Evaluation of ecotoxicity of typical surfactants for leather manufacture by luminescent bacteria

Content: Surfactants are used as auxiliaries in every wet processing process of leather production and discharged into wastewater, which would cause potential ecological risks. In this paper, fresh luminescent bacillus liquids were employed to evaluate the ecological toxicity of six surfactants, including anionic, cationic and non-ionic surfactants, and mixture of two typical ionic and nonionic surfactants after a 15-min exposure period. Non-ionic surfactants AEO and Tween80 showed slight light inhibition ie.10-35% to luminescent bacteria. The toxicity of anionic surfactants with polar sulfonic group was: penetrant T(EC50=406.81mg/L) ＞SDBS(EC50=573.37mg/L). The toxicity of cationic surfactants was: DTAB（EC50=10.68mg/L）＞SKC （EC50=73.96mg/L）. The addition of nonionic surfactants reduced the toxicity of ionic surfactants. 1-1 mixture of SKC and AEO: EC50=80.17mg/L, 1-1 mixture of SDBS and AEO: EC50=624.34mg/L. These results provided ecological parameters for the selection of surfactants in the process of ecological leather production. Take-Away: 1. The toxicity measurement by luminescent bacteria, which is simple and convenient, was used to evaluate the toxicity of surfactants, and the reproducibility was improved in our study. 2. The toxicities of six different surfactants was evaluated by EC50 which provided ecological parameters for the selection of surfactants in the process of ecological leather production

Emulating Anyonic Fractional Statistical Behavior in a Superconducting Quantum Circuit

Anyons are exotic quasiparticles obeying fractional statistics, whose behavior can be emulated in artificially designed spin systems. Here we present an experimental emulation of creating anyonic excitations in a superconducting circuit that consists of four qubits, achieved by dynamically generating the ground and excited states of the toric code model, i.e., four-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. The anyonic braiding is implemented via single-qubit rotations: a phase shift of π related to braiding, the hallmark of Abelian 1/2 anyons, has been observed through a Ramsey-type interference measurement

Back reaction, covariant anomaly and effective action

In the presence of back reaction, we first produce the one-loop corrections for the event horizon and Hawking temperature of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole. Then, based on the covariant anomaly cancelation method and the effective action technique, the modified expressions for the fluxes of gauge current and energy momentum tensor, due to the effect of back reaction, are obtained. The results are consistent with the Hawking fluxes of a (1+1)-dimensional blackbody at the temperature with quantum corrections, thus confirming the robustness of the covariant anomaly cancelation method and the effective action technique for black holes with back reaction.Comment: 17 page

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer mission

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), one of the four scientific space science missions within the framework of the Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is a general purpose high energy cosmic-ray and gamma-ray observatory, which was successfully launched on December 17th, 2015 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The DAMPE scientific objectives include the study of galactic cosmic rays up to $\sim 10$ TeV and hundreds of TeV for electrons/gammas and nuclei respectively, and the search for dark matter signatures in their spectra. In this paper we illustrate the layout of the DAMPE instrument, and discuss the results of beam tests and calibrations performed on ground. Finally we present the expected performance in space and give an overview of the mission key scientific goals.Comment: 45 pages, including 29 figures and 6 tables. Published in Astropart. Phy

The association between subclass-specific IgG Fc N-glycosylation profiles and hypertension in the Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz, and Tajik populations

Hypertension results from the interaction of genetic and acquired factors. IgG occurs in the form of different subclasses, of which the effector functions show significant variation. The detailed differences between the glycosylation profiles of the individual IgG subclasses may be lost in a profiling method for total IgG N-glycosylation. In this study, subclass-specific IgG Fc glycosylation profile was investigated in the four northwestern Chinese minority populations, namely, Uygur (UIG), Kazak (KZK), Kirgiz (KGZ), and Tajik (TJK), composed of 274 hypertensive patients and 356 healthy controls. The results showed that ten directly measured IgG N-glycan traits (i.e., IgG1G0F, IgG2G0F, IgG2G1FN, IgG2G1FS, IgG2G2S, IgG4G0F, IgG4G1FS, IgG4G1S, IgG4G2FS, and IgG4G2N) representing galactosylation and sialylation are significantly associated with hypertension, with IgG4 consistently showing weaker associations of its sialylation, across the four ethnic groups. We observed a modest improvement on the AUC of ROC curve when the IgG Fc N-glycan traits are added into the glycan-based model (difference between AUCs, 0.044, 95% CI: 0.016-0.072, P = 0.002). The AUC of the diagnostic model indicated that the subclass-specific IgG Fc N-glycan profiles provide more information reinforcing current models utilizing age, gender, BMI, and ethnicity, and demonstrate the potential of subclass-specific IgG Fc N-glycosylation profiles to serve as a biomarker for hypertension. Further research is however required to determine the additive value of subclass-specific IgG Fc N-glycosylation on top of biomarkers, which are currently used

Measurement of the branching fractions of psi(2S) -> 3(pi+pi-) and J/psi -> 2(pi+pi-)

Using data samples collected at sqrt(s) = 3.686GeV and 3.650GeV by the BESII detector at the BEPC, the branching fraction of psi(2S) -> 3(pi+pi-) is measured to be [4.83 +- 0.38(stat) +- 0.69(syst)] x 10^-4, and the relative branching fraction of J/psi -> 2(pi+pi-) to that of J/psi -> mu+mu- is measured to be [5.86 +- 0.19(stat) +- 0.39(syst)]% via psi(2S) -> (pi+pi-)J/psi, J/psi -> 2(pi+pi-). The electromagnetic form factor of 3(pi+pi-) is determined to be 0.21 +- 0.02 and 0.20 +- 0.01 at sqrt(s) = 3.686GeV and 3.650GeV, respectively.Comment: 17pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Direct detection of a break in the teraelectronvolt cosmic-ray spectrum of electrons and positrons

High energy cosmic ray electrons plus positrons (CREs), which lose energy quickly during their propagation, provide an ideal probe of Galactic high-energy processes and may enable the observation of phenomena such as dark-matter particle annihilation or decay. The CRE spectrum has been directly measured up to $\sim 2$ TeV in previous balloon- or space-borne experiments, and indirectly up to $\sim 5$ TeV by ground-based Cherenkov $\gamma$-ray telescope arrays. Evidence for a spectral break in the TeV energy range has been provided by indirect measurements of H.E.S.S., although the results were qualified by sizeable systematic uncertainties. Here we report a direct measurement of CREs in the energy range $25~{\rm GeV}-4.6~{\rm TeV}$ by the DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) with unprecedentedly high energy resolution and low background. The majority of the spectrum can be properly fitted by a smoothly broken power-law model rather than a single power-law model. The direct detection of a spectral break at $E \sim0.9$ TeV confirms the evidence found by H.E.S.S., clarifies the behavior of the CRE spectrum at energies above 1 TeV and sheds light on the physical origin of the sub-TeV CREs.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, Nature in press, doi:10.1038/nature2447

Measurement of the chi_{c2} Polarization in psi(2S) to gamma chi_{c2}

The polarization of the chi_{c2} produced in psi(2S) decays into gamma chi_{c2} is measured using a sample of 14*10^6 psi(2S) events collected by BESII at the BEPC. A fit to the chi_{c2} production and decay angular distributions in psi(2S) to gamma chi_{c2}, chi_{c2} to pi pi and KK yields values x=A_1/A_0=2.08+/-0.44 and y=A_2/A_0=3.03 +/-0.66, with a correlation rho=0.92 between them, where A_{0,1,2} are the chi_{c2} helicity amplitudes. The measurement agrees with a pure E1 transition, and M2 and E3 contributions do not differ significantly from zero.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Search for psi(3770)\ra\rho\pi at the BESII detector at the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider

Non-$D\bar{D}$ decay \psppto \rhopi is searched for using a data sample of $(17.3\pm 0.5) pb^{-1}$ taken at the center-of-mass energy of 3.773 GeV by the BESII detector at the BEPC. No \rhopi signal is observed, and the upper limit of the cross section is measured to be \sigma(\EETO \rhopi)<6.0 pb at 90% C. L. Considering the interference between the continuum amplitude and the \pspp resonance amplitude, the branching fraction of \pspp decays to $\rho\pi$ is determined to be \BR(\pspp\ra\rho\pi)\in(6.0\times10^{-6}, 2.4\times10^{-3}) at 90% C. L. This is in agreement with the prediction of the $S$- and $D$-wave mixing scheme of the charmonium states for solving the ``\rhopi puzzle'' between \jpsi and \psp decays.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure