Summary
An ABC‐transporter of Arabidopsis thaliana exhibiting high sequence similarity to the human (MRP) and yeast (YCF) glutathione‐conjugate transporters has been analysed and used to complement a ...cadmium‐sensitive yeast mutant (DTY68) that also lacks glutathione‐conjugate transport activity. Comparison of the hydrophobicity plots of this A. thaliana MRP‐like protein with MRP and YCF demonstrates that the transmembrane domains are conserved, even at the N‐terminus where sequence identity is low. Cadmium resistance is partially restored in the complemented ycf mutant, and glutathione‐conjugate transport activity can be observed as well. The kinetic properties of the A. thaliana MRP‐like protein (AtMRP3) are very similar to those previously described for the vacuolar glutathione‐conjugate transporter of barley and mung bean. Furthermore, a hitherto undescribed ATP‐dependent transport activity could be correlated with the gene product, i.e. vesicles isolated from the complemented yeast, but not from DTY68 or the wild type, take up the chlorophyll catabolite Bn‐NCC‐. The results indicate that the product of the MRP‐like gene of A. thaliana is capable of mediating the transport of the two different classes of compounds.
The completed extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) catalogues contain redshifts of 344m 080 quasars at 0.8 < z < 2.2, 174 816 luminous red galaxies between 0.6 < z < 1.0, and 173 ...736 emission-line galaxies over 0.6 < z < 1.1 in order to constrain the expansion history of the Universe and the growth rate of structure through clustering measurements. Mechanical limitations of the fibre-fed spectrograph on the Sloan telescope prevent two fibres being placed closer than 62 arcsec in a single pass of the instrument. These ‘fibre collisions’ strongly correlate with the intrinsic clustering of targets and can bias measurements of the two-point correlation function resulting in a systematic error on the inferred values of the cosmological parameters. We combine the new techniques of pairwise-inverse probability and the angular upweighting (PIP+ANG) to correct the clustering measurements for the effect of fibre collisions. Using mock catalogues, we show that our corrections provide unbiased measurements, within data precision, of both the projected $\rm {\mathit{ w}_p}\left(\mathit{ r}_p\right)$ and the redshift-space multipole ξ(ℓ = 0, 2, 4)(s) correlation functions down to $0.1\, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$, regardless of the tracer type. We apply the corrections to the eBOSS DR16 catalogues. We find that, on scales $s\gtrsim 20\, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$ for ξℓ, as used to make baryon acoustic oscillation and large-scale redshift-space distortion measurements, approximate methods such as nearest-neighbour upweighting are sufficiently accurate given the statistical errors of the data. Using the PIP method, for the first time for a spectroscopic program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we are able to successfully access the one-halo term in the clustering measurements down to $\sim 0.1\, h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$ scales. Our results will therefore allow studies that use the small-scale clustering to strengthen the constraints on both cosmological parameters and the halo occupation distribution models.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) care has improved considerably, particularly since the implementation of a quality of care program centered on national evidence-based guidelines. Formal quality assessment is ...however still needed. The aim of this research was to identify factors associated with practice variation in CRC patient care.
CRC patients identified from all cancer centers in South-West France were included. We investigated variations in practices (from diagnosis to surgery), and compliance with recommended guidelines for colon and rectal cancer. We identified factors associated with three colon cancer practice variations potentially linked to better survival: examination of ≥ 12 lymph nodes (LN), non-use and use of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II and stage III patients, respectively.
We included 1,206 patients, 825 (68%) with colon and 381 (32%) with rectal cancer, from 53 hospitals. Compliance was high for resection, pathology report, LN examination, and chemotherapy use for stage III patients. In colon cancer, 26% of stage II patients received adjuvant chemotherapy and 71% of stage III patients. 84% of stage US T3T4 rectal cancer patients received pre-operative radiotherapy. In colon cancer, factors associated with examination of ≥ 12 LNs were: lower ECOG score, advanced stage and larger hospital volume; factors negatively associated were: left sided tumor location and one hospital district. Use of chemotherapy in stage II patients was associated with younger age, advanced stage, emergency setting and care structure (private and location); whereas under-use in stage III patients was associated with advanced age, presence of comorbidities and private hospitals.
Although some changes in practices may have occurred since this observational study, these findings represent the most recent report on practices in CRC in this region, and offer a useful methodological approach for assessing quality of care. Guideline compliance was high, although some organizational factors such as hospital size or location influence practice variation. These factors should be the focus of any future guideline implementation.
Using linear perturbation theory, we evaluate the time-dependent force exerted on an eccentric and inclined low-mass planet embedded in a gaseous protoplanetary disc with finite thermal diffusivity ...\(\chi\). We assume the eccentricity and inclination to be small compared to the size of the thermal lobes \(\lambda\sim(\chi/\Omega)^{1/2}\), itself generally much smaller than the scalelength of pressure \(H\). When the planet is non-luminous, we find that its eccentricity and inclination are vigorously damped by the disc, over a timescale shorter by a factor \(H/\lambda\) than the damping timescale in adiabatic discs. On the contrary, when the luminosity-to-mass ratio of the planet exceeds a threshold that depends on the disc's properties, its eccentricity and inclination undergo an exponential growth. In the limit of a large luminosity, the growth rate of the eccentricity is 2.5~times larger than that of the inclination, in agreement with previous numerical work. Depending on their luminosity, planetary embryos therefore exhibit much more diverse behaviours than the mild damping of eccentricity and inclination considered hitherto.
We compute 1-loop corrections to the redshift space galaxy power spectrum in cosmologies containing additional scales, and hence kernels different from Einstein-de Sitter (EdS). Specifically, our ...method is tailored for cosmologies in the presence of massive neutrinos and some modified gravity models; in this article we concentrate on the former case. The perturbative kernels have contributions that we notice appear either from the logarithmic growth factor \(f(k,t)\), which is scale-dependent because of the neutrino free-streaming, or from the failure of the commonly used approximation \(f^2=\Omega_m\). The latter contributions make the computation of loop corrections quite slow, precluding full-shape analyses for parameter estimation. However, we identify that the dominant pieces of the kernels come from the growth factor, allowing us to simplify the kernels but retaining the characteristic free-streaming scale introduced by the neutrinos' mass. Moreover, with this simplification one can exploit FFTLog methods to speed up the computations even more. We validate our analytical modeling and numerical method with halo catalogs extracted from the Quijote simulations finding good agreement with the, a priori, known cosmological parameters. We make public our Python code FOLPS\(\nu\) to compute the redshift space power spectrum in a fraction of second. Code available at https://github.com/henoriega/FOLPS-nu.
Recently, a new wave of full modeling analyses have emerged within the Large-Scale Structure community, leading mostly to tighter constraints on the estimation of cosmological parameters, when ...compared with standard approaches used over the last decade by collaboration analyses of stage III experiments. However, the majority of these full-shape analyses have primarily been conducted in Fourier space, with limited emphasis on exploring the configuration space. Investigating n-point correlations in configuration space demands a higher computational cost compared to Fourier space because it typically requires an additional integration step. This can pose a limitation when using these approaches, especially when considering higher-order statistics. One avenue to mitigate the high computation time is to take advantage of neural network acceleration techniques. In this work, we present a full shape analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey III/BOSS in configuration space using a neural network accelerator. We show that the efficacy of the pipeline is enhanced by a time factor \(10^{3}\) without sacrificing precision, making it possible to reduce the error associated with the surrogate modeling to below \(10^{-2}\) percent which is compatible with the precision required for current stage IV experiments such as DESI. We find \(\Omega_m=0.286\pm 0.009\), \(H_0=68.8\pm 1.2\) \(\mathrm{km} \mathrm{s^{-1}}\mathrm{Mpc^{-1}}\) and \(A_s \times 10^9 =2.09 ^{+0.25}_{-0.29}\). Our results on public BOSS data are in good agreement with BOSS official results and compatible with other independent full modeling analyses. We explore relaxing the prior on \(\omega_b\) and varying \(n_s\), without significant changes in the mean values of the cosmological parameters posterior distributions, but enlarging their widths. Finally, we explore the information content of the multipoles when constraining cosmological parameters.
We present the cosmological implications from final measurements of clustering using galaxies, quasars, and Ly\(\alpha\) forests from the completed Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) lineage of ...experiments in large-scale structure. These experiments, composed of data from SDSS, SDSS-II, BOSS, and eBOSS, offer independent measurements of baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements of angular-diameter distances and Hubble distances relative to the sound horizon, \(r_d\), from eight different samples and six measurements of the growth rate parameter, \(f\sigma_8\), from redshift-space distortions (RSD). This composite sample is the most constraining of its kind and allows us to perform a comprehensive assessment of the cosmological model after two decades of dedicated spectroscopic observation. We show that the BAO data alone are able to rule out dark-energy-free models at more than eight standard deviations in an extension to the flat, \(\Lambda\)CDM model that allows for curvature. When combined with Planck Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements of temperature and polarization the BAO data provide nearly an order of magnitude improvement on curvature constraints. The RSD measurements indicate a growth rate that is consistent with predictions from Planck primary data and with General Relativity. When combining the results of SDSS BAO and RSD with external data, all multiple-parameter extensions remain consistent with a \(\Lambda\)CDM model. Regardless of cosmological model, the precision on \(\Omega_\Lambda\), \(H_0\), and \(\sigma_8\), remains at roughly 1\%, showing changes of less than 0.6\% in the central values between models. The inverse distance ladder measurement under a o\(w_0w_a\)CDM yields \(H_0= 68.20 \pm 0.81 \, \rm km\, s^{-1} Mpc^{-1}\), remaining in tension with several direct determination methods. (abridged)
We present an analysis of the anisotropic redshift-space void-galaxy correlation in configuration space using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) ...Data Release 16 luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample. This sample consists of LRGs between redshifts 0.6 and 1.0, combined with the high redshift \(z>0.6\) tail of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Data Release 12 CMASS sample. We use a reconstruction method to undo redshift-space distortion (RSD) effects from the galaxy field before applying a watershed void-finding algorithm to remove bias from the void selection. We then perform a joint fit to the multipole moments of the correlation function for the growth rate \(f\sigma_8\) and the geometrical distance ratio \(D_M/D_H\), finding \(f\sigma_8(z_\mathrm{eff})=0.356\pm0.079\) and \(D_M/D_H(z_\mathrm{eff})=0.868\pm0.017\) at the effective redshift \(z_\mathrm{eff}=0.69\) of the sample. The posterior parameter degeneracies are orthogonal to those from galaxy clustering analyses applied to the same data, and the constraint achieved on \(D_M/D_H\) is significantly tighter. In combination with the consensus galaxy BAO and full-shape analyses of the same sample, we obtain \(f\sigma_8=0.447\pm0.039\), \(D_M/r_d=17.48\pm0.23\) and \(D_H/r_d=20.10\pm0.34\). These values are in good agreement with the \(\Lambda\)CDM model predictions and represent reductions in the uncertainties of \(13\%\), \(23\%\) and \(28\%\) respectively compared to the combined results from galaxy clustering, or an overall reduction of 55\% in the allowed volume of parameter space.
A grand challenge of the 21st century cosmology is to accurately estimate the cosmological parameters of our Universe. A major approach to estimating the cosmological parameters is to use the ...large-scale matter distribution of the Universe. Galaxy surveys provide the means to map out cosmic large-scale structure in three dimensions. Information about galaxy locations is typically summarized in a "single" function of scale, such as the galaxy correlation function or power-spectrum. We show that it is possible to estimate these cosmological parameters directly from the distribution of matter. This paper presents the application of deep 3D convolutional networks to volumetric representation of dark-matter simulations as well as the results obtained using a recently proposed distribution regression framework, showing that machine learning techniques are comparable to, and can sometimes outperform, maximum-likelihood point estimates using "cosmological models". This opens the way to estimating the parameters of our Universe with higher accuracy.
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