332 research outputs found
Phenotypic and functional abnormalities of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells in systemic lupus erythematosus
Introduction: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease characterized by autoreactive T and B cells, which are believed to be secondary to deficient dendritic cells (DCs). However, whether DC abnormalities occur during their development in the bone marrow (BM) or in the periphery is not known.Methods: Thirteen patients with SLE and 16 normal controls were recruited. We studied the morphology, phenotype, and functional abilities of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) generated by using two culture methods: FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (Flt3)-ligand (FL) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) plus interleukin-4 (IL-4), respectively.Results: BMDCs induced by FL exhibited both myeloid (mDC) and plasmacytoid DC (pDC) features, whereas GM-CSF/IL-4 induced mDC generation. Substantial phenotypic and functional defects of BMDCs were found from patients with SLE at different stages of cell maturation. When compared with healthy controls, SLE immature BM FLDCs expressed higher levels of CCR7. Both immature and mature SLE BM FLDCs expressed higher levels of CD40 and CD86 and induced stronger T-cell proliferation. SLE BM mDCs expressed higher levels of CD40 and CD86 but lower levels of HLA-DR and a lower ability to stimulate T-cell proliferation when compared with control BM mDCs.Conclusions: Our data are in accordance with previous reports that suggest that DCs have a potential pathogenic role in SLE. Defects of these cells are evident during their development in BM. BM mDCs are deficient, whereas BM pDCs, which are part of BM FLDCs, are the likely culprit in inducing autoimmunity in SLE. © 2010 Nie et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.published_or_final_versio
KMT-2016-BLG-1107: A New Hollywood-Planet Close/Wide Degeneracy
We show that microlensing event KMT-2016-BLG-1107 displays a new type of
degeneracy between wide-binary and close-binary Hollywood events in which a
giant-star source envelops the planetary caustic. The planetary anomaly takes
the form of a smooth, two-day "bump" far out on the falling wing of the light
curve, which can be interpreted either as the source completely enveloping a
minor-image caustic due to a close companion with mass ratio , or
partially enveloping a major-image caustic due to a wide companion with
. The best estimates of the companion masses are both in the planetary
regime ( and ) but differ by an even larger factor than the mass ratios due to
different inferred host masses. We show that the two solutions can be
distinguished by high-resolution imaging at first light on next-generation
("30m") telescopes. We provide analytic guidance to understand the conditions
under which this new type of degeneracy can appear.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in A
Matching in the Wild: Learning Anatomical Embeddings for Multi-Modality Images
Radiotherapists require accurate registration of MR/CT images to effectively
use information from both modalities. In a typical registration pipeline, rigid
or affine transformations are applied to roughly align the fixed and moving
images before proceeding with the deformation step. While recent learning-based
methods have shown promising results in the rigid/affine step, these methods
often require images with similar field-of-view (FOV) for successful alignment.
As a result, aligning images with different FOVs remains a challenging task.
Self-supervised landmark detection methods like self-supervised Anatomical
eMbedding (SAM) have emerged as a useful tool for mapping and cropping images
to similar FOVs. However, these methods are currently limited to intra-modality
use only. To address this limitation and enable cross-modality matching, we
propose a new approach called Cross-SAM. Our approach utilizes a novel
iterative process that alternates between embedding learning and CT-MRI
registration. We start by applying aggressive contrast augmentation on both CT
and MRI images to train a SAM model. We then use this SAM to identify
corresponding regions on paired images using robust grid-points matching,
followed by a point-set based affine/rigid registration, and a deformable
fine-tuning step to produce registered paired images. We use these registered
pairs to enhance the matching ability of SAM, which is then processed
iteratively. We use the final model for cross-modality matching tasks. We
evaluated our approach on two CT-MRI affine registration datasets and found
that Cross-SAM achieved robust affine registration on both datasets,
significantly outperforming other methods and achieving state-of-the-art
performance
KMT-2018-BLG-1990Lb: A Nearby Jovian Planet From A Low-Cadence Microlensing Field
We report the discovery and characterization of KMT-2018-BLG-1990Lb, a Jovian
planet orbiting a late M dwarf
, at a distance
(D_L=1.23_{-0.43}^{+1.06}\,\kpc), and projected at times the
snow line distance, i.e., a_{\rm snow}\equiv 2.7\,\au (M/M_\odot), This is
the second Jovian planet discovered by KMTNet in its low cadence () fields, demonstrating that this population will be well
characterized based on survey-only microlensing data.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, 4 table
KMT-2018-BLG-1292: A Super-Jovian Microlens Planet in the Galactic Plane
We report the discovery of KMT-2018-BLG-1292Lb, a super-Jovian planet orbiting an F or G dwarf , which lies physically within {\cal O}(10\,\pc) of the
Galactic plane. The source star is a heavily extincted luminous
giant that has the lowest Galactic latitude, , of any planetary
microlensing event. The relatively blue blended light is almost certainly
either the host or its binary companion, with the first explanation being
substantially more likely. This blend dominates the light at band and
completely dominates at and bands. Hence, the lens system can be probed
by follow-up observations immediately, i.e., long before the lens system and
the source separate due to their relative proper motion. The system is well
characterized despite the low cadence -- of
observations and short viewing windows near the end of the bulge season. This
suggests that optical microlensing planet searches can be extended to the
Galactic plane at relatively modest cost.Comment: 35 pages, 3 Tables, 8 figure
OGLE-2018-BLG-0532Lb: Cold Neptune With Possible Jovian Sibling
We report the discovery of the planet OGLE-2018-BLG-0532Lb, with very obvious
signatures in the light curve that lead to an estimate of the planet-host mass
ratio . Although there are
no obvious systematic residuals to this double-lens/single-source (2L1S) fit,
we find that can be significantly improved by adding either a third
lens (3L1S, ) or second source (2L2S, ) to
the lens-source geometry. After thorough investigation, we conclude that we
cannot decisively distinguish between these two scenarios and therefore focus
on the robustly-detected planet. However, given the possible presence of a
second planet, we investigate to what degree and with what probability such
additional planets may affect seemingly single-planet light curves. Our best
estimates for the properties of the lens star and the secure planet are: a host
mass , system distance kpc and planet mass
with projected separation au.
However, there is a relatively bright (and also relatively blue) star
projected within mas of the lens, and if future high-resolution images
show that this is coincident with the lens, then it is possible that it is the
lens, in which case, the lens would be both more massive and more distant than
the best-estimated values above.Comment: 48 pages, 9 figures, 7 table
OGLE-2016-BLG-1227L: A Wide-separation Planet from a Very Short-timescale Microlensing Event
We present the analysis of the microlensing event OGLE-2016-BLG-1227. The light curve of this short-duration event appears to be a single-lens event affected by severe finite-source effects. Analysis of the light curve based on single-lens single-source (1L1S) modeling yields very small values of the event timescale, t_E ∼ 3.5 days, and the angular Einstein radius, θ_E ∼ 0.009 mas, making the lens a candidate of a free-floating planet. Close inspection reveals that the 1L1S solution leaves small residuals with amplitude ΔI ≲ 0.03 mag. We find that the residuals are explained by the existence of an additional widely-separated heavier lens component, indicating that the lens is a wide-separation planetary system rather than a free-floating planet. From Bayesian analysis, it is estimated that the planet has a mass of _p = 0.79^(+1.30)_(−0.39) M_J and it is orbiting a low-mass host star with a mass of M_(host) = 0.10+0.17−0.05 M_⊙ located with a projected separation of a_ = 3.4^(+2.1)_(−1.0) au. The planetary system is located in the Galactic bulge with a line-of-sight separation from the source star of D_(LS) = 1.21^(+0.96)_(−0.63) kpc. The event shows that there are a range of deviations in the signatures of host stars for apparently isolated planetary lensing events and that it is possible to identify a host even when a deviation is subtle
- …