Eclipsing Binaries From the CSTAR Project at Dome A, Antarctica

The Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR) has observed an area around the Celestial South Pole at Dome A since 2008. About $20,000$ light curves in the i band were obtained lasting from March to July, 2008. The photometric precision achieves about 4 mmag at i = 7.5 and 20 mmag at i = 12 within a 30 s exposure time. These light curves are analyzed using Lomb--Scargle, Phase Dispersion Minimization, and Box Least Squares methods to search for periodic signals. False positives may appear as a variable signature caused by contaminating stars and the observation mode of CSTAR. Therefore the period and position of each variable candidate are checked to eliminate false positives. Eclipsing binaries are removed by visual inspection, frequency spectrum analysis and locally linear embedding technique. We identify 53 eclipsing binaries in the field of view of CSTAR, containing 24 detached binaries, 8 semi-detached binaries, 18 contact binaries, and 3 ellipsoidal variables. To derive the parameters of these binaries, we use the Eclipsing Binaries via Artificial Intelligence (EBAI) method. The primary and the secondary eclipse timing variations (ETVs) for semi-detached and contact systems are analyzed. Correlated primary and secondary ETVs confirmed by false alarm tests may indicate an unseen perturbing companion. Through ETV analysis, we identify two triple systems (CSTAR J084612.64-883342.9 and CSTAR J220502.55-895206.7). The orbital parameters of the third body in CSTAR J220502.55-895206.7 are derived using a simple dynamical model.Comment: 41 pages, 12 figures; published online in ApJ

Assessment of Cardiovascular Fibrosis Using Novel Fluorescent Probes

Cardiovascular fibrosis resulted from pressure overload or ischemia could alter myocardial stiffness and lead to ventricular dysfunction. Fluorescently labeled collagen-binding protein CNA 35, derived from the surface component of Staphylococcus aureus, and a novel synthetic biphenylalanine containing peptide are applied to stain fibrosis associated collagen and myocytes, respectively. Detailed pathological characteristics of cardiovascular fibrosis could be identified clearly in 2 hours. This staining pair requires only simple staining and brief washing, generating less than 10 ml of waste. The image information collected by this novel fluorescent staining pair is compatible with it collected by the traditional Masson's Trichrome and Picrosirius Red staining which are widely used to stain cardiovascular fibrosis and isolated cells

Exoplanets in the Antarctic Sky I. The first data release of AST3-II (CHESPA) and new found variables within the southern CVZ of TESS

Located at Dome A, the highest point of the Antarctic plateau, the Chinese Kunlun station is considered to be one of the best ground-based photometric sites because of its extremely cold, dry, and stable atmosphere. A target can be monitored from there for over 40 days without diurnal interruption during a polar winter. This makes Kunlun station a perfect site to search for short-period transiting exoplanets. Since 2008, an observatory has existed at Kunlun station, and three telescopes are working there. Using these telescopes, the AST3 project has been carried out over the last 6 yr with a search for transiting exoplanets as one of its key programs (CHESPA). In the austral winters of 2016 and 2017, a set of target fields in the southern continuous viewing zone (CVZ) of TESS were monitored by the AST3-II telescope. In this paper, we introduce the CHESPA and present the first data release containing photometry of 26,578 bright stars (m(i) <= 15). The best photometric precision at the optimum magnitude for the survey is around 2 mmag. To demonstrate the data quality, we also present a catalog of 221 variables with a brightness variation greater than 5 mmag from the 2016 data. Among these variables, 179 are newly identified periodic variables not listed in the AAVSO database (https://www.aavso.org/), and 67 are listed in the Candidate Target List. These variables will require careful attention to avoid false-positive signals when searching for transiting exoplanets. Dozens of new transiting exoplanet candidates will be released in a subsequent paper

Exoplanets in the Antarctic Sky. II. 116 Transiting Exoplanet Candidates Found by AST3-II (CHESPA) within the Southern CVZ of TESS

We report first results from the CHinese Exoplanet Searching Program from Antarctica (CHESPA)-a wide-field high-resolution photometric survey for transiting exoplanets carried out using telescopes of the AST3 (Antarctic Survey Telescopes times 3) project. There are now three telescopes (AST3-I, AST3-II, and CSTAR-II) operating at Dome A-the highest point on the Antarctic Plateau-in a fully automatic and remote mode to exploit the superb observing conditions of the site, and its long and uninterrupted polar nights. The search for transiting exoplanets is one of the key projects for AST3. During the austral winters of 2016 and 2017 we used the AST3-II telescope to survey a set of target fields near the southern ecliptic pole, falling within the continuous viewing zone of the TESS mission. The first data release of the 2016 data, including images, catalogs, and light curves of 26,578 bright stars (7.5 <= m(i) <= 15), was presented in Zhang et al. The best precision, as measured by the rms of the light curves at the optimum magnitude of the survey (m(i) = 10), is around 2 mmag. We detect 222 objects with plausible transit signals from these data, 116 of which are plausible transiting exoplanet candidates according to their stellar properties as given by the TESS Input Catalog, Gaia DR2, and TESS-HERMES spectroscopy. With the first data release from TESS expected in late 2018, this candidate list will be timely for improving the rejection of potential false-positives

Effects of Anacetrapib in Patients with Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease

BACKGROUND: Patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease remain at high risk for cardiovascular events despite effective statin-based treatment of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels. The inhibition of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) by anacetrapib reduces LDL cholesterol levels and increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. However, trials of other CETP inhibitors have shown neutral or adverse effects on cardiovascular outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 30,449 adults with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive atorvastatin therapy and who had a mean LDL cholesterol level of 61 mg per deciliter (1.58 mmol per liter), a mean non-HDL cholesterol level of 92 mg per deciliter (2.38 mmol per liter), and a mean HDL cholesterol level of 40 mg per deciliter (1.03 mmol per liter). The patients were assigned to receive either 100 mg of anacetrapib once daily (15,225 patients) or matching placebo (15,224 patients). The primary outcome was the first major coronary event, a composite of coronary death, myocardial infarction, or coronary revascularization. RESULTS: During the median follow-up period of 4.1 years, the primary outcome occurred in significantly fewer patients in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (1640 of 15,225 patients [10.8%] vs. 1803 of 15,224 patients [11.8%]; rate ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.85 to 0.97; P=0.004). The relative difference in risk was similar across multiple prespecified subgroups. At the trial midpoint, the mean level of HDL cholesterol was higher by 43 mg per deciliter (1.12 mmol per liter) in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (a relative difference of 104%), and the mean level of non-HDL cholesterol was lower by 17 mg per deciliter (0.44 mmol per liter), a relative difference of -18%. There were no significant between-group differences in the risk of death, cancer, or other serious adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive statin therapy, the use of anacetrapib resulted in a lower incidence of major coronary events than the use of placebo. (Funded by Merck and others; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN48678192 ; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01252953 ; and EudraCT number, 2010-023467-18 .)

Integrative Analysis of Modular Structure of Genes in High-throughput Tumor Profiles

Cellular functions, such as signal transduction, transportation, cell cycle, and various metabolism, require cooperation of many gene products. Following the central dogma, such large-scale cooperation within and across cells often leave traces on different omics profiles. One major clue would be the strong correlation among genes in genomics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. Based on this premise, we started to identify functional modules by integrating pairwise correlation among genes from different information sources into the form of multiplex networks. Although all the layers of the multiplex shared the same protein interactome as the skeleton, edge weights in each layer represents pairwise correlation from a different type of information sources. This formation allows information flow from one data source to another. We also designed a novel graph clustering algorithm to detect gene sets with strong correlations inside. However, the multiplex integration only yields marginal improvement against single omics. We turn to the mutual exclusivity patterns in cancer genomics. This pattern suggests that a single somatic alteration event may be sufficient to promote tumorigenesis. We pushed the assumption further to state that disruption of a single pathway could lead to differential expression of a large set of genes, which is supported by our work on Boolean matrix factorization. Then we proposed the OR-gate network (ORN) to model the causal mechanism from somatic alterations to transcriptomics. Results showed that it is able to recover the heterogeneity among cancer samples and functional modules responsible for certain dysregulation in cancer transcriptomics. Still, ORN has two major limitations. One is the issue of co-amplification. ORN cannot distinguish passengers in the same copy number variation hotspot as the drivers. To this end, we applied the word2vec model to extract gene embedding from biomedical literature. Another issue is the transcriptional regulation module may not be accurate. To this end, we developed a novel algorithm (peak2vec) to uncover transcriptional motif patterns and coregulation from the chromatic accessibility profiles. In the future, we will integrate gene embedding and peak2vec into the ORN framework to better understand the causal impact of somatic alteration as functional modules

Efficiency intervals, rank intervals and dominance relations of decision-making units with fixed-sum outputs

How to evaluate the performance of decision-making units (DMUs) with fixed-sum outputs is a timely and challenging question in data envelopment analysis (DEA). Two major challenges are (1) how to determine a common equilibrium efficient frontier and (2) how to deal with multiple feasible equilibrium efficient frontiers. This paper first uses a simple dataset to illustrate the possibility of multiple equilibrium efficient frontiers and the corresponding major differences in the DMUs’ efficiencies and rankings resulting from these frontiers. We address these challenges by considering all feasible equilibrium efficient frontiers and develop several models to obtain the corresponding efficiency intervals, ranking intervals and dominance relations for the DMUs with fixed-sum outputs. We illustrate the proposed approach with two numerical examples and show that it gives more informative results than previous DEA approaches. For example, there are interesting dominance relations between DMUs under the fixed-sum outputs; yet these relations do not exist when there are no fixed-sum outputs. In addition, the efficiency ranges and ranking intervals can be narrowed by accounting for policy suggestions such as adjustment constraints of fixed-sum outputs for DMUs.Peer reviewe