Stroke ranks as the fourth leading cause of death in Hong Kong. Between 2001 and 2021 there was a distinct trend towards younger onset ages of stroke, which has exerted a profound impact on the public health system and the families of patients. To address the challenges of disability and slow rehabilitation progress associated with hemiparesis, a common sequela of stroke, a research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has applied intelligent closed-loop mobile technology to develop a new-generation wearable rehabilitation device, the “Remind-to-Move” (RTM) sensory wristband. Complemented by a mobile application, the device delivers instant feedback to users and automatically adjusts treatment regimens, thereby enabling more personalised home-based rehabilitation training.

The review highlights: the importance of hierarchical pore engineering for rapid ion transport; the role of heteroatom doping and surface functionalization in enhancing capacitance and electrochemical stability; and the integration of conductive nanostructures to improve energy density and long-term cycling performance.

An international experiment that has already broken several records. The KATRIN project (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino Experiment), led by KIT–Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and involving 20 institutions from seven different countries, including the Politecnico di Milano, celebrated the achievement of 1,000 days of neutrino measurements with the inauguration of phase 2 of the project: the commissioning of a new and more sophisticated detector, TRISTAN. The RadLab group of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB at Politecnico di Milano, led by professors Carlo Fiorini and Marco Carminati (the latter being the national coordinator for the experiment), also supported by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, made a significant contribution to the creation of the new detector by designing and developing the detection modules and the low-noise, highly compact readout electronics of the SDD detector.

For about half the global population, rice is the staple food. Yet every year, a fungal disease – rice blast – destroys harvests that could feed 60 million people. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have uncovered how the pathogen outsmarts the rice plant’s defense system. The findings open up new possibilities for making rice more resilient, directly benefiting global food security. 

Researchers at Concordia University have developed magnet-guided soft robots designed to safely navigate blood vessels and remove dangerous clots linked to strokes and heart attacks. The flexible devices can maneuver through narrow, complex pathways more precisely than conventional tools, potentially reducing damage to surrounding tissue and improving outcomes in minimally invasive treatments for life-threatening vascular conditions.

Researchers found that toxic metal particles in rural North China air are smaller and potentially more harmful than those in urban areas. The study showed that village pollution was strongly linked to biomass and coal burning, while urban pollution was mainly associated with dust-related mineral particles. The findings highlight the overlooked health risks faced by rural populations exposed to PM_2.5-bound heavy metals.