The ubiquity of M dwarf stars combined with their low masses and luminosities make them prime targets in the search for nearby, habitable exoplanets. We investigate the effects of starspot-induced ...radial velocity (RV) jitter on detection and characterization of planets orbiting M dwarfs. We create surface spot configurations with both random spot coverage and active regions. Synthetic stellar spectra are calculated from a given spot map, and RV measurements are obtained using cross-correlation technique. We add the RV signal of an orbiting planet to these jitter measurements, and reduce the data to ‘measure’ the planetary parameters. We investigate the detectability of planets around M dwarfs of different activity levels, and the recovery of input planetary parameters. When studying the recovery of the planetary period we note that while our original orbital radius places the planet inside the habitable zone (HZ) of its star, even at a filling factor of 2 per cent a few of our measurements fall outside the ‘conservative HZ’. Higher spot filling factors result in more and higher deviations. Our investigations suggest that caution should be used when characterizing planets discovered with the RV method around stars that are (or are potentially) active.
Milk proteins are known to exert a wide range of nutritional, functional and biological activities. Apart from being a balanced source of valuable amino acids, milk proteins contribute to the ...consistency and sensory properties of various dairy products. Furthermore, many milk proteins possess specific biological properties which make them potential ingredients of health-promoting foods. These properties are attributed to both native protein molecules and to physiologically active peptides encrypted in the protein molecules. Considerable progress has been made over the last twenty years in technologies aimed at separation, fractionation and isolation in a purified form of many interesting proteins occurring in bovine colostrum and milk. Industrial-scale methods have been developed for native whey proteins such as immunoglobulins, lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, alpha-lactalbumin and beta-lactoglobulin. Their large-scale manufacture and commercial exploitation is still limited although validated research data about their physiological health benefits is rapidly accumulating. Promising product concepts and novel fields of use have emerged recently, and some of these molecules have already found commercial applications. The same applies to bioactive peptides derived from different milk proteins. Active peptides can be liberated during gastrointestinal digestion or milk fermentation with proteolytic enzymes. Such peptides may exert a number of physiological effects in vivo on the gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, nervous and other body systems. However, at present the industrial-scale production of such peptides is limited by a lack of suitable technologies. On the other hand, a number of bioactive peptides have been identified in fermented dairy products, and there are already a few commercial dairy products enriched with blood pressure-reducing milk protein peptides. There is a need to develop methods to optimise the activity of bioactive peptides in food systems and to enable their optimum utilisation in the body. This review highlights existing modern technologies applicable for the isolation of bioactive native proteins and peptides derived from bovine colostrum, milk and cheese whey, and discusses aspects of their current and potential applications for human nutrition and promotion of human health.
Dietary proteins are known to carry a wide range of nutritional, functional and biological properties. Nutritionally, the proteins are a source of energy and amino acids, which are essential for ...growth and maintenance. Functionally, the proteins contribute to the physicochemical and sensory properties of various protein-rich foods. Furthermore, many dietary proteins possess specific biological properties which make these components potential ingredients of functional or health-promoting foods. Many of these properties are attributed to physiologically active peptides encrypted in protein molecules. Particularly rich sources of such peptides are milk and egg, but they are also found in meat of various kinds as well as many plants. These peptides are inactive within the sequence of parent protein and can be released during gastrointestinal digestion or food processing. Depending on the amino acid sequence, these peptides may exert a number of different activities in vivo, affecting, e.g., the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune and nervous systems in addition to nutrient utilization. There is increasing commercial interest in the production of bioactive peptides from various sources. Industrial-scale production of such peptides is, however, hampered by the lack of suitable technologies. Bioactive peptides can also be produced from milk proteins through fermentation of milk, by starters employed in the manufacture of fermented milks or cheese. In particular, antihypertensive peptides have been identified in fermented milk, whey and ripened cheese. A few of these peptides have been commercialised in the form of fermented milks. There is a need to develop technologies which retain or even enhance the activity of bioactive peptides in food systems. Also, it is essential to study the optimum utilization of such peptides during passage through the gastrointestinal tract.
ABSTRACT
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) may have major importance for planetary and stellar evolution. Stellar CME parameters, such as mass and velocity, have yet not been determined statistically. So ...far only a handful of stellar CMEs has been detected mainly on dMe stars using spectroscopic observations. We therefore aim for a statistical determination of CMEs of solar-like stars by using spectroscopic data from the ESO phase 3 and Polarbase archives. To identify stellar CMEs, we use the Doppler signal in optical spectral lines being a signature of erupting filaments that are closely correlated to CMEs. We investigate more than 3700 h of on-source time of in total 425 dF-dK stars. We find no signatures of CMEs and only few flares. To explain this low level of activity, we derive upper limits for the non-detections of CMEs and compare those with empirically modelled CME rates. To explain the low number of detected flares, we adapt a flare power law derived from EUV data to the H α regime, yielding more realistic results for H α observations. In addition, we examine the detectability of flares from the stars by extracting Sun-as-a-star H α light curves. The extrapolated maximum numbers of observable CMEs are below the observationally determined upper limits, which indicates that the on-source times were mostly too short to detect stellar CMEs in H α. We conclude that these non-detections are related to observational biases in conjunction with a low level of activity of the investigated dF-dK stars.
We present a search for stellar activity (flares and mass ejections) in a sample of 28 stars in the young open cluster Blanco-1. We use optical spectra obtained with European Southern Observatory's ...Visible Multi-Object Spectrograph installed on the Very Large Telescope. From the total observing time of ∼5 h, we find four Hα flares but no distinct indication of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on the investigated dK–dM stars. Two flares show ‘dips’ in their light curves right before their impulsive phases which are similar to previous discoveries in photometric light curves of active dMe stars. We estimate an upper limit of <4 CMEs per day per star and discuss this result with respect to a empirical estimation of the CME rate of main-sequence stars. We find that we should have detected at least one CME per star with a mass of ≤ 3 × 1017 g depending on the star's X-ray luminosity, but the estimated Hα fluxes associated with these masses are below the detection limit of our observations. We conclude that the parameter which mainly influences the detection of stellar CMEs using the method of Doppler-shifted emission caused by moving plasma is not the spectral resolution/velocity but the flux/mass of the CME.
Aim
To evaluate the definition and causes of neonatal bradycardias.
Methods
This retrospective study included 135 term‐born newborns referred for 24‐hour Holter monitoring due to bradycardia. ...Bradycardia was defined as either a heart rate below 80 beats per minute (standard definition) or a heart rate below our recently published age‐specific reference values for neonatal heart rate.
Results
The mean (SD) age was 6.1 (1.3) days. With standard definition, 107 newborns (79%) had bradycardia, whereas only 20 (15%) had a minimum heart rate lower than the age‐specific reference. Younger newborns had lower heart rates. Each day increased the minimum, mean and maximum heart rate by 1.8 (95% CI: 1.0, 2.6), 4.2 (95% CI: 3.0, 5.3) and 2.1 beats per minute (95% CI: 0.3, 3.8), respectively. Male sex and maternal levothyroxine medication were negatively associated with the mean and maximum heart rate. None of the newborns had a cardiac cause for low heart rate.
Conclusion
Among term newborns with bradycardias, younger age, male sex and maternal levothyroxine medication were associated with a lower heart rate on Holter monitoring. Given the age‐related increase in heart rate, the 80 beats per minute limit as a universal threshold for abnormal heart rate in newborns appears inappropriate.
The ultrafast-rotating (P sub(rot)approximate 0.44 d) fully convective single M4 dwarf V374Peg is a well-known laboratory for studying intense stellar activity in a stable magnetic topology. As an ...observable proxy for the stellar magnetic field, we study the stability of the light curve, hence the spot configuration. We also measure the occurrence rate of flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). We have analysed spectroscopic observations, BV(RI) sub(C) photometry covering 5 yrs, and additional R sub(C) photometry that expands the temporal base over 16 yr. The light curve suggests an almost rigid-body rotation and a spot configuration that is stable over about 16 yrs, confirming the previous indications of a very stable magnetic field. We observed small changes on a nightly timescale and frequent flaring, including a possible sympathetic flare. The strongest flares seem to be more concentrated around the phase where the light curve indicates a smaller active region. Spectral data suggest a complex CME with falling-back and re-ejected material with a maximal projected velocity of ~675kms super(-1). We observed a CME rate that is much lower than expected from extrapolations of the solar flare-CME relation to active stars.
While the position weight matrix (PWM) is the most popular model for sequence motifs, there is growing evidence of the usefulness of more advanced models such as first-order Markov representations, ...and such models are also becoming available in well-known motif databases. There has been lots of research of how to learn these models from training data but the problem of predicting putative sites of the learned motifs by matching the model against new sequences has been given less attention. Moreover, motif site analysis is often concerned about how different variants in the sequence affect the sites. So far, though, the corresponding efficient software tools for motif matching have been lacking.
We develop fast motif matching algorithms for the aforementioned tasks. First, we formalize a framework based on high-order position weight matrices for generic representation of motif models with dinucleotide or general q -mer dependencies, and adapt fast PWM matching algorithms to the high-order PWM framework. Second, we show how to incorporate different types of sequence variants , such as SNPs and indels, and their combined effects into efficient PWM matching workflows. Benchmark results show that our algorithms perform well in practice on genome-sized sequence sets and are for multiple motif search much faster than the basic sliding window algorithm.
Implementations are available as a part of the MOODS software package under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and the Biopython license ( http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/pssmfind ).
janne.h.korhonen@gmail.com.
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