There has recently been a dramatic renewal of interest in hadron spectroscopy and charm physics. This renaissance has been driven in part by the discovery of a plethora of charmonium-like XYZ states at BESIII and B factories, and the observation of an intriguing proton-antiproton threshold enhancement and the possibly related X(1835) meson state at BESIII, as well as the threshold measurements of charm mesons and charm baryons. We present a detailed survey of the important topics in tau-charm physics and hadron physics that can be further explored at BESIII during the remaining operation period of BEPCII. This survey will help in the optimization of the data-taking plan over the coming years, and provides physics motivation for the possible upgrade of BEPCII to higher luminosity.

The numbers of ψ(3686) events accumulated by the BESIII detector for the data taken during 2009 and 2012 are determined to be (107.0±0.8)×10 6 and (341.1±2.1)×10 6 , respectively, by counting inclusive hadronic events, where the uncertainties are systematic and the statistical uncertainties are negligible. The number of events for the sample taken in 2009 is consistent with that of the previous measurement. The total number of ψ(3686) events for the two data taking periods is (448.1±2.9)×10 6 .

Hadronic transitions of χ cJ → η c π + π − (J = 0, 1, 2) are searched for using a sample of 1.06 × 10 8 ψ(3686) events collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII storage ring. The η c is reconstructed with K 0 S K ± π ∓ and K + K − π 0 final states. No signals are observed in any of the three χ cJ states in either η c decay mode. At the 90% confidence level, the upper limits are determined to be B(χ c0 → η c π + π − ) < 0.07%, B(χ c1 → η c π + π − ) < 0.32%, and B(χ c2 → η c π + π − ) < 0.54%. The upper limit of B(χ c1 → η c π + π − ) is lower than the existing theoretical prediction by almost an order of magnitude. The branching fractions of χ cJ → K 0 S K ± π ∓ π + π − , K + K − π + π − π 0 , ωK + K − and φπ + π − π 0 (J = 0, 1, 2) are measured for the first time.

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Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a group of chronic interstitial pulmonary diseases characterized by myofibroblast proliferation and extracellular matrix deposition with limited treatment options. Based on our previous observation, we hypothesized microcystin-leucine arginine (LR), an environmental cyanobacterial toxin, could potentially suppress pulmonary fibrosis. In this study, we first demonstrated that chronic exposure of microcystin-LR by oral for weeks indeed attenuated the pulmonary fibrosis both on bleomycin-induced rat and fluorescein isothiocyanate-induced mouse models. Our data further indicated that treatment with microcystin-LR substantially reduced TGF-β1/Smad signaling in rat pulmonary tissues. The experiments in vitro found that microcystin-LR was capable of blocking epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and fibroblast-myofibroblast transition (FMT) through suppressing the differentiation of CD206 + macrophages. Mechanically, microcystin-LR was found to bind to glucose-regulated protein 78 kDa (GRP78) and suppress endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response (UPR ER) signaling pathways. These events led to the modulation of M2 polarization of macrophages, which eventually contributed to the alleviation of pulmonary fibrosis. Our results revealed a novel mechanism that may account for therapeutic effect of microcystin-LR on IPF.

Precise localization of mobile tumor positions in real time is critical to the success of gated radiotherapy. Tumor positions are usually derived from either internal or external surrogates. Fluoroscopic gating based on internal surrogates, such as implanted fiducial markers, is accurate however requiring a large amount of imaging dose. Gating based on external surrogates, such as patient abdominal surface motion, is non-invasive however less accurate due to the uncertainty in the correlation between tumor location and external surrogates. To address these complications, we propose to investigate an approach based on hybrid gating with dynamic internal/external correlation updates. In this approach, the external signal is acquired at high frequency (such as 30 Hz) while the internal signal is sparsely acquired (such as 0.5 Hz or less). The internal signal is used to validate and update the internal/external correlation during treatment. Tumor positions are derived from the external signal based on the newly updated correlation. Two dynamic correlation updating algorithms are introduced. One is based on the motion amplitude and the other is based on the motion phase. Nine patients with synchronized internal/external motion signals are simulated retrospectively to evaluate the effectiveness of hybrid gating. The influences of different clinical conditions on hybrid gating, such as the size of gating windows, the optimal timing for internal signal acquisition and the acquisition frequency are investigated. The results demonstrate that dynamically updating the internal/external correlation in or around the gating window will reduce false positive with relatively diminished treatment efficiency. This improvement will benefit patients with mobile tumors, especially greater for early stage lung cancers, for which the tumors are less attached or freely floating in the lung.

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