Search for the decay B0 to gamma gamma

The rare decay B0 -> gamma gamma is searched for in 104 fb^-1 of data, corresponding to 111 x 10^6 BBar pairs, collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+ e- collider. No evidence for the signal is found, and an upper limit of 6.2 x 10^-7 at 90% confidence level is set for the corresponding branching fraction.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication by Phys. Rev.

Determining the optimal size of small molecule mixtures for high throughput NMR screening

High-throughput screening (HTS) using NMR spectroscopy has become a common component of the drug discovery effort and is widely used throughout the pharmaceutical industry. NMR provides additional information about the nature of small molecule-protein interactions compared to traditional HTS methods. In order to achieve comparable efficiency, small molecules are often screened as mixtures in NMR-based assays. Nevertheless, an analysis of the efficiency of mixtures and a corresponding determination of the optimum mixture size (OMS) that minimizes the amount of material and instrumentation time required for an NMR screen has been lacking. A model for calculating OMS based on the application of the hypergeometric distribution function to determine the probability of a \u27hit\u27 for various mixture sizes and hit rates is presented. An alternative method for the deconvolution of large screening mixtures is also discussed. These methods have been applied in a high-throughput NMR screening assay using a small, directed library