Yellow Star Research Articles

Orbital cellulitis as the initial presentation of Langerhans cell histiocytosis in an adult patient

A 28-year-old woman presented with 3 weeks of right-sided blurry vision, proptosis, orbital pain, and upper eye lid swelling. She also complained of progressively worsening intermittent headaches. She had been evaluated in the emergency department multiple times for the same complaint, and had received multiple courses of intravenous antibiotics with minimal improvement. Physical examination revealed significant proptosis of the right eye although visual acuity was preserved in both eyes. Initial laboratory studies including complete blood count, basic metabolic panel, and thyroid functioning tests were within normal limits. An infectious workup including blood and fungal cultures were negative. A non-contrast computed tomography (CT) scan of the head demonstrated a mass on the right orbital rim which was concerning for right periorbital and orbital cellulitis, with the post septal component present along the superior and lateral aspects of the right orbit (Figure 1A). Broad spectrum antibiotics were initiated and a repeat magnetic resonance imaging scan performed ten days later showed partial improvement of the inflammatory changes associated with orbital cellulitis. However, there was an interval increase in the size of a more discrete mass-appearing lesion which was now eroding into the adjacent bony structures (Figure 1B). A biopsy of the lesion showed an infiltrate which stained strongly positive for CD1a and S100 (Figure 1C-F). A diagnosis of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) was considered. CT scans of the chest and abdomen-pelvis and a bone marrow biopsy did not show evidence of systemic LCH disease. She declined therapy and her prognosis is unknown. CNS imaging findings for Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). A: CT head without contrast showed right periorbital edema with underlying, focal cortical destruction of the right superior orbital rim consistent with periorbital cellulitis. B: A MR of the orbits performed 2 weeks later showed an enlargement of the mass with invasion into the orbital rim. The mass is delineated by a yellow star. Subsequent pathology obtained from biopsy of the mass revealed Langerhans's histiocytosis (eosinophilic granuloma). C: Low power view; (E) High power view (cells are medium to large size, with folded/convoluted nuclei, fine chromatin, abundant eosinophilic cytoplasm in a background of eosinophils, neutrophils and small lymphocytes; (D) CD1a positive; (F) S100 positive LCH, previously known as histiocytosis X, describes a spectrum of proliferation of Langerhans cells that may manifest as a single system or multiple system disease. Although solitary ocular manifestations of LCH without evidence of systemic LCH are documented in children, they are rare in adults. The location of the infiltrate within the orbit largely determines the patient's presenting complaints.1 Most orbital manifestations of LCH in adults have been in the context of systemic LCH disease with only a handful of cases of solitary orbital LCH presenting as orbital cellulitis documented. The diagnosis is primarily determined by a biopsy of the presenting lesion, where immunohistochemical staining with S100 and CD1a is characteristic of Langerhans cells.2 Treatment strategies for orbital LCH depend on “case-by-case basis” and surgical resection and radiation is reserved for solitary lesions in children. Given its rarity, ideal management strategies are unclear, however solitary orbital LCH can spread to the central nervous system, and these patients can develop diabetes insipidus and systemic LCH. Aggressive prolonged multi-drug regimens including combinations of vincristine, prednisolone, etoposide, and methotrexate are used for treatment, with routine surveillance for recurrence with history, examination, and imaging. None. Not Applicable Obtained AD drafted and revised the manuscript. AG provided care for the patient and conceptualized the report. AG and HN revised and edited the manuscript for intellectual content.

Law and Human Suffering: A Slice of Life in Vichy France

This essay discusses three diaries of the French Nazi occupation era. One offers moral reflection concerning the collaborationist state and the Nazi occupier. The second is by a student from an old French Jewish family who writes of, among other things, what it meant to have to wear the yellow star. The final diary spans just one month, starting from the arrest of the author's husband. He was about to be deported on the last train to leave Paris. These diaries show us a slice of life of the times, as they spur us to reflection on law and humanity.

Auditory Brain Development in Children With Hearing Loss – Part One

Auditory Brain Development in Children With Hearing Loss – Part One

Monitoring Understory Composition of Blue Oak Woodlands on Conservation Easements

Conservation easements are an increasingly popular strategy for conserving biological diversity on private land. Long-term vegetation monitoring on conservation easements can provide critical information on persistence of biological diversity and abundance of invasive species. We sampled understory plant composition on five of The Nature Conservancy’s conservation easements in the Mt. Lassen foothills of Northern California. We established 73 plots of 10-meter radius, measured species composition with the point-intercept method, and compiled a full species list for each plot in 2005 and 2006. We found significant differences in the relative cover of native and non-native annual grasses and annual forbs among easement properties. Relative cover of native plants was significantly higher in herbaceous plots (50 percent) than in plots with blue oak (Quercus douglasii) canopy (21 percent). We found medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae) in 64 percent of plots and yellow star thistle (Centaurea solstitialis) in 9 percent of plots. Overlap of species composition between years was correlated with difference in date sampled each year but not correlated with confidence in plot relocation. Our analysis of community diversity and relative abundance provides a baseline for future change. Finally, we make recommendations for the design of future monitoring efforts on conservation easements.

Law and Human Suffering: A Slice of Life in Vichy France

This essay discusses three diaries from the Vichy era, the period of the Nazi Occupation of France: Jean Guehenno’s Journal des annees noires 1940-1944, Helene Berr’s Journal, and Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar’s Ceux qui ne dormaient pas. Guehenno was an educator and writer who entered the Resistance in 1940. His diary offers deep moral reflection as well as accounts of the dishonorable peace Vichy imposed and the ignoble servitude to which the new collaborationist French State and the Nazi occupier subjected France. In the final pages, as Leclerc’s army marches into Paris, with a victory he understands to be thanks to the help of the Allied forces, Guehenno dares to rekindle his former faith in humankind. Berr was a young university student born into a wealthy old French Jewish family, the daughter of a famous scientist. Sensitive and generous-spirited, she lived an unusual life inasmuch as her family seemed to suffer no material hardship throughout the years that culminated in their deportation in the spring of 1944. Among the memorable events of her diary is her experience of the first day she was forced to wear the yellow star. Finally, Mesnil-Amar’s diary spans just one month at the end of the war in France, the month in which her husband has been detained and is about to be deported on the last train to leave Paris. The diary evokes her embracing of Jewish identity as a result of being identified as Jewish by anti-Semites. The lyricism of her writing approaches poetry in a work that is both a retrospective and a love letter to her husband. These diaries show us a slice of life of the times, but they also spur us to reflection on law and humanity, their limitations, potentials and fluctuations.

A λ 3 mm and 1 mm line survey toward the yellow hypergiant IRC +10420: N-rich chemistry and IR flux variations.

Our knowledge of the chemical properties of the circumstellar ejecta of the most massive evolved stars is particularly poor. We aim to study the chemical characteristics of the prototypical yellow hypergiant star, IRC +10420. For this purpose, we obtained full line surveys at 1 and 3 mm atmospheric windows. We have identified 106 molecular emission lines from 22 molecular species. Approximately half of the molecules detected are N-bearing species, in particular HCN, HNC, CN, NO, NS, PN, and N2H+. We used rotational diagrams to derive the density and rotational temperature of the different molecular species detected. We introduced an iterative method that allows us to take moderate line opacities into account. We have found that IRC +10420 presents high abundances of the N-bearing molecules compared with O-rich evolved stars. This result supports the presence of a N-rich chemistry, expected for massive stars. Our analysis also suggests a decrease of the 12C/13C ratio from ≳ 7 to ~ 3.7 in the last 3800 years, which can be directly related to the nitrogen enrichment observed. In addition, we found that SiO emission presents a significant intensity decrease for high-J lines when compared with older observations. Radiative transfer modeling shows that this variation can be explained by a decrease in the infrared (IR) flux of the dust. The origin of this decrease might be an expansion of the dust shell or a lower stellar temperature due to the pulsation of the star.

Detecting abrupt changes in the spectra of high-energy astrophysical sources

Variable-intensity astronomical sources are the result of complex and often extreme physical processes. Abrupt changes in source intensity are typically accompanied by equally sudden spectral shifts, that is, sudden changes in the wavelength distribution of the emission. This article develops a method for modeling photon counts collected from observation of such sources. We embed change points into a marked Poisson process, where photon wavelengths are regarded as marks and both the Poisson intensity parameter and the distribution of the marks are allowed to change. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort to embed change points into a marked Poisson process. Between the change points, the spectrum is modeled nonparametrically using a mixture of a smooth radial basis expansion and a number of local deviations from the smooth term representing spectral emission lines. Because the model is over-parameterized, we employ an $\ell_{1}$ penalty. The tuning parameter in the penalty and the number of change points are determined via the minimum description length principle. Our method is validated via a series of simulation studies and its practical utility is illustrated in the analysis of the ultra-fast rotating yellow giant star known as FK Com.

Effect of covering materials on off-season cut flower production in chrysanthemum (Dendrathema grandiflora)

Studies on the effect of covering material on off-season cut flower production of chrysanthemum (Dendranthema grandiflora Tzvelev) were carried out at the experimental farm of the Department of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, Dr Yashwant Singh Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, during 2011 in naturally ventilated polyhouse. The experiment was carried out using three types of covering materials(viz. tarpaulin, high density polyethylene (HDPE) and black sateen cloth) and four cultivars each of standard (Purnima, Yellow Star, Tata Century and White Star) and spray (Ajay, Birbal, Nanako and White Bouquet) varieties. Findings revealed that HDPE was the best alternative covering material to tarpaulin as optimum plant height (83.33 cm), plant spread (40.54 cm), maximum number of cut stems (4.21), duration of flowering (33.54 days) and earliest flower bud formation (91.07 days) and flowering were obtained in plants under HDPE. Flowering was earlier under controlled photoperiod than natural photoperiod. Peak flowering was earliest (140.36 days) in plants under HDPE* cover as compared to plants under natural photoperiodic conditions which took maximum number of days (176.19), to come to peak flowering. The varieties were assigned to different response group under controlled photoperiodic conditions with HDPE. All the varieties tested were found suitable for off-season flower production.

SEARCHING FOR NEW YELLOW SYMBIOTIC STARS: POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION OF StHα63*

ABSTRACT Yellow symbiotic stars are useful targets for probing whether mass transfer has happened in their binary systems. However, the number of known yellow symbiotic stars is very scarce. We report spectroscopic observations of five candidate yellow symbiotic stars that were selected by their positions in the 2MASS (J − H) versus (H − K s ) diagram and which were included in some emission-line catalogs. Among the five candidates, only StHα63 is identified as a new yellow symbiotic star because of its spectrum and its position in the [TiO]1–[TiO]2 diagram, which indicates a K4–K6 spectral type. In addition, the derived electron density (∼108.4 cm−3) and several emission-line intensity ratios provide further support for that classification. The other four candidates are rejected as symbiotic stars because three of them actually do not show emission lines and the fourth one only Balmer emission lines. We also found that the WISE W3–W4 index clearly separates normal K-giants from yellow symbiotic stars and therefore can be used as an additional tool for selecting candidate yellow symbiotic stars.

A LUMINOUS YELLOW POST-AGB STAR IN THE GALACTIC GLOBULAR CLUSTER M79*

ABSTRACT We report the discovery of a luminous F-type post-asymptotic-giant-branch (PAGB) star in the Galactic globular cluster (GC) M79 (NGC 1904). At visual apparent and absolute magnitudes of V = 12.20 ?> and M V = − 3.46 ?> , this “yellow” PAGB star is by a small margin the visually brightest star known in any GC. It was identified using CCD observations in the uBVI photometric system, which is optimized to detect stars with large Balmer discontinuities, indicative of very low surface gravities. Follow-up observations with the SMARTS 1.3 and 1.5 m telescopes show that the star is not variable in light or radial velocity, and that its velocity is consistent with cluster membership. Near- and mid-infrared observations with 2MASS and WISE show no evidence for circumstellar dust. We argue that a sharp upper limit to the luminosity function exists for yellow PAGB stars in old populations, making them excellent candidates for Population II standard candles, which are four magnitudes brighter than RR Lyrae variables. Their luminosities are consistent with the stars being in a PAGB evolutionary phase, with core masses of ∼ 0.53 M ⊙ ?> . We also detected four very hot stars lying above the horizontal branch (“AGB-manqué” stars); along with the PAGB star, they are the brightest objects in M79 in the near-ultraviolet. In the Appendix, we give periods and light curves for five variables in M79: three RR Lyrae stars, a Type II Cepheid, and a semiregular variable.

Spectroscopic view on the outburst activity of the symbiotic binary AG Draconis

Variations of the emission lines in the spectrum of the yellow symbiotic star AG Dra have been studied for over 14 years (1997 - 2011), using more than 500 spectra obtained on the 1.5-metre telescope at Tartu Observatory, Estonia. The time interval covered includes the major (cool) outburst of AG Dra that started in 2006. Main findings can be summarized as follows: (i) cool and hot outbursts of AG Dra can be distinguished from the variations of optical emission lines; (ii) the Raman scattered emission line of O VI at $\lambda\,6825$ almost disappeared during the cool outburst; (iii) lower excitation emission lines did not change significantly during the cool outburst, but they vary in hot outbursts and also follow orbital motion; (iv) similarity of variations in AG Dra to those in the prototypical symbiotic star Z And allows to suggest that a "combination nova" model proposed for the latter object might also be responsible for the outburst behaviour of AG Dra.

Interview with Director Richard Beecham

Richard Beecham's theater includes eclectic credits from Dancing at Lughnasa, In Praise of Love, Humble Boy (Royal & Derngate, Northampton), Red Light Winter, In a Garden, Henry IVPart I (Theatre Royal, Bath), as well as various productions at Salisbury Playhouse, Northcott Theatre Exeter, and the Octagon Theatre, Bolton. Beecham also curates large cultural events such as the National Commemorative Event for Holocaust Memorial Day at Newcastle Theatre Royal. I sat down to interview him just prior to the March 2015 opening of The Crucible Theatre's revival of Arthur Miller's stage version of Playing for Time, with Siân Phillips.David Smith: Am I right in assuming this is your first Miller production?Richard Beecham: That's correct; however I did actually meet him once. I was an undergraduate at Oxford between 1992 and 1995, and in 1995 Arthur Miller was announced as the visiting drama professor. At the time I was a member of the OWLS-the Oxford University Dramatic Society-who were very excited with the news, and invited him to a drinks party. This party was to be held the night before my finals exam. I was behind with my revision, so all I remember is shaking his hand. This enormous man, with big bear hands; he gave off this aura, a charisma, but I just had to run, so that was my one experience with the great man.DS: I was wondering how you and the cast were reacting to the text of the play?RB: It is obviously a very challenging subject matter and everyone in the room comes to it with their own personal story I am Jewish, so I have my own personal connections. We have a number of Jewish actors in the cast; a couple of them have very direct stories, and others just have general awareness. So we have immersed ourselves in research. I drove all the cast crackers, insisting they read this, visit this exhibition there, please watch this, etc. Then of course you get into rehearsal. So now you have to think, we have done that, and now we have to study Miller's play. So I made sure all the actors had read Fania's memoir, as it was Miller's one and only source. We then considered what choices Miller had made-what he had taken or left out of the memoir-and asked the question why he may have made those decisions. That was a very interesting exercise, and further complicated by the fact that Miller had originally written it a screenplay. Having studied and watched the screenplay, there are not huge changes, but obviously there are some due to moving from film to theater.DS: Due to the development from screen to the theater, I was wondering how you were actually going to stage the play? Miller was quite adamant that the play should be seen as a "demonstration," there were to be no unnecessary "adornments."RB: In my opinion every word the playwright writes, whether in the text, stage direction, or a foreword, it is worth probably its weight in gold. But every director has to try to meet the requirements within the theater in which he is producing it. In this case we have a good match, Crucible has a big epic space, and we have a very big cast. It is not a proscenium arch theater-Miller wouldn't want that-so in terms of staging we have created a very epic, open, stripped-back, dark theater space, which we hope is not literally, but metaphorically evocative of the landscape of the play. We are not trying to recreate Auschwitz on the stage. That would not be possible, and if it were, it would not be desirable. We have also been very careful to avoid cliche, so there is no barbed wire or tiered bunks. Those we have really tried to pare back on, so when we are making any visual statements they are very considered. There are some things we felt we had to include, like the yellow stars, the striped uniforms, the kapos, and so on.DS: Of course sound effects are critical to building the atmosphere; machine gun fire in the middle of an orchestral piece, for example.RB: Exactly, I think that the soundscape of the production does carry a lot of the building of the world, creating another attack on the senses of the audience. …

Growing up and growing pores in myoblast fusion

![Figure][1] During Drosophila flight muscle formation, myoblasts (MB) flatten against myotubes (MT), then form many direct contacts (yellow stars) that evolve into fusion pores (red star). [Dhanyasi et al.][2] describe how myoblasts form muscle syncytia in Drosophila flight muscles.

A Rare Cause of Intermittent, Occult Lower Gastrointestinal Bleeding

56-year-old man presented with fatigue and inAtermittent, occult lower gastrointestinal bleeding since a percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty with bare metal stent implantation was performed for critical stenosis of the left anterior descending. Associated medical treatment was aspirin 80 mg and clopidogrel 75 mg daily. One episode of massive lower gastrointestinal bleeding (hemoglobin 5.0 g/dL) occurred 1 day after endoscopic polypectomy, which was treated with 6 units of packed cells. Endoscopic work-up included a negative gastroscopy and colonoscopy. A double-balloon enteroscopy revealed pulsatile waves in the distal ileal mucosa. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography scan revealed a hypertrophied ileocolic artery (arrowheads) feeding a preterminal ileal small bowel loop presenting with a hyperdense contrast enhancement (small arrows); early filling of a hypertrophied ileal draining vein (large arrow) is also seen (Figure A). A catheter-directed selective angiogram showed a hypertrophied ileocolic artery (small arrows) and end-branches (arrowheads) and an early draining hypertrophied ileal vein (large arrow) (Figure B), suggesting an ileal high-flow arterioportal vascular malformation. Because of the large intestinal territory the high-flow malformation was extended, it was decided to resect the affected small bowel segment. Pathologic analysis of the resected specimen (hematoxylin-eosin; original magnification, 25) revealed a submucosal high-flow arteriovenous malformation with very large, thick-walled vessels in the submucosa (yellow arrows); the muscularis propria is indicated by a yellow star (Figure C). Clinical follow-up after surgery was uneventful. High-flow arterioportal vascular malformations are extremely rare and are mostly seen as spontaneously formed vascular lesions within a hepatocellular carcinoma; extrahepatic arterioportal fistulas are extremely rare and can be isolated or associated with a visceral aneurysm, eroding into the portal circulation. Intestinal angiodysplasia is characterized by the presence of thin, ectatic vessels with little or no smooth muscle but without early draining veins. Clinically these lesions tend to bleed intermittently, especially in patients on antiplatelet or anticoagulation drug regimens. In the present case, there was radiologic, macroscopic, and microscopic pathologic evidence of a highflow arterioportal vascular malformation located in the preterminal ileum. Because of the intermittent bleeding episodes and the potential for progression to symptomatic portal hypertension and liver cirrhosis, surgical resection seemed to be justified. These are our main findings. A small bowel highflow arterioportal vascular malformation may cause

Aftershock Observation and Analysis of the 2013Ms 7.0 Lushan Earthquake

Online Material: Figures of station deployment time and of spatial and temporal depiction of aftershocks, and tables of station information and aftershock catalogs. At 08:02 (local and Beijing time) on 20 April 2013, an earthquake of M s 7.0 ( M w 6.6) struck Lushan County in Sichuan Province, southwestern China (hereafter referred to as the Lushan earthquake). The Lushan earthquake resulted in casualties and severe damage to the buildings and to the economic activities of the region. The earthquake left 193 dead, up to 10,000 injured, and 25 missing. The direct economic loss hit over $1.6 billion U.S. The Lushan earthquake is the second destructive earthquake to have occurred in the southern segment of the Longmenshan fault zone since the 12 May 2008 M s 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake (Fig. 1). The distance between the epicenters of the Lushan earthquake and the Wenchuan earthquake is about 87 km (Fang, Wu, Wang, Lu, et al. , 2013). As happened following the Wenchuan earthquake, the occurrence of the Lushan earthquake also stimulated lots of discussions on the seismic risk potential and prediction in southwest China. In particular, whether it was a large aftershock of the Wenchuan earthquake has been heatedly debated (Chen et al. , 2013; Du et al. , 2013; J. Liu et al. , 2013; Wang et al. , 2013; Jia et al. , 2014). Figure 1. (a) Tectonic settings of the Longmenshan fault zone. Red and yellow stars indicate the epicenters of the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes, respectively. The focal mechanisms of the Lushan earthquake and Wenchuan earthquake are also shown. Red circles represent aftershocks of the Lushan and Wenchuan earthquakes. Black lines indicate the main faults. The inset map shows the location of the study region in the Chinese mainland. (b) The distribution of seismic stations in and around the epicentral region of the Lushan …

A Fatal Balancing Act: The Dilemma of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 1939–1945, by Beate Meyer

A Fatal Balancing Act: The Dilemma of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, 1939-1945, by Beate Meyer. New York, Berghahn Books, 2013. vii, 441 pp. $100.00 US (cloth). Beate Meyer has chosen to research a serious subject that is by any standard difficult and painful to confront in an honest way. The system of Jewish self-destruction set up and continually orchestrated by the Nazi regime is key to our understanding of the uniquely sinister aspects of The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. In what other genocide were the victims forced to finance and organize their own dispossession, deportation, and eventual extermination? The book is a careful, detailed study of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (the Association), which every Jew was forced to join and fund by decree in 1939. This organization executed all anti-Jewish orders and policies of the Nazi state, including emigration and deportation. It provided social welfare, policy information, kept community statistics, but also evacuated apartments, collected valuables, moved Jews to Judenhauser (designated residential areas), and prepared confiscations of property. In five chapters, Meyer attempts to document and explain the activities of the Jewish functionaries tasked with operating this Association. The first chapter examines the years from 1939 to 1941 during which the new Association was first established and charged with the arduous task of helping increase the number of Jews leaving Germany. At the same time, the Nazis were planning to deport the remaining German Jews to the furthest eastern border of the new Reich, and had two other Jewish reservations in mind: Lublin and Madagascar. The Association was provided with vague information about these deportation plans; however, it was not privy to the precise goals and locations. Illustrating a growing desperation among Jewish leaders in Germany, Meyer discusses ideas such as moving Jews to Palestine, as the Nazi victories gobbled up more of Europe, as well as a strange initiative asking the Pope to help move Jews to southern Alaska. Most of the Jews who left Germany between 1933 and 1939 were well-established financially. The Jews cared for by the Association from late 1939 onward were largely the elderly, ill, disabled, and those without family support. The levels of dispossession and destitution increased dramatically with the imposition of Aryanization policies (confiscation of businesses, wealth, and property), which also reduced the budget of the Association. Chapters two and three detail the participation of the Berlin and district branches of the Association and its leadership in the deportations of German Jewry to the East, beginning in October 1941. The Gestapo ordered the Association and its offices to assist the state in organizing and implementing the resettlement of Jews to Poland. One month earlier, the Association was charged with providing yellow stars to the Jewish population to affix to their clothing, to provide the yellow cloth and instructions for use, and to pay for the stars at ten pfennigs each. …

Rho‐kinase Mediates Biventricular Coronary Arterial Remodeling During Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension in Fischer 344 Rats

Rationale: Fischer 344 rats exposed to Sugen‐5416 and hypoxia, then normoxia (Su/Hx/Nx) develop severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Unique to this strain, PAH is accompanied by significant death within 8 weeks. Coronary remodeling and acute heart failure is suspected. Here, we test the hypothesis that PAH is accompanied by biventricular Rho‐kinase mediated coronary arterial remodeling, ischemia and heart failure.
 Methods: Rats were injected with Sugen‐5416 followed by 3 weeks of hypoxia (10% O2), then 6 weeks of normoxia (21% O2). Survival was plotted as a Kaplan‐Meier curve. Histology examined biventricular coronary remodeling and matrix deposition. Hypertensive rats were treated with fasudil, a Rho‐kinase inhibitor, added to the drinking water.
 Preliminary Results: 3 out of 4 non‐treated PAH rats died between 5 and 8 weeks of Su/Hx/Nx exposure, while 3 out of 3 fasudil‐treated PAH rats survived to 9 weeks, when sacrificed. Echocardiography at 5 weeks showed right ventricular dilation, septal deviation and decreased cardiac output. RV/(LV+S) confirmed significant hypertrophy of the right ventricular wall regardless of treatment. Histology revealed that Rho‐kinase inhibition normalized biventricular coronary remodeling and perivascular fibrosis (Figure 1).
ConclusionDuring PAH in Fischer rats, Rho‐kinase mediates coronary arterial wall thickening in both ventricles, which primes the heart for ischemia and failure.Funding: NIH‐ HL060024 and HL066299 Figure 1: Coronary arteries during PAH with or without fasudil treatment compared to normotensive. Red arrows‐ smooth muscle medial hypertrophy; yellow star‐ perivascular fibrosis.image

Five decades of invasion genetics.

Five decades of invasion genetics.

The February 2014 Cephalonia Earthquake (Greece): 3D Deformation Field and Source Modeling from Multiple SAR Techniques

Online Material: Tables of moment tensor elements; SAR image pairs and coseismic displacement gradients; figures of InSAR data, model parameter tradeoffs, and observed and modeled displacements. On 26 January 2014 at 13:55 UTC, an M w 6.0 earthquake struck the island of Cephalonia, Greece, followed five hours later by an M w 5.3 aftershock and by an M w 5.9 event on 3 February 2014 at 03:08 UTC (National Observatory of Athens, Institute of Geodynamics [NOA‐GI]). The epicenter of the M w 6.0 event was relocated 2 km east of the town of Lixouri, and that of the M w 5.9 event at the tip of the Gulf of Argostoli, in the northern part of the Paliki peninsula (Fig. 1; Karastathis et al. , 2014; Papadopoulos et al. , 2014). Extensive structural damage and widespread environmental effects were induced throughout the Paliki peninsula and along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Argostoli (Valkaniotis et al. , 2014). Quays, sidewalks, and piers were damaged in the waterfront areas of the towns of Lixouri and Argostoli, the island capital, and liquefactions, road failures, rock falls, and small landslides were observed. Most of the latter effects took place in the aftermath of the 26 January 2014 event and were reactivated one week later by the 3 February earthquake. Figure 1. Location map showing the tectonic context of the Aegean Sea and the main faults on the island of Cephalonia. Colored rectangles and magenta triangles indicate the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) frame coverage and the continuous Global Positioning System (cGPS) stations, respectively. Yellow stars indicate the relocated epicenters of the three largest events of the 2014 sequence (Karastathis et al. , 2014). Diverging and converging arrows in the top‐right map indicate approximate horizontal projections of the P axis (compression) and T axis (extension), respectively, based on figure 5b in …

HIGH-RESOLUTION SPECTROSCOPIC OBSERVATIONS OF BINARY STARS AND YELLOW STRAGGLERS IN THREE OPEN CLUSTERS : NGC 2360, NGC 3680, AND NGC 5822

Binary stars in open clusters are very useful targets in constraining the nucleosynthesis process. The luminosities of the stars are known because the distances of the clusters are also known, so chemical peculiarities can be linked directly to the evolutionary status of a star. In addition, binary stars offer the opportunity to verify a relationship between them and the straggler population in both globular and open clusters. We carried out a detailed spectroscopic analysis to derive the atmospheric parameters for 16 red giants in binary systems and the chemical composition of 11 of them in the open clusters NGC 2360, NGC 3680, and NGC 5822. We obtained abundances of C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, Ca, Si, Ti, Ni, Cr, Y, Zr, La, Ce, and Nd. The atmospheric parameters of the studied stars and their chemical abundances were determined using high-resolution optical spectroscopy. We employ the local thermodynamic equilibrium model atmospheres of Kurucz and the spectral analysis code MOOG. The abundances of the light elements were derived using the spectral synthesis technique. We found that the stars NGC 2360-92 and 96, NGC 3680-34, and NGC 5822-4 and 312 are yellow straggler stars. We show that the spectra of NGC 5822-4more » and 312 present evidence of contamination by an A-type star as a secondary star. For the other yellow stragglers, evidence of contamination is given by the broad wings of the Hα. Detection of yellow straggler stars is important because the observed number can be compared with the number predicted by simulations of binary stellar evolution in open clusters. We also found that the other binary stars are not s-process enriched, which may suggest that in these binaries the secondary star is probably a faint main-sequence object. The lack of any s-process enrichment is very useful in setting constraints for the number of white dwarfs in the open cluster, a subject that is related to the birthrate of these kinds of stars in open clusters and also to the age of a cluster. Finally, rotational velocities were also determined and their values were compared with those already determined for field giant stars.« less