Four new species of Cystolepiota (Agaricaceae, Agaricales) from northeastern China

Cystolepiota is a tiny lepiotaceous fungi. During our 3 years fieldwork, we found four new species of Cystolepiota from northeastern China. A phylogenetic study of a combined dataset of ITS+nrLSU+rpb2+tef1-α revealed that Cystolepiota changbaishanensis and Cystolepiota hetieri are sister clades; Cystolepiota hongshiensis belongs to Cystolepiota seminuda complex; Cystolepiota luteosquamulosa formed a clade not closely related with any other; Cystolepiota nivalis and Cystolepiota sp. (HMJAU68235) formed a sister clade. All new species are provided with descriptions, photos of the basidiomata, and colored illustrations of the microstructures. A key for the identification of Cystolepiota species from China is also presented

Rolling element bearings fault diagnosis based on CEEMD and SVM

According to the nonstationary characteristics of rolling element bearing fault vibration signal, a fault diagnosis method of rolling element bearings based on Complementary Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition and support machine vector is proposed. The method consists of three stages. Firstly, CEEMD is used to decompose the rolling element bearings signal into several IMFs. Then, the IMF components containing main fault information was selected for constructing the faulty characteristic vector. Secondly, PCA is used to reduce the feature vector dimensions. Finally, the GA-optimized SVM is employed for rolling element bearings fault diagnosis. The presented method is applied to the fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings, and testing results show that the GA-optimized SVM can reliably separate different fault conditions, which has a better classification performance compared to the BP neural networks

Computational investigation of static multipole polarizabilities and sum rules for ground-state hydrogen-like ions

High precision multipole polarizabilities, $\alpha_{\ell}$ for $\ell \le 4$ of the $1s$ ground state of the hydrogen isoelectronic series are obtained from the Dirac equation using the B-spline method with Notre Dame boundary conditions. Compact analytic expressions for the polarizabilities as a function of $Z$ with a relative accuracy of 10$^{-6}$ up to $Z = 100$ are determined by fitting to the calculated polarizabilities. The oscillator strengths satisfy the sum rules $\sum_i f^{(\ell)}_{0i} = 0$ for all multipoles from $\ell = 1$ to $\ell = 4$. The dispersion coefficients for the long-range H-H and H-He$^+$ interactions are given.Comment: 8 figures, 8 table

Thymol exerts anti-inflammatory effect in dextran sulfate sodium-induced experimental murine colitis

Purpose: To investigate the effect of thymol on dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced experimental colitis in mice.Methods: Colitis in mice was induced by drinking water with 2.5 % (w/v) DSS. The levels of myeloperoxidase (MPO), malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione (GSH) and superoxide (SOD) in colonic tissues were determined using commercial kits. Histological changes were evaluated by hematoxylin and eosin staining. The production of nitric oxide (NO) was measured by Griess assay. The levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 were assessed by quantitative PCR and ELISA kits. Nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-κB) pathway activation was determined by Western blot.Results: Thymol markedly reduced disease activity index (DAI) scores, and recovered the colon length. Histological damage and MPO levels in the colonic tissues were markedly inhibited (p < 0.05) by thymol, which also reduced mRNA expressions of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 in the colon. In addition, it downregulated MDA level but elevated GSH and SOD levels. Moreover, in vitro data showed that thymol significantly inhibited (p < 0.05) lipopolysaccharide-induced secretion of NO, TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 in macrophages, and suppressed (p < 0.05) the activation of NF-κB pathway.Conclusion: Thymol attenuates experimental colitis by down-regulating the activation of NF-κB pathway. Therefore, thymol is a potential candidate drug for the management of ulcerative colitis.Keywords: Thymol, Ulcerative colitis, Dextran sulfate sodium, Macrophages, Nuclear factor-kappa

A dinuclear copper complex: bis­(μ-4-amino­benzoato)bis­[aqua(1,10-phenanthroline)copper(II)] dichloride bis(4-amino­benzoic acid) dihydrate

The title complex, [Cu2(C7H6NO2)2(C12H8N2)2(H2O)2]·2C7H7NO2·2H2O, consists of a dinuclear [Cu2(C7H6NO2)2(C12H8N2)2(H2O)2]2+ cation, two Cl− anions, two 4-amino­benzoic acid mol­ecules and two disordered water mol­ecules (site occupancy factors 0.5). The Cu(II) ion adopts a distorted square-pyramidal geometry formed by two N atoms from the 1,10-phenanthroline ligand and two O atoms of the two 4-amino­benzoic acid ligands and one water O atom. The Cu⋯Cu separation is 3.109 (2) Å. A twofold axis passes through the mid-point of the Cu⋯Cu vector