A Substellar Common Proper Motion Companion to the Pleiad HII 1348

We announce the identification of a proper motion companion to the star HII 1348, a K5V member of the Pleiades open cluster. The existence of a faint point source 1.1arcsec away from HII 1348 was previously known from adaptive optics imaging by Bouvier et al. However, because of a high likelihood of background star contamination and in the absence of follow-up astrometry, Bouvier et al. tentatively concluded that the candidate companion was not physically associated with HII 1348. We establish the proper motion association of the pair from adaptive optics imaging with the Palomar 5m telescope. Adaptive optics spectroscopy with the integral field spectrograph OSIRIS on the Keck 10m telescope reveals that the companion has a spectral type of M8\pm1. According to substellar evolution models, the M8 spectral type resides within the substellar mass regime at the age of the Pleiades. The primary itself is a known double-lined spectroscopic binary, which makes the resolved companion, HII 1348B, the least massive and widest component of this hierarchical triple system and the first substellar companion to a stellar primary in the Pleiades.Comment: accepted by Ap

Adult Osteosclerotic Metaphyseal Dysplasia With Progressive Osteonecrosis of the Jaws and Abnormal Bone Resorption Pattern Due to a LRRK1 Splice Site Mutation

Osteosclerotic metaphyseal dysplasia (OSMD) is a rare autosomal recessive sclerosing skeletal dysplasia. We report on a 34-year-old patient with sandwich vertebrae, platyspondyly, osteosclerosis of the tubular bones, pathologic fractures, and anemia. In the third decade, he developed osteonecrosis of the jaws, which was progressive in spite of repeated surgical treatment over a period of 11 years. An iliac crest bone biopsy revealed the presence of hypermineralized cartilage remnants, large multinucleated osteoclasts with abnormal morphology, and inadequate bone resorption typical for osteoclast-rich osteopetrosis. After exclusion of mutations in TCIRG1 and CLCN7 we performed trio-based exome sequencing. The novel homozygous splice-site mutation c.261G>A in the gene LRRK1 was found and co-segregated with the phenotype in the family. cDNA sequencing showed nearly complete skipping of exon 3 leading to a frameshift (p.Ala34Profs*33). Osteoclasts differentiated from the patient's peripheral blood monocytes were extremely large. Instead of resorption pits these cells were only capable of superficial erosion. Phosphorylation of L-plastin at position Ser5 was strongly reduced in patient-derived osteoclasts showing a loss of function of the mutated LRRK1 kinase protein. Our analysis indicates a strong overlap of LRRK1-related OSMD with other forms of intermediate osteopetrosis, but an exceptional abnormality of osteoclast resorption. Like in other osteoclast pathologies an increased risk for progressive osteonecrosis of the jaws should be considered in OSMD, an intermediate form of osteopetrosis

Religiöses Bekenntnis und politisches Interesse : Bamberger Hegelwoche 2002

Religiöses Bekenntnis und politisches Interesse : Bamberger Hegelwoche 200

Planets Around Low-Mass Stars (PALMS). I. A Substellar Companion to the Young M Dwarf 1RXS J235133.3+312720

We report the discovery of a brown dwarf companion to the young M dwarf 1RXS J235133.3+312720 as part of a high contrast imaging search for planets around nearby young low-mass stars with Keck-II/NIRC2 and Subaru/HiCIAO. The 2.4" (~120 AU) pair is confirmed to be comoving from two epochs of high resolution imaging. Follow-up low- and moderate-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy of 1RXS J2351+3127 B with IRTF/SpeX and Keck-II/OSIRIS reveals a spectral type of L0$^{+2}_{-1}$. The M2 primary star 1RXS J2351+3127 A exhibits X-ray and UV activity levels comparable to young moving group members with ages of ~10-100 Myr. UVW kinematics based the measured radial velocity of the primary and the system's photometric distance (50 +/- 10 pc) indicate it is likely a member of the ~50-150 Myr AB Dor moving group. The near-infrared spectrum of 1RXS J2351+3127 B does not exhibit obvious signs of youth, but its H-band morphology shows subtle hints of intermediate surface gravity. The spectrum is also an excellent match to the ~200 Myr M9 brown dwarf LP 944-20. Assuming an age of 50-150 Myr, evolutionary models imply a mass of 32 +/- 6 Mjup for the companion, making 1RXS J2351+3127 B the second lowest-mass member of the AB Dor moving group after the L4 companion CD-35 2722 B and one of the few benchmark brown dwarfs known at young ages.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 24 pages, 12 figures, 4 table

Terbium to Quantum Dot FRET Bioconjugates for Clinical Diagnostics: Influence of Human Plasma on Optical and Assembly Properties

Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) from luminescent terbium complexes (LTC) as donors to semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) as acceptors allows extraordinary large FRET efficiencies due to the long Förster distances afforded. Moreover, time-gated detection permits an efficient suppression of autofluorescent background leading to sub-picomolar detection limits even within multiplexed detection formats. These characteristics make FRET-systems with LTC and QDs excellent candidates for clinical diagnostics. So far, such proofs of principle for highly sensitive multiplexed biosensing have only been performed under optimized buffer conditions and interactions between real-life clinical media such as human serum or plasma and LTC-QD-FRET-systems have not yet been taken into account. Here we present an extensive spectroscopic analysis of absorption, excitation and emission spectra along with the luminescence decay times of both the single components as well as the assembled FRET-systems in TRIS-buffer, TRIS-buffer with 2% bovine serum albumin, and fresh human plasma. Moreover, we evaluated homogeneous LTC-QD FRET assays in QD conjugates assembled with either the well-known, specific biotin-streptavidin biological interaction or, alternatively, the metal-affinity coordination of histidine to zinc. In the case of conjugates assembled with biotin-streptavidin no significant interference with the optical and binding properties occurs whereas the histidine-zinc system appears to be affected by human plasma

Economic predictors of differences in interview faking between countries : economic inequality matters, not the state of economy

Many companies recruit employees from different parts of the globe, and faking behavior by potential employees is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It seems that applicants from some countries are more prone to faking compared to others, but the reasons for these differences are largely unexplored. This study relates country-level economic variables to faking behavior in hiring processes. In a cross-national study across 20 countries, participants (N = 3839) reported their faking behavior in their last job interview. This study used the random response technique (RRT) to ensure participants anonymity and to foster honest answers regarding faking behavior. Results indicate that general economic indicators (gross domestic product per capita [GDP] and unemployment rate) show negligible correlations with faking across the countries, whereas economic inequality is positively related to the extent of applicant faking to a substantial extent. These findings imply that people are sensitive to inequality within countries and that inequality relates to faking, because inequality might actuate other psychological processes (e.g., envy) which in turn increase the probability for unethical behavior in many forms

Discovery of an Unusually Red L-type Brown Dwarf

We report the discovery of an unusually red brown dwarf found in a search for high proper motion objects using WISE and 2MASS data. WISEP J004701.06+680352.1 is moving at 0.44$ arcsec/yr and lies relatively close to the Galactic Plane (b=5.2 degrees). Near-infrared photometry and spectroscopy reveals that this is one of the reddest (2MASS J-K_s = 2.55 +/- 0.08 mag) field L dwarfs yet detected, making this object an important member of the class of unusually red L dwarfs. We discuss evidence for thick condensate clouds and speculate on the age of the object. Although models by different research groups agree that thick clouds can explain the red spectrum, they predict dramatically different effective temperatures, ranging from 1100K to 1600K. This brown dwarf is well suited for additional studies of extremely dusty substellar atmospheres because it is relatively bright (K_s = 13.05 +/- 0.03 mag), which should also contribute to an improved understanding of young gas-giant planets and the transition between L and T brown dwarfs.Comment: Accepted to Astronomical Journal (AJ

Further Defining Spectral Type "Y" and Exploring the Low-mass End of the Field Brown Dwarf Mass Function

We present the discovery of another seven Y dwarfs from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Using these objects, as well as the first six WISE Y dwarf discoveries from Cushing et al., we further explore the transition between spectral types T and Y. We find that the T/Y boundary roughly coincides with the spot where the J-H colors of brown dwarfs, as predicted by models, turn back to the red. Moreover, we use preliminary trigonometric parallax measurements to show that the T/Y boundary may also correspond to the point at which the absolute H (1.6 um) and W2 (4.6 um) magnitudes plummet. We use these discoveries and their preliminary distances to place them in the larger context of the Solar Neighborhood. We present a table that updates the entire stellar and substellar constituency within 8 parsecs of the Sun, and we show that the current census has hydrogen-burning stars outnumbering brown dwarfs by roughly a factor of six. This factor will decrease with time as more brown dwarfs are identified within this volume, but unless there is a vast reservoir of cold brown dwarfs invisible to WISE, the final space density of brown dwarfs is still expected to fall well below that of stars. We also use these new Y dwarf discoveries, along with newly discovered T dwarfs from WISE, to investigate the field substellar mass function. We find that the overall space density of late-T and early-Y dwarfs matches that from simulations describing the mass function as a power law with slope -0.5 < alpha < 0.0; however, a power-law may provide a poor fit to the observed object counts as a function of spectral type because there are tantalizing hints that the number of brown dwarfs continues to rise from late-T to early-Y. More detailed monitoring and characterization of these Y dwarfs, along with dedicated searches aimed at identifying more examples, are certainly required.Comment: 91 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa