A new method of measuring Forbush decreases

Forbush decreases (FDs) are short-term depressions in the galactic cosmic ray flux and one of the common signatures of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the heliosphere. They often show a two-step profile, the second one associated with the CMEs magnetic structure (flux rope, FR), which can be described by the recently developed model ForbMod. The aim of this study is to utilise ForbMod to develop a best-fit procedure to be applied on FR-related FDs as a convenient measurement tool. We develop a best-fit procedure that can be applied to a data series from an arbitrary detector. Thus, the basic procedure facilitates measurement estimation of the magnitude of the FR-related FD, with the possibility of being adapted for the energy response of a specific detector for a more advanced analysis. The non-linear fitting was performed by calculating all possible ForbMod curves constrained within the FR borders to the designated dataset and minimising the mean square error (MSE). In order to evaluate the performance of the ForbMod best-fit procedure, we used synthetic measurements produced by calculating the theoretical ForbMod curve for a specific example CME and then applying various effects to the data to mimic the imperfection of the real measurements. We also tested the ForbMod best-fit function on the real data, measured by detector F of the SOHO-EPHIN instrument on a sample containing 30 events, all of which have a distinct FD corresponding to the CMEs magnetic structure. Overall, we find that the ForbMod best-fit procedure performs similar to the traditional algorithm-based observational method, but with slightly smaller values for the FD amplitude, as it is taking into account the noise in the data. Furthermore, we find that the best-fit procedure has an advantage compared to the traditional method as it can estimate the FD amplitude even when there is a data gap at the onset of the FD.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, A&

Sexual well-being in older adults: A qualitative study with older adults from Portugal and Slovenia

Introduction Beyond living longer, it is increasingly important to live with more and better health during aging; sexual well-being was found to contribute to health and well-being in old age and is highly under-researched in the older population. This study aims to analyze sexual well-being in a cross-cultural way through older Portuguese and Slovenian older samples. Methods We interviewed 136 older participants with an average age of 71.6 years old. Participants were Portuguese and Slovenian and lived in the community. Participants were subjected to semi-structured interviews and these were subjected to a content analysis process. Results The content analysis indicated nine themes related to sexual well-being: self-reported good health; demonstrations of love; non-sexual joint activities; overall well-being and quality of life; partner support; positive self-image; being independent and active; sexual compatibility; and masturbation. Conclusions Portuguese older adults experience their sexual well-being associated mainly with self-reported good health and demonstrations of love, while Slovenians older adults associate their sexual well-being mainly with non-sexual joint activities and overall well-being and quality of life. Policy Implications The themes found in this study are fundamental evidence for cultural interventions and guidelines outlining in the context of sexual health in aging, mainly due to the scarcity of knowledge of sexual well-being among older adults.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Full phase stabilization of a Yb:fiber femtosecond frequency comb via high-bandwidth transducers

We present full phase stabilization of an amplified Yb:fiber femtosecond frequency comb using an intra-cavity electro-optic modulator and an acousto-optic modulator. These transducers provide high servo bandwidths of 580 kHz and 250 kHz for frep and fceo, producing a robust and low phase noise fiber frequency comb. The comb was self-referenced with an f - 2f interferometer and phase locked to an ultra-stable optical reference used for the JILA Sr optical clock at 698 nm, exhibiting 0.21 rad and 0.47 rad of integrated phase errors (over 1 mHz - 1 MHz) respectively. Alternatively, the comb was locked to two optical references at 698 nm and 1064 nm, obtaining 0.43 rad and 0.14 rad of integrated phase errors respectively

Distribuição de microssatélites no genoma de leguminosas mediante hibridização in situ fluorescente.

Os microssatélites consistem em unidades de repetição (1 a 5pb) distribuídas em tandem, que podem estar dispersas ao longo dos genomas ou associadas a regiões heterocromáticas. Tais características têm permitido sua utilização na construção de mapas cromossômicos mediante hibridização in situ fluorescente (FISH), auxiliando no entendimento da organização genômica entre espécies proximamente relacionadas. O presente trabalho caracterizou a distribuição de oligonucleotídeos sintéticos (AG)8, (AAG)5, (ACC)5, (CTC)5 e (TGA)6 em Phaseolus vulgaris, P. lunatus, Vigna unguiculata, V. radiata e Glycine max, identificando marcas cromossômicas para a comparação destas leguminosas. Lâminas foram hibridizadas com sondas de oligonucleotídeos e rehibridizadas com DNAr 5S e 45S, provenientes de Lotus japonicus e Arabidopsis thaliana, respectivamente. Em soja, esta análise estendeu-se a uma investigação genômica, a partir de sequências disponibilizadas no banco de dados SoyBase (http://www.soybase.org/), usando o programa BLASTN com os seguintes parâmetros: formato de saída de alinhamentos sem lacunas, matriz de comparação blossum62, valor W padrão, e-value 0.1 ou menor e filtro de baixa complexidade desligado. Os oligonucleotídeos [(AAG)5]10, [(AAC)5]10, [(AG)8]15, [(CTC)5]10 e [(TGA)6]10 foram utilizados como sondas, adotando como ponto de corte valores de identidade de pareamento inferiores a 77%, objetivando caracterizar número, tamanho e localização destas unidades de repetições no genoma. A FISH com oligonucleotídeos evidenciaram marcações pericentroméricas e proximais, embora um padrão de distribuição disperso tenha prevalecido ao longo dos cromossomos das espécies analisadas, com exceção de (AG)8 em soja que não revelou marcações visíveis. O oligonucleotídeo (AAG)5 revelou uma marcação pericentromérica evidente em P. lunatus, tratando-se de um marcador cromossômico para tal espécie. Na hibridização com (ACC)5 notou-se a presença de seis marcações fortes em V. unguiculata, estando uma delas localizada no par cromossômico 10, portador do sítio de DNAr 45S. O microssatélite (TGA)6 revelou uma marcação bem evidente no cromossomo 10 de P. lunatus, identificado pela presença de DNAr 5S. Algumas divergências observadas no padrão de distribuição e na intensidade dos sinais entre os genomas das espécies confirmam a hipótese de que as sequências de DNA repetitivo apresentam uma composição heterogênea. Na análise genômica de soja, foram observados 92, 84, 83, 142 e 103 sítios de repetições para os oligonucleotídeos (AG)8, (AAG)5, (ACC)5, (CTC)5 e (TGA)6, respectivamente, de tamanhos variáveis entre 30 a 454 pb, localizados, principalmente, em regiões de alta a moderada densidade gênica, por vezes associados a genes e elementos transponíveis. Considerando o pequeno tamanho, fica evidente que estas sequências não correspondem aos sítios observados pela FISH, uma vez que esta técnica evidencia apenas sequências com comprimentos acima de 1-3kb. Sugere-se que as marcações localizadas por FISH estejam associadas a regiões de heterocromatina e que sejam constituintes dos mais de 1.000 scaffolds existentes no sequenciamento da soja, não sendo, por essa razão, detectadas pela análise in silico

Purifying Selection in Deeply Conserved Human Enhancers Is More Consistent than in Coding Sequences

(c) 2014 De Silva et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The transcription factor STAT6 mediates direct repression of inflammatory enhancers and limits activation of alternatively polarized macrophages

The molecular basis of signal-dependent transcriptional activation has been extensively studied in macrophage polarization, but our understanding remains limited regarding the molecular determinants of repression. Here we show that IL-4-activated STAT6 transcription factor is required for the direct transcriptional repression of a large number of genes during in vitro and in vivo alternative macrophage polarization. Repression results in decreased lineage-determining transcription factor, p300, and RNA polymerase II binding followed by reduced enhancer RNA expression, H3K27 acetylation, and chromatin accessibility. The repressor function of STAT6 is HDAC3 dependent on a subset of IL-4-repressed genes. In addition, STAT6-repressed enhancers show extensive overlap with the NF-κB p65 cistrome and exhibit decreased responsiveness to lipopolysaccharide after IL-4 stimulus on a subset of genes. As a consequence, macrophages exhibit diminished inflammasome activation, decreased IL-1β production, and pyroptosis. Thus, the IL-4-STAT6 signaling pathway establishes an alternative polarization-specific epigenenomic signature resulting in dampened macrophage responsiveness to inflammatory stimuli