Soft SUSY Breaking Terms for Chiral Matter in IIB String Compactifications

This paper develops the computation of soft supersymmetry breaking terms for chiral D7 matter fields in IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifications with stabilised moduli. We determine explicit expressions for soft terms for the single-modulus KKLT scenario and the multiple-moduli large volume scenario. In particular we use the chiral matter metrics for Calabi-Yau backgrounds recently computed in hep-th/0609180. These differ from the better understood metrics for non-chiral matter and therefore give a different structure of soft terms. The soft terms take a simple form depending explicitly on the modular weights of the corresponding matter fields. For the large-volume case we find that in the simplest D7 brane configuration, scalar masses, gaugino masses and A-terms are very similar to the dilaton-dominated scenario. Although all soft masses are suppressed by ln(M_P/m_{3/2}) compared to the gravitino mass, the anomaly-mediated contributions do not compete, being doubly suppressed and thus subdominant to the gravity-mediated tree-level terms. Soft terms are flavour-universal to leading order in an expansion in inverse Kahler moduli. They also do not introduce extra CP violating phases to the effective action. We argue that soft term flavour universality should be a property of the large-volume compactifications, and more generally IIB flux models, in which flavour is determined by the complex structure moduli while supersymmetry is broken by the Kahler moduli. For the simplest large-volume case we run the soft terms to low energies and present some sample spectra and a basic phenomenological analysis.Comment: 40 pages, 9 figures, JHEP style; v2. sentence rephrase

Evaluation of antiulcer activity of aqueous ethanol extract of Thesium viride on ethanol and aspirin induced models in rats

Thesiumviride Hill (Santalaceae) is a sub-shrub hemiparasite that grows up to 45cm tall and widely distributed in Europe, Asia and Africa. It is used in treatment of ulcer and jaundice. Phytochemical screening was carried out on the aqueous ethanol extract of the whole plant by using standard phytochemical methods. Acute oral toxicity test was carried out and antiulcer activity was conducted using absolute ethanol and aspirin as the ulcerogenic agents on rats where the ulcer index was the parameter and percentage preventive index was determined. The aqueous ethanol extract of the plant was found to contain flavonoids,  anthraquinones, glycosidesand alkaloids. Acute toxicity test showed an oral LD50 greater than 5000 mg/kg. In ethanol model, aqueous ethanol extract at doses of 250 and 500 mg/kg exhibited significant (P<0.0001) protection against ulcer with mean ulcer indices of 4.40 ± 0.60 and 1.80 ± 0.37 respectively as compared with negative (12.80 ± 0.97) and positive (4.00 ± 0.71)control mean ulcer indices. In aspirin model, aqueous ethanol extract at doses of 250 and 500 mg/kg demonstrated  significant (P<0.05) protection against ulcer with mean ulcer indices of 3.20 ± 0.80 and 2.60 ± 0.24 respectively ascompared with negative (5.60 ± 0.97) and positive (1.00 ± 0.44) controlmean ulcer indices. The higher dose of the extract demonstrated greater protective ability with percentage preventive index 85.94% in ethanol induced model and 53.57% in aspirin induced model. The aqueous ethanol extract of the plant was found to be non-toxic and contains some phytochemicals that could be responsible for its antiulcer activity.Keywords: Thesiumviride, Phytochemical, LD50, Ulcer index, Aqueous ethanol extrac

Evaluation of the effects of aqueous extract of Parkinsonia aculeata leaves on kidney and liver function indices in albino rats

The present study was designed to evaluate the reno- and hepatotoxicity effects of aqueous extract of Parkinsonia Aculeate leaves in wistar albino rats. Twenty rats were randomly divided into five groups of four animals each. Group 1 served as control, receiving only water and food, while groups 2, 3, 4 and 5 were administered graded doses of the extract at 0.60, 1.20, 1.80 and 2.40 g/kg body weight respectively, orally, once daily for 28 days. There were no mortality or behavioural changes in the acute toxicity study at single dose of 3.00 g/kg bw for the period of 48 hours. The extract also showed no significant effect on changes in the body weights of the animals. Alanine Transaminase (ALT) activity was significantly (p<0.05) decreased at the dose of 2.40 g/kgbw of the extract. Aspartate Transaminase (AST) and Alkaline Phosphatase (ALP) activities were significantly (p<0.05) decreased at the doses of 1.80 and 2.40 g/kgbw. The serum total protein and albumin concentrations were significantly (p<0.05) increased at the dose of 2.40 g/kg bw of the extract. Serum creatinine, urea and uric acid levels were significantly (p<0.05) increased at the doses of 1.80 and 2.40g/kgbw. These results suggest that the aqueous extract of P. Aculeate leaves may be safe to the liver but toxic to the kidney and the toxicity is dose-dependent.Keywords: Toxicity, kidney, liver, extract, Parkinsonia aculeat

Ethno-botanical and Pharmaceutical Properties of Mollucan Spinach (Gynura procumbens Lour. Merr)

Recently there has been increase in patronage of herbal medicine due to economic constrain particularly among low income earners in the developing countries such as Nigeria. Gynura procumbens, (Molucan spinach) is widely used in traditional medicine for treatment of wide ailments such as fever, malaria, anti-glycaemic, rheumatism, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cancer, kidney diseases, anti-inflammatory, constipation, male sterility and body pain among others. This study reviews the ethnobotanical and pharmaceutical properties of G. procumbens (Lour.) Merr hence provided some data and information on the biological activity of G. procumbens which evaluated and validated its efficacy and safety in the treatment of different ailments. Based on the traditional uses of G. procumbens, the specie appears to possess high therapeutic potential for treatment of various diseases hence making it a target for pharmacological studies. Despite the knowledge and use of ethnomedicine the current scientific evidence on biological activities of G. procumbens remain scanty

Evolutionary-inspired probabilistic search for enhancing sampling of local minima in the protein energy surface

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Despite computational challenges, elucidating conformations that a protein system assumes under physiologic conditions for the purpose of biological activity is a central problem in computational structural biology. While these conformations are associated with low energies in the energy surface that underlies the protein conformational space, few existing conformational search algorithms focus on explicitly sampling low-energy local minima in the protein energy surface.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This work proposes a novel probabilistic search framework, PLOW, that explicitly samples low-energy local minima in the protein energy surface. The framework combines algorithmic ingredients from evolutionary computation and computational structural biology to effectively explore the subspace of local minima. A greedy local search maps a conformation sampled in conformational space to a nearby local minimum. A perturbation move jumps out of a local minimum to obtain a new starting conformation for the greedy local search. The process repeats in an iterative fashion, resulting in a trajectory-based exploration of the subspace of local minima.</p> <p>Results and conclusions</p> <p>The analysis of PLOW's performance shows that, by navigating only the subspace of local minima, PLOW is able to sample conformations near a protein's native structure, either more effectively or as well as state-of-the-art methods that focus on reproducing the native structure for a protein system. Analysis of the actual subspace of local minima shows that PLOW samples this subspace more effectively that a naive sampling approach. Additional theoretical analysis reveals that the perturbation function employed by PLOW is key to its ability to sample a diverse set of low-energy conformations. This analysis also suggests directions for further research and novel applications for the proposed framework.</p

Weak convergence for variational inequalities with inertial-type method

Weak convergence of inertial iterative method for solving variational inequalities is the focus of this paper. The cost function is assumed to be non-Lipschitz and monotone. We propose a projection-type method with inertial terms and give weak convergence analysis under appropriate conditions. Some test results are performed and compared with relevant methods in the literature to show the efficiency and advantages given by our proposed methods

A Mathematical Model on the Dynamics of Poverty and Prostitution in Nigeria

In this paper, we propose a compartmental mathematical model that tracks the dynamic of poverty and prostitution in Nigeria. Our model incorporates an infected compartment that allows for a non-violent approach of government interventions. The stability of the system is analyzed for the existence of the prostitution free equilibrium. We established that there exist a prostitution free equilibrium point that is locally asymptotically stable when the reproduction number  and unstable when . Result in this paper shows that high rate of government interventions will reduce to the barest minimum the number of members in both poverty and prostitution class. Keywords: Mathematical model, Poverty, Prostitution, Stability Analysis, Reproduction numbe

Evaluation of Hepatotoxic effects of Leaves Extract of Cassia italica (Mill.) Lam. ex F.W. Ander (Leguminosae) in Albino Rats

The hepatotoxic effect of aqueous leaves extract of Cassia italica on some liver function parameters was investigated in albino rats. Five groups of the rats were administered the following graded doses of the extract orally: 0, 300, 600, 1500 and 3000 mg/kg bw, for groups 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively, once daily for 28 days. The serum ALAT, ASAT and ALP levels were found to increase significantly (p&lt;0.05) in all the groups when compared to the control; whereas the serum Albumin levels decreased significantly (p&lt;0.05) in all the groups when compared with the control. There was also a significant increase in Total Bilirubin level (p&lt;0.05) in the groups administered with 3000 and 1500 mg/kg bw, but the reverse was the case in the groups administered with 600 and 300 mg/kg bw of the extract, which showed significant decrease (p&lt;0.05) when compared with the control. These results suggest that, the aqueous leaves extract of Cassia italica has adverse effects on the functional capacities of rat liver.Keywords: Hepatotoxicity, extract, Cassia italic, rat