Reexamination of the resonance contributions in B->X_s e^+ e^-

With help of the recent developments in the heavy quarkonium physics, we reexamine the long distance(LD) effects in \Bsee dominantly from the charmonium resonances $J/\Psi$ and $\Psi^{\prime}$ through the decay chains B\ra X_s J/\Psi (\Psi^{\prime}) \ra X_s e^+ e^-. We find that the resonance to nonresonance interference are reduced substantially.Comment: Revtex file,11 pages,1 figures,Phys.Lett.B in pres

A Multiagent Approach Towards Solving Complex Problems of Sociotechnical Systems

Complex resource allocation problems arise due to complex human societies and scarce resources to be distributed. Scarce resources could be food, water, and energy. Meanwhile, the size of the problem, the intersection of different areas, and possible global consequences all add to the complexity of the problems, which makes it difficult for humans to solve the problems by themselves. For all these reasons, humans need technical help to tackle complex problems. Since humans participating in the problems usually own part of the information about the problems, and no one may see the whole picture of the problems, it is natural to use distributed systems to simulate and analyze the problems. In a distributed system, humans represented by agents knowing only partial information interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal while maximizing their own interests. The resultant distributed system is called a multiagent system, because multiple agents are involved in the systems. In this dissertation, we study three cases of multiagent systems that help with distributing a certain kind of resource. First, we present an approach to assist individuals shop for groceries. The aim is to help a customer to find the most economical way of shopping. We show that a customer could save 22% or more most of the time with simulated price data and 6.7% with real price data. Robustness is also considered with deceptive stores and wrongly reported prices. Second, we simulate a healthcare system in which agents are used to assist a patient to find a physician. We investigate four different strategies for assisting a person in choosing a physician and three physician-waiting policies in three common social network models. The results show that the resultant sociotechnical system can decrease the number of annual sick days per person by 0.4-1.8 days compared with choosing a physician randomly. Third we investigate the influence of humans\u27 personalities on resource allocation in mixed human-agent societies. It is shown that humans treat other humans and agents differently and humans with different temperaments behave differently, but not with significantly difference, which means fair is more important than personality types while making decisions. The three cases investigate different aspects of a sociotechnical system. The grocery-shopping case involves agents that interact with each other indirectly through a central aggregator of local results. The physician choosing case involves agents that interact with each other directly in a social network that is a subset of the complete network of agents. The resource-allocation case investigates the relationships between the agents and the humans in a sociotechnical system

Effective discrimination of flavours and tastes of Chinese traditional fish soups made from different regions of the silver carp using an electronic nose and electronic tongue

Silver carp is a one of the most important freshwater fish species in China, and is popular when making soup in the Chinese dietary culture. In order to investigate the profile of fish soup tastes and flavours cooked using different regions of the same fish, the silver carp was cut into four different regions: head, back, abdomen, and tail. The differences in taste and flavour of the four kinds of homemade fish soup were investigated by an electronic nose and electronic tongue. The basic chemical components of the different fish regions and the SDS-PAGE profile of the fish soup samples were investigated. Two chemometrics methods (principal component analysis and discriminant factor analysis) were used to classify the odour and taste of the fish soup samples. The results showed that the electronic tongue and nose performed outstandingly in discriminating the four fish soups even though the samples were made from different regions of the same fish. The taste and flavour information of different regions of the silver carp fish could provide the theoretical basis for food intensive processing

Prediction of Inhibitory Activity of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Inhibitors Using Grid Search-Projection Pursuit Regression Method

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) is an important protein target for anti-tumor drug discovery. To identify potential EGFR inhibitors, we conducted a quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) study on the inhibitory activity of a series of quinazoline derivatives against EGFR tyrosine kinase. Two 2D-QSAR models were developed based on the best multi-linear regression (BMLR) and grid-search assisted projection pursuit regression (GS-PPR) methods. The results demonstrate that the inhibitory activity of quinazoline derivatives is strongly correlated with their polarizability, activation energy, mass distribution, connectivity, and branching information. Although the present investigation focused on EGFR, the approach provides a general avenue in the structure-based drug development of different protein receptor inhibitors

Nonfactorization Effects in Inclusive Decay B->J/\Psi X_s

We discuss the nonfactorization effects in $B\to J/\Psi+X_{s}$, which is similar to the nonperturbative effect found by Voloshin in the decay $B\to \gamma +X_{s}$. The QCD sum rule has been used to estimate the hadron matrix elements. We find that the correction from this effect is very large and the large discrepancy between the theory and the experimental data can be reduced considerably.Comment: LaTex, 9 pages, 4 figures. Two references added and typo correcte

Probe New Physics in Leptonic Bc B_c Decays at CERN LHC

With respect to large samples of $B_c$ mesons expected to be produced at CERN Large Hadron Collider(LHC) and the large branching ratios $Br(B_{c}\to \tau\bar\nu)$ and $Br(B_{c}\to \mu\bar\nu)$, we suggest that $B_c$ purely leptonic decays could offer an unique probe of the standard model and its extensions such as two Higgs doublet models and models involving supersymmetry, and also the structure of charged weak currents.Comment: LaTeX file, 9 pages, 3 figures, final version to be published in Phys.Lett.

¹H-NMR based metabolomics reveals the nutrient differences of two kinds of freshwater fish soups before and after simulated gastrointestinal digestion

Soups show diverse health functions, which could be linked to their original nutrient profiles and metabolites derived from digestion. NMR spectroscopy is a robust and rapid method that unveils or identifies the chemical composition of food or food-derived metabolites. In the current study, 1H-NMR spectroscopy approach was applied to identify the differences in metabolic profiling of two kinds of home-cooked freshwater fish soups (crucian carp and snakehead fish) before and after in vitro gastrointestinal digestion. The nutritional profiles of these soups were studied using the 1H-NMR method for the first time. Two metabolomics methods -PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and OPLS-DA (Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis), were used to analyze the data. On the whole, levels of amino acid metabolites such as valine (Val), tyrosine, choline, taurine (Tau) and glycine were higher in the crucian carp soup, whereas higher levels of fatty acids and unsaturated fatty acids were found in the snakehead soup. Furthermore, the high content of seven metabolites valine, leucine, EPA C20:5 (PUFA eicosapentaenoic acid), acetic acid, taurine, GPCho (phosphatidylcholine) and creatine showed an upward trend after simulated gastrointestinal digestion. The results demonstrate that 1H-NMR metabolic profile of different fish soups can shed some light to our understanding of food functional properties and dietary therapy. Furthermore, changes of metabolites in digested fish soups could reveal information about chemical compounds which play important roles in the body

Investigation of bioaccumulation and human health risk assessment of heavy metals in crayfish (procambarus clarkii) farming with a rice-crayfish-based coculture breeding modes

Due to the rapid development of the crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) industry in Chinese catering, people are paying more attention to the bioaccumulation of heavy metals in crayfish. To evaluate the health risks associated with the consumption of crayfish, nine types of heavy metals in both crayfish and abdominal muscles of crayfish were investigated. Crayfish samples were collected from rice-crayfish-based coculture breeding modes from different areas located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The average concentrations of heavy metals in the whole crayfish were much higher than the abdominal muscle of crayfish. The estimated daily intake (EDI) of heavy metals in the abdomen of crayfish was calculated to assess the noncarcinogenic risk and the overall noncarcinogenic risk including the target hazard quotient (THQ), the hazard index (HI) and carcinogenic risk (CR). The results of the present study showed that the consumption of crayfish may not present an obvious health risk to humans associated with heavy metals. However, the THQ values of As in the abdominal muscles of crayfish for adults in EnShi (ES) and children in JiaYu (JY) should be of concern due to the higher contribution to the potential health risks of crayfish compared to other metals. Through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) detection of heavy metal As, it was found that As in the crayfish culture environment mainly exists in the form of As3+.Therefore, the quality and quantity of crayfish consumption should be moderated to prevent the bioaccumulation of As. The results indicate that crayfish cultured in different areas may have similar pollution levels and/or emissions from the same pollution sources

The mechanism of chlorogenic acid inhibits lipid oxidation: An investigation using multi-spectroscopic methods and molecular docking

Endogenous lipase and lipoxygenase play important roles in accelerating lipid oxidation. Polyphenols are a series of commonly used chemicals for preserving fish and seafood products, due to their positive inhibitory effects on lipid oxidation. However, the mechanism involved is still unknown. The inhibitory effects of chlorogenic acid (CGA) on lipase and lipoxygenase were investigated and explored with multi- spectroscopic and molecular docking approaches. Results showed that CGA could inhibit the activities of lipase and lipoxygenase with concentration increased in a highly dose-dependent manner. CGA quenched intrinsic fluorescence intensities of enzymes by static quenching and binding with CGA which led to changes in 3D structures of enzymes. Results of the molecular docking confirmed binding modes, binding sites and major interaction forces between CGA and enzymes, which reduced the corresponding activity. Thus, this study could provide basic mechanisms of the inhibitory effects of polyphenols on lipid oxidation during food preservation

Serum protein coating enhances the antisepsis efficacy of silver nanoparticles against multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli infections in mice

Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant threat to public health and social development worldwide. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in treating multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. Eco-friendly spherical AgNPs were synthesized using rutin at room temperature. The biocompatibility of both polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) and mouse serum (MS)-stabilized AgNPs was evaluated at 20 μg/mL and showed a similar distribution in mice. However, only MS-AgNPs significantly protected mice from sepsis caused by the multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli (E. coli) CQ10 strain (p = 0.039). The data revealed that MS-AgNPs facilitated the elimination of Escherichia coli (E. coli) in the blood and the spleen, and the mice experienced only a mild inflammatory response, as interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, chemokine KC, and C-reactive protein levels were significantly lower than those in the control group. The results suggest that the plasma protein corona strengthens the antibacterial effect of AgNPs in vivo and may be a potential strategy for combating antimicrobial resistance