TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE B[e] PHENOMENON. III. PROPERTIES OF THE OPTICAL COUNTERPART OF IRAS 00470+6429

FS CMa type stars are a group of Galactic objects with the B[e] phenomenon. They exhibit strong emission-line spectra and infrared excesses, which are most likely due to recently formed circumstellar dust. The group content and identification criteria were described in the first two papers of the series. In this paper we report our spectroscopic and photometric observations of the optical counterpart of IRAS 00470+6429 obtained in 2003-2008. The optical spectrum is dominated by emission lines, most of which have P Cyg type profiles. We detected significant brightness variations, which may include a regular component, and variable spectral line profiles in both shape and position. The presence of a weak Li I 6708 angstrom line in the spectrum suggests that the object is most likely a binary system with a B2-B3 spectral-type primary companion of a luminosity log L/L(circle dot) = 3.9 +/- 0.3 and a late-type secondary companion. We estimate a distance toward the object to be 2.0 +/- 0.3 kpc from the Sun.

Hypermethioninemia provokes oxidative damage and histological changes in liver of rats

In the present study we evaluated the effect of chronic methionine administration on oxidative stress and biochemical parameters in liver and serum of rats, respectively. We also performed histological analysis in liver. Results showed that hypermethioninemia increased chemiluminescence, carbonyl content and glutathione peroxidase activity, decreased total antioxidant potential, as well as altered catalase activity. Hypermethioninemia increased synthesis and concentration of glycogen, besides histological studies showed morphological alterations and reduction in the glycogen/glycoprotein content in liver. Serum alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase and glucose were increased in hypermethioninemic rats. These findings suggest that oxidative damage and histological changes caused by methionine may be related to the hepatic injury observed in hypermethioninemia. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

The magnetized steel and scintillator calorimeters of the MINOS experiment

The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment uses an accelerator-produced neutrino beam to perform precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters in the ""atmospheric neutrino"" sector associated with muon neutrino disappearance. This long-baseline experiment measures neutrino interactions in Fermilab`s NuMI neutrino beam with a near detector at Fermilab and again 735 km downstream with a far detector in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in northern Minnesota. The two detectors are magnetized steel-scintillator tracking calorimeters. They are designed to be as similar as possible in order to ensure that differences in detector response have minimal impact on the comparisons of event rates, energy spectra and topologies that are essential to MINOS measurements of oscillation parameters. The design, construction, calibration and performance of the far and near detectors are described in this paper. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.