Global Non-Potential Magnetic Models of the Solar Corona During the March 2015 Eclipse.

Seven different models are applied to the same problem of simulating the Sun's coronal magnetic field during the solar eclipse on 2015 March 20. All of the models are non-potential, allowing for free magnetic energy, but the associated electric currents are developed in significantly different ways. This is not a direct comparison of the coronal modelling techniques, in that the different models also use different photospheric boundary conditions, reflecting the range of approaches currently used in the community. Despite the significant differences, the results show broad agreement in the overall magnetic topology. Among those models with significant volume currents in much of the corona, there is general agreement that the ratio of total to potential magnetic energy should be approximately 1.4. However, there are significant differences in the electric current distributions; while static extrapolations are best able to reproduce active regions, they are unable to recover sheared magnetic fields in filament channels using currently available vector magnetogram data. By contrast, time-evolving simulations can recover the filament channel fields at the expense of not matching the observed vector magnetic fields within active regions. We suggest that, at present, the best approach may be a hybrid model using static extrapolations but with additional energization informed by simplified evolution models. This is demonstrated by one of the models.

Multi-Scale Gaussian Normalization for Solar Image Processing.

Extreme ultra-violet images of the corona contain information over a wide range of spatial scales, and different structures such as active regions, quiet Sun, and filament channels contain information at very different brightness regimes. Processing of these images is important to reveal information, often hidden within the data, without introducing artefacts or bias. It is also important that any process be computationally efficient, particularly given the fine spatial and temporal resolution of Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (AIA/SDO), and consideration of future higher resolution observations. A very efficient process is described here, which is based on localised normalising of the data at many different spatial scales. The method reveals information at the finest scales whilst maintaining enough of the larger-scale information to provide context. It also intrinsically flattens noisy regions and can reveal structure in off-limb regions out to the edge of the field of view. We also applied the method successfully to a white-light coronagraph observation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11207-014-0523-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

I/D ACE gene polymorphism in survival of leukemia patients -- hypothesis and pilot study.

Angiotensin-I converting enzyme (ACE) is involved not only in intracellular volume regulation but also in proliferation control. Since both ACE gene polymorphism (I/D ACE) and ABO blood group determine ACE level in peripheral blood and probably also in bone marrow, the hypothesis to the interindividual differences in survival of leukemic patients was suggested. The data of 25 patients of both sexes with acute myelogenous (AML), acute lymphatic (ALL), chronic myelogenous (CML) and chronic lymphatic (CLL) leukemia treated by conventional were used for the study. The overall survival (SUR) was estimated as the time from the date of diagnosis to the date of death. The difference between patient's individual SUR (iSUR) and median SUR according to the type of leukemia (mSUR) was calculated. This difference (iSUR-mSUR) varied with I/D ACE genotype (p<0.02) but neither with diagnosis nor with ABO blood group. The regression model for iSUR calculation, from mSUR and I/D ACE genotype, has been suggested.