A Microsatellite Guided Insight into the Genetic Status of Adi, an Isolated Hunting-Gathering Tribe of Northeast India

Tibeto-Burman populations of India provide an insight into the peopling of India and aid in understanding their genetic relationship with populations of East, South and Southeast Asia. The study investigates the genetic status of one such Tibeto-Burman group, Adi of Arunachal Pradesh based on 15 autosomal microsatellite markers. Further the study examines, based on 9 common microsatellite loci, the genetic relationship of Adi with 16 other Tibeto-Burman speakers of India and 28 neighboring populations of East and Southeast Asia. Overall, the results support the recent formation of the Adi sub-tribes from a putative ancestral group and reveal that geographic contiguity is a major influencing factor of the genetic affinity among the Tibeto-Burman populations of India

OGLE-2017-BLG-1186: first application of asteroseismology and Gaussian processes to microlensing

We present the analysis of the event OGLE-2017-BLG-1186 from the 2017 Spitzer microlensing campaign. This is a remarkable microlensing event because its source is photometrically bright and variable, which makes it possible to perform an asteroseismic analysis using ground-based data. We find that the source star is an oscillating red giant with average timescale of ∼9 days. The asteroseismic analysis also provides us source properties including the source angular size (∼27μas) and distance (∼11.5 kpc), which are essential for inferring the properties of the lens. When fitting the light curve, we test the feasibility of Gaussian Processes (GPs) in handling the correlated noise caused by the variable source. We find that the parameters from the GP model are generally more loosely constrained than those from the traditional χ2 minimization method. We note that this event is the first microlensing system for which asteroseismology and GPs have been used to account for the variable source. With both finite-source effect and microlens parallax measured, we find that the lens is likely a ∼0.045 M⊙ brown dwarf at distance ∼9.0 kpc, or a ∼0.073 M⊙ ultracool dwarf at distance ∼9.8 kpc. Combining the estimated lens properties with a Bayesian analysis using a Galactic model, we find a 35% probability for the lens to be a bulge object and 65% to be a background disk object

OGLE-2017-BLG-0406: Spitzer microlens parallax reveals Saturn-mass planet orbiting M-dwarf host in the inner galactic disk

Funding: Work by Y.H. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17J02146. DPB, AB, and CR were supported by NASA through grant NASA-80NSSC18K0274. Work by N.K. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP18J00897. Work by AG was supported by AST-1516842 from the US NSF and by JPL grant 1500811. AG received support from the European Research Council under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP 7) ERC Grant Agreement n.[321035]. Work by C.H. was supported by the grants of the National Research Foundation of Korea (2017R1A4A1015178 and 2019R1A2C2085965). YT acknowledges the support of DFG priority program SPP 1992 ”Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets” (WA 1047/11-1).We report the discovery and analysis of the planetary microlensing event OGLE-2017-BLG-0406, which was observed both from the ground and by the Spitzer satellite in a solar orbit. At high magnification, the anomaly in the light curve was densely observed by ground-based-survey and follow-up groups, and it was found to be explained by a planetary lens with a planet/host mass ratio of q = 7.0 x 10-4 from the light-curve modeling. The ground-only and Spitzer-"only" data each provide very strong one-dimensional (1-D) constraints on the 2-D microlens parallax vector πE. When combined, these yield a precise measurement of πE, and so of the masses of the host Mhost = 0.56 ± 0.07 M⊙ and planet Mplanet = 0.41 ± 0.05 MJup. The system lies at a distance DL = 5.2 ± 0.5 kpc from the Sun toward the Galactic bulge, and the host is more likely to be a disk population star according to the kinematics of the lens. The projected separation of the planet from the host is a⊥ = 3.5 ± 0.3 au, i.e., just over twice the snow line. The Galactic-disk kinematics are established in part from a precise measurement of the source proper motion based on OGLE-IV data. By contrast, the Gaia proper-motion measurement of the source suffers from a catastrophic 10σ error.PostprintPeer reviewe

Faint-source-star planetary microlensing: the discovery of the cold gas-giant planet OGLE-2014-BLG-0676Lb

We report the discovery of a planet – OGLE-2014-BLG-0676Lb– via gravitational microlensing. Observations for the lensing event were made by the following groups: Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics; Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment; Wise Observatory; RoboNET/Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope; Microlensing Network for the Detection of Small Terrestrial Exoplanets; and μ-FUN. All analyses of the light-curve data favour a lens system comprising a planetary mass orbiting a host star. The most-favoured binary lens model has a mass ratio between the two lens masses of (4.78 ± 0.13) × 10−3. Subject to some important assumptions, a Bayesian probability density analysis suggests the lens system comprises a 3.09+1.02 −1.12 MJ planet orbiting a 0.62+0.20 −0.22 M host star at a deprojected orbital separation of 4.40+2.16 −1.46 au. The distance to the lens system is 2.22+0.96 −0.83 kpc. Planet OGLE- 2014-BLG-0676Lb provides additional data to the growing number of cool planets discovered using gravitational microlensing against which planetary formation theories may be tested. Most of the light in the baseline of this event is expected to come from the lens and thus high-resolution imaging observations could confirm our planetary model interpretation

A cyclic universe with colour fields

The topology of the universe is discussed in relation to the singularity problem. We explore the possibility that the initial state of the universe might have had a structure with 3-Klein bottle topology, which would lead to a model of a nonsingular oscillating (cyclic) universe with a well-defined boundary condition. The same topology is assumed to be intrinsic to the nature of the hypothetical primitive constituents of matter (usually called preons) giving rise to the observed variety of elementary particles. Some phenomenological implications of this approach are also discussed.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures; v.4: final versio

Effects of alirocumab on types of myocardial infarction: insights from the ODYSSEY OUTCOMES trial

Aims  The third Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction (MI) Task Force classified MIs into five types: Type 1, spontaneous; Type 2, related to oxygen supply/demand imbalance; Type 3, fatal without ascertainment of cardiac biomarkers; Type 4, related to percutaneous coronary intervention; and Type 5, related to coronary artery bypass surgery. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) reduction with statins and proprotein convertase subtilisin–kexin Type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors reduces risk of MI, but less is known about effects on types of MI. ODYSSEY OUTCOMES compared the PCSK9 inhibitor alirocumab with placebo in 18 924 patients with recent acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and elevated LDL-C (≥1.8 mmol/L) despite intensive statin therapy. In a pre-specified analysis, we assessed the effects of alirocumab on types of MI. Methods and results  Median follow-up was 2.8 years. Myocardial infarction types were prospectively adjudicated and classified. Of 1860 total MIs, 1223 (65.8%) were adjudicated as Type 1, 386 (20.8%) as Type 2, and 244 (13.1%) as Type 4. Few events were Type 3 (n = 2) or Type 5 (n = 5). Alirocumab reduced first MIs [hazard ratio (HR) 0.85, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.77–0.95; P = 0.003], with reductions in both Type 1 (HR 0.87, 95% CI 0.77–0.99; P = 0.032) and Type 2 (0.77, 0.61–0.97; P = 0.025), but not Type 4 MI. Conclusion  After ACS, alirocumab added to intensive statin therapy favourably impacted on Type 1 and 2 MIs. The data indicate for the first time that a lipid-lowering therapy can attenuate the risk of Type 2 MI. Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol reduction below levels achievable with statins is an effective preventive strategy for both MI types.For complete list of authors see http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz299</p

OGLE-2016-BLG-1003: First Resolved Caustic-crossing Binary-source Event Discovered by Second-generation Microlensing Surveys

We report the analysis of the first resolved caustic-crossing binary-source microlensing event OGLE-2016-BLG-1003. The event is densely covered by the round-the-clock observations of three surveys. The light curve is characterized by two nested caustic-crossing features, which is unusual for typical caustic-crossing perturbations. From the modeling of the light curve, we find that the anomaly is produced by a binary source passing over a caustic formed by a binary lens. The result proves the importance of high-cadence and continuous observations, and the capability of second-generation microlensing experiments to identify such complex perturbations that are previously unknown. However, the result also raises the issues of the limitations of current analysis techniques for understanding lens systems beyond two masses and of determining the appropriate multiband observing strategy of survey experiments