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We present the 13CO/C18O (J = 3 → 2) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey (CHIMPS) which has been carried out using the Heterodyne Array Receiver Program on the 15 m James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. The high-resolution spectral survey currently covers |b| ≤ 0 ∘..∘5 and 28deg≲l≲46deg28deg≲l≲46deg, with an angular resolution of 15 arcsec in 0.5 km s-1 velocity channels. The spectra have a median rms of ∼0.6 K at this resolution, and for optically thin gas at an excitation temperature of 10 K, this sensitivity corresponds to column densities of NH2 ∼ 3 × 1020 cm-2 and NH2 ∼ 4 × 1021 cm-2 for 13CO and C18O, respectively. The molecular gas that CHIMPS traces is at higher column densities and is also more optically thin than in other publicly available CO surveys due to its rarer isotopologues, and thus more representative of the three-dimensional structure of the clouds. The critical density of the J = 3 → 2 transition of CO is ≳104 cm-3 at temperatures of ≤20 K, and so the higher density gas associated with star formation is well traced. These data complement other existing Galactic plane surveys, especially the JCMT Galactic Plane Survey which has similar spatial resolution and column density sensitivity, and the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey. In this paper, we discuss the observations, data reduction and characteristics of the survey, presenting integrated-emission maps for the region covered. Position-velocity diagrams allow comparison with Galactic structure models of the Milky Way, and while we find good agreement with a particular four-arm model, there are some significant deviations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performing ground-based submillimetre observations is a difficult task as the measurements are subject to absorption and emission from water vapour in the Earth's atmosphere and time variation in weather and instrument stability. Removing these features and other artefacts from the data is a vital process which affects the characteristics of the recovered astronomical structure we seek to study. In this paper, we explore two data reduction methods for data taken with the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array-2 (SCUBA-2) at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). The JCMT Legacy Reduction 1 (JCMT LR1) and The Gould Belt Legacy Survey Legacy Release 1 (GBS LR1) reduction both use the same software (STARLINK) but differ in their choice of data reduction parameters. We find that the JCMT LR1 reduction is suitable for determining whether or not compact emission is present in a given region and the GBS LR1 reduction is tuned in a robustway to uncover more extended emission, which better serves more in-depth physical analyses of star-forming regions. Using the GBS LR1 method, we find that compact sources are recovered well, even at a peak brightness of only three times the noise, whereas the reconstruction of larger objects requires much care when drawing boundaries around the expected astronomical signal in the data reduction process. Incorrect boundaries can lead to false structure identification or it can cause structure to be missed. In the JCMT LR1 reduction, the extent of the true structure of objects larger than a point source is never fully recovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is an unique tracer of motion in protostars. It has broad and complex line profiles, dominated by the jet/outflow system. We summarise the results of spectrally resolved H2O line profiles observed with Herschel HIFI from the "Water in star-forming regions with Herschel" (WISH, van Dishoeck et al. 2011), "William Herschel Line Legacy" (WILL, Mottram et al. in prep.) and Cygnus-X surveys. In total, more than 100 low-, intermediate and high-mass (LM, IM & HM) protostars have been observed with Lbol from 0.1 to 105 Lʘ. On Galactic scales, water traces star formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context. For stars to form, material must fall inwards from core scales through the envelope towards the central protostar. While theories of how this takes place have been around for some time, the velocity profile around protostars is poorly constrained. The combination of observations in multiple transitions of a tracer which is sensitive to kinematics and radiative transfer modelling of those lines has the potential to break this deadlock. Aims. Seven protostars observed with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI) on board the Herschel Space Observatory as part of the "Water in star-forming regions with Herschel" (WISH) survey show infall signatures in water line observations. We aim to constrain the infall velocity and the radii over which infall is taking place within the protostellar envelopes of these sources. We will also use these data to constrain the chemistry of cold water. Methods. We use 1-D non-LTE ratran radiative transfer models of the observed water lines to constrain the infall velocity and chemistry in the protostellar envelopes of six Class 0 protostars and one Class I source. We assume a free-fall velocity profile and, having found the best fit, vary the radii over which infall takes place. Results. In the well-studied Class 0 protostar NGC1333-IRAS4A we find that our observations probe infall over the whole envelope to which our observations are sensitive (r ≳ 1000 AU). For L1527, L1157, BHR71 and IRAS 15398 infall takes place on core to envelope scales (i.e. ~10 000-3000 AU). In Serpens-SMM4 and GSS30 the inverse P-Cygni profiles seen in the ground-state lines are more likely due to larger-scale motions or foreground clouds. Models including a simple consideration of the chemistry are consistent with the observations, while using step abundance profiles are not. The non-detection of excited water in the inner envelope in six out of seven protostars is further evidence that water must be heavily depleted from the gas-phase at these radii. Conclusions. Infall in four of the sources is supersonic and in all sources must take place at the outer edge of the envelope, which may be evidence that collapse is global or outside-in rather than inside-out. The mass infall rate in NGC1333-IRAS4A is large (≳10-4 M☉ yr-1), higher than the mass outflow rate and expected mass accretion rates onto the star. This suggests that any flattened disk-like structure on small scales will be gravitationally unstable, potentially leading to rotational fragmentation and/or episodic accretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observations of higher-excited transitions of abundant molecules such as CO are important for determining where energy in the form of shocks is fed back into the parental envelope of forming stars. The nearby prototypical and protobinary low-mass hot core, IRAS 16293-2422 (I16293) is ideal for such a study. The source was targeted with ALMA for science verification purposes in band 9, which includes CO J = 6-5 (Eup/kB ∼ 116 K), at an unprecedented spatial resolution (∼0″ 002, 25 AU). I16293 itself is composed of two sources, A and B, with a projected distance of 500. CO J = 6-5 emission is detected throughout the region, particularly in small, arcsecond-sized hotspots, where the outflow interacts with the envelope. The observations only recover a fraction of the emission in the line wings when compared to data from single-dish telescopes, with a higher fraction of emission recovered at higher velocities. The very high angular resolution of these new data reveal that a bow shock from source A coincides, in the plane of the sky, with the position of source B. Source B, on the other hand, does not show current outflow activity. In this region, outflow entrainment takes place over large spatial scales, ≳100 AU, and in small discrete knots. This unique dataset shows that the combination of a high-temperature tracer (e.g., CO J = 6-5) and very high angular resolution observations is crucial for interpreting the structure of the warm inner environment of low-mass protostars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: Previous studies have shown that CRK3 protein kinase of Leishmania mexicana is a potential drug target. Therefore, the aim of this study was to provide an active protein kinase for chemical inhibitors testing. A system was developed to express and affinity-purify recombinant L. mexicana CRK3 protein from Escherichia coli. RESULTS: Biochemical analysis has confirmed the expression of the pure kinase. The bacterial-expressed kinase was found to be inactive as a monomer. The mutated CRK3-E178 protein kinase was also found to be inactive. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that cyclin binding and phosphorylation status are both important for reconstituting protein kinase activity. Work presented by this paper has confirmed the usefulness of the prokaryotic system for production of pure homogenous recombinant protein kinase of Leishmania parasite, though this system is unable to produce active CRK3 protein kinase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We present high-resolution H i data obtained using the Australia Telescope Compact Array to resolve the near/far distance ambiguities towards a sample of compact H ii regions from the Red MSX Source (RMS) survey. The high-resolution data are complemented with lower resolution archival H i data extracted from the Southern and Very Large Array (VLA) Galactic Plane surveys. We resolve the distance ambiguity for nearly all of the 105 sources where the continuum was strong enough to allow analysis of the H i absorption line structure. This represents another step in the determination of distances to the total RMS sample, which with over 1000 massive young stellar objects and compact H ii regions is the largest and most complete sample of its kind. The full sample will allow the distribution of massive star formation in the Galaxy to be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We present 12CO, 13CO and C18O ( J=3−2) observations of a new cluster of outflows in the Vulpecula Rift with HARP on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). The mass associated with the outflows, measured using the 12CO HARP observations and assuming a distance to the region of 2.3 kpc, is 129 M⊙, while the mass associated with the dense gas from C18O observations is 458 M⊙ and the associated sub-millimeter (sub-mm) core has a mass of 327 ± 112 M⊙ independently determined from Bolocam 1.1-mm data. The outflow-to-core mass ratio is therefore ∼0.4, making this region one of the most efficient observed thus far with more than an order of magnitude more mass in the outflow than would be expected based on previous results. The kinetic energy associated with the flows, 94 × 1045 erg, is enough to drive the turbulence in the local clump, and potentially unbind the local region altogether. The detection of SiO ( J=8−7) emission towards the outflows indicates that the flow is still active, and not simply a fossil flow. We also model the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of the four young stellar objects (YSOs) associated with the molecular material, finding them all to be of mid to early B spectral type. The energetic nature of the outflows and significant reservoir of cold dust detected in the sub-mm suggest that these intermediate mass YSOs will continue to accrete and become massive, rather than reach the main sequence at their current mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]