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We estimate disc-averaged RV variations of the Sun over the last magnetic cycle, from the single Fe I line observed by SDO/HMI, using a physical model for rotationally modulated magnetic activity that was previously validated against HARPS-N solar observations. We estimate the disc-averaged, unsigned magnetic flux and show that a simple linear fit to it reduces the RMS of RV variations by 62%, i.e. a factor of 2.6. We additionally apply the FF' method, which predicts RV variations based on a star's photometric variations. At cycle maximum, we find that additional physical processes must be at play beyond suppression of convective blueshift and velocity imablances resulting from brightness inhomogeneities, in agreement with recent studies of solar RV variations. By modelling RV variations over the magnetic cycle using a linear fit to the unsigned magnetic flux, we recover injected planets at an orbital period of about 300 days with RV semi-amplitudes down to 0.3 m/s. To reach semi-amplitudes of 0.1 m/s, we will need to identify and model additional physical phenomena that are not well traced by the unsigned magnetic flux or FF'. The unsigned magnetic flux is an excellent proxy for rotationally modulated, activity-induced RV variations, and could become a key tool in confirming and characterising Earth analogs orbiting Sun-like stars. The present study motivates ongoing and future efforts to develop observation and analysis techniques to measure the unsigned magnetic flux at high precision in slowly rotating, relatively inactive stars like the Sun., 25 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, submitted to ApJ

Purpose of review Undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies, continues to plague children across the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The situation has worsened alongside the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic because of major systemic disruptions to food supply, healthcare, and employment. Large-scale food fortification (LSFF) is a potential strategy for improving micronutrient intakes through the addition of vitamins and minerals to staple foods and improving the nutritional status of populations at large. Recent findings Current evidence unquestionably supports the use of LSFF to improve micronutrient status. Evidence syntheses have also demonstrated impact on some functional outcomes, including anemia, wasting, underweight, and neural tube defects, that underpin poor health and development. Importantly, many of these effects have also been reflected in effectiveness studies that examine LSFF in real-world situations as opposed to under-controlled environments. However, programmatic challenges must be addressed in LMICs in order for LSFF efforts to reach their full potential. Summary LSFF is an important strategy that has the potential to improve the health and nutrition of entire populations of vulnerable children. Now more than ever, existing programs should be strengthened and new programs implemented in areas with widespread undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.

Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., Context. Gliese-832 (GJ 832) is an M2V star hosting a massive planet on a decade-long orbit, GJ 832b, discovered by radial velocity (RV). Later, a super Earth or mini-Neptune orbiting within the stellar habitable zone was reported (GJ 832c). The recently determined stellar rotation period (45.7 ± 9.3 days) is close to the orbital period of putative planet c (35.68 ± 0.03 days). Aims. We aim to confirm or dismiss the planetary nature of the RV signature attributed to GJ 832c, by adding 119 new RV data points, new photometric data, and an analysis of the spectroscopic stellar activity indicators. Additionally, we update the orbital parameters of the planetary system and search for additional signals. Methods. We performed a frequency content analysis of the RVs to search for periodic and stable signals. Radial velocity time series were modelled with Keplerians and Gaussian process (GP) regressions alongside activity indicators to subsequently compare them within a Bayesian framework. Results. We updated the stellar rotational period of GJ 832 from activity indicators, obtaining 37.5+1.4-1.5 days, improving the precision by a factor of 6. The new photometric data are in agreement with this value. We detected an RV signal near 18 days (FAP < 4.6%), which is half of the stellar rotation period. Two Keplerians alone fail at modelling GJ 832b and a second planet with a 35-day orbital period. Moreover, the Bayesian evidence from the GP analysis of the RV data with simultaneous activity indices prefers a model without a second Keplerian, therefore negating the existence of planet c. © P. Gorrini et al. 2022., P.G. acknowledges research funding from CONICYT project 22181925. N.A.-D. acknowledges the support of FONDECYT project 3180063. SVJ acknowledges the support of the DFG priority programme SPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets (JE 701/5-1). F.D.S. acknowledges support from a Marie Curie Action of the European Union (grant agreement 101030103). R.E.M. gratefully acknowledges support by the ANID BASAL projects ACE210002 and FB210003 and FONDECYT 1190621. Y.T. acknowledges the support of DFG priority program SPP 1992 ‘Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets” (TS 356/3-1). J.R. Barnes and C.A. Haswell are funded by STFC under consolidated grant ST/T000295/1. We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades through projects PID2019-109522GB-C52, PID2019-107061GB-C64, PID2019-110689RB-100 and the Centre of Excellence ‘Severo Ochoa’ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). We acknowledge the support by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COM-PETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020; PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032113; PTDC/FISAST/28953/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953. This work made use of RadVel (Fulton et al. 2018), Pyaneti (Barragán et al. 2022), MULTINEST V3.10 (e.g. Feroz et al. 2019)), PYMULTINEST wrapper (Buchner et al. 2014), GEORGE (Ambikasaran et al. 2015), and lightkurve (Lightkurve Collaboration 2018). This research includes publicly available data from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) from the TESS mission, as well as data public data from HARPS, UCLES and PFS.

N.S., R.W. and B.-O.D. acknowledge support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P2-163967 and PP00P2-190080). M.N.G. acknowledges support from MIT's Kavli Institute as a Juan Carlos Torres Fellow and from the European Space Agency (ESA) as an ESA Research Fellow. A.A.B., B.S.S.and I.A.S. acknowledge the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under the grant 075-15-2020-780 (N13.1902.21.0039). L.D. is an F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher. B.V.R. thanks the Heising-Simons Foundation for support. This publication benefits from the support of the French Community of Belgium in the context of the FRIA Doctoral Grant awarded to M.T. and E.J. acknowledges DGAPA for his postdoctoral fellowship. Y.G.M.C. acknowledges support from UNAM-DGAPA PAPIIT BG-101321. D.D. acknowledges support from the TESS Guest Investigator Program grant 80NSSC19K1727 and NASA Exoplanet Research Program grant 18-2XRP18_2-0136. We acknowledge support from the Centre for Space and Habitability (CSH) of the University of Bern. Part of this work received support from the National Centre for Competence in Research PlanetS, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission that are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). This work is based upon observations carried out at the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional on the Sierra de San Pedro Martir (OAN-SPM), Baja California, Mexico. We warmly thank the entire technical staff of the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional at San Pedro Martir in Mexico for their unfailing support to SAINT-EX operations, namely: E. Cadena, T. Calvario, E. Colorado, F. Diaz, A. Franco, B. Garcia, C. Guerrero, G. Guisa, F. Guillen, A. Landa, L. Figueroa, B. Hernandez, J. Herrera, E. Lopez, E. Lugo, B. Martinez, G. Melgoza, F. Montalvo, J.M. Nunez, J.L. Ochoa, I. Plauchu, F. Quiroz, H. Riesgo, H. Serrano, T. Verdugo, I. Zavala. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the FP/2007-2013 ERC grant agreement nffi 336480, and under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grants agreements nffi 679030 and 803193/BEBOP); from an Actions de Recherche Concertee (ARC) grant, financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, from the Balzan Prize Foundation, from the BEL-SPO/BRAIN2.0 research program (PORTAL project), from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC; grant nffi ST/S00193X/1), and from F.R.S-FNRS (Research Project ID T010920F). This work was also partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (PI: Queloz, grant number 327127), as well as by the MERAC foundation (PI: Triaud). PI: Gillon is F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant PDR T.0120.21, with the participation of the Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF). M.G. and E.J. are F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associate. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. Part of the LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP). M.S.I.P. is funded by NSF. Some of the observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument(s) `Alopeke (and/or Zorro). `Alopeke (and/or Zorro) was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. Data were reduced using a software pipeline originally written by Elliott Horch and Mark Everett. `Alopeke (and/or Zorro) was mounted on the Gemini North (and/or South) telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's OIR Lab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion (Argentina), Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This research made use of exoplanet (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2021a,b) and its dependencies (Agol et al. 2020; Kumar et al. 2019; Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018; Kipping 2013; Luger et al. 2019; Salvatier et al. 2016; Theano Development Team 2016). Additional use of software packages AstroImageJ (Collins et al. 2017) and TAPIR (Jensen 2013)., Context. Thanks to the relative ease of finding and characterizing small planets around M-dwarf stars, these objects have become cornerstones in the field of exoplanet studies. The current paucity of planets in long-period orbits around M dwarfs makes such objects particularly compelling as they provide clues about the formation and evolution of these systems. Aims. In this study we present the discovery of TOI-2257 b (TIC 198485881), a long-period (35 d) sub-Neptune orbiting an M3 star at 57.8 pc. Its transit depth is about 0.4%, large enough to be detected with medium-size, ground-based telescopes. The long transit duration suggests the planet is in a highly eccentric orbit (e similar to 0.5), which would make it the most eccentric planet known to be transiting an M-dwarf star. Methods. We combined TESS and ground-based data obtained with the 1.0-meter SAINT-EX, 0.60-meter TRAPPIST-North, and 1.2-meter FLWO telescopes to find a planetary size of 2.2 R-circle plus and an orbital period of 35.19 days. In addition, we make use of archival data, high-resolution imaging, and vetting packages to support our planetary interpretation. Results. With its long period and high eccentricity, TOI-2257 b falls into a novel slice of parameter space. Despite the planet's low equilibrium temperature (similar to 256 K), its host star's small size (R-* = 0.311 +/- 0.015) and relative infrared brightness (K-mag = 10.7) make it a suitable candidate for atmospheric exploration via transmission spectroscopy., Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), European Commission PP00P2-163967 PP00P2-190080, MIT's Kavli Institute, European Space Agency European Commission, Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation 075-15-2020-780 (N13.1902.21.0039), Heising-Simons Foundation, French Community of Belgium, DGAPA, Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigacion e Innovacion Tecnologica (PAPIIT) Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico BG-101321, TESS Guest Investigator Program 80NSSC19K1727, NASA Exoplanet Research Program 18-2XRP18_2-0136, Centre for Space and Habitability (CSH) of the University of Bern, European Research Council (ERC) 336480, Actions de Recherche Concertee (ARC) grant - Wallonia-Brussels Federation, UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF) ST/S00193X/1, Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS T010920F, Simons Foundation 327127, MERAC foundation, Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS PDR T.0120.21, National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program NASA's Science Mission Directorate, European Research Council (ERC) 679030 803193/BEBOP, Balzan Prize Foundation BEL-SPO/BRAIN2.0 research program (PORTAL project)

Context. The number of super-Earth and Earth-mass planet discoveries has increased significantly in the last two decades thanks to the Doppler radial velocity and planetary transit observing techniques. Either technique can detect planet candidates on its own, but the power of a combined photometric and spectroscopic analysis is unique for an insightful characterization of the planets, which in turn has repercussions for our understanding of the architecture of planetary systems and, therefore, their formation and evolution. Aims. Two transiting planet candidates with super-Earth radii around the nearby (d = 70.64 ± 0.06 pc) K7–M0 dwarf star TOI-1238 were announced by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which observed the field of TOI-1238 in four different sectors. We aim to validate their planetary nature using precise radial velocities taken with the CARMENES spectrograph. Methods. We obtained 55 CARMENES radial velocity measurements that span the 11 months between 9 May 2020 and 5 April 2021. For a better characterization of the parent star’s activity, we also collected contemporaneous optical photometric observations at the Joan Oró and Sierra Nevada observatories and retrieved archival photometry from the literature. We performed a combined TESS+CARMENES photometric and spectroscopic analysis by including Gaussian processes and Keplerian orbits to account for the stellar activity and planetary signals simultaneously. Results. We estimate that TOI-1238 has a rotation period of 40 ± 5 d based on photometric and spectroscopic data. The combined analysis confirms the discovery of two transiting planets, TOI-1238 b and c, with orbital periods of 0.764597−0.000011+0.000013 d and 3.294736−0.000036+0.000034 d, masses of 3.76−1.07+1.15 M⊕ and 8.32−1.88+1.90 M⊕, and radii of 1.21−0.10+0.11 R⊕ and 2.11−0.14+0.14 R⊕. They orbit their parent star at semimajor axes of 0.0137 ± 0.0004 au and 0.036 ± 0.001 au, respectively.The two planets are placed on opposite sides of the radius valley for M dwarfs and lie between the star and the inner border of TOI-1238’s habitable zone. The inner super-Earth TOI-1238 b is one of the densest ultra-short-period planets ever discovered (ρ = 11.7−3.4+4.2 g cm−3). The CARMENES data also reveal the presence of an outer, non-transiting, more massive companion with an orbital period and radial velocity amplitude of ≥600 d and ≥70 m s−1, which implies a likely mass of M ≥ 2 √(1− e2) MJup and a separation ≥1.1 au from its parent star. © ESO 2022., CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán de Calar Alto (CAHA, Almería, Spain). CARMENES is funded by the German Max-Planck- Gesellschaft (MPG), the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the European Union through FEDER/ERF funds, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Koönigstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Insitut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad, Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the state of Baden-Wüttemberg, the German Science Foundation (DFG), the Klaus Tschira Foundation (KTS), and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work was based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission that are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. Some of the observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument ‘Alopeke obtained under Gemini LLP Proposal Number: GN/S-2021A-LP-105. ‘Alopeke was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. ‘Alopeke was mounted on the Gemini North (and/or South) telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF’s OIR Lab, which is managed bythe Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). Data were partly collected with the 90 cm telescope at the Sierra Nevada Observatory (SNO) operated by the Instituto de Astrofí fica de Andalucí a (IAA-CSIC). We acknowledge the telescope operators from Observatori Astronómic del Montsec, Sierra Nevada Observatory, and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán de Calar Alto (CAHA). E.G.A., M.R.Z.O., J.A.C., J.S.F, and D.M. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through project PID2019-109522GBC5[1:4]. E.G.A also acknowledges support from AEI Project No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu” – Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA). V.M.P. acknowledges financial support from NASA through grant NNX17AG24G. S.V.J. acknowledges the support of the DFG priority program SPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets (JE 701/5-1)”. M.J.L.-G., E.R., C.R.-L., and P.J.A. acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through projects PID2019-109522GB-C52, PID2019-107061GB-C64, PID2019-110689RB-100 and the Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). G.M. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 895525. S.S. and S.R. acknowledgesupport by the DFG Research Unit FOR 2544 Blue Planets around Red Stars, project no. RE 2694/4-1.

Full list of authors: Luque, R.; Fulton, B. J.; Kunimoto, M.; Amado, P. J.; Gorrini, P.; Dreizler, S.; Hellier, C.; Henry, G. W.; Molaverdikhani, K.; Morello, G.; Pena-Monino, L.; Perez-Torres, M.; Pozuelos, F. J.; Shan, Y.; Anglada-Escude, G.; Bejar, V. J. S.; Bergond, G.; Boyle, A. W.; Caballero, J. A.; Charbonneau, D.; Ciardi, D. R.; Dufoer, S.; Espinoza, N.; Everett, M.; Fischer, D.; Hatzes, A. P.; Henning, Th; Hesse, K.; Howard, A. W.; Howell, S. B.; Isaacson, H.; Jeffers, S., V; Jenkins, J. M.; Kane, S. R.; Kemmer, J.; Khalafinejad, S.; Kidwell, R. C., Jr.; Kossakowski, D.; Latham, D. W.; Lillo-Box, J.; Lissauer, J. J.; Montes, D.; Orell-Miquel, J.; Palle, E.; Pollacco, D.; Quirrenbach, A.; Reffert, S.; Reiners, A.; Ribas, I; Ricker, G. R.; Rogers, L. A.; Sanz-Forcada, J.; Schlecker, M.; Schweitzer, A.; Seager, S.; Shporer, A.; Stassun, K. G.; Stock, S.; Tal-Or, L.; Ting, E. B.; Trifonov, T.; Vanaverbeke, S.; Vanderspek, R.; Villasenor, J.; Winn, J. N.; Winters, J. G.; Osorio, M. R. Zapatero.-- This is an Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., We report the discovery of a multiplanetary system transiting the M0 V dwarf HD 260655 (GJ 239, TOI-4599). The system consists of at least two transiting planets, namely HD 260655 b, with a period of 2.77 d, a radius of Rb = 1.240 ± 0.023 R⊕, a mass of Mb = 2.14 ± 0.34 M⊕, and a bulk density of ρb = 6.2 ± 1.0 g cm−3, and HD 260655 c, with a period of 5.71 d, a radius of , a mass of Mc = 3.09 ± 0.48 M⊕, and a bulk density of g cm−3. The planets have been detected in transit by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission and confirmed independently with archival and new precise radial velocities obtained with the HIRES and CARMENES instruments since 1998 and 2016, respectively. At a distance of 10 pc, HD 260655 has become the fourth closest known multitransiting planet system after HD 219134, LTT 1445 A, and AU Mic. Due to the apparent brightness of the host star (J = 6.7 mag), both planets are among the most suitable rocky worlds known today for atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope, both in transmission and emission. © R. Luque et al. 2022., This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSlC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium with additional contributions. Some of the observations in this paper made use of the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet and Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI). NESSI was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and the NASA Ames Research Center. NESSI was built at the Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. R.L. acknowledges funding from University of La Laguna through the Margarita Salas Fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Universities ref. UNI/551/2021-May 26, and under the EU Next Generation funds. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and the ERDF “A way of making Europe” through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4]/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019-000920-S), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737); the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme; the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars” (RE 2694/8-1, KU 3625/2-1), the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS (EXC-2094 – 390783311) and the Priority Programme “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets” (JE 701/5-1); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grants 80NSSC21K0367 and 80NSSC22K0165 in support of Cycles 3 and 4 of the TESS Guest Investigator program; the National Science Foundation, Tennessee State University, and the State of Tennessee through its Centers of Excellence Program; and the Bulgarian BNSF program “VIHREN-2021” project No. KP-06-DV/5. The results reported herein benefited from collaborations and/or information exchange within the program “Alien Earths” (supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under agreement No. 80NSSC21K0593) for NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) research coordination network sponsored by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. We thank VeraM. Passegger for a helpful discussion on the photospheric parameters of HD 260655.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission identified a deep and asymmetric transit-like signal with a periodicity of 4.5 days orbiting the M4 dwarf star TOI-3884. The signal has been confirmed by follow-up observations collected by the ExTrA facility and Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, which reveal that the transit is chromatic. The light curves are well modelled by a host star having a large polar spot transited by a 6-R$_{\oplus}$ planet. We validate the planet with seeing-limited photometry, high-resolution imaging, and radial velocities. TOI-3884 b, with a radius of $6.00 \pm 0.18$ R$_{\oplus}$, is the first sub-Saturn planet transiting a mid-M dwarf. Owing to the host star's brightness and small size, it has one of the largest transmission spectroscopy metrics for this planet size and becomes a top target for atmospheric characterisation with the James Webb Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes., Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Letters

We report the detection of GJ 3090 b (TOI-177.01), a mini-Neptune on a 2.9-day orbit transiting a bright (K = 7.3 mag) M2 dwarf located at 22 pc. The planet was identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and was confirmed with the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher radial velocities. Seeing-limited photometry and speckle imaging rule out nearby eclipsing binaries. Additional transits were observed with the LCOGT, Spitzer, and ExTrA telescopes. We characterise the star to have a mass of 0.519 $\pm$ 0.013 M$_\odot$ and a radius of 0.516 $\pm$ 0.016 R$_\odot$. We modelled the transit light curves and radial velocity measurements and obtained a planetary mass of 3.34 $\pm$ 0.72 M$_\oplus$, a radius of 2.13 $\pm$ 0.11 R$_\oplus$, and a mean density of 1.89$^{+0.52}_{-0.45}$ g/cm$^3$. The low density of the planet implies the presence of volatiles, and its radius and insolation place it immediately above the radius valley at the lower end of the mini-Neptune cluster. A coupled atmospheric and dynamical evolution analysis of the planet is inconsistent with a pure H-He atmosphere and favours a heavy mean molecular weight atmosphere. The transmission spectroscopy metric of 221$^{+66}_{-46}$ means that GJ 3090 b is the second or third most favourable mini-Neptune after GJ 1214 b whose atmosphere may be characterised. At almost half the mass of GJ 1214 b, GJ 3090 b is an excellent probe of the edge of the transition between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. We identify an additional signal in the radial velocity data that we attribute to a planet candidate with an orbital period of 13 days and a mass of 17.1$^{+8.9}_{-3.2}$ M$_\oplus$, whose transits are not detected., Comment: 25 pages, 26 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

We report the detection and characterization of the transiting sub-Neptune TOI-1759 b, using photometric time-series from TESS and near infrared spectropolarimetric data from SPIRou on the CFHT. TOI-1759 b orbits a moderately active M0V star with an orbital period of $18.849975\pm0.000006$ d, and we measure a planetary radius and mass of $3.06\pm0.22$ R$_\oplus$ and $6.8\pm2.0$ M$_\oplus$. Radial velocities were extracted from the SPIRou spectra using both the CCF and the LBL methods, optimizing the velocity measurements in the near infrared domain. We analyzed the broadband SED of the star and the high-resolution SPIRou spectra to constrain the stellar parameters and thus improve the accuracy of the derived planet parameters. A LSD analysis of the SPIRou Stokes $V$ polarized spectra detects Zeeman signatures in TOI-1759. We model the rotational modulation of the magnetic stellar activity using a GP regression with a quasi-periodic covariance function, and find a rotation period of $35.65^{+0.17}_{-0.15}$ d. We reconstruct the large-scale surface magnetic field of the star using ZDI, which gives a predominantly poloidal field with a mean strength of $18\pm4$ G. Finally, we perform a joint Bayesian MCMC analysis of the TESS photometry and SPIRou RVs to optimally constrain the system parameters. At $0.1176\pm0.0013$ au from the star, the planet receives $6.4$ times the bolometric flux incident on Earth, and its equilibrium temperature is estimated at $433\pm14$ K. TOI-1759 b is a likely gas-dominated sub-Neptune with an expected high rate of photoevaporation. Therefore, it is an interesting target to search for neutral hydrogen escape, which may provide important constraints on the planetary formation mechanisms responsible for the observed sub-Neptune radius desert., Accepted for publication in the 10. Planets and planetary systems section of Astronomy & Astrophysics

Full list of authors: Lillo-Box, J.; Gandolfi, D.; Armstrong, D. J.; Collins, K. A.; Nielsen, L. D.; Luque, R.; Korth, J.; Sousa, S. G.; Quinn, S. N.; Acuña, L.; Howell, S. B.; Morello, G.; Hellier, C.; Giacalone, S.; Hoyer, S.; Stassun, K.; Palle, E.; Aguichine, A.; Mousis, O.; Adibekyan, V.; Azevedo Silva, T.; Barrado, D.; Deleuil, M.; Eastman, J. D.; Fukui, A.; Hawthorn, F.; Irwin, J. M.; Jenkins, J. M.; Latham, D. W.; Muresan, A.; Narita, N.; Persson, C. M.; Santerne, A.; Santos, N. C.; Savel, A. B.; Osborn, H. P.; Teske, J.; Wheatley, P. J.; Winn, J. N.; Barros, S. C. C.; Butler, R. P.; Caldwell, D. A.; Charbonneau, D.; Cloutier, R.; Crane, J. D.; Demangeon, O. D. S.; Díaz, R. F.; Dumusque, X.; Esposito, M.; Falk, B.; Gill, H.; Hojjatpanah, S.; Kreidberg, L.; Mireles, I.; Osborn, A.; Ricker, G. R.; Rodriguez, J. E.; Schwarz, R. P.; Seager, S.; Serrano Bell, J.; Shectman, S. A.; Shporer, A.; Vezie, M.; Wang, S. X.; Zhou, G.--This is an Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., Context. The current architecture of a given multi-planetary system is a key fingerprint of its past formation and dynamical evolution history. Long-term follow-up observations are key to complete their picture. Aims. In this paper, we focus on the confirmation and characterization of the components of the TOI-969 planetary system, where TESS detected a Neptune-size planet candidate in a very close-in orbit around a late K-dwarf star. Methods. We use a set of precise radial velocity observations from HARPS, PFS, and CORALIE instruments covering more than two years in combination with the TESS photometric light curve and other ground-based follow-up observations to confirm and characterize the components of this planetary system. Results. We find that TOI-969 b is a transiting close-in (Pb ~ 1.82 days) mini-Neptune planet (mb = 9.1−1.0+1.1 M⊕, Rb = 2.765−0.097+0.088 R⊕), placing it on the lower boundary of the hot-Neptune desert (Teq,b = 941 ± 31 K). The analysis of its internal structure shows that TOI-969 b is a volatile-rich planet, suggesting it underwent an inward migration. The radial velocity model also favors the presence of a second massive body in the system, TOI-969 c, with a long period of Pc = 1700−280+290 days, a minimum mass of mc sin ic = 11.3−0.9+1.1 MJup, and a highly eccentric orbit of ec = 0.628−0.036+0.043. Conclusions. The TOI-969 planetary system is one of the few around K-dwarfs known to have this extended configuration going from a very close-in planet to a wide-separation gaseous giant. TOI-969 b has a transmission spectroscopy metric of 93 and orbits a moderately bright (G = 11.3 mag) star, making it an excellent target for atmospheric studies. The architecture of this planetary system can also provide valuable information about migration and formation of planetary systems. © The Authors 2023., J.L-B. acknowledges financial support received from “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) and from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Slodowska-Curie grant agreement No 847648, with fellowship code LCF/BQ/PI20/11760023. This research has also been partly funded by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) Projects No.PID2019-107061GB-C6l and No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “Maria de Maeztu” – Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC). R.L. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, through project PID2019-109522GB-C52, and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). DJ.A. acknowledges support from the STFC via an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (ST/R00384X/1). S.G.S acknowledges the support from FCT through Estimulo FCT contract nr.CEECIND/00826/2018 and POPH/FSE (EC). G.M. has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 895525. S.H. acknowledges CNES funding through the grant 837319. The French group acknowledges financial support from the French Programme National de Planétologie (PNP, INSU). This work is partly financed by the Spanish Mnistry of Economics and Competitiveness through grants PGC2018-098153-B-C31. We acknowledge the support by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through national funds and by FEDER through COMPETE2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização by these grants: UID/FIS/04434/2019; UIDB/04434/2020; UIDP/04434/2020; PTDC/FIS-AST/32113/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032113; PTDC/FISAST/28953/2017 & POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028953. P.J.W is supported by an STFC consolidated grant (ST/T000406/1). F.H. is funded by an STFC studentship. T.A.S acknowledges support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Fellowship PD/BD/150416/2019 and POCH/FSE (EC). C.M.P. acknowledges support from the SNSA (dnr 65/19P). This work has been carried out within the framework of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement SCORE No 851555). O.D.S.D. is supported in the form of work contract (DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0004) funded by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). M.E. acknowledges the support of the DFG priority programSPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets” (HA 3279/12-1). A.O. is funded by an STFC studentship. J.K. gratefully acknowledge the support of the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA; DNR 2020-00104). This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. This paper is based on observations made with the MuSCAT3 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center and under financial supports by ISPS KAKENHI (IP18H05439) and 1ST PRESTO (IPMIPR1775), at Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, HI, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory. Some of the observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument Zorro obtained under Gemini LLP Proposal Number: GN/S-2021A-LP-105. Zorro was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nie Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. Zorro was mounted on the Gemini North (and/or South) telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF’s OIR Lab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. The MEarth Team gratefully acknowledges funding from the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering (awarded to D.C.). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants AST-0807690, AST-1109468, AST-1004488 (Alan T. Waterman Award), and AST-1616624, and upon work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. 80NSSC18K0476 issued through the XRP Program. This work is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. This research made use of Astropy, (a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy, Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020), matplotlib (a Python library for publication quality graphics Hunter 2007), and numpy (Harris et al. 2020). This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France., With funding from the Spanish government through the "Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence" accreditation (CEX2021-001131-S).

Full list of authors: Delrez, L.; Murray, C. A.; Pozuelos, F. J.; Narita, N.; Ducrot, E.; Timmermans, M.; Watanabe, N.; Burgasser, A. J.; Hirano, T.; Rackham, B., V; Stassun, K. G.; Van Grootel, V.; Aganze, C.; Cointepas, M.; Howell, S.; Kaltenegger, L.; Niraula, P.; Sebastian, D.; Almenara, J. M.; Barkaoui, K.; Baycroft, T. A.; Bonfils, X.; Bouchy, F.; Burdanov, A.; Caldwell, D. A.; Charbonneau, D.; Ciardi, D. R.; Collins, K. A.; Daylan, T.; Demory, B-O; Guenther, N.; de Wit, J.; Dransfield, G.; Fajardo-Acosta, S. B.; Fausnaugh, M.; Fukui, A.; Furlan, E.; Garcia, L. J.; Gnilka, C. L.; Chew, Y. Gomez Maqueo; Gomez-Munoz, M. A.; Harakawa, H.; Heng, K.; Hooton, M. J.; Hori, Y.; Ikoma, M.; Jehin, E.; Jenkins, J. M.; Kagetani, T.; Kawauchi, K.; Kimura, T.; Kodama, T.; Kotani, T.; Krishnamurthy, V; Kudo, T.; Kunovac, V; Kusakabe, N.; Latham, D. W.; Littlefield, C.; McCormac, J.; Melis, C.; Mori, M.; Murgas, F.; Palle, E.; Pedersen, P. P.; Queloz, D.; Ricker, G.; Sabin, L.; Schanche, N.; Schroffenegger, U.; Seager, S.; Shiao, B.; Sohy, S.; Standing, M. R.; Tamura, M.; Theissen, C. A.; Thompson, S. J.; Triaud, A. H. M. J.; Vanderspek, R.; Vievard, S.; Wells, R. D.; Winn, J. N.; Zou, Y.; Zuniga-Fernandez, S.; Gillon, M.--This is an Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., Context. In the age of JWST, temperate terrestrial exoplanets transiting nearby late-type M dwarfs provide unique opportunities for characterising their atmospheres, as well as searching for biosignature gases. In this context, the benchmark TRAPPIST-1 planetary system has garnered the interest of a broad scientific community. Aims. We report here the discovery and validation of two temperate super-Earths transiting LP 890-9 (TOI-4306, SPECULOOS-2), a relatively low-activity nearby (32 pc) M6V star. The inner planet, LP 890-9 b, was first detected by TESS (and identified as TOI-4306.01) based on four sectors of data. Intensive photometric monitoring of the system with the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory then led to the discovery of a second outer transiting planet, LP 890-9 c (also identified as SPECULOOS-2 c), previously undetected by TESS. The orbital period of this second planet was later confirmed by MuSCAT3 follow-up observations. Methods. We first inferred the properties of the host star by analyzing its Lick/Kast optical and IRTF/SpeX near-infrared spectra, as well as its broadband spectral energy distribution, and Gaia parallax. We then derived the properties of the two planets by modelling multi-colour transit photometry from TESS, SPECULOOS-South, MuSCAT3, ExTrA, TRAPPIST-South, and SAINT-EX. Archival imaging, Gemini-South/Zorro high-resolution imaging, and Subaru/IRD radial velocities also support our planetary interpretation. Results. With a mass of 0.118 ± 0.002 M⊙, a radius of 0.1556 ± 0.0086 R⊙, and an effective temperature of 2850 ± 75 K, LP 890-9 is the second-coolest star found to host planets, after TRAPPIST-1. The inner planet has an orbital period of 2.73 d, a radius of 1.320 −0.027+0.053 R⊕, and receives an incident stellar flux of 4.09 ± 0.12 S⊕. The outer planet has a similar size of 1.367 −0.039+0.055R⊕ and an orbital period of 8.46 d. With an incident stellar flux of 0.906 ± 0.026 S⊕, it is located within the conservative habitable zone, very close to its inner limit (runaway greenhouse). Although the masses of the two planets remain to be measured, we estimated their potential for atmospheric characterisation via transmission spectroscopy using a mass-radius relationship and found that, after the TRAPPIST-1 planets, LP 890-9 c is the second-most favourable habitable-zone terrestrial planet known so far (assuming for this comparison a similar atmosphere for all planets). Conclusions. The discovery of this remarkable system offers another rare opportunity to study temperate terrestrial planets around our smallest and coolest neighbours. © L. Delrez et al. 2022., Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. We acknowledge the use of public TESS data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission that are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the FP/2007-2013 ERC grant agreement no 336480, and under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grants agreements no 679030 & 803193/BEBOP); from an Action de Recherche Concertée (ARC) grant, financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, from the Balzan Prize Foundation, from the BELSPO/BRAIN2.0 research program (PORTAL project), from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC; grants no ST/S00193X/1, ST/00305/1, and ST/W000385/1), and from F.R.S-FNRS (Research Project ID T010920F). This work was also partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (PI: Queloz, grant number 327127), as well as by the MERAC foundation (PI: Triaud). TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant PDR T.0120.21, with the participation of the Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF). This work is partly supported by MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP15H02063, JP17H04574, JP18H05439, JP18H05442, JP19K14783, JP21H00035, JP21K13975, JP21K20376, JP22000005, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows Grant Number JP20J21872, JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR1761, the Astrobiology Center of National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) (Grant Numbers AB031010, AB031014), and Social welfare juridical person SHIYUKAI (chairman MASAYUKI KAWASHIMA). This paper is based on data collected at the Subaru Telescope, which is located atop Maunakea and operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). We wish to recognise and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. This paper is based on observations made with the MuSCAT3 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center and under financial supports by JSPS KAKENHI (JP18H05439) and JST PRESTO (JPMJPR1775), at Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, HI, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory. Some of the observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument Zorro obtained under Gemini LLP Proposal Number: GN/S-2021A-LP-105. Zorro was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. Zorro was mounted on the Gemini North (and/or South) telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF s OIR Lab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). We acknowledge funding from the European Research Council under the ERC Grant Agreement n. 3 37591-ExTrA. This work has been carried out within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This work is based upon observations carried out at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir (OAN-SPM), Baja California, México. We warmly thank the entire technical staff of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at San Pedro Mártir for their unfailing support to SAINT-EX operations. Research at Lick Observatory is partially supported by a generous gift from Google. L.D. is an F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher. M.G. and E.J. are F.R.S.-FNRS Senior Research Associates. V.V.G. is an F.R.S.-FNRS Research Associate. B.V.R. thanks the Heising-Simons Foundation for support. Y.G.M.C. acknowledges support from UNAM-PAPIIT IG-101321. B.-O.D. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP00P2-163967 and PP00P2-190080). M.N.G. acknowledges support from the European Space Agency (ESA) as an ESA Research Fellow. A.H.M.J.T acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 803193/BEBOP), from the MERAC foundation, and from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC; grants no ST/S00193X/1, ST/00305/1, and ST/W000385/1). E.D. acknowledges support from the innovation and research Horizon 2020 program in the context of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie subvention 945298. V.K. acknowledges support from NSF award AST2009343. This publication benefits from the support of the French Community of Belgium in the context of the FRIA Doctoral Grant awarded to M.T., With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.

Uganda has achieved a considerable reduction in childhood stunting over the past 2 decades, although accelerated action will be needed to achieve 2030 targets.This study assessed the national, community, household, and individual-level drivers of stunting decline since 2000, along with direct and indirect nutrition policies and programs that have contributed to nutrition change in Uganda.This mixed-methods study used 4 different approaches to determine the drivers of stunting change over time: 1) a scoping literature review; 2) quantitative data analyses, including Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and difference-in-difference multivariable hierarchical modeling; 3) national- and community-level qualitative data collection and analysis; and 4) analysis of key direct and indirect nutrition policies, programs, and initiatives.Stunting prevalence declined by 14% points from 2000 to 2016, although geographical, wealth, urban/rural, and education-based inequalities persist. Child growth curves demonstrated substantial improvements in child height-for-age z-scores (HAZs) at birth, reflecting improved maternal nutrition and intrauterine growth. The decomposition analysis explained 82% of HAZ change, with increased coverage of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs; 35%), better maternal nutrition (19%), improved maternal education (14%), and improved maternal and newborn healthcare (11%) being the most critical factors. The qualitative analysis supported these findings, and also pointed to wealth, women's empowerment, cultural norms, water and sanitation, dietary intake/diversity, and reduced childhood illness as important. The 2011 Uganda Nutrition Action Plan was an essential multisectoral strategy that shifted nutrition out of health and mainstreamed it across related sectors.Uganda's success in stunting reduction was multifactorial, but driven largely through indirect nutrition strategies delivered outside of health. To further improve stunting, it will be critical to prioritize malaria-control strategies, including ITN distribution campaigns and prevention/treatment approaches for mothers and children, and deliberately target the poor, least educated, and rural populations along with high-burden districts.

Drawing on signalling theory, we propose that use of deceptive impression management (IM) in the employment interview could produce false signals, and individuals hired based on such signals may incur consequences once they are on the job—such as poor perceived fit. We surveyed job applicants who recently interviewed and received a job to investigate the relationship between use of deceptive IM in the interview and subsequent perceived personjob and person-organization fit, stress, well-being, and employee engagement. In a twophase study, 206 job applicants self-reported their use of deceptive IM in their interviews at Time 1, and their perceived person–job and person–organization fit, job stress, affective well-being, and employee engagement at Time 2. Deceptive IM had a negative relationship with perceived person–job and person–organization fit. As well, perceived fit accounted for the relationship between deceptive IM and well-being, employee engagement, and job stress. The findings indicate that using deceptive IM in the interview may come at a cost to employees.

Undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies, continues to plague children across the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The situation has worsened alongside the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic because of major systemic disruptions to food supply, healthcare, and employment. Large-scale food fortification (LSFF) is a potential strategy for improving micronutrient intakes through the addition of vitamins and minerals to staple foods and improving the nutritional status of populations at large.Current evidence unquestionably supports the use of LSFF to improve micronutrient status. Evidence syntheses have also demonstrated impact on some functional outcomes, including anemia, wasting, underweight, and neural tube defects, that underpin poor health and development. Importantly, many of these effects have also been reflected in effectiveness studies that examine LSFF in real-world situations as opposed to under-controlled environments. However, programmatic challenges must be addressed in LMICs in order for LSFF efforts to reach their full potential.LSFF is an important strategy that has the potential to improve the health and nutrition of entire populations of vulnerable children. Now more than ever, existing programs should be strengthened and new programs implemented in areas with widespread undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.

Funding: A.C.C. acknowledges support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) consolidated grant No. ST/R000824/1. Radial velocity (RV) searches for Earth-mass exoplanets in the habitable zone around Sun-like stars are limited by the effects of stellar variability on the host star. In particular, suppression of convective blueshift and brightness inhomogeneities due to photospheric faculae/plage and starspots are the dominant contribution to the variability of such stellar RVs. Gaussian process (GP) regression is a powerful tool for statistically modeling these quasi-periodic variations. We investigate the limits of this technique using 800 days of RVs from the solar telescope on the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher for the Northern hemisphere (HARPS-N) spectrograph. These data provide a well-sampled time series of stellar RV variations. Into this data set, we inject Keplerian signals with periods between 100 and 500 days and amplitudes between 0.6 and 2.4 m s−1. We use GP regression to fit the resulting RVs and determine the statistical significance of recovered periods and amplitudes. We then generate synthetic RVs with the same covariance properties as the solar data to determine a lower bound on the observational baseline necessary to detect low-mass planets in Venus-like orbits around a Sun-like star. Our simulations show that discovering planets with a larger mass (~0.5 m s−1) using current-generation spectrographs and GP regression will require more than 12 yr of densely sampled RV observations. Furthermore, even with a perfect model of stellar variability, discovering a true exo-Venus (~0.1 m s−1) with current instruments would take over 15 yr. Therefore, next-generation spectrographs and better models of stellar variability are required for detection of such planets. Postprint

Background: Uganda has achieved a considerable reduction in childhood stunting over the past two decades, though accelerated action will be needed to achieve 2030 targets. This study assessed the national, community, household, and individual-level drivers of stunting decline since 2000, along with direct and indirect nutrition policies and programs that have contributed to nutrition change in Uganda. Methods: This mixed-methods study used 4 different approaches to determine the drivers of stunting change over time: 1) a systematic literature review; 2) quantitative data analyses, including Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and difference-in-difference multivariable hierarchical modeling; 3) national and community-level qualitative data collection and analysis; and 4) analysis of key direct and indirect nutrition policies, programs, and initiatives. Findings: Stunting prevalence declined by 14% points from 2000 to 2016, though geographical, wealth, urban/rural, and education-based inequalities persist. Child growth curves demonstrated substantial improvements in child height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) at birth, reflecting improved maternal nutrition and intrauterine growth. The decomposition analysis explained 82% of HAZ change, with increased coverage of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs; 35%), better maternal nutrition (19%), improved maternal education (14%), and improved maternal and newborn healthcare (11%) being the most critical factors. The qualitative analysis supported these findings, and also pointed to wealth, women’s empowerment, cultural norms, water and sanitation, dietary intake, and childhood illness as important. The 2011 Uganda Nutrition Action Plan was an essential multi-sectoral strategy that shifted nutrition out of health and mainstreamed it across related sectors. Interpretation: Uganda’s success in stunting reduction was multi-factorial, but driven largely through indirect nutrition strategies delivered outside of health. To further improve stunting, it will be critical to prioritize malaria-control strategies, including ITN distribution campaigns and prevention/treatment approaches for mothers and children, and deliberately target the poor, least educated and rural populations along with high-burden northern and western districts. Funding: This study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gates Ventures. Declaration of Interest: None to declare. Ethical Approval: Ethics approval was obtained from the Makerere University School of Public Health Higher Degrees Research Ethical Committee (Uganda), the Uganda National Council of Science and Technology, and the Research Ethics Board at the Hospital for Sick Children (Canada).

Kossakowski, D., et al., We present the discovery of a transiting mini-Neptune around TOI-1201, a relatively bright and moderately young early M dwarf (J ≈ 9.5 mag, ~600-800 Myr) in an equal-mass ~8 arcsecond-wide binary system, using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, along with follow-up transit observations. With an orbital period of 2.49 d, TOI-1201 b is a warm mini-Neptune with a radius of Rb = 2.415 ± 0.090 R⊕. This signal is also present in the precise radial velocity measurements from CARMENES, confirming the existence of the planet and providing a planetary mass of Mb = 6.28 ± 0.88 M⊕ and, thus, an estimated bulk density of 2.45-0.42+0.48 g cm-3. The spectroscopic observations additionally show evidence of a signal with a period of 19 d and a long periodic variation of undetermined origin. In combination with ground-based photometric monitoring from WASP-South and ASAS-SN, we attribute the 19 d signal to the stellar rotation period (Prot = 19-23 d), although we cannot rule out that the variation seen in photometry belongs to the visually close binary companion. We calculate precise stellar parameters for both TOI-1201 and its companion. The transiting planet is anexcellent target for atmosphere characterization (the transmission spectroscopy metric is 97-16+21) with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. It is also feasible to measure its spin-orbit alignment via the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect using current state-of-the-art spectrographs with submeter per second radial velocity precision., Part of this work was supported by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project number Ts 17/2–1. CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg,Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work was based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). We acknowledgefinancial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4]/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program (ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28), the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme, the DFG priority program SPP 1992 “Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets (JE 701/5-1)”, the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via ERC Advanced Grant Origins 832428 and under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant 895525.

Vitamins play an essential role in supporting physiological processes throughout the life course, but are especially important during pregnancy and for adequate infant growth and development. Deficiencies during these key periods can cause or contribute to devastating effects including maternal death, poor birth outcomes such as intrauterine growth restriction and low birthweight, and increased risk of infections and child stunting. Maternal vitamin deficiencies are common where diets are not diverse enough to meet nutritional needs or where recurrent infections/chronic conditions inhibit proper absorption, two situations that are common in low and middle-income countries. If maternal vitamin status is insufficient, then newborns will not be able to acquire in utero the vitamin stores that they need for their first few months of life, making maternal nutrition exceptionally important for both mother and baby. This chapter explores the role of vitamins in both pregnancy and in newborns. It considers sources of vitamins, including from the diet, breastmilk and formula, the global burden and consequences of vitamin deficiencies, and strategies for preventing and managing these deficiencies.

State-of-the-art radial-velocity (RV) exoplanet searches are currently limited by RV signals arising from stellar magnetic activity. We analyze solar observations acquired over a 3 yr period during the decline of Carrington Cycle 24 to test models of RV variation of Sun-like stars. A purpose-built solar telescope at the High Accuracy Radial-velocity Planet Searcher for the Northern hemisphere (HARPS-N) provides disk-integrated solar spectra, from which we extract RVs and {log}{R}HK}{\prime }. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) provides disk-resolved images of magnetic activity. The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) provides near-continuous solar photometry, analogous to a Kepler light curve. We verify that the SORCE photometry and HARPS-N {log}{R}HK}{\prime } correlate strongly with the SDO-derived magnetic filling factor, while the HARPS-N RV variations do not. To explain this discrepancy, we test existing models of RV variations. We estimate the contributions of the suppression of convective blueshift and the rotational imbalance due to brightness inhomogeneities to the observed HARPS-N RVs. We investigate the time variation of these contributions over several rotation periods, and how these contributions depend on the area of active regions. We find that magnetic active regions smaller than 60 Mm2 do not significantly suppress convective blueshift. Our area-dependent model reduces the amplitude of activity-induced RV variations by a factor of two. The present study highlights the need to identify a proxy that correlates specifically with large, bright magnetic regions on the surfaces of exoplanet-hosting stars.

At least 5% of women have an eating disorder (ED) during pregnancy. These EDs affect prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) and weight gain during pregnancy, factors associated with birth complications and adverse neonatal outcomes. This review contributes to the literature by examining several adverse birth outcomes associated with EDs and differentiates between past and present EDs. Of the 18 articles reviewed, EDs were associated with preterm birth in 5/14 (36%) and small-for-gestational-age in 5/8 (63%) studies. Anorexia Nervosa increases the odds of a low birth weight baby, particularly when women enter pregnancy with a low BMI. Binge Eating Disorder is positively associated with having a large-for-gestational-age infant, and Bulimia Nervosa is associated with miscarriage when symptomatic during pregnancy. Having a current ED increases the risk for adverse birth outcomes more than a past ED. Since the aetiology of adverse birth outcomes is multi-factorial, drawing conclusions about causal relationships between EDs and birth outcomes is problematic given the small number of studies reporting these outcomes. Resources should target preconception interventions that put EDs into remission and help women achieve a healthier BMI prior to pregnancy, as these have been consistently shown to improve birth outcomes.

The time-variable velocity fields of solar-type stars limit the precision of radial-velocity determinations of their planets' masses, obstructing detection of Earth twins. Since 2015 July we have been monitoring disc-integrated sunlight in daytime using a purpose-built solar telescope and fibre feed to the HARPS-N stellar radial-velocity spectrometer. We present and analyse the solar radial-velocity measurements and cross-correlation function (CCF) parameters obtained in the first 3 years of observation, interpreting them in the context of spatially-resolved solar observations. We describe a Bayesian mixture-model approach to automated data-quality monitoring. We provide dynamical and daily differential-extinction corrections to place the radial velocities in the heliocentric reference frame, and the CCF shape parameters in the sidereal frame. We achieve a photon-noise limited radial-velocity precision better than 0.43 m s$^{-1}$ per 5-minute observation. The day-to-day precision is limited by zero-point calibration uncertainty with an RMS scatter of about 0.4 m s$^{-1}$. We find significant signals from granulation and solar activity. Within a day, granulation noise dominates, with an amplitude of about 0.4 m s$^{-1}$ and an autocorrelation half-life of 15 minutes. On longer timescales, activity dominates. Sunspot groups broaden the CCF as they cross the solar disc. Facular regions temporarily reduce the intrinsic asymmetry of the CCF. The radial-velocity increase that accompanies an active-region passage has a typical amplitude of 5 m s$^{-1}$ and is correlated with the line asymmetry, but leads it by 3 days. Spectral line-shape variability thus shows promise as a proxy for recovering the true radial velocity., 19 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present Hubble Space Telescope optical and near-ultraviolet transmission spectra of the transiting hot-Jupiter HD189733b, taken with the repaired Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument. The resulting spectra cover the range 2900-5700 Ang and reach per-exposure signal-to-noise levels greater than 11,000 within a 500 Ang bandwidth. We used time series spectra obtained during two transit events to determine the wavelength dependance of the planetary radius and measure the exoplanet's atmospheric transmission spectrum for the first time over this wavelength range. Our measurements, in conjunction with existing HST spectra, now provide a broadband transmission spectrum covering the full optical regime. The STIS data also shows unambiguous evidence of a large occulted stellar spot during one of our transit events, which we use to place constraints on the characteristics of the K dwarf's stellar spots, estimating spot temperatures around Teff~4250 K. With contemporaneous ground-based photometric monitoring of the stellar variability, we also measure the correlation between the stellar activity level and transit-measured planet-to-star radius contrast, which is in good agreement with predictions. We find a planetary transmission spectrum in good agreement with that of Rayleigh scattering from a high-altitude atmospheric haze as previously found from HST ACS camera. The high-altitude haze is now found to cover the entire optical regime and is well characterised by Rayleigh scattering. These findings suggest that haze may be a globally dominant atmospheric feature of the planet which would result in a high optical albedo at shorter optical wavelengths.

This article provides a historical overview of Indiana University Libraries’ participation in all four components of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). Additional topics include the rationale behind Indiana's commitment to the Program and the benefits derived from PCC membership. The article concludes that PCC participants are uniquely positioned to play an effective role in meeting the challenges facing today's academic libraries.

The nearby transiting planet HD 189733b was observed during three transits with the ACS camera of the Hubble Space Telescope in spectroscopic mode. The resulting time series of 675 spectra covers the 550-1050 nm range, with a resolution element of ~8 nm, at extremely high accuracy (signal-to-noise ratio up to 10,000 in 50 nm intervals in each individual spectrum). Using these data, we disentangle the effects of limb darkening, measurement systematics, and spots on the surface of the host star, to calculate the wavelength dependence of the effective transit radius to an accuracy of ~50 km. This constitutes the ``transmission spectrum'' of the planetary atmosphere. It indicates at each wavelength at what height the planetary atmosphere becomes opaque to the grazing stellar light during the transit. In this wavelength range, strong features due to sodium, potassium and water are predicted by atmosphere models for a planet like HD 189733b, but they can be hidden by broad absorption from clouds or hazes higher up in the atmosphere. We observed an almost featureless transmission spectrum between 550 and 1050 nm, with no indication of the expected sodium or potassium atomic absorption features. Comparison of our results with the transit radius observed in the near and mid-infrared (2-8 microns), and the slope of the spectrum, suggest the presence of a haze of sub-micron particles in the upper atmosphere of the planet.

We monitored three transits of the giant gas planet around the nearby K dwarf HD 189733 with the ACS camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. The resulting very-high accuracy lightcurve (signal-to-noise ratio near 15000 on individual measurements, 35000 on 10-minute averages) allows a direct geometric measurement of the orbital inclination, radius ratio and scale of the system: i = 85.68 +- 0.04, Rpl/R*=0.1572 +- 0.0004, a/R*=8.92 +- 0.09. We derive improved values for the stellar and planetary radius, R*=0.755+- 0.011 Rsol, Rpl=1.154 +- 0.017 RJ, and the transit ephemerides, Ttr=2453931.12048 +- 0.00002 + n 2.218581 +- 0.000002$. The HST data also reveal clear evidence of the planet occulting spots on the surface of the star. At least one large spot complex (>80000 km) is required to explain the observed flux residuals and their colour evolution. This feature is compatible in amplitude and phase with the variability observed simultaneously from the ground. No evidence for satellites or rings around HD 189733b is seen in the HST lightcurve. This allows us to exlude with a high probability the presence of Earth-sized moons and Saturn-type debris rings around this planet. The timing of the three transits sampled is stable to the level of a few seconds, excluding a massive second planet in outer 2:1 resonance., revised version. Significant updates and new figures; to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics

We present here the detection of a system of four low-mass planets around the bright (V=5.5) and close-by (6.5 pc) star HD219134. This is the first result of the Rocky Planet Search program with HARPS-N on the TNG in La Palma. The inner planet orbits the star in 3.0937 +/-0.0004 days, on a quasi-circular orbit with a semi-major axis of 0.0382 +/- 0.0003 AU. Spitzer observations allowed us to detect the transit of the planet in front of the star making HD219134b the nearest known transiting planet to date. From the amplitude of the radial-velocity variation (2.33 +/- 0.24 m/s) and observed depth of the transit (359 +/- 38 ppm), the planet mass and radius are estimated to be 4.46 +/- 0.47 M_{\oplus} and 1.606 +/- 0.086 R_{\oplus} leading to a mean density of 5.89 +/- 1.17 g/cc, suggesting a rocky composition. One additional planet with minimum mass of 2.67 +/- 0.59 M_{\oplus} moves on a close-in, quasi-circular orbit with a period of 6.765 +/- 0.005 days. The third planet in the system has a period of 46.78 +/- 0.16 days and a minimum mass of 8.7 +/- 1.1 M{\oplus}, at 0.234 +/- 0.002 AU from the star. Its eccentricity is 0.32 +/- 0.14. The period of this planet is close to the rotational period of the star estimated from variations of activity indicators (42.3 +/- 0.1 days). The planetary origin of the signal is, however, the preferred solution as no indication of variation at the corresponding frequency is observed for activity-sensitive parameters. Finally, a fourth additional longer-period planet of mass of 62 +/- 6 M_{\oplus} orbits the star in 1190 days, on an eccentric orbit (e=0.27 +/- 0.11) at a distance of 2.14 +/- 0.27 AU., Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A

We report the discovery of the exoplanet K2-110 b (previously EPIC212521166b) from K2 photometry orbiting in a 13.8637d period around an old, metal-poor K3 dwarf star. With a V-band magnitude of 11.9, K2-110 is particularly amenable to RV follow-up. A joint analysis of K2 photometry and high-precision RVs from 28 HARPS and HARPS-N spectra reveal it to have a radius of 2.6$\pm 0.1 R_{\oplus}$ and a mass of 16.7$\pm 3.2$~M$_{\oplus}$, hence a density of $5.2\pm1.2$ g.cm$^{-3}$, making it one of the most massive planets yet to be found with a sub-Neptune radius. When accounting for compression, the resulting Earth-like density is best fitted by a 0.2 M$_{\oplus}$ hydrogen atmosphere over an 16.5 M$_{\oplus}$ Earth-like interior, although the planet could also have significant water content. At 0.1~AU, even taking into account the old stellar age of $8 \pm 3$ Gyr, the planet is unlikely to have been significantly affected by EUV evaporation. However the planet likely disc-migrated to its current position making the lack of a thick H$_2$ atmosphere puzzling. This analysis has made K2-110 b one of the best-characterised mini-Neptunes with density constrained to less than 30%., Submitted to A&A, May 2016; Accepted April 2017

“Horizon” is the integrated library system marketed by Ameritech Library Services. The cataloging and authority control module of this system is a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. The MARC editor is inefficient for use in environments where high productivity is required but will be replaced with a significantly improved editor in the near future. Simultaneous import of MARC records by multiple users is problematic. Bibliographic headings are stored in the form of separate authority records, an approach that offers advantages but also presents significant problems. The flexibility of non-MARC edit forms is a major plus.

The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG)[9] hosts, starting in April 2012, the visible spectrograph HARPS-N. It is based on the design of its predecessor working at ESO's 3.6m telescope, achieving unprecedented results on radial velocity measurements of extrasolar planetary systems. The spectrograph's ultra-stable environment, in a temperature-controlled vacuum chamber, will allow measurements under 1 m/s which will enable the characterization of rocky, Earth-like planets. Enhancements from the original HARPS include better scrambling using octagonal section fibers with a shorter length, as well as a native tip-tilt system to increase image sharpness, and an integrated pipeline providing a complete set of parameters. Observations in the Kepler field will be the main goal of HARPS-N, and a substantial fraction of TNG observing time will be devoted to this follow-up. The operation process of the observatory has been updated, from scheduling constraints to telescope control system. Here we describe the entire instrument, along with the results from the first technical commissioning.

We present a high-precision infrared radial velocity study of late-type stars using spectra obtained with NIRSPEC at the W. M. Keck Observatory. Radial velocity precisions of 50 m/s are achieved for old field mid-M dwarfs using telluric features for precise wavelength calibration. Using this technique, 20 young stars in the �� Pic (age ~12 Myr) and TW Hya (age ~8 Myr) Associations were monitored over several years to search for low mass companions; we also included the chromospherically active field star GJ 873 (EV Lac) in this survey. Based on comparisons with previous optical observations of these young active stars, radial velocity measurements at infrared wavelengths mitigate the radial velocity noise caused by star spots by a factor of ~3. Nevertheless, star spot noise is still the dominant source of measurement error for young stars at 2.3 ��m, and limits the precision to ~77 m/s for the slowest rotating stars (v sin i < 6 km/s), increasing to ~168 m/s for rapidly rotating stars (v sin i > 12 km/s). The observations reveal both GJ 3305 and TWA 23 to be single-lined spectroscopic binaries; in the case of GJ 3305, the motion is likely caused by its 0.09" companion, identified after this survey began. The large amplitude, short-timescale variations of TWA 13A are indicative of a hot Jupiter-like companion, but the available data are insufficient to confirm this. We label it as a candidate radial velocity variable. For the remainder of the sample, these observations exclude the presence of any 'hot' (P < 3 days) companions more massive than 8 MJup, and any 'warm' (P < 30 days) companions more massive than 17 MJup, on average. Assuming an edge-on orbit for the edge-on disk system AU Mic, these observations exclude the presence of any hot Jupiters more massive than 1.8 MJup or warm Jupiters more massive than 3.9 MJup., Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 18 pages, 7 figures

The Extrasolar Planet Observation Characterization and the Deep Impact Extended Investigation missions (EPOXI) are currently observing the transits of exoplanets, a comet nucleus at short range, and Earth using the High Resolution Instrument (HRI) - a 0.3 m f/35 telescope - on the Deep Impact flyby spacecraft. The HRI is in a permanently defocused state with the instrument point of focus about 0.6 cm before the focal plane due to the use of a reference flat mirror that became a powered optic due to thermal warping during ground thermal-vacuum testing. Consequently, the point spread function (PSF) covers approximately nine pixels FWHM and is characterized by a patch with three-fold symmetry due to the three-point support structures of the primary and secondary mirrors. The PSF is also strongly color dependent varying in shape and size with change in filtration and target color. While defocus is highly desirable for exoplanet transit observations to limit sensitivity to intra-pixel variation, it is suboptimal for observations of spatially resolved targets. Consequently, all images used in our analysis of such objects were deconvolved with an instrument PSF. The instrument PSF is also being used to optimize transit analysis. We discuss development and usage of an instrument PSF for these observations.

We recently reported the photometric and spectroscopic detection of the primary transit of the 111-day-period, eccentric extra-solar planet HD80606 b, at Observatoire de Haute-Provence, France (Moutou et al. 2009). The whole egress of the primary transit and a section of its central part were observed, allowing the measurement of the planetary radius, and evidence for a spin-orbit misalignment through the observation of the Rossiter-McLaughlin anomaly. The ingress having not been observed for this long-duration transit, uncertainties remained in the parameters of the system. We present here a refined, combined analysis of our photometric and spectroscopic data, together with further published radial velocities, ground-based photometry, and Spitzer photometry around the secondary eclipse, as well as new photometric measurements of HD 80606 acquired at Mount Hopkins, Arizona, just before the beginning of the primary transit. Although the transit is not detected in those new data, they provide an upper limit for the transit duration, which narrows down the possible behaviour of the Rossiter-McLaughlin anomaly in the unobserved part of the transit. We analyse the whole data with a Bayesian approach using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo integration on all available information. We find R_p = 0.98 +- 0.03 R_Jup for the planetary radius, and a total primary transit duration of 11.9 +- 1.3 hours from first to fourth contact. Our analysis reinforces the hypothesis of spin-orbit misalignment in this system (alignment excluded at >95 % level), with a positive projected angle between the planetary orbital axis and the stellar rotation (median solution lambda ~ 50 degrees). As HD80606 is a component of a binary system, the peculiar orbit of its planet could result from a Kozai mechanism., accepted for Publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, submitted 11 May 2009

AIMS : To improve the parameters of the HD 17156 system (peculiar due to the eccentric and long orbital period of its transiting planet) and constrain the presence of stellar companions. METHODS : Photometric data were acquired for 4 transits, and high precision radial velocity measurements were simultaneously acquired with SARG@TNG for one transit. The template spectra of HD 17156 was used to derive effective temperature, gravity, and metallicity. A fit of the photometric and spectroscopic data was performed to measure the stellar and planetary radii, and the spin-orbit alignment. Planet orbital elements and ephemeris were derived from the fit. Near infrared adaptive optic images was acquired with ADOPT@TNG. RESULTS: We have found that the star has a radius of R_S = 1.43+/-0.03 R_sun and the planet R_P =1.02+/-0.08 R_jup. The transit ephemeris is T_c = 2454\756.73134+/-0.00020+N*21.21663+/-0.00045 BJD. The analysis of the Rossiter-Mclaughlin effect shows that the system is spin orbit aligned with an angle lambda = 4.8 +/- 5.3 deg. The analysis of high resolution images has not revealed any stellar companion with projected separation between 150 and 1000 AU from HD 17156., submitted to A&A

We characterize the planetary system Kepler-101 by performing a combined differential evolution Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis of Kepler data and forty radial velocities obtained with the HARPS-N spectrograph. This system was previously validated and is composed of a hot super-Neptune, Kepler-101b, and an Earth-sized planet, Kepler-101c. These two planets orbit the slightly evolved and metal-rich G-type star in 3.49 and 6.03 days, respectively. With mass Mp = 51.1-4.7+ 5.1 M⊕, radius Rp = 5.77-0.79+ 0.85 R⊕, and density ρp = 1.45-0.48+ 0.83 g cm-3, Kepler-101b is the first fully characterized super-Neptune, and its density suggests that heavy elements make up a significant fraction of its interior; more than 60% of its total mass. Kepler-101c has a radius of 1.25-0.17+ 0.19 R⊕, which implies the absence of any H/He envelope, but its mass could not be determined because of the relative faintness of the parent star for highly precise radial-velocity measurements (Kp = 13.8) and the limited number of radial velocities. The 1σ upper limit, Mp

We report a spectroscopic orbit with period P = 3.52433 +/- 0.00027 days for the planetary companion that transits the solar-type star HD209458. For the metallicity, mass, and radius of the star we derive [Fe/H] = 0.00 +/- 0.02, M = 1.1 +/- 0.1 solar masses, and R = 1.3 +/- 0.1 solar radii. This is based on a new analysis of the iron lines in our HIRES template spectrum, and also on the absolute magnitude and color of the star, and uses isochrones from four different sets of stellar evolution models. Using these values for the stellar parameters we reanalyze the transit data and derive an orbital inclination of i = 85.2 +/- 1.4 degrees. For the planet we derive a mass of Mp = 0.69 +/- 0.05 Jupiter masses, a radius of Rp = 1.54 +/- 0.18 Jupiter radii, and a density of 0.23 +/- 0.08 grams per cubic cm., Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables, LaTex, aastex, accepted for publication by ApJ Letters

A Jupiter size planet at a distance of 0.05 AU could produce a reflected light component at the level of ~7×10-5 relative to its host star. Although the star and planet are at a very small angular separation, they would be well resolved spectroscopically, due to the large orbital velocity of the companion. The distinctive signature produced by the addition of this secondary reflected light spectrum should be observable given sufficient spectral resolution and signal-to-noise. A detection would be extremely significant as it would be the first direct detection of a planet around another star. It would yield the orbital inclination and hence the mass of the companion. Furthermore, it would measure a combination of the planetary radius and albedo, from which a minimum radius may be deduced.

Objective: To quantify the performance of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) in incentive learning, or learning to respond to stimuli that signal the imminent presentation of a reinforcer, and in paired-associate learning, or learning of word associations. Methods: The performance of 32 patients with idiopathic PD was compared to that of 25 healthy control subjects, and 32 subjects suffering from arthritis, matched for age and education. The PD and arthritic groups were comparable on a self-report measure of physical disability. All subjects were physically capable of satisfying the contingencies of the incentive learning task. The avoidance task that quantified incentive learning used money loss as an aversive stimulus. The word paired-associate learning task was presented on a computer and feedback was not given on performance. Results: The normal and arthritic groups performed equally well on the avoidance task, whereas the PD group was impaired despite dopaminergic replacement therapy. The groups did not differ significantly in paired-associate learning. Conclusions: These findings are among the first to suggest that the nigrostriatal dopamine dysfunction associated with PD may play a role in incentive learning but not in paired-associate learning and are consistent with a role for dopamine in certain forms of learning and memory. The findings may highlight differences between tonic and modulated function in the nigrostriatal system.