A signicant number of the parameters of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) and its host galaxy are calculated from the afterglow. There are various methods obtaining extinction values for the necessary correction for galactic foreground. These are: galaxy counts, from HI 21 cm surveys, from spectroscopic measurements and colors of nearby Galactic stars, or using extinction maps calculated from infrared surveys towards the GRB. We demonstrate that AKARI Far-Infrared Surveyor sky surface brightness maps are useful uncovering the ne structure of the galactic foreground of GRBs. Galactic cirrus structures of a number of GRBs are calculated with a 2 arcminute resolution, and the results are compared to that of other methods.

The point sources in the Bright Source Catalogue of the AKARI Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) were classied based on their FIR and mid-IR uxes and colours into young stellar object (YSO) and ex- tragalactic source types using a Quadratic Discriminant Analysis method (QDA) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The reliability of the selection of YSO candidates is high, and the number of known YSO candidates were increased signicantly, that we demonstrate in the case of the nearby open cluster IC348. Our results show that we can separate galactic and extragalactic AKARI point sources in the multidimensioal space of FIR uxes and colours with high reliability, however, dierentiating among the extragalactic sub-types needs further information.

The physical and chemical properties of prestellar cores, especially massive ones, are still far from being well understood due to the lack of a large sample. The low dust temperature (< 14 K) of Planck cold clumps makes them promising candidates for prestellar objects or for sources at the very initial stages of protostellar collapse. We have been conducting a series of observations toward Planck cold clumps (PCCs) with ground-based radio telescopes. In general, when compared with other star forming samples (e.g. infrared dark clouds), PCCs are more quiescent, suggesting that most of them may be in the earliest phase of star formation. However, some PCCs are associated with protostars and molecular out ows, indicating that not all PCCs are in a prestellar phase. We have identied hundreds of starless dense clumps from a mapping survey with the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) 13.7-m telescope. Follow-up observations suggest that these dense clumps are ideal targets to search for prestellar objects.