Elevated anticardiolipin antibodies in acute liver failure

AbstractAntibodies to cardiolipin (aCLA), a phospholipid primarily localized in inner mitochondrial membranes, were transiently elevated (P<0.01) when mice were exposed to an industrial surfactant and then infected with influenza B virus, a model of acute liver failure (ALF). Children with ALF also had elevated levels of aCLA

A Comparison of Solar Cycle Variations in the Equatorial Rotation Rates of the Sun's Subsurface, Surface, Corona, and Sunspot Groups

Using the Solar Optical Observing Network (SOON) sunspot-group data for the period 1985-2010, the variations in the annual mean equatorial-rotation rates of the sunspot groups are determined and compared with the known variations in the solar equatorial-rotation rates determined from the following data: i) the plasma rotation rates at 0.94Rsun, 0.95Rsun,...,1.0Rsun measured by Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) during the period 1995-2010, ii) the data on the soft X-ray corona determined from Yohkoh/SXT full disk images for the years 1992-2001, iii) the data on small bright coronal structures (SBCS) which were traced in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)/EIT images during the period 1998-2006, and iv) the Mount Wilson Doppler-velocity measurements during the period 1986-2007. A large portion (up to approximate 30 deg latitude) of the mean differential-rotation profile of the sunspot groups lies between those of the internal differential-rotation rates at 0.94Rsun and 0.98Rsun.The variation in the yearly mean equatorial-rotation rate of the sunspot groups seems to be lagging that of the equatorial-rotation rate determined from the GONG measurements by one to two years.The amplitude of the latter is very small.The solar-cycle variation in the equatorial-rotation rate of the solar corona closely matches that determined from the sunspot-group data.The variation in the equatorial-rotation rate determined from the Mount Wilson Doppler-velocity data closely resembles the corresponding variation in the equatorial-rotation rate determined from the sunspot-group data that included the values of the abnormal angular motions (> 3 deg per day) of the sunspot groups. Implications of these results are pointed out.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Solar Physic

Modeling the Subsurface Structure of Sunspots

While sunspots are easily observed at the solar surface, determining their subsurface structure is not trivial. There are two main hypotheses for the subsurface structure of sunspots: the monolithic model and the cluster model. Local helioseismology is the only means by which we can investigate subphotospheric structure. However, as current linear inversion techniques do not yet allow helioseismology to probe the internal structure with sufficient confidence to distinguish between the monolith and cluster models, the development of physically realistic sunspot models are a priority for helioseismologists. This is because they are not only important indicators of the variety of physical effects that may influence helioseismic inferences in active regions, but they also enable detailed assessments of the validity of helioseismic interpretations through numerical forward modeling. In this paper, we provide a critical review of the existing sunspot models and an overview of numerical methods employed to model wave propagation through model sunspots. We then carry out an helioseismic analysis of the sunspot in Active Region 9787 and address the serious inconsistencies uncovered by \citeauthor{gizonetal2009}~(\citeyear{gizonetal2009,gizonetal2009a}). We find that this sunspot is most probably associated with a shallow, positive wave-speed perturbation (unlike the traditional two-layer model) and that travel-time measurements are consistent with a horizontal outflow in the surrounding moat.Comment: 73 pages, 19 figures, accepted by Solar Physic

Large-Eddy Simulations of Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence in Heliophysics and Astrophysics

We live in an age in which high-performance computing is transforming the way we do science. Previously intractable problems are now becoming accessible by means of increasingly realistic numerical simulations. One of the most enduring and most challenging of these problems is turbulence. Yet, despite these advances, the extreme parameter regimes encountered in space physics and astrophysics (as in atmospheric and oceanic physics) still preclude direct numerical simulation. Numerical models must take a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach, explicitly computing only a fraction of the active dynamical scales. The success of such an approach hinges on how well the model can represent the subgrid-scales (SGS) that are not explicitly resolved. In addition to the parameter regime, heliophysical and astrophysical applications must also face an equally daunting challenge: magnetism. The presence of magnetic fields in a turbulent, electrically conducting fluid flow can dramatically alter the coupling between large and small scales, with potentially profound implications for LES/SGS modeling. In this review article, we summarize the state of the art in LES modeling of turbulent magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) ows. After discussing the nature of MHD turbulence and the small-scale processes that give rise to energy dissipation, plasma heating, and magnetic reconnection, we consider how these processes may best be captured within an LES/SGS framework. We then consider several special applications in heliophysics and astrophysics, assessing triumphs, challenges,and future directions

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe