Located in a subtropical region facing the South China Sea, during summer Hong Kong experiences high salinity in the warm sea air which corrodes the metal structures of buildings. To address this challenge posed by the humid environment, researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have developed a real-time monitoring system to evaluate the impact of atmospheric corrosion on steel structures and components in buildings. This system has been deployed to monitor the structural corrosion of a newly-built research complex and a housing project. Based on the data collected, targeted protective measures have been proposed to help achieve sustainable building development.

A new smartphone-based Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) positioning technique, aimed at overcoming the challenges of urban canyons, has been developed.

Heat stress has become one of the major threats to agricultural production. With the sharp increase in future food demand, breeding heat-tolerant crop varieties has become an urgent task for ensuring food security. In a recent review article published in aBIOTECH, Xiong et al. summarizes the latest research on the impact of heat stress (HS) on major cereal crops at various developmental stages. The review highlights the use of beneficial natural variants and gene-editing techniques to improve crop tolerance to heat stress, emphasizing the value of alleles associated with thermomemory, combined stress tolerance, and the balance between stress responses and growth.

New research has uncovered why different climate models offer varying projections of sea surface temperature changes in the tropical Pacific, a region critical for global climate patterns.

A research team led by Prof. JIANG Yanyi from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has uncovered an important mechanism that helps squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) resist a form of cell death - ferroptosis. 

A Chinese research team has developed a single-step femtosecond laser 4D printing technology that enables rapid and precise micro-scale deformation of smart hydrogels. This innovation, inspired by the hierarchical structure of butterfly wings, holds significant promise for applications in flexible electronics and minimally invasive medicine.

Recently, a research team in the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a novel ammonium adsorbent that significantly reduces ammonia emissions from wheat fields, enhancing the soil's ability to retain ammonium and thereby decreasing ammonia losses.

A recent collaborative study, published in Nature, introduces an innovative approach to improving energy storage in antiferroelectric materials. The research team, including researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, and the University of Wollongong, has proposed antipolar frustration strategy to enhance the performance of dielectric capacitors, which are crucial for high-power devices requiring fast charge and discharge rates.

Recently, the research team led by Dr. HUANG Qing from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed a new method using low-frequency Raman spectroscopy to detect very subtle changes in the structure of Porphyrin molecules - changes that are usually too small to be detected by traditional tools.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. QU Zhe from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. LIU Enke from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found a new way to control the magnetic reversal in a special material called Co₃Sn₂S₂, a Weyl semimetal.