Berkeley 51, a young open cluster with four yellow supergiants

The heavily obscured open cluster Berkeley 51 shows characteristics typical of young massive clusters, even though the few previous studies have suggested older ages.We combine optical (UBV) and 2MASS photometry of the cluster field with multi-object and long-slit optical spectroscopy for a large sample of stars. We apply classical photometric analysis techniques to determine the reddening to the cluster, and then derive cluster parameters via isochrone fitting. We find a large population of B-type stars, with a main-sequence turn-off at B3V, as well as a large number of supergiants with spectral types ranging from F to M. We use intermediate-resolution spectra of the evolved cool stars to derive their stellar parameters and find an essentially solar iron abundance. Under the plausible assumption that our photometry reaches stars still close to the zero-age main sequence, the cluster is located at d ≈ 5.5 kpc and has an age of ~60 Ma, though a slightly younger and more distant cluster cannot be ruled out. Despite the apparent good fit of isochrones, evolved stars seem to reside in positions of the colour-magnitude diagram far away from the locations where stellar tracks predict helium burning to occur. Of particular interest is the presence of four yellow supergiants, two on the ascending branch and two others close to or inside the instability strip

NGC 6067: A young and massive open cluster with high metallicity

© 2017 The Authors. NGC6067 is a young open cluster hosting the largest population of evolved stars among known Milky Way clusters in the 50-150 Ma age range. It thus represents the best laboratory in our Galaxy to constrain the evolutionary tracks of 5-7M⊙ stars. We have used high-resolution spectra of a large sample of bright cluster members (45), combined with archival photometry, to obtain accurate parameters for the cluster as well as stellar atmospheric parameters.We derive a distance of 1.78 ± 0.12 kpc, an age of 90 ± 20 Ma and a tidal radius of 14.8 -3.2+6.8 arcmin. We estimate an initial mass above 5700M⊙, for a present-day evolved population of two Cepheids, two A supergiants and 12 red giants with masses ≈6M⊙. We also determine chemical abundances of Li, O, Na, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Ni, Rb, Y and Ba for the red clump stars. We find a supersolar metallicity, [Fe/H]=+0.19 ± 0.05, and a homogeneous chemical composition, consistent with the Galactic metallicity gradient. The presence of a Li-rich red giant, star 276 with A(Li)=2.41, is also detected. An overabundance of Ba is found, supporting the enhanced s-process. The ratio of yellow to red giants is much smaller than 1, in agreement with models with moderate overshooting, but the properties of the cluster Cepheids do not seem consistent with current Padova models for supersolar metallicity

An FPGA Implementation to Detect Selective Cationic Antibacterial Peptides

Exhaustive prediction of physicochemical properties of peptide sequences is used in different areas of biological research. One example is the identification of selective cationic antibacterial peptides (SCAPs), which may be used in the treatment of different diseases. Due to the discrete nature of peptide sequences, the physicochemical properties calculation is considered a high-performance computing problem. A competitive solution for this class of problems is to embed algorithms into dedicated hardware. In the present work we present the adaptation, design and implementation of an algorithm for SCAPs prediction into a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform. Four physicochemical properties codes useful in the identification of peptide sequences with potential selective antibacterial activity were implemented into an FPGA board. The speed-up gained in a single-copy implementation was up to 108 times compared with a single Intel processor cycle for cycle. The inherent scalability of our design allows for replication of this code into multiple FPGA cards and consequently improvements in speed are possible. Our results show the first embedded SCAPs prediction solution described and constitutes the grounds to efficiently perform the exhaustive analysis of the sequence-physicochemical properties relationship of peptides

Effects of fishery protection on biometry and genetic structure of two target sea cucumber species from the Mediterranean Sea

Sea cucumber fisheries are now occurring in most of the tropical areas of the world, having expanded from its origin in the central Indo-Pacific. Due to the overexploitation of these resources and the increasing demand from Asian countries, new target species from Mediterranean Sea and northeastern Atlantic Ocean are being caught. The fishery effects on biometry and genetic structure of two target species (Holothuria polii and H. tubulosa) from Turkey, were assessed. The heaviest and largest individuals of H. polii were found into the non-fishery area of Kusadasi, also showing the highest genetic diversity. Similar pattern was detected in H. tubulosa, but only the weight was significantly higher in the protected area. However, the observed differences on the fishery effects between species, could be explained considering the different percentage of catches (80% for H. polii and 20% for H. tubulosa)

Non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries in 4d string models

We study the realization of non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries in 4d field theory and string theory compactifications. The underlying structure generalizes the Abelian case, and follows from the interplay between gaugings of non-Abelian isometries of the scalar manifold and field identifications making axion-like fields periodic. We present several classes of string constructions realizing non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries. In particular, compactifications with torsion homology classes, where non-Abelianity arises microscopically from the Hanany-Witten effect, or compactifications with non-Abelian discrete isometry groups, like twisted tori. We finally focus on the more interesting case of magnetized branes in toroidal compactifications and quotients thereof (and their heterotic and intersecting duals), in which the non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries imply powerful selection rules for Yukawa couplings of charged matter fields. In particular, in MSSM-like models they correspond to discrete flavour symmetries constraining the quark and lepton mass matrices, as we show in specific examples.Comment: 58 pages; minor typos corrected and references adde

High genetic diversity at the extreme range edge: nucleotide variation at nuclear loci in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in Scotland

Nucleotide polymorphism at 12 nuclear loci was studied in Scots pine populations across an environmental gradient in Scotland, to evaluate the impacts of demographic history and selection on genetic diversity. At eight loci, diversity patterns were compared between Scottish and continental European populations. At these loci, a similar level of diversity (θsil=~0.01) was found in Scottish vs mainland European populations, contrary to expectations for recent colonization, however, less rapid decay of linkage disequilibrium was observed in the former (ρ=0.0086±0.0009, ρ=0.0245±0.0022, respectively). Scottish populations also showed a deficit of rare nucleotide variants (multi-locus Tajima's D=0.316 vs D=−0.379) and differed significantly from mainland populations in allelic frequency and/or haplotype structure at several loci. Within Scotland, western populations showed slightly reduced nucleotide diversity (πtot=0.0068) compared with those from the south and east (0.0079 and 0.0083, respectively) and about three times higher recombination to diversity ratio (ρ/θ=0.71 vs 0.15 and 0.18, respectively). By comparison with results from coalescent simulations, the observed allelic frequency spectrum in the western populations was compatible with a relatively recent bottleneck (0.00175 × 4Ne generations) that reduced the population to about 2% of the present size. However, heterogeneity in the allelic frequency distribution among geographical regions in Scotland suggests that subsequent admixture of populations with different demographic histories may also have played a role

Anesthesia of Epinephelus marginatus with essential oil of Aloysia polystachya: an approach on blood parameters

This study investigated the anesthetic potential of the essential oil (EO) of Aloysia polystachya in juveniles of dusky grouper (Epinephelus marginatus). Fish were exposed to different concentrations of EO of A. polystachya to evaluate time of induction and recovery from anesthesia. In the second experiment, fish were divided into four groups: control, ethanol and 50 or 300 mu L L-1 EO of A. polystachya, and each group was submitted to induction for 3.5 min and recovery for 5 or 10 min. The blood gases and glucose levels showed alterations as a function of the recovery times, but Na+ and K+ levels did not show any alteration. In conclusion, the EO from leaves of A. polystachya is an effective anesthetic for dusky grouper, because anesthesia was reached within the recommended time at EO concentrations of 300 and 400 mu L L-1. However, most evaluated blood parameters showed compensatory responses due to EO exposure.Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul/Programa de Apoio a Nucleos de Excelencia (FAPERGS/PRONEX) [10/0016-8]; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) [470964/2009-0]; Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior, Brazil (CAPES)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of miCRovascular rarefaction in vascUlar Cognitive Impairment and heArt faiLure (CRUCIAL): Study protocol for an observational study

INTRODUCTION: Microvascular rarefaction, the functional reduction in perfused microvessels and structural reduction of microvascular density, seems to be an important mechanism in the pathophysiology of small blood vessel related disorders including vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) due to cerebral small vessel disease and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Both diseases share common risk factors including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and ageing; in turn, these co-morbidities are associated with microvascular rarefaction. Our consortium aims to investigate novel non-invasive tools to quantify microvascular health and rarefaction in both organs, as well as surrogate biomarkers for cerebral and/or cardiac rarefaction (via sublingual capillary health, vascular density of the retina, and RNA content of circulating extracellular vesicles), and to determine whether microvascular density relates to disease severity. METHODS/DESIGN: The clinical research program of CRUCIAL consists of four observational cohort studies. We aim to recruit 75 VCI patients, 60 HFpEF patients, 60 patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing surgical aortic valve replacement as a pressure overload HFpEF model, and 200 elderly participants with mixed comorbidities to serve as controls. Data collected will include medical history, physical examination, cognitive testing, advanced brain and cardiac MRI, ECG, echocardiography, sublingual capillary health, optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTa), extracellular vesicles RNA analysis and myocardial remodelling-related serum biomarkers. The AS cohort undergoing surgery will also have myocardial biopsy for histological microvascular assessment. DISCUSSION: CRUCIAL will examine the pathophysiological role of microvascular rarefaction in VCI and HFpEF using advanced brain and cardiac MRI techniques. Furthermore, we will investigate surrogate biomarkers for non-invasive, faster, easier, and cheaper assessment of microvascular density since these are more likely to be disseminated into widespread clinical practice. If microvascular rarefaction is an early marker of developing small vessel diseases, then measuring rarefaction may allow pre-clinical diagnosis, with implications for screening, risk stratification, and prevention. Further knowledge of the relevance of microvascular rarefaction and its underlying mechanisms may provide new avenues for research and therapeutic targets

Routine management of locally advanced cervical cancer with concurrent radiation and cisplatin. Five-year results

BACKGROUND: Globally, cervical cancer primarily affects socially disadvantaged women. Five randomized trials were the foundation for adopting cisplatin-based chemotherapy during radiation as the standard of care for high-risk patients after primary radical hysterectomy who require adjuvant radiation and for locally advanced patients treated with definitive radiation. These results were obtained in clinical trials performed in carefully prepared academic centers; hence, we sought to determine whether these results could be reproduced when patients were treated on an out-of-protocol basis. METHODS: We reviewed the files of 294 patients with locally advanced cervical cancer who received radiation plus weekly cisplatin as routine management between 1999 to 2003, and analyzed treatment compliance, response rate, toxicity, and survival. RESULTS: A total of 294 patients who received radiation and cisplatin were analyzed. Mean age was 43.8 years (range, 26–68 years). The majority of cases were squamous cell carcinoma (87.8%), and distribution according to International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage was as follows: IB2-IIA, 23%; IIB, 53.3%, and IIIB, 23%; there were only two IVA cases. Overall, 96% of patients completed external beam, and intracavitary therapy. The majority of patients (67%) received the planned six courses of weekly cisplatin. Complete responses were achieved in 243 (83%) patients, whereas 51 (17%) had either persistent (32 patients, 10.8%) or progressive (19 patients, 6.4%) disease. At median follow-up (28 months; range, 2–68 months), 36 patients (12.2%) have relapsed (locally 30.5, and systemically, 69.5%). The most common toxicities were hematologic and gastrointestinal, in the majority of cases considered mild-moderate. At median follow-up (28 months; range, 2–68 months), overall and progression-free survival are 76.5 and 67%, respectively. CONCLUSION: Our results support use of chemoradiation with six weekly applications of cisplatin at 40 mg/m(2 )during external radiation for routine management of locally advanced cervical cancer