Analysis of the strong vertices of ΣcND∗\Sigma_cND^{*} and ΣbNB∗\Sigma_bNB^{*} in QCD sum rules

The strong coupling constant is an important parameter which can help us to understand the strong decay behaviors of baryons. In our previous work, we have analyzed strong vertices $\Sigma_{c}^{*}ND$, $\Sigma_{b}^{*}NB$, $\Sigma_{c}ND$, $\Sigma_{b}NB$ in QCD sum rules. Following these work, we further analyze the strong vertices $\Sigma_{c}ND^{*}$ and $\Sigma_{b}NB^{*}$ using the three-point QCD sum rules under Dirac structures $q\!\!\!/p\!\!\!/\gamma_{\alpha}$ and $q\!\!\!/p\!\!\!/p_{\alpha}$. In this work, we first calculate strong form factors considering contributions of the perturbative part and the condensate terms $\langle\overline{q}q\rangle$, $\langle\frac{\alpha_{s}}{\pi}GG\rangle$ and $\langle\overline{q}g_{s}\sigma Gq\rangle$. Then, these form factors are used to fit into analytical functions. According to these functions, we finally determine the values of the strong coupling constants for these two vertices $\Sigma_{c}ND^{*}$ and $\Sigma_{b}NB^{*}$.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1705.0322

Expressions of ECE-CYC2 clade genes relating to abortion of both dorsal and ventral stamens in Opithandra (Gesneriaceae)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>ECE-CYC2 clade genes known in patterning floral dorsoventral asymmetry (zygomorphy) in <it>Antirrhinum majus </it>are conserved in the dorsal identity function including arresting the dorsal stamen. However, it remains uncertain whether the same mechanism underlies abortion of the ventral stamens, an important morphological trait related to evolution and diversification of zygomorphy in Lamiales <it>sensu lato</it>, a major clade of predominantly zygomorphically flowered angiosperms. <it>Opithandra </it>(Gesneriaceae) is of particular interests in addressing this question as it is in the base of Lamiales <it>s.l</it>., an early representative of this type zygomorphy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We investigated the expression patterns of four ECE-CYC2 clade genes and two putative target <it>cyclinD3 </it>genes in <it>Opithandra </it>using RNA <it>in situ </it>hybridization and RT-PCR. <it>OpdCYC </it>gene expressions were correlated with abortion of both dorsal and ventral stamens in <it>Opithandra</it>, strengthened by the negatively correlated expression of their putative target <it>OpdcyclinD3 </it>genes. The complement of <it>OpdcyclinD3 </it>to <it>OpdCYC </it>expressions further indicated that <it>OpdCYC </it>expressions were related to the dorsal and ventral stamen abortion through negative effects on <it>OpdcyclinD3 </it>genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that ECE-CYC2 clade TCP genes are not only functionally conserved in the dorsal stamen repression, but also involved in arresting ventral stamens, a genetic mechanism underlying the establishment of zygomorphy with abortion of both the dorsal and ventral stamens evolved in angiosperms, especially within Lamiales <it>s.l</it>.</p

9-(2-Thien­yl)-9H-carbazole

In the title compound, C16H11NS, the dihedral angles between the fused ring system and the pendant thienyl ring are 86.37 (5) and 57.14 (5)°

Effect of Astragalus membranaceus (Fisch) Bunge extract on streptozocin-induced diabetic in rats

Purpose: To investigate the effect of Astragalus membranaceus (Fisch.) Bunge. extract (AMBE) on streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.Methods: The aqueous extract of AMB was obtained by steeping the dried  Astragalus membranaceus (Fisch.) Bunge. in water at 60 oC three times, each for 1 h, before first drying in an oven at 100 oC and then freeze-drying the last extract thus obtained. Diabete model rats was induced by a single intraperitoneal injection of a freshly prepared solution of streptozotocin (50 mg/kg). The rats were randomly divided into 6 groups of ten rats each: negative control group, normal control group, reference group (glibenclamide1 mg/kgbody weight) as well as AMB extract groups, namely, 40, 80 and 160 mg/kg body weight. Antihyperglycemic effect was measured by blood glucose and plasma insulin levels. Oxidative stress was evaluated in liver and kidney by antioxidant markers, viz, lipidperoxidation (LPO), superoxide  dismutase (SOD), reduced glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT), while blood serum levels of creatinine and urea were also determined in both diabetic control and treated rats.Results: Compared with diabetic rats, oral administration of AMBE at a  concentration of 160 mg/kg daily for 30 days showed a significant decrease in fasting blood glucose (109.438 ± 3.52, p &lt; 0.05) and increased insulin level (13.96 ± 0.74, p &lt; 0.05). Furthermore, it significantly reduced biochemical parameters (serum creatinine, 0.86 ± 0.29, p &lt; 0.05) and serum urea (45.14 ± 1.79, p &lt; 0.05). The treatment also resulted in significant increase in GSH (49.21 ± 2.59, p &lt; 0.05), GPx (11.96 ± 1.16, p &lt; 0.05), SOD (14.13 ± 0.49, p &lt; 0.05), CAT (83.25 ± 3.14, p &lt; 0.05) level in the liver and kidney of diabetic rats.Conclusion: The results suggest that AMBE may effectively normalize impaired  antioxidant status in streptozotocin-induced diabetes in a dose-dependent manner. AMBE has a protective effect against lipid peroxidation by scavenging free radicals and is thus capable of reducing the risk of diabetic complications.Keywords: Astragalus membranaceus, Diabetic, Antihyperglycemic, Antioxidant Oxidative stress, Fasting blood glucos

Successful treatment of methemoglobinemia in an elderly couple with severe cyanosis: two case reports

INTRODUCTION: Methemoglobinemia should be considered in all cyanotic patients who remain unresponsive to oxygen therapy. Rapid diagnosis is very important in emergency cases. Here, we present the cases of two patients, a married couple, admitted to our hospital with methemoglobinemia after exposure to sodium nitrite. CASE PRESENTATION: Two patients, a married couple, presented with methemoglobinemia. The 72-year-old Taiwanese man and 68-year-old Taiwanese woman were referred to our hospital with dizziness and tachypnea. On examination, their mucous membranes were cyanotic, and their blood samples showed the classic ‘chocolate brown’ appearance. The man also reported having experienced twitching of his right arm for a few minutes before arrival at the hospital. The symptoms of both patients failed to improve in response to supplemental oxygen delivered via oxygen masks, although the arterial blood gas data of these patients were normal and their pulse oximetry showed oxyhemoglobin levels of approximately 85%. A carbon monoxide-oximeter showed that the man’s methemoglobin concentration was 48.3%, and the woman’s was 36.4%. Methylene blue (100mg) was administered intravenously to both patients, and their symptoms improved dramatically. They were admitted to the intensive care unit and discharged three days later, without neurological sequelae. CONCLUSION: Severe methemoglobinemia is a life-threatening condition and, if untreated, may result in death. Early diagnosis and appropriate antidotal treatment are crucial in treating this emergency situation

Improving Sequence-to-Sequence Acoustic Modeling by Adding Text-Supervision

This paper presents methods of making using of text supervision to improve the performance of sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) voice conversion. Compared with conventional frame-to-frame voice conversion approaches, the seq2seq acoustic modeling method proposed in our previous work achieved higher naturalness and similarity. In this paper, we further improve its performance by utilizing the text transcriptions of parallel training data. First, a multi-task learning structure is designed which adds auxiliary classifiers to the middle layers of the seq2seq model and predicts linguistic labels as a secondary task. Second, a data-augmentation method is proposed which utilizes text alignment to produce extra parallel sequences for model training. Experiments are conducted to evaluate our proposed method with training sets at different sizes. Experimental results show that the multi-task learning with linguistic labels is effective at reducing the errors of seq2seq voice conversion. The data-augmentation method can further improve the performance of seq2seq voice conversion when only 50 or 100 training utterances are available.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to IEEE ICASSP 201

An evolutionary particle filter with the immune genetic algorithm for intelligent video target tracking

AbstractParticle filter algorithm is widely used for target tracking using video sequences, which is of great importance for intelligent surveillance applications. However, there is still much room for improvement, e.g. the so-called “sample impoverishment”. It is brought by re-sampling which aims to avoid particle degradation, and thus becomes the inherent shortcoming of the particle filter. In order to solve the problem of sample impoverishment, increase the number of meaningful particles and ensure the diversity of the particle set, an evolutionary particle filter with the immune genetic algorithm (IGA) for target tracking is proposed by adding IGA in front of the re-sampling process to increase particle diversity. Particles are regarded as the antibodies of the immune system, and the state of target being tracked is regarded as the external invading antigen. With the crossover and mutation process, the immune system produces a large number of new antibodies (particles), and thus the new particles can better approximate the true state by exploiting new areas. Regulatory mechanisms of antibodies, such as promotion and suppression, ensure the diversity of the particle set. In the proposed algorithm, the particle set optimized by IGA can better express the true state of the target, and the number of meaningful particles can be increased significantly. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed particle filter are verified by target tracking experiments. Simulation results show that the proposed particle filter is better than the standard one in particle diversity and efficiency. The proposed algorithm can easily be extended to multiple objects tracking problems with occlusions

Cytotoxic Effect of the Genus Sinularia Extracts on Human SCC25 and HaCaT Cells

Soft corals of the genus Sinularia are being increasingly adopted to treat a wide variety of disease processes. However, the mechanism underlying its activity against human oral cancer cells is poorly understood. This study evaluates the cyototoxicity effects of the genus Sinularia extracts (S. grandilobata, S. parva, S. triangula, S. scabra, S. nanolobata and S. gibberosa) by SCC25 and HaCaT cells. The cell adhesion assay indicates that extracts reduce the cell attachment. Extracts exhibit a dose-dependent cytotoxic effect using MTS assay.Treatment of extracts to observe the morphological alterations in cells, membrane blebbing, nuclear condensation, and apoptotic bodies is demonstrated. Flow cytometry shows that extracts sensitized the cells in the G0/G1 and G2/M phases with a concomitant significantly increased sub-G1 fraction, suggesting cell death by apoptosis. Extracts of the genus Sinularia thus apparently cause apoptosis of SCC25 and HaCaT cells, and warrant further research investigating the possible antioral cancer compounds in these soft corals