Interpretation of 750 GeV Diphoton Excess at LHC in Singlet Extension of Color-octet Neutrino Mass Model

We propose that the possible 750 GeV diphoton excess can be explained in the color-octet neutrino mass model extended with a scalar singlet $\Phi$. The model generally contains $N_s$ species of color-octet, electroweak doublet scalars $S$ and $N_f$ species of color-octet, electroweak triplet $\chi$ or singlet $\rho$ fermions. While both scalars and fermions contribute to the production of $\Phi$ through gluon fusion, only the charged members induce the diphoton decay of $\Phi$. The diphoton rate can be significantly enhanced due to interference between the scalar and fermion loops. We show that the diphoton cross section can be from 3 to 10 fb for O(TeV) color-octet particles while evading all current LHC limits.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; v2: 13 pages, 4 figures, version to appear in EPJC, clarified a few things, updated numerical analysis using the most recent bound on color-octet fermions but without changing conclusions, corrected a mistake when quoting the branching ratio to Z gamma, added some references missed in v

Persistent Ballistic Entanglement Spreading with Optimal Control in Quantum Spin Chains

Entanglement propagation provides a key routine to understand quantum many-body dynamics in and out of equilibrium. In this work, we uncover that the ``variational entanglement-enhancing'' field (VEEF) robustly induces a persistent ballistic spreading of entanglement in quantum spin chains. The VEEF is time dependent, and is optimally controlled to maximize the bipartite entanglement entropy (EE) of the final state. Such a linear growth persists till the EE reaches the genuine saturation $\tilde{S} = - \log_{2} 2^{-\frac{N}{2}}=\frac{N}{2}$ with $N$ the total number of spins. The EE satisfies $S(t) = v t$ for the time $t \leq \frac{N}{2v}$, with $v$ the velocity. These results are in sharp contrast with the behaviors without VEEF, where the EE generally approaches a sub-saturation known as the Page value $\tilde{S}_{P} =\tilde{S} - \frac{1}{2\ln{2}}$ in the long-time limit, and the entanglement growth deviates from being linear before the Page value is reached. The dependence between the velocity and interactions is explored, with $v \simeq 2.76$, $4.98$, and $5.75$ for the spin chains with Ising, XY, and Heisenberg interactions, respectively. We further show that the nonlinear growth of EE emerges with the presence of long-range interactions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

miR-650 Promotes the Metastasis and Epithelial–Mesenchymal Transition of Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Directly Inhibiting LATS2 Expression

Background/Aims: Previous studies have confirmed that microRNAs are involved in the metastasis and epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) of malignancies. In this study, we examined whether miR-650 promotes the migration, invasion, and EMT of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells by targeting the large tumor suppressor kinase 2 gene (LATS2). Methods: qRT-PCR was used to detect expression of miR-650 in HCC tissues and paired normal tissues. MTT and Transwell assay were used to observe the effect of miR-650 on proliferation, migration and invasion of HCC cells. Western blot assay and Immunohistochemistry were performed to demonstrate association between miR-650 expression level and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) related protein. Mechanistically, Reporter luciferase assay was performed to reveal whether large tumor suppressor kinase 2 (LATS2) was a direct target of miR-650 in HCC cells. Results: We observed that miR-650 levels were largely up-regulated in HCC tissues, and that the increased expression was closely associated with the adverse clinical features of HCC patients. Additionally, the expression of LATS2, which was identified as a direct target of miR-650, can counteract the effects of miR-650 in HCC. Furthermore, we demonstrated that high miR-650 expression levels and low LATS2 expression levels in tumors may indicate a poor prognosis for HCC patients. Conclusion: In conclusion, the miR-650/LATS2 pathway may serve as a novel prognostic biomarker and an attractive therapeutic target for HCC patients

Back to the Starting Point: on the Simulation of Initial Magnetic Fields and Spin Periods of Non-accretion Pulsars

Neutron stars (NSs) play essential roles in modern astrophysics. Magnetic fields and spin periods of newborn (zero age) NSs have large impact on the further evolution of NSs, which are however poorly explored in observation due to the difficulty of finding newborn NSs. In this work, we aim to infer the magnetic fields and spin periods (Bi and Pi) of zero-age NSs from the observed properties of NS population. We select non-accretion NSs (NANSs) whose evolution is solely determined by magnetic dipole radiation. We find that both Bi and Pi can be described by log-normal distribution and the fitting sensitively depends on our parameters.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Intelligent diagnostic scheme for lung cancer screening with Raman spectra data by tensor network machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) has brought tremendous impacts on biomedical sciences from academic researches to clinical applications, such as in biomarkers' detection and diagnosis, optimization of treatment, and identification of new therapeutic targets in drug discovery. However, the contemporary AI technologies, particularly deep machine learning (ML), severely suffer from non-interpretability, which might uncontrollably lead to incorrect predictions. Interpretability is particularly crucial to ML for clinical diagnosis as the consumers must gain necessary sense of security and trust from firm grounds or convincing interpretations. In this work, we propose a tensor-network (TN)-ML method to reliably predict lung cancer patients and their stages via screening Raman spectra data of Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath, which are generally suitable as biomarkers and are considered to be an ideal way for non-invasive lung cancer screening. The prediction of TN-ML is based on the mutual distances of the breath samples mapped to the quantum Hilbert space. Thanks to the quantum probabilistic interpretation, the certainty of the predictions can be quantitatively characterized. The accuracy of the samples with high certainty is almost 100$\%$. The incorrectly-classified samples exhibit obviously lower certainty, and thus can be decipherably identified as anomalies, which will be handled by human experts to guarantee high reliability. Our work sheds light on shifting the ``AI for biomedical sciences'' from the conventional non-interpretable ML schemes to the interpretable human-ML interactive approaches, for the purpose of high accuracy and reliability.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Molecular and clinical features of papillary thyroid cancer in adult patients with a non-classical phenotype

PurposeGenotyping is fundamental in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) and helps to enhance diagnosis and prognosis and determine appropriate treatments. The phenotype-genotype association in PTC was previously studied, with BRAF V600E characterizing classic PTC and tall-cell PTC and RAS mutations characterizing follicular-variant PTC. In clinic, some non-classical histological subtypes of PTC were also identified, however, their genotype remains unclear. In this study, we collected samples of these non-classical PTC after the exclusion of classic phenotypes and examined their phenotypes, genotype and the relationship between phenotype and genotype.MethodsWe screened out non-classical PTC by excluding classical PTC from 1,059 different thyroid samples, and a total of 24 cases was obtained and described from the morphological features, which is rare in differentiated PTC. DNA/RNA sequencing was performed using 18 available samples to describe the genetic features.ResultsPTC with the non-classical phenotype were characterized cuboidal to low columnar tumor cells with subtle nuclear features of PTC and without discernible nuclear elongation, concurrently with dense microfollicles, delicate papillae or solid nodules with delicate fibrovascular cores. They were associated with lymphatic vessel invasion (P<0.001) but not with a worse prognosis (P=0.791). Gene fusions were identified in 14 of 18 (77.8%) cases, including eight fusions of NTRK and six fusions of RET. The high percentage of fusions in this papillary thyroid cancer subgroup suggested a correlation of gene fusions with the phenotype that does not belong to the BRAF V600E-mutant or RAS-mutant group.ConclusionsOur study retrospectively screened a large cohort of different thyroid tissue samples, and presented the histopathological and genetic features of a non-classical phenotype of PTC from 24 patients. It may contribute to diagnose in PTC, and patients of these non-classical phenotype may benefit from targeted therapy, compared to a natural patient cohort without selection

The effect of JuanBiQiangGu granules in combination with methotrexate on joint inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis: a randomized controlled trial

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) joint inflammation severely affects joint function and quality of life in patients and leads to joint deformities and limb disability. The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs used in the treatment of RA do not fully control the progression of joint inflammation and bone destruction and have notable adverse reactions. Traditional Chinese medicine formula JuanBiQiangGu Granules (JBQG) are commonly used for the treatment of RA inflammation and delay of bone destruction, but has not been evaluated through high-quality clinical studies. There is a pressing need for well-designed, randomized, parallel, controlled clinical studies to evaluate the exact effect of JBQG on RA joint inflammation and improvement of patient quality of life.Methods: This is a randomized, parallel, controlled clinical study in which 144 patients with rheumatoid arthritis who met the inclusion criteria were randomly assigned to 2 groups in a 1:1 ratio. The JBQG group received methotrexate 7.5 mg qw and JBQG granules 8 mg tid, while the MTX group received methotrexate 7.5 mg qw. The endpoint was 12 weeks after treatment. Relevant indices at baseline, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks after treatment were observed and recorded, and DAS28-ESR, HAQ-DI, and Sharp scores were recorded for each patient. Blood samples were collected to test for CRP, ESR, TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-17, and INF-γ, and adverse reactions and liver and kidney function (AST, ALT, Cr, BUN) were recorded for safety assessment. After 12 weeks of treatment, the effect of JBQG granules on disease activity, improvement in bone damage, and patient quality of life scores and safety in RA patients were evaluated.Results: A total of 144 subjects completed treatment (71 in the JBQG group and 73 in the MTX group) and were included in the analysis. At baseline, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of the observed indicators (p > 0.05). After treatment, 76.06% of patients in the JBQG group had DAS28-ESR levels below or equal to Low, including 45.07% in Remission and 5.63% in High, compared to 53.1% in the MTX group below or equal to Low, 12.33% in Remission, and 17.81% in High. CRP was significantly reduced (8.54 ± 5.87 vs. 11.86 ± 7.92, p < 0.05, p = 0.005), ESR was significantly reduced (15.1 ± 6.11 vs. 21.96 ± 9.19, p < 0.0001), TNF-α was significantly reduced (1.44 ± 0.83 vs. 1.85 ± 1.07, p < 0.05, p = 0.011), IL-17 was significantly reduced (0.53 ± 0.33 vs. 0.71 ± 0.38, p < 0.05, p = 0.004), and INF-γ was significantly reduced (3.2 ± 1.51 vs. 3.89 ± 1.77, p < 0.05, p = 0.014). The median (IQR) OPG in the JBQG group was 2.54 (2.21–3.01), significantly higher than in the MTX group 2.06 (1.81–2.32), p < 0.0001), and the median (IQR) β-CTX in the JBQG group was 0.4 (0.32–0.43), significantly lower than in the MTX group 0.55 (0.47–0.67), p < 0.0001). The median (IQR) VSA scores were 2 (1–3), a decrease from 3 (2–4) in the MTX group (p < 0.0001). The median (IQR) Sharp scores were 1 (1–2), a decrease from 2 (1–2) in the MTX group, but the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05, p = 0.28). The median (IQR) HAQ-DI scores were 11 (8–16), significantly lower than in the MTX group 26 (16–30) (p < 0.0001). The median (IQR) AST in the JBQG group was 16 (12–20), with a significant difference compared to the MTX group 19 (13–25) (p < 0.01, p = 0.004); the median (IQR) ALT in the JBQG group was 14 (10–18), with a significant difference compared to the MTX group 16 (11–22.5) (p < 0.05, p = 0.015). There were no statistically significant differences in Cr or BUN (p > 0.05).Conclusion: JuanBiQiangGu Granules can be used to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis, alleviate joint inflammation, reduce the incidence of adverse reactions to methotrexate, and has good safety.Clinical Trial Registration:http://www.chinadrugtrials.org.cn/index.html; identifier: ChiCTR2100046373