Zero mode in a strongly coupled quark gluon plasma

In connection with massless two-flavour QCD, we analyse the chiral symmetry restoring phase transition using three distinct gluon-quark vertices and two different assumptions about the long-range part of the quark-quark interaction. In each case, we solve the gap equation, locate the transition temperature T_c, and use the maximum entropy method to extract the dressed-quark spectral function at T>T_c. Our best estimate for the chiral transition temperature is T_c=(147 +/- 8)MeV; and the deconfinement transition is coincident. For temperatures markedly above T_c, we find a spectral density that is consistent with those produced using a hard thermal loop expansion, exhibiting both a normal and plasmino mode. On a domain T\in[T_c,T_s], with T_s approximately 1.5T_c, however, with each of the six kernels we considered, the spectral function contains a significant additional feature. Namely, it displays a third peak, associated with a zero mode, which is essentially nonperturbative in origin and dominates the spectral function at T=T_c. We suggest that the existence of this mode is a signal for the formation of a strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma and that this strongly-interacting state of matter is likely a distinctive feature of the QCD phase transition.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Phase diagram and thermal properties of strong-interaction matter

We introduce a novel procedure for computing the (mu,T)-dependent pressure in continuum QCD; and therefrom obtain a complex phase diagram and predictions for thermal properties of the system, providing the in-medium behaviour of the trace anomaly, speed of sound, latent heat and heat capacity.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Minor amendments in the version accepted for publicatio

A novel financial risk assessment model for companies based on heterogeneous information and aggregated historical data

The financial risk not only affects the development of the company itself, but also affects the economic development of the whole society; therefore, the financial risk assessment of company is an important part. At present, numerous methods of financial risk assessment have been researched by scholars. However, most of the extant methods neither integrated fuzzy sets with quantitative analysis, nor took into account the historical data of the past few years

Systematic review and meta-analysis of Chinese herbal formula Tongxie Yaofang for diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome: Evidence for clinical practice and future trials

Introduction: Diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D) significantly decreases the quality of life of patients and their families, and affects patients’ mental health. No specific western medications are available. Ancient classical Chinese medical texts have recognized Tongxie Yaofang (TXYF) as a therapy for diarrhea which is widely used in clinical practice. Standard TXYF prescription (S-TXYF) is composed of four herbal medicines: Atractylodes macrocephala Koidz. [Asteraceae; Rhizoma Atractylodis Macrocephalae.], Paeonia lactiflora Pall. [Ranunculaceae; Paeoniae Radix Alba], Citrus × aurantium L. [Rutaceae; Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium] and Saposhnikovia divaricata (Turcz. ex Ledeb.) Schischk. [Umbelliferae; Saposhnikoviae Radix]. This review aimed to evaluate the therapeutic effects and safety of S-TXYF for IBS-D. Methods: Eight English and Chinese electronic databases were searched from their inception to 25 December 2021 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing S-TXYF with placebo, western medications or no treatment for IBS-D. The primary outcome was the global improvement of IBS-D symptoms. Data were analyzed using Cochrane’s Revman 5.4 software. Evidence certainty was assessed using the online GRADEpro tool for the primary outcome. Results: Eleven RCTs involving 985 adults with IBS-D were included. For global improvement of symptoms, S-TXYF was superior to western medication and placebo (moderate evidence by GRADE). Regarding the improvement of stool consistency, stool frequency and abdominal pain, S-TXYF was significantly effective than placebo. In addition, S-TXYF was superior to western medication on improving the quality of life and relieving anxiety. Six trials reported adverse events: five of them reported (non-serious) adverse events occurred in both groups, and one trial reported that 3 cases with adverse events (constipation, elevation in liver-enzyme, nausea) occurred in S-TXYF group and 3 cases with adverse events (abdominal distension, nausea) occurred in placebo group. Conclusion: Although current results showed that S-TXYF may have potential to treat IBS-D and its use appears to be safe, no a clear and confirmed conclusion can be drawn from our review as the overall inadequate design of the included trials reviewed. So more rigorous trials are warranted to establish confirmed evidence on its benefits and safety

Oceanic redox conditions during the terminal Cambrian extinction event

Marine animal diversity during the late Cambrian was reduced by a series of extinctions that have generally been attributed to oceanic anoxic events associated with positive carbon isotope excursions. Here we present carbon and uranium isotope ratios (δ13C and δ238U values) as proxies for global carbon cycle and oceanic redox conditions, respectively, from carbonate rocks of the Wa'ergang section, South China. The dataset spans an interval that includes the last major negative δ13C excursion (TOCE) of the Cambrian Period. The TOCE is a globally documented event, recovery from which corresponds to the terminal Cambrian extinction event. The δ13C and δ238U values covary through the section, shifting initially to lower values, with δ238U falling below the modern open-ocean seawater value from the start to the middle of the profile, followed by a shift to higher values towards the end of the Cambrian. Neither the co-occurrence of δ13C and δ238U negative excursions, nor the association of rising δ238U with extinction have been commonly reported. Here we argue that robust positive coupling of δ13C and δ238U relates to the existence of extensive intermediate reducing settings (from low-O2 suboxia to intermittent anoxia) during the late Cambrian alongside low atmospheric pO2 and a greenhouse climate. Similarly, a stepwise increase in the δ238U baseline in carbonates across the Ediacaran−Cambrian boundary is consistent with the growing importance of an intermediate reducing sink through that interval. We propose further that divergent trends in lower and upper ocean redox conditions could have driven the parallel isotope excursions. An expansion of intermediate reducing conditions, rather than persistent anoxic euxinia, is consistent with the recovery of δ13C and δ238U to higher values, as well as the presence of benthic fauna and shoreward extension of deeper-water fauna that may have had a greater tolerance against hypoxia

Multi-Dimensional Refinement Graph Convolutional Network with Robust Decouple Loss for Fine-Grained Skeleton-Based Action Recognition

Graph convolutional networks have been widely used in skeleton-based action recognition. However, existing approaches are limited in fine-grained action recognition due to the similarity of inter-class data. Moreover, the noisy data from pose extraction increases the challenge of fine-grained recognition. In this work, we propose a flexible attention block called Channel-Variable Spatial-Temporal Attention (CVSTA) to enhance the discriminative power of spatial-temporal joints and obtain a more compact intra-class feature distribution. Based on CVSTA, we construct a Multi-Dimensional Refinement Graph Convolutional Network (MDR-GCN), which can improve the discrimination among channel-, joint- and frame-level features for fine-grained actions. Furthermore, we propose a Robust Decouple Loss (RDL), which significantly boosts the effect of the CVSTA and reduces the impact of noise. The proposed method combining MDR-GCN with RDL outperforms the known state-of-the-art skeleton-based approaches on fine-grained datasets, FineGym99 and FSD-10, and also on the coarse dataset NTU-RGB+D X-view version