Carbon monoxide gas produced by a giant impact in the inner region of a young system.

Models of terrestrial planet formation predict that the final stages of planetary assembly-lasting tens of millions of years beyond the dispersal of young protoplanetary disks-are dominated by planetary collisions. It is through these giant impacts that planets like the young Earth grow to their final mass and achieve long-term stable orbital configurations1. A key prediction is that these impacts produce debris. So far, the most compelling observational evidence for post-impact debris comes from the planetary system around the nearby 23-million-year-old A-type star HD 172555. This system shows large amounts of fine dust with an unusually steep size distribution and atypical dust composition, previously attributed to either a hypervelocity impact2,3 or a massive asteroid belt4. Here we report the spectrally resolved detection of a carbon monoxide gas ring co-orbiting with dusty debris around HD 172555 between about six and nine astronomical units-a region analogous to the outer terrestrial planet region of our Solar System. Taken together, the dust and carbon monoxide detections favour a giant impact between large, volatile-rich bodies. This suggests that planetary-scale collisions, analogous to the Moon-forming impact, can release large amounts of gas as well as debris, and that this gas is observable, providing a window into the composition of young planets.

Aligning geriatric medicine fellowships with the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE).

Geriatric medicine fellowship programs provide comprehensive training to one-year clinical fellows and must demonstrate successful progression of competence among fellows by reporting on 23 milestones to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) is a model of care located throughout the United States and can serve as a training venue for fellows. We surveyed 113 fellowship program directors with a response rate of 42% (n = 48). The purpose of the survey was to assess: (1) familiarity and access to PACE and (2) perceived value of PACE to the fellowship program with regard to training and ability to achieve success in the 23 reporting milestones. Milestones involving communication and team management skills were most consistently identified as very valuable with a PACE clinical rotation. We then convened a focus group of four PACE medical directors who developed a fellowship curriculum for use in training fellows at PACE. We discuss the limitations of our design as well as the opportunities to build on the strengths of that model as a training site for fellows.

A triple-star system with a misaligned and warped circumstellar disk shaped by disk tearing.

Young stars are surrounded by a circumstellar disk of gas and dust, within which planet formation can occur. Gravitational forces in multiple star systems can disrupt the disk. Theoretical models predict that if the disk is misaligned with the orbital plane of the stars, the disk should warp and break into precessing rings, a phenomenon known as disk tearing. We present observations of the triple-star system GW Orionis, finding evidence for disk tearing. Our images show an eccentric ring that is misaligned with the orbital planes and the outer disk. The ring casts shadows on a strongly warped intermediate region of the disk. If planets can form within the warped disk, disk tearing could provide a mechanism for forming wide-separation planets on oblique orbits.

Spiral density waves in a young protoplanetary disk.

Gravitational forces are expected to excite spiral density waves in protoplanetary disks, disks of gas and dust orbiting young stars. However, previous observations that showed spiral structure were not able to probe disk midplanes, where most of the mass is concentrated and where planet formation takes place. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, we detected a pair of trailing symmetric spiral arms in the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star Elias 2-27. The arms extend to the disk outer regions and can be traced down to the midplane. These millimeter-wave observations also reveal an emission gap closer to the star than the spiral arms. We argue that the observed spirals trace shocks of spiral density waves in the midplane of this young disk.

The comet-like composition of a protoplanetary disk as revealed by complex cyanides.

Observations of comets and asteroids show that the solar nebula that spawned our planetary system was rich in water and organic molecules. Bombardment brought these organics to the young Earth's surface. Unlike asteroids, comets preserve a nearly pristine record of the solar nebula composition. The presence of cyanides in comets, including 0.01 per cent of methyl cyanide (CH3CN) with respect to water, is of special interest because of the importance of C-N bonds for abiotic amino acid synthesis. Comet-like compositions of simple and complex volatiles are found in protostars, and can readily be explained by a combination of gas-phase chemistry (to form, for example, HCN) and an active ice-phase chemistry on grain surfaces that advances complexity. Simple volatiles, including water and HCN, have been detected previously in solar nebula analogues, indicating that they survive disk formation or are re-formed in situ. It has hitherto been unclear whether the same holds for more complex organic molecules outside the solar nebula, given that recent observations show a marked change in the chemistry at the boundary between nascent envelopes and young disks due to accretion shocks. Here we report the detection of the complex cyanides CH3CN and HC3N (and HCN) in the protoplanetary disk around the young star MWC 480. We find that the abundance ratios of these nitrogen-bearing organics in the gas phase are similar to those in comets, which suggests an even higher relative abundance of complex cyanides in the disk ice. This implies that complex organics accompany simpler volatiles in protoplanetary disks, and that the rich organic chemistry of our solar nebula was not unique.

Imaging of the CO snow line in a solar nebula analog.

Planets form in the disks around young stars. Their formation efficiency and composition are intimately linked to the protoplanetary disk locations of "snow lines" of abundant volatiles. We present chemical imaging of the carbon monoxide (CO) snow line in the disk around TW Hya, an analog of the solar nebula, using high spatial and spectral resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array observations of diazenylium (N2H(+)), a reactive ion present in large abundance only where CO is frozen out. The N2H(+) emission is distributed in a large ring, with an inner radius that matches CO snow line model predictions. The extracted CO snow line radius of ~30 astronomical units helps to assess models of the formation dynamics of the solar system, when combined with measurements of the bulk composition of planets and comets.

Flows of gas through a protoplanetary gap.

The formation of gaseous giant planets is thought to occur in the first few million years after stellar birth. Models predict that the process produces a deep gap in the dust component (shallower in the gas). Infrared observations of the disk around the young star HD 142527 (at a distance of about 140 parsecs from Earth) found an inner disk about 10 astronomical units (AU) in radius (1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance), surrounded by a particularly large gap and a disrupted outer disk beyond 140 AU. This disruption is indicative of a perturbing planetary-mass body at about 90 AU. Radio observations indicate that the bulk mass is molecular and lies in the outer disk, whose continuum emission has a horseshoe morphology. The high stellar accretion rate would deplete the inner disk in less than one year, and to sustain the observed accretion matter must therefore flow from the outer disk and cross the gap. In dynamical models, the putative protoplanets channel outer-disk material into gap-crossing bridges that feed stellar accretion through the inner disk. Here we report observations of diffuse CO gas inside the gap, with denser HCO(+) gas along gap-crossing filaments. The estimated flow rate of the gas is in the range of 7 × 10(-9) to 2 × 10(-7) solar masses per year, which is sufficient to maintain accretion onto the star at the present rate.

A ∼0.2-solar-mass protostar with a Keplerian disk in the very young L1527 IRS system.

In their earliest stages, protostars accrete mass from their surrounding envelopes through circumstellar disks. Until now, the smallest observed protostar-to-envelope mass ratio was about 2.1 (ref. 1). The protostar L1527 IRS is thought to be in the earliest stages of star formation. Its envelope contains about one solar mass of material within a radius of about 0.05 parsecs (refs 3, 4), and earlier observations suggested the presence of an edge-on disk. Here we report observations of dust continuum emission and (13)CO (rotational quantum number J = 2 → 1) line emission from the disk around L1527 IRS, from which we determine a protostellar mass of 0.19 ± 0.04 solar masses and a protostar-to-envelope mass ratio of about 0.2. We conclude that most of the luminosity is generated through the accretion process, with an accretion rate of about 6.6 × 10(-7) solar masses per year. If it has been accreting at that rate through much of its life, its age is approximately 300,000 years, although theory suggests larger accretion rates earlier, so it may be younger. The presence of a rotationally supported disk is confirmed, and significantly more mass may be added to its planet-forming region as well as to the protostar itself in the future.

Prevalence of interatrial block in the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE).

Interatrial block (IAB) (P wave > or =110 milliseconds) is a potent correlate of atrial tachyarrhythmias, left atrial electromechanical dysfunction, and embolism. IAB has been demonstrated to be highly prevalent in the general hospital population, but no investigation has addressed this in the elderly community outside the hospital. We appraised the prevalence of IAB in a service of the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), the Elder Service Plan (ESP). Of the 202 ESP members in Worcester, MA, 167 (ages 61-103 years; female 81.4%) who had current 12-lead electrocardiograms were evaluated for IAB, and an age-based comparison was made between those with and without IAB. Of those patients with current electrocardiograms, 148 (88.6%) showed sinus rhythm and 72 (48.6%) depicted IAB: 20% in patients aged 60-69 years, 39.5% aged 70-79 years, 56.8% aged 80-89 years, and 50% in those 90 years and older. Given its sequelae of anatomic and pathophysiologic consequences, prompt recognition of IAB in a high-risk group such as that in the PACE community (48.6% prevalence) is important, especially for anticipation of atrial fibrillation and possible embolism.