We have determined the distance to nearby open clusters from the means of Hipparcos parallaxes re-computed from the intermediate data. The rst result worth noticing is that Praesepe, Coma Ber, Persei and Blanco 1 deene the same main sequence in spite of their diierences in metallicity. The second and more surprising result is that the Pleiades, and probably IC 2391 and 2602, deene a sequence ab...

Novel fluorogenic DNA probes are described. The probes (called Pleiades) have a minor groove binder (MGB) and a fluorophore at the 5'-end and a non-fluorescent quencher at the 3'-end of the DNA sequence. This configuration provides surprisingly low background and high hybridization-triggered fluorescence. Here, we comparatively study the performance of such probes, MGB-Eclipse probes, and molec...

We present absolute trigonometric parallaxes and relative proper motions for three members of the Pleiades star cluster, obtained with HST’s Fine Guidance Sensor 1r, a white-light interferometer. We estimate spectral types and luminosity classes of the stars comprising the astrometric reference frame from R ≈ 2, 000 spectra, VJHK photometry, and reduced proper motions. From these we derive esti...

Despite advances in Earth observation and modeling, estimating tropical biomass remains a challenge. Recent work suggests that integrating satellite measurements of canopy height within ecosystem models is a promising approach to infer biomass. We tested the feasibility of this approach to retrieve aboveground biomass (AGB) at three tropical forest sites by assimilating remotely sensed canopy h...

The advent of multicore technologies is set to significantly increase the average compute power per machine. Effective and efficient exploitation of this power poses unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The Pleiades system, currently under development in UCF, CSU and UCC [1], proposes the construction of a distributed, heterogeneous, and secure marketplace for trading and administer thes...

MOTIVATION Clustering protein structures is an important task in structural bioinformatics. De novo structure prediction, for example, often involves a clustering step for finding the best prediction. Other applications include assigning proteins to fold families and analyzing molecular dynamics trajectories. RESULTS We present Pleiades, a novel approach to clustering protein structures with ...

In the ancient Egypt seven goddesses, represented by seven cows, composed the celestial herd that provides the nourishment to her worshippers. This herd is observed in the sky as a group of stars, the Pleiades, close to Aldebaran, the main star in the Taurus constellation. For many ancient populations, Pleiades were relevant stars and their rising was marked as a special time of the year. In th...

The proper motion measurements for 143 previously known L and T dwarfs are presented. From this sample we identify and discuss 8 high velocity L dwarfs. We also find 4 new wide common proper motion binaries/multiple systems. Using the moving cluster methods we have also identified a number of L dwarfs that may be members of the Ursa Major (age≈ 400 Myr), the Hyades (age≈ 625 Myr) and the Pleiad...