Follow-up Imaging of Disk Candidates from the Disk Detective Citizen Science Project: New Discoveries and False Positives in WISE Circumstellar Disk Surveys

The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with excess 22 μm emission from circumstellar dust in the AllWISE data release from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We evaluated 261 Disk Detective objects of interest with imaging with the Robo-AO adaptive optics instrument on the 1.5 m telescope at Palomar Observatory and with RetroCam on the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory to search for background objects at 0.″15-12″ separations from each target. Our analysis of these data leads us to reject 7% of targets. Combining this result with statistics from our online image classification efforts implies that at most 7.9% ± 0.2% of AllWISE-selected infrared excesses are good disk candidates. Applying our false-positive rates to other surveys, we find that the infrared excess searches of McDonald et al. and Marton et al. all have false-positive rates >70%. Moreover, we find that all 13 disk candidates in Theissen & West with W4 signal-to-noise ratio >3 are false positives. We present 244 disk candidates that have survived vetting by follow-up imaging. Of these, 213 are newly identified disk systems. Twelve of these are candidate members of comoving pairs based on Gaia astrometry, supporting the hypothesis that warm dust is associated with binary systems. We also note the discovery of 22 μm excess around two known members of the Scorpius-Centaurus association, and we identify known disk host WISEA J164540.79-310226.6 as a likely Sco-Cen member. Thirty of these disk candidates are closer than ∼125 pc (including 26 debris disks), making them good targets for both direct-imaging exoplanet searches

Emergency Department Physical Therapist Service: A Pilot Study Examining Physician Perceptions

Though physical therapist consultation has been described as a means of enhancing care in the Emergency Department (ED), such services are rare and often poorly understood. This pilot study utilizes qualitative methodology for the purpose of describing how one group of emergency physicians experienced with physical therapist consultation in the ED perceive these services and the challenges associated with their provision. Transcripts of interviews with 11 emergency physicians were analyzed for recurrent themes. Findings indicated that these physicians found ED physical therapist services to be of value for themselves, their patients, and the department as a whole and described specific manners in which such consultations enhanced emergency care. Implementation and maintenance of the program, however, presented various challenges. Furthermore, physicians perceived that possession of certain characteristics better prepared physical therapists for success in this practice environment. These findings may help clarify the role of the ED physical therapist and aid in communicating the potential benefits and complications associated with the delivery of such services