More than 200 Chinese medicinal herb extracts were screened for antiviral activities against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium inner salt (MTS) assay for virus-induced cytopathic effect (CPE). Four of these extracts showed moderate to potent antiviral activities against SARS-CoV with 50% effective concentration (EC50) ranging from 2.4 +/- 0.2 to 88.2 +/- 7.7 microg/ml. Out of the four, Lycoris radiata was most potent. To identify the active component, L. radiata extract was subjected to further fractionation, purification, and CPE/MTS assays. This process led to the identification of a single substance lycorine as an anti-SARS-CoV component with an EC50 value of 15.7 +/- 1.2 nM. This compound has a CC50 value of 14980.0 +/- 912.0 nM in cytotoxicity assay and a selective index (SI) greater than 900. The results suggested that four herbal extracts and the compound lycorine are candidates for the development of new anti-SARS-CoV drugs in the treatment of SARS.

We investigate the effects of quintessence dark energy on the shadows of black hole, surrounded by various profiles of accretions. For the thin-disk accretion, the images of the black hole comprises the dark region and bright region, including direct emission, lensing rings and photon rings. Although their details depend on the form of the emission, generically, direct emission plays a major role for the observed brightness of the black hole, while the lensing ring makes a small contribution and the photon ring makes a negligible contribution. The existence of a cosmological horizon also plays an important role in the shadows, since the observer in the domain of outer communications is near the cosmological horizon. For spherically symmetric accretion, static and infalling matters are considered. We find that the positions of photon spheres are the same for both static and infalling accretions. However, the observed specific intensity of the image for infalling accretion is darker than for static accretion, due to the Doppler effect of the infalling motion.

We investigate the effect of massive graviton on the holographic thermalization process.Before doing this, we first find out the generalized Vaidya-AdS solutions in the de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) massive gravity by directly solving the gravitational equations.Then, we study the thermodynamics of these Vaidya-AdS solutions by using the Minsner-Sharp energy and unified first law, which also shows that the massive gravity is in a thermodynamic equilibrium state. Moreover, we adopt the two-point correlation function at equal time to explore the thermalization process in the dual field theory, and to see how the graviton mass parameter affects this process from the viewpoint of AdS/CFT correspondence. Our results show that the graviton mass parameter will increase the holographic thermalization process.

We study the holographic superconductor-normal metal-superconductor (SNS) Josephson junction in de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley massive gravity. If the boundary theory is independent of spatial directions, i.e., if the chemical potential is homogeneous in spatial directions, we find that the graviton mass parameter will make it more difficult for the normal metal-superconductor phase transition to take place. In the holographic model of the Josephson junction, it is found that the maximal tunneling current will decrease according to the graviton mass parameter. Besides, the coherence length of the junction decreases as well with respect to the graviton mass parameter. If one interprets the graviton mass parameter as the effect of momentum dissipation in the boundary field theory, this indicates that the stronger the momentum dissipation is, the smaller the coherence length is.

Abstract:We construct a holographic model of superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) in the Einstein-Maxwell-complex scalar theory with a negative cosmological constant. The SQUID ring consists of two Josephson junctions which sit on two sides of a compactified spatial direction of a Schwarzschild-AdS black brane. These two junctions interfere with each other and then result in a total current depending on the magnetic flux, which can be deduced from the phase differences of the two Josephson junctions. The relation between the total current and the magnetic flux is obtained numerically.