Hydrogel is used as a structural template and precursor to prepare carbon aerogel doped with Fe–Co bimetal sites as bifunctional catalysts for ORR and OER, which exhibits enhanced activity and stability, as compared to the monometal counterparts.

A genetic linkage map for the duck (Anas platyrhynchos) was developed within a cross between two extreme Peking duck lines by linkage analysis of 155 polymorphic microsatellite markers, including 84 novel markers reported in this study. A total of 115 microsatellite markers were placed into 19 linkage groups. The sexaveraged map spans 1353.3 cM, with an average interval distance of 15.04 cM. The male map covers 1415 cM, whereas the female map covers only 1387.6 cM. All of the flanking sequences of the 155 polymorphic loci-44 monomorphic loci and a further 41 reported microsatellite loci for duck-were blasted against the chicken genomic sequence, and corresponding orthologs were found for 49. To integrate the genetic and cytogenetic map of the duck genome, 28 BAC clones were screened from a chicken BAC library using the specific PCR primers and localized to duck chromosomes by FISH, respectively. Of 28 BAC clones, 24 were detected definitely on duck chromosomes. Thus, 11 of 19 linkage groups were localized to 10 duck chromosomes. This genetic and cytogenetic map will be helpful for the mapping QTL in duck for breeding applications and for conducting genomic comparisons between chicken and duck.

The premature leakage of anticancer drugs during blood circulation may the damage immune system, normal cells, and tissues. Constructing targeted nanocarriers with pH, glutathione, and NIR triple-responsive property can effectively avoid the leakage of anticancer drugs before they arrive at the targeted site. In this paper, magnetic hollow porous carbon nanoparticles (MHPCNs) were successfully fabricated as nanocarrier. Poly(γ-glutamic acid) was used to cap the pores of MHPCNs. The photothermal conversion property of carbon and iron oxide (FeO) nanomaterials was utilized to perform photothermal therapy to overcome multidrug-resistance produced by chemotherapy. The biodistribution of nanoparticles was investigated by magnetic resonance imaging. Experiments in vivo confirm the efficient accumulations of nanoparticles at tumor sites. Meanwhile, tumor growth was effectively inhibited via synergistic photothermal/chemotherapy with minimal side effects.

Taking advantage of the protection effect of singlestranded DNA oligonucleotides, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) remain dispersed and retain a red color with the addition of a low concentration of salt, while AuNPs would aggregate in the presence of double-stranded DNA. This difference has been used to design label-free colorimetric sensors for DNA detection. NaCl is the most commonly used salt to induce the aggregation of AuNPs. In this work, we aimed to test if other salts can provide even better sensor performance and to understand the effects of the cations and anions in salts. We first studied the effect of anions, including halides (NaF, NaCl, NaBr, and NaI), and other common salts (NaNO 3 , NaClO 4 , Na 2 SO 4 , Na 2 S 2 O 3 , sodium phosphate, and sodium citrate). Among them, weakly adsorbing ones such as F − , citrate, and phosphate appeared to yield better sensitivity than Cl − . Anions can directly adsorb on the AuNPs and affect DNA adsorption. We then tested cations, and only group 1A metals (LiCl, NaCl, KCl, RbCl, and CsCl) can signal DNA adsorption, while divalent metals (MgCl 2 , CaCl 2 , MnCl 2, and NiCl 2 ) barely showed the effect of DNA. CsCl only works for strongly adsorbing DNA, such as A 15 , but not weakly adsorbing T 15 . Overall, NaF is a better salt than NaCl by having a 2.3-fold higher sensitivity, which was confirmed in a DNA sensing assay. This work has identified a better salt yielding higher sensitivity, and sensing work relying on the change of the aggregation state of AuNPs can benefit from this study.