644 research outputs found
The intermediate-mass star-forming region Lynds 1340. An optical view
We have performed an optical spectroscopic and photometric search for young
stellar objects associated with the molecular cloud Lynds 1340, and examined
the structure of the cloud by constructing an extinction map, based on SDSS
data. The new extinction map suggests a shallow, strongly fragmented cloud,
having a mass of some 3700~Msun. Longslit spectroscopic observations of the
brightest stars over the area of L1340 revealed that the most massive star
associated with L1340 is a B4 type, about 5 solar mass star. The new
spectroscopic and photometric data of the intermediate mass members led to a
revised distance of 825 (+110 /-80) pc, and revealed seven members of the young
stellar population with M > 2 solar masses. Our search for H alpha emission
line stars, conducted with the Wide Field Grism Spectrograph 2 on the 2.2-meter
telescope of the University of Hawaii and covering a 30 arcmin x 40 arcmin
area, resulted in the detection of 75 candidate low-mass pre-main sequence
stars, 58 of which are new. We constructed spectral energy distributions of our
target stars, based on SDSS, 2MASS, Spitzer, and WISE photometric data, derived
their spectral types, extinctions, and luminosities from BVRIJ fluxes,
estimated masses by means of pre-main sequence evolutionary models, and
examined the disk properties utilizing the 2-24 micron interval of the spectral
energy distribution. We measured the equivalent width of the H alpha lines and
derived accretion rates. The optically selected sample of pre-main sequence
stars has a median effective temperature of 3970 K, stellar mass 0.7 Msun, and
accretion rate of 7.6 10^{-9} Msun/yr.Comment: 47 pages, 15 figures, 10 tables; accepted for publication in ApJ,
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Association study of suicidal behavior and affective disorders with a genetic polymorphism in ABCG1, a positional candidate on chromosome 21q22.3
The gene that codes for the ABC transporter ABCG1 is located in a chromosomal susceptibility region (21q22.3) for affective disorders. Genetic variations in ABCG1 have been associated with affective disorders in Japanese males. In this study, we investigated the distribution of a G2457A polymorphism in patients with affective disorders, suicide attempters with various psychiatric diagnoses and healthy subjects, We initially found a trend towards a modest association with affective disorders in males (p = 0.046 for allele frequencies and p = 0.046 for AA versus GG). We conducted a replication study with independent patients and controls, There was no association with affective disorders, either in the replication or in the combined group, Furthermore, we found no association with suicidal behavior, These findings do not support the hypothesis that ABCG1 is a susceptibility gene for affective disorders or suicidal behavior. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel
Evaluation of intron containing potential reference gene-specific primers to validate grapevine nucleic acid samples prepared for conventional PCR and RT-PCR
Previously we proved the usefulness of an intron containing reference gene, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEP) to validate cDNA synthesis for detection of grapevine viruses by conventional RT-PCR from crude nucleic acid preparations. Thus amplicons derived from residual genomic DNA (gDNA) and cDNA can be clearly distinguished by their sizes. Here we designed novel sets of primers which encompass one or two intron containing sequences of grapevine housekeeping genes such as actin, tubulin and elongation factor 1-α. Using these primers the expected sequences were amplified from gDNAs of the tested 24 grapevine cultivars. Thereafter they were challenged using cDNAs prepared from total nucleic acid samples isolated from cambial scrapings of dormant canes, leaf laminas, petioles and in vitro leaves of 12 grapevine cultivars. All of these novel, and the previously published PEP gene-specific primers generated the amplification of the expected shorter DNA fragments without introns. Thus they are suitable to check the quality of nucleic acid preparations and to validate subsequent cDNA synthesis prior to pathogen detection assays
Production of bioactive compounds by different fungal species
Production of cholesterol-lowering drugs Nowadays in Hungary and all over the world there is an increasing demand on cholesterol-lowering drugs. Highest risk factor of atherosclerosis and especially coronary occlusion is the high cholesterol level of the plasma. In the recent two decades the 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (EC.1.1.1.34) as the rate limiting key enzyme of the cholesterol biosynthesis in the organism was extensively examined. Mevinolin and other related compounds (compactin, pravastatin, simvastatin) are the competitive inhibitors of the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme. Our investigations were focussed on finding microorganisms, which would produce HMG-CoA reductase enzyme inhibitors. During screening, covering about 20,000 fungus strains two microorganisms were selected, one of them an Aspergillusspecies was able to biosynthesize mevinolin and another strain belongs to thePenicilliumgenus was able to produce compactin. In the course of our experiments new, economic microbial processes were developed for both cholesterol-lowering agents
Identification of Young Stellar Object candidates in the DR2 x AllWISE catalogue with machine learning methods
The second Data Release (DR2) contains astrometric and photometric
data for more than 1.6 billion objects with mean magnitude 20.7,
including many Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) in different evolutionary stages.
In order to explore the YSO population of the Milky Way, we combined the
DR2 database with WISE and Planck measurements and made an all-sky
probabilistic catalogue of YSOs using machine learning techniques, such as
Support Vector Machines, Random Forests, or Neural Networks. Our input
catalogue contains 103 million objects from the DR2xAllWISE cross-match table.
We classified each object into four main classes: YSOs, extragalactic objects,
main-sequence stars and evolved stars. At a 90% probability threshold we
identified 1,129,295 YSO candidates. To demonstrate the quality and potential
of our YSO catalogue, here we present two applications of it. (1) We explore
the 3D structure of the Orion A star forming complex and show that the spatial
distribution of the YSOs classified by our procedure is in agreement with
recent results from the literature. (2) We use our catalogue to classify
published Science Alerts. As measures the sources at multiple
epochs, it can efficiently discover transient events, including sudden
brightness changes of YSOs caused by dynamic processes of their circumstellar
disk. However, in many cases the physical nature of the published alert sources
are not known. A cross-check with our new catalogue shows that about 30% more
of the published alerts can most likely be attributed to YSO activity.
The catalogue can be also useful to identify YSOs among future alerts.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, 3 table
Activity of 50 Long-Period Comets Beyond 5.2 AU
Remote investigations of the ancient solar system matter has been
traditionally carried out through the observations of long-period (LP) comets
that are less affected by solar irradiation than the short-period counterparts
orbiting much closer to the Sun. Here we summarize the results of our
decade-long survey of the distant activity of LP comets. We found that the most
important separation in the dataset is based on the dynamical nature of the
objects. Dynamically new comets are characterized by a higher level of activity
on average: the most active new comets in our sample can be characterized by
afrho values >3--4 higher than that of our most active returning comets. New
comets develop more symmetric comae, suggesting a generally isotropic outflow.
Contrary to this, the coma of recurrent comets can be less symmetrical,
ocassionally exhibiting negative slope parameters, suggesting sudden variations
in matter production. The morphological appearance of the observed comets is
rather diverse. A surprisingly large fraction of the comets have long, teniouos
tails, but the presence of impressive tails does not show a clear correlation
with the brightness of the comets.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A
New Candidate Eruptive Young Stars in Lynds 1340
We report on the discovery of three candidate eruptive young stars, found during our comprehensive multi-wavelength study of the young stellar population of the dark cloud L1340. These stars are as follows. (1) IRAS 02224+7227 (2MASS 02270555+7241167, HH 487S) exhibited FUor-like spectrum in our low-resolution optical spectra. The available photometric data restrict its luminosity to 23 L_â < L_(bol) < 59 L_â. (2) 2MASS 02263797+7304575, identified as a classical T Tauri star during our Hα survey, exhibited an EXor-type brightening in 2005 November at the time of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey observations of the region. (3) 2MASS 02325605+7246055, a low-mass embedded young star, associated with a fan-shaped infrared nebula, underwent an outburst between the DSS 1 and DSS 2 surveys, leading to the appearance of a faint optical nebula. Our [S II] and Hα images, as well as the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera 4.5 ÎŒm images, revealed Herbig-Haro objects associated with this star. Our results suggest that amplitudes and timescales of outbursts do not necessarily correlate with the evolutionary stage of the stars
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