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Body composition traits are complex traits controlled by minor genes and, in hybrid populations, are impacted by additive and nonadditive effects. We aimed to identify candidate genes and increase the accuracy of genomic prediction of body composition traits in crossbred pigs by including dominance genetic effects. Genomic selection (GS) and genome‐wide association studies were performed on seven body composition traits in 807 Yunong‐black pigs using additive genomic models (AM) and additive‐dominance genomic models (ADM) with an imputed high‐density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array and the Illumina Porcine SNP50 BeadChip. The results revealed that the additive heritabilities estimated for AM and ADM using the 50 K SNP data ranged from 0.20 to 0.34 and 0.11 to 0.30, respectively. However, the ranges of additive heritability for AM and ADM in the imputed data ranged from 0.20 to 0.36 and 0.12 to 0.30, respectively. The dominance variance accounted for 23% and 27% of the total variance for the 50 K and imputed data, respectively. The accuracy of genomic prediction improved by 5% on average for 50 K and imputed data when dominance effect were considered. Without the dominance effect, the accuracies for 50 K and imputed data were 0.35 and 0.38, respectively, and 0.41 and 0.43, respectively, upon considering it. A total of 12 significant SNP and 16 genomic regions were identified in the AM, and 14 significant SNP and 21 genomic regions were identified in the ADM for both the 50 K and imputed data. There were five overlapping SNP in the 50 K and imputed data. In the AM, a significant SNP (CNC10041568) was found in both body length and backfat thickness traits, which was in the PLAG1 gene strongly and significantly associated with body length and backfat thickness in pigs. Moreover, a significant SNP (CNC10031356) with a heterozygous dominant genotype was present in the ADM. Furthermore, several functionally related genes were associated with body composition traits, including MOS, RPS20, LYN, TGS1, TMEM68, XKR4, SEMA4D and ARNT2. These findings provide insights into molecular markers and GS breeding for the Yunong‐black pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring efficient and stable long-persistent luminescence (LPL) materials is of great value for promoting their advanced applications. Here, the metal halide CsCdCl3:Mn2+ crystals with tunable afterglow properties and good stability were grown by a facile solution method. Upon ultraviolet excitation, CsCdCl3:Mn2+ crystals exhibited a bright orange emission at 590 nm from the d–d transition of Mn2+ ions. Mn2+ doping concentrations matter for the LPL performance. By optimizing the doping amount of Mn2+, an enhanced afterglow duration up to 12 000 s was achieved, compared with undoped sample, originating from a trap redistribution. The deep traps in CsCdCl3:0.1Mn2+ crystal that provide little contribution to the LPL at room temperature shifted to shallow levels, thus synergistically enhancing the afterglow intensity and duration. Based on the variable afterglow durations by tuning Mn2+ doping concentrations, a multi-dimensional information storage encryption model was designed. This work gives deep understanding in doping effect on the afterglow and provides examples for the development of multi-dimensional information encryption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bi2Te3-based alloys are currently the best room-temperature thermoelectric materials, and have been used widely in the field of thermoelectric refrigeration. Bi2Te3 ingots prepared by the zone-melting method provide convenience for large-scale commercial application. Currently, one trend is that the dimensionless thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) value of the n-type Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 is slightly lower than that of the p-type Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3. In this paper, n-type Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 alloy ingots with large size were successfully prepared through the optimized zone-melting preparation process, and achieved a high ZT value of 1.16 at 360 K. This value is higher than all the n-type or p-type Bi2Te3-based ingots in current commercial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]