Interstellar space has numerous micro-scale dust. On the one hand, space dust is a potential threat to spacecraft; on the other hand, it plays a significant role in stellar evolution.

The transition-metal-catalysed cross-coupling reaction between an organo(pseudo)halide and a nucleophile is important in organic synthesis for carbon-carbon (C–C) and carbon-heteroatom (C–E, where E indicates p-block elements other than carbon) bond formations, in both industrial and academic settings (Fig. 1a).

Spin polarization is the basic concept of spintronics. In the last decade, the spin-orbital coupling effect in noncentrosymmetric crystal material-induced spin-momentum locking polarization, such as the Rashba effect, has promoted the development of a new generation of spintronics devices. While in the class of centrosymmetric material, the spin-orbital coupling effect cooperating with the local inversion symmetry breaking also induced the odd-spatially distributed spin polarization, named “Hidden Spin Polarization”, which has promised an expanded material pool for future spintronics. However, such an exotic hidden effect is difficult to be detected and thus be utilized for a device.

The impact of the direction of the chemical bond of colliding molecules on their chemical reactions has been observed in collisions of non-polar molecules for the first time. This observation and its theoretical underpinnings potentially offer a new way to control chemical reactions beyond the traditional chemical-reaction parameters of temperature, pressure, and the addition of catalysts.

Natural faults are rough due to wearing, erosion, non-uniform stress loading, and other conditions. Understanding the impacts of fault surface roughness on fault strength and earthquake hazard is always at the forefront of earthquake science.