685 research outputs found
Reeling In Outsourcing: Evaluating Supply Chain Risk And Reward Under Economic Uncertainty
In todays climate of economic uncertainty, companies that have relied on outsourcing in the past to curtail costs are increasingly reeling in their outsourcing decision to more appropriately balance supply chain risk and reward. This paper provides a review of the literature on reversing supply chain outsourcing and frames the sourcing decision in terms of multiple options, including multi- sourcing, near sourcing, and in-sourcing. A decision tree model is presented to aid the decision maker in evaluating the expected value of various sourcing decisions when risks and returns are explicitly considered. Trends and conditions that influence the outsourcing decision are also discussed
Resources, mortality, and disease ecology: Importance of positive feedbacks between host growth rate and pathogen dynamics
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution in 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15659801.2015.1035508.Resource theory and metabolic scaling theory suggest that the dynamics of a pathogen within a host should strongly depend upon the rate of host cell metabolism. Once an infection occurs, key ecological interactions occur on or within the host organism that determine whether the pathogen dies out, persists as a chronic infection, or grows to densities that lead to host death. We hypothesize that, in general, conditions favoring rapid host growth rates should amplify the replication and proliferation of both fungal and viral pathogens. If a host population experiences an increase in mortality, to persist it must have a higher growth rate, per host, often reflecting greater resource availability per capita. We hypothesize that this could indirectly foster the pathogen, which also benefits from increased within-host resource turnover. We first bring together in a short review a number of key prior studies which illustrate resource effects on viral and fungal pathogen dynamics. We then report new results from a semi-continuous cell culture experiment with SHIV, demonstrating that higher mortality rates indeed can promote viral proliferation. We develop a simple model that illustrates dynamical consequences of these resource effects, including interesting effects such as alternative stable states and oscillatory dynamics. Our paper contributes to a growing body of literature at the interface of ecology and infectious disease epidemiology, emphasizing that host abundances alone do not drive community dynamics: the physiological state and resource content of infected hosts also strongly influence host-pathogen interactions
Linking Dynamical and Population Genetic Models of Persistent Viral Infection
This article develops a theoretical framework to link dynamical and population genetic models of persistent viral infection. This linkage is useful because, while the dynamical and population genetic theories have developed independently, the biological processes they describe are completely interrelated. Parameters of the dynamical models are important determinants of evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift. We develop analytical methods, based on coupled differential equations and Markov chain theory, to predict the accumulation of genetic diversity within the viral population as a function of dynamical parameters. These methods are first applied to the standard model of viral dynamics and then generalized to consider the infection of multiple host cell types by the viral population. Each cell type is characterized by specific parameter values. Inclusion of multiple cell types increases the likelihood of persistent infection and can increase the amount of genetic diversity within the viral population. However, the overall rate of gene sequence evolution may actually be reduced
Evaluation of Sulfa Drugs against Recombinant Pneumocystis carinii Dihydropteroate Synthetase and In vivo
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74851/1/j.1550-7408.1996.tb04976.x.pd
Sulfa Resistance in Mouse-Derived Pneumocystis carinii
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/74674/1/j.1550-7408.1996.tb04975.x.pd
Extended Red Objects and Stellar Wind Bow Shocks in the Carina Nebula
We report the results of infrared photometry on 39 extended red objects
(EROs) in the Carina Nebula, observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Most
EROs are identified by bright, extended 8.0 um emission, which ranges from 10''
to 40'' in size, but our sample also includes 4 EROs identified by extended 24
um emission. Of particular interest are nine EROs associated with late O or
early B-type stars and characterized by arc-shaped morphology, suggesting
dusty, stellar-wind bow shocks. These objects are preferentially oriented
towards the central regions of the Carina Nebula, suggesting that these bow
shocks are generally produced by the interactions of OB winds with the bulk
expansion of the H II region rather than high proper motion. We identify
preferred regions of mid-infrared color space occupied by our bow shock
candidates, which also contain bow shock candidates in M17 and RCW 49 but are
well-separated from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission or circumstellar
discs. Color cuts identify an additional 12 marginally-resolved bow shock
candidates, 10 of which are also associated with known late O or early B stars.
H II region expansion velocities derived from bow shock candidate standoff
distances are ~10 km/s, assuming typical H II region gas densities, comparable
to expansion velocities derived from bow shocks in M17 and RCW 49. One
candidate bow shock provides direct evidence of physical interaction between
the massive stellar winds originating in the Trumpler 15 and Trumpler 14
clusters, supporting the conclusion that both clusters are at similar
heliocentric distances.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS accepted (2014 October 10
A Pan-Carina YSO Catalog: Intermediate-Mass Young Stellar Objects in the Carina Nebula Identified Via Mid-Infrared Excess Emission
We present a catalog of 1439 young stellar objects (YSOs) spanning the 1.42
deg^2 field surveyed by the Chandra Carina Complex Project (CCCP), which
includes the major ionizing clusters and the most active sites of ongoing star
formation within the Great Nebula in Carina. Candidate YSOs were identified via
infrared (IR) excess emission from dusty circumstellar disks and envelopes,
using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope Vela--Carina survey and the
Two-Micron All Sky Survey. We model the 1--24 /mu m IR spectral energy
distributions of the YSOs to constrain physical properties. Our Pan-Carina YSO
Catalog (PCYC) is dominated by intermediate-mass (2 Msun < m < 10 Msun) objects
with disks, including Herbig Ae/Be stars and their less evolved progenitors.
The PCYC provides a valuable complementary dataset to the CCCP X-ray source
catalogs, identifying 1029 YSOs in Carina with no X-ray detection. We also
catalog 410 YSOs with X-ray counterparts, including 62 candidate protostars.
Candidate protostars with X-ray detections tend to be more evolved than those
without. In most cases, X-ray emission apparently originating from
intermediate-mass, disk-dominated YSOs is consistent with the presence of
low-mass companions, but we also find that X-ray emission correlates with
cooler stellar photospheres and higher disk masses. We suggest that
intermediate-mass YSOs produce X-rays during their early pre-main sequence
evolution, perhaps driven by magnetic dynamo activity during the convective
atmosphere phase, but this emission dies off as the stars approach the main
sequence. Extrapolating over the stellar initial mass function scaled to the
PCYC population, we predict a total population of >2x10^4 YSOs and a
present-day star formation rate (SFR) of >0.008 Msun/yr. The global SFR in the
Carina Nebula, averaged over the past ~5 Myr, has been approximately constant.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, accepted for the ApJS Special Issue on the
Chandra Carina Complex Project (CCCP), scheduled for publication in May 2011.
All 16 CCCP Special Issue papers, including a version of this article with
high-quality figures and full electronic tables, are available at
http://cochise.astro.psu.edu/Carina_public/special_issue.html (through 2011
at least
Spitzer Space Telescope observations of the Carina Nebula: The steady march of feedback-driven star formation
We report the first results of imaging the Carina Nebula with Spitzer/IRAC,
providing a catalog of point sources and YSOs based on SED fits. We discuss
several aspects of the extended emission, including dust pillars that result
when a clumpy molecular cloud is shredded by massive star feedback. There are
few "extended green objects" (EGOs) normally taken as signposts of outflow
activity, and none of the HH jets detected optically are seen as EGOs. A
population of "extended red objects" tends to be found around OB stars, some
with clear bow-shocks. These are dusty shocks where stellar winds collide with
flows off nearby clouds. Finally, the relative distributions of O stars and
subclusters of YSOs as compared to dust pillars shows that while some YSOs are
located within pillars, many more stars and YSOs reside just outside pillar
heads. We suggest that pillars are transient phenomena, part of a continuous
outwardly propagating wave of star formation driven by massive star feedback.
As pillars are destroyed, they leave newly formed stars in their wake, which
are then subsumed into the young OB association. Altogether, the current
generation of YSOs shows no strong deviation from a normal IMF. The number of
YSOs suggests a roughly constant star-formation rate over the past 3Myr,
implying that star formation in pillars constitutes an important mechanism to
construct unbound OB associations. Accelerated pillars may give birth to O-type
stars that, after several Myr, could appear to have formed in isolation.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, MNRAS accepte
Evidence to Support the Use of the Retrospective Pretest method to Measure Dietary and Physical Activity Behavior and Self-Efficacy in Adolescents
This study compared the retrospective pretest-posttest method to the traditional prospective pretest-posttest method assessing adolescents’ dietary and physical activity, self-efficacy and behaviors. Participants were 7th and 8th grade students at a rural K-8th grade elementary school in Northern California (n=188). All participants completed an evaluation instrument (traditional pretest), followed by a 9-lesson dietary and physical activity intervention. Upon completion of the intervention, participants completed a second and identical evaluation instrument which served as a traditional posttest. The following day, participants completed another evaluation tool, this time formatted as a retrospective pretest. Analysis included sample t tests comparing the means of each method. Participants (n = 154) with a mean age of 13 ± .7 years old were included in the analyses (52% female). Paired sample t tests reported non-significant differences between the two methods for dietary behavior and dietary self-efficacy, yet significant differences were found for physical activity behavior (p < .05) and physical activity self-efficacy (p < .01). We conclude that the retrospective pretest-posttest method was as good a measure of dietary self-efficacy and behavior as the traditional prospective pretest-posttest method and may be better at attenuating response-shift bias when assessing physical activity self-efficacy and behavior
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