pressures (10-30 MPa), but also demands a large deal of H 2 mainly from natural gas reforming which causes abundant consumption of fossil fuels and huge CO 2 emissions. [3-6] As a result, for energy conservation and environmental protection, it is of crucial importance to explore a clean and sustainable route for NH 3 production. Electrocatalytic N 2 reduction reaction (NRR) under ambient conditions has been emerged recently as an attractive strategy for the green synthesis of NH 3 through utilizing inexhaustible N 2 and H 2 O. [7-12] However, due to the competition with H 2 evolution reaction (HER) and ultra-stable NN covalent triple bond, NRR suffers from unsatisfactory Faradaic efficiency (FE) and sluggish reaction kinetics. [13] It is of eager desire, but very challenging to develop selective and efficient electrocatalysts toward NRR that can inhibit the competitive HER and activate the N 2 molecule. Among various developed electrocatalysts, perovskite oxides have proven their great potential toward NRR because of their low cost, good adjustability in intriguing physicochemical properties, as well as economic and environmental friendliness. Typical examples include a few simple perovskite oxides, such as LaCoO 3 , LaCrO 3 , LaFeO 3 , La 2 Ti 2 O 7 , and Ce 1/3 NbO 3. [14-19] Although significant progress has been made, their NRR performance is still far from the requirements of commercial NH 3 synthesis. Most recently, several studies have shown that the electrocatalytic The electrocatalytic N 2 reduction reaction (NRR) under ambient conditions is an attractive strategy for green synthesis of NH 3. Due to the ultra-stable NN covalent triple bond, it is very challenging to develop highly selective and efficient electrocatalysts toward NRR. Here a general strategy to enhance the NRR activity through modulating A-site-deficiency-induced oxygen vacancies of perovskite oxides is reported. One successful example is La x FeO 3−δ (L x F, x = 1, 0.95, and 0.9) perovskite oxides with tunable oxygen vacancies that are directly proportional to the La-site deficiencies. As compared to the pristine LF, the L 0.95 F and L 0.9 F exhibit significantly improved NRR activities, which are positively correlated with the La-site deficiency and the amount of oxygen vacancies. Among them, the L 0.9 F delivers the best activity, with an NH 3 yield rate of 22.1 µg•h −1 •mg −1 cat. at −0.5 V and a Faradaic efficiency of 25.6% at −0.3 V, which are 2.2 and 1.6 times those of the pristine LF, respectively. Both experimental characterizations and theoretical calculations suggest that the enhanced NRR activity can be mainly attributed to the favorable merits produced by the oxygen vacancies: the promoted adsorption/activation of reaction species, and thus optimized reaction pathways. Application of this strategy to other perovskite oxides generates similarly successful results.

Nutritional and medicinal benefits have been attributed to the consumption of tissues from the black-boned chickens in oriental countries. Lueyang black-boned chicken is one of the native chicken breeds. However, some birds may instead have white or lighter skin, which directly causes economic losses every year. Previous studies of pigmentation have focused on a number of genes that may play important roles in coat color regulation. Illumina2000 sequencing technology was used to catalog the global gene expression profiles in the skin of the Lueyang chicken with white versus black skin. A total of 18,608 unigenes were assembled from the reads obtained from the skin of the white and black chickens. A total of 649 known genes were differentially expressed in the black versus white chickens, with 314 genes that were up regulated and 335 genes that were down-regulated, and a total of 162 novel genes were differentially expressed in the black versus white chickens, consisting of 73 genes that were up-regulated (including 4 highly expressed genes that were expressed exclusively in the skin of the black chickens) and 89 genes that were down-regulated. There were also a total of 8 known coat-color genes expressed in previous studies (ASIP, TYR, KIT, TYRP1, OCA2, KITLG, MITF and MC1R). In this study, 4 of which showed greater expression in the black chickens, and several were up-regulated, such as KIT, ASIP, TYR and OCA2. To our surprise, KITLG, MITF and MC1R showed no significant difference in expression between the black- and white-skinned chickens, and the expression of TYRP1 was not detected in either skin color. The expression of ASIP, TYR, KIT, TYRP1, OCA2, KITLG, MITF and MC1R was validated by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), and the results of the qPCR were consistent with the RNA-seq. This study provides several candidate genes that may be associated with the development of black versus white skin. More importantly, the fact that the MC1R gene showed no significant difference in expression between the black and white chickens is of particular interest for future studies that aim to elucidate its functional role in the regulation of skin color.

FSASCs were designed using a NiCo2O4 cathode material with an urchin-like hollow structure and a FeSe2 anode with a hierarchical snowflake structure, which exhibit satisfactory performances with excellent flexibility, high energy density, and long-term stability.

The oxidation of CO on strained Pt(100) surface was studied using periodic density functional theory (DFT). Unlike the uniform response of global properties (e.g., d-band center) to strain, the localized nature of adsorption leads to complex site-dependent and adsorbate-dependent responses, invalidating the generally believed statement of "tension strengthens binding". Moreover, the complex responses of reaction energetics to strain require direct study of the reaction under strain rather than extrapolating the known behaviors of individual adsorbates under strain or reaction energetics on unstrained surfaces. We show that the tensile strain lowers the reaction barrier of CO oxidation over the Pt(100) surface. This work provides a theoretical basis of utilizing strain to improve the Pt catalysts with a higher tolerance toward CO poisoning.