Hydrogels have become essential to modern biomedicine, enabling advances in drug delivery, tissue engineering and wearable healthcare. Researchers have proposed an architecture-based framework for designing high-performance hydrogels beyond conventional, randomly crosslinked networks. Their review defines hydrogels with high-order structures, outlines four construction routes, including phase separation, molecular self-assembly, nanocomposite integration and polymer crystallization, and links multiscale organization to mechanical robustness, transport control and integrated biomedical functions.

Coronary artery disease remains the top global cause of death, yet current clinical practice often targets advanced vessel narrowing and ischemia, missing opportunities for early prevention before heart attacks occur. This peer‑reviewed commentary, inspired by The Lancet Commission, synthesizes real‑world Chinese population data showing atherosclerotic plaques are common among middle‑aged and older adults, with coronary plaque prevalence reaching 44.9% in local community cohorts aged 50‑75 years. The authors outline a stepwise, risk‑stratified screening workflow for primary‑care settings to detect subclinical plaque, prioritize systemic medical therapy over routine stenting for non‑culprit unstable lesions, and integrate inflammation and environmental risk control. The authors note that robust long‑term randomized trial evidence is still needed to validate broad implementation of plaque‑guided care.

This review assesses the state-of-the-art of functional liquid crystals with nanomaterials, including self-organized alignment enabled by nanotechnology, diverse properties of nanoparticle-doped systems, soft actuators and tunable structural color in nanohybrid elastomers, and provides critical perspectives on comparative advantages and remaining challenges.

This article collection features papers published in Environmental Surfaces and Interfaces since 2023 on the theme of materials‑driven environmental pollutant removal. It focuses on the development of novel materials and their practical applications in environmental pollutant remediation. All articles are freely available for reading.

Optical fibres carry the global internet because light travels through them with extremely low loss. Researchers at Caltech and the University of Southampton have now adapted flame hydrolysis deposition, a process widely used in optical-fibre manufacturing, to photonic chips. The resulting high-germania-doped microresonators reach ultrahigh Q from telecom to violet wavelengths, opening a scalable route toward fibre-like loss, low-noise lasers, frequency combs and precision photonic systems.

A collaborative research team led by Shi-Liang Shi at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ming Joo Koh's group at the National University of Singapore, reported an enantioselective reduction of Heck and Heck coupling reactions of inner alkenes catalyzed by a nitrogen-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)-nickel complex. This method, using aryl trifluoromethanesulfonate as an electrophile, achieved highly regioselective and enantioselective functionalization of inner alkenes, constructing a diverse range of chiral arylized products. The reaction conditions were mild, and the functional group compatibility was excellent. By using sterically hindered and tunably flexible NHC ligands, side reactions were effectively suppressed, and precise stereocontrol was achieved. This strategy provides a universal platform for the asymmetric functionalization of inner alkenes and demonstrates its potential application in the late-stage modification of drug-related molecules. The article was published as an open access Research Article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.

The near-Earth asteroid Apophis will make an extremely close flyby of Earth on April 13, 2029, at a distance of approximately 38,000 km—an event that occurs on average only once every 7,500 years, offering an unprecedented opportunity for planetary science and planetary defense. However, significant uncertainties remain regarding the physical parameters of Apophis, such as its shape, spin state, internal structure, and material composition, and predictions of tidal effects—including potential orbital changes, spin acceleration, surface material displacement, and dust ejection during the flyby—are highly dependent on model assumptions. Although multiple nations have planned exploration missions, how to coordinate global observational resources within the limited time window, optimize rapid-response mission architectures, and translate scientific understanding into effective planetary defense strategies remain critical challenges to be addressed.

With the intensifying space confrontation in geostationary orbit (GEO), the U.S. GSSAP (Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program) satellites have conducted hundreds of close-range observation operations on dozens of on-orbit satellites in the vicinity of GEO. The acquisition of multi-aspect information from non-cooperative targets has thus become a critical component of space security assessment. Close-range spacecraft operations, which employ relative motion configurations such as fly-around, hovering, and drifting flight, provide an effective technical means for approaching and observing targets to obtain multi-aspect payload information. However, existing studies predominantly focus on the control design of a single relative motion configuration, which fails to satisfy the complex mission requirements of multi-aspect observation. The combination of multiple models for observation presents multiple challenges, including smooth switching between modes, fuel optimization, strategy design algorithms, and analysis of payload parameter effects. Therefore, how to coordinately plan a sequential combination of multiple close-range operation models under minimum fuel constraints to efficiently acquire multi-aspect information of non-cooperative targets has become a key bottleneck in enhancing space situational awareness capabilities.

Bietti’s crystalline dystrophy (BCD) is a rare inherited retinal degenerative disease characterized by progressive night blindness, visual field constriction, and crystalline deposits in the retina and cornea. The disease is caused by mutations in CYP4V2, a gene involved in fatty acid metabolism. Traditionally, BCD has been viewed primarily as an ocular disorder. However, as CYP4V2-targeted gene therapies move into clinical exploration, a new question has become increasingly important: does BCD also involve measurable systemic metabolic changes, and could blood-based markers help monitor disease status and treatment-related metabolic safety?

A new study by researchers from the Eye and ENT Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai Proton and Heavy Ion Center, and collaborators provides fresh evidence from plasma metabolomics. Using a family-controlled design, the team enrolled 36 genetically confirmed patients with BCD and 49 unaffected first-degree relatives as controls. This design helped reduce the confounding effects of genetic background and shared environmental differences, which can be especially important in rare inherited diseases. Through untargeted liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry-based metabolomic profiling, the researchers found that BCD is associated not only with retinal degeneration, but also with systemic lipid metabolic rewiring, energy-related metabolic stress, and compensatory network changes.

Radome materials for hypersonic vehicles must simultaneously satisfy stringent performance requirements, including low dielectric constant, low dielectric loss, high mechanical strength, and excellent high-temperature resistance. However, achieving synergistic optimization between wave-transparent performance and load-bearing capacity has long remained a central challenge in material design. Research group from Sun Yat-sen University innovatively constructed three composite systems, namely Si₃N_4f/BN, Si₃N_4f/SiO₂, and Si₃N_4f/SiO₂–BN, and systematically elucidated the cross-scale mechanism by which material composition modulates the mechanical and dielectric properties of composites through tailoring interfacial bonding and thermal mismatch stress. This work provides important theoretical guidance and experimental support for the design optimization and interfacial engineering of high-temperature wave-transparent materials for hypersonic vehicle applications.