Measurements of the Mass and Full-Width of the ηc\eta_c Meson

In a sample of 58 million $J/\psi$ events collected with the BES II detector, the process J/$\psi\to\gamma\eta_c$ is observed in five different decay channels: $\gamma K^+K^-\pi^+\pi^-$, $\gamma\pi^+\pi^-\pi^+\pi^-$, $\gamma K^\pm K^0_S \pi^\mp$ (with $K^0_S\to\pi^+\pi^-$), $\gamma \phi\phi$ (with $\phi\to K^+K^-$) and $\gamma p\bar{p}$. From a combined fit of all five channels, we determine the mass and full-width of $\eta_c$ to be $m_{\eta_c}=2977.5\pm1.0 ({stat.})\pm1.2 ({syst.})$ MeV/$c^2$ and $\Gamma_{\eta_c} = 17.0\pm3.7 ({stat.})\pm7.4 ({syst.})$ MeV/$c^2$.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures and 4 table. Submitted to Phys. Lett.

A Measurement of Psi(2S) Resonance Parameters

Cross sections for e+e- to hadons, pi+pi- J/Psi, and mu+mu- have been measured in the vicinity of the Psi(2S) resonance using the BESII detector operated at the BEPC. The Psi(2S) total width; partial widths to hadrons, pi+pi- J/Psi, muons; and corresponding branching fractions have been determined to be Gamma(total)= (264+-27) keV; Gamma(hadron)= (258+-26) keV, Gamma(mu)= (2.44+-0.21) keV, and Gamma(pi+pi- J/Psi)= (85+-8.7) keV; and Br(hadron)= (97.79+-0.15)%, Br(pi+pi- J/Psi)= (32+-1.4)%, Br(mu)= (0.93+-0.08)%, respectively.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

A rapid detection of the pinewood nematode, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus in stored Monochamus alternatus by rDNA amplification

Pine wilt disease (PWD) caused by pinewood nematode (PWN) Bursaphelenchus xylophilus has originated serious loss to pine forestry around the world. Monochamus alternatus is the most important vector of B. xylophilus in Japan and China. It is necessary to develop an efficient method to store M. alternatus for subsequent PCR detection of B. xylophilus. In the present study, beetle samples carrying nematodes were stored in 75% alcohol. A simple procedure was firstly developed for isolating B. xylophilus DNA in 2 mg stored beetle tissue carrying nematodes for subsequent nematode detection by PCR amplification. The B. xylophilus– specific amplicon of 403 bp (DQ855275) was generated by PCR assay from the stored beetle tissue. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a rapid detection of the pine wood nematode –B. xylophilus in stored M. alternatus by rDNA amplification established without a separate nematode extraction. This result will provide a useful method to detect B. xylophilus in stored M. alternatus

Transitional metal-doped 8 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolytes

10.1016/j.ssi.2009.08.004Solid State Ionics18023-251311-1317SSIO

Direct PCR-based method for detecting Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, the pine wood nematode in wood tissue of Pinus massoniana

Pine wilt disease (PWD), caused by the pine wood nematode (PWN) Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, leads to serious losses to pine forestry around the world. Pinus massoniana, which is vulnerable to be attacked by the PWN, is the dominant species used in pine forestry in China. The objective of this study is to develop a direct PCR-based method for detecting B. xylophilus in the wood of P. massoniana without a separate nematode extraction step. A simple procedure was first developed for isolating B. xylophilus DNA in 5 mg pine wood tissue samples harbouring PWN for detection by PCR amplification. A B. xylophilus-specific amplicon of 403 bp (DQ855275) was generated by PCR from the infested wood tissue. The entire procedure can be completed within 5 h with one pair of primers. This assay can serve as a rapid, cheap and environmentally friendly method to detect B. xylophilus in samples of P. massoniana

Simultaneous grain growth and grain refinement in bulk ultrafine-grained copper under tensile deformation at room temperature

Grain growth and grain refinement behavior during deformation determine the strength and ductility of ultrafine-grained materials. We used asymmetric cryorolling to fabricate ultrafine-grained copper sheets with an average grain width of 230 nm and having a laminate structure. The sheets show a high-true failure strain of 1.5. Observation of the microstructure at the fracture surface reveals that ultrafine laminate-structured grains were simultaneously transformed into both equiaxed nanograins and coarse grains under tensile deformation at room temperature