Nuclear science has always been at the forefront of material science, dedicated to researching the extreme states of matter from the early stages of the universe's creation to the process of celestial evolution. It continues to make creative discoveries to this day and plays an irreplaceable role. In this review, we will briefly summarize the frontiers and highlights of the development of nuclear physics and technology in 2023, showcasing domestic outstanding works. The breakthroughs in these areas have a foundation for the future development of nuclear science and made unprecedented contributions to national security,technology, health, and economic prosperity.

Metamaterials are a new class of artificial materials that emerged at the turn of the century, providing a new method of material construction and revolutionary technology for many technical fields. In the past 2023, research on metamaterials made certain progress in multiple aspects. This article attempts to review some of the main research works on metamaterials from several aspects, including optical metamaterials, thermal metamaterials, mechanics(mechanical) metamaterials, quantum and time-varying metamaterials, and the merging of metamaterials with conventional materials. The future research and development trends in the field are also predicted and anticipated.

This article reviews the major achievements and advances made in the field of astronomy in 2023. The James Webb Space Telescope produced many new discoveries and provided important data on many aspects, such as galaxy formation and exoplanet exploration. The ultra-high sensitivity of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope(FAST) allowed it to obtain sufficiently accurate data in a short period of time and become the first to detect a key evidence of nanohertz gravitational waves. The Euclid telescope was launched and sent back the first batch of images, took over the baton from the Planck satellite and continued to explore dark energy and dark matter of the universe. The Wide Field Survey Telescope(WFST)was put into operation, providing new support for optical time-domain survey in the Northern Hemisphere. The results of the asteroid impact experiment were released, providing an empirical basis for the future planetary defense plan. Lunar exploration fever was once again sweeping the world, and India became the fourth country to successfully land on the lunar surface.Observations discovered more new exoplanets and expanded our understanding of the universe. The publication of global images of Mars and launching probes into Jupiter's icy moons brought new progress to the scientific research of our solar system. Highresolution and panoramic images of black holes were released, providing a new perspective for understanding the complex structures around black holes. The age of the universe was questioned, the actual age might be doubled.

pace science and explorations provide the first-hand data for possible science breakthroughs and continue to push forward the frontiers of knowledge. The paper analyzes the global top discoveries which are grouped in 10 categories, based on the publications mainly in Nature and Science as well as major achievements by Chinese missions and experiments in 2023. These discoveries cover hot spots in the origin and evolution of the early universe, the lunar and planetary explorations, the search for exoplanets and characterization, heliophysics and manned spaceflight. The coming missions in 2024 are also prospected.

In 2023, planetary physics, a major branch of planetary science, exhibited a diverse and thriving landscape. China's planetary physics evolved into emerging areas, including the processes of generating solar and planetary magnetic fields, longterm variations in the space environments of Earth and other planets, and interconnected processes within Earth and planetary multilayer systems. These advancements laid a solid foundation for the future progress of deep space exploration. This paper carefully selects 20 research areas in planetary physics, focusing on the developments and key areas of interest within China's planetary physics. By placing them within the spatiotemporal context of the world and history, the paper presents a comprehensive overview of the planetary physics trends both in China and the world.

Realizing efficient control of water pollution and green utilization of water resources is a necessary condition for maintaining public health, promoting ecological civilization construction, and promoting sustainable economic and social development. This study reviews and summarizes the global scientific and technological research hotspots in this field in 2023,with highlights on prevention and control of new pollutants in surface water, protection of groundwater resources, safety assurance of drinking water, carbon reduction and efficiency enhancement in sewage treatment, resource utilization of wastewater,development of unconventional water sources, and protection and utilization of water resources in China. Research shows that construction of a new pollution prevention and control system for surface water should focus on the research of environmental quality standards and pollution control technologies. It is expected to improve the protection level of groundwater resources with the help of modern hydrogeology. New membrane technology helps ensure drinking water safety, and the synergistic development of efficiency and carbon reduction has become a new challenge for the sewage treatment industry. In the field of rural sewage treatment and resource utilization, substantial achievements and research results have been made in multiple aspects such as technological innovation, management optimization, and sewage resource utilization. Carbon based nanomaterials and other materials have received widespread attention in the field of environmental radioactive nuclide separation. Crystallization technology is a key technology for zero discharge of high salinity wastewater. New membrane distillation technology can promote the steady development of seawater desalination technology and engineering construction. All these research results have important meanings to the major strategic engineering practices of water resource protection and utilization, as well as water pollution control.

This paper reviews the research progress of marine meteorology during 2022-2023 on typhoon, sea fog, monsoon, airsea flux, wave simulation, cold wave and the improvement and development of marine meteorological observation technology during this period. These researches mainly focused on the improvement of various oceanic and meteorological observation and simulation technologies, as well as the formation and development mechanisms of potential factors of marine meteorological disasters, e. g., diverse typhoon paths and the rapid development cases. The observation and development mechanisms of monsoon, sea fog, wave and air-sea flux and the improvement of model parameterization are important research directions of marine meteorology in the future. These research results provide certain scientific bases and application values for prediction and warning of marine meteorological disasters.

In 2023 China's oil and gas production engineering made technological breakthroughs and achieved outstanding innovative results in areas such as effective production in new area, tapping potential and increasing efficiency in old fields,digital and intelligent development, and green low-carbon transformation. In the field of layered injection, the level of AI continued to improve and the scope of technological adaptation further expanded, significantly enhancing the level of refinement in layered injection. In the field of artificial lifting, the new high-efficiency lifting technology index reached a new height, with significant improvement in mechanical mining, efficiency and digital level, and significant energy-saving and consumption reduction effects. The development of gas production technology towards green and intelligent gas production, full lifecycle fine gas production, and composite drainage gas production effectively promoted the leapfrog growth of natural gas production. In the field of reservoir modification, unconventional horizontal well volume fracturing 2.0 was developing towards refinement and personalization, and innovative breakthroughs were made in fracturing theories, equipment tools and materials, and fracture monitoring technology, which would provide a strong guarantee for high-efficiency exploration and development of oil and gas. In the field of downhole operation, there were significant technological progress in the areas of pressure work, continuous tubing operation, digital intelligent well workover operation and downhole operation under complex working conditions, which effectively ensured the healthy production of oil, gas and water wells. These technological advancements provided strong support and engineering guarantees for the high-quality development of oil and gas field development business.

In 2023, breakthrough advancements were made in various fields of life sciences. This article mainly reviews some of those developments that have changed and will likely continue to change our technological, perspective, and investigative approaches to life sciences: The artificial intelligence as an increasingly powerful and important tool for applications in life sciences and medicine; The emergence and unprecedentedly widespread use of GLP-1 agonists; the further optimization and application of new technologies in areas such as phase separation, in vitro embryo models, neuroscience, and developmental biology; and the advent and initial clinical application of new clinical treatments like antibody therapy against beta-amyloid,stem cell and immunotherapy, mRNA vaccines, and CRISPR gene-editing therapies. These research advancements are not only further expanding our understanding of the mysteries of life itself but also bringing hope to patients suffering from a series of significant human diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer, viral infections, and more.

In the past year, dramatic progress on wheat genetic improvement was achieved, including the exploring of new genes related to high yield, disease resistance, and drought and low temperature tolerance, the development of new germplasms with ideal disease resistance and promising yield and good quality potential, the creating of EMS-induced mutants in a large scale,the improvement of prime editing technology used in wheat and haploid induction system by wheat edited mutant, and the enrichment of wheat genome sequencing data on coverage and polymorphism. In future studies, these genes, materials,technologies, and genome sequencing information should be better used in wheat breeding for fully playing their roles.Particularly, multiple available genes or traits can be pyramided by crossing or advanced techniques to develop ideal wheat varieties which have high yield, multiple resistances, and satisfying quality. Additionally, more researches on aphid resistance,high temperature tolerance, and high photosynthetic efficiency are necessary in this crop for reducing yield loss in wheat production.

Third-generation photovoltaic semiconductors have the unique advantages of solution-compatible low-cost processing, transparency, flexibility, large-area film formation, photo-responsive and ion-transport capabilities. Focusing on devices prepared from such semiconductor materials, this paper reviews recent advances in organic photovoltaic as well as organic/inorganic hybrid perovskite photovoltaic, and explores their significant advantages in application scenarios such as flexible self-powered electricity supply and building integrated photovoltaic. At the same time, the development of thirdgeneration light-emitting diode in terms of material selection and structural design, and their application prospects in the field of lighting and display are discussed. In addition, the latest advances of third-generation semiconductor materials in artificial optoelectronic synapses are discussed, mainly focusing on new mechanisms, new device structures, and new functions. The latest applications of artificial synaptic devices in integrated sensing-memory-computing chips, neural networks, and intelligent bionic devices are also introduced. The key scientific issues for the field are briefly summarized, and an outlook for future scientific research and application breakthroughs is presented.

The year of 2023 witnessed the rapid development and application of magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials and systems, with many research hotspots and remarkable application milestones. Regarding material design and development,researchers were successfully enhanced the thermodynamics/kinetics of magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials through various modification methods and realized the near-room temperature hydrogen absorption, hydrogen release below 200° C, and improved cycle life. In terms of engineering applications, the world's first tonnage magnesium-based solid-state hydrogen storage and transport trailer was launched, and several demonstration application projects and material production lines were also implemented. The whole community is now interested in promoting the development of magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials and systems, exploring their potential application scenarios. This paper provides an overview and outlook of magnesium based hydrogen storage materials on five aspects: catalysis, nanotechnology, alloying, storage system, and demonstration applications. It summarizes the progress of magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials made in 2023, explores their potential applications in hydrogen storage and transportation, energy storage, and power generation using solid oxide fuel cells. Opportunities and challenges that magnesium-based hydrogen storage materials will encounter in the coming 2024 are also discussed.

In 2023 innovations and breakthroughs were achieved in UAV technology, showing remarkable technological innovation progress and wide application situation. This paper comprehensively analyzes the scientific and technological hotspots of UAV in 2023 from multiple perspectives, such as UAV control policy, technology innovation, key technologies, UAV cluster verification, and anti-UAV technology. With the improvement of visual emergency obstacle avoidance technology and intelligent autonomous flight ability, the performance and function of UAV were significantly improved. With the continuous popularization and application of Uavs, the key technologies, combat styles and platform construction of UAV swarms were also constantly improving. Industry customization, independent intelligence and cross-domain actual combat are still important directions for the future development of UAVs.

In 2023, countries such as the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and India successively released national policies and strategic plans for cybersecurity, and the strategic position of cybersecurity was becoming increasingly prominent and constantly improving. At the same time, high covert and destructive attack activities represented by APT attacks,ransomware attacks, supply chain attacks, new network attacks, and mobile attacks were frequent, posing serious security threats to the global cyberspace. Zero trust, confidential computing, privacy computing, and resilient security technologies were flourishing. Quantum key distribution and anti quantum cryptography continued to achieve technological innovation and breakthroughs. Generative artificial intelligence created a new development space for cybersecurity, and the field of cybersecurity was facing unprecedented development opportunities and application prospects.

This article reviews the major advances in the field of quantum information in 2023, and checks out the research hotspots in the field of quantum information research, such as quantum computing and quantum simulation, quantum communication and quantum networks, quantum precision measurement, and quantum information physics. The development of quantum information will lead to physically-secure communications, efficient information processing, precision measurements,etc., which will have a significant impact on national information security and human production and lifestyle.

In 2023 the development of large generative AI models achieved a series of breakthroughs. This paper reviews the key technologies of large models that have received significant attention, including the emergent abilities of large language model(LLM), development of multimodal LLMs, as well as alignment and knowledge enhancement techniques of large models. The paper also introduces the vertical applications of generative AI in various fields such as healthcare and education, and its role in advancing the development of AI agents and metaverse technologies. Additionally, the challenges and developmental trends in generative AI are discussed, including issues related to data privacy, biased values, copyright disputes, and fake news propagation.

In the era of big data and artificial intelligence, homomorphic encryption methods are widely recognized as an ideal technology to solve data security and privacy leakage problems. However, there are currently issues such as poor computational efficiency and ciphertext inflation, which seriously affect application and promotion of this technology. On the basis of summarizing the current research status, this paper reviews and analyzes the relevant research progress in 2023 from two aspects:hardware acceleration for homomorphic encryption algorithms and optimization of homomorphic encryption algorithms. Significant acceleration effects are attributed to the dedicated integrated circuit technology route; substantial progress has been made in optimization from the algorithm perspective. It can be predicted that in the next few years homomorphic encryption will be combined with artificial intelligence to deliver more value in cross-industry and industry division data collaboration and utilization.

In 2023 a new industrial pattern of XR industrial spatial computing was formed due to the entry of technology giants.Breakthrough transformation in hardware form of the XR industry was achieved. Meanwhile, the industrial focus was gradually shifting from hardware to interactive methods, content ecology, and scene experience: Vanes for improving XR terminal performance were established, including co-processing chips, spatial computing, and perspective technology; the interaction standard of the next generation computing platform was defined as multimodal forms of gesture interaction, eye tracking, and speech interaction; the cross platform connection of XR content was realized, from 3D production, format standardization to sharing and display; the recovery of offline industries was driven by the application of large space and models on the content side. The XR industry was being driven towards the direction of software and hardware system integration and collaborative development of content ecology, stemming from the enormous potential of the explosion of new generation computing platforms. A mutually prosperous high-quality industrial development pattern would inevitably be promoted, including technology, products,services, and applications.

This paper summarizes the development hotspots of urban AI in 2023 from four aspects: The connotation and characteristics of urban AI, "urban research+AI", "urban planning+AI", and "urban construction and management+AI". Then,the future development trend of urban AI is prospected, including optimizing the top-level design of urban AI, building a smart platform for urban AI, strengthening the construction of urban AI scenarios, promoting disciplinary integration for urban AI, and preventing safety and ethical risks of urban AI.

In 2023 the ransomware virus still threatened the security of global industrial control systems(ICSs), intensified geopolitical conflicts made the ICS become an important battlefield for hostile cyberattacks, and the supply chain once again became the soft underbelly of ICSs. Fortunately, much more attention was paid to ICS security and large-scale exercises were carried out by countries worldwide. Besides, there were many documents launched by authorities for ICS policies and standards.For techniques, vulnerabilities were newly found and the defense approaches were evolving. Specifically, the software and hardware vulnerabilities were still the unavoidable weakness of ICSs. The“living-off-the-land attack”did not use vulnerabilities but enabled“low-cost, big threat”operations over ICSs. Besides, there were novel attacks such as deep lateral move attack on the control level, the PLC ransomware virus, and the attack toolkit Pipedream. Security vendors and research institutions launched security-specific monitoring platforms for ICSs, produced the trustful DCS, developed the forensics tools, proposed the lightweight cryptographic algorithms, and designed zero trust mechanism sensors. The idea of“secure by design”was gradually taken into the design of ICSs. There were also advanced researches on runtime PLC security testing, protocol implementation correctness testing, protocol reverse analysis, and attack detection. The emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence,digital twin, and large language model, brought opportunities to the ICS security. Moreover, the ICS security had spillover to satellite systems, and the Europe and US began to prepare for the battlefield of cyber warfare in the space.