Effect of Puromycin on Mitotic Index, Amino Acid Incorporation and Dna Synthesis of Epidermal Cells

Puromycin 200 mg/kg given systemically will block DNA synthesis, amino acid incorporation and mitosis in the epidermis of the baby rat. Topically applied solutions of 1% puromycin did not have any effect on uptake of H3 thymidine or on mitosis of the epidermal cells. H3-puromycin given intraperitoneally was demonstrated in the epidermal cells by radioautographs but no evidence of labeling of epidermal cells was found by topical application

Urine Orotic Acid-Orotidine Levels in Azaribine-Treated Patients with Psoriasis

Azaribine, as a pyrimidine analog, blocks the decarboxylase conversion of orotidylic acid to uridine monophosphate with a resultant excretion of accumulated orotic acid and orotidine in the urine. Patients treated with azaribine may develop transitory, severe central nervous system symptoms of depression, lethargy, and ataxia. These side effects are not predictable from oral dosage, and blood levels of the drug are very difficult to determine. All of our psoriatic patients treated with azaribine excreted large but variable amounts of orotic acid-orotidine in the urine. Spot urine ratios of orotic acid-orotidine:creatinine correlated very well with measured 24-hr urine output of orotic acid-orotidine. Patients with central nervous system symptoms were found to have very high urine levels of orotic acid orotidine. These symptoms can be prevented by monitoring the urinary orotic acid-orotidine:creatinine ratio levels and keeping them within a range which is still compatible with successful management of the psoriatic lesions

Type II-P Supernovae from the SDSS-II Supernova Survey and the Standardized Candle Method

We apply the Standardized Candle Method (SCM) for Type II Plateau supernovae (SNe II-P), which relates the velocity of the ejecta of a SN to its luminosity during the plateau, to 15 SNe II-P discovered over the three season run of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - II Supernova Survey. The redshifts of these SNe - 0.027 < z < 0.144 - cover a range hitherto sparsely sampled in the literature; in particular, our SNe II-P sample contains nearly as many SNe in the Hubble flow (z > 0.01) as all of the current literature on the SCM combined. We find that the SDSS SNe have a very small intrinsic I-band dispersion (0.22 mag), which can be attributed to selection effects. When the SCM is applied to the combined SDSS-plus-literature set of SNe II-P, the dispersion increases to 0.29 mag, larger than the scatter for either set of SNe separately. We show that the standardization cannot be further improved by eliminating SNe with positive plateau decline rates, as proposed in Poznanski et al. (2009). We thoroughly examine all potential systematic effects and conclude that for the SCM to be useful for cosmology, the methods currently used to determine the Fe II velocity at day 50 must be improved, and spectral templates able to encompass the intrinsic variations of Type II-P SNe will be needed.Comment: Accepted for publication by ApJ; data used in this paper can be downloaded from http://sdssdp47.fnal.gov/sdsssn/photometry/SNIIp.tgz; citation errors correcte

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search. IV. Statistical Lens Sample from the Fifth Data Release

We present the second report of our systematic search for strongly lensed quasars from the data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). From extensive follow-up observations of 136 candidate objects, we find 36 lenses in the full sample of 77,429 spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the SDSS Data Release 5. We then define a complete sample of 19 lenses, including 11 from our previous search in the SDSS Data Release 3, from the sample of 36,287 quasars with i<19.1 in the redshift range 0.6<z<2.2, where we require the lenses to have image separations of 1"<\theta<20" and i-band magnitude differences between the two images smaller than 1.25 mag. Among the 19 lensed quasars, 3 have quadruple-image configurations, while the remaining 16 show double images. This lens sample constrains the cosmological constant to be \Omega_\Lambda=0.84^{+0.06}_{-0.08}(stat.)^{+0.09}_{-0.07}(syst.) assuming a flat universe, which is in good agreement with other cosmological observations. We also report the discoveries of 7 binary quasars with separations ranging from 1.1" to 16.6", which are identified in the course of our lens survey. This study concludes the construction of our statistical lens sample in the full SDSS-I data set.Comment: 37 pages, 2 figures and 5 tables, accepted to A

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog IV. Fifth Data Release

We present the fourth edition of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Catalog. The catalog contains 77,429 objects; this is an increase of over 30,000 entries since the previous edition. The catalog consists of the objects in the SDSS Fifth Data Release that have luminosities larger than M_i = -22.0 (in a cosmology with H_0 = 70 km/s/Mpc, Omega_M = 0.3, and Omega_Lambda = 0.7) have at least one emission line with FWHM larger than 1000 km/s, or have interesting/complex absorption features, are fainter than i=15.0, and have highly reliable redshifts. The area covered by the catalog is 5740 sq. deg. The quasar redshifts range from 0.08 to 5.41, with a median value of 1.48; the catalog includes 891 quasars at redshifts greater than four, of which 36 are at redshifts greater than five. Approximately half of the catalog quasars have i < 19; nearly all have i < 21. For each object the catalog presents positions accurate to better than 0.2 arcsec. rms per coordinate, five-band (ugriz) CCD-based photometry with typical accuracy of 0.03 mag, and information on the morphology and selection method. The catalog also contains basic radio, near-infrared, and X-ray emission properties of the quasars, when available, from other large-area surveys. The calibrated digital spectra cover the wavelength region 3800--9200A at a spectral resolution of ~2000. The spectra can be retrieved from the public database using the information provided in the catalog. The average SDSS colors of quasars as a function of redshift, derived from the catalog entries, are presented in tabular form. Approximately 96% of the objects in the catalog were discovered by the SDSS.Comment: 37 pages, Accepted for publication in A

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search. V. Final Catalog from the Seventh Data Release

We present the final statistical sample of lensed quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Lens Search (SQLS). The well-defined statistical lens sample consists of 26 lensed quasars brighter than i=19.1 and in the redshift range of 0.6<z<2.2 selected from 50,836 spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7), where we restrict the image separation range to 1"<\theta<20" and the i-band magnitude differences in two image lenses to be smaller than 1.25 mag. The SDSS DR7 quasar catalog also contains 36 additional lenses identified with various techniques. In addition to these lensed quasars, we have identified 81 pairs of quasars from follow-up spectroscopy, 26 of which are physically associated binary quasars. The statistical lens sample covers a wide range of image separations, redshifts, and magnitudes, and therefore is suitable for systematic studies of cosmological parameters and surveys of the structure and evolution of galaxies and quasars.Comment: 42 pages, 2 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in AJ; see http://www-utap.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~sdss/sqls/ for supplemental informatio

A Large Sample of BL Lacs from SDSS and FIRST

We present a large sample of 501 radio-selected BL Lac candidates from the combination of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 optical spectroscopy and from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters (FIRST) radio survey; this is one of the largest BL Lac samples yet assembled, and each object emerges with homogeneous data coverage. Each candidate is detected in the radio from FIRST and confirmed in SDSS optical spectroscopy to have: (1) no emission feature with measured rest equivalent width larger than 5 Angstroms; and (2) no measured Ca II H/K depression larger than 40%. We subdivide our sample into 426 higher confidence candidates and 75 lower confidence candidates. We argue that contamination from other classes of objects that formally pass our selection criteria is small, and we identify a few very rare radio AGN with unusual spectra that are probably related to broad absorption line quasars. About one-fifth of our sample were known BL Lacs prior to the SDSS. A preliminary analysis of the sample generally supports the standard beaming paradigm. While we recover sizable numbers of low-energy and intermediate-energy cutoff BL Lacs (LBLs and IBLs, respectively), there are indications of a potential bias toward recovering high-energy cutoff BL Lacs (HBLs) from SDSS spectroscopy. Such a large sample may eventually provide new constraints on BL Lac unification models and their potentially peculiar cosmic evolution; in particular, our sample contains a significant number of higher redshift objects, a sub-population for which the standard paradigm has yet to be rigorously constrained.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for Publication in the Astronomical Journa

Galaxy Clustering in Early SDSS Redshift Data

We present the first measurements of clustering in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) galaxy redshift survey. Our sample consists of 29,300 galaxies with redshifts 5,700 km/s < cz < 39,000 km/s, distributed in several long but narrow (2.5-5 degree) segments, covering 690 square degrees. For the full, flux-limited sample, the redshift-space correlation length is approximately 8 Mpc/h. The two-dimensional correlation function \xi(r_p,\pi) shows clear signatures of both the small-scale, ``fingers-of-God'' distortion caused by velocity dispersions in collapsed objects and the large-scale compression caused by coherent flows, though the latter cannot be measured with high precision in the present sample. The inferred real-space correlation function is well described by a power law, \xi(r)=(r/6.1+/-0.2 Mpc/h)^{-1.75+/-0.03}, for 0.1 Mpc/h < r < 16 Mpc/h. The galaxy pairwise velocity dispersion is \sigma_{12} ~ 600+/-100 km/s for projected separations 0.15 Mpc/h < r_p < 5 Mpc/h. When we divide the sample by color, the red galaxies exhibit a stronger and steeper real-space correlation function and a higher pairwise velocity dispersion than do the blue galaxies. The relative behavior of subsamples defined by high/low profile concentration or high/low surface brightness is qualitatively similar to that of the red/blue subsamples. Our most striking result is a clear measurement of scale-independent luminosity bias at r < 10 Mpc/h: subsamples with absolute magnitude ranges centered on M_*-1.5, M_*, and M_*+1.5 have real-space correlation functions that are parallel power laws of slope ~ -1.8 with correlation lengths of approximately 7.4 Mpc/h, 6.3 Mpc/h, and 4.7 Mpc/h, respectively.Comment: 51 pages, 18 figures. Replaced to match accepted ApJ versio