Effectiveness and safety of levilimab in combination with methotrexate in treatment of patients with active rheumatoid arthritis resistant to methotrexate monotherapy (double-blinded randomized placebo controlled phase III clinical study SOLAR)

Levilimab is anti-interleukin-6 receptor (IL6R) monoclonal antibody. The article presents data obtained during 24 weeks of the SOLAR phase III study.Objective: to confirm efficacy and safety of levilimab in combination with methotrexate (MTX) in patients with methotrexate resistant active rheumatoid arthritis (RA).Patients and methods. 154 adult patients, aged ≥18 years with the diagnosis of RA (ACR/EULAR 2010) and confirmed disease activity at screening despite treatment with MTX for at least 12 weeks (in a stable dose 15-25 mg/week). Patients were randomized 2:1 in levilimab (162 mg once a week, subcutaneously) + MTX (n=102) or placebo + MTX (n=52) group.The hypothesis of superiority of levilimab over placebo was tested for two co-primary efficacy endpoints: proportion of subjects who achieved ACR20 at week 12 and proportion of subjects who achieved low disease activity (LDA) of RA (DAS28-CRP <3.2) at week 24. Safety was assessed through monitoring of adverse events (AEs).Results and discussion. Seventy (68.6%) subjects who received levilimab and 20 (38.5%) who received placebo achieved ACR20 response at week 12. Fifty three (52%) subjects who received levilimab and 3 (5,8%) subjects who received placebo achieved LDA at week 24. The most common adverse events (reported in ≥5% of subjects) in levilimab and placebo arms, respectively were (by decreasing frequency): blood c holesterol increase (24% vs 12%), alanine aminotransferase elevation (11% vs 8%), lymphocyte count decrease (9% vs 8%), blood total bilirubin increase (11% vs 0%), blood triglycerides increase (10% vs 2%), aspartate aminotransferase elevation (7% vs 4%), positive interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA) with M.tuberculosis antigen blood test (5% vs 6%), absolute neutrophil count decrease (8% vs 0%). No deaths were occurred.Conclusion. The study confirmed superior efficacy of levilimab + MTX over placebo + MTX in subjects with MTX resistant active RA. Levilimab showed favorable safety profile and low immunogenicity. No new important safety risks were detected.

Photometry and model of near-Earth asteroid 2021 DW1 from one apparition

&lt;p&gt;2021 DW1 was discovered on 16 February 2021 by Pan-STARRS 1 on Haleakala. This ~40-m object passed the Earth at a distance of 570000 km (1.5 Lunar Distance) on 4 March at 9 UTC, reaching a brightness of V=14.6 mag. &amp;#160;We observed it photometrically from 2 March, 4 UTC, when it was visible at V=16.5 mag, until 7 March, 9 UTC (V=18.2 mag). &amp;#160;During that time 2021 DW1 swept a 170 deg long arc in the northern sky, spanning solar phase angles in the range from 36 to 86 deg. This made it an excellent target for physical characterization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In our campaign, we used 9 telescopes with apertures ranging from 0.3-m to 1.2-m, located in the USA, UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, and South Korea. This gave us a good coverage of the asteroid path. We collected a lot of data which are now being analysed. Preliminary analysis show a very short rotation period of 50 seconds and a lightcurve amplitude of about 0.3 mag, which didn't change much along the asteroid path in the sky. More results will be presented at the conference.&lt;/p&gt;

Thermal infrared imaging experiment of S-type binary asteroids in the Hera mission

&lt;p&gt;The thermal infrared imager TIRI onboard the ESA Hera spacecraft is being developed to investigate thermophysical properties of the S-type asteroid 65803 Didymos and its moon Dimorphos by mapping thermal inertia and compositional variations of them. TIRI is based on an uncooled micro-bolometer array of 1024 x 768 effective pixels and covers the field of view of 13.3&amp;#176; x 10.0&amp;#176;, with the resolution of 0.23 mrad per pixel. TIRI has an eight-position filter wheel to be used as one wide bandpath at 8-14 &amp;#181;m for thermal imaging, six narrow bands peaked at 7.8, 8.6, 9.6, 10.6, 11.65, and 13.1 &amp;#181;m for compositional information, and one closed plate both for a shutter and a temperature reference.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;TIRI will be mounted on the top panel of the Hera spacecraft to point the target asteroids in the same direction with other instruments AFC, PALT, and Hyperscout-H, for the simultaneous observations. The asteroid surface temperature will change day and night according to thermal inertia and roughness of the surface layer, which will be consequently derived from the diurnal temperature profile. The maximum temperature in a day will also change according to the solar distance of the asteroid from ~1 to ~2 au at the beginning to the end of the nominal mission. During the early characterization phase (ECP) at 20 to 30 km from the asteroid, TIRI will take images from large solar phase angles from 50&amp;#176; to 70&amp;#176; with the spatial resolution of ~4.6 to 6.9 m per pixel to construct the asteroid shape model even in the night side and map the thermal inertia and composition. During the detailed characterization phase (DCP) at 10 to 20 km from the asteroid, TIRI will take images from the noon with the spatial resolution of ~2.3 m per pixel for more detailed thermal properties and compositional mapping. During the close-up operation phase (COP) at &lt; 5 km from the asteroid, TIRI will take images from the noon with the spatial resolution of ~1 m per pixel. Higher spatial resolution will be achieved during the further close observations.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In the Hayabusa2 mission, thermal imaging has revealed the highly porous nature of C-type asteroid from global to local scales (Okada et al, 2020; Shimaki et al, 2020), but nobody knows the surface properties of S-type asteroids so that this is a unique opportunity to investigate the S-type asteroid Didymos in comparison with the C-type asteroid Ryugu. For the moon Dimorphos, it will be the smallest asteroid ever explored so that it is also a unique opportunity to investigate the small-sized asteroid, especially for the strength and porosity. TIRI will contribute to verifying Yarkovsky and YORP (B-YORP) effects, orbital and rotational evolution in relation to thermophysical modeling. The temperature profile and compositional difference between the inside and outside of the artificial crater formed by the kinetic impact of the NASA DART spacecraft will be the important target both for the purpose of planetary defense and science.&lt;/p&gt;

Phase-angle dependence of colour ratios and potential implications for lunar remote sensing

Context. The colour-ratio technique has been widely used in mapping planetary surfaces, but its solar phase-angle dependence is not well understood. Understanding the phase-angle dependence of the colour ratio would enhance our abilities in interpreting planetary remote sensing data. Aims. We aim to investigate the dependence of the colour ratio indices on mineralogy, phase angle, particle size, and the degree of simulated space weathering. Methods. We measured the multi-band (i.e. 458, 633, 750, and 905 nm) and multi-angle reflectance spectra of four typical lunar-type minerals with different particle sizes using a custom multi-angular imaging device. Results. The colour ratio does have a phase-angle dependence that is more sensitive to the mineralogy and wavelength and less sensitive to particle size distribution. Conclusions. The combined analysis of the colour ratio and its phase dependence can improve efficiency in mapping the lunar surface. With a prior knowledge of the phase behaviours of colour ratios of specific lunar-type minerals, an optimised colour ratio at certain phase angles can be found to efficiently distinguish the composition of a target surface.

Phase curves of >40,000 small solar system bodies obtained by the Tomo-e Gozen transient survey

&lt;p&gt;The Tomo-e Gozen project conducts optical wide-field survey programs with a wide-field CMOS camera,&amp;#160;Tomo-e Gozen, attached on the 105-cm Schmidt telescope at the Kiso Observatory, the University of&amp;#160;Tokyo, Japan. Tomo-e Gozen is the world's first wide-field CMOS camera which covers 20 square degrees with&amp;#160;84 chips of 35 mm full HD CMOS image sensors. A wide-field and high-cadence survey in the optical&amp;#160;wavelengths began in 2018 with the Tomo-e Gozen (hereafter referred to as the Tomo-e Gozen transient&amp;#160;survey). The main purpose of this survey is to detect young supernovae. However, the survey&amp;#160;simultaneously detects a large number of moving objects in their images. As one of the by-products of the&amp;#160;survey, here we show our preliminary result about production of phase curves (solar phase angles versus&amp;#160;absolute magnitude) of more than 44,000 small solar system bodies including main-belt asteroids,&amp;#160;near-Earth asteroids, Jupiter Trojans, Centaurs, and Transneptunian objects (this number is as of&amp;#160;April 11, 2020). Combining the moving&amp;#160;object catalogue derived from the survey and the output ephemeris that the Horizons/JPL system&amp;#160;provides, we are now able to obtain phase curves of these objects almost automatically. As the Kiso&amp;#160;moving object catalogue is updated and being expanded on a daily basis, the number of the objects&amp;#160;(small bodies) that we deal with goes up as well. Our result, when completed, will make a fair complement&amp;#160;as well as a significant keystone to what is already published such as from the Pan-STARRS systematic&amp;#160;survey on the knowledge of the surface characteristics of the small solar system bodies.&lt;/p&gt;

Ionospheric Modeling and Forecasting Services of GNSS

The study of ionospheric variability is vital for refining and predicts services of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) applications. The GNSS service provides an explicitly obtainable resource GNSS information, goods and services in support of the earthly reference structure. GNSS is provides an Earth observation, navigation, positioning, timing and other applications that an assistance Society and Science. To investigate the variations in the daily averaged TEC (Total Electron Content) by taking several model components such as solar activity component, geomagnetic activity and periodic components at different latitudes ranging from 10˚N to 26˚N for the year 2018. The presented results would be useful to download, processing and analysis the IGS (International GNSS Service) data. MSSA model can reproduce quite well the observed values of GPS-TEC by utilizing only the first 4 singular modes and constitutes 99% of the total variance. The data is transformed into the singular values which are used for forecasting a noiseless time series. The proposed system results show that higher accuracy is achieved by MSSA (Multivariate Singular Spectrum Analysis) based model. It can also be noted that the training of MSSA is much faster and achieves higher learning accuracy, lowest training time. MSSA is effective even the space weather conditions are active during different solar phase periods.

VIRTIS-H observations of the dust coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: spectral properties and color temperature variability with phase and elevation

We analyze 2–5 μm spectroscopic observations of the dust coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko obtained with the Visible InfraRed Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS-H) instrument on board Rosetta from 3 June to 29 October 2015 at heliocentric distances rh = 1.24–1.55 AU. The 2–2.5 μm color, bolometric albedo, and color temperature were measured using spectral fitting. Data obtained at α = 90° solar phase angle show an increase in bolometric albedo (0.05–0.14) with increasing altitude (0.5–8 km), accompanied by a possible marginal decrease in color and color temperature. Possible explanations include dark particles on ballistic trajectories in the inner coma and radial changes in particle composition. In the phase angle range 50°–120°, phase reddening is significant (0.031%/100 nm deg−1) for a mean color of 2%/100 nm at α = 90°, which might be related to the roughness of the dust particles. Moreover, a decrease in color temperature with decreasing phase angle is also observed at a rate of ~0.3 K deg−1, consistent with the presence of large porous particles, with low thermal inertia, and showing a significant day-to-night temperature contrast. Comparing data acquired at fixed phase angle (α = 90°), a 20% increase in bolometric albedo is observed near perihelion. Heliocentric variations in dust color are not significant in the time period we analyzed. The measured color temperatures vary from 260 to 320 K, and follow a rh−0.6 variation in the rh = 1.24–1.5 AU range, which is close to the expected rh−0.5 value.

Investigating Sterile Neutrino Flux in the Solar Neutrino Data

There are compelling evidences for the existence of a fourth degree of freedom of neutrinos, i.e., sterile neutrino. In the recent studies the role of sterile component of neutrinos has been found to be crucial, not only in particle physics, but also in astrophysics and cosmology. This has been proposed to be one of the potential candidates of dark matter. In this work we investigate the updated solar neutrino data available from all the relevant experiments including Borexino and KamLAND solar phase in a model independent way and obtain bounds on the sterile neutrino component present in the solar neutrino flux. The mystery of the missing neutrinos is further deepening as subsequent experiments are coming up with their results. The energy spectrum of solar neutrinos, as predicted by Standard Solar Models (SSM), is seen by neutrino experiments at different parts as they are sensitive to various neutrino energy ranges. It is interesting to note that more than 98% of the calculated standard model solar neutrino flux lies below 1 MeV. Therefore, the study of low energy neutrinos can give us better understanding and the possibility of knowing about the presence of antineutrino and sterile neutrino components in solar neutrino flux. As such, this work becomes interesting as we include the data from medium energy (~1 MeV) experiments, i.e., Borexino and KamLAND solar phase. In our study we retrieve the bounds existing in literature and rather provide more stringent limits on sterile neutrino (νs) flux available in solar neutrino data.