Tagetes spp. Essential oils and other extracts : chemical characterization and biological activity

Tagetes (marigold) is native to America, and its cultivation currently extends to other countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Many species of this genus, such as T. minuta, T. erecta, T. patula, and T. tenuifolia, are cultivated as ornamental plants and studied for their medicinal properties on the basis of their use in folk medicine. Different parts of the Tagetes species are used as remedies to treat various health problems, including dental, stomach, intestinal, emotional, and nervous disorders, as well as muscular pain, across the world. Furthermore, these plants are studied in the field of agriculture for their fungicidal, bactericidal, and insecticidal activities. The phytochemical composition of the extracts of different Tagetes species parts are reported in this work. These compounds exhibit antioxidant, antiinflammatory, and enzyme inhibitory properties. Cultivation and the factors affecting the chemical composition of Tagetes species are also covered. In the current work, available literature on Tagetes species in traditional medicine, their application as a food preservative, and their antimicrobial activities are reviewed

Accreting Neutron Stars in Low-Mass X-Ray Binary Systems

Using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RossiXTE), astronomers have discovered that disk-accreting neutron stars with weak magnetic fields produce three distinct types of high-frequency X-ray oscillations. These oscillations are powered by release of the binding energy of matter falling into the strong gravitational field of the star or by the sudden nuclear burning of matter that has accumulated in the outermost layers of the star. The frequencies of the oscillations reflect the orbital frequencies of gas deep in the gravitational field of the star and/or the spin frequency of the star. These oscillations can therefore be used to explore fundamental physics, such as strong-field gravity and the properties of matter under extreme conditions, and important astrophysical questions, such as the formation and evolution of millisecond pulsars. Observations using RossiXTE have shown that some two dozen neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binary systems have the spin rates and magnetic fields required to become millisecond radio-emitting pulsars when accretion ceases, but that few have spin rates above about 600 Hz. The properties of these stars show that the paucity of spin rates greater than 600 Hz is due in part to the magnetic braking component of the accretion torque and to the limited amount of angular momentum that can be accreted in such systems. Further study will show whether braking by gravitational radiation is also a factor. Analysis of the kilohertz oscillations has provided the first evidence for the existence of the innermost stable circular orbit around dense relativistic stars that is predicted by strong-field general relativity. It has also greatly narrowed the possible descriptions of ultradense matter.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, updated list of sources and references, to appear in "Short-period Binary Stars: Observation, Analyses, and Results", eds. E.F. Milone, D.A. Leahy, and D. Hobill (Dordrecht: Springer, http://www.springerlink.com

Studies of Bs2∗(5840)0 and Bs1(5830)0 mesons including the observation of the Bs2∗(5840)0→B0KS0 decay in proton-proton collisions at s=8TeV.

Measurements of Bs2∗(5840)0 and Bs1(5830)0 mesons are performed using a data sample of proton-proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of , collected with the CMS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 8TeV . The analysis studies P-wave Bs0 meson decays into B(∗)+K- and B(∗)0KS0 , where the B+ and B0 mesons are identified using the decays B+→J/ψK+ and B0→J/ψK∗(892)0 . The masses of the P-wave Bs0 meson states are measured and the natural width of the Bs2∗(5840)0 state is determined. The first measurement of the mass difference between the charged and neutral B∗ mesons is also presented. The Bs2∗(5840)0 decay to B0KS0 is observed, together with a measurement of its branching fraction relative to the Bs2∗(5840)0→B+K- decay

First report on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus of Spa type T037, Sequence type 239, SCCmec type III/IIIA in Malaysia

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from Malaysia were shown to possess staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec)-III and IIIA. Spa sequencing and multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) documented t037 and ST 239 (CC8) for 83.3% of the isolates. This confirms observations in several other Far Eastern countries and corroborates the epidemicity of this clone

Search for new phenomena with the MT2 variable in the all-hadronic final state produced in proton-proton collisions at s=13 TeV.

A search for new phenomena is performed using events with jets and significant transverse momentum imbalance, as inferred through the MT2 variable. The results are based on a sample of proton-proton collisions collected in 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the CMS detector and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb-1 . No excess event yield is observed above the predicted standard model background, and the results are interpreted as exclusion limits at 95% confidence level on the masses of predicted particles in a variety of simplified models of R-parity conserving supersymmetry. Depending on the details of the model, 95% confidence level lower limits on the gluino (light-flavor squark) masses are placed up to 2025 (1550) GeV . Mass limits as high as 1070 (1175) GeV are set on the masses of top (bottom) squarks. Information is provided to enable re-interpretation of these results, including model-independent limits on the number of non-standard model events for a set of simplified, inclusive search regions