207 research outputs found
The Detectability of Rocky Planet Surface and Atmosphere Composition with JWST: The Case of LHS 3844b
The spectroscopic characterization of terrestrial exoplanets will be made
possible for the first time with JWST. One challenge to characterizing such
planets is that it is not known a priori whether they possess optically thick
atmospheres or even any atmospheres altogether. But this challenge also
presents an opportunity - the potential to detect the surface of an extrasolar
world. This study explores the feasibility of characterizing the atmosphere and
surface of a terrestrial exoplanet with JWST, taking LHS 3844b as a test case
because it is the highest signal-to-noise rocky thermal emission target among
planets that are cool enough to have non-molten surfaces. We model the
planetary emission, including the spectral signal of both atmosphere and
surface, and we explore all scenarios that are consistent with the existing
Spitzer 4.5 m measurement of LHS 3844b from Kreidberg et al. (2019). In
summary, we find a range of plausible surfaces and atmospheres that are within
3 of the observation - less reflective metal-rich, iron oxidized and
basaltic compositions are allowed, and atmospheres are restricted to a maximum
thickness of 1 bar, if near-infrared absorbers at 100 ppm are
included. We further make predictions on the observability of surfaces and
atmospheres, perform a Bayesian retrieval analysis on simulated JWST data and
find that a small number, ~3, of eclipse observations should suffice to
differentiate between surface and atmospheric features. However, the surface
signal may make it harder to place precise constraints on the abundance of
atmospheric species and may even falsely induce a weak HO detection.Comment: 33 pages, 20 figure
Spitzer phase curve observations and circulation models of the inflated ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-76b
The large radii of many hot Jupiters can only be matched by models that have
hot interior adiabats, and recent theoretical work has shown that the interior
evolution of hot Jupiters has a significant impact on their atmospheric
structure. Due to its inflated radius, low gravity, and ultra-hot equilibrium
temperature, WASP-76b is an ideal case study for the impact of internal
evolution on observable properties. Hot interiors should most strongly affect
the non-irradiated side of the planet, and thus full phase curve observations
are critical to ascertain the effect of the interior on the atmospheres of hot
Jupiters. In this work, we present the first Spitzer phase curve observations
of WASP-76b. We find that WASP-76b has an ultra-hot day side and relatively
cold nightside with brightness temperatures of / at 3.6~\micron and / at 4.5~\micron, respectively. These results provide evidence
for a dayside thermal inversion. Both channels exhibit small phase offsets of
at 3.6~\micron and at
. We compare our observations to a suite of general
circulation models that consider two end-members of interior temperature along
with a broad range of frictional drag strengths. Strong frictional drag is
necessary to match the small phase offsets and cold nightside temperatures
observed. From our suite of cloud-free GCMs, we find that only cases with a
cold interior can reproduce the cold nightsides and large phase curve amplitude
at 4.5~\micron, hinting that the hot interior adiabat of WASP-76b does not
significantly impact its atmospheric dynamics or that clouds blanket its
nightside.Comment: 24 pages, 10 Figures, 5 Tables. Accepted to AJ. Co-First Author
Security lies in obedience - Voices of young women of a slum in Pakistan
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Existing literature shows that young people, especially women, have poor knowledge about sexuality and reproductive health. Many of the difficulties young women experience are related to beliefs and expectations in society making them more vulnerable to reproductive ill health. The objective of this study was to explore how young women living in a slum in Islamabad are prepared for marriage and how they understand and perceive their transition to marriage and the start of sexual and childbearing activity.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Twenty qualitative interviews and three focus group discussions were conducted with young women residing in a slum of Islamabad. Content analysis was used to explore how the participants represented and explained their situation and how decisions about their marriage were made.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The main theme identified was <it>security lies in obedience</it>. The two sub-themes contributing to the main theme were <it>socialization into submissiveness </it>and <it>transition into adulthood in silence</it>. The theme and the sub-themes illustrate the situation of young women in a poor setting in Pakistan.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study demonstrates how, in a culture of silence around sexuality, young women's socialization into submissiveness lays the foundation for the lack of control over the future reproductive health that they experience.</p
Motivational determinants among physicians in Lahore, Pakistan
Introduction: Human resource crises in developing countries have been identified as a critical aspect of poor quality and low accessibility in health care. Worker motivation is an important facet of this issue. Specifically, motivation among physicians, who are an important bridge between health systems and patients, should be considered. This study aimed to identify the determinants of job motivation among physicians, a neglected perspective, especially in developing countries. Methods: A stratified random sample of 360 physicians was selected from public primary, public secondary and public and private tertiary health facilities in the Lahore district, Pakistan. Pretested, semi-structured, self-administered questionnaires were used. For the descriptive part of this study, physicians were asked to report their 5 most important work motivators and demotivators within the context of their current jobs and in general. Responses were coded according to emergent themes and frequencies calculated. Of the 30 factors identified, 10 were classified as intrinsic, 16 as organizational and 4 as socio-cultural. Results: Intrinsic and socio-cultural factors like serving people, respect and career growth were important motivators. Conversely, demotivators across setups were mostly organizational, especially in current jobs. Among these, less pay was reported the most frequently. Fewer opportunities for higher qualifications was a demotivator among primary and secondary physicians. Less personal safety and poor working conditions were important in the public sector, particularly among female physicians. Among private tertiary physicians financial incentives other than pay and good working conditions were motivators in current jobs. Socio-cultural and intrinsic factors like less personal and social time and the inability to financially support oneself and family were more important among male physicians. Conclusion: Motivational determinants differed across different levels of care, sectors and genders. Nonetheless, the important motivators across setups in this study were mostly intrinsic and socio-cultural, which are difficult to affect while the demotivators were largely organizational. Many can be addressed even at the facility level such as less personal safety and poor working conditions. Thus, in resource limited settings a good strategic starting point could be small scale changes that may markedly improve physicians' motivation and subsequently the quality of health care
Extracting causal relations on HIV drug resistance from literature
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In HIV treatment it is critical to have up-to-date resistance data of applicable drugs since HIV has a very high rate of mutation. These data are made available through scientific publications and must be extracted manually by experts in order to be used by virologists and medical doctors. Therefore there is an urgent need for a tool that partially automates this process and is able to retrieve relations between drugs and virus mutations from literature.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this work we present a novel method to extract and combine relationships between HIV drugs and mutations in viral genomes. Our extraction method is based on natural language processing (NLP) which produces grammatical relations and applies a set of rules to these relations. We applied our method to a relevant set of PubMed abstracts and obtained 2,434 extracted relations with an estimated performance of 84% for F-score. We then combined the extracted relations using logistic regression to generate resistance values for each <drug, mutation> pair. The results of this relation combination show more than 85% agreement with the Stanford HIVDB for the ten most frequently occurring mutations. The system is used in 5 hospitals from the Virolab project <url>http://www.virolab.org</url> to preselect the most relevant novel resistance data from literature and present those to virologists and medical doctors for further evaluation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The proposed relation extraction and combination method has a good performance on extracting HIV drug resistance data. It can be used in large-scale relation extraction experiments. The developed methods can also be applied to extract other type of relations such as gene-protein, gene-disease, and disease-mutation.</p
Marriage decision making, spousal communication, and reproductive health among married youth in Pakistan
Competitive and Cooperative Interactions Mediate RNA Transfer from Herpesvirus Saimiri ORF57 to the Mammalian Export Adaptor ALYREF
The essential herpesvirus adaptor protein HVS ORF57, which has homologs in all other herpesviruses, promotes viral mRNA
export by utilizing the cellular mRNA export machinery. ORF57 protein specifically recognizes viral mRNA transcripts, and
binds to proteins of the cellular transcription-export (TREX) complex, in particular ALYREF. This interaction introduces viral
mRNA to the NXF1 pathway, subsequently directing it to the nuclear pore for export to the cytoplasm. Here we have used a
range of techniques to reveal the sites for direct contact between RNA and ORF57 in the absence and presence of ALYREF. A
binding site within ORF57 was characterized which recognizes specific viral mRNA motifs. When ALYREF is present, part of
this ORF57 RNA binding site, composed of an a-helix, binds preferentially to ALYREF. This competitively displaces viral RNA
from the a-helix, but contact with RNA is still maintained by a flanking region. At the same time, the flexible N-terminal
domain of ALYREF comes into contact with the viral RNA, which becomes engaged in an extensive network of synergistic
interactions with both ALYREF and ORF57. Transfer of RNA to ALYREF in the ternary complex, and involvement of individual
ORF57 residues in RNA recognition, were confirmed by UV cross-linking and mutagenesis. The atomic-resolution structure
of the ORF57-ALYREF interface was determined, which noticeably differed from the homologous ICP27-ALYREF structure.
Together, the data provides the first site-specific description of how viral mRNA is locked by a herpes viral adaptor protein in
complex with cellular ALYREF, giving herpesvirus access to the cellular mRNA export machinery. The NMR strategy used
may be more generally applicable to the study of fuzzy protein-protein-RNA complexes which involve flexible polypeptide
regions
Perceived risk of infection and death from COVID-19 among community members of low- and middle-income countries: A cross-sectional study [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]
Background: Risk perceptions of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are considered important as they impact community health behaviors. The aim of this study was to determine the perceived risk of infection and death due to COVID-19 and to assess the factors associated with such risk perceptions among community members in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa, Asia, and South America.
Methods: An online cross-sectional study was conducted in 10 LMICs in Africa, Asia, and South America from February to May 2021. A questionnaire was utilized to assess the perceived risk of infection and death from COVID-19 and its plausible determinants. A logistic regression model was used to identify the factors associated with such risk perceptions.
Results: A total of 1,646 responses were included in the analysis of the perceived risk of becoming infected and dying from COVID-19. Our data suggested that 36.4% of participants had a high perceived risk of COVID-19 infection, while only 22.4% had a perceived risk of dying from COVID-19. Being a woman, working in healthcare-related sectors, contracting pulmonary disease, knowing people in the immediate social environment who are or have been infected with COVID-19, as well as seeing or reading about individuals infected with COVID-19 on social media or TV were all associated with a higher perceived risk of becoming infected with COVID-19. In addition, being a woman, elderly, having heart disease and pulmonary disease, knowing people in the immediate social environment who are or have been infected with COVID-19, and seeing or reading about individuals infected with COVID-19 on social media or TV had a higher perceived risk of dying from COVID-19.
Conclusions: The perceived risk of infection and death due to COVID-19 are relatively low among respondents; this suggests the need to conduct health campaigns to disseminate knowledge and information on the ongoing pandemic
Geminin overexpression prevents the completion of topoisomerase IIα chromosome decatenation, leading to aneuploidy in human mammary epithelial cells
- …