GeMs/GSAOI observations of La Serena 94: an old and far open cluster inside the solar circle

Physical properties were derived for the candidate open cluster La Serena 94, recently unveiled by the VVV collaboration. Thanks to the exquisite angular resolution provided by GeMS/GSAOI, we could characterize this system in detail, for the first time, with deep photometry in JHK$_{s}$ - bands. Decontaminated JHK$_{s}$ diagrams reach about 5 mag below the cluster turnoff in H. The locus of red clump giants in the colour - colour diagram, together with an extinction law, was used to obtain an average extinction of $A_V =14.18 \pm 0.71$. The same stars were considered as standard - candles to derive the cluster distance, $8.5 \pm 1.0$ kpc. Isochrones were matched to the cluster colour - magnitude diagrams to determine its age, $\log{t(yr)}=9.12\pm 0.06$, and metallicity, $Z=0.02\pm0.01$. A core radius of $r_{c}=0.51\pm 0.04$ pc was found by fitting King models to the radial density profile. By adding up the visible stellar mass to an extrapolated mass function, the cluster mass was estimated as $M=(2.65\pm0.57) \times 10^3$ M$_{\odot}$, consistent with an integrated magnitude of $M_{K}=-5.82\pm0.16$ and a tidal radius of $r_{t}=17.2\pm2.1$ pc. The overall characteristics of La Serena 94 confirm that it is an old open cluster located in the Crux spiral arm towards the fourth Galactic quadrant and distant $7.30\pm 0.49$ kpc from the Galactic centre. The cluster distorted structure, mass segregation and age indicate that it is a dynamically evolved stellar system.Comment: 16 pages, 24 figures, 2 Tables, accepted by MNRAS; corrected typo

Durabilidade e atratividade de CeraTrap à Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae).

O objetivo deste trabalho foi comparar a atratividade da CeraTrap com o Trimedlure para o monitoramento de C. capitata, bem como a sua durabilidade no ambiente. Semiárido

Statistics of Stellar Populations of Star Clusters and Surrounding Fields in the Outer Disk of the Large Magellanic Cloud

A comparative analysis of Washington color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for 14 star clusters and respective surrounding fields in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) outer disk is presented. Each CCD frame including field and respective cluster covers an area of 185 arcmin^2. The stellar population sampled is of intermediate age and metallicity. CMD radial analysis involving star count ratios, morphology and integrated light properties are carried out. Luminosity functions (LFs) are also presented. Two main results are: (i) Within the range 4<R(kpc)<8, the distance from the LMC center is well correlated with the average age in the sense that inner fields are younger and; (ii) Beyond approximately 8kpc the outer fields do not show evidence of a significant intermediate-age component in their stellar populations, as inferred from red giant clump star counts.Comment: 27 pages, 4 tables, 11 figures; accepted by the A

Nevoid Basal-cell Syndrome: Literature Review And Case Report In A Family.

The Nevoid Basal-Cell Carcinoma Syndrome (NBCC), or as it is also referred to, basal-cell nevus syndrome or Gorlin-Goltz syndrome, is characterized by multiple early-appearing basal cell carcinomas, keratocytosis of the mandible, and anomalies of the ocular, skeletal reproductive system. We describe four patients in the same family, all of them possessing a large number of skin tumors associated with other typical clinical and X-Ray anomalies of NBCC. The definitive treatment of NBCC has yet to be established, however, early diagnosis is very important as well as the periodical follow-up examination of ten patients, mainly due to the transformations in the skin lesions that may occur.113391792

Ventricular BNP gene expression in acute cardiac overload

INTRODUCTION:B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) plasma levels have important diagnostic and prognostic implications in heart failure (HF). Recently, aside from its natriuretic effect, antiproliferative and antifibrotic actions of BNP on the cardiovascular system have been described. Under physiological conditions the atria are the main source of this peptide, while its ventricular expression is still controversial. The aim of this work was to evaluate, in an animal model, the ventricular expression of BNP in normal hearts, at baseline and under acute cardiac overload.METHODS:Anesthetized open chest male Wistar rats (n=18) were instrumented with a micromanometer in the right ventricular cavity for pressure assessment. Randomization for three different protocols was then performed: (i) pressure overload for a period of 6 hours (SPr; n = 6), by pulmonary trunk banding, in order to double basal right ventricular systolic pressure; (ii) volume overload with a six-hour perfusion of Dextran 40 (SVol; n = 6), to raise end-diastolic right ventricular pressure fourfold; (iii) sham operated rats (n = 6). Transmural samples from the right ventricular free wall were then obtained for quantification of BNP mRNA by RT and quantitative real-time PCR. The results are expressed as mean+/-SEM (number molecules of mRNA BNP)/(ng total mRNA); p < 0.05.RESULTS:A basal expression of BNP was identified in the sham group (3.6x10(7) +/- 1.7x10(7)). BNP mRNA levels were elevated in both the SPr and SVol groups (+123.1 +/- 46.3% SPr and +171.6 +/- 87.7% SVol).CONCLUSIONS:Acute cardiac pressure and volume overload are associated with increased ventricular BNP gene expression. Our results suggest that BNP may be involved in early ventricular remodeling

UFPR-Periocular: A Periocular Dataset Collected by Mobile Devices in Unconstrained Scenarios

Recently, ocular biometrics in unconstrained environments using images obtained at visible wavelength have gained the researchers' attention, especially with images captured by mobile devices. Periocular recognition has been demonstrated to be an alternative when the iris trait is not available due to occlusions or low image resolution. However, the periocular trait does not have the high uniqueness presented in the iris trait. Thus, the use of datasets containing many subjects is essential to assess biometric systems' capacity to extract discriminating information from the periocular region. Also, to address the within-class variability caused by lighting and attributes in the periocular region, it is of paramount importance to use datasets with images of the same subject captured in distinct sessions. As the datasets available in the literature do not present all these factors, in this work, we present a new periocular dataset containing samples from 1,122 subjects, acquired in 3 sessions by 196 different mobile devices. The images were captured under unconstrained environments with just a single instruction to the participants: to place their eyes on a region of interest. We also performed an extensive benchmark with several Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures and models that have been employed in state-of-the-art approaches based on Multi-class Classification, Multitask Learning, Pairwise Filters Network, and Siamese Network. The results achieved in the closed- and open-world protocol, considering the identification and verification tasks, show that this area still needs research and development