Ground Tests to Science with the Wide Field Instrument	Kevin France
5:45 – 6:00PM		Habitable Worlds Observatory and the Search for Life	John Grunsfeld
6:00 – 6:15PM		Laser Interferometry Space Antenna : Measuring Low Frequency Gravitational Waves from the Universe	Rebekah Hounsell
6:15- 6:30PM		Our Cosmic Roots, Kinship, and Destiny with the Habitable Worlds Observatory	Natasha Latouf

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7

9:00 – 9:15AM		What Can Roman Do for You? Explore Its Four Community-Defined Surveys	Karoline Gilbert
9:15 – 9:30AM		Galaxies	Benne Holwerda
9:30 – 9:45AM		The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute: Making Exoplanet Science Easier	Catherine Clark
5:30 – 5:45PM		Science from the Roman Space Telescope Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey	Robby Wilson
5:45 – 6:00PM		The Pandora SmallSat: Exploring Exoplanet Atmospheres	Thomas Barclay
6:00 – 6:15PM		How Did the Universe Become Habitable? Get Involved with NASA’s Cosmic Origins Group	Sabrina Stierwalt

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8

9:00 – 9:15AM		Science with Petabyte-Scale Data: Cloud Platforms	Thomas Dutkiewicz
9:15 – 9:30AM		The Future of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite	Nicole Schanche
9:30 – 9:45AM		Is There an Atmosphere on the Habitable-Zone Planet TRAPPIST-1 e?	Nestor Espinoza

Team members working with NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover created this “postcard” by commanding the rover to take images at two times of day on Nov. 18, 2025, spanning periods that occurred on both the 4,722nd and 4,723rd Martian days, or sols, of the mission.

The panoramas were captured at 4:15 p.m. on Sol 4,722 and 8:20 a.m. on Sol 4,723 (both at local Mars time), then merged together. Color was later added for an artistic interpretation of the scene with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon one. The resulting “postcard” is similar to ones the rover took in June 2023 and November 2021. Adding color to these kinds of merged images helps different details stand out in the landscape.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Microorganisms and Spaceflight

Spaceflight poses a risk of adverse health effects due to the interactions between microorganisms, their hosts, and their environment. The JSC Microbiology team addresses the benefits and risks related to microorganisms, including infectious disease, allergens, environmental and food contamination, and the impacts of changes in environmental and human microbial ecology aboard spacecraft. The team includes certified medical technologists, environmental microbiologists, mycologists, and biosafety professionals.

The JSC Microbiology laboratory is a critical component of the Human Health and Performance Directorate and is responsible for addressing crew health and environmental issues related to microbial infection, allergens, and contamination. This responsibility is achieved by operational monitoring and investigative research using classical microbiological, advanced molecular, and immunohistochemical techniques. This research has resulted in a significant number of presentations and peer-reviewed publications contributing to the field of Microbiology with articles in journals such as Infection and Immunity, Journal of Infectious Disease and Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Nature Reviews Microbiology, and Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Keeping Crew-members Safe

As a functional part of the Crew Health Care System and in support of Environmental Control and Life Support Systems engineers, the Microbiology Laboratory team defines requirements, coordinates and analyzes microbial sampling, and analysis of air, surface, and water samples. These environmental samples, including preflight and in-flight samples, re-analyzed to ensure that microorganisms do not adversely affect crew health or system performance.

Microbiologists also serve as team members when anomalous events occur that might affect crew health or life support systems operations. Spaceflight food samples also are evaluated preflight to decrease the risk of infectious disease to the crew.

Technology and Hardware

• ABI DNA sequencer
• Illumina MiSeq desktop sequencer
• Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION DNA / RNA sequencers
• Agilent Bioanalyzer
• VITEK 2 Microbial Identification
• ​Space analogue bioreactors

Points of Contact

Sarah Wallace, PhD
Hang Nguyen, PhD

Africa’s largest fintech company, Flutterwave, has acquired Nigerian open banking startup Mono in an all-stock deal valued between $25 million and $40 million, according to people familiar with the transaction. The acquisition brings together two of Africa’s leading fintech infrastructure companies. Flutterwave operates one of the continent’s widest payments networks, while Mono, often described as […]

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