L1599B: Cloud Envelope and C+ Emission in a Region of Moderately Enhanced Radiation Field

We study the effects of an asymmetric radiation field on the properties of a molecular cloud envelope. We employ observations of carbon monoxide (12CO and 13CO), atomic carbon, ionized carbon, and atomic hydrogen to analyze the chemical and physical properties of the core and envelope of L1599B, a molecular cloud forming a portion of the ring at approximately 27 pc from the star Lambda Ori. The O III star provides an asymmetric radiation field that produces a moderate enhancement of the external radiation field. Observations of the [CII] fine structure line with the GREAT instrument on SOFIA indicate a significant enhanced emission on the side of the cloud facing the star, while the [Ci], 12CO and 13CO J = 1-0 and 2-1, and 12CO J = 3-2 data from the PMO and APEX telescopes suggest a relatively typical cloud interior. The atomic, ionic, and molecular line centroid velocities track each other very closely, and indicate that the cloud may be undergoing differential radial motion. The HI data from the Arecibo GALFA survey and the SOFIA/GREAT [CII] data do not suggest any systematic motion of the halo gas, relative to the dense central portion of the cloud traced by 12CO and 13CO.Comment: 9 Figure

Encapsulation of gold nanostructures and oil-in-water nanocarriers in microgels with biomedical potential

Indexación: Scopus.Funding: This research was funded by FONDECYT 1161450, 1150744, 11130494 and 1170929, FONDEQUIP EQM160157, EQM170111, CONICYT-FONDAP 15130011, and CONICYT PhD Scholarship 21141137.Here we report the incorporation of gold nanostructures (nanospheres or nanorods, functionalized with carboxylate-end PEG) and curcumin oil-in-water (O/W) nanoemulsions (CurNem) into alginate microgels using the dripping technique. While gold nanostructures are promising nanomaterials for photothermal therapy applications, CurNem possess important pharmacological activities as reported here. In this sense, we evaluated the effect of CurNem on cell viability of both cancerous and non-cancerous cell lines (AGS and HEK293T, respectively), demonstrating preferential toxicity in cancer cells and safety for the non-cancerous cells. After incorporating gold nanostructures and CurNem together into the microgels, microstructures with diameters of 220 and 540 µm were obtained. When stimulating microgels with a laser, the plasmon effect promoted a significant rise in the temperature of the medium; the temperature increase was higher for those containing gold nanorods (11–12 ◦ C) than nanospheres (1–2 ◦ C). Interestingly, the incorporation of both nanosystems in the microgels maintains the photothermal properties of the gold nanostructures unmodified and retains with high efficiency the curcumin nanocarriers. We conclude that these results will be of interest to design hydrogel formulations with therapeutic applications. © 2018 by the authors.https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/5/120

A customisable pipeline for continuously harvesting socially-minded Twitter users

On social media platforms and Twitter in particular, specific classes of users such as influencers have been given satisfactory operational definitions in terms of network and content metrics. Others, for instance online activists, are not less important but their characterisation still requires experimenting. We make the hypothesis that such interesting users can be found within temporally and spatially localised contexts, i.e., small but topical fragments of the network containing interactions about social events or campaigns with a significant footprint on Twitter. To explore this hypothesis, we have designed a continuous user profile discovery pipeline that produces an ever-growing dataset of user profiles by harvesting and analysing contexts from the Twitter stream. The profiles dataset includes key network and content-based users metrics, enabling experimentation with user-defined score functions that characterise specific classes of online users. The paper describes the design and implementation of the pipeline and its empirical evaluation on a case study consisting of healthcare-related campaigns in the UK, showing how it supports the operational definitions of online activism, by comparing three experimental ranking functions. The code is publicly available.Comment: Procs. ICWE 2019, June 2019, Kore

Postoperative bladder dysfunction and outcomes after minimally invasive extravesical ureteric reimplantation in children using a laparoscopic and a robot-assisted approach: results of a multicentre international survey

OBJECTIVES: To assess and compare postoperative bladder dysfunction rates and outcomes after laparoscopic and robot-assisted extravesical ureteric reimplantation in children and to identify risk factors associated with bladder dysfunction. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 151 children underwent minimally invasive extravesical ureteric reimplantation in five international centres of paediatric urology over a 5-year period (January 2013-January 2018). The children were divided in two groups according to surgical approach: group 1 underwent laporoscopic reimplantation and included 116 children (92 girls and 24 boys with a median age of 4.5 years), while group 2 underwent robot-assisted reimplantation and included 35 children (29 girls and six boys with a median age of 7.5 years). The two groups were compared with regard to: procedure length; success rate; postoperative complication rate; and postoperative bladder dysfunction rate (acute urinary retention [AUR] and voiding dysfunction). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to assess predictors of postoperative bladder dysfunction. Factors assessed included age, gender, laterality, duration of procedure, pre-existing bladder and bowel dysfunction (BBD) and pain control. RESULTS: The mean operating time was significantly longer in group 2 compared with group 1, for both unilateral (159.5 vs 109.5 min) and bilateral procedures (202 vs 132 min; P = 0.001). The success rate was significantly higher in group 2 than in group 1 (100% vs 95.6%; P = 0.001). The overall postoperative bladder dysfunction rate was 8.6% and no significant difference was found between group 1 (6.9%) and group 2 (14.3%; P = 0.17). All AUR cases were managed with short-term bladder catheterization except for two cases (1.3%) in group 1 that required short-term suprapubic catheterization. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that bilateral pathology, pre-existing BBD and duration of procedure were predictors of postoperative bladder dysfunction (P = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our results confirmed that short-term bladder dysfunction is a possible complication of extravesical ureteric reimplantation, with no significant difference between the laparoscopic and robot-assisted approaches. Bladder dysfunction occurred more often after bilateral repairs, but required suprapubic catheterization in only 1.3% of cases. Bilaterality, pre-existing BBD and duration of surgery were confirmed on univariate and multivariate analyses as predictors of postoperative bladder dysfunction in this series

Woolliness assessment in peaches (Cv. Springcrest) by sensory and instrumental means.

Mealiness is a negative attribute of sensory texture, characterised by the lack of juiciness without variation of total water content in the tissues. In peaches, mealiness is also known as "woolliness" and "leatheriness". This internal disorder is characterised by the lack of juiciness and flavour. In peaches, it is associated with interna browning near the stone and the incapacity of ripening although there is externa ripe appearance. Woolliness is associated with inadequate cold storage and is considered as a physiological disorder that appears in stone fruits when an unbalanced pectolitic enzyme activity during storage occurs (Kailasapathy and Melton, 1992). Many attempts have been carried out to identify and measure mealiness and woolliness in fruits. The texture of a food product is composed by a wide spectrum of sensory attributes. Consumer defines the texture integrating simultaneously all the sensory attributes. However, an instrument assesses one or several parameters related to a fraction of the texture spectrum (Kramer, 1973). The complexity of sensory analysis by means of trained panels to assess the quality of some producing processes, supports the attempt to estimate texture characteristics by instrumental means. Some studies have been carried out comparing sensory and instrumental methods to assess mealiness and woolliness. The current study is centered on analysis and evaluation of woolliness in peaches and is part of the European project FAIR CT95 0302 "Mealiness in fruits: consumer perception and means for detection". The main objective of this study was to develop procedures to detect woolly peaches by sensory and by instrumental means, as well as to compare both measuring procedures

Stochastic Ion Acceleration by the Ion-cyclotron Instability in a Growing Magnetic Field

Using 1D and 2D particle-in-cell simulations of a plasma with a growing magnetic field B, we show that ions can be stochastically accelerated by the ion-cyclotron (IC) instability. As B grows, an ion pressure anisotropy p1_i > p_∥.i arises due to the adiabatic invariance of the ion magnetic moment p_||,i and p ⊥,i are the ion pressures parallel and perpendicular to B. When initially β i = 0.5 (Bi = 8π pi/|B|2, where p i is the ion isotropic pressure), the pressure anisotropy is limited mainly by inelastic pitch-angle scattering provided by the IC instability, which in turn produces a nonthermal tail in the ion energy spectrum. After B is amplified by a factor of ~2.7, this tail can be approximated as a power law of index ~3.4 plus two nonthermal bumps and accounts for 2%–3% of the ions and ~18% of their kinetic energy. On the contrary, when initially β i = 2, the ion scattering is dominated by the mirror instability, and the acceleration is suppressed. This implies that efficient ion acceleration requires that initially, β i < 1. Although we focus on cases where B is amplified by plasma shear, we check that the acceleration occurs similarly if B grows due to plasma compression. Our results are valid in a subrelativistic regime where the ion thermal energy is ~10% of the ion rest-mass energy. This acceleration process can thus be relevant in the inner region of low-luminosity accretion flows around black holes

Radio and gamma-ray follow-up of the exceptionally high activity state of PKS 1510-089 in 2011

We investigate the radio and gamma-ray variability of the flat spectrum radio quasar PKS 1510-089 in the time range between 2010 November and 2012 January. In this period the source showed an intense activity, with two major gamma-ray flares detected in 2011 July and October. During the latter episode both the gamma-ray and the radio flux density reached their historical peak. Multiwavelength analysis shows a rotation of about 380 deg of the optical polarization angle close in time with the rapid and strong gamma-ray flare in 2011 July. An enhancement of the optical emission and an increase of the fractional polarization both in the optical and in radio bands is observed about three weeks later, close in time with another gamma-ray outburst. On the other hand, after 2011 September a huge radio outburst has been detected, first in the millimeter regime followed with some time delay at centimeter down to decimeter wavelengths. This radio flare is characterized by a rising and a decaying stage, in agreement with the formation of a shock and its evolution, as a consequence of expansion and radiative cooling. If the gamma-ray flare observed in 2011 October is related to this radio outburst, then this strongly indicates that the region responsible for the gamma-ray variability is not within the broad line, but a few parsecs downstream along the jet.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Evaluating the impact of sex-biased genetic admixture in the americas through the analysis of haplotype data

A general imbalance in the proportion of disembarked males and females in the Americas has been documented during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Colonial Era and, although less prominent, more recently. This imbalance may have left a signature on the genomes of modern-day populations characterised by high levels of admixture. The analysis of the uniparental systems and the evaluation of continental proportion ratio of autosomal and X chromosomes revealed a general sex imbalance towards males for European and females for African and Indigenous American ancestries. However, the consistency and degree of this imbalance are variable, suggesting that other factors, such as cultural and social practices, may have played a role in shaping it. Moreover, very few investigations have evaluated the sex imbalance using haplotype data, containing more critical information than genotypes. Here, we analysed genome-wide data for more than 5000 admixed American individuals to assess the presence, direction and magnitude of sex-biased admixture in the Americas. For this purpose, we applied two haplotype-based approaches, ELAI and NNLS, and we compared them with a genotype-based method, ADMIXTURE. In doing so, besides a general agreement between methods, we unravelled that the post-colonial admixture dynamics show higher complexity than previously described