Active fold-thrust belts are located at the front of highly deformed orogenic regions, such as the Apennines, the Zagros Mountains, the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes. These areas are densely populated and industrially concentrated, posing significant earthquake hazards with the potential to greatly impact human civilization. Understanding the complex relationships among fault slip, fold growth, and earthquakes would benefit earthquake risk assessment in these regions.

The American Physical Society (APS) recently announced its 2024 class of APS Fellows.

BODIPY (boron dipyrromethene) is an N,N-π-conjugated tetracoordinate organoboron compound formed through the chelation of two pyrrole units. As an important fluorescent dye, BODIPYs are widely applied in the fields such as fluorescent probes, bioimaging, optoelectronic materials, and photocatalysts, owing to their excellent photophysical properties, good biocompatibility, and ease of synthesis and modification.

Sulfur stereogenic molecules are widely present in natural products and have a significant impact on drug development (Fig. 1a). Among them, sulfilimines are chiral molecules bearing S(IV) stereocentres, which exhibit great value in chemistry and biology.

Over 60% of the energy from numerous primary sources globally is ultimately released into the atmosphere as heat. The effective recapture and reuse of this wasted thermal energy could significantly mitigate the greenhouse effect and contribute to achieving carbon neutrality goals. In this context, thermoelectric materials—innovative and environmentally friendly energy conversion materials—have emerged as particularly valuable. These materials can directly transform various forms of thermal energy into electricity and utilize the temperature differences generated by electric currents to manufacture precise temperature control or refrigeration equipment.

In buildings, the overreliance on air conditioning to achieve comfortable indoor temperatures results in significant power consumption and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions. As a viable technology to economize building energy consumption, the installation of smart windows that can block solar radiation and regulate indoor temperature is very important for the construction of zero-energy buildings. However, existing smart windows mainly change their optical properties through light, thermal, and electrical stimuli to achieve privacy protection as well as light and temperature regulation in confined spaces. Inevitably, this requires additional energy consumption from external stimulus signals to maintain their optical adjustment performance.