scholarly journals Flyby-induced misalignments in planet-hosting discs

Author(s):  
Rebecca Nealon ◽  
Nicolás Cuello ◽  
Richard Alexander

Abstract We now have several observational examples of misaligned broken protoplanetary discs, where the disc inner regions are strongly misaligned with respect to the outer disc. Current models suggest that this disc structure can be generated with an internal misaligned companion (stellar or planetary), but the occurrence rate of these currently unobserved companions remains unknown. Here we explore whether a strong misalignment between the inner and outer disc can be formed without such a companion. We consider a disc that has an existing gap — essentially separating the disc into two regions — and use a flyby to disturb the discs, leading to a misalignment. Despite considering the most optimistic parameters for this scenario, we find maximum misalignments between the inner and outer disc of ∼45○ and that these misalignments are short-lived. We thus conclude that the currently observed misaligned discs must harbour internal, misaligned companions.

2019 ◽  
Vol 492 (1) ◽  
pp. 572-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Ansdell ◽  
E Gaidos ◽  
C Hedges ◽  
M Tazzari ◽  
A L Kraus ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Dippers are a common class of young variable star exhibiting day-long dimmings with depths of up to several tens of per cent. A standard explanation is that dippers host nearly edge-on (id ≈ 70°) protoplanetary discs that allow close-in (<1 au) dust lifted slightly out of the mid-plane to partially occult the star. The identification of a face-on dipper disc and growing evidence of inner disc misalignments brings this scenario into question. Thus, we uniformly (re)derive the inclinations of 24 dipper discs resolved with (sub-)mm interferometry from ALMA. We find that dipper disc inclinations are consistent with an isotropic distribution over id ≈ 0−75°, above which the occurrence rate declines (likely an observational selection effect due to optically thick disc mid-planes blocking their host stars). These findings indicate that the dipper phenomenon is unrelated to the outer (>10 au) disc resolved by ALMA and that inner disc misalignments may be common during the protoplanetary phase. More than one mechanism may contribute to the dipper phenomenon, including accretion-driven warps and ‘broken’ discs caused by inclined (sub-)stellar or planetary companions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 638 ◽  
pp. A156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Appelgren ◽  
Michiel Lambrechts ◽  
Anders Johansen

Recent surveys have revealed that protoplanetary discs typically have dust masses that appear to be insufficient to account for the high occurrence rate of exoplanet systems. We demonstrate that this observed dust depletion is consistent with the radial drift of pebbles. Using a Monte Carlo method we simulate the evolution of a cluster of protoplanetary discs using a 1D numerical method to viscously evolve each gas disc together with the radial drift of dust particles that have grown to 100 μm in size. For a 2 Myr-old cluster of stars, we find a slightly sublinear scaling between the gas disc mass and the gas accretion rate (Mg ∝ Ṁ0.9). However, for the dust mass we find that evolved dust discs have a much weaker scaling with the gas accretion rate, with the precise scaling depending on the age at which the cluster is sampled and the intrinsic age spread of the discs in the cluster. Ultimately, we find that the dust mass present in protoplanetary discs is on the order of 10–100 M⊕ in 1–3 Myr-old star-forming regions, a factor of 10–100 depleted from the original dust budget. As the dust drains from the outer disc, pebbles pile up in the inner disc and locally increase the dust-to-gas ratio by up to a factor of four above the initial value. In these regions of high dust-to-gas ratio we find conditions that are favourable for planetesimal formation via the streaming instability and subsequent growth by pebble accretion. We also find the following scaling relations with stellar mass within a 1–2 Myr-old cluster: a slightly super-linear scaling between the gas accretion rate and stellar mass (Ṁ ∝ M⋆1.4), a slightly super-linear scaling between the gas disc mass and the stellar mass (Mg ∝ M⋆1.4), and a super-linear relation between the dust disc mass and stellar mass (Md ∝ M⋆1.4−4.1).


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (9) ◽  
pp. 989-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Gorasiya ◽  
Juliet Mushi ◽  
Ryan Pekson ◽  
Sabesan Yoganathan ◽  
Sandra E. Reznik

Background: Preterm birth (PTB), or birth that occurs before 37 weeks of gestation, accounts for the majority of perinatal morbidity and mortality. As of 2016, PTB has an occurrence rate of 9.6% in the United States and accounts for up to 18 percent of births worldwide. Inflammation has been identified as the most common cause of PTB, but effective pharmacotherapy has yet to be developed to prevent inflammation driven PTB. Our group has discovered that N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMA), a readily available solvent commonly used as a pharmaceutical excipient, rescues lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced timed pregnant mice from PTB. Methods: We have used in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro approaches to investigate this compound further. Results: Interestingly, we found that DMA suppresses cytokine secretion by inhibiting nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB). In ongoing work in this exciting line of investigation, we are currently investigating structural analogs of DMA, some of them novel, to optimize this approach focused on the inflammation associated with PTB. Conclusion: Successful development of pharmacotherapy for the prevention of PTB rests upon the pursuit of multiple strategies to solve this important clinical challenge.


Author(s):  
Shuang Qiu ◽  
Zheng An ◽  
Renbo Tan ◽  
Ping-an He ◽  
Jingjing Jing ◽  
...  

Abstract Data from the SEER reports reveal that the occurrence rate of a cancer type generally follows a unimodal distribution over age, peaking at an age that is cancer-type specific and ranges from 30+ through 70+. Previous studies attribute such bell-shaped distributions to the reduced proliferative potential in senior years but fail to explain why some cancers have their occurrence peak at 30+ or 40+. We present a computational model to offer a new explanation to such distributions. The model uses two factors to explain the observed age-dependent cancer occurrence rates: cancer risk of an organ and the availability level of the growth signals in circulation needed by a cancer type, with the former increasing and the latter decreasing with age. Regression analyses were conducted of known occurrence rates against such factors for triple negative breast cancer, testicular cancer and cervical cancer; and all achieved highly tight fitting results, which were also consistent with clinical, gene-expression and cancer-drug data. These reveal a fundamentally important relationship: while cancer is driven by endogenous stressors, it requires sufficient levels of exogenous growth signals to happen, hence suggesting the realistic possibility for treating cancer via cleaning out the growth signals in circulation needed by a cancer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 945
Author(s):  
Zhongxin Deng ◽  
Rui Wang ◽  
Yi Liu ◽  
Tong Xu ◽  
Zhuangkai Wang ◽  
...  

In the current study, we investigated the mechanism of medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbance (MSTID) triggering spread-F in the low latitude ionosphere using ionosonde observation and Global Navigation Satellite System-Total Electron Content (GNSS-TEC) measurement. We use a series of morphological processing techniques applied to ionograms to retrieve the O-wave traces automatically. The maximum entropy method (MEM) was also utilized to obtain the propagation parameters of MSTID. Although it is widely acknowledged that MSTID is normally accompanied by polarization electric fields which can trigger Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability and consequently excite spread-F, our statistical analysis of 13 months of MSTID and spread-F occurrence showed that there is an inverse seasonal occurrence rate between MSTID and spread-F. Thus, we assert that only MSTID with certain properties can trigger spread-F occurrence. We also note that the MSTID at night has a high possibility to trigger spread-F. We assume that this tendency is consistent with the fact that the polarization electric field caused by MSTID is generally the main source of post-midnight F-layer instability. Moreover, after thorough investigation over the azimuth, phase speed, main frequency, and wave number over the South America region, we found that the spread-F has a tendency to be triggered by nighttime MSTID, which is generally characterized by larger ΔTEC amplitudes.


Author(s):  
Kwo-Tsao Chiang ◽  
Min-Yu Tu ◽  
Chao-Chien Cheng ◽  
Hsin-Hui Chen ◽  
Wun-Wei Huang ◽  
...  

Hypoxia remains a flight-safety issue in terms of aviation medicine. Hypoxia-awareness training has been used to help aircrew members recognize personal hypoxia symptoms. There is still no study, as yet, to establish the association of within-subject data between inflight hypoxia events and the altitude chamber. The main purpose of our study was to use paired subjects’ data on inflight hypoxia symptoms compared with those experienced during training. A questionnaire was developed to obtain information on military aircrew members in 2018. Among 341 subjects, 46 (13.49%) suffered from inflight hypoxia. The majority of the subjects detected ongoing inflight hypoxia on the basis of their previous experience with personal hypoxia symptoms or sensations in previous chamber flights. Of the top five hypoxia symptoms, the data revealed that hot flashes, poor concentration, and impaired cognitive function appeared both during the inflight events and during the hypoxia-awareness training. The occurrence rate of hypoxia symptoms was found to not be significantly different between the in-flight events and the past chamber flights through an analysis of within-subject data. Because the individual memory had faded away over time, fresher hypoxia awareness training is still mandatory and valuable to recall personal hypoxia experience for military aircrew members.


2021 ◽  
Vol 504 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-299
Author(s):  
Marija R Jankovic ◽  
James E Owen ◽  
Subhanjoy Mohanty ◽  
Jonathan C Tan

ABSTRACT Short-period super-Earth-sized planets are common. Explaining how they form near their present orbits requires understanding the structure of the inner regions of protoplanetary discs. Previous studies have argued that the hot inner protoplanetary disc is unstable to the magnetorotational instability (MRI) due to thermal ionization of potassium, and that a local gas pressure maximum forms at the outer edge of this MRI-active zone. Here we present a steady-state model for inner discs accreting viscously, primarily due to the MRI. The structure and MRI-viscosity of the inner disc are fully coupled in our model; moreover, we account for many processes omitted in previous such models, including disc heating by both accretion and stellar irradiation, vertical energy transport, realistic dust opacities, dust effects on disc ionization, and non-thermal sources of ionization. For a disc around a solar-mass star with a standard gas accretion rate ($\dot{M}\, \sim \, 10^{-8}$ M⊙ yr−1) and small dust grains, we find that the inner disc is optically thick, and the accretion heat is primarily released near the mid-plane. As a result, both the disc mid-plane temperature and the location of the pressure maximum are only marginally affected by stellar irradiation, and the inner disc is also convectively unstable. As previously suggested, the inner disc is primarily ionized through thermionic and potassium ion emission from dust grains, which, at high temperatures, counteract adsorption of free charges on to grains. Our results show that the location of the pressure maximum is determined by the threshold temperature above which thermionic and ion emission become efficient.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingchen Zou ◽  
Haotian Wu ◽  
Shuangquan Yao ◽  
Dong Ren ◽  
Song Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background This study was done to observe the incidence of Osteo-line on the femur neck and to explore the clinical application of Osteo-line in osteotomy. Methods Eighty-nine adult femur specimens were selected to observe the incidence of Osteo-line on the femur neck. From August 2015 to January 2019, a total of 278 patients who completed unilateral hip arthroplasty at the Third Hospital of Hebei Medical University were retrospectively included. Patients who accepted osteotomy via Osteo-line on the femur neck were defined as the experimental group (n = 139), and patients who accepted osteotomy via traditional method (The femoral distance 1.5 cm above the trochanter was retained for osteotomy by visual inspection.) were defined as the control group (n = 139). According to the postoperative pelvic X-ray, Photoshop was used to evaluate the leg length discrepancy (LLD) by the CFR-T-LT method. Results Among the 89 specimens, the incidence of anterior Osteo-line was 75.28%, and the incidence of posterior Osteo-line was 100%. According to the clinical application results, the incidence of anterior Osteo-line on the femur neck was 80%, and the incidence of posterior Osteo-line was 100%. The Osteo-line was clearer than those on the femoral specimens. Twenty-six cases had LLD greater than 1 cm (9.29%), including 2 cases in the experimental group and 24 cases in the control group. The average postoperative LLD in the experimental group (0.19 ± 0.38 mm) was significantly shorter than in the control group (0.54 ± 0.51 mm)(P = 0.005). Conclusion The incidence of Osteo-line on the femur neck was high, and patients who accepted osteotomy via Osteo-line on the femur neck can achieve shorter postoperative LLD than the control group.


Author(s):  
Daiana Antoaneta Opris ◽  
Horia Opris ◽  
Cristian Dinu ◽  
Simion Bran ◽  
Grigore Baciut ◽  
...  

Cleft lip and palate is the most frequent birth anomaly, with increasing reported rates of complications, such as palate fistulae. Current studies concerning the occurrence rate of cleft lip and palate (CLP) report 2 to 10 cases in 10,000 births. The purpose of this study was to investigate the existence of factors that could predict the occurrence of fistulae after cleft lip and palate surgery. A retrospective study was performed by collecting and analyzing data from all patients who were operated for cleft lip and/or palate in the Maxillo-Facial Department of the Emergency Clinical County Hospital of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, between 2010 and 2020. We investigated the existing evidence for possible links between the number of fistulae observed after the primary palatoplasty and the age at which the primary palatoplasty was performed, the sex of the patient, the type of cleft, the timing of the surgical corrections, and the presence of comorbidities. A total of 137 cases were included for analysis. A significant link between the number of fistulae and the type of cleft was found (with fistulae occurring more frequently after the surgical correction of CLP—p < 0.001). No evidence was found for the existence of significant links between the number of fistulae and the patient’s sex, the timing of surgery, or the presence of comorbidities. This study concluded that the incidence of palatal fistulae appears to be influenced by the type of cleft (CLP), but not by the sex of the patient, the timing of surgery, or the presence of comorbidities.


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