Absorption of high-energy radiation in planetary thermospheres is generally believed to lead to the formation of planetary winds. The resulting mass-loss rates can affect the evolution, particularly ...of small gas planets. We present 1D, spherically symmetric hydrodynamic simulations of the escaping atmospheres of 18 hot gas planets in the solar neighborhood. Our sample only includes strongly irradiated planets, whose expanded atmospheres may be detectable via transit spectroscopy using current instrumentation. The simulations were performed with the PLUTO-CLOUDY interface, which couples a detailed photoionization and plasma simulation code with a general MHD code. We study the thermospheric escape and derive improved estimates for the planetary mass-loss rates. Our simulations reproduce the temperature-pressure profile measured via sodium D absorption in HD 189733 b, but show still unexplained differences in the case of HD 209458 b. In contrast to general assumptions, we find that the gravitationally more tightly bound thermospheres of massive and compact planets, such as HAT-P-2 b are hydrodynamically stable. Compact planets dispose of the radiative energy input through hydrogen Lyα and free-free emission. Radiative cooling is also important in HD 189733 b, but it decreases toward smaller planets like GJ 436 b. Computing the planetary Lyα absorption and emission signals from the simulations, we find that the strong and cool winds of smaller planets mainly cause strong Lyα absorption but little emission. Compact and massive planets with hot, stable thermospheres cause small absorption signals but are strong Lyα emitters, possibly detectable with the current instrumentation. The absorption and emission signals provide a possible distinction between these two classes of thermospheres in hot gas planets. According to our results, WASP-80 and GJ 3470 are currently the most promising targets for observational follow-up aimed at detecting atmospheric Lyα absorption signals.
Summary
Background
Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) 90 is suggested to be the new standard endpoint for randomized controlled trials of biologics for psoriasis, whereas treatment guidelines ...often still refer to PASI 75.
Objectives
To analyse in a real‐world setting: firstly, what factors are associated with higher levels of treatment response to biologics; secondly, the health‐related quality of life gains associated with different response levels in clinical practice.
Methods
Biologically naïve patients with PASI, Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) and EuroQol (EQ)‐5D outcomes before (maximum 6 months) and after (3–12 months) switch to biologics during registration in the Swedish National Registry for Systemic Treatment of Psoriasis (PsoReg) were included (n = 515). Patient characteristics associated with higher treatment response were analysed by regression analyses. Improvements in absolute PASI, DLQI and EQ‐5D were assessed in different PASI percentage response levels.
Results
High PASI percentage response was associated with higher PASI before switch and lower body mass index. DLQI and EQ‐5D improved within all responder groups (P < 0·001). The magnitude of improvements in DLQI (P = 0·02) differed between responder groups. The mean (SD) DLQI improvements for PASI 75<90 responders, PASI 90<100 responders and patients achieving complete skin clearance (PASI 100) were 9·9 (7·4), 11·5 (7·0) and 8·0 (6·1), respectively.
Conclusions
PASI percentage change is largely dependent on absolute PASI before switch. Patients in clinical practice lack ‘baseline’ PASI values as they may switch directly from one treatment to another or stay successfully treated for a longer time period. Treatment goals such as PASI 90 are thus not suitable for treatment guidelines or for follow‐up in clinical practice.
What's already known about this topic?
Randomized clinical trials of biologics as well as treatment guidelines include treatment goals based on a percentage improvement compared with baseline Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI), such as PASI 75 or PASI 90.
Few studies have assessed which factors are associated with high skin clearance rates, or health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) improvements associated with different levels of skin clearance in clinical practice.
What does this study add?
A high absolute PASI before switch to biologics and low body mass index are associated with higher PASI percentage response.
Few patients with baseline PASI >30 achieved complete skin clearance (CSC).
All responder groups achieved significant HRQoL improvements.
Patients achieving CSC (PASI 100) had lower absolute PASI before switch and lower improvements in absolute PASI and HRQoL than patients with almost cleared skin.
What are the clinical implications of this work?
Relative measures based on PASI percentage, such as PASI 75 or PASI 90, are not suitable for treatment guidelines or for follow‐up in clinical practice.
Abstract
The accurate identification and description of the genes in the human and mouse genomes is a fundamental requirement for high quality analysis of data informing both genome biology and ...clinical genomics. Over the last 15 years, the GENCODE consortium has been producing reference quality gene annotations to provide this foundational resource. The GENCODE consortium includes both experimental and computational biology groups who work together to improve and extend the GENCODE gene annotation. Specifically, we generate primary data, create bioinformatics tools and provide analysis to support the work of expert manual gene annotators and automated gene annotation pipelines. In addition, manual and computational annotation workflows use any and all publicly available data and analysis, along with the research literature to identify and characterise gene loci to the highest standard. GENCODE gene annotations are accessible via the Ensembl and UCSC Genome Browsers, the Ensembl FTP site, Ensembl Biomart, Ensembl Perl and REST APIs as well as https://www.gencodegenes.org.
Abstract
The GENCODE project annotates human and mouse genes and transcripts supported by experimental data with high accuracy, providing a foundational resource that supports genome biology and ...clinical genomics. GENCODE annotation processes make use of primary data and bioinformatic tools and analysis generated both within the consortium and externally to support the creation of transcript structures and the determination of their function. Here, we present improvements to our annotation infrastructure, bioinformatics tools, and analysis, and the advances they support in the annotation of the human and mouse genomes including: the completion of first pass manual annotation for the mouse reference genome; targeted improvements to the annotation of genes associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection; collaborative projects to achieve convergence across reference annotation databases for the annotation of human and mouse protein-coding genes; and the first GENCODE manually supervised automated annotation of lncRNAs. Our annotation is accessible via Ensembl, the UCSC Genome Browser and https://www.gencodegenes.org.
First, the potential role of Raman-based techniques in biomedicine is introduced. Second, an overview about the instrumentation for spontaneous and coherent Raman scattering microscopic imaging is ...given with a focus of recent developments. Third, imaging strategies are summarized including sequential registration with laser scanning microscopes, line imaging and global or wide-field imaging. Finally, examples of biomedical applications are presented in the context of single cells, laser tweezers, tissue sections, biopsies and whole animals.
The analysis of the photo-induced polymerization of bulk materials is a very important aspect of scientific and industrial research and applications. Thereby, the interactions between the initiator, ...the monomer and the light source have to be considered, which have been hardly/not investigated. For example, novel UV-light sources based on LED technology are in the process of development. Hence, the need for such kinetic analyses increases to investigate the multiple energy and intensity dependent influencing factors, like the quantum yield of the primary radical formation and the reactivity’s towards double bonds or inhibitors. Within this contribution a dose and wavelength dependent procedure is firstly described in detail, which allows the analysis of the kinetics of the photo-curing and the solidification of multifunctional liquid acrylic esters without a solvent. The photo-polymerizations induced by three different model resins, containing well-known commercial initiators, are monitored by an in situ Raman UV-vis system and analysed in detail. This novel procedure is based on an absolute and spectral calibrated fibre optical receiver, which is part of the Raman UV-vis setup. The multiple influences of the absorbed photons on e.g. the kinetic length of the chain reaction are presented and/or demonstrated. For example, higher yields can be achieved by less energetic and less intense irradiation.
Disorder-free localization has been recently introduced as a mechanism for ergodicity breaking in low-dimensional homogeneous lattice gauge theories caused by local constraints imposed by gauge ...invariance. We show that also genuinely interacting systems in two spatial dimensions can become nonergodic as a consequence of this mechanism. This result is all the more surprising since the conventional many-body localization is conjectured to be unstable in two dimensions; hence the gauge invariance represents an alternative robust localization mechanism surviving in higher dimensions in the presence of interactions. Specifically, we demonstrate nonergodic behavior in the quantum link model by obtaining a bound on the localization-delocalization transition through a classical correlated percolation problem implying a fragmentation of Hilbert space on the nonergodic side of the transition. We study the quantum dynamics in this system by introducing the method of "variational classical networks," an efficient and perturbatively controlled representation of the wave function in terms of a network of classical spins akin to artificial neural networks. We identify a distinguishing dynamical signature by studying the propagation of line defects, yielding different light cone structures in the localized and ergodic phases, respectively. The methods we introduce in this work can be applied to any lattice gauge theory with finite-dimensional local Hilbert spaces irrespective of spatial dimensionality.
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