A way to measure the water quality of the LHAASO-WCDA with cosmic muon signals

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) is to be built at Daocheng, Sichuan Province, China. As one of the major components of the LHAASO project, a Water Cherenkov Detector Array (WCDA), with an area of 78,000~$\rm m^{2}$, contains 350,000~tons of purified water. The water transparency and its stability are critical for successful long-term operation of this project. To gain full knowledge of the water Cherenkov technique and investigate the engineering issues, a 9-cell detector array has been built at the Yangbajing site, Tibet, China. With the help of the distribution of single cosmic muon signals, the monitoring and measurement of water transparency are studied. The results show that a precision of several percent can be obtained for the attenuation length measurement, which satisfies the requirements of the experiment. In the near future, this method could be applied to the LHAASO-WCDA project

Hypermethylation in the ZBTB20 gene is associated with major depressive disorder

Background: Although genetic variation is believed to contribute to an individual's susceptibility to major depressive disorder, genome-wide association studies have not yet identified associations that could explain the full etiology of the disease. Epigenetics is increasingly believed to play a major role in the development of common clinical phenotypes, including major depressive disorder. Results: Genome-wide MeDIP-Sequencing was carried out on a total of 50 monozygotic twin pairs from the UK and Australia that are discordant for depression. We show that major depressive disorder is associated with significant hypermethylation within the coding region of ZBTB20, and is replicated in an independent cohort of 356 unrelated case-control individuals. The twins with major depressive disorder also show increased global variation in methylation in comparison with their unaffected co-twins. ZBTB20 plays an essential role in the specification of the Cornu Ammonis-1 field identity in the developing hippocampus, a region previously implicated in the development of major depressive disorder. Conclusions: Our results suggest that aberrant methylation profiles affecting the hippocampus are associated with major depressive disorder and show the potential of the epigenetic twin model in neuro-psychiatric disease

Socio-demographic association of multiple modifiable lifestyle risk factors and their clustering in a representative urban population of adults: a cross-sectional study in Hangzhou, China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To plan long-term prevention strategies and develop tailored intervention activities, it is important to understand the socio-demographic characteristics of the subpopulations at high risk of developing chronic diseases. This study aimed to examine the socio-demographic characteristics associated with multiple lifestyle risk factors and their clustering.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a simple random sampling survey to assess lifestyle risk factors in three districts of Hangzhou, China between 2008 and 2009. A two-step cluster analysis was used to identify different health-related lifestyle clusters based on tobacco use, physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and out-of-home eating. Multinomial logistic regression was used to model the association between socio-demographic factors and lifestyle clusters.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 2016 eligible people (977 men and 1039 women, ages 18-64 years) completed the survey. Three distinct clusters were identified from the cluster analysis: an unhealthy (UH) group (25.7%), moderately healthy (MH) group (31.1%), and healthy (H) group (43.1%). UH group was characterised by a high prevalence of current daily smoking, a moderate or low level of PA, low FV consumption with regard to the frequency or servings, and more occurrences of eating out. H group was characterised by no current daily smoking, a moderate level of PA, high FV consumption, and the fewest times of eating out. MH group was characterised by no current daily smoking, a low or high level of PA, and an intermediate level of FV consumption and frequency of eating out. Men were more likely than women to have unhealthy lifestyles. Adults aged 50-64 years were more likely to live healthy lifestyles. Adults aged 40-49 years were more likely to be in the UH group. Adults whose highest level of education was junior high school or below were more likely to be in the UH group. Adults with a high asset index were more likely to be in the MH group.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study suggests that Chinese urban people who are middle-aged, men, and less educated are most likely to be part of the cluster with a high-risk profile. Those groups will contribute the most to the future burden of major chronic disease and should be targeted for early prevention programs.</p

Guidelines for burn rehabilitation in China

Abstract Quality of life and functional recovery after burn injury is the final goal of burn care, especially as most of burn patients survive the injury due to advanced medical science. However, dysfunction, disfigurement, contractures, psychological problems and other discomforts due to burns and the consequent scars are common, and physical therapy and occupational therapy provide alternative treatments for these problems of burn patients. This guideline, organized by the Chinese Burn Association and Chinese Association of Burn Surgeons aims to emphasize the importance of team work in burn care and provide a brief introduction of the outlines of physical and occupational therapies during burn treatment, which is suitable for the current medical circumstances of China. It can be used as the start of the tools for burn rehabilitation.</jats:p

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We report the first observation of two Cabibbo-suppressed decay modes of the Bs0 meson. Using a sample of pp̄ collisions at √s=1.96TeV corresponding to 5.9fb-1 of integrated luminosity collected with the CDF II, the collider detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, we search for new Bs0 decay modes in a sample of events containing J/ψ→μ+μ - decays. We reconstruct a Bs0→J/ψK*(892)0 signal with K*(892)0→K+π-, observing a yield of 151±25 events with a statistical significance of 8.0σ. We also reconstruct a Bs0→J/ψKS0 signal with KS0→π+π-, observing a yield of 64±14 events with a statistical significance of 7.2σ. From these yields, we extract the branching ratios B(Bs0→J/ψK*(892)0)=(8. 3±3.8)×10-5 and B(Bs0→J/ψK0)=(3.5±0.8) ×10-5, where statistical, systematic, and fragmentation- fraction uncertainties are included in the combined uncertainty. © 2011 American Physical Society

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Measurement of the Bs0 lifetime in fully and partially reconstructed Bs0→Ds-(Φπ \u3csup\u3e-\u3c/sup\u3e)X decays in p̄p collisions at √s=1.96TeV

We present a measurement of the Bs0 lifetime in fully and partially reconstructed Bs0→Ds-(Φπ -)X decays in 1.3fb -1 collected in pp̄ collisions at √s=1.96TeV by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. We measure τ(Bs0)=1.518±0.041(stat)±0. 027(syst)ps. The ratio of this result and the world average B0 lifetime yields τ(Bs0)/τ(B0)=0.99±0.03, which is in agreement with recent theoretical predictions. © 2011 American Physical Society