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Gravitational redshift is a classical effect of Einstein's General Relativity, already measured in stars, quasars and clusters of galaxies. We here identify the signature of gravitational redshift in the emission lines of active galaxies due to supermassive black holes and discuss their impact on cosmological inference from type Ia supernovae. Firstly, from the full width at half maximum of $H_{\beta}$ lines of 75 Seyfert type I galaxies of the AGN Black Hole Mass Database, we derive a gravitational redshift $z_g = (2.4 \pm 0.9) \times 10^{-4}$. Expanding this analysis to 86755 quasars from DR14 of SDSS we have a mean value $z_g \approx 2.7 \times 10^{-4}$. Then, by comparing the redshifts of 34 lines measured at the central and outer regions of LINER galaxies in the SAMI survey we obtain $z_g = (0.68 \pm 0.09) \times 10^{-4}$. These numbers are compatible with central black holes of $\approx 10^9$ solar masses and broad line regions of $\approx 1$~pc. For non-AGN galaxies the gravitational redshift is compatible with zero and, as they constitute most of SNe Ia host galaxies, the impact on the cosmological parameters is negligible., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

Effective models of quantum black holes inspired by Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) have had success in resolving the classical singularity with polymerisation procedures and by imposing the LQG area gap as a minimum area. The singularity is replaced by a hypersurface of transition from black to white holes, and a recent example is the Ashtekar, Olmedo and Singh (AOS) model for a Schwarzschild black hole. More recently, a one-parameter model, with equal masses for the black and white solutions, was suggested by Alonso-Bardaji, Brizuela and Vera (ABBV). An interesting feature of their quantisation is that the angular part of the metric retains its classical form and the horizon area is therefore the same as in the classical theory. In the present contribution we solve the dynamical equations derived from the ABBV effective Hamiltonian and, by applying the AOS minimal area condition, we obtain the scaling of the polymerisation parameter with the black hole mass. We then show that this effective model can also describe Planck scale black holes, and that the curvature and quantum corrections at the horizon are small even at this scale. By generating the exterior metric through a phase rotation in the dynamical variables, we also show that, for an asymptotic observer, the Kretschmann scalar is the same as in the classical Schwarzschild solution, but with a central mass screened by the quantum fluctuations., Revised version, accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Grav

Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia Introduction and objectives: Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are opportunistic human pathogens found in the environment. The transmission seems to be associated with inhalation of aerosol droplets, ingestion or trauma events. Recent studies indicate that NTM disease is increasing worldwide, however, the true clinical impact of NTM infections is difficult to determine due to challenges in discriminating between disease and colonization as they are ubiquitous in the environment. In addition, understanding the epidemiology of NTM is difficult and has not yet been established. In this work, we used a country NTM representative collection from the National Reference Laboratory for Tuberculosis (NRL-TB) of the National Institute of Health (INSA), to characterize the circulation trends of NTM species in Portugal and the most affected regions, contributing to a better understanding of the NTM epidemiology. Material and methods: We conducted a nationwide retrospective study where all individuals with positive NTM cultures at the NRL-TB of the INSA from 2014 to December 2020 were included. Positive cultures were identified using GenoType Mycobacterium CM/AS® (Hain Lifescience) according to manufacturer's instructions, or hsp65 DNA sequencing as previously described. Social-demographic data from patients were also analyzed and patients classified into 3 groups according only to microbiological data, “definite NTM disease”, “NTM colonization” and, “possible NTM disease”. Results: In the period 2014-2020, the NRL-TB performed 50397 cultures. Among these, 1118 cultures were NTM positive retrieved from 944. Most of our cases were in patients whose mean age was 64±15.9 years, and no significant differences between gender was observed, although more frequent in male patients. Overall, from the 944 cases, we were able to identified 93 “definite NTM disease” cases and 79 “possible NTM disease”. Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) (40,8%), Mycobacterium abscessus-chelonae complex (MABC) (9,6%) and Mycobacterium fortuitum (6,3%) were responsible for most of the infections. The geographical distribution of NTM cases varied significantly and was possible to observe that was independent of population density. The region were most cases occurred was Lisbon Metropolitan Area (31,9%), followed by North (25,3%) and Centre (24,4%), however North region has the highest number of “definite NTM disease” cases (n=33). Conclusions: This is the first national wide epidemiological study on this subject, contributing to a better understanding of NTM dynamics in Portugal. MAC was the NTM species responsible for the majority of infections and, LMA the region with the highest number of cases. It was also possible to conclude that the number of NTM isolates is independent of the demography of the region. publishersversion published

Understanding the origins of small-scale flats of CCDs and their wavelength-dependent variations plays an important role in high-precision photometric, astrometric, and shape measurements of astronomical objects. Based on the unique flat data of 47 narrow-band filters provided by JPAS-{\it Pathfinder}, we analyze the variations of small-scale flats as a function of wavelength. We find moderate variations (from about $1.0\%$ at 390 nm to $0.3\%$ at 890 nm) of small-scale flats among different filters, increasing towards shorter wavelengths. Small-scale flats of two filters close in central wavelengths are strongly correlated. We then use a simple physical model to reproduce the observed variations to a precision of about $\pm 0.14\%$, by considering the variations of charge collection efficiencies, effective areas and thicknesses between CCD pixels. We find that the wavelength-dependent variations of small-scale flats of the JPAS-{\it Pathfinder} camera originate from inhomogeneities of the quantum efficiency (particularly charge collection efficiency) as well as the effective area and thickness of CCD pixels. The former dominates the variations in short wavelengths while the latter two dominate at longer wavelengths. The effects on proper flat-fielding as well as on photometric/flux calibrations for photometric/slit-less spectroscopic surveys are discussed, particularly in blue filters/wavelengths. We also find that different model parameters are sensitive to flats of different wavelengths, depending on the relations between the electron absorption depth, the photon absorption length and the CCD thickness. In order to model the wavelength-dependent variations of small-scale flats, a small number (around ten) of small-scale flats with well-selected wavelengths are sufficient to reconstruct small-scale flats in other wavelengths., 14 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJS

In the years to come, the Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) will observe 8000 deg2 of the northern sky with 56 photometric bands. J-PAS is ideal for the detection of nebular emission objects. This paper presents a new method based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) that is aimed at measuring and detecting emission lines in galaxies up to zRlarr2 =Rlarr2 0.35. These lines are essential diagnostics for understanding the evolution of galaxies through cosmic time. We trained and tested ANNs with synthetic J-PAS photometry from CALIFA, MaNGA, and SDSS spectra. To this aim, we carried out two tasks. First, we clustered galaxies in two groups according to the values of the equivalent width (EW) of Hα, Hβ, [N II], and [O III] lines measured in the spectra. Then we trained an ANN to assign a group to each galaxy. We were able to classify them with the uncertainties typical of the photometric redshift measurable in J-PAS. Second, we utilized another ANN to determine the values of those EWs. Subsequently, we obtained the [N II]/Hα, [O III]/Hβ, and O 3N 2 ratios, recovering the BPT diagram ([O III]/Hβ versus [N II]/Hα). We studied the performance of the ANN in two training samples: one is only composed of synthetic J-PAS photo-spectra (J-spectra) from MaNGA and CALIFA (CALMa set) and the other one is composed of SDSS galaxies. We were able to fully reproduce the main sequence of star-forming galaxies from the determination of the EWs. With the CALMa training set, we reached a precision of 0.092 and 0.078 dex for the [N II]/Hα and [O III]/Hβ ratios in the SDSS testing sample. Nevertheless, we find an underestimation of those ratios at high values in galaxies hosting an active galactic nuclei. We also show the importance of the dataset used for both training and testing the model. Such ANNs are extremely useful for overcoming the limitations previously expected concerning the detection and measurements of the emission lines in such surveys as J-PAS. Furthermore, we show the capability of the method to measure a EW of 10 Å in Hα, Hβ, [N II] and [O III] lines with a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 5, 1.5, 3.5, and 10, respectively, in the photometry. Finally, we compare the properties of emission lines in galaxies observed with miniJPAS and SDSS. Despite the limitation of such a comparison, we find a remarkable correlation in their EWs. © ESO 2021., G.M.S., R.G.D., R.G.B., E.P., J.R.M., L.A.D.G. and J.M.V. acknowledge support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709) and the projects AYA2016-77846-P and PID2019-109067-GB100. L.A.D.G. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (grant MOST 106-2628-M-001-003-MY3) and from the Academia Sinica (grant AS-IA-107-M01). P.O.B. acknowledge support from the Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) -Finance Code 001. R.A.D. acknowledges support from the CNPq through BP grant 308105/2018-4, and FINEP grants REF. 1217/13 -01.13.0279.00 and REF 0859/10 -01.10.0663.00 and also FAPERJ PRONEX grant E-26/110.566/2010 for hardware funding support for the JPAS project through the National Observatory of Brazil and Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas. S.C. thanks CNPq, grant No. 307467/2017-1. V.M. thanks CNPq (Brazil) and FAPES (Brazil) for partial financial support. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 888258. LSJ acknowledges support from Brazilian agencies FAPESP (2019/10923-5) and CNPq (304819/201794). A.C. acknowledges support from PNPD/CAPES. J.M.V. acknowledges financial support from research projects AYA2016-79724-C4-4-P, PID2019-107408GB-C44 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion. The authors acknowledge the following people for providing valuable comments and suggestions on the first draft of this paper: Stravos Akras, Joel Bregman, Salvador Duarte Puertas, Jorge Iglesias, Yolanda Jimenez Teja, Jose Miguel Rodriguez Espinosa, David Sobral and, Adi Zitrin. This research made use of Python (http://www.python.org), Numpy (Van Der Walt et al. 2011); of Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), a suite of open-source Python modules that provides a framework for creating scientific plots and, Astropy, the communitydeveloped core python package (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018). Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org.This study makes use of the results based on the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey (http://califa.caha.es/).This project made use of the MaNGA-Pipe3D dataproducts. We thank the IA-UNAM MaNGA team for creating this catalogue, and the ConaCyt-180125 project for supporting them. Funding for the J-PAS Project has been provided by the Governments of Espana and Aragon though the Fondo de Inversion de Teruel, European FEDER funding and the MINECO and by the Brazilian agencies FINEP, FAPESP, FAPERJ and by the National Observatory of Brazil. Based on observations made with the JST/T250 telescope and PathFinder camera for the miniJPAS project at the Observatorio Astrofisico de Javalambre (OAJ), in Teruel, owned, managed, and operated by the Centro de Estudios de Fisica del Cosmos de Aragon (CEFCA). We acknowledge the OAJ Data Processing and Archiving Unit (UPAD) for reducing and calibrating the OAJ data used in this work. Funding for OAJ, UPAD, and CEFCA has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragon through the Fondo de Inversiones de Teruel; the Aragon Government through the Research Groups E96, E103, and E16_17R; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) with grant PGC2018-097585-B-C21; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO/FEDER, UE) under AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-2, AYA2012-30789, and ICTS-2009-14; and European FEDER funding (FCDD10-4E-867, FCDD13-4E-2685).

ObjectiveTo assess the safety and efficacy of rituximab in systemic sclerosis (SSc) in clinical practice.MethodsWe performed a prospective study including patients with SSc from the European Scleroderma Trials and Research (EUSTAR) network treated with rituximab and matched with untreated patients with SSc. The main outcomes measures were adverse events, skin fibrosis improvement, lung fibrosis worsening and steroids use among propensity score-matched patients treated or not with rituximab.Results254 patients were treated with rituximab, in 58% for lung and in 32% for skin involvement. After a median follow-up of 2 years, about 70% of the patients had no side effect. Comparison of treated patients with 9575 propensity-score matched patients showed that patients treated with rituximab were more likely to have skin fibrosis improvement (22.7 vs 14.03 events per 100 person-years; OR: 2.79 [1.47–5.32]; p=0.002). Treated patients did not have significantly different rates of decrease in forced vital capacity (FVC)>10% (OR: 1.03 [0.55–1.94]; p=0.93) nor in carbon monoxide diffusing capacity (DLCO) decrease. Patients having received rituximab were more prone to stop or decrease steroids (OR: 2.34 [1.56–3.53], pConclusionRituximab use was associated with a good safety profile in this large SSc-cohort. Significant change was observed on skin fibrosis, but not on lung. However, the limitation is the observational design. The potential stabilisation of lung fibrosis by rituximab has to be addressed by a randomised trial.

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