Maria Farina, Md Shahriar Hossain

This paper examines the impact of lighting conditions on academic performance, concentration, and psychological well-being in childhood classrooms. Lighting is a fundamental environmental factor in educational spaces, yet it is often overlooked or poorly designed in many school settings. These deficiencies can negatively affect visual comfort, attention span, and emotional regulation, particularly in young children whose cognitive and psychological development is still in critical stages. Through a comprehensive review of existing research and the collection and analysis of published relevant data, this study explores how specific lighting characteristics, such as brightness, illuminance, color temperature, contrast, glare, and wall color, affect children’s attention, comfort, behavior, and cognitive development. The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate that well-designed lighting systems can significantly enhance students’ focus, mood, and overall learning performance while fostering an ergonomic, safer, and more comfortable classroom environment. By evaluating previously conducted studies, this research seeks to identify optimal lighting characteristics that best support childhood education. The study highlights the critical role of proper lighting in creating effective learning spaces that promote long-term developmental outcomes.

Xander Nichols, Sarah Bergeron, and John P. Doucet

Speculation regarding the possibility of life beyond Earth dates back to antiquity.  Only in the 21st century have scientists applied sufficiently advanced chemical and spectral technology to identify with atomic certainty extraterrestrial molecules of biological significance.  Signatures of amino acids, ribose and other sugars, glycolaldehyde, ammoniated salts, dimethylsulfoxide, phosphine, various nucleobases, aliphatic molecules, and even peptides, have recently been identified from meteorites, comets, and planetary atmospheres.  Amid accelerating discovery, including anticipation of detailed laboratory identification of molecules captured in situ from the carbonaceous, near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu (collected by NASA in 2023), curation of molecular information becomes paramount for both current understanding and improving (and assuring) technology and search missions.  Toward that end, we have conducted a survey of recently discovered astrobiochemicals and curated information on molecular type, biological significance, discovery locus, discovery technology, space mission, and peer-reviewed reporting.  Our work anticipates international collection of such astrobiochemical information in a field we hereby name “cosmomics.”