Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed the world’s first kilowatt-scale elastocaloric cooling device. The device can stabilize indoor temperatures at a comfortable 21-22°C in just 15 minutes, even when outdoor temperatures reach between 30-31°C, marking a significant breakthrough toward the commercial application of elastocaloric solid-state cooling technology. The research findings have been published in the leading international science journal Nature, offering a promising solution to combat climate change and accelerate low-carbon transformation of the global cooling industry. 

As climate change and population growth increase pressure on global food production, regional-scale crop growth and associated process (CROP-AP) models have become essential tools for understanding and predicting agricultural productivity. A new review, published in Science China Earth Sciences, categorizes these models into four types—statistical models, crop growth models, hydrology-crop coupling models, and ecosystem models. The study explores their main functions from five aspects: crop yield prediction, crop water consumption, agricultural non-point source pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change impact and responses, and identifies key future research directions, including model validation and calibration, the ability to simulate the coupling of crop physiology and human activities, enhancing model scalability, multi-model ensembles, data and code sharing, and the integration of artificial intelligence.

The first-ever published research on Tinshemet Cave reveals that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the mid-Middle Paleolithic Levant not only coexisted but actively interacted, sharing technology, lifestyles, and burial customs. These interactions fostered cultural exchange, social complexity, and behavioral innovations, such as formal burial practices and the symbolic use of ochre for decoration. The findings suggest that human connections, rather than isolation, were key drivers of technological and cultural advancements, highlighting the Levant as a crucial crossroads in early human history.

An international collaboration headed by researchers in the Department of Physics has shown that additive manufacturing offers a realistic way to build large-scale plastic scintillator detectors for particle physics experiments.

Conductive hydrogels from ionic liquids are widely used in soft electronics and solid electrolytes due to their high flexibility and conductivity. However, engineering such hydrogels with simultaneous biocompatibility, recyclability, excellent conductivity, stretchability, and toughness for different soft electronic applications remains challenging. This study presents a simple strategy to fabricate tough, biocompatible, and recyclable conductive hydrogels based on polyvinyl alcohol PVA and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate for highly stretchable strain sensors and all-in-one supercapacitors. These hydrogels can also be recycled to make new strain sensors with consistent performance in terms of linear sensitivity, durability, and low hysteresis. This simple design concept opens up new avenues for the development of the next generation "green" wearable and implantable electronic devices.

An international team of researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Riga Technical University, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente has discovered a new method to generate electricity using small plastic beads. By placing these beads close together and bringing them into contact, they generate more electricity than usual. This process, known as triboelectrification, is similar to the static electricity produced when rubbing a balloon against hair.