CCD photometry in the region of NGC 6994: the remains of an old open cluster

We present the results of BV(RI)_KC CCD photometry down to V=21 mag in the region of NGC 6994. To our knowledge, no photometry has previously been reported for this object and we find evidences that it is a poor and sparse old open cluster, with a minimum angular diameter of 9 arcmin, i.e. larger than the 3 arcmin originally assigned to it. We obtain a color excess E(B-V) = 0.07 +/- 0.02 mag by means of the BVI_(C) technique. Based on the theoretical isochrones from VandenBergh (1985) that are in better agreement with our data, we estimate for this cluster a distance from the Sun of 620 pc (Vo-Mv = 9 +/- 0.25 mag) and an age lying within the range of 2 - 3 Gyr, adopting solar metallicity. Thus, the corresponding cluster's Galactocentric distance is 8.1 kpc and is placed at about 350 pc below the Galactic plane. According to this results, NGC 6994 belongs to the old open cluster population located in the outer disk and at large distances from the Galactic plane, and must have suffered significant individual dynamical evolution, resulting in mass segregation and evaporation of low mass stars.Comment: 10 pages including 11 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

CCD photometry in the region of NGC 6994: the remains of an old open cluster

We present the results of BV(RI)KC CCD photometry down to V=21 mag in the region of NGC 6994. To our knowledge, no photometry has previously been reported for this object and we find evidences that it is a poor and sparse old open cluster, with a minimum angular diameter of 9 arcmin, i.e. larger than the 3 arcmin originally assigned to it. We obtain a color excess EB-V = 0.07 ± 0.02 mag by means of the BVIC technique. Based on the theoretical isochrones from VandenBerg (1985) that are in better agreement with our data, we estimate for this cluster a distance from the Sun of 620 pc (V0 - MV = 9 ± 0.25 mag) and an age lying within the range of 2 - 3 Gyr, adopting solar metallicity. Thus, the corresponding cluster's Galactocentric distance is 8.1 kpc and is placed at about 350 pc below the Galactic plane. According to these results, NGC 6994 belongs to the old open cluster population located in the outer disk and at large distances from the Galactic plane, and must have suffered significant individual dynamical evolution, resulting in mass segregation and evaporation of low mass stars.Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y GeofísicasInstituto de Astrofísica de La Plat

CCD photometry in the region of NGC 6994: the remains of an old open cluster

We present the results of BV(RI)KC CCD photometry down to V=21 mag in the region of NGC 6994. To our knowledge, no photometry has previously been reported for this object and we find evidences that it is a poor and sparse old open cluster, with a minimum angular diameter of 9 arcmin, i.e. larger than the 3 arcmin originally assigned to it. We obtain a color excess EB-V = 0.07 ± 0.02 mag by means of the BVIC technique. Based on the theoretical isochrones from VandenBerg (1985) that are in better agreement with our data, we estimate for this cluster a distance from the Sun of 620 pc (V0 - MV = 9 ± 0.25 mag) and an age lying within the range of 2 - 3 Gyr, adopting solar metallicity. Thus, the corresponding cluster's Galactocentric distance is 8.1 kpc and is placed at about 350 pc below the Galactic plane. According to these results, NGC 6994 belongs to the old open cluster population located in the outer disk and at large distances from the Galactic plane, and must have suffered significant individual dynamical evolution, resulting in mass segregation and evaporation of low mass stars.Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y GeofísicasInstituto de Astrofísica de La Plat

Identification of Biomolecular Conformations from Incomplete Torsion Angle Observations by Hidden Markov Models

We present a novel method for the identification of the most important conformations of a biomolecular system from molecular dynamics or Metropolis Monte Carlo time series by means of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). We show that identification is possible based on the observation sequences of some essential torsion or backbone angles. In particular, the method still provides good results even if the conformations do have a strong overlap in these angles. To apply HMMs to angular data, we use von Mises output distributions. The performance of the resulting method is illustrated by numerical tests and by application to a hybrid Monte Carlo time series of trialanine and to MD simulation results of a DNA-oligomer

Polarimetry of an Intermediate-age Open Cluster: NGC 5617

We present polarimetric observations in the UBVRI bands of 72 stars located in the direction of the medium age open cluster NGC 5617. Our intention is to use polarimetry as a tool membership identification, by building on previous investigations intended mainly to determine the cluster's general characteristics rather than provide membership suitable for studies such as stellar content and metallicity, as well as study the characteristics of the dust lying between the Sun and the cluster. The obsevations were carried out using the five-channel photopolarimeter of the Torino Astronomical Observatory attached to the 2.15m telescope at the Complejo Astron\'omico El Leoncito (CASLEO; Argentina. We are able to add 32 stars to the list of members of NGC 5617, and review the situation for others listed in the literature. In particular, we find that five blue straggler stars in the region of the cluster are located behind the same dust as the member stars are and we confirm the membership of two red giants. The proposed polarimetric memberships are compared with those derived by photometric and kinematical methods, with excellent results. Among the observed stars, we identify 10 with intrinsic polarization in their light. NGC 5617 can be polarimetrically characterized with $P_{max}= 4.40$ and $\theta_{v}= 73^\circ.1$. The spread in polarization values for the stars observed in the direction of the cluster seems to be caused by the uneven distribution of dust in front of the cluster's face. Finally, we find that in the direction of the cluster, the interstellar medium is apparently free of dust, from the Sun's position up to the Carina-Sagittarius arm, where NGC 5617 seems to be located at its farthest border

The Fontan operation in infants less than 2 years of age

AbstractYoung age remains a reported risk factor for a successful Fontan operation despite improved survival rates. Since March 1978, the Fontan operation has been performed in 47 patients. To avoid a primary or secondary polliative shunt, an early Fontan procedure (Group 1: mean age 1.5 ± 0.5 years, range 0.6 to 2) has been performed in 17 children with the outcome similar to that of the remaining 30 older patients (Group 2: mean age 7.5 ± 5 years, range 2.4 to 23 years). Preoperatively both groups had acceptable hemodynamic status for a successful Fontan result.Operative variables including cardiopulmonary bypass time, aortic cross-clamp time and core temperature were similar between groups and did not affect mortality. The postoperative mortality rate including early surgical (0% vs. 13%, respectively), late (18% vs. 12%) and total (18% vs. 23%) was similar between Groups 1 and 2 (p > 0.05). Immediate postoperative arrhythmias were more frequent in Group 1 (71% vs. 25%, p < 0.01) with no related mortality, while late arrhythmias occurred with equal frequency (29% vs. 39%, p > 0.05). Group 1 infants required a longer hospital stay (22 ± 9 vs. 14 ± 5 days, p < 0.01).Thus, young age is not a risk factor for successful outcome of the Fontan operation in patients with acceptable preoperative hemodynamic status. An early Fontan operation may also avoid prolonged palliative procedures and their potential deleterious effects

Dutch translation and cross-cultural validation of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT)

Background: The Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit was developed to measure outcomes of social care in England. In this study, we translated the four level self-completion version (SCT-4) of the ASCOT for use in the Netherlands and performed a cross-cultural validation. Methods: The ASCOT SCT-4 was translated into Dutch following international guidelines, including two forward and back translations. The resulting version was pilot tested among frail older adults using think-aloud interviews. Furthermore, using a subsample of the Dutch ACT-study, we investigated test-retest reliability and construct validity and compared response distributions with data from a comparable English study. Results: The pilot tests showed that translated items were in general understood as intended, that most items were reliable, and that the response distributions of the Dutch translation and associations with other measures were comparable to the original English version. Based on the results of the pilot tests, some small modifications and a revision of the Dignity items were proposed for the final translation, which were approved by the ASCOT development team. The complete original English version and the final Dutch translation can be obtained after registration on the ASCOT website (http://www.pssru.ac.uk/ascot). Conclusions: This study provides preliminary evidence that the Dutch translation of the ASCOT is valid, reliable and comparable to the original English version. We recommend further research to confirm the validity of the modified Dutch ASCOT translation

On the Whitehead spectrum of the circle

The seminal work of Waldhausen, Farrell and Jones, Igusa, and Weiss and Williams shows that the homotopy groups in low degrees of the space of homeomorphisms of a closed Riemannian manifold of negative sectional curvature can be expressed as a functor of the fundamental group of the manifold. To determine this functor, however, it remains to determine the homotopy groups of the topological Whitehead spectrum of the circle. The cyclotomic trace of B okstedt, Hsiang, and Madsen and a theorem of Dundas, in turn, lead to an expression for these homotopy groups in terms of the equivariant homotopy groups of the homotopy fiber of the map from the topological Hochschild T-spectrum of the sphere spectrum to that of the ring of integers induced by the Hurewicz map. We evaluate the latter homotopy groups, and hence, the homotopy groups of the topological Whitehead spectrum of the circle in low degrees. The result extends earlier work by Anderson and Hsiang and by Igusa and complements recent work by Grunewald, Klein, and Macko.Comment: 52 page

3-manifolds which are spacelike slices of flat spacetimes

We continue work initiated in a 1990 preprint of Mess giving a geometric parameterization of the moduli space of classical solutions to Einstein's equations in 2+1 dimensions with cosmological constant 0 or -1 (the case +1 has been worked out in the interim by the present author). In this paper we make a first step toward the 3+1-dimensional case by determining exactly which closed 3-manifolds M^3 arise as spacelike slices of flat spacetimes, and by finding all possible holonomy homomorphisms pi_1(M^3) to ISO(3,1).Comment: 10 page

Higher algebraic KK-groups and D\mathcal D-split sequences

In this paper, we use $\mathcal D$-split sequences and derived equivalences to provide formulas for calculation of higher algebraic $K$-groups (or mod-$p$ $K$-groups) of certain matrix subrings which cover tiled orders, rings related to chains of Glaz-Vasconcelos ideals, and some other classes of rings. In our results, we do not assume any homological requirements on rings and ideals under investigation, and therefore extend sharply many existing results of this type in the algebraic $K$-theory literature to a more general context.Comment: 20 page