Unraveling molecular mechanisms of cigarette smoke bitterness via chemical profiling and bitter taste receptor activation analysis.

Tobacco metabolites play a crucial role in shaping the sensory experience of tobacco products, such as cigarettes. Bitter metabolites in tobacco not only serve as protective agents in plants, but also significantly influence the overall flavor profile of cigarettes. In this study, we employed an integrated approach combining chemical profiling, cell-based calcium imaging assays, and molecular docking studies to identify key bitter compounds in cigarette smoke and explore the molecular mechanisms underlying their bitterness.

Witness-based nonlinear detection of quantum entanglement.

We present a nonlinear entanglement detection strategy that detects entanglement that the linear detection strategy fails. We show that when the nonlinear entanglement detection strategy fails to detect the entanglement of an entangled state with two copies, it may succeed with three or more copies. Based on our strategy, a witness combined with a suitable quantum mechanical observable may detect the entanglement that cannot be detected by the witness alone.

Two Quantum Proxy Blind Signature Schemes Based on Controlled Quantum Teleportation.

We present a scheme for teleporting an unknown, two-particle entangled state with a message from a sender (Alice) to a receiver (Bob) via a six-particle entangled channel. We also present another scheme for teleporting an unknown one-particle entangled state with a message transmitted in a two-way form between the same sender and receiver via a five-qubit cluster state. One-way hash functions, Bell-state measurements, and unitary operations are adopted in these two schemes.

Separability Criteria Based on the Weyl Operators.

Entanglement as a vital resource for information processing can be described by special properties of the quantum state. Using the well-known Weyl basis we propose a new Bloch decomposition of the quantum state and study its separability problem. This decomposition enables us to find an alternative characterization of the separability based on the correlation matrix.

Quantum Nonlocality of Arbitrary Dimensional Bipartite States.

We study the nonlocality of arbitrary dimensional bipartite quantum states. By computing the maximal violation of a set of multi-setting Bell inequalities, an analytical and computable lower bound has been derived for general two-qubit states. This bound gives the necessary condition that a two-qubit state admits no local hidden variable models.