Funding system reform for excellence in science: an interview with Jinghai Li,President of NSFC

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) is the major funding agency for China''s basic research in natural science. The total budget for NSFC was 26.7 billion Yuan (RMB) in 2017, accounting for 27% of China''s total investment in basic research. In the past decades, continuous increases in the National Natural Science Fund and other funding programs provided strong support for the rapid growth in China''s science and technology (S&T). In the second half of 2018, NSFC unveiled a deep reform plan that aims to build a fair, efficient and standardized new funding system that meets the demands of excellence in science in the twenty-first century in 5–10 years. Why did NSFC propose this reform? What are the major tasks of this reform? And how would NSFC implement this reform? All-in-all, this reform would not only have profound effect on S&T in China but also matters the world for the global collaborative efforts for the science. Recently, National Science Review had an exclusive interview with Jinghai Li, President of NSFC and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to learn his views and perspectives of the future of NSFC.     

New SI and precision measurements: an interview with Tianchu Li

On 13–16 November 2018, the 26th General Conference of Weights and Measures (CGPM) was held in Paris. The conference adopted Resolution A on ‘Revision of the International System of Units (SI).’ According to Resolution A: four of the SI basic units, namely kilograms, amps, kelvin and mole, are defined by the Planck constant h, the basic charge constant e, the Boltzmann constant k and the Avogadro constant N_A, respectively. This establishes the basic quantities and units in SI on a series of constants. The new SI was officially launched on 20 May 2019. This is the most significant change and a milestone in the history of metrology since the Metre Convention was signed in 20 May 1875. Professor Tianchu Li, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has been working on time and frequency standards for 37 years. In this interview, Prof. Li reviews the quantization and constant evolutions of the second and meter, and introduces the redefinitions of ampere, kelvin, kilogram and mole, and their significance for precision measurements.     

Exoplanets,extraterrestrial life and beyond:an interview with Douglas Lin

In a survey released by the US National Academies of Sciences,Engineering and Medicine in November2021,the search for Earth-like planets outside our solar syste...     

The future of carbon neutrality from a scientific research perspective:an interview with Jing-Hai Li

<正>Since China announced that it will strive to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, it has become the focus of the whole society.The implementation of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals requires a range of revolutionary technologies and involves an array of key scientific questions.A great deal of research has focused on the development of new concepts and innovative technologies on carbon science and sustainable development.     

Functional mesoporous materials in clean energy: an interview with Dongyuan Zhao

<正>National Science Review invited Prof. Dongyuan Zhao of Fudan University for an interview focusing on his team’s renowned research on functional mesoporous materials and energy-related applications. Prof. Zhao is a professor of chemistry and materials science, and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his PhD in chemistry from Jilin University in 1990. He has since focused his research on the synthesis and structure of porous materials and molecular sieves.     

县级科协是科普工作的主力军

福建省各县级科协充分发挥科普主力军作用,大力推进科普工作的群众化、社会化、经常化,为福建省精神文明建设增添光彩。科普宣传影响大福建县级科协大力普及科技知识,重视宣传弘扬科学思想、科学精神、科学方法,举办各类讲座、报告会、展览等活动,不断提升科普宣传层面。县级科     

A new twist on graphene: an interview with Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and Allan MacDonald

Graphene is the building block of graphite, made of carbon atoms bonded into sheets of hexagonal rings just a single atom thick. Although such isolated sheets had been predicted for many decades to exist, and had been grown on other surfaces, interest in this material exploded after the discovery in 2004 that single sheets could be made easily and cheaply by separating them mechanically from graphite flakes (a process called exfoliation). Although graphene is often advertised as a ‘wonder material’—electronically conducting, transparent and extremely strong and flexible—much of the interest in it is more fundamental. As a 2D conductor, graphene shows unusual electronic and magnetic properties that enable the study of quantum-mechanical effects of confinement and of correlations between electron motions—some of which might find applications in electronic devices. The excitement of this discovery was reflected in the award of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics to two pioneers in the field: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in the UK.This rich behavior is broadened still further when two graphene sheets are brought close enough to interact with one another. In particular, the electronic properties may then depend on the relative orientation of the sheets: how aligned the two ‘honeycomb’ lattices are. Two grids superimposed on one another may create ‘superlattices’: regularities at larger scales than the grid spacing, due to registry (commensurability) between the two at certain angles. This so-called moiré effect is sometimes evident for two closely spaced grid-like fences seen from afar. Experimentally exploring the electronic properties of such ‘twisted bilayer graphene’ requires an ability to precisely control the position and orientation of the two sheets. These phenomena are now recognized as generic to other 2D materials, such as hexagonal sheets of boron nitride. They have revealed a fertile playground for condensed-matter physics. In particular, striking electronic properties appear at certain ‘magic-angle’ twists of the layers.NSR spoke to two of the leading experts in the study of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG): experimentalist Pablo Jarillo-Herrero of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and theorist Allan MacDonald of the University of Texas at Austin.     

The past and future of USTC: an interview with USTC President Xinhe Bao

The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) is located in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, and has its own characteristics among the universities in China. Established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), USTC is distinctively tinted with a scientific color. It is also famous for its ‘Special Class for the Gifted Young’ and is considered one of the best Chinese universities in the fields of science and technology (S&T). Recently, National Science Review interviewed Professor Xinhe Bao, the President of USTC, about the characteristics of the university and the education and research in China. Xinhe Bao is an academician of CAS and has made seminal contributions in catalysis and energy chemistry in the past decades. Before joining USTC, he had worked at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), CAS and Fudan University (Shanghai), and thus possesses an in-depth understanding of the education and research in China.     

Activate dormant C-H bonds with tons of enthusiasm:an interview with Jin-Quan Yu

Synthetic chemistry is the art of molecules.By breaking and forming chemical bonds,chemists can transform one molecule into another,and provide a variety of che...     

Taxonomy and why history of science matters for science: a case study

The history of science often has difficulty connecting with science at the lab-bench level, raising questions about the value of history of science for science. This essay offers a case study from taxonomy in which lessons learned about particular failings of numerical taxonomy (phenetics) in the second half of the twentieth century bear on the new movement toward DNA barcoding. In particular, it argues that an unwillingness to deal with messy theoretical questions in both cases leads to important problems in the theory and practice of identifying taxa. This argument makes use of scientific and historical considerations in a way that the authors hope leads to convincing conclusions about the history of taxonomy as well as about its present practice.     

Progress in the brain–computer interface: an interview with Bin He

What can the brain–computer interface (BCI) do? Wearing an electroencephalogram (EEG) headcap, you can control the flight of a drone in the laboratory by your thought; with electrodes inserted inside the brain, paralytic patients can drink by controlling a robotic arm with thinking. Both invasive and non-invasive BCI try to connect human brains to machines. In the past several decades, BCI technology has continued to develop, making science fiction into reality and laboratory inventions into indispensable gadgets. In July 2019, Neuralink, a company founded by Elon Musk, proposed a sewing machine-like device that can dig holes in the skull and implant 3072 electrodes onto the cortex, promising more accurate reading of what you are thinking, although many serious scientists consider the claim misleading to the public. Recently, National Science Review (NSR) interviewed Professor Bin He, the department head of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and a leading scientist in the non-invasive-BCI field. His team developed new methods for non-invasive BCI to control drones by thoughts. In 2019, Bin’s team demonstrated the control of a robotic arm to follow a continuously randomly moving target on the screen. In this interview, Bin He recounted the history of BCI, as well as the opportunities and challenges of non-invasive BCI.     

Scientific aspirations of the Chinese Space Station program: an interview with Ming Gao

On 17 June 2021, China''s spacecraft Shenzhou 12 took three Chinese astronauts into the Earth''s orbit and docked with the assembly of Tianhe and Tianzhou, the core module and cargo ship of the Chinese Space Station (CSS), which had been launched and assembled in orbit earlier this year. The three astronauts became the first visitors of the CSS and would stay in orbit for about three months. In 2022, two laboratory cabin modules, Wentian and Mengtian, will be launched and assembled into Tianhe, completing the basic structure of the CSS. The CSS is designed to be used for at least 10 years, and will provide an outer space experimental platform for researchers from multiple disciplines.On 23 July 2021, National Science Review (NSR) interviewed Professor Ming Gao (高铭), the Commander-in-Chief of the Space Utilizaiton System of the China Manned Space Program, Director General of the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization (CSU) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics. The Space Utilizaiton System is the scientific part of the CSS project, responsible for the design and organization of the onboard research programs. Gao has been involved in China''s Manned Space Program since 1994, and has experienced the whole development process from the Shenzhou spacecraft to the CSS. In this interview, she introduces the scientific goals, plans and aspirations of the CSS.     

Pas de deux of electricity and magnetism: an interview with Sang-Wook Cheong

Materials can be ferroelectric, having a spontaneous electric polarization that can be reversed by an external electric field, or they can be ferromagnetic, exhibiting spontaneous magnetization that is switchable by an applied magnetic field. However, until the 1960s, scientists did not expect that these two ferroic properties could co-exist in a single material. Today, materials exhibiting more than one of the primary ferroic properties are called multiferroics. Here, the primary ferroic properties can be ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, antiferromagnetism, ferroelasticity, ferrotoroidicity or others. Basically, the multiferroic effect originates from the simultaneous breaking of space inversion and time-reversal symmetries. Multiferroics can be imagined as a pas de deux of electricity and magnetism. Recently, National Science Review interviewed Professor Sang-Wook Cheong from Rutgers University, who is one of the pioneering scientists in this field. Cheong talked about the multiferroics field, which has been fast developing since the early 2000s. His introductions and opinions on diverse multiferroic materials and potential multiferroic devices, as well as future research directions, may provide a useful resource for researchers both inside and outside the multiferroic research field.     

Challenges and opportunities facing game theory and control: an interview with Tamer Başar

The Control community has recently witnessed an almost exponentially growing interest in the application of game-theoretic concepts and tools in research on control, multi-agent systems, and networks. In an interview with NSR, Professor Tamer Başar, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Swanlund Endowed Chair and CAS Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA, former president of both the IEEE Control Systems Society and the American Automatic Control Council, and the founding president of the International Society of Dynamic Games, talked about the recently emerging role of game theory in control and networking research, how it broadens the territorial boundaries of control into disciplines outside engineering, and opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.     

Frontiers in zeolites: towards establishing a new discipline of condensed matter chemistry—an interview with Ruren Xu

In recent decades, the application of zeolite has been extended to many sustainable processes. Professor Ruren Xu (徐如人) of Jilin University is a leader within Chinese, Asian and worldwide zeolite communities, as well as the founder of the inorganic synthesis discipline in China and the first person in the world to propose the scientific discipline of modern inorganic synthetic chemistry. Professor Xu started his scholarly research on zeolites in the mid-1970s. He focused initially on crystallization and mechanisms of zeolite formation. In the 1980s, he gradually shifted his research to the exploration of microporous materials with novel frameworks and compositions. In 1984, he outlined new directions in the synthesis of zeolites and placed emphasis on the ‘heteroatom concept’, which turned out to be very influential and fruitful for the subsequent development of heteroatom-containing zeolite catalysts. In the following years, he and his group systematically developed new solvothermal routes for zeolite synthesis. In the late 1990s, Xu started to think about the rational synthesis of zeolites, a major challenge for zeolite as well as inorganic synthesis in general. His group developed several effective strategies for the rational design and synthesis of zeolitic materials. He is the chairman of the 15th International Zeolite Conference (15th IZC) held in 2007 for the first time in China. Because of his significant contribution to zeolite science in China, he received the National Zeolite Lifetime Achievement Award of China in 2017. NSR recently interviewed Professor Xu about the current status and future prospects of zeolites and related porous materials. This interview is dedicated to Professor Xu on his 90th birthday, in recognition of his seminal contribution to zeolite science, modern inorganic synthetic chemistry and the new discipline of condensed matter chemistry, which was first suggested by Professor Xu in 2018.

NSR: Could you please briefly introduce the history of the science of zeolites and related porous materials and the contribution by the Jilin group to the development of zeolite science? Xu : The term ‘zeolite’ was first coined by Swedish Mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt in 1756 to name a new type of mineral that produced a large amount of steam from water when heated up rapidly. In the 1950s, R.M. Milton from the Union Carbide Corporation made the first synthetic zeolites under hydrothermal conditions. Since then, great efforts have been made to discover new types of zeolites and related porous materials. Besides zeolites with pore sizes smaller than 2.0 nm, mesoporous materials with pore sizes between 2.0 and 50 nm, including mesoporous polymer and mesoporous carbon, porous metal-organic-frameworks (MOFs), and porous organic materials such as porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs), have greatly extended the compositions of porous materials, making porous materials an important area in materials science.The group at the State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry at Jilin University has been working on zeolites since the mid-1970s, initially focusing on the crystallization and formation mechanism of zeolites followed by the synthesis of heteroatom-doped zeolites and open frameworks with new tetrahedral elements and building units. The most publicized examples include JDF-20, a microporous aluminophosphate with the largest 20-membered ring, AlPO-CJB1, the first aluminophosphate sieve with Brönsted acidity, and MAPO-CJ40, a heteroatom-stabilized chiral framework of aluminophosphate molecular sieve with the zeolite structure of JRY, the first zeotype structure discovered by scientists from China.Open in a separate windowProfessor Ruren Xu at Jilin University; a leader in the zeolite community and the founder of the inorganic synthesis discipline in China (courtesy of Professor Ruren Xu).International colleagues in the field of zeolite research widely consider our group to be leaders in the discovery of numerous compounds with abundant structure types and compositions, referred to as the third milestone in the field. Our group is therefore widely referred to as ‘the Jilin Group’ by international colleagues, and is considered to be an important team in the international zeolite research community. Two of the members of this group are Professor Jihong Yu (于吉红) of Jilin University and Professor Fengshou Xiao (肖丰收) now at Zhejiang University. Professor Jihong Yu has had great success in establishing the methodologies for the rational design and synthesis of zeolites and revealing the crystallization mechanism of zeolites, especially the discovery of the hydroxyl free radicals involved in the crystallization mechanism of zeolites. She has also developed new applications of zeolites to catalysis, separation and energy storage. Professor Fengshou Xiao has successfully developed a green synthesis route for zeolites, i.e. a template- and solvent-free route, and highly efficient catalysis systems with synergistic functionalities. In the 1990s, two scholars, Dr. Qisheng Huo (霍启升) and then Dr. Dongyuan Zhao (赵东元) from our group, joined the group of Professor G.D. Stucky at UC Santa Barbara. They became pioneers in the field of ‘mesostructured materials’. Professor Shilun Qiu (裘式纶) made contributions to the early development of MOFs, the membrane of covalent organic frameworks (COFs); and PAFs and COFs with exceptional adsorption, separation and catalysis. Professor Dongyuan Zhao (赵东元) and his group developed, for the first time in the early years of the new century, a new self-assembly route of organic-organic components for the construction of ordered polymer and carbon-based materials, which has been applied to macro-molecules catalysis, adsorption-separation, nanoscale assembly and biochemical systems. Their achievements have significantly advanced the field of porous materials and made great contributions to the field of zeolites. NSR : In recent years, you have been working tirelessly to develop the fields of condensed matter chemistry and condensed matter engineering. Could you please give a brief overview of condensed matter chemistry and engineering, and their relationship to other modern chemistry sciences? Xu : Since the early 1800s, more than 193 million organic and inorganic substances, including alloys, coordination compounds, minerals, mixtures, polymers and salts, have been discovered and presented in the scientific literature. These substances are either natural or human-made via chemical reactions, whereas chemical reactions are the core of the science of chemistry. The traditional thinking has been that the main components in all chemical reactions are molecules, atoms and/or ions, and virtually no attention has been paid to the states of the reactants, which are generally in condensed states like solids, liquids and mesostructures, or even in complex living organisms. Therefore, the processes and products of chemical reactions should not be determined solely by the structure and composition of these basic species but also by the complex, and possibly multilevel-structured, physical and chemical environment, together referred to as the condensed state [1–3]. That is, the relevant matters in the condensed state should be the main bodies of chemical reactions; this is applicable not only to solids and liquids but also to gas molecules, as reactions among gas molecules can take place only in the presence of catalysts in specific condensed states, or after their state transition under extreme reaction conditions. The reaction process, the mechanism and the reaction products are dictated, possibly predominantly by the composition and the multilevel structure of the catalysts in condensed matter states.To achieve a more realistic view of chemical reactions, we need to establish a new chemistry discipline, i.e. condensed matter chemistry, to gain an improved understanding of the actual reaction processes of chemical reactions in the condensed state and to establish associations among functionalities, multilevel structures and properties of the reactants in complex environments. I anticipate that big data and artificial-intelligence-based machine-learning techniques may play indispensable roles as we work to derive general principles and rules from the available data of reactants, reactions and products, along with reaction conditions, possibly guided by principles and knowledge from the science of condensed matter physics.

The processes and products of chemical reactions should not be determined solely by the structure and composition of these basic species but also by the complex, and possibly multilevel-structured, physical and chemical environment, together referred to as the condensed state.—Ruren Xu

NSR: In your opinion, what are the important frontiers in the field of zeolites and related porous materials? Xu: I think the important frontiers in the field of zeolites and related porous materials include: (i) theoretical study of the synthesis, characterization and functionality of zeolites and related porous materials; (ii) development of new zeolites and porous materials with desired functionalities; and (iii) development of the science of condensed matter engineering for porous materials, which involves structure design and rational construction at the condensed state level (i.e. rational synthesis, preparation and self-assembly). NSR: Could you please briefly describe the relationship between zeolites and related porous materials, as well as condensed matter chemistry? Xu : Taking zeolites with specific catalytic performance as an example, the synthesis and preparation stages, as well as the catalysis process, all involve complex condensed matter chemistry. The composition and multilevel structure in the condensed state of the catalyst, the local environment, and the interactions among the reactants enabled by the catalytic sites, determine the catalysis mechanism, process, yield, side-reaction and types of products. During the crystallization process of zeolites under hydro/solvothermal conditions, the composition and structure of the liquid phase will affect the condensation reaction between species, the gelation process, the gel composition, gel crystallization in the presence of the template and the crystallinity of the products, among a few other things. These issues need to be studied at the level of condensed matter chemistry. Studying these issues will push forward the development of condensed matter chemistry. NSR: How do you achieve the rational design and synthesis of zeolites and related porous materials with specific functionalities? Xu : One possible way is to establish the relationship among functionalities in the condensed state, multilevel structure and construction of matter through the development of condensed matter engineering, coupled with mining and modeling big data using artificial intelligence techniques. With such relationships established, we can design the composition and structure in the condensed state of zeolites with specific functionalities and accomplish the rational synthesis and precise preparation/modification of the relevant zeolites. Regarding the development of condensed matter engineering, it was started in the early 1990s via the project ‘Construction of Molecular Engineering’ sponsored by the National Pandeng (攀登, means climb) Project. The principal investigators included our group, Professor Youqi Tang''s (唐有祺) group of Peking University and four other universities and two research institutes. The projects went on for 25 years with the first 10 years supported by the National Pandeng Project and the next 15 years by the ‘973 Project’. Through these projects we have gained considerable knowledge and experience, and built a foundation for the current development of condensed matter engineering. NSR: What suggestions do you have for young researchers working in the field of zeolites and related porous materials? Xu : Zeolites and related porous materials are extremely important materials with great potential for application. Here, I encourage young researchers working in this field to consider the issues from the perspective of condensed matter physical science when they develop new types of porous materials with new functionalities, explore new application areas of porous materials, and investigate the rational construction and precise preparation of matter with specific multilevel structures in condensed states. This new knowledge will serve as the basis and direction for the rapid development of condensed matter chemistry in other fields of chemistry.     

Soft,biocompatible materials and skin-like electronics as wearable devices: an interview with John A. Rogers

Recent advances in active materials, micro-fabrication techniques, ultra-miniaturized design approaches and hybrid device layouts form the foundations for emerging classes of unusual systems that can capture physiological signals from the human body in a physically imperceptible fashion at nearly any anatomical location, external on the skin or internal on vital organ systems. Of particular interest with these technologies are their thin geometries, flexible/stretchable physical properties and unique form factors, to enable conformal and gentle contacts with soft, curved and dynamic surfaces of living tissues. Commercial embodiments of skin-integrated devices with clinical-grade monitoring capabilities are just now becoming widely available not only in developed countries but also in the most resource-constrained areas of the globe. A specific example is in skin-like—sometimes referred to as ‘epidermal’—wireless electronics for continuous monitoring of essential markers of physiological health status, with accuracy and reliability comparable to that of expensive, wired-based systems currently used with patients in intensive care units, but cost-effectively and applicable in any setting—in hospitals, health clinics, work environments or in the home. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for the care of patients. NSR spoke to one of the scientific leaders in this field—a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, the winner of the 2022 US National Academy of Sciences James Prize in Science and Technology Integration and one of the few individuals in history to be elected to all three US National Academies, namely the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Medicine, Professor John A. Rogers, the Director of the Querrey-Simpson Institute of Bioelectronics at Northwestern University on the recent advancements and the prospects of soft, biocompatible electronic systems and skin-like wearable devices.