A Transiting, Temperate Mini-Neptune Orbiting the M Dwarf TOI-1759 Unveiled by TESS

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.-- Full list of authors: Espinoza, Néstor; Pallé, Enric; Kemmer, Jonas; Luque, Rafael; Caballero, José A.; Cifuentes, Carlos; Herrero, Enrique; Sánchez Béjar, Víctor J.; Stock, Stephan; Molaverdikhani, Karan; Morello, Giuseppe; Kossakowski, Diana; Schlecker, Martin; Amado, Pedro J.; Bluhm, Paz; Cortés-Contreras, Miriam; Henning, Thomas; Kreidberg, Laura; Kürster, Martin; Lafarga, Marina; Lodieu, Nicolas; Morales, Juan Carlos; Oshagh, Mahmoudreza; Passegger, Vera M.; Pavlov, Alexey; Quirrenbach, Andreas; Reffert, Sabine; Reiners, Ansgar; Ribas, Ignasi; Rodríguez, Eloy; López, Cristina Rodríguez; Schweitzer, Andreas; Trifonov, Trifon; Chaturvedi, Priyanka; Dreizler, Stefan; Jeffers, Sandra V.; Kaminski, Adrian; López-González, María José; Lillo-Box, Jorge; Montes, David; Nowak, Grzegorz; Pedraz, Santos; Vanaverbeke, Siegfried; Zapatero Osorio, Maria R.; Zechmeister, Mathias; Collins, Karen A.; Girardin, Eric; Guerra, Pere; Naves, Ramon; Crossfield, Ian J. M.; Matthews, Elisabeth C.; Howell, Steve B.; Ciardi, David R.; Gonzales, Erica; Matson, Rachel A.; Beichman, Charles A.; Schlieder, Joshua E.; Barclay, Thomas; Vezie, Michael; Villaseñor, Jesus Noel; Daylan, Tansu; Mireies, Ismael; Dragomir, Diana; Twicken, Joseph D.; Jenkins, Jon; Winn, Joshua N.; Latham, David; Ricker, George; Seager, Sara.We report the discovery and characterization of TOI-1759 b, a temperate (400 K) sub-Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting the M dwarf TOI-1759 (TIC 408636441). TOI-1759 b was observed by TESS to transit in Sectors 16, 17, and 24, with only one transit observed per sector, creating an ambiguity regarding the orbital period of the planet candidate. Ground-based photometric observations, combined with radial-velocity measurements obtained with the CARMENES spectrograph, confirm an actual period of 18.85019 ± 0.00014 days. A joint analysis of all available photometry and radial velocities reveals a radius of 3.17 ± 0.10 R⊕ and a mass of 10.8 ± 1.5 M⊕. Combining this with the stellar properties derived for TOI-1759 (R⋆ = 0.597 ± 0.015 R⊙; M⋆ = 0.606 ± 0.020 M⊙; Teff = 4065 ± 51 K), we compute a transmission spectroscopic metric (TSM) value of over 80 for the planet, making it a good target for transmission spectroscopy studies. TOI-1759 b is among the top five temperate, small exoplanets (Teq 200 days seem to be present in our radial velocities. While our data suggest both could arise from stellar activity, the later signal's source and periodicity are hard to pinpoint given the ∼200 days baseline of our radial-velocity campaign with CARMENES. Longer baseline radial-velocity campaigns should be performed in order to unveil the true nature of this long-period signal. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciëncies de l'Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología, and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars," the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work was based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PGC2018-098153-B-C33, AYA2018-84089, PID2019-107061GB-C64, PID2019-110689RB-100, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, and BES-2017-080769, and the Centre of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" and "María de Maeztu" awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019-000920-S), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), NASA (NNX17AG24G), and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA program. Data were partly collected with the 90 cm telescope at the Sierra Nevada Observatory (SNO) operated by the Instituto de Astrofí fica de Andalucí a (IAA, CSIC). We acknowledge the telescope operators from the Sierra Nevada Observatory for their support. G.M. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 895525. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products.Peer reviewe

A detailed analysis of the Gl 486 planetary system

Full list of authors: Caballero, J. A.; Gonzalez-Alvarez, E.; Brady, M.; Trifonov, T.; Ellis, T. G.; Dorn, C.; Cifuentes, C.; Molaverdikhani, K.; Bean, J. L.; Boyajian, T.; Rodriguez, E.; Sanz-Forcada, J.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Abia, C.; Amado, P. J.; Anugu, N.; Bejar, V. J. S.; Davies, C. L.; Dreizler, S.; Dubois, F.; Ennis, J.; Espinoza, N.; Farrington, C. D.; Garcia Lopez, A.; Gardner, T.; Hatzes, A. P.; Henning, Th; Herrero, E.; Herrero-Cisneros, E.; Kaminski, A.; Kasper, D.; Klement, R.; Kraus, S.; Labdon, A.; Lanthermann, C.; Le Bouquin, J-B; Lopez Gonzalez, M. J.; Luque, R.; Mann, A. W.; Marfil, E.; Monnier, J. D.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Palle, E.; Pedraz, S.; Quirrenbach, A.; Reffert, S.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I; Rodriguez-Lopez, C.; Schaefer, G.; Schweitzer, A.; Seifahrt, A.; Setterholm, B. R.; Shan, Y.; Shulyak, D.; Solano, E.; Sreenivas, K. R.; Stefansson, G.; Stuermer, J.; Tabernero, H. M.; Tal-Or, L.; ten Brummelaar, T.; Vanaverbeke, S.; von Braun, K.; Youngblood, A.; Zechmeister, M.- This is an Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Context. The Gl 486 system consists of a very nearby, relatively bright, weakly active M3.5 V star at just 8 pc with a warm transiting rocky planet of about 1.3 R⊕ and 3.0 M⊕. It is ideal for both transmission and emission spectroscopy and for testing interior models of telluric planets. Aims. To prepare for future studies, we aim to thoroughly characterise the planetary system with new accurate and precise data collected with state-of-the-art photometers from space and spectrometers and interferometers from the ground. Methods. We collected light curves of seven new transits observed with the CHEOPS space mission and new radial velocities obtained with MAROON-X at the 8.1 m Gemini North telescope and CARMENES at the 3.5 m Calar Alto telescope, together with previously published spectroscopic and photometric data from the two spectrographs and TESS. We also performed near-infrared interferometric observations with the CHARA Array and new photometric monitoring with a suite of smaller telescopes (AstroLAB, LCOGT, OSN, TJO). This extraordinary and rich data set was the input for our comprehensive analysis. Results. From interferometry, we measure a limb-darkened disc angular size of the star Gl 486 at θLDD = 0.390 ± 0.018 mas. Together with a corrected Gaia EDR3 parallax, we obtain a stellar radius R* = 0.339 ± 0.015 R⊕. We also measure a stellar rotation period at Prot = 49.9 ± 5.5 days, an upper limit to its XUV (5-920 A) flux informed by new Hubble/STIS data, and, for the first time, a variety of element abundances (Fe, Mg, Si, V, Sr, Zr, Rb) and C/O ratio. Moreover, we imposed restrictive constraints on the presence of additional components, either stellar or sub-stellar, in the system. With the input stellar parameters and the radial-velocity and transit data, we determine the radius and mass of the planet Gl 486 b at Rp = 1.343−0.062+0.063 R⊕ and Mp = 3.00−0.12+0.13 M⊕, with relative uncertainties of the planet radius and mass of 4.7% and 4.2%, respectively. From the planet parameters and the stellar element abundances, we infer the most probable models of planet internal structure and composition, which are consistent with a relatively small metallic core with respect to the Earth, a deep silicate mantle, and a thin volatile upper layer. With all these ingredients, we outline prospects for Gl 486 b atmospheric studies, especially with forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) observations. © J. A. Caballero et al. 2022.CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work is based upon observations obtained with the Georgia State University (GSU) Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy Array at Mount Wilson Observatory. The CHARA Array is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1636624 and AST-2034336. Institutional support has been provided from the GSU College of Arts and Sciences and the GSU Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. We would like to recognise the observing team, scientists, and support staff at the CHARA Array. Observation time for this work was generously allocated via discretionary time from CHARA Array director Theo ten Brumelaar and via NOIRLab community access program (proposals 2021A-0247 and 2021A-0141). MIRC-X received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant No. 639889), as well as from NASA (XRP NNX16AD43G) and NSF (AST 1909165). Data were partly collected with the 90 cm telescope at the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada operated by the Instituto de Astrofífica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC). This work made use of observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network. LCOGT observations were partially acquired via program number TAU2021A-015 of the Wise Observatory, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PID2019-107061GB-C64, PID2019-110689RB-100, PGC2018-095317-B-C21, PGC2018-102108-B-I00, and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019-000920-S), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), DFG through FOR2544 (KU 3625/2-1) and Germany’s Excellence Strategy to the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS (EXC-2094 - 390783311), European Research Council (Starting Grant 639889), Bulgarian National Science Fund through VIHREN-2021 (KP-06-DB/5), Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung / Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique (PZ00P2_174028), United Kingdom Science Technology and Facilities Council (630008203), NASA (80NSSC22K0117), National Science Foundation (2108465 and Graduate Research Fellowship DGE 1746045), Princeton University through the Henry Norris Russell Fellowship, Universidad La Laguna through the Margarita Salas Fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio de Universidades and under the EU Next Generation funds (UNI/551/2021-May 26), and the Generalitat de Catalunya (CERCA programme).Peer reviewe

Predicting Survival after Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in Myelofibrosis : Performance of the Myelofibrosis Transplant Scoring System (MTSS) and Development of a New Prognostic Model

Accurate prognostic tools are crucial to assess the risk/benefit ratio of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) in patients with myelofibrosis (MF). We aimed to evaluate the performance of the Myelofibrosis Transplant Scoring System (MTSS) and identify risk factors for survival in a multicenter series of 197 patients with MF undergoing allo-HCT. After a median follow-up of 3.1 years, 47% of patients had died, and the estimated 5-year survival rate was 51%. Projected 5-year risk of nonrelapse mortality and relapse incidence was 30% and 20%, respectively. Factors independently associated with increased mortality were a hematopoietic cell transplantation-specific comorbidity index (HCT-CI) ≥3 and receiving a graft from an HLA-mismatched unrelated donor or cord blood, whereas post-transplant cyclophosphamide (PT-Cy) was associated with improved survival. Donor type was the only parameter included in the MTSS model with independent prognostic value for survival. According to the MTSS, 3-year survival was 62%, 66%, 37%, and 17% for low-, intermediate-, high-, and very high-risk groups, respectively. By pooling together the low- and intermediate-risk groups, as well as the high- and very high-risk groups, we pinpointed 2 categories: standard risk and high risk (25% of the series). Three-year survival was 62% in standard-risk and 25% in high-risk categories (P <.001). We derived a risk score based on the 3 independent risk factors for survival in our series (donor type, HCT-CI, and PT-Cy). The corresponding 5-year survival for the low-, intermediate-, and high-risk categories was 79%, 55%, and 32%, respectively (P <.001). In conclusion, the MTSS model failed to clearly delineate 4 prognostic groups in our series but may still be useful to identify a subset of patients with poor outcome. We provide a simple prognostic scoring system for risk/benefit considerations before transplantation in patients with MF

The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. Wolf 1069 b: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, very low-mass star

D. Kossakowski et al.We present the discovery of an Earth-mass planet (Mb sin i = 1.26 ± 0.21 M⊕) on a 15.6 d orbit of a relatively nearby (d ~ 9.6 pc) and low-mass (0.167 ± 0.011 M⊙) M5.0 V star, Wolf 1069. Sitting at a separation of 0.0672 ± 0.0014 au away from the host star puts Wolf 1069 b in the habitable zone (HZ), receiving an incident flux of S = 0.652 ± 0.029 S⊕. The planetary signal was detected using telluric-corrected radial-velocity (RV) data from the CARMENES spectrograph, amounting to a total of 262 spectroscopic observations covering almost four years. There are additional long-period signals in the RVs, one of which we attribute to the stellar rotation period. This is possible thanks to our photometric analysis including new, well-sampled monitoring campaigns undergone with the OSN and TJO facilities that supplement archival photometry (i.e., from MEarth and SuperWASP), and this yielded an updated rotational period range of Prot = 150–170 d, with a likely value at 169.3−3.6+3.7. The stellar activity indicators provided by the CARMENES spectra likewise demonstrate evidence for the slow rotation period, though not as accurately due to possible factors such as signal aliasing or spot evolution. Our detectability limits indicate that additional planets more massive than one Earth mass with orbital periods of less than 10 days can be ruled out, suggesting that perhaps Wolf 1069 b had a violent formation history. This planet is also the sixth closest Earth-mass planet situated in the conservative HZ, after Proxima Centauri b, GJ 1061 d, Teegarden’s Star c, and GJ 1002 b and c. Despite not transiting, Wolf 1069 b is nonetheless a very promising target for future three-dimensional climate models to investigate various habitability cases as well as for sub-m s−1 RV campaigns to search for potential inner sub-Earth-mass planets in order to test planet formation theories.Part of this work was supported by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG project number Ts 17/2–1. CARMENES is an instrument at the Centra Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the ERDF “A way of making Europe” through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PID2019-107061GB-C64, and PID2019-110689RB-100, and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737); the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program (ERC Advanced Grant Origins 832428 and under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant 895525); the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme; the DFG through the priority program SPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets (JE 701/5-1)” and the Research Unit FOR 2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars” (KU 3625/2-1); the Bulgarian National Science Fund through program “VIHREN-2021” (KP-06-DV/5); the SNSF under grant P2BEP2_195285; the National Science Foundation under award No. 1753373, and by a Clare Boothe Luce Professorship.Peer reviewe

The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs Guaranteed time observations Data Release 1 (2016-2020)

I. Ribas et al.[Context] The CARMENES instrument, installed at the 3.5 m telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, Spain, was conceived to deliver high-accuracy radial velocity (RV) measurements with long-term stability to search for temperate rocky planets around a sample of nearby cool stars. Moreover, the broad wavelength coverage was designed to provide a range of stellar activity indicators to assess the nature of potential RV signals and to provide valuable spectral information to help characterise the stellar targets.[Aims] We describe the CARMENES guaranteed time observations (GTO), spanning from 2016 to 2020, during which 19 633 spectra for a sample of 362 targets were collected. We present the CARMENES Data Release 1 (DR1), which makes public all observations obtained during the GTO of the CARMENES survey.[Methods] The CARMENES survey target selection was aimed at minimising biases, and about 70% of all known M dwarfs within 10 pc and accessible from Calar Alto were included. The data were pipeline-processed, and high-level data products, including 18 642 precise RVs for 345 targets, were derived. Time series data of spectroscopic activity indicators were also obtained.[Results] We discuss the characteristics of the CARMENES data, the statistical properties of the stellar sample, and the spectroscopic measurements. We show examples of the use of CARMENES data and provide a contextual view of the exoplanet population revealed by the survey, including 33 new planets, 17 re-analysed planets, and 26 confirmed planets from transiting candidate follow-up. A subsample of 238 targets was used to derive updated planet occurrence rates, yielding an overall average of 1.44 ± 0.20 planets with 1 M⊕ < Mpl sin i < 1000 M⊕ and 1 day < Porb < 1000 days per star, and indicating that nearly every M dwarf hosts at least one planet. All the DR1 raw data, pipeline-processed data, and high-level data products are publicly available online.[Conclusions] CARMENES data have proven very useful for identifying and measuring planetary companions. They are also suitable for a variety of additional applications, such as the determination of stellar fundamental and atmospheric properties, the characterisation of stellar activity, and the study of exoplanet atmospheres.CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano en Andalucía (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (AEI-MCIN) and the ERDF “A way of making Europe” through projects PID2020-117493GB-I00, PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PID2019-110689RB-I00, PID2019-107061GB-C61, PID2019-107061GB-C64, PGC2018-098153-B-C33, PID2021-125627OB-C31/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (CEX2020-001058-M), Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019-000920-S), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737). We also benefited from additional funding from: the Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya and the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca of the Generalitat de Catalunya, with additional funding from the European FEDER/ERDF funds, and from the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme; the DFG through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars” (RE 2694/8-1); the University of La Laguna through the Margarita Salas Fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio de Universidades ref. UNI/551/2021-May-26, and under the EU Next Generation funds; the Gobierno de Canarias through projects ProID2021010128 and ProID2020010129; the Spanish MICINN under Ramón y Cajal programme RYC-2013-14875; the “Fondi di Ricerca Scientifica d’Ateneo 2021” of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”; and the programme “Alien Earths” supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under agreement No. 80NSSC21K0593. TPeer reviewe

Bladder cancer index: cross-cultural adaptation into Spanish and psychometric evaluation

BACKGROUND: The Bladder Cancer Index (BCI) is so far the only instrument applicable across all bladder cancer patients, independent of tumor infiltration or treatment applied. We developed a Spanish version of the BCI, and assessed its acceptability and metric properties. METHODS: For the adaptation into Spanish we used the forward and back-translation method, expert panels, and cognitive debriefing patient interviews. For the assessment of metric properties we used data from 197 bladder cancer patients from a multi-center prospective study. The Spanish BCI and the SF-36 Health Survey were self-administered before and 12 months after treatment. Reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha. Construct validity was assessed through the multi-trait multi-method matrix. The magnitude of change was quantified by effect sizes to assess responsiveness. RESULTS: Reliability coefficients ranged 0.75-0.97. The validity analysis confirmed moderate associations between the BCI function and bother subscales for urinary (r = 0.61) and bowel (r = 0.53) domains; conceptual independence among all BCI domains (r ≤ 0.3); and low correlation coefficients with the SF-36 scores, ranging 0.14-0.48. Among patients reporting global improvement at follow-up, pre-post treatment changes were statistically significant for the urinary domain and urinary bother subscale, with effect sizes of 0.38 and 0.53. CONCLUSIONS: The Spanish BCI is well accepted, reliable, valid, responsive, and similar in performance compared to the original instrument. These findings support its use, both in Spanish and international studies, as a valuable and comprehensive tool for assessing quality of life across a wide range of bladder cancer patients

Global human footprint on the linkage between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in reef fishes

Copyright: © 2011 Mora et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Difficulties in scaling up theoretical and experimental results have raised controversy over the consequences of biodiversity loss for the functioning of natural ecosystems. Using a global survey of reef fish assemblages, we show that in contrast to previous theoretical and experimental studies, ecosystem functioning (as measured by standing biomass) scales in a non-saturating manner with biodiversity (as measured by species and functional richness) in this ecosystem. Our field study also shows a significant and negative interaction between human population density and biodiversity on ecosystem functioning (i.e., for the same human density there were larger reductions in standing biomass at more diverse reefs). Human effects were found to be related to fishing, coastal development, and land use stressors, and currently affect over 75% of the world's coral reefs. Our results indicate that the consequences of biodiversity loss in coral reefs have been considerably underestimated based on existing knowledge and that reef fish assemblages, particularly the most diverse, are greatly vulnerable to the expansion and intensity of anthropogenic stressors in coastal areas

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research