138 research outputs found
North-South Distribution of Solar Flares during Cycle 23
In this paper, we investigate the spatial distribution of solar flares in the
northern and southern hemisphere of the Sun that occurred during the period
1996 to 2003. This period of investigation includes the ascending phase, the
maximum and part of descending phase of solar cycle 23. It is revealed that the
flare activity during this cycle is low compared to previous solar cycle,
indicating the violation of Gnevyshev-Ohl rule. The distribution of flares with
respect to heliographic latitudes shows a significant asymmetry between
northern and southern hemisphere which is maximum during the minimum phase of
the solar cycle. The present study indicates that the activity dominates the
northern hemisphere in general during the rising phase of the cycle
(1997-2000). The dominance of northern hemisphere is shifted towards the
southern hemisphere after the solar maximum in 2000 and remained there in the
successive years. Although the annual variations in the asymmetry time series
during cycle 23 are quite different from cycle 22, they are comparable to cycle
21.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; Accepted for the publication in the
proceedings of international solar workshop held at ARIES, Nainital, India on
"Transient Phenomena on the Sun and Interplanetary Medium" in a special issue
of "Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy (JAA)
Inference and Evolutionary Analysis of Genome-Scale Regulatory Networks in Large Phylogenies
Changes in transcriptional regulatory networks can significantly contribute to species evolution and adaptation. However, identification of genome-scale regulatory networks is an open challenge, especially in non-model organisms. Here, we introduce multi-species regulatory network learning (MRTLE), a computational approach that uses phylogenetic structure, sequence-specific motifs, and transcriptomic data, to infer the regulatory networks in different species. Using simulated data from known networks and transcriptomic data from six divergent yeasts, we demonstrate that MRTLE predicts networks with greater accuracy than existing methods because it incorporates phylogenetic information. We used MRTLE to infer the structure of the transcriptional networks that control the osmotic stress responses of divergent, non-model yeast species and then validated our predictions experimentally. Interrogating these networks reveals that gene duplication promotes network divergence across evolution. Taken together, our approach facilitates study of regulatory network evolutionary dynamics across multiple poorly studied species. Keywords: regulatory networks;
network inference; evolution of gene regulatory networks; evolution of stress response; yeast; probabilistic graphical model; phylogeny; comparative functional genomicsNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DBI-1350677)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01CA119176-01)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant DP1OD003958-01
Search for Short-Term Periodicities in the Sun's Surface Rotation: A Revisit
The power spectral analyses of the Sun's surface equatorial rotation rate
determined from the Mt. Wilson daily Doppler velocity measurements during the
period 3 December 1985 to 5 March 2007 suggests the existence of 7.6 year, 2.8
year, 1.47 year, 245 day, 182 day and 158 day periodicities in the surface
equatorial rotation rate during the period before 1996.
However, there is no variation of any kind in the more accurately measured
data during the period after 1995. That is, the aforementioned periodicities in
the data during the period before the year 1996 may be artifacts of the
uncertainties of those data due to the frequent changes in the instrumentation
of the Mt. Wilson spectrograph. On the other hand, the temporal behavior of
most of the activity phenomena during cycles 22 (1986-1996) and 23 (after 1997)
is considerably different. Therefore, the presence of the aforementioned
short-term periodicities during the last cycle and absence of them in the
current cycle may, in principle, be real temporal behavior of the solar
rotation during these cycles.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physic
Measurement of Muon Capture on the Proton to 1% Precision and Determination of the Pseudoscalar Coupling g_P
The MuCap experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute has measured the rate L_S
of muon capture from the singlet state of the muonic hydrogen atom to a
precision of 1%. A muon beam was stopped in a time projection chamber filled
with 10-bar, ultra-pure hydrogen gas. Cylindrical wire chambers and a segmented
scintillator barrel detected electrons from muon decay. L_S is determined from
the difference between the mu- disappearance rate in hydrogen and the free muon
decay rate. The result is based on the analysis of 1.2 10^10 mu- decays, from
which we extract the capture rate L_S = (714.9 +- 5.4(stat) +- 5.1(syst)) s^-1
and derive the proton's pseudoscalar coupling g_P(q^2_0 = -0.88 m^2_mu) = 8.06
+- 0.55.Comment: Updated figure 1 and small changes in wording to match published
versio
Measurement of the Rate of Muon Capture in Hydrogen Gas and Determination of the Proton's Pseudoscalar Coupling
The rate of nuclear muon capture by the proton has been measured using a new
experimental technique based on a time projection chamber operating in
ultra-clean, deuterium-depleted hydrogen gas at 1 MPa pressure. The capture
rate was obtained from the difference between the measured
disappearance rate in hydrogen and the world average for the decay
rate. The target's low gas density of 1% compared to liquid hydrogen is key to
avoiding uncertainties that arise from the formation of muonic molecules. The
capture rate from the hyperfine singlet ground state of the atom is
measured to be , from which the induced
pseudoscalar coupling of the nucleon, , is
extracted. This result is consistent with theoretical predictions for
that are based on the approximate chiral symmetry of QCD.Comment: submitted to Phys.Rev.Let
Predicting the Amplitude of a Solar Cycle Using the North-South Asymmetry in the Previous Cycle: II. An Improved Prediction for Solar Cycle~24
Recently, using Greenwich and Solar Optical Observing Network sunspot group
data during the period 1874-2006, (Javaraiah, MNRAS, 377, L34, 2007: Paper I),
has found that: (1) the sum of the areas of the sunspot groups in 0-10 deg
latitude interval of the Sun's northern hemisphere and in the time-interval of
-1.35 year to +2.15 year from the time of the preceding minimum of a solar
cycle n correlates well (corr. coeff. r=0.947) with the amplitude (maximum of
the smoothed monthly sunspot number) of the next cycle n+1. (2) The sum of the
areas of the spot groups in 0-10 deg latitude interval of the southern
hemisphere and in the time-interval of 1.0 year to 1.75 year just after the
time of the maximum of the cycle n correlates very well (r=0.966) with the
amplitude of cycle n+1. Using these relations, (1) and (2), the values 112 + or
- 13 and 74 + or -10, respectively, were predicted in Paper I for the amplitude
of the upcoming cycle 24. Here we found that in case of (1), the north-south
asymmetry in the area sum of a cycle n also has a relationship, say (3), with
the amplitude of cycle n+1, which is similar to (1) but more statistically
significant (r=0.968) like (2). By using (3) it is possible to predict the
amplitude of a cycle with a better accuracy by about 13 years in advance, and
we get 103 + or -10 for the amplitude of the upcoming cycle 24. However, we
found a similar but a more statistically significant (r=0.983) relationship,
say (4), by using the sum of the area sum used in (2) and the north-south
difference used in (3). By using (4) it is possible to predict the amplitude of
a cycle by about 9 years in advance with a high accuracy and we get 87 + or - 7
for the amplitude of cycle 24.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, Published in Solar Physics 252, 419-439 (2008
Variability of Sun-like stars: reproducing observed photometric trends
The Sun and stars with low magnetic activity levels, become photometrically
brighter when their activity increases. Magnetically more active stars display
the opposite behaviour and get fainter when their activity increases.
We reproduce the observed photometric trends in stellar variations with a
model that treats stars as hypothetical Suns with coverage by magnetic features
different from that of the Sun.
The presented model attributes the variability of stellar spectra to the
imbalance between the contributions from different components of the solar
atmosphere, such as dark starspots and bright faculae. A stellar spectrum is
calculated from spectra of the individual components, by weighting them with
corresponding disc area coverages. The latter are obtained by extrapolating the
solar dependences of spot and facular disc area coverages on chromospheric
activity to stars with different levels of mean chromospheric activity.
We have found that the contribution by starspots to the variability increases
faster with chromospheric activity than the facular contribution. This causes
the transition from faculae-dominated variability and direct
activity--brightness correlation to spot-dominated variability and inverse
activity--brightness correlation with increasing chromospheric activity level.
We have shown that the regime of the variability also depends on the angle
between the stellar rotation axis and the line-of-sight and on the latitudinal
distribution of active regions on the stellar surface. Our model can be used as
a tool to extrapolate the observed photometric variability of the Sun to
Sun-like stars at different activity levels, which makes possible the direct
comparison between solar and stellar irradiance data.Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in
Astronomy&Astrophysic
Spot sizes on Sun-like stars
The total area coverage by starspots is of interest for a variety of reasons,
but direct techniques only provide estimates of this important quantity.
Sunspot areas exhibit a lognormal size distribution irrespective of the phase
of the activity cycle, implying that most sunspots are small. Here we explore
the consequences if starspot areas were similarly distributed. The solar data
allow for an increase in the fraction of larger sunspots with increasing
activity. Taking this difference between the size distribution at sunspot
maximum and minimum, we extrapolate to higher activity levels, assuming
different dependencies of the parameters of the lognormal distribution on total
spot coverage. We find that even for very heavily spotted (hypothetical) stars
a large fraction of the spots are smaller than the current resolution limit of
Doppler images and might hence be missed on traditional Doppler maps.Comment: 10 pages with 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Evolution of regulatory networks associated with traits under selection in cichlids
Background Seminal studies of vertebrate protein evolution speculated that gene regulatory changes can drive anatomical innovations. However, very little is known about gene regulatory network (GRN) evolution associated with phenotypic effect across ecologically diverse species. Here we use a novel approach for comparative GRN analysis in vertebrate species to study GRN evolution in representative species of the most striking examples of adaptive radiations, the East African cichlids. We previously demonstrated how the explosive phenotypic diversification of East African cichlids can be attributed to diverse molecular mechanisms, including accelerated regulatory sequence evolution and gene expression divergence. Results To investigate these mechanisms across species at a genome-wide scale, we develop a novel computational pipeline that predicts regulators for co-extant and ancestral co-expression modules along a phylogeny, and candidate regulatory regions associated with traits under selection in cichlids. As a case study, we apply our approach to a well-studied adaptive trait—the visual system—for which we report striking cases of network rewiring for visual opsin genes, identify discrete regulatory variants, and investigate their association with cichlid visual system evolution. In regulatory regions of visual opsin genes, in vitro assays confirm that transcription factor binding site mutations disrupt regulatory edges across species and segregate according to lake species phylogeny and ecology, suggesting GRN rewiring in radiating cichlids. Conclusions Our approach reveals numerous novel potential candidate regulators and regulatory regions across cichlid genomes, including some novel and some previously reported associations to known adaptive evolutionary traits
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