The solar system includes numerous small objects, generally classifiable as asteroids, comets, or interplanetary dust. Asteroids and comets are of considerable importance in the study of the terrestrial planets. The impacts of these bodies with the planets have repeatedly reshaped the planets' surfaces, redistributed the surface materials and changed their chemistry and mineralogy. In addition,...

The LISA space mission, designed to monitor low frequency gravitational waves, is also sensitive to passages of asteroids nearby one of its three spacecrafts. We report the expected rate of detections of asteroid passages, using the known catalog of asteroids and a modeled population. The method adopted consists of determining for each known asteroid the critical encounter distance capable of p...

A number of recent works[1-9] have shown that the thermal inertia of the surfaces of small, km-sized near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is in general between two and three orders of magnitude higher than that of large main belt asteroids[10] with sizes in the range between 200 and 1,000 km. This confirms the idea that large main-belt asteroids, over many hundreds of millions of years, have developed s...

The Planck mission, originally devised for cosmological studies, offers the opportunity to observe Solar System objects at millimetric and submillimetric wavelengths. We concentrate in this paper on the asteroids of the Main Belt, a large class of minor bodies in the Solar System. At present more that 40000 of these asteroids have been discovered and their detection rate is rapidly increasing. ...

We analyze 1187 observations of about 860 unique candidate Jovian Trojan asteroids listed in the 3rd release of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Moving Object Catalog. The sample is complete at the faint end to r = 21.2 mag (apparent brightness) and H = 13.8 (absolute brightness, approximately corresponding to 10 km diameter). A subset of 297 detections of previously known Trojans were used to d...

Recent works have shown that the thermal inertia of km-sized near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of main belt asteroids (MBAs) with sizes (diameters) between 200 and 1,000 km. This confirms the idea that large MBAs, over hundreds millions of years, have developed a fine and thick thermally insulating regolith layer, responsible for the low values of...

Two fatal cases of infection with Nocardia asteroides are described with necropsy findings in one. Both patients had been anaemic and had received steroid therapy. The bacteriological problems of species recognition in the genus Nocardia are considered and the results of infection in experimental animals described.

A 22-year-old man with recurrent pharyngitis developed a peritonsillar abscess from which aspirated material yielded a pure culture of Nocardia asteroides. It is likely that the organism was introduced iatrogenically during a prior tonsillar incision. Although unusual, Nocardia species should be considered and microbiological specimens should be handled appropriately in pharyngeal abscesses tha...

Among Nocardia species causing infections, Nocardia veterana is rarely isolated and is mostly described as causing pulmonary infections. This is the first presentation of a case of brain abscess attributable to an N. veterana infection in a patient with type 2 diabetes. Prolonged antibiotic therapy with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole led to successful clinical recovery.

Lung transplantation is a therapeutic option for the treatment of advanced lung disease. The risk pulmonary infections increased in transplant recipients. We report case coinfection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Nocardia species recipient.