A metagenomic cosmid library was prepared in Escherichia coli from DNA extracted from the contents of rabbit cecum and screened for cellulase activities. Eleven independent clones expressing cellulase activities (four endo-beta-1,4-glucanases and seven beta-glucosidases) were isolated. Subcloning and sequencing analysis of these clones identified 11 cellulase genes; the encoded products of which shared less than 50% identities and 70% similarities to cellulases in the databases. All four endo-beta-1,4-glucanases and all seven beta-glucosidases, respectively, belonged to glycosyl hydrolase family 5 (GHF 5) and family 3 (GHF 3) and formed two separate branches in the phylogenetic tree. Ten of the 11 cloned cellulases exhibited highest activities at pH 5.5 approximately 7.0 and 40 approximately 55 degrees C, a condition similar to that in the rabbit cecum. All the four endo-beta-1,4-glucanases could hydrolyze a wide range of beta-1,4-, beta-1,4/beta-1,3- or beta-1,3/beta-1,6-linked polysaccharides. One endo-beta-1, 4-glucanase gene, umcel5G, was overexpressed in E. coli, and the purified recombinant enzyme was characterized in detail. The enzymes cloned in this work represented at least some of the cellulases operating efficiently in the rabbit cecum. This work provides the first snapshot on the cellulases produced by bacteria in rabbit cecum.

We present a Theorem that all generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states of a three-qubit system violate a Bell inequality in terms of probabilities. All pure entangled states of a three-qubit system are shown to violate a Bell inequality for probabilities; thus, one has Gisin's theorem for three qubits.PACS numbers: 03.65. Ud, 03.67.Mn, Quantum mechanics violates Bell type inequalities that hold for any local-realistic theory [1,2,3,4,5]. In 1991, Gisin presented a theorem, which states that any pure entangled state of two particles violates a Bell inequality for two-particle correlation functions [6,7]. Bell's inequalities for systems of more than two qubits are the object of renewed interest, motivated by the fact that entanglement between more than two quantum systems is becoming experimentally feasible. Recent investigations show the surprising result that there exists a family of pure entangled N > 2 qubit states that do not violate any Bell inequality for N -particle correlations for the case of a standard Bell experiment on N qubits [8]. By a standard Bell experiment we mean the one in which each local observer is given a choice between two dichotomic observables [9,10,11,12]. This family is the generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states given by( 1) with 0 ≤ ξ ≤ π/4. The GHZ states [3] are for ξ = π/4. In 2001, Scarani and Gisin noticed that for sin 2ξ ≤ 1/ √ 2 N −1 the states (1) do not violate the Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko (MABK) inequalities. Based on which, Scarani and Gisin wrote that "this analysis suggests that MK [in Ref. [9], MABK] inequalities, and more generally the family of Bell's inequalities with two observables per qubit, may not be the 'natural' generalizations of the CHSH inequality to more than two qubits" [8], where CHSH stands for Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt. In Ref.[10]Żukowski and Brukner (ŻB) have derived a general Bell inequality for correlation functions for N qubits. TheŻB inequalities include MABK inequalities as special cases. Ref. [9] shows that (a) For N = even, although the generalized GHZ state (1) does not violate MABK inequalities, it violates theŻB inequality and (b) For sin 2ξ ≤ 1/ √ 2 N −1 and N = odd, the correlations between measurements on qubits in the generalized GHZ state (1) satisfy all Bell inequalities for correlation functions, which involve two dichotomic observables per local measurement station.In this Letter, we focus on a three-qubit system, whose corresponding generalized GHZ state reads |ψ GHZ = cos ξ|000 + sin ξ|111 . Up to now, there is no Bell inequality violated by this pure entangled state for the region ξ ∈ (0, π/12] based on the standard Bell experiment. Can Gisin's theorem be generalized to three-qubit pure entangled states? Can one find a Bell inequality that violates |ψ GHZ for the whole region? In the following, we first present a theorem that all generalized GHZ states of a three-qubit system violate a Bell inequality in terms of probabilities; second, we will provide a universal Bell inequality for probabilities tha...

Activation of transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) induces neuronal injury. TRPV4 activation enhances inflammatory response and promotes the proinflammatory cytokine release in various types of tissue and cells. Hyperneuroinflammation contributes to neuronal damage in epilepsy. Herein, we examined the contribution of neuroinflammation to TRPV4-induced neurotoxicity and its involvement in the inflammation and neuronal damage in pilocarpine model of temporal lobe epilepsy in mice. Icv. injection of TRPV4 agonist GSK1016790A (GSK1016790A-injected mice) increased ionized calcium binding adapter molecule-1 (Iba-1) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) protein levels and Iba-1-positive (Iba-1 + ) and GFAP-positive (GFAP + ) cells in hippocampi, which indicated TRPV4-induced microglial cell and astrocyte activation. The protein levels of nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome components NLRP3, apoptosis-related spotted protein (ASC) and cysteinyl aspartate-specific protease-1 (caspase-1) were increased in GSK1016790A-injected mice, which indicated NLRP3 inflammasome activation. GSK1016790A also increased proinflammatory cytokine IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 protein levels, which were blocked by caspase-1 inhibitor Ac-YVAD-cmk. GSK1016790A-induced neuronal death was attenuated by Ac-YVAD-cmk. Icv. injection of TRPV4-specific antagonist HC-067047 markedly increased the number of surviving cells 3 d post status epilepticus in pilocarpine model of temporal lobe epilepsy in mice (pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus, PISE). HC-067047 also markedly blocked the increase in Iba-1 and GFAP protein levels, as well as Iba-1 + and GFAP + cells 3 d post-PISE. Finally, the increased protein levels of NLRP3, ASC and caspase-1 as well as IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 were markedly blocked by HC-067047. We conclude that TRPV4-induced neuronal death is mediated at least partially by enhancing the neuroinflammatory response, and this action is involved in neuronal injury following status epilepticus.

Hardy's proof is considered the simplest proof of nonlocality. Here we introduce an equally simple proof that (i) has Hardy's as a particular case, (ii) shows that the probability of nonlocal events grows with the dimension of the local systems, and (iii) is always equivalent to the violation of a tight Bell inequality.PACS numbers: 03.65. Ud, 03.67.Mn, 42.50.Xa Introduction.-Nonlocality, namely, the impossibility of describing correlations in terms of local hidden variables [1], is a fundamental property of nature. Hardy's proof [2,3], in any of its forms [4][5][6][7], provides a simple way to show that quantum correlations cannot be explained with local theories. Hardy's proof is usually considered "the simplest form of Bell's theorem" [8].On the other hand, if one wants to study nonlocality in a systematic way, one must define the local polytope [9] corresponding to any possible scenario (i.e., for any given number of parties, settings, and outcomes) and check whether quantum correlations violate the inequalities defining the facets of the corresponding local polytope. These inequalities are the so-called tight Bell inequalities. In this sense, Hardy's proof has another remarkable property: It is equivalent to a violation of a tight Bell inequality, the Clauser-Horne-ShimonyHolt (CHSH) inequality [10]. This was observed in [5].Hardy's proof requires two observers, each with two measurements, each with two possible outcomes. The proof has been extended to the case of more than two measurements [11,12], and more than two outcomes [13][14][15]. However, none of these extensions is equivalent to the violation of a tight Bell inequality.The aim of this Letter is to show that, if we remove the requirement that the measurements have two outcomes, then Hardy's proof can be formulated in a much powerful way. The new formulation shows that the maximum probability of nonlocal events, which has a limit of 0.09 in Hardy's formulation and previously proposed extensions, actually grows with the number of possible outcomes, tending asymptotically to a limit that is more than four times higher than the original one. Moreover, for any given number of outcomes, the new formulation turns out to be equivalent to a violation of a tight Bell inequality, a feature that suggest that this formulation is more fundamental than any other one proposed previously. All this while preserving the simplicity of Hardy's original proof.A new formulation of Hardy's paradox.-Let us consider two observers, Alice, who can measure either A 1 or A 2 on her subsystem, and Bob, who can measure B 1 or B 2 on his.

We present an experimentally feasible scheme to implement holonomic quantum computation in the ultrastrong-coupling regime of light-matter interaction. The large anharmonicity and the Z 2 symmetry of the quantum Rabi model allow us to build an effective three-level Λ-structured artificial atom for quantum computation. The proposed physical implementation includes two gradiometric flux qubits and two microwave resonators where single-qubit gates are realized by a two-tone driving on one physical qubit, and a two-qubit gate is achieved with a time-dependent coupling between the field quadratures of both resonators. Our work paves the way for scalable holonomic quantum computation in ultrastrongly coupled systems.

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering is a form of quantum nonlocality intermediate between entanglement and Bell nonlocality. Although Schrödinger already mooted the idea in 1935, steering still defies a complete understanding. In analogy to “all-versus-nothing” proofs of Bell nonlocality, here we present a proof of steering without inequalities rendering the detection of correlations leading to a violation of steering inequalities unnecessary. We show that, given any two-qubit entangled state, the existence of certain projective measurement by Alice so that Bob's normalized conditional states can be regarded as two different pure states provides a criterion for Alice-to-Bob steerability. A steering inequality equivalent to the all-versus-nothing proof is also obtained. Our result clearly demonstrates that there exist many quantum states which do not violate any previously known steering inequality but are indeed steerable. Our method offers advantages over the existing methods for experimentally testing steerability, and sheds new light on the asymmetric steering problem.

We introduce a new strongly driven dispersive atom-cavity interaction and develop a new scheme for implementing the nontrivial entangling gates for two logical qubits in decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs). Our scheme combines the robust advantages of DFS and the geometric phase. Moreover, only two neighboring physical qubits, which encode a logical qubit, are required to undergo the collective dephasing in our scheme.

A different way to realize nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation is proposed by varying parameters in the Hamiltonian for nuclear-magnetic resonance, where the dynamical and geometric phases are implemented separately without the usual operational process. Therefore the phase accumulated in the geometric gate is a pure geometric phase for any input state. In comparison with the conventional geometric gates by rotating operations, our approach simplifies experimental implementations making them robust to certain experimental errors. In contrast to the unconventional geometric gates, our approach distinguishes the total and geometric phases and offers a wide choice of the relations between the dynamical and geometric phases.