Synthesis, structure and luminescence property of the ternary and quaternary europium complexes with furoic acid

A ternany europium complex with furoic acid (α-FURA) and 1,10-phenanthroline(phen), [Eu(α-FURA)₃phen]H₂O(I) and a quaternary europium furoate complex with 1,10-phenanthroline and nitrate, Eu(α-FURA)₂NO₃phen(II) were synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffraction. The two europium ions in each of the complexes (I) and (II) are held together by four carboxylato groups with the two modes, namely bidentate bridging and tridentate bridging, and each europium ion is further bonded to two nitrogen atoms from 1,10-phenanthroline and one chelated bidentate furoate group for the complex (I) and one chelated nitrato group for the complex (II), making a coordination number of 9. Luminescence spectra observed at 77 K show that the europium ion site in the crystals of the complexes (I) and (II) has low symmetry and lifetimes of the solid complexes (I) and (II) are 1.13 and 1.20 ms, respectively.     

Quantum Correlations Induced by Local von Neumann Measurement

We study the total quantum correlation, semiquantum correlation and joint quantum correlation induced by local von Neumann measurement in bipartite system. We analyze the properties of these quantum correlations and obtain analytical formula for pure states. The experimental witness for these quantum correlations is further provided and the significance of these quantum correlations is discussed in the context of local distinguishability of quantum states.     

Identification of metabolites in WZS‐miniature pig urine after oral administration of Danshen decoction by HPLC coupled with diode array detection with electrospray ionization tandem ion trap and time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

Danshen (DS) is a widely used traditional Chinese medicine for treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. A simple, rapid and sensitive method was developed for identification of the in vivo metabolites in urine of WZS‐miniature pigs after oral administration of DS decoction by HPLC coupled with diode array detection with electrospray ionization tandem ion trap and time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry. This method has been successfully applied to simultaneous identification of 50 compounds (including 11 new ones) in pig urine. In addition, one new compound, (3‐hydroxyphenyl) crylic acid glycine methyl ester (C1), along with eight known ones were first isolated by column chromatography and identified by spectroscopic means, including 1D/2DNMR and mass spectrometry, as reference substances. Ten phenolic compounds (protocatechuic aldehyde, protocatechuic acid, caffeic acid, danshensu, ferulic acid, isoferulic acid, rosmarinic acid and salvianolic acid A/B/D) were found to be the main absorbed original constituents of DS decoction, which underwent the metabolic reactions of glucuronidation, sulfation, methylation, hydrogenation and glycine conjugation in vivo. In conclusion, the developed method is applicable to the analysis and identification of constituents in biological matrices after administration of DS decoction. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A class of random field memory models for mortality forecasting

This article proposes a parsimonious alternative approach for modeling the stochastic dynamics of mortality rates. Instead of the commonly used factor-based decomposition framework, we consider modeling mortality improvements using a random field specification with a given causal structure. Such a class of models introduces dependencies among adjacent cohorts aiming at capturing, among others, the cohort effects and cross generations correlations. It also describes the conditional heteroskedasticity of mortality. The proposed model is a generalization of the now widely used AR-ARCH models for random processes. For such a class of models, we propose an estimation procedure for the parameters. Formally, we use the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) and show its statistical consistency and the asymptotic normality of the estimated parameters. The framework being general, we investigate and illustrate a simple variant, called the three-level memory model, in order to fully understand and assess the effectiveness of the approach for modeling mortality dynamics.     

Urinary metabonomic study using a CUMS rat model of depression

Chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) is a well‐validated model of depression. In this study, a urinary metabonomics method based on the NMR spectrometry was used to study the metabolic perturbation in CUMS‐induced rat depression model. With pattern recognition analysis, a clear separation of CUMS rats and healthy controls was achieved, and nine endogenous metabolites contributing to the separation were identified. CUMS‐treated rats were characterized by the increase of glycine, pyruvate, glutamine, and asparagines, as well as the decrease of 2‐oxoglutarate, dimethylglycine, citrate, succinate, and acetate. The urinary biochemical changes related to the metabolic disturbance in CUMS induced depression, and the possible correlations with live qi stagnation in traditional Chinese medicine are discussed. The work shows that CUMS is a reliable model for studying depression, and the noninvasive urinary metabolomic method is a valuable tool to investigate the biochemical pertubations in depression as an early diagnostic means. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

External perturbation manifested system size resonance in a mesoscopic hormone signaling model

In mesoscopic reaction systems that contain only finite number of reactants, molecular fluctuation (or the so called internal noise), which can be characterized by the system size, plays an important role in nonlinear systems. In this work, the effect of internal noise is studied in a mesoscopic hormone signaling model with the presence of external perturbations (noise or signal). Simulation results reveal that the internal noise can play a constructive role to optimize the regularity of the noise induced internal signal only when external perturbation is present. This is a novel external perturbations induced system size resonance, which indicates that in complex mesoscopic systems, the system can automatically avoid the destructive environmental effects by tuning its size. Such kind of nontrivial cooperative effect may attribute to the fact that external perturbations broadened the regulation scope of the key mutual feedback. Therefore, current finding is of practical significance for similar physiological systems where the intercellular regulation plays the dominate role for signaling.