19 research outputs found
Transportation and Distribution of Strategic National Stockpile Supplies in a Public Health Emergency
In the event of a public health emergency in the United States, it is important that public
authorities are equipped to distribute medical supplies to every person in need as quickly as
possible. Federal guidelines state that all persons in an area affected by a public health
emergency should receive their medical countermeasures within 48 hours of the emergency’s
declaration. While the CDC has determined a general dispensing plan for each state and county
to follow, it is ultimately up to the state and county to formalize and implement detailed plans.
A body of academic literature focuses on optimizing the placement and operation of Points of
Dispensing (PODs), which are mass dispensing locations the public visits to receive
countermeasures. However, very few papers have considered the logistics associated with
moving countermeasures from state receiving areas to county-level PODs. This research
addresses this gap through service network design and transportation modeling. Specifically,
the feasibility of a multi-tiered distribution model is evaluated for a case study region
representative of a US state comprised of a mix of urban and rural areas
The Stellar Content of Obscured Galactic Giant H II Regions IV.: NGC3576
We present deep, high angular resolution near-infrared images of the obscured
Galactic Giant H II region NGC3576. Our images reach objects to ~3M_sun. We
collected high signal-to-noise K-band spectra of eight of the brightest
objects, some of which are affected by excess emission and some which follow a
normal interstellar reddening law. None of them displayed photospheric features
typical of massive OB type stars. This indicates that they are still enshrouded
in their natal cocoons. The K-band brightest source (NGC3576 #48) shows CO 2.3
micron bandhead emission, and three others have the same CO feature in
absorption. Three sources display spatially unresolved H_2 emission, suggesting
dense shocked regions close to the stars. We conclude that the remarkable
object NGC3576 #48 is an early-B/late-O star surrounded by a thick
circumstellar disk. A number of other relatively bright cluster members also
display excess emission in the K-band, indicative of reprocessing disks around
massive stars (YSOs). Such emission appears common in other Galactic Giant H II
regions we have surveyed. The IMF slope of the cluster, Gamma = -1.51, is
consistent with Salpeter's distribution and similar to what has been observed
in the Magellanic Cloud clusters and in the periphery of our Galaxy.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A