Carbon monoxide and water vapor in the atmosphere of the non-transiting exoplanet HD 179949 b

(Abridged) In recent years, ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy has become a powerful tool for investigating exoplanet atmospheres. It allows the robust identification of molecular species, and it can be applied to both transiting and non-transiting planets. Radial-velocity measurements of the star HD 179949 indicate the presence of a giant planet companion in a close-in orbit. Here we present the analysis of spectra of the system at 2.3 micron, obtained at a resolution of R~100,000, during three nights of observations with CRIRES at the VLT. We targeted the system while the exoplanet was near superior conjunction, aiming to detect the planet's thermal spectrum and the radial component of its orbital velocity. We detect molecular absorption from carbon monoxide and water vapor with a combined S/N of 6.3, at a projected planet orbital velocity of K_P = (142.8 +- 3.4) km/s, which translates into a planet mass of M_P = (0.98 +- 0.04) Jupiter masses, and an orbital inclination of i = (67.7 +- 4.3) degrees, using the known stellar radial velocity and stellar mass. The detection of absorption features rather than emission means that, despite being highly irradiated, HD 179949 b does not have an atmospheric temperature inversion in the probed range of pressures and temperatures. Since the host star is active (R_HK > -4.9), this is in line with the hypothesis that stellar activity damps the onset of thermal inversion layers owing to UV flux photo-dissociating high-altitude, optical absorbers. Finally, our analysis favors an oxygen-rich atmosphere for HD 179949 b, although a carbon-rich planet cannot be statistically ruled out based on these data alone.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Exoplanet atmospheres with GIANO. I. Water in the transmission spectrum of HD 189733b

High-resolution spectroscopy (R $\ge$ 20,000) at near-infrared wavelengths can be used to investigate the composition, structure, and circulation patterns of exoplanet atmospheres. However, up to now it has been the exclusive dominion of the biggest telescope facilities on the ground, due to the large amount of photons necessary to measure a signal in high-dispersion spectra. Here we show that spectrographs with a novel design - in particular a large spectral range - can open exoplanet characterisation to smaller telescope facilities too. We aim to demonstrate the concept on a series of spectra of the exoplanet HD 189733 b taken at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo with the near-infrared spectrograph GIANO during two transits of the planet. In contrast to absorption in the Earth's atmosphere (telluric absorption), the planet transmission spectrum shifts in radial velocity during transit due to the changing orbital motion of the planet. This allows us to remove the telluric spectrum while preserving the signal of the exoplanet. The latter is then extracted by cross-correlating the residual spectra with template models of the planet atmosphere computed through line-by-line radiative transfer calculations, and containing molecular absorption lines from water and methane. By combining the signal of many thousands of planet molecular lines, we confirm the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere of HD 189733 b at the 5.5-$\sigma$ level. This signal was measured only in the first of the two observing nights. By injecting and retrieving artificial signals, we show that the non-detection on the second night is likely due to an inferior quality of the data. The measured strength of the planet transmission spectrum is fully consistent with past CRIRES observations at the VLT, excluding a strong variability in the depth of molecular absorption lines.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. v2 includes language editin

Detection of water absorption in the day side atmosphere of HD 189733 b using ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy at 3.2 microns

We report a 4.8 sigma detection of water absorption features in the day side spectrum of the hot Jupiter HD 189733 b. We used high-resolution (R~100,000) spectra taken at 3.2 microns with CRIRES on the VLT to trace the radial-velocity shift of the water features in the planet's day side atmosphere during 5 h of its 2.2 d orbit as it approached secondary eclipse. Despite considerable telluric contamination in this wavelength regime, we detect the signal within our uncertainties at the expected combination of systemic velocity (Vsys=-3 +5-6 km/s) and planet orbital velocity (Kp=154 +14-10 km/s), and determine a H2O line contrast ratio of (1.3+/-0.2)x10^-3 with respect to the stellar continuum. We find no evidence of significant absorption or emission from other carbon-bearing molecules, such as methane, although we do note a marginal increase in the significance of our detection to 5.1 sigma with the inclusion of carbon dioxide in our template spectrum. This result demonstrates that ground-based, high-resolution spectroscopy is suited to finding not just simple molecules like CO, but also to more complex molecules like H2O even in highly telluric contaminated regions of the Earth's transmission spectrum. It is a powerful tool that can be used for conducting an immediate census of the carbon- and oxygen-bearing molecules in the atmospheres of giant planets, and will potentially allow the formation and migration history of these planets to be constrained by the measurement of their atmospheric C/O ratios.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Dynamic verification of mashups of service-oriented things through a mediation platform

The new Internet is evolving into the vision of the Internet of Things, where physical world entities are integrated into virtual world things. Things are expected to become active participants in business, information and social processes. Then, the Internet of Things could benefit from the Web Service architecture like today’s Web does; so Future service-oriented Internet things will offer their functionality via service-enabled interfaces. As demonstrated in previous work, there is a need of considering the behaviour of things to develop applications in a more rigorous way. We proposed a lightweight model for representing such behaviour based on the service-oriented paradigm and extending the standard DPWS profile to specify the (partial) order with which things can receive messages. To check whether a mashup of things respects the behaviour, specified at design-time, of composed things, we proposed a static verification. However, at run-time a thing may change its behaviour or receive requests from instances of different mashups. Then, it is required to check and detect dynamically possible invalid invocations provoked by the behaviour’s changes. In this work, we extend our static verification with an approach based on mediation techniques and complex event processing to detect and inhibit invalid invocations, checking that things only receive requests compatible with their behaviour. The solution automatically generates the required elements to perform run-time validation of invocations, and it may be extended to validate other issues. Here, we have also dealt with quality of service and temporal restrictions

Fissure ridges: A reappraisal of faulting and travertine deposition (travitonics)

The mechanical discontinuities in the upper crust (i.e., faults and related fractures) lead to the uprising of geothermal fluids to the Earth’s surface. If fluids are enriched in Ca2+ and HCO3‐, masses of CaCO3 (i.e., travertine deposits) can form mainly due to the CO2 leakage from the thermal waters. Among other things, fissure‐ridge‐type deposits are peculiar travertine bodies made of bedded carbonate that gently to steeply dip away from the apical part where a central fissure is located, corresponding to the fracture trace intersecting the substratum; these morpho‐tectonic features are the most useful deposits for tectonic and paleoseismological investigation, as their development is contemporaneous with the activity of faults leading to the enhancement of permeability that serves to guarantee the circulation of fluids and their emergence. Therefore, the fissure ridge architecture sheds light on the interplay among fault activity, travertine deposition, and ridge evolution, providing key geo‐chronologic constraints due to the fact that travertine can be dated by different radio-metric methods. In recent years, studies dealing with travertine fissure ridges have been consider-ably improved to provide a large amount of information. In this paper, we report the state of the art of knowledge on this topic refining the literature data as well as adding original data, mainly focusing on the fissure ridge morphology, internal architecture, depositional facies, growth mechanisms, tectonic setting in which the fissure ridges develop, and advantages of using the fissure ridges for neotectonic and seismotectonic studies

Thoracic ultrasound for pleural effusion in the intensive care unit: A narrative review from diagnosis to treatment

Pleural effusion (PLEFF), mostly caused by volume overload, congestive heart failure, and pleuropulmonary infection, is a common condition in critical care patients. Thoracic ultrasound (TUS) helps clinicians not only to visualize pleural effusion, but also to distinguish between the different types. Furthermore, TUS is essential during thoracentesis and chest tube drainage as it increases safety and decreases life-threatening complications. It is crucial not only during needle or tube drainage insertion, but also to monitor the volume of the drained PLEFF. Moreover, TUS can help diagnose co-existing lung diseases, often with a higher specificity and sensitivity than chest radiography and without the need for X-ray exposure. We review data regarding the diagnosis and management of pleural effusion, paying particular attention to the impact of ultrasound. Technical data concerning thoracentesis and chest tube drainage are also provided

IN SILICO METHODS FOR DRUG DESIGN AND DISCOVERY

Computer-aided drug design (CADD) methodologies are playing an ever-increasing role in drug discovery that are critical in the cost-effective identification of promising drug candidates. These computational methods are relevant in limiting the use of animal models in pharmacological research, for aiding the rational design of novel and safe drug candidates, and for repositioning marketed drugs, supporting medicinal chemists and pharmacologists during the drug discovery trajectory.Within this field of research, we launched a Research Topic in Frontiers in Chemistry in March 2019 entitled “In silico Methods for Drug Design and Discovery,” which involved two sections of the journal: Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Theoretical and Computational Chemistry. For the reasons mentioned, this Research Topic attracted the attention of scientists and received a large number of submitted manuscripts. Among them 27 Original Research articles, five Review articles, and two Perspective articles have been published within the Research Topic. The Original Research articles cover most of the topics in CADD, reporting advanced in silico methods in drug discovery, while the Review articles offer a point of view of some computer-driven techniques applied to drug research. Finally, the Perspective articles provide a vision of specific computational approaches with an outlook in the modern era of CADD

Could the use of bedside lung ultrasound reduce the number of chest x-rays in the intensive care unit?

Background: Lung ultrasound can be used as an alternative to chest radiography (CXR) for the diagnosis and follow-up of various lung diseases in the intensive care unit (ICU). Our aim was to evaluate the influence that introducing a routine daily use of lung ultrasound in critically ill patients may have on the number of CXRs and as a consequence, on medical costs and radiation exposure. Methods: Data were collected by conducting a retrospective evaluation of the medical records of adult patients who needed thoracic imaging and were admitted to our academic polyvalent ICU. We compared the number of CXRs and relative costs before and after the introduction of lung ultrasound in our ICU. Results: A total of 4134 medical records were collected from January 2010 to December 2014. We divided our population into two groups, before (Group A, 1869 patients) and after (Group B, 2265 patients) the introduction of a routine use of LUS in July 2012. Group A performed a higher number of CXRs compared to Group B (1810 vs 961, P = 0.012), at an average of 0.97 vs 0.42 exams per patient. The estimated reduction of costs between Groups A and B obtained after the introduction of LUS, was 57%. No statistically significant difference between the outcome parameters of the two groups was observed. Conclusions: Lung ultrasound was effective in reducing the number of CXRs and relative medical costs and radiation exposure in ICU, without affecting patient outcome

Search for an exosphere in sodium and calcium in the transmission spectrum of exoplanet 55 Cancri e

[Abridged] The aim of this work is to search for an absorption signal from exospheric sodium (Na) and singly ionized calcium (Ca$^+$) in the optical transmission spectrum of the hot rocky super-Earth 55 Cancri e. Although the current best-fitting models to the planet mass and radius require a possible atmospheric component, uncertainties in the radius exist, making it possible that 55 Cancri e could be a hot rocky planet without an atmosphere. High resolution (R$\sim$110000) time-series spectra of five transits of 55 Cancri e, obtained with three different telescopes (UVES/VLT, HARPS/ESO 3.6m & HARPS-N/TNG) were analysed. Targeting the sodium D lines and the calcium H and K lines, the potential planet exospheric signal was filtered out from the much stronger stellar and telluric signals, making use of the change of the radial component of the orbital velocity of the planet over the transit from -57 to +57 km/sec. Combining all five transit data sets, we detect a signal potentially associated with sodium in the planet exosphere at a statistical significance level of 3$\sigma$. Combining the four HARPS transits that cover the calcium H and K lines, we also find a potential signal from ionized calcium (4.1 $\sigma$). Interestingly, this latter signal originates from just one of the transit measurements - with a 4.9$\sigma$ detection at this epoch. Unfortunately, due to the low significance of the measured sodium signal and the potentially variable Ca$^+$ signal, we estimate the p-values of these signals to be too high (corresponding to <4$\sigma$) to claim unambiguous exospheric detections. By comparing the observed signals with artificial signals injected early in the analysis, the absorption by Na and Ca$^+$ are estimated to be at a level of approximately 2.3$\times 10^{-3}$ and 7.0$\times 10^{-2}$ respectively, relative to the stellar spectrum.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, submission updated after English language editing, submission updated to correct a mistaken cross-reference noticed in A&A proo