Recycling-oriented alloy design is a crucial part of material sustainability, as it reduces the need for raw material extraction and minimises environmental impact. This requires that scraps be reused or repurposed effectively, even when the scraps are co-mingled and have higher costs for further sorting and separation. In this work, we explore an alloy design concept by creating a compositionally flexible domain that can recycle multiple alloy grades and yet maintain relatively consistent properties across chemical variations. This is demonstrated through the Fe-Cr-Ni-Mn system to identify compositionally flexible austenitic stainless steels (CF-ASS) and accommodate the recycling of mixed austenitic stainless steel scraps. Alloys within the nominal composition spaces exhibit relatively consistent mechanical properties and corrosion resistance despite significant variations in different alloy compositions. We illustrate how we can utilise the compositionally flexible austenitic stainless steels to recycle mixed 200 and 300-series stainless steel and ferronickel scraps, demonstrating its practical viability. While this demonstration focuses on the stainless steel system, the underlying principles can be extended to other systems related to mixed scrap recycling.

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Photochromic smart windows have drawn increasing attention as an approach to improve building energy efficiency and enhance indoor daylight comfort. However, existing photochromic smart windows still block sunlight from entering the room on sunny winter days, causing additional energy consumption for heating. Herein, a dual-mode smart window is designed with decoupled photo and thermal functions by combining colorless Fe-doped WO3 photochromic film with window rotation. Based on this, selective heating and cooling of the room between winter and summer is achieved while maintaining the daylight comfort benefits during all seasons. As a proof of concept, the smart window reduces the temperature of a model house by up to 7.9 °C in summer mode, while in winter mode the temperature is only reduced by 0.7 °C. The proposed seasonally adaptive dual-mode smart window obtains by window rotation overcomes the limitations of conventional photochromic smart windows, which not only achieves better energy efficiency but also retains improved daylight comfort. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the heat absorbed by the smart window can be harnessed to produce electricity through the integration of thermoelectric modules within the glazing, which enhances its impact on reducing energy consumption.@en

To date only a fraction of the genetic footprint of thyroid function has been clarified. We report a genome-wide association study meta-analysis of thyroid function in up to 271,040 individuals of European ancestry, including reference range thyrotropin (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4), free and total triiodothyronine (T3), proxies for metabolism (T3/FT4 ratio) as well as dichotomized high and low TSH levels. We revealed 259 independent significant associations for TSH (61% novel), 85 for FT4 (67% novel), and 62 novel signals for the T3 related traits. The loci explained 14.1%, 6.0%, 9.5% and 1.1% of the total variation in TSH, FT4, total T3 and free T3 concentrations, respectively. Genetic correlations indicate that TSH associated loci reflect the thyroid function determined by free T3, whereas the FT4 associations represent the thyroid hormone metabolism. Polygenic risk score and Mendelian randomization analyses showed the effects of genetically determined variation in thyroid function on various clinical outcomes, including cardiovascular risk factors and diseases, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. In conclusion, our results improve the understanding of thyroid hormone physiology and highlight the pleiotropic effects of thyroid function on various diseases.

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