Hidden-bottom molecular states from Σb(∗)B(∗)−ΛbB(∗)\Sigma^{(*)}_bB^{(*)}-\Lambda_bB^{(*)} interaction

In this work, we study possible hidden-bottom molecular pentaquarks $P_b$ from coupled-channel $\Sigma^{(*)}_bB^{(*)}-\Lambda_bB^{(*)}$ interaction in the quasipotential Bethe-Salpeter equation approach. In isodoublet sector with $I=1/2$, with the same reasonable parameters the interaction produces seven molecular states, a state near $\Sigma_bB$ threshold with spin parity $J^P=1/2^-$, a state near $\Sigma^*_bB$ threshold with $3/2^-$, two states near $\Sigma_bB^*$ threshold with $1/2^-$ and $3/2^-$, and three states near $\Sigma_b^*B^*$ threshold with $1/2^-$, $3/2^-$, and $5/2^-$. The results suggest that three states near $\Sigma_b^* B^*$ threshold and two states near $\Sigma_b B^*$ threshold are very close, respectively, which may be difficult to distinguish in experiment without partial wave analysis. Compared with the hidden-charm pentaquark, the $P_b$ states are relatively narrow with widths at an order of magnitude of 1 MeV or smaller. The importance of each channel considered is also discussed, and it is found that the $\Lambda_b B^*$ channel provides important contribution for the widths of those states. In isoquartet sector with $I=3/2$, cutoff should be considerably enlarged to achieve bound states from the interaction, which makes the existence of such states unreliable. The results in the current work are helpful for searching for hidden-bottom molecular pentaquarks in future experiments, such as the COMPASS, J-PARC, and the Electron Ion Collider in China (EicC).Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Possible molecular dibaryons with csssqqcsssqq quarks and their baryon-antibaryon partners

In this work, we systematically investigate the charmed-strange dibaryon systems with $csssqq$ quarks and their baryon-antibaryon partners from the interactions $\Xi^{(',*)}_{c}\Xi^{(*)}$, $\Omega^{(*)}_c\Lambda$, $\Omega^{(*)}_c\Sigma^{(*)}$, $\Lambda_c\Omega$ and $\Sigma^{(*)}_c\Omega$ and their baryon-antibaryon partners from interactions $\Xi^{(',*)}_{c}\bar{\Xi}^{(*)}$, $\Omega^{(*)}_c\bar{\Lambda}$, $\Omega^{(*)}_c\bar{\Sigma}^{(*)}$, $\Lambda_c\bar{\Omega}$ and $\Sigma^{(*)}_c\bar{\Omega}$. The potential kernels are constructed with the help of effective Lagrangians under SU(3), heavy quark, and chiral symmetries to describe these interactions. To search for possible molecular states, the kernels are inserted into the quasipotential Bethe-Salpeter equation, which is solved to find poles from scattering amplitude. The results suggest that 36 and 24 bound states can be found in the baryon-baryon and baryon-antibaryon interactions, respectively. However, much large values of parameter $\alpha$ are required to produce the bound states from the baryon-antibaryon interactions, which questions the existence of these bound states. Possible coupled-channel effect are considered in the current work to estimate the couplings of the molecular states to the channels considered.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2208.1196

Possible molecular states from interactions of charmed baryons

In this work, we perform a systematic study of possible molecular states composed of two charmed baryons including hidden-charm systems $\Lambda_c\bar{\Lambda}_c$, $\Sigma_c^{(*)}\bar{\Sigma}_c^{(*)}$, and $\Lambda_c\bar{\Sigma}_c^{(*)}$, and corresponding double-charm systems $\Lambda_c\Lambda_c$, $\Sigma_c^{(*)}\Sigma_c^{(*)}$, and $\Lambda_c\Sigma_c^{(*)}$. With the help of the heavy quark chiral effective Lagrangians, the interactions are described with $\pi$, $\rho$, $\eta$, $\omega$, $\phi$, and $\sigma$ exchanges. The potential kernels are constructed, and inserted into the quasipotential Bethe-Salpeter equation. The bound states from the interactions considered is studied by searching for the poles of the scattering amplitude. The results suggest that strong attractions exist in both hidden-charm and double-charm systems considered in the current work, and bound states can be produced in most of the systems. More experiment studies about these molecular states are suggested though the nucleon-nucleon collison at LHC and nucleon-antinucleon collison at $\rm \bar{P}ANDA$.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Rational Design of Single Atomic Co in CoNx Moieties on Graphene Matrix as an Ultra‐Highly Efficient Active Site for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

The sharp increase in current energy consumption needs the development of fuel cells (FCs) as one of sustainable, renewable, efficient and eco‐friendly electrochemical conversion systems of energy. The performance of electrocatalysts is crucially important for commercialization of FCs. Commercial Pt based catalysts are used due to their high catalytic activity. However, widespread commercialization is impossible because of the scarcity and poor durability of Pt based catalysts. We are on our quest to find a more stable and affordable alternative catalyst of Pt based catalysts. In particular, single‐atom catalysts supported on graphene are greatly attractive because of their unique characteristic and high catalytic activity. In this work, graphene is hydrothermally treated by sulfuric acid to introduce the ion‐exchanging sites. Then, Co2+ ion‐exchanging, 2‐methylimidazole coordination and pyrolysis process are subsequently conducted to prepare highly‐dispersed single‐atom Co species catalyst with outstanding ORR activity and durability. This work presents a new direction for a rational design of single‐atom catalyst on carbon matrix.We would like to thank MICIINUN and FEDER for financial support (Project RTI2018-095291-B-I00)

Discovery of six high-redshift quasars with the Lijiang 2.4m telescope and the Multiple Mirror Telescope

Quasars with redshifts greater than 4 are rare, and can be used to probe the structure and evolution of the early universe. Here we report the discovery of six new quasars with $i$-band magnitudes brighter than 19.5 and redshifts between 2.4 and 4.6 from the YFOSC spectroscopy of the Lijiang 2.4m telescope in February, 2012. These quasars are in the list of $z>3.6$ quasar candidates selected by using our proposed $J-K/i-Y$ criterion and the photometric redshift estimations from the SDSS optical and UKIDSS near-IR photometric data. Nine candidates were observed by YFOSC, and five among six new quasars were identified as $z>3.6$ quasars. One of the other three objects was identified as a star and the other two were unidentified due to the lower signal-to-noise ratio of their spectra. This is the first time that $z>4$ quasars have been discovered using a telescope in China. Thanks to the Chinese Telescope Access Program (TAP), the redshift of 4.6 for one of these quasars was confirmed by the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) Red Channel spectroscopy. The continuum and emission line properties of these six quasars, as well as their central black hole masses and Eddington ratios, were obtained.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, published in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA) as a lette

Attention-driven tree-structured convolutional LSTM for high dimensional data understanding

Modeling sequential information for image sequences is a vital step of various vision tasks and convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) has demonstrated its superb performance in such spatiotemporal problems. Nevertheless, the hierarchical data structures (e.g., human body parts and vessel/airway tree in biomedical images) in various tasks cannot be properly modeled by sequential models. Thus, ConvLSTM is not suitable for analyzing tree-structured image data that has a rich relation among its elements. In order to address this limitation, we present a tree-structured ConvLSTM model for tree-structured image analysis which can be trained end-to-end. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we first evaluate the proposed tree-structured ConvLSTM model on a synthetic Tree-Moving-MNIST dataset for tree-structured modeling. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the tree-structured ConvLSTM model for tree-structured image analysis compared with other alternatives. Additionally, we present a tree-structured segmentation framework which consists of a tree-structured ConvLSTM layer and an attention fully convolutional network (FCN) model. The proposed framework is validated on four large-scale coronary artery datasets. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method, showing its potential use cases in the analysis of tree-structured image data

Fluvoxamine inhibits Th1 and Th17 Polarization and Function By Repressing Glycolysis to attenuate autoimmune Progression in Type 1 Diabetes

BACKGROUND: Fluvoxamine is one of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that are regarded as the first-line drugs to manage mental disorders. It has been also recognized with the potential to treat inflammatory diseases and viral infection. However, the effect of fluvoxamine on autoimmune diseases, particularly type 1 diabetes (T1D) and the related cellular and molecular mechanisms, are yet to be addressed. METHOD: Herein in this report, we treated NOD mice with fluvoxamine for 2 weeks starting from 10-week of age to dissect the impact of fluvoxamine on the prevention of type 1 diabetes. We compared the differences of immune cells between 12-week-old control and fluvoxamine-treated mice by flow cytometry analysis. to study the mechanism involved, we extensively examined the characteristics of CD4 RESULT: Fluvoxamine not only delayed T1D onset, but also decreased T1D incidence. Moreover, fluvoxamine-treated NOD mice showed significantly attenuated insulitis coupled with well-preserved β cell function, and decreased Th1 and Th17 cells in the peripheral blood, pancreatic lymph nodes (PLNs), and spleen. Mechanistic studies revealed that fluvoxamine downregulated glycolytic process by inhibiting phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)-AKT signaling, by which it restrained effector T (Teff) cell differentiation and production of proinflammatory cytokines. CONCLUSION: Collectively, our study supports that fluvoxamine could be a viable therapeutic drug against autoimmunity in T1D setting

Implantable and Biodegradable Macroporous Iron Oxide Frameworks for Efficient Regeneration and Repair of Infracted Heart

The construction, characterization and surgical application of a multilayered iron oxide-based macroporous composite framework were reported in this study. The framework consisted of a highly porous iron oxide core, a gelatin-based hydrogel intermediary layer and a matrigel outer cover, which conferred a multitude of desirable properties including excellent biocompatibility, improved mechanical strength and controlled biodegradability. The large pore sizes and high extent of pore interconnectivity of the framework stimulated robust neovascularization and resulted in substantially better cell viability and proliferation as a result of improved transport efficiency for oxygen and nutrients. In addition, rat models with myocardial infraction showed sustained heart tissue regeneration over the infract region and significant improvement of cardiac functions following the surgical implantation of the framework. These results demonstrated that the current framework might hold great potential for cardiac repair in patients with myocardial infraction

Current trends in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics.

Pharmacokinetics (PK) is the study of the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) processes of a drug. Understanding PK properties is essential for drug development and precision medication. In this review we provided an overview of recent research on PK with focus on the following aspects: (1) an update on drug-metabolizing enzymes and transporters in the determination of PK, as well as advances in xenobiotic receptors and noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) in the modulation of PK, providing new understanding of the transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulatory mechanisms that result in inter-individual variations in pharmacotherapy; (2) current status and trends in assessing drug-drug interactions, especially interactions between drugs and herbs, between drugs and therapeutic biologics, and microbiota-mediated interactions; (3) advances in understanding the effects of diseases on PK, particularly changes in metabolizing enzymes and transporters with disease progression; (4) trends in mathematical modeling including physiologically-based PK modeling and novel animal models such as CRISPR/Cas9-based animal models for DMPK studies; (5) emerging non-classical xenobiotic metabolic pathways and the involvement of novel metabolic enzymes, especially non-P450s. Existing challenges and perspectives on future directions are discussed, and may stimulate the development of new research models, technologies, and strategies towards the development of better drugs and improved clinical practice

Scientific Publications in Nephrology and Urology Journals from Chinese Authors in East Asia: A 10-Year Survey of the Literature

BACKGROUND: Diseases of the kidneys and genitourinary tract are common health problems that affect people of all ages and demographic backgrounds. In this study, we compared the quantity and quality of nephrological and urological articles published in international journals from the three major regions of China: the mainland (ML), Hong Kong (HK), and Taiwan (TW). METHODS: Nephrological and urological articles originating from ML, TW, and HK that were published in 61 journals from 1999-2008 were retrieved from the PubMed database. We recorded the numbers of total articles, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, case reports, impact factors (IF), citations, and articles published in the leading general-medicine journals. We used these data to compare the quantity and quality of publication output from the three regions. RESULTS: The total number of articles increased significantly from 1999 to 2008 in the three regions. The number of articles from ML has exceeded that from HK since 2004, and surpassed that from TW in 2008. Publications from TW had the highest accumulated IF, total citations of articles, and the most articles published in leading general-medicine journals. However, HK publications had the highest average IF. Although ML produced the largest quantity of articles, it exhibited the lowest quality among the three regions. CONCLUSION: The number of nephrological and urological publications originating from the three major regions of China increased significantly from 1999 to 2008. The annual number of publications by ML researchers exceeded those from TW and HK. However, the quality of articles from TW and HK was higher than that from ML