Recently, the first symposium on “Fundamental Theory and Experimental Techniques for the Researchers on Solar Energy Utilization” was successfully held in DICP (Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics). This symposium series of iCheM (Innovative Energy Chemistry Materials Center) were organized by the Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
　　The symposium, proposed by Prof. Can Li and founded by DICP, mainly focused on the fundamental theory and experimental technique of solar energy utilization, including solar fuels and solar electricity productions, specifically photocatalysis, photoelectrocatalysis, photovoltaics, solar cell devices, etc., with the intention of deepening the audience’s understanding of fundamental theory and familiarizing them with the advance application of the experimental techniques in these fields. About twenty well experienced experts from Germany, Japan, Korea and China, who have been working and teaching in this field for many years, were invited to present lectures in this symposium.
　　About one 80 attendees have been selected out to attend this symposium from hundreds of candidates through a strict selection process by the organizing committee. Most of the attendees including “ National Recruitment Program of 1,000 Global Youth Experts”scholars have obtained PhD, while some of them are the senior PhD students who have published at least one research paper.
　　First symposium on “Fundamental Theory and Experimental Techniques for the Researchers on Solar Energy Utilization” successfully held in DICP
　　In the opening ceremony, Mr. Hui Lin from iCheM, Xiamen University made an opening speech. Prof. Can Li introduced the development trend and frontier of the global and domestic scientific research on solar energy utilization. During the five-day symposium, all the participants engaged quickly and efficiently into high level discussions of problems presented in the lectures. About 20 lectures including surface photovoltage techniques, single molecule chemistry of photo energy conversion systems, and excited state electron transition theory were presented in the symposium.
　　In the closing ceremony, the vice director of DICP, Zhiyuan Mao, made a speech and thanked all the lecture presenters for their professionalism and devotion for this symposium. Prof. Can Li made a concluding remark and blessed best wishes for the young people for their future success in scientific research. All the attendees were awarded graduation certificate at the end of the closing ceremony.(Photo/ Text By Fengtao Fan)
　　

　　Recently, a “”up front” paper is being published in Diabetologia on acute effects of exercise on the metabolome and transcriptome of type 2 diabetic patients (Diabetologia. 2015 Aug;58(8):1845-54.). It was a research achievement under the cooperation of the Metabonomics Research Center (Group 1808), Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences with the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and Department of Internal Medicine, University Tuebingen, Germany.
　　The therapeutic strength of physical activity to prevent and treat type 2 diabetes is commonly accepted. However, the impact of the disease on the regulation of fuel supply and oxidation and gene expression during exercise is less clear. In this international, interdisciplinary study we describe that in type 2 diabetic patients the beneficial effects of one 60min exercise bout at 50 % VO2max on glucose and fatty acid metabolism are not diminished compared to normal glucose tolerant controls. Specific transcriptional adaptations found in the diabetic skeletal muscle after exercise indicate even a more pronounced response of regulators of glucose and amino acid metabolism. These data suggest that diabetic patients can have great benefits from moderate intense exercise and provide evidence for novel potential mechanisms to ameliorate the disturbed glucose and amino acid metabolism in type 2 diabetes.
　　Group 1808 in DICP has a close cooperation since a long time on (patho)biochemical alterations in metabolism with the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Tübingen. Results have been achieved in studies on functions of important metabolites (J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2013 Jun;98(6):E1137-42，Diabetes Care. 2013 Aug;36(8):2331-8), the lipid components of brown adipose tissue (Biochim Biophys Acta. 2014 Oct;1842(10):1563-70) and influence of life style on health etc.
　　This study was supported by the foundation from the Sino-German center.(Text/Photo by ZHAO Xinjie)
　　

　　At Prof. Can Li’s invitation, Prof. Yi Lu, from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, visited DICP on July 17. He gave a lecture entitled “Designing Metalloenzymes: Exploring the Roles of Non-covalent Interactions in the Secondary Sphere in Efficient Biocatalysis for Renewable Energy”. Prof. Zongbao (Kent) Zhao hosted the lecture.
　　In Prof. Lu’s lecture, he addressed how to design functional metalloenzyme for sustainable energy conversion with a case study of O2 reduction. Learning from Cytochrome C oxidase (CcO), Prof. Lu’s group engineered azurin and myoglobin into functional metalloproteins with diverse redox activity. They have demonstrated redox potential tuning of azurin can be realized through fine-tuning of three non-covalent secondary coordination sphere interactions: hydrophobicity, hydrogen-bonding, and peptide bond oxygen interactions. After the lecture, Prof. Lu visited Laboratory of Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy and State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, and had in-depth discussions with related researchers.
　　Introduction of Prof. Yi Lu
　　Professor Yi Lu Visits DICP
　　Prof. Yi Lu received his B.S. degree from Peking University in 1986, and Ph.D. degree from University of California at Los Angeles in 1992. Prof. Lu started his own independent career in the Department of Chemistry at UIUC since 1994. He is now Jay and Ann Schenck Professor of Chemistry in the Departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering. His research interests lie at the interface between chemistry and biology. His group is developing new chemical approaches to provide deeper insight into biological systems. At the same time, they take advantage of recently developed biological tools to advance many areas in chemistry. Specific areas of current interests include a) design and engineering of functional metalloproteins as environmentally benign catalysis in renewable energy generation and pharmaceuticals; b) Fundamental understanding of DNAzymes and their applications in environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, and targeted drug delivery; and c) Employing principles from biology for directed assembly of nanomaterials with controlled morphologies and its applications in imaging and medicine.
　　Prof. Lu has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry Applied Inorganic Chemistry Award (2015), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2015), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007), Early Career Award, Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (2007), Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Award (2002), Camile Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1999), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (1998), Research Corporation Cottrell Scholars Award (1997), and the Beckman Young Investigators Award (1996). Prof. Lu is also an inventor, with more than 20 US and international patents and an entrepreneur, as a co-founder of companies for environmental monitoring (www.ANDalyze.com) and medical diagnostics (www.GlucoSentient.com). (Text/Guoqing Jia and Yinghao Li; Photo/Mingpan Cheng)

　　Led by Prof. Xueming Yang, researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics have recently revealed the physical origin of Ti3+ ions related electronic structure in TiO2, under the collaboration with Prof. Li-Min Liu from Beijing Computational Science Research Center and Prof. Annabella Selloni from Princeton University. The results entitled “Localized Excitation of Ti3+ Ions in the Photoabsorption and Photocatalytic Activity of Reduced Rutile TiO2” have recently been published online in Journal of the American Chemical Society (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.5b04483).
　　As a prototypical metal oxide in solar energy conversion, TiO2 is easily reduced, forming Ti3+ ions, for which a characteristic signature is the presence of a localized state in the band gap at ~ 1 eV below the Fermi level (EF). There is evidence that d→d transitions from the gap states contribute to the photoabsorption of reduced TiO2. In addition, due to the band gap narrowing and enhanced photo-absorption associated with the presence of band gap state, visible light photocatalysis through Ti3+ self-doping has also been achieved. While transitions from the band gap state are clearly important, little is known, however, about the character of the electronic excited states that are involved in these transitions, due also to the greater difficulty to experimentally access unoccupied states in comparison to occupied ones. A characterization of these states is not only scientifically interesting, but is also important for a better understanding and control of TiO2 photocatalysis.
　　Followed by their previous studies (Chemical Science, 2010, 1, 575; Chemical Science, 2011, 2, 1980; Energy and Environmental Science, 2012, 5, 6833; J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2013, 4, 3839), researchers utilize a combined two-photon photoemission spectroscopy (2PPE) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate the electronic structure of reduced TiO2. They successfully disclose the John-Teller splitting of the 3d orbitals of Ti3+ ions of TiO2(110) into band gap states (~ 1 eV below EF) and excited states (~ 2.5 eV above EF) which are of dxy, dxz/dyz/dz2 character, respectively. Localized excitation of Ti3+ ions through d→d transition from the widely distributed band gap states and excited states extends the photo-absorption into the visible region. They have identified the Ti3+ related intrinsic excited state which was thought to be an adsorbate induced feature previously (Science, 2005, 308, 1154; Science, 2006, 311, 1436), provided a thorough analysis of the photoabsorption of TiO2, explained the visible light photocatalysis associated with Ti3+ self-doping and also paved the way for the investigation of the electronic structure and photoabsorption of other metal oxides.
　　This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the National Basic Research Program of China and the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Science. (By Chuanyao Zhou and Zhiqiang Wang)
　　

　　Recently, Prof. Haiyang Li’s group (Group 102, Lab for Rapid Separation and Detection) has successfully developed an ultra-high resolution ion mobility spectrometry, which pushed the limit of detection for DMMP from 5 ppbv to 200 pptv, 25 times enhanced. The results are published on Analytical Chemistry (DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b01737). (Article/Chuang Chen; Picture/Chuang Chen)
　　

　　On 14th July, 2015, the 863 office of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) organized the evaluation meeting of the project “Study on Testing Method, Protocol and Standards for Flow Batteries” undertaken by Energy Storage Division in Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP). The meeting was chaired by Jinbao Zhao from Xiamen University. The Deputy Director of DICP Hua Wang and the representatives of the relevant research teams attended the meeting.
　　The project leader, Hexiang Zhong, presented the experts some aspects of the targets completeness. The evaluation group affirmed the achievements, and accepted the great progress made in the aspects of testing method, National standards and Industry standards, high performance stacks, and 200kW standards domestic materials-based vanadium flow battery system. Based on the serious discussion, the evaluation groups were unanimous in approving that all the subjects passed the technical evaluation. (Text Xin Liu/Photo Chengwei Deng)