The amalgamated duplication of a ring along a multiplicative-canonical ideal

After recalling briefly the main properties of the amalgamated duplication of a ring $R$ along an ideal $I$, denoted by R\JoinI, we restrict our attention to the study of the properties of R\JoinI, when $I$ is a multiplicative canonical ideal of $R$ \cite{hhp}. In particular, we study when every regular fractional ideal of $R\Join I$ is divisorial

Daily physical activity and macronutrient distribution of low-calorie diets jointly affect body fat reduction in obese women.

Inadequate dietary patterns and sedentary lifestyles are believed to be important factors in predisposing people to obesity. This study analyzed the potential interaction between habitual physical activity and the carbohydrate (CHO)-fat distribution in 2 hypocaloric diets and the impact of such interplay on body composition changes. Forty healthy obese women, 20–50 years old, were randomly assigned to a high- or low-CHO energy-restricted diet, which was low or high in fat, respectively, during 10 weeks. Baseline and final measurements were performed to assess dietary habits, resting metabolic rate, and body composition changes. Physical activity was measured with a triaxial accelerometer and with a questionnaire. There were no significant differences in anthropometric and metabolic variables between both dietary groups at baseline. However, there was a positive correlation between total free-living physical activity and arm muscle preservation after 10 weeks (r = 0.371; p = 0.024). Interestingly, an interaction between macronutrient (CHO–fat distribution) intake and physical activity was found, since less-active subjects with a high-CHO–low-fat diet showed a greater fat loss than those more active with a lower-CHO–high-fat diet, whereas more-active subjects with a high-CHO–low-fat diet showed a smaller fat loss than those receiving a low-CHO–high-fat diet. Physical activity and the macronutrient content of energyrestricted diets, when designed to promote body fat mass reduction, should be considered together to better predict the outcome

Effect of erdosteine on the rate and duration of COPD exacerbations: the RESTORE study

Oxidative stress contributes to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations and antioxidants can decrease exacerbation rates, although we lack data about the effect of such drugs on exacerbation duration. The RESTORE (Reducing Exacerbations and Symptoms by Treatment with ORal Erdosteine in COPD) study was a prospective randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, enrolling patients aged 40–80 years with Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease stage II/III. Patients received erdosteine 300 mg twice daily or placebo added to usual COPD therapy for 12 months. The primary outcome was the number of acute exacerbations during the study. In the pre-specified intention-to-treat population of 445 patients (74% male; mean age 64.8 years, forced expiratory volume in 1 s 51.8% predicted) erdosteine reduced the exacerbation rate by 19.4% (0.91 versus. 1.13 exacerbations·patient−1·year−1 for erdosteine and placebo, respectively; p=0.01), due to an effect on mild events; the reduction in the rate of mild exacerbations was 57.1% (0.23 versus 0.54 exacerbations·patient−1·year−1 for erdosteine and placebo, respectively; p=0.002). No significant difference was observed in the rate of moderate and severe exacerbations (0.68 versus 0.59 exacerbations·patient−1·year−1 for erdosteine and placebo, respectively; p=0.054) despite a trend in favour of the comparison group. Erdosteine decreased the exacerbation duration irrespective of event severity by 24.6% (9.55 versus 12.63 days for erdosteine and placebo, respectively; p=0.023). Erdosteine significantly improved subject and physician subjective severity scores (p=0.022 and p=0.048, respectively), and reduced the use of reliever medication (p<0.001), but did not affect the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire score or the time to first exacerbation. In patients with COPD, erdosteine can reduce both the rate and duration of exacerbations. The percentage of patients with adverse events was similar in both the placebo and erdosteine treatment groups

Validation of the Spanish version of the physical activity questionnaire used in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study

Objective: The objective of this analysis was to test the validity of the estimates of energy expenditure and sedentary lifestyle obtained through a self-administered questionnaire of physical activity for Spanish-speaking people adapted from US questionnaires (Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study) using a triaxial accelerometer (RT3 Triaxial Research Tracker) as the reference. Design and setting: Validation study, calculating the non-parametric correlation coefficients between the level of physical activity and sedentary lifestyle collected by the self-administered questionnaire and the triaxial accelerometer measurements. Percentage of misclassification and kappa coefficients were also calculated. Subjects: The study population consisted of a sample of 40 obese women who were participants of the SUN (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) project (a prospective cohort study among Spanish university alumni). They were selected because of their peculiar metabolic characteristics, in the search for a sub-optimal scenario for validity. Results: Physical activity during leisure time (estimated as MET-h week21) derived from the self-administered questionnaire moderately correlated with kcal day21 assessed through the accelerometer (Spearman’s r ¼ 0.507, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.232, 0.707). The Spearman correlation between the ratio of sedentary lifestyle to physical activity obtained through the questionnaire and the direct estimation (RT3) was 20.578 (95% CI 20.754, 20.325). The kappa index was 0.25 (P ¼ 0.002) when assessing the cross-classification into quintiles and 0.41 for the dichotomous estimation of a sedentary lifestyle. Only 2.5% of participants were misclassified by the questionnaire more than two quintiles apart from the estimates of the RT3. Conclusions: The moderate values obtained for correlation in a sub-optimal scenario for validity and the low percentage of extreme misclassification suggest the validity of the questionnaire to assess physical activity in Spanish-speaking women aged 20–50 years

BB flavour tagging using charm decays at the LHCb experiment

An algorithm is described for tagging the flavour content at production of neutral $B$ mesons in the LHCb experiment. The algorithm exploits the correlation of the flavour of a $B$ meson with the charge of a reconstructed secondary charm hadron from the decay of the other $b$ hadron produced in the proton-proton collision. Charm hadron candidates are identified in a number of fully or partially reconstructed Cabibbo-favoured decay modes. The algorithm is calibrated on the self-tagged decay modes $B^+ \to J/\psi \, K^+$ and $B^0 \to J/\psi \, K^{*0}$ using $3.0\mathrm{\,fb}^{-1}$ of data collected by the LHCb experiment at $pp$ centre-of-mass energies of $7\mathrm{\,TeV}$ and $8\mathrm{\,TeV}$. Its tagging power on these samples of $B \to J/\psi \, X$ decays is $(0.30 \pm 0.01 \pm 0.01) \%$.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at http://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-027.htm

Measurements of long-range near-side angular correlations in sNN=5\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}=5TeV proton-lead collisions in the forward region

Two-particle angular correlations are studied in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}=5$TeV, collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. The analysis is based on data recorded in two beam configurations, in which either the direction of the proton or that of the lead ion is analysed. The correlations are measured in the laboratory system as a function of relative pseudorapidity, $\Delta\eta$, and relative azimuthal angle, $\Delta\phi$, for events in different classes of event activity and for different bins of particle transverse momentum. In high-activity events a long-range correlation on the near side, $\Delta\phi \approx 0$, is observed in the pseudorapidity range $2.0<\eta<4.9$. This measurement of long-range correlations on the near side in proton-lead collisions extends previous observations into the forward region up to $\eta=4.9$. The correlation increases with growing event activity and is found to be more pronounced in the direction of the lead beam. However, the correlation in the direction of the lead and proton beams are found to be compatible when comparing events with similar absolute activity in the direction analysed.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-040.htm

Evidence for the strangeness-changing weak decay Ξb−→Λb0π−\Xi_b^-\to\Lambda_b^0\pi^-

Using a $pp$ collision data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0~fb$^{-1}$, collected by the LHCb detector, we present the first search for the strangeness-changing weak decay $\Xi_b^-\to\Lambda_b^0\pi^-$. No $b$ hadron decay of this type has been seen before. A signal for this decay, corresponding to a significance of 3.2 standard deviations, is reported. The relative rate is measured to be ${{f_{\Xi_b^-}}\over{f_{\Lambda_b^0}}}{\cal{B}}(\Xi_b^-\to\Lambda_b^0\pi^-) = (5.7\pm1.8^{+0.8}_{-0.9})\times10^{-4}$, where $f_{\Xi_b^-}$ and $f_{\Lambda_b^0}$ are the $b\to\Xi_b^-$ and $b\to\Lambda_b^0$ fragmentation fractions, and ${\cal{B}}(\Xi_b^-\to\Lambda_b^0\pi^-)$ is the branching fraction. Assuming $f_{\Xi_b^-}/f_{\Lambda_b^0}$ is bounded between 0.1 and 0.3, the branching fraction ${\cal{B}}(\Xi_b^-\to\Lambda_b^0\pi^-)$ would lie in the range from $(0.57\pm0.21)\%$ to $(0.19\pm0.07)\%$.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-047.htm

Study of the production of Λb0\Lambda_b^0 and B‾0\overline{B}^0 hadrons in pppp collisions and first measurement of the Λb0→J/ψpK−\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi pK^- branching fraction

The product of the $\Lambda_b^0$ ($\overline{B}^0$) differential production cross-section and the branching fraction of the decay $\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi pK^-$ ($\overline{B}^0\rightarrow J/\psi\overline{K}^*(892)^0$) is measured as a function of the beauty hadron transverse momentum, $p_{\rm T}$, and rapidity, $y$. The kinematic region of the measurements is $p_{\rm T}<20~{\rm GeV}/c$ and $2.0<y<4.5$. The measurements use a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $3~{\rm fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb detector in $pp$ collisions at centre-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s}=7~{\rm TeV}$ in 2011 and $\sqrt{s}=8~{\rm TeV}$ in 2012. Based on previous LHCb results of the fragmentation fraction ratio, $f_{\Lambda_B^0}/f_d$, the branching fraction of the decay $\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi pK^-$ is measured to be \begin{equation*} \mathcal{B}(\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi pK^-)= (3.17\pm0.04\pm0.07\pm0.34^{+0.45}_{-0.28})\times10^{-4}, \end{equation*} where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, the third is due to the uncertainty on the branching fraction of the decay $\overline{B}^0\rightarrow J/\psi\overline{K}^*(892)^0$, and the fourth is due to the knowledge of $f_{\Lambda_b^0}/f_d$. The sum of the asymmetries in the production and decay between $\Lambda_b^0$ and $\overline{\Lambda}_b^0$ is also measured as a function of $p_{\rm T}$ and $y$. The previously published branching fraction of $\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi p\pi^-$, relative to that of $\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow J/\psi pK^-$, is updated. The branching fractions of $\Lambda_b^0\rightarrow P_c^+(\rightarrow J/\psi p)K^-$ are determined.Comment: 29 pages, 19figures. All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2015-032.htm

Measurement of the Bs0→J/ψKS0B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0 branching fraction

The $B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ branching fraction is measured in a data sample corresponding to 0.41$fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. This channel is sensitive to the penguin contributions affecting the sin2$\beta$ measurement from $B^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ The time-integrated branching fraction is measured to be $BF(B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0)=(1.83\pm0.28)\times10^{-5}$. This is the most precise measurement to date