Corrugated velocity patterns in the spiral galaxies: NGC 278, NGC 1058, NGC 2500 & UGC 3574

We address the study of the H α vertical velocity field in a sample of four nearly face-on galaxies using long-slit spectroscopy taken with the Intermediate dispersion Spectrograph and Imaging System (ISIS), attached to the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Spain). The spatial structure of the velocity vertical component shows a radial corrugated pattern with spatial scales higher or within the order of 1 kpc. The gas is mainly ionized by high-energy photons: only in some locations of NGC 278 and NGC 1058 is there some evidence of ionization by low-velocity shocks, which, in the case of NGC 278, could be due to minor mergers. The behaviour of the gas in the neighbourhood of the spiral arms fits, in the majority of the observed cases, with that predicted by the so-called hydraulic bore mechanism, where a thick magnetized disc encounters a spiral density perturbation. The results obtained show that it is difficult to explain the H α large-scale velocity field without the presence of a magnetized, thick galactic disc. Larger samples and spatial covering of the galaxy discs are needed to provide further insight into this problem.We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grants AYA2010-17631 and AYA2013-40611-P, and from the Consejeria de Educacion y Ciencia (Junta de Andalucia) through TIC-101, TIC-4075 and TIC-114Peer Reviewe

CzSL: Learning from citizen science, experts, and unlabelled data in astronomical image classification

Citizen science is gaining popularity as a valuable tool for labelling large collections of astronomical images by the general public. This is often achieved at the cost of poorer quality classifications made by amateur participants, which are usually verified by employing smaller data sets labelled by professional astronomers. Despite its success, citizen science alone will not be able to handle the classification of current and upcoming surv e ys. To alleviate this issue, citizen science projects have been coupled with machine learning techniques in pursuit of a more robust automated classification. Ho we v er, e xisting approaches have neglected the fact that, apart from the data labelled by amateurs, (limited) expert knowledge of the problem is also available along with vast amounts of unlabelled data that have not yet been exploited within a unified learning framework. This paper presents an innov ati ve learning methodology for citizen science capable of taking advantage of expert- and amateur-labelled data, featuring a transfer of labels between experts and amateurs. The proposed approach first learns from unlabelled data with a convolutional auto-encoder and then exploits amateur and expert labels via the pre-training and fine-tuning of a convolutional neural network, respectively. We focus on the classification of galaxy images from the Galaxy Zoo project, from which we test binary, multiclass, and imbalanced classification scenarios. The results demonstrate that our solution is able to impro v e classification performance compared to a set of baseline approaches, deploying a promising methodology for learning from different confidence levels in data labelling.Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa’ award to the Instituto de Astrof ´ısica de Andaluc ´ıa (grant no. SEV-2017-0709)A-TIC-434-UGR20 and PID2020-119478GB-I00NVIDIA Corporatio

Low molecular weight ϵ-caprolactone-pcoumaric acid copolymers as potential biomaterials for skin regeneration applications

ϵ-caprolactone-p-coumaric acid copolymers at different mole ratios (ϵ-caprolactone:p-coumaric acid 1:0, 10:1, 8:1, 6:1, 4:1, and 2:1) were synthesized by melt-polycondensation and using 4-dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid as catalyst. Chemical analysis by NMR and GPC showed that copolyesters were formed with decreasing molecular weight as p-coumaric acid content was increased. Physical characteristics, such as thermal and mechanical properties, as well as water uptake and water permeability, depended on the mole fraction of pcoumaric acid. The p-coumarate repetitive units increased the antioxidant capacity of the copolymers, showing antibacterial activity against the common pathogen Escherichia coli. In addition, all the synthesized copolyesters, except the one with the highest concentration of the phenolic acid, were cytocompatible and hemocompatible, thus becoming potentially useful for skin regeneration applications

Evaluación de las características morfológicas y agronómicas de cinco líneas de maíz amarillo en diferentes fechas de siembra | Evaluation of morphological and agronomical characteristics of five yellow-maize inbred lines in different sowing dates

Con el objetivo de evaluar las características morfológicas y agronómicas de cinco líneas de maíz (Zea mays L.) amarillo en la región central del estado Aragua, fueron establecidos cinco experimentos en diferentes fechas de siembra en el campo experimental del INIA – CENIAP, Maracay, Venezuela, bajo un diseño de bloques completos al azar con tres repeticiones. La parcela experimental fue de seis hileras de 5 m de largo, separadas a 0,80 m, con una planta cada 20 cm. La evaluación de las líneas se hizo en las cuatro hileras centrales, sobre la base de 17 variables morfológicas y agronómicas asociadas con el rendimiento de grano. Los datos fueron analizados por métodos univariados. En el análisis de varianza combinado de fechas por líneas, se observó diferencia significativa (p < 0,05) para número de hileras y número de granos por hilera, y altamente significativa (p < 0,01) para días al inicio, 50% y 100% de floración masculina e inicio y 50% de floración femenina, longitud de mazorca, diámetro de mazorca y diámetro de marlo. Las líneas fueron más afectadas en la expresión de sus características y potencial de rendimiento cuando fueron sembradas en las fechas (19-ene-06) y (03-jul-06), coincidiendo la primera fecha con el período más seco y la segunda con el período más húmedo. Los rendimientos más altos se obtuvieron en la fecha de siembra (07-nov-05), la cual coincidió con los picos más altos de radiación solar recibida por el cultivo, lo que pudo ser aprovechado por las plantas para acumular más materia seca. Las variables menos afectadas por la fecha de siembra fueron número de hileras y número de granos por hilera, seguidas por diámetro de marlo. Las líneas desarrolladas en el INIA-CENIAP (80-SUWAN 1 FHC 65-4-2-#-# y 92-POB 36 CV HC 144-2-2-B-#*4-1-#) tuvieron, en general, valores más altos para la mayoría de las variables evaluadas, en comparación con las líneas provenientes del CIMMYT (CML-451, CML-287 y CL-02450). Se concluye que las líneas 80-SUWAN 1 FHC 65-4-2-#-# y 92-POB 36 CV HC 144-2-2-B-#*4-1-# con rendimiento promedio de 4127 y 4391 kg ha-1, respectivamente presentan características adecuadas para ser usadas como progenitores hembras en la producción de semilla híbrida, seguidas de la línea CML-451, con rendimiento promedio de 3005 kg ha-1. Debido a su menor rendimiento, las líneas CML-287 y CL-02450, con rendimiento promedio de 2190 y 1882 kg ha-1, respectivamente, podrían ser donadoras de polen en un programa de mejoramiento. Palabras clave: Zea mays, maíz amarillo, evaluación de líneas, fechas de siembra. ABSTRACT With the objective of evaluating the morphological and agronomical characteristics of five yellow-maize inbred lines (Zea mays L.) in the central region of Aragua state, five experiments were established in different sowing dates in the experimental field of INIA-CENIAP, Maracay, Venezuela. These lines were planted in 6-rows plots of 5 m in length, separated 0, 80 m apart and thinned to 26 plants row-1. A complete block design with three replications was used and the evaluations were carried out on the inner four rows, considering 17 morphological and agronomical variables associated with grain yield. Data were analyzed by univariate methods. The combined analysis of variance showed significant differences (p < 0.05) for both row number and grain number per row). Highly significant differences (p < 0.01) were found for days to beginning, 50%, and 100% of male flowering, as well as for days to beginning and 50% of female flowering, ear length, ear diameter, and cob diameter. Lines performance were more affected when planted in the dates (19-ene-06) and (03-jul-06), coinciding the first date with the dry period and the latter with the rainy period. The outstanding yields were obtained in the date (07-nov-05). It coincided with a global radiation peak, which could favour the dry matter accumulation in the line ears. The variables less affected by the sowing date were row number, grain number per row, and cob diameter. The lines developed at the INIA-CENIAP (‘80-SUWAN 1 FHC 65-4-2-#-#’ and ‘92-POB 36 CV HC 144-2-2-B-#*4-1-#’) had, in general, higher values for the majority of the evaluated variables, in comparison to those of the linescoming from the CIMMYT (‘CML-451’, ‘CML-287’, and ‘CL-02450’). On the basis of these results, the lines 80-SUWAN 1 FHC 65-4-2-#- # and 92-POB 36 CV HC 144-2-2-B-#*4-1-#, with 4127 and 4391 kg ha-1 in average yield, respectively can be recommended as female progenitors for hybrid-seed production, following by the CML-451 line, with 3005 kg ha-1 in average. Whereas, the lower yields of the lines CML-287 and CL-02450, with 2190 and 1882 kg ha-1 in average, respectively, suggest their use as pollen donors in a breeding program. Key words: Zea mays, yellow maize, inbred lines evaluation, sowing dates

Full OCT anterior segment biometry: An application in cataract surgery

In vivo three-dimensional (3-D) anterior segment biometry before and after cataract surgery was analyzed by using custom highresolution high-speed anterior segment spectral domain Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). The system was provided with custom algorithms for denoising, segmentation, full distortion correction (fan and optical) and merging of the anterior segment volumes (cornea, iris, and crystalline lens or IOL), to provide fully quantitative data of the anterior segment of the eye. The method was tested on an in vitro artificial eye with known surfaces geometry at different orientations and demonstrated on an aging cataract patient in vivo. Biometric parameters CCT, ACD/ILP, CLT/ILT Tilt and decentration are retrieved with a very high degree of accuracy. IOL was placed 400 οm behind the natural crystalline lens, The IOL was aligned with a similar orientation of the natural lens (2.47 deg superiorly), but slightly lower amounts (0.77 deg superiorly). The IOL was decentered superiorly (0.39 mm) and nasally (0.26 mm). © 2013 Optical Society of America.This study has been funded by Spanish Government Grant FIS2011-25637 and European Research Council Grant ERC-2011-AdG-294099 to S. Marcos.Peer Reviewe

The ALHAMBRA survey: Accurate merger fractions by PDF analysis of photometric close pairs

Our goal is to develop and test a novel methodology to compute accurate close pair fractions with photometric redshifts. We improve the current methodologies to estimate the merger fraction f_m from photometric redshifts by (i) using the full probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the sources in redshift space, (ii) including the variation in the luminosity of the sources with z in both the selection of the samples and in the luminosity ratio constrain, and (iii) splitting individual PDFs into red and blue spectral templates to deal robustly with colour selections. We test the performance of our new methodology with the PDFs provided by the ALHAMBRA photometric survey. The merger fractions and rates from the ALHAMBRA survey are in excellent agreement with those from spectroscopic work, both for the general population and for red and blue galaxies. With the merger rate of bright (M_B <= -20 - 1.1z) galaxies evolving as (1+z)^n, the power-law index n is larger for blue galaxies (n = 2.7 +- 0.5) than for red galaxies (n = 1.3 +- 0.4), confirming previous results. Integrating the merger rate over cosmic time, we find that the average number of mergers per galaxy since z = 1 is N_m = 0.57 +- 0.05 for red galaxies and N_m = 0.26 +- 0.02 for blue galaxies. Our new methodology exploits statistically all the available information provided by photometric redshift codes and provides accurate measurements of the merger fraction by close pairs only using photometric redshifts. Current and future photometric surveys will benefit of this new methodology.Comment: Submitted to A&A, 15 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables. Comments are welcome. Close pair systems available at https://cloud.iaa.csic.es/alhambra/catalogues/ClosePairs

Distribución espacial de impactos de eventos hidrometeorológicos en América Central

América Central está expuesta a la ocurrencia de eventos hidrometeorológicos a lo largo del año y los impactos que estos pueden provocar van a estar mayormente localizados en áreas donde las variables tanto naturales como sociales conlleven a una situación de emergencia. La distribución temporal anual de los impactos estudiados en este trabajo está asociada a la ocurrencia de tres fenómenos meteorológicos: los ciclones tropicales, las ondas del este y los frentes fríos. Para este análisis se recopilaron datos de impactos de desastres de bases de datos como DesInventar y EM-DAT para seis países: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y Panamá. En Costa Rica también se usó la base de eventos hidrometeorológicos extremos y sus impactos del Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (IMN). Las series temporales son heterogéneas y abarcan eventos desde 1900 hasta el año 2014.Se trabajó a escala de municipio o cantón con el fin de evaluar la distribución espacial de los impactos. El estudio mostró que los lugares con la mayor población, como es el caso de las capitales: Ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala), Distrito Central (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), Managua (Nicaragua), San José (Costa Rica), Ciudad de Panamá (Panamá) tienen la mayor correlación con la ocurrencia de impactos, esto posiblemente responde a la mayor cantidad de población expuesta viviendo en las ciudades; sin embargo se tuvo que verificar con los datos ya que la distribución de las amenazas no corresponde con la distribución de la población. En estos análisis, las variables climáticas no son las únicas que condicionan la generación de un impacto, por lo que se acompaña de una correlación no paramétrica con variables socioeconómicas como pobreza, salud e Índice de Desarrollo Humano,para llegar a conclusiones más robustas acerca de las causas de los mismos.Extreme hydrometeorological events in Central America are common and the impacts usually occur in areas where natural and social variables result in emergency situations. In this study, we analyzed the temporal distribution of impacts associated with occurrence of three types of meteorological events: tropical cyclones, easterly waves and cold fronts. Disaster impacts data from DesInventar and EM-DAT were collected from six countries: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Extreme hydrometeorological events and their impacts database from Costa Rican National Meteorological Institute (IMN) were also used in this country. The time evolution of reporting conditions is highly variable and heterogeneous, covering reports from 1900 to 2014. The spatial distribution of impacts was evaluated at the municipality scale (local government or canton). The study showed that towns with the greatest populations of each country, like capitals: Ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala), Distrito Central (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), Managua (Nicaragua), San Jose (Costa Rica), Ciudad de Panama (Panama) have high correlation with impact occurrences. In this kind of analysis, it is necessary to consider socioeconomic variables like poverty, health and Human Development Index, in order to infer robust conclusions about impact causes.Universidad de Costa Rica/[A9-532]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[B3-600]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[B0-065]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[B4-227]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[B4-228]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[B0-810]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[A1-715]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[A4-906]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[B6-143]/UCR/Costa RicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigaciones Geofísicas (CIGEFI)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Básicas::Facultad de Ciencias::Escuela de FísicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR

The ALHAMBRA Survey: Bayesian Photometric Redshifts with 23 bands for 3 squared degrees

The ALHAMBRA (Advance Large Homogeneous Area Medium Band Redshift Astronomical) survey has observed 8 different regions of the sky, including sections of the COSMOS, DEEP2, ELAIS, GOODS-N, SDSS and Groth fields using a new photometric system with 20 contiguous ~ $300\AA$ filters covering the optical range, combining them with deep $JHKs$ imaging. The observations, carried out with the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope using the wide field (0.25 sq. deg FOV) optical camera LAICA and the NIR instrument Omega-2000, correspond to ~700hrs on-target science images. The photometric system was designed to maximize the effective depth of the survey in terms of accurate spectral-type and photo-zs estimation along with the capability of identification of relatively faint emission lines. Here we present multicolor photometry and photo-zs for ~438k galaxies, detected in synthetic F814W images, complete down to I~24.5 AB, taking into account realistic noise estimates, and correcting by PSF and aperture effects with the ColorPro software. The photometric ZP have been calibrated using stellar transformation equations and refined internally, using a new technique based on the highly robust photometric redshifts measured for emission line galaxies. We calculate photometric redshifts with the BPZ2 code, which includes new empirically calibrated templates and priors. Our photo-zs have a precision of $dz/(1+z_s)=1$ for I<22.5 and 1.4% for 22.5<I<24.5. Precisions of less than 0.5% are reached for the brighter spectroscopic sample, showing the potential of medium-band photometric surveys. The global $P(z)$ shows a mean redshift =0.56 for I=0.86 for I<24.5 AB. The data presented here covers an effective area of 2.79 sq. deg, split into 14 strips of 58.5'x15.5' and represents ~32 hrs of on-target.Comment: The catalog data and a full resolution version of this paper is available at https://cloud.iaa.csic.es/alhambra