Recently, Prof. Weishen Yang’s group of State Key Laboratory of Catalysismade a new progress on stabilizing perovskite membrane at low temperatures. The paper was online published in Nano Letters(DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b03668).
　　The application of mixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) membranehas attracted widespread attentiondue to its unique advantages in oxygen separation and catalytic oxidation in membrane reactors.Usually, the operation temperatureof MIEC membrane is higher (>800 °C), which will lead to higher investment on membrane modules and moredifficultyfor sealing modules. Therefore, researchers have devoted a greateffort to decrease the operation temperature to low temperature range (350-650 °C). However, numerous studies showed that the oxygen permeation flux of MIEC membrane decreasedrapidly with time in the low temperature range. In their previous work, thegroup has verified the degradation mechanism of MIEC membranes with stable crystal structures and proposed an effective method to inhibit the degradation of permeation flux (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.2013, 52, 3232; J. Membr. Sci. 2015, 492, 173.). However, themethod is invalid for those membranes withphase transformations at low temperature, such as Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-δ(BSCF)membrane (AIChE J.2015, 61, 3879.).
　　To solve above problems, the changes of microstructure of BSCF have been investigated intensively under operation conditions and it is found that the degradation of oxygen permeation flux is due to the phase transformation at grain boundaries.In the paper, a new stabilization mechanism was proposed to inhibit phase transformations of perovskite materials by deliberately introducing nanoparticles at the grain boundaries. The nanoparticles act as “roadblocks” that limit the diffusion of metal ions along the grain boundaries and inhibit heterogeneous nucleation and new phase formation. With this novelapproach, a stable oxygen permeation flux(500 h) through a nanoparticle-decorated BSCF perovskitemembrane has been achieved with 10-1000times higher permeation flux thanprevious studies at 550-650 °C.This approach could potentially be extended toother systems that suffer from performance degradation due toa grain-boundary-initiated heterogeneous nucleation phasetransformations.
　　DICP Researchers Made A New Progress on Stabilizing Perovskite Membrane at Low Temperatures(Photo by Yan LIU and Prof. Xuefeng ZHU)
　　This work was supported byNatural ScienceFoundation of Chinaand the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.(Text/Photo by Yan Liu and Prof. Xuefeng Zhu)
　　

　　The paper entitled “A local mode picture for H atom reaction with vibrationally excited H2O: A full dimensional state-to-state quantum dynamics investigation” was recently published online in Chemical Science
　　(http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2015/sc/c5sc03472h#!divAbstract),
　　written by Shu Liu and Pro. Dong. H Zhang.
　　Normal mode picture has been extensively used to understand molecular vibrations. In the normal mode picture, the symmetric and asymmetric stretch excitations of H2O molecule look very differently, involving simultaneous excitation of both OH bonds. As a result, they were expected to behave differently when reacting with H atom, and produce OH with some vibrational excitation after the breaking of the other OH bond. However, Zare and coworkers observed negligible OD excitation from H reacting with D2O in fundamental asymmetrical excitation. A local mode picture was postulated to explain the phenomenon, but has never been confirmed.
　　DICP Researchers confirm the local mode picture for H atom reaction with vibrationally excited H2O(Photo by Shu LIU & Shuling CHEN)
　　DICP Researchers report the first full-dimensional state-to-state study for the title reaction with H2O in the ground and the first symmetric and asymmetric stretching excited states. It is found that symmetric and asymmetric stretching excited states behave essentially identically in the reaction. More importantly, their calculation revealed that the populations of OH in v=1 state from vibrational excited states are very close to the relative reactivity between the ground and vibrationally excited states, therefore verified the local mode picture for the reaction. In the local mode picture, the (100) and (001) states correspond to , i.e. each OH bond is a superposition of the ground and first excited quantum states. The incident H atom tends to react with excited state, producing OH mainly in corresponding ground state.(Text/Photo by Shu LIU & Shuling CHEN)
　　

　　Prof. Ling Yang’s group has made a breakthrough in drug metabolism research field. Members in Prof. Yang’s group, cooperated with prof. Jingnan Cui of State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Dalian University of Technology, have designed and developed an innovative highly selective fluorescent probe for human cytochrome P450 1A (CYP1A). The relevant results have been published as a full article entitled “A highly selective ratiometric two-photon fluorescent probe for human cytochrome P450 1A”, which has recently been published online in Journal of the American Chemical Society (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b09854).
　　CYP1A, one of the most important phase I drug-metabolizing enzymes in human, plays an essential role in metabolism of therapeutic drugs and activation of environmental contaminants or other xenobiotics (e.g., aflatoxins) to their ultimate carcinogens. In Mongoloids, the expression and activity of CYP1A are relatively high, which contribute to the tumor formation and thus increase the incidence of some major cancers (liver cancer, lung cancer, and so on). In addition, large inter-individual differences in CYP1A expression and catalytic activity are reported, due to a variety of genetic factors, therapeutic drugs and environmental factors. Thus, developing a practical method for rapid, sensitive detection and real-time monitoring of the enzymatic activity of CYP1A in biological systems will be a major breakthrough for solving these problems and a big challenge in this field.
　　A highly selective ratiometric two-photon fluorescent probe for human cytochrome P450 1A(Photo by Ziru Dai and Guangbo Ge)
　　CYP1A is a membrane-bound enzyme, for which the development and application of a highly selective probe are affected by various factors, such as selectivity and ability of resisting biological interference. The probe was designed on the basis of 3D structure information and the key amino acids in the active cavity of CYP1A, while the compound with two-photon absorption properties was selected as the fluorophore. To achieve a highly sensitive and selective probe for CYP1A, a series of derivatives were synthesized and used to explore the potential structure-selectivity relationship, by using a panel of human CYP isoforms for selectivity screening. Furthermore, the probe can be used in ratiometric two-photon imaging of intracellular CYP1A in living cells and tissues for the first time. This newly developed probe can be used to real-time monitor the enzyme activity of CYP1A in complex biological systems, and thus can be used for rapid screening of new drugs at early stage, tissue imaging, in vitro diagnostics and other biomedical fields.
　　In recent years, Prof. Yang’s group has been making progress in characterizing many important human drug-metabolizing enzymes, for example, a highly selective probe for human cytochrome P450 3A4 (http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2013/CC/c3cc45250f); a highly selective ratiometric fluorescent probe for human carboxylesterase 1 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956566314000670); a highly selective long-wavelength fluorescent probe for human carboxylesterase 2 (http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/CC/C4CC06642A); and an optimized ratiometric fluorescent probe for human UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 1A1 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956566315301007). These innovations provide powerful tools for personalized medicine and individualized diagnosis in the fields of translational and precision medicine.
　　This work was supported by the National S&T Major Projects of China, NSFC, and the National Basic Research Program of China.(Text/Photo by Ziru Dai and Guangbo Ge)
　　

　　On 22 Oct., Frontier Science and Technology Symposium on Solar energy and Energy Storage was held at the academic hall of CAS, Beijing. The symposium organized by Department of China Academy of Engineering Energy and Mining and DNL, DICP. It is an important part of the CAE key program of “Direction and strategy research of energy technology revolution” in which the project of “Roadmap of solar energy and energy storage research and development” which is leading by Academician Baolian Yi and Liquan Chen.
　　Ms. Jiami Sun, from department of energy saving and equipment, and Academician Suping Peng, from Department of China Academy of Engineering Energy and Mining addressed at the opening ceremony of the symposium.
　　The symposium attracted nearly one hundred attendees. Leading scholars and experts from academy and industry were invited to give keynote lectures and conducted extensive discussions on key problems of solar energy and energy storage. Academician Can Li and Academician Baolian Yi chaired the discussions of solar energy and energy storage respectively.（Photo/Text by Hongmei Yu）
　　Frontier Science & Technology Symposium on Solar energy and Energy Storage held in Beijing(Photo by Hongmei Yu)

　　The journal Analytical Scientist announced The Power List 2015-the Top 100 most influential people in the world of analytical science in the issue #1015 in Oct. , 2015 (https://theanalyticalscientist.com/#power-list/the-power-list-2015/). Prof. Guowang Xu, Prof. Yukui Zhang and Prof. Hanfa Zou from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences were involved in this list. They also are the only 3 Chinese scientists in this list. On the basis of an open nomination process for The Power List, 5 judges finally selected their Top 100.
　　In 2013, the Analytical Scientist announced the first Power List, 6 Chinese scientists were involved, 3 of them were also Prof. Guowang Xu, Prof. Yukui Zhang and Prof. Hanfa Zou from DICP. (Text by Xiaoli HOU)
　　Three Professors from DICP were Involved in the Power List 2015 (From the Website)

　　Recently, our physical chemist Xueming Yang, the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, was informed that he was elected to be 2015 Gauss Professor by the Academy of Sciences in Gottingen. The Gauss-Professorship was established in honour of the 100th anniversary of the death of Gauss and is rewarded to one outstanding scientist every year, who will be invited to a 2 month research visit in University of Gottingen.
　　Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, a well-known German mathematician and astronomer, was born on April 30, 1777, died on February 23, 1855. Gauss is known as the Prince of Mathematicians, and is one of the most influential Mathematicians in history, who is as famous as Archimedes and Newton. Gauss is also a multi-talented scientist, he made important contributions in many fields, such as number theory, algebra, statistics, differential geometry, geophysics, mechanics, astronomy, optics and so on. Gottingen is a world famous academic city, many famous scientists such as Gauss, Hilbert, Max Planck, Bonn were used to work in Gottingen, even the famous American scientist, the Father of the Atomic Bomb Oppenheimer also once studied in Gottingen. (Text/Photo by Lina Cheng)
　　Xueming Yang was elected as the Gauss Professor(Photo by Lina Cheng)