The pledge of achieving carbon peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060 is a strategic decision that responds to the inherent needs of China’s sustainable and high-quality development, and is an important driving force for promoting China’s ecological civilization constructions. As the consumption of fossil fuel energy is responsible for more than 90% of China’s greenhouse gases emissions, policies focusing on energy transition are vital for China accomplishing the goal of carbon neutrality. Considering the fact that China’s energy structure is dominated by fossil fuels, especially coal, it is urgent to accelerate the low-carbon transition of the energy system in a relatively short time, and dramatically increase the proportion of clean energy in the future energy supply. Although China has made notable progress in the clean energy transition in the past, its path to carbon neutrality still faces many significant challenges. During the process of energy transformation, advanced technologies and greater investment will play essential parts in this extensive and profound systemic reform for China’s economy and society. In the meantime, these changes will create immense economic opportunities and geopolitical advantages.

Variation of maternal gut microbiota may increase the risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in offspring. Animal studies have indicated that maternal gut microbiota is related to neurodevelopmental abnormalities in mouse offspring, while it is unclear whether there is a correlation between gut microbiota of ASD children and their mothers. We examined the relationships between gut microbiome profiles of ASD children and those of their mothers, and evaluated the clinical discriminatory power of discovered bacterial biomarkers. Gut microbiome was profiled and evaluated by 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing in stool samples of 59 mother–child pairs of ASD children and 30 matched mother–child pairs of healthy children. Significant differences were observed in the gut microbiome composition between ASD and healthy children in our Chinese cohort. Several unique bacterial biomarkers, such as Alcaligenaceae and Acinetobacter, were identified. Mothers of ASD children had more Proteobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, Moraxellaceae, and Acinetobacter than mothers of healthy children. There was a clear correlation between gut microbiome profiles of children and their mothers; however, children with ASD still had unique bacterial biomarkers, such as Alcaligenaceae, Enterobacteriaceae, and Clostridium. Candidate biomarkers discovered in this study had remarkable discriminatory power. The identified patterns of mother–child gut microbiome profiles may be important for assessing risks during the early stage and planning of personalized treatment and prevention of ASD via microbiota modulation.

China is committed to the targets of achieving peak CO₂ emissions around 2030 and realizing carbon neutrality around 2060. To realize carbon neutrality, people are seeking to replace fossil fuel with renewable energy. Thermal energy storage is the key to overcoming the intermittence and fluctuation of renewable energy utilization. In this paper, the relation between renewable energy and thermal energy storage is first addressed. Then, the classifications of thermal energy storage and Carnot batteries are given. The aim of this review is to provide an insight into the promising thermal energy storage technologies for the application of renewable energy in order to realize carbon neutrality. Three types of heat storage methods, especially latent heat storage and thermochemical heat storage, are analyzed in detail. The application of thermal energy storage is influenced by many heat storage properties, such as temperature range, heat storage capacity, cost, stability, and technical readiness. Therefore, the heat storage properties for different heat storage technologies are reviewed and compared. The advantage and challenge of different heat storage technologies and Carnot batteries for carbon neutrality processes are analyzed. Finally, the prospects of different heat storage technologies are summarized.

Understanding thermal transport across metal/semiconductor interfaces is crucial for the heat dissipation of electronics. The dominant heat carriers in non-metals, phonons, are thought to transport elastically across most interfaces, except for a few extreme cases where the two materials that formed the interface are highly dissimilar with a large difference in Debye temperature. In this work, we show that even for two materials with similar Debye temperatures (Al/Si, Al/GaN), a substantial portion of phonons will transport inelastically across their interfaces at high temperatures, significantly enhancing interface thermal conductance. Moreover, we find that interface sharpness strongly affects phonon transport process. For atomically sharp interfaces, phonons are allowed to transport inelastically and interface thermal conductance linearly increases at high temperatures. With a diffuse interface, inelastic phonon transport diminishes. Our results provide new insights on phonon transport across interfaces and open up opportunities for engineering interface thermal conductance specifically for materials of relevance to microelectronics.