ABSTRACT
We present robust planet occurrence rates for Kepler planet candidates around M stars for planet radii Rp = 0.5–4 R⊕ and orbital periods P = 0.5–256 d using the approximate Bayesian ...computation technique. This work incorporates the final Kepler DR25 planet candidate catalogue and data products and augments them with updated stellar properties using Gaia DR2 and 2MASS point source catalogue. We apply a set of selection criteria to select a sample of 1746 Kepler M dwarf targets that host 89 associated planet candidates. These early-type M dwarfs and late K dwarfs were selected from cross-referenced targets using several photometric quality flags from Gaia DR2 and colour–magnitude cuts using 2MASS magnitudes. We estimate a habitable zone occurrence rate of $f_{\textrm {M,HZ}} = 0.33^{+0.10}_{-0.12}$ for planets with 0.75–1.5 R⊕ size. We caution that occurrence rate estimates for Kepler M stars are sensitive to the choice of prior due to the small sample of target stars and planet candidates. For example, we find an occurrence rate of $4.2^{+0.6}_{-0.6}$ or $8.4^{+1.2}_{-1.1}$ planets per M dwarf (integrating over Rp = 0.5–4 R⊕ and P = 0.5–256 d) for our two choices of prior. These occurrence rates are greater than those for FGK dwarf target when compared at the same range of orbital periods, but similar to occurrence rates when computed as a function of equivalent stellar insolation. Combining our result with recent studies of exoplanet architectures indicates that most, and potentially all, early-type M dwarfs harbour planetary systems.
Precise radial velocity measurements have led to the discovery of 6170 extrasolar planetary systems. Understanding the uncertainties in the orbital solutions will become increasingly important as the ...discovery space for extrasolar planets shifts to planets with smaller masses and longer orbital periods. The method of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) provides a rigorous method for quantifying the uncertainties in orbital parameters in a Bayesian framework (Paper I). The main practical challenge for the general application of MCMC is the need to construct Markov chains that quickly converge. The rate of convergence is very sensitive to the choice of the candidate transition probability distribution function (CTPDF). Here we explain one simple method for generating alternative CTPDFs that can significantly speed convergence by 1-3 orders of magnitude. We have numerically tested dozens of CTPDFs with simulated radial velocity data sets to identify those that perform well for different types of orbits and suggest a set of CTPDFs for general application. In addition, we introduce other refinements to the MCMC algorithm for radial velocity planets, including an improved treatment of the uncertainties in the radial velocity observations, an algorithm for automatically choosing step sizes, an algorithm for automatically determining reasonable stopping times, and the use of importance sampling for including the dynamical evolution of multiple-planet systems. Together, these improvements make it practical to apply MCMC to multiple-planet systems. We demonstrate the improvements in efficiency by analyzing a variety of extrasolar planetary systems.
Precise radial velocity measurements have led to the discovery of ~100 extrasolar planetary systems. We investigate the uncertainty in the orbital solutions that have been fitted to these ...observations. Understanding these uncertainties will become more and more important as the discovery space for extrasolar planets shifts to longer and longer periods. While detections of short-period planets can be rapidly refined, planets with long orbital periods will require observations spanning decades to constrain the orbital parameters precisely. Already in some cases, multiple distinct orbital solutions provide similarly good fits, particularly in multiple-planet systems. We present a method for quantifying the uncertainties in orbital fits and addressing specific questions directly from the observational data rather than relying on best-fit orbital solutions. This Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique has the advantage that it is well suited to the high-dimensional parameter spaces necessary for the multiple-planet systems. We apply the MCMC technique to several extrasolar planetary systems, assessing the uncertainties in orbital elements for several systems. Our MCMC simulations demonstrate that for some systems there are strong correlations between orbital parameters and/or significant non-Gaussianities in parameter distributions, even though the measurement errors are nearly Gaussian. Once these effects are considered, the actual uncertainties in orbital elements can be significantly larger or smaller than the published uncertainties. We also present simple applications of our methods, such as predicting the times of possible transits for GJ 876.
It is important to understand factors that make one more or less vulnerable to the harmful effects of social threat. This study focuses on the role of implicit theories (also referred to as mindsets) ...in shaping responses to a potent form of social threat, namely social-evaluative threat (SET). 124 individuals participated in an experimental study in which they were induced to have an incremental theory or an entity theory about their social skills. Next, they were exposed to SET in the laboratory. Psychological and physiological responses were assessed including social self-esteem, rumination, spontaneous mentions of concerns about one's social skills, and heart-rate variability. Compared to those induced to have entity theories, those induced to have incremental theories were buffered from the typical harmful effects of SET on social self-esteem, rumination, and concerns about their social skills. The association between implicit theories and heart-rate variability fell just short of significance.
Cancer and chronic infections induce T cell exhaustion, a hypofunctional fate carrying distinct epigenetic, transcriptomic and metabolic characteristics. However, drivers of exhaustion remain poorly ...understood. As intratumoral exhausted T cells experience severe hypoxia, we hypothesized that metabolic stress alters their responses to other signals, specifically, persistent antigenic stimulation. In vitro, although CD8
T cells experiencing continuous stimulation or hypoxia alone differentiated into functional effectors, the combination rapidly drove T cell dysfunction consistent with exhaustion. Continuous stimulation promoted Blimp-1-mediated repression of PGC-1α-dependent mitochondrial reprogramming, rendering cells poorly responsive to hypoxia. Loss of mitochondrial function generated intolerable levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), sufficient to promote exhausted-like states, in part through phosphatase inhibition and the consequent activity of nuclear factor of activated T cells. Reducing T cell-intrinsic ROS and lowering tumor hypoxia limited T cell exhaustion, synergizing with immunotherapy. Thus, immunologic and metabolic signaling are intrinsically linked: through mitigation of metabolic stress, T cell differentiation can be altered to promote more functional cellular fates.
There is intense interest about whether modulating gut microbiota can impact systemic metabolism. We investigated the safety of weekly oral fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) capsules from ...healthy lean donors and their ability to alter gut microbiota and improve metabolic outcomes in patients with obesity.
FMT-TRIM was a 12-week double-blind randomized placebo-controlled pilot trial of oral FMT capsules performed at a single US academic medical center. Between August 2016 and April 2018, we randomized 24 adults with obesity and mild-moderate insulin resistance (homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance HOMA-IR between 2.0 and 8.0) to weekly healthy lean donor FMT versus placebo capsules for 6 weeks. The primary outcome, assessed by intention to treat, was change in insulin sensitivity between 0 and 6 weeks as measured by hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamps. Additional metabolic parameters were evaluated at 0, 6, and 12 weeks, including HbA1c, body weight, body composition by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, and resting energy expenditure by indirect calorimetry. Fecal samples were serially collected and evaluated via 16S V4 rRNA sequencing. Our study population was 71% female, with an average baseline BMI of 38.8 ± 6.7 kg/m2 and 41.3 ± 5.1 kg/m2 in the FMT and placebo groups, respectively. There were no statistically significant improvements in insulin sensitivity in the FMT group compared to the placebo group (+5% ± 12% in FMT group versus -3% ± 32% in placebo group, mean difference 9%, 95% CI -5% to 28%, p = 0.16). There were no statistically significant differences between groups for most of the other secondary metabolic outcomes, including HOMA-IR (mean difference 0.2, 95% CI -0.9 to 0.9, p = 0.96) and body composition (lean mass mean difference -0.1 kg, 95% CI -1.9 to 1.6 kg, p = 0.87; fat mass mean difference 1.2 kg, 95% CI -0.6 to 3.0 kg, p = 0.18), over the 12-week study. We observed variable engraftment of donor bacterial groups among FMT recipients, which persisted throughout the 12-week study. There were no significant differences in adverse events (AEs) (10 versus 5, p = 0.09), and no serious AEs related to FMT. Limitations of this pilot study are the small sample size, inclusion of participants with relatively mild insulin resistance, and lack of concurrent dietary intervention.
Weekly administration of FMT capsules in adults with obesity results in gut microbiota engraftment in most recipients for at least 12 weeks. Despite engraftment, we did not observe clinically significant metabolic effects during the study.
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02530385.
Surveys have revealed many multi-planet systems containing super-Earths and Neptunes in orbits of a few days to a few months. There is debate whether in situ assembly or inward migration is the ...dominant mechanism of the formation of such planetary systems. Simulations suggest that migration creates tightly packed systems with planets whose orbital periods may be expressed as ratios of small integers (resonances), often in a many-planet series (chain). In the hundreds of multi-planet systems of sub-Neptunes, more planet pairs are observed near resonances than would generally be expected, but no individual system has hitherto been identified that must have been formed by migration. Proximity to resonance enables the detection of planets perturbing each other. Here we report transit timing variations of the four planets in the Kepler-223 system, model these variations as resonant-angle librations, and compute the long-term stability of the resonant chain. The architecture of Kepler-223 is too finely tuned to have been formed by scattering, and our numerical simulations demonstrate that its properties are natural outcomes of the migration hypothesis. Similar systems could be destabilized by any of several mechanisms, contributing to the observed orbital-period distribution, where many planets are not in resonances. Planetesimal interactions in particular are thought to be responsible for establishing the current orbits of the four giant planets in the Solar System by disrupting a theoretical initial resonant chain similar to that observed in Kepler-223.
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is fed by galaxy outflows and accretion of intergalactic gas, but its mass, heavy element enrichment, and relation to galaxy properties are poorly constrained by ...observations. In a survey of the outskirts of 42 galaxies with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard the Hubble Space Telescope, we detected ubiquitous, large (150-kiloparsec) halos of ionized oxygen surrounding star-forming galaxies; we found much less ionized oxygen around galaxies with little or no star formation. This ionized CGM contains a substantial mass of heavy elements and gas, perhaps far exceeding the reservoirs of gas in the galaxies themselves. Our data indicate that it is a basic component of nearly all star-forming galaxies that is removed or transformed during the quenching of star formation and the transition to passive evolution.
A key question in tuberculosis control is why some strains of M. tuberculosis are preferentially associated with resistance to multiple drugs. We demonstrate that M. tuberculosis strains from lineage ...2 (East Asian lineage and Beijing sublineage) acquire drug resistances in vitro more rapidly than M. tuberculosis strains from lineage 4 (Euro-American lineage) and that this higher rate can be attributed to a higher mutation rate. Moreover, the in vitro mutation rate correlates well with the bacterial mutation rate in humans as determined by whole-genome sequencing of clinical isolates. Finally, using a stochastic mathematical model, we demonstrate that the observed differences in mutation rate predict a substantially higher probability that patients infected with a drug-susceptible lineage 2 strain will harbor multidrug-resistant bacteria at the time of diagnosis. These data suggest that interventions to prevent the emergence of drug-resistant tuberculosis should target bacterial as well as treatment-related risk factors.
Doppler planet searches revealed that many giant planets orbit close to their host star or in highly eccentric orbits. These and subsequent observations inspired new theories of planet formation that ...invoke gravitation interactions in multiple planet systems to explain the excitation of orbital eccentricities and even short-period giant planets. Recently, NASA’s Kepler mission has identified over 300 systems with multiple transiting planet candidates, including many potentially rocky planets. Most of these systems include multiple planets with closely spaced orbits and sizes between that of Earth and Neptune. These systems represent yet another new and unexpected class of planetary systems and provide an opportunity to test the theories developed to explain the properties of giant exoplanets. Presently, we have limited knowledge about such planetary systems, mostly about their sizes and orbital periods. With the advent of long-term, nearly continuous monitoring by Kepler, the method of transit timing variations (TTVs) has blossomed as a new technique for characterizing the gravitational effects of mutual planetary perturbations for hundreds of planets. TTVs can provide precise, but complex, constraints on planetary masses, densities, and orbits, even for planetary systems with faint host stars. In the coming years, astronomers will translate TTV observations into increasingly powerful constraints on the formation and orbital evolution of planetary systems with low-mass planets. Between TTVs, improved Doppler surveys, high-contrast imaging campaigns, and microlensing surveys, astronomers can look forward to a much better understanding of planet formation in the coming decade.
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