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.

On December 20, 2022, the American Physical Society’s (APS) Physics website reviewed the year’s major advances in international physics. They released ten of the most representative important works of 2022 as the “Highlights of the Year”.

The field of topological physics has seen a significant uptake in research efforts and interest in recent years. Kagome lattice materials have fascinated scientists for a long time because they provide a window into quantum phenomena such as geometrical frustration, topology, and strong correlations.

Jing XU, Professor of the Department of Chemistry at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), received the Wuxi AppTec Life Science and Chemistry Award for his outstanding contribution in the field of total synthesis of bioactive caged natural products.

2D heterojunctions have attracted extensive attention for their interfacial coupling associated with unique electronic hybridization, band structure manipulation, interlayer excitons, as well as twisting effects. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are promising candidates for constructing 2D heterojunctions due to a broad selection of electronic properties and dangling-bond-free layered surfaces, which offers great flexibility for both vertical and lateral heterostructure integration.

The 11th Members’ Congress of the Chinese Geophysical Society (CGS) was recently held online, during which they held their 75th anniversary commemorative meeting and award ceremony.