Identifying young stars in massive star-forming regions for the MYStIX project

The Massive Young star-forming Complex Study in Infrared and X-rays (MYStIX) project requires samples of young stars that are likely members of 20 nearby Galactic massive star-forming regions. Membership is inferred from statistical classification of X-ray sources, from detection of a robust infrared excess that is best explained by circumstellar dust in a disk or infalling envelope and from published spectral types that are unlikely to be found among field stars. We present the MYStIX membership lists here, and describe in detail the statistical classification of X-ray sources via a "Naive Bayes Classifier." These membership lists provide the empirical foundation for later MYStIX science studies. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We appreciate the significant time our anonymous referee devoted to this long paper and the useful suggestions offered. The MYStIX project is supported at Penn State by NASA grant NNX09AC74G, NSF grant AST-0908038, and the Chandra ACIS Team contract SV4-74018 (G. Garmire & L. Townsley, Principal Investigators), issued by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. M. S. Povich was supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-0901646. We thank Steve Majewski and Remy Indebetouw for access to results from the Spitzer Vela-Carina survey. This research made use of data products from the Chandra Data Archive and the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology) under a contract with NASA. This research used data products from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), which is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the U.K.; some UKIRT data were obtained as part of the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (Lawrence et al. 2007) and some were obtained via UKIRT director's discretionary time. This research used data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. The HAWK-I near-infrared observations were collected with the High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager instrument on the ESO 8 m Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory, Chile, under ESO programme 60.A-9284(K). This research has also made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services, the SIMBAD database operated at the Centre de Données Astronomique de Strasbourg, and SAOImage DS9 software developed by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Age Gradients in the Stellar Populations of Massive Star Forming Regions Based on a New Stellar Chronometer

Accepted for publication in ApJ; 89 pages, 23 figures, 2 Tables; High quality version is at http://astro.psu.edu/mystixAuthor's accepted version of article published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/787/2/108A major impediment to understanding star formation in massive star forming regions (MSFRs) is the absence of a reliable stellar chronometer to unravel their complex star formation histories. We present a new estimation of stellar ages using a new method that employs near-infrared (NIR) and X-ray photometry, AgeJX. Stellar masses are derived from X-ray luminosities using the Lx - Mass relation from the Taurus cloud. J-band luminosities are compared to mass-dependent pre-main-sequence evolutionary models to estimate ages. AgeJX is sensitive to a wide range of evolutionary stages, from disk-bearing stars embedded in a cloud to widely dispersed older pre-main sequence stars. The MYStIX (Massive Young Star-Forming Complex Study in Infrared and X-ray) project characterizes 20 OB-dominated MSFRs using X-ray, mid-infrared, and NIR catalogs. The AgeJX method has been applied to 5525 out of 31,784 MYStIX Probable Complex Members. We provide a homogeneous set of median ages for over a hundred subclusters in 15 MSFRs; median subcluster ages range between 0.5 Myr and 5 Myr. The important science result is the discovery of age gradients across MYStIX regions. The wide MSFR age distribution appears as spatially segregated structures with different ages. The AgeJX ages are youngest in obscured locations in molecular clouds, intermediate in revealed stellar clusters, and oldest in distributed populations. The NIR color index J-H, a surrogate measure of extinction, can serve as an approximate age predictor for young embedded clusters

The MYStIX infrared-excess source catalog

The Massive Young Star-Forming Complex Study in Infrared and X-rays (MYStIX) project provides a comparative study of 20 Galactic massive star-forming complexes (d = 0.4-3.6 kpc). Probable stellar members in each target complex are identified using X-ray and/or infrared data via two pathways: (1) X-ray detections of young/massive stars with coronal activity/strong winds or (2) infrared excess (IRE) selection of young stellar objects (YSOs) with circumstellar disks and/or protostellar envelopes. We present the methodology for the second pathway using Spitzer/IRAC, 2MASS, and UKIRT imaging and photometry. Although IRE selection of YSOs is well-trodden territory, MYStIX presents unique challenges. The target complexes range from relatively nearby clouds in uncrowded fields located toward the outer Galaxy (e.g., NGC 2264, the Flame Nebula) to more distant, massive complexes situated along complicated, inner Galaxy sightlines (e.g., NGC 6357, M17). We combine IR spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting with IR color cuts and spatial clustering analysis to identify IRE sources and isolate probable YSO members in each MYStIX target field from the myriad types of contaminating sources that can resemble YSOs: extragalactic sources, evolved stars, nebular knots, and even unassociated foreground/background YSOs. Applying our methodology consistently across 18 of the target complexes, we produce the MYStIX IRE Source (MIRES) Catalog comprising 20,719 sources, including 8686 probable stellar members of the MYStIX target complexes. We also classify the SEDs of 9365 IR counterparts to MYStIX X-ray sources to assist the first pathway, the identification of X-ray-detected stellar members. The MIRES Catalog provides a foundation for follow-up studies of diverse phenomena related to massive star cluster formation, including protostellar outflows, circumstellar disks, and sequential star formation triggered by massive star feedback processes. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.M.S.P. was supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-0901646 during the main analysis phase of this project. The MIRES Catalog is based on observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology) under contract with NASA. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by NASA and the NSF. This work is based in part on data obtained as part of the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) Infrared Deep Sky Survey and in part by data obtained in UKIRT Director's Discretionary Time. UKIRT is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the U.K. The MYStIX project is supported at Penn State by NASA grant NNX09AC74G, NSF grant AST-0908038, and the Chandra ACIS Team contract SV4-74018 (PIs: G. Garmire and L. Townsley), issued by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060

Could the Pharmaceutical Industry Benefit from Full-Scale Adoption of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology with New Regulations?

Healthcare regulators are directing attention to the pharmaceutical supply chain with the passage of the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA) and the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA). Adoption of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has the ability to improve compliance, reduce costs, and improve safety in the supply chain but its implementation has been limited; primarily because of hardware and tag costs. The purpose of this research study was to analyze the benefits to the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare system of the adoption of RFID technology as a result of newly implemented supply chain regulations. The methodology was a review following the steps of a systematic review with a total of 96 sources used. With the DSCSA, pharmaceutical companies must track and trace prescription drugs across the supply chain, and RFID can resolve many track-and-trace issues with manufacturer control of data. The practical implication of this study is that pharmaceutical companies must continue to have the potential to increase revenues, decrease associated costs, and increase compliance with new FDA regulations with RFID. Still, challenges related to regulatory statute wording, implementation of two-dimensional barcode technology, and the variety of interfaces within the pharmaceutical supply chain have delayed adoption and its full implementation

The relevance of outsourcing and leagile strategies in performance optimization of an integrated process planning and scheduling

Over the past few years growing global competition has forced the manufacturing industries to upgrade their old production strategies with the modern day approaches. As a result, recent interest has been developed towards finding an appropriate policy that could enable them to compete with others, and facilitate them to emerge as a market winner. Keeping in mind the abovementioned facts, in this paper the authors have proposed an integrated process planning and scheduling model inheriting the salient features of outsourcing, and leagile principles to compete in the existing market scenario. The paper also proposes a model based on leagile principles, where the integrated planning management has been practiced. In the present work a scheduling problem has been considered and overall minimization of makespan has been aimed. The paper shows the relevance of both the strategies in performance enhancement of the industries, in terms of their reduced makespan. The authors have also proposed a new hybrid Enhanced Swift Converging Simulated Annealing (ESCSA) algorithm, to solve the complex real-time scheduling problems. The proposed algorithm inherits the prominent features of the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and the Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). The ESCSA algorithm reduces the makespan significantly in less computational time and number of iterations. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been shown by comparing the results with GA, SA, Tabu, and hybrid Tabu-SA optimization methods

Modelling Realistic User Behaviour in Information Systems Simulations as Fuzzing Aspects

In this paper we contend that the engineering of information systems is hampered by a paucity of tools to tractably model, simulate and predict the impact of realistic user behaviours on the emergent properties of the wider socio-technical system, evidenced by the plethora of case studies of system failure in the literature. We address this gap by presenting a novel approach that models ideal user behaviour as workflows, and introduces irregularities in that behaviour as aspects which fuzz the model. We demonstrate the success of this approach through a case study of software development workflows, showing that the introduction of realistic user behaviour to idealised workflows better simulates outcomes reported in the empirical software engineering literature

Overview of the Massive Young Star-Forming Complex Study in Infrared and X-ray (MYStIX) project

The Massive Young Star-Forming Complex Study in Infrared and X-ray (MYStIX) seeks to characterize 20 OB-dominated young clusters and their environs at distances d ≤ 4 kpc using imaging detectors on the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope. The observational goals are to construct catalogs of star-forming complex stellar members with well-defined criteria and maps of nebular gas (particularly of hot X-ray-emitting plasma) and dust. A catalog of MYStIX Probable Complex Members with several hundred OB stars and 31,784 low-mass pre-main sequence stars is assembled. This sample and related data products will be used to seek new empirical constraints on theoretical models of cluster formation and dynamics, mass segregation, OB star formation, star formation triggering on the periphery of H II regions, and the survivability of protoplanetary disks in H II regions. This paper gives an introduction and overview of the project, covering the data analysis methodology and application to two star-forming regions: NGC 2264 and the Trifid Nebula. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We thank J. Forbrich and P. Teixeira (Univ. Vienna) for useful discussion about NGC 2264. The MYStIX project is supported at Penn State by NASA grant NNX09AC74G, NSF grant AST-0908038, and theChandra ACIS Team contract SV4- 74018 (PIs: G. Garmire & L. Townsley), issued by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. M. S. Povich was supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-0901646. This research made use of data products from the Chandra Data Archive and the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology) under a contract with NASA. The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the U.K. This work is based in part on data obtained as part of the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey and in part on data obtained in UKIRT Director’s Discretionary Time. This research used data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. The HAWK-I near-infrared observations were collected with the High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager instrument on the ESO 8 m Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory, Chile, under ESO programme 60.A-9284(K). This research has also made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services, the SIMBAD database operated at the Centre de Donnees ´ Astronomique de Strasbourg, and SAOImage DS9 software developed by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Synovial DKK1 expression is regulated by local glucocorticoid metabolism in inflammatory arthritis

Introduction: Inflammatory arthritis is associated with increased bone resorption and suppressed bone formation. The Wnt antagonist dickkopf-1 (DKK1) is secreted by synovial fibroblasts in response to inflammation and this protein has been proposed to be a master regulator of bone remodelling in inflammatory arthritis. Local glucocorticoid production is also significantly increased during joint inflammation. Therefore, we investigated how locally derived glucocorticoids and inflammatory cytokines regulate DKK1 synthesis in synovial fibroblasts during inflammatory arthritis.Methods: We examined expression and regulation of DKK1 in primary cultures of human synovial fibroblasts isolated from patients with inflammatory arthritis. The effect of TNFα, IL-1β and glucocorticoids on DKK1 mRNA and protein expression was examined by real-time PCR and ELISA. The ability of inflammatory cytokine-induced expression of the glucocorticoid-activating enzyme 11beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) to sensitise fibroblasts to endogenous glucocorticoids was explored. Global expression of Wnt signalling and target genes in response to TNFα and glucocorticoids was assessed using a custom array.Results: DKK1 expression in human synovial fibroblasts was directly regulated by glucocorticoids but not proinflammatory cytokines. Glucocorticoids, but not TNFα, regulated expression of multiple Wnt agonists and antagonists in favour of inhibition of Wnt signalling. However, TNFα and IL-1β indirectly stimulated DKK1 production through increased expression of 11β-HSD1.Conclusions: These results demonstrate that in rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblasts, DKK1 expression is directly regulated by glucocorticoids rather than TNFα. Consequently, the links between synovial inflammation, altered Wnt signalling and bone remodelling are not direct but are dependent on local activation of endogenous glucocorticoids

Unwanted incidents during transition of geriatric patients from hospital to home: a prospective observational study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Geriatric patients recently discharged from hospital experience increased chance of unplanned readmissions and admission to nursing homes. Several studies have shown that medication-related discrepancies are common. Few studies report unwanted incidents by other factors than medications. In 2002 an ambulatory team (AT) was established within the Department of Geriatrics, St. Olavs University Hospital HF, Trondheim, Norway. The AT monitored the transition of the patients from hospital to home and four weeks after discharge in order to reveal unwanted incidents.</p> <p>The aim of the present study was to describe unwanted incidents registered by the AT among patients discharged from a geriatric evaluation and management unit (GEMU) by character, frequency and stage in the transitional process. Only unwanted incidents with a severity making contact with the primary health care (PHC) necessary were registered.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A prospective observational study with patients treated in the GEMU and followed by the AT was performed. Current practice included comprehensive geriatric assessment and management including discharge planning in the GEMU and collaboration with the primary health care on appointments on assistance to be provided after discharge from hospital. Unwanted incidents severe enough to induce contact with the primary health care were registered during the transitional phase and after discharge.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>118 patients (65% female), with mean age 83.2 ± 6.4 years participated. Median Barthel Index at discharge was 18 (interquartile range 16-19) and median Mini Mental Status Examination 24 (interquartile range 21-26). A total of 146 unwanted incidents were registered in 70 (59%) of the patients. Most frequent were unwanted incidents related to drug prescription regime (32%), exchange of information in and between the GEMU and the primary health care (25%) and service or help provided from the PHC (17%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Despite a seemingly well-organised system for transition of patients from the GEMU to their homes, one or more unwanted incidents occurred in most patients during discharge or four weeks post discharge. The study has revealed areas of importance for improving transitional care of geriatric patients.</p

Analysis of CC chemokine and chemokine receptor expression in solid ovarian tumours

To understand the chemokine network in a tissue, both chemokine and chemokine receptor expression should be studied. Human epithelial ovarian tumours express a range of chemokines but little is known about the expression and localisation of chemokine receptors. With the aim of understanding chemokine action in this cancer, we investigated receptors for CC–chemokines and their ligands in 25 biopsies of human ovarian cancer. CC–chemokine receptor mRNA was generally absent from solid tumours, the exception being CCR1 which was detected in samples from 75% of patients. CCR1 mRNA localised to macrophages and lymphocytes and there was a correlation between numbers of CD8+ and CCR1 expressing cells (P = 0.031). mRNA for 6 CC-chemokines was expressed in a majority of tumour samples. In a monocytic cell line in vitro, we found that CCR1 mRNA expression was increased 5-fold by hypoxia. We suggest that the CC-chemokine network in ovarian cancer is controlled at the level of CC-chemokine receptors and this may account for the phenotypes of infiltrating cells found in these tumours. The leukocyte infiltrate may contribute to tumour growth and spread by providing growth survival factors and matrix metalloproteases. Thus, CCR1 may be a novel therapeutic target in ovarian cancer. http://www.bjcancer.com © 2001 Cancer Research Campaignhttp://www.bjcancer.co