Ventilator-associated Pneumonia After Elective Cardiac Surgery Caused by Pneumocystis Jirovecii

Ventilator-associated pneumonia is a severe complication among patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Although hospital-acquired bacterial pathogens, often multidrug resistant, are the most frequent cause, non-bacterial atypical and opportunistic agents traditionally associated with immunocompromise are increasingly recognized. We describe ventilator-associated pneumonia due to Pneumocystis jirovecii in the absence of traditional risk factors for Pneumocystis pneumonia in a patient after cardiac surgery

Cytomolecular identification of individual wheat-wheat chromosome arm associations in wheat-rye hybrids

Chromosome pairing in the meiotic metaphase I of wheatrye hybrids has been characterized by sequential genomic and fluorescent in situ hybridization allowing not only the discrimination of wheat and rye chromosomes, but also the identification of the individual wheat and rye chromosome arms involved in the chromosome associations. The majority of associations (93.8%) were observed between the wheat chromosomes. The largest number of wheat-wheat chromosome associations (53%) was detected between the A and D genomes, while the frequency of B-D and A-B associations was significantly lower (32 and 8%, respectively). Among the A-D chromosome associations, pairing between the 3AL and 3DL arms was observed with the highest frequency, while the most frequent of all the chromosome associations (0.113/ cell) was found to be the 3DS-3BS. Differences in the pairing frequency of the individual chromosome arms of wheat-rye hybrids have been discussed in relation to the homoeologous relationships between the constituent genomes of hexaploid wheat

The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs: Two planets on opposite sides of the radius gap transiting the nearby M dwarf LTT 3780

Full list of authors: Nowak, G.; Luque, R.; Parviainen, H.; Pallé, E.; Molaverdikhani, K.; Béjar, V. J. S.; Lillo-Box, J.; Rodríguez-López, C.; Caballero, J. A.; Zechmeister, M.; Passegger, V. M.; Cifuentes, C.; Schweitzer, A.; Narita, N.; Cale, B.; Espinoza, N.; Murgas, F.; Hidalgo, D.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.; Pozuelos, F. J.; Aceituno, F. J.; Amado, P. J.; Barkaoui, K.; Barrado, D.; Bauer, F. F.; Benkhaldoun, Z.; Caldwell, D. A.; Casasayas Barris, N.; Chaturvedi, P.; Chen, G.; Collins, K. A.; Collins, K. I.; Cortés-Contreras, M.; Crossfield, I. J. M.; de León, J. P.; Díez Alonso, E.; Dreizler, S.; El Mufti, M.; Esparza-Borges, E.; Essack, Z.; Fukui, A.; Gaidos, E.; Gillon, M.; Gonzales, E. J.; Guerra, P.; Hatzes, A.; Henning, Th.; Herrero, E.; Hesse, K.; Hirano, T.; Howell, S. B.; Jeffers, S. V.; Jehin, E.; Jenkins, J. M.; Kaminski, A.; Kemmer, J.; Kielkopf, J. F.; Kossakowski, D.; Kotani, T.; Kürster, M.; Lafarga, M.; Latham, D. W.; Law, N.; Lissauer, J. J.; Lodieu, N.; Madrigal-Aguado, A.; Mann, A. W.; Massey, B.; Matson, R. A.; Matthews, E.; Montañés-Rodríguez, P.; Montes, D.; Morales, J. C.; Mori, M.; Nagel, E.; Oshagh, M.; Pedraz, S.; Plavchan, P.; Pollacco, D.; Quirrenbach, A.; Reffert, S.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I.; Ricker, G. R.; Rose, M. E.; Schlecker, M.; Schlieder, J. E.; Seager, S.; Stangret, M.; Stock, S.; Tamura, M.; Tanner, A.; Teske, J.; Trifonov, T.; Twicken, J. D.; Vanderspek, R.; Watanabe, D.; Wittrock, J.; Ziegler, C.; Zohrabi, F.We present the discovery and characterisation of two transiting planets observed by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) orbiting the nearby (d∗ ≈ 22 pc), bright (J ≈ 9 mag) M3.5 dwarf LTT 3780 (TOI-732). We confirm both planets and their association with LTT 3780 via ground-based photometry and determine their masses using precise radial velocities measured with the CARMENES spectrograph. Precise stellar parameters determined from CARMENES high-resolution spectra confirm that LTT 3780 is a mid-M dwarf with an effective temperature of Teff = 3360 ± 51 K, a surface gravity of log g∗ = 4.81 ± 0.04 (cgs), and an iron abundance of [Fe/H] = 0.09 ± 0.16 dex, with an inferred mass of M∗ = 0.379 ± 0.016M· and a radius of R∗ = 0.382 ± 0.012R·. The ultra-short-period planet LTT 3780 b (Pb = 0.77 d) with a radius of 1.35-0.06+0.06 R·, a mass of 2.34-0.23+0.24 M·, and a bulk density of 5.24-0.81+0.94 g cm-3 joins the population of Earth-size planets with rocky, terrestrial composition. The outer planet, LTT 3780 c, with an orbital period of 12.25 d, radius of 2.42-0.10+0.10 R·, mass of 6.29-0.61+0.63 M·, and mean density of 2.45-0.37+0.44 g cm-3 belongs to the population of dense sub-Neptunes. With the two planets located on opposite sides of the radius gap, this planetary system is anexcellent target for testing planetary formation, evolution, and atmospheric models. In particular, LTT 3780 c is an ideal object for atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). © 2020 ESO.CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almeria, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF FICTS-2011-02 funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl, Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Institut fur Astrophysik Gottingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thuringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiologia and Centro Astronomico Hispano-Aleman), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the German Science Foundation through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and DFG Research Unit FOR2544 "Blue Planets around Red Stars", the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucia. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. We acknowledge the use of public TOI Release 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. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium).Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This article is partly based on observations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by ABC, at Telescopio Carlos Sanchez operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. This work makes use of observations acquired with the T150 telescope at Sierra Nevada Observatory, operated by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAACSIC). Some of the Observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument 'Alopeke at Gemini-North. `Alopeke was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. IRD is operated by the Astrobiology Center of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences. The research leading to these results has received funding from the ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions, financed by the WalloniaBrussels Federation. TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant FRFC 2.5.594.09.F, with the participation of the Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF). TRAPPIST-North is a project funded by the University of Liege (Belgium), in collaboration with Cadi Ayyad University of Marrakech (Morocco) M.G. and E.J. are F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. The authors acknowledge funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness through projects PGC2018-098153-B-C31 and AYA2015-69350-C3-2-P. This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP18H01265 and JP18H05439, and JST PRESTO Grant Number JPMJPR1775. V.M.P. acknowledges support from NASA Grant NNX17AG24G. T.H. acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28. This research has been partially funded by Project No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia "Maria de Maeztu" -Centro de Astrobiologia (INTA-CSIC). This research acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709) and project AYA2016-794425

Evolution of Linear Absorption and Nonlinear Optical Properties in V-Shaped Ruthenium(II)-Based Chromophores

In this article, we describe a series of complexes with electron-rich cis-{Ru^(II)(NH_3)_4}^(2+) centers coordinated to two pyridyl ligands bearing N-methyl/arylpyridinium electron-acceptor groups. These V-shaped dipolar species are new, extended members of a class of chromophores first reported by us (Coe, B. J. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005, 127, 4845−4859). They have been isolated as their PF_6− salts and characterized by using various techniques including ^1H NMR and electronic absorption spectroscopies and cyclic voltammetry. Reversible Ru^(III/II) waves show that the new complexes are potentially redox-switchable chromophores. Single crystal X-ray structures have been obtained for four complex salts; three of these crystallize noncentrosymmetrically, but with the individual molecular dipoles aligned largely antiparallel. Very large molecular first hyperpolarizabilities β have been determined by using hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) with an 800 nm laser and also via Stark (electroabsorption) spectroscopic studies on the intense, visible d → π^* metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) and π → π^* intraligand charge-transfer (ILCT) bands. The latter measurements afford total nonresonant β_0 responses as high as ca. 600 × 10^(−30) esu. These pseudo-C_(2v) chromophores show two substantial components of the β tensor, β_(zzz) and β_(zyy), although the relative significance of these varies with the physical method applied. According to HRS, β_(zzz) dominates in all cases, whereas the Stark analyses indicate that β_(zyy) is dominant in the shorter chromophores, but β_(zzz) and β_(zyy) are similar for the extended species. In contrast, finite field calculations predict that β_(zyy) is always the major component. Time-dependent density functional theory calculations predict increasing ILCT character for the nominally MLCT transitions and accompanying blue-shifts of the visible absorptions, as the ligand π-systems are extended. Such unusual behavior has also been observed with related 1D complexes (Coe, B. J. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2004, 126, 3880−3891)

Coherent control of electron spin qubits in silicon using a global field

Silicon spin qubits promise to leverage the extraordinary progress in silicon nanoelectronic device fabrication over the past half century to deliver large-scale quantum processors. Despite the scalability advantage of using silicon technology, realising a quantum computer with the millions of qubits required to run some of the most demanding quantum algorithms poses several outstanding challenges, including how to control so many qubits simultaneously. Recently, compact 3D microwave dielectric resonators were proposed as a way to deliver the magnetic fields for spin qubit control across an entire quantum chip using only a single microwave source. Although spin resonance of individual electrons in the globally applied microwave field was demonstrated, the spins were controlled incoherently. Here we report coherent Rabi oscillations of single electron spin qubits in a planar SiMOS quantum dot device using a global magnetic field generated off-chip. The observation of coherent qubit control driven by a dielectric resonator establishes a credible pathway to achieving large-scale control in a spin-based quantum computer

Diquat Derivatives: Highly Active, Two-Dimensional Nonlinear Optical Chromophores with Potential Redox Switchability

In this article, we present a detailed study of structure−activity relationships in diquaternized 2,2′-bipyridyl (diquat) derivatives. Sixteen new chromophores have been synthesized, with variations in the amino electron donor substituents, π-conjugated bridge, and alkyl diquaternizing unit. Our aim is to combine very large, two-dimensional (2D) quadratic nonlinear optical (NLO) responses with reversible redox chemistry. The chromophores have been characterized as their PF_6^− salts by using various techniques including electronic absorption spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. Their visible absorption spectra are dominated by intense π → π^* intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) bands, and all show two reversible diquat-based reductions. First hyperpolarizabilities β have been measured by using hyper-Rayleigh scattering with an 800 nm laser, and Stark spectroscopy of the ICT bands affords estimated static first hyperpolarizabilities β_0. The directly and indirectly derived β values are large and increase with the extent of π-conjugation and electron donor strength. Extending the quaternizing alkyl linkage always increases the ICT energy and decreases the E_(1/2) values for diquat reduction, but a compensating increase in the ICT intensity prevents significant decreases in Stark-based β_0 responses. Nine single-crystal X-ray structures have also been obtained. Time-dependent density functional theory clarifies the molecular electronic/optical properties, and finite field calculations agree with polarized HRS data in that the NLO responses of the disubstituted species are dominated by ‘off-diagonal’ β_(zyy) components. The most significant findings of these studies are: (i) β_0 values as much as 6 times that of the chromophore in the technologically important material (E)-4′-(dimethylamino)-N-methyl-4-stilbazolium tosylate; (ii) reversible electrochemistry that offers potential for redox-switching of optical properties over multiple states; (iii) strongly 2D NLO responses that may be exploited for novel practical applications; (iv) a new polar material, suitable for bulk NLO behavior

Understanding the Nature of the Optical Emission in Gamma-Ray Bursts: Analysis from TAROT, COATLI, and RATIR Observations

We collected the optical light curve data of 227 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed with the TAROT, COATLI, and RATIR telescopes. These consist of 133 detections and 94 upper limits. We constructed average light curves in the observer and rest frames in both X-rays (from {\itshape Swift}/XRT) and in the optical. Our analysis focused on investigating the observational and intrinsic properties of GRBs. Specifically, we examined observational properties, such as the optical brightness function of the GRBs at $T=1000$ seconds after the trigger, as well as the temporal slope of the afterglow. We also estimated the redshift distribution for the GRBs within our sample. Of the 227 GRBs analysed, we found that 116 had a measured redshift. Based on these data, we calculated a local rate of $\rho_0=0.2$ Gpc$^{-3}$ yr$^{-1}$ for these events with $z<1$. To explore the intrinsic properties of GRBs, we examined the average X-ray and optical light curves in the rest frame. We use the {\scshape afterglowpy} library to generate synthetic curves to constrain the parameters typical of the bright GRB jet, such as energy (${\langle} {E_{0}}{\rangle}\sim 10^{53.6}$~erg), opening angle (${\langle}\theta_\mathrm{core}{\rangle}\sim 0.2$~rad), and density (${\langle}n_\mathrm{0}{\rangle}\sim10^{-2.1}$ cm$^{-3}$). Furthermore, we analyse microphysical parameters, including the fraction of thermal energy in accelerated electrons (${\langle}\epsilon_e{\rangle}\sim 10^{-1.37}$) and in the magnetic field (${\langle}\epsilon_B{\rangle}\sim10^{-2.26}$), and the power-law index of the population of non-thermal electrons (${\langle}p{\rangle}\sim 2.2$).Comment: Resubmitted to MNRAS after minor revision, 13 pages and 9 figure

The Snail repressor recruits EZH2 to specific genomic sites through the enrollment of the lncRNA HOTAIR in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition

The transcription factor Snail is a master regulator of cellular identity and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) directly repressing a broad repertoire of epithelial genes. How chromatin modifiers instrumental to its activity are recruited to Snail-specific binding sites is unclear. Here we report that the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) HOTAIR (for HOX Transcript Antisense Intergenic RNA) mediates a physical interaction between Snail and enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2), an enzymatic subunit of the polycomb-repressive complex 2 and the main writer of chromatin-repressive marks. The Snail-repressive activity, here monitored on genes with a pivotal function in epithelial and hepatic morphogenesis, differentiation and cell-type identity, depends on the formation of a tripartite Snail/HOTAIR/EZH2 complex. These results demonstrate an lncRNA-mediated mechanism by which a transcriptional factor conveys a general chromatin modifier to specific genes, thereby allowing the execution of hepatocyte transdifferentiation; moreover, they highlight HOTAIR as a crucial player in the Snail-mediated EMT.Oncogene advance online publication, 25 July 2016; doi:10.1038/onc.2016.260