The Icefield Ranges Research Project, 1971

The 1971 Icefield Ranges Research Project (IRRP) field season again was something of a paradox and, as in past seasons, weather was the guilty agent. Projects that were carried out on the continental slope of the St. Elias Mountains enjoyed relatively good weather; those pursued under the direct influence of Pacific maritime air masses suffered through possibly the worst season weatherwise since the inauguration of IRRP in 1961. Research activity at Kluane Lake camp continued year-round during 1970-1971 for the first time in ten years of operation. ... Base camp is situated on the southern end of Kluane Lake (el. c. 780 m.) and was the hub from which two full-time and four short-term field camps were supported. Air support was provided by the Arctic Institute's versatile STOL supercharged Helio Courier aircraft equipped with ski-wheels aided substantially by a Canadian Forces DeHavilland Buffalo and by two fixed-wing and two rotary-wing aircraft which were chartered locally when necessity demanded. In early July the DeHavilland Buffalo dropped over 4 tons of supplies and equipment to the Mount Logan physiology laboratory (el. c. 5,335 m). Aircraft flew approximately 270 hours in support of IRRP programs in 1971. All base camp facilities were opened for summer field research parties mid-May and were closed 12 September. As in past summers, however, maximum utilization of facilities and research activity occurred between mid-June and mid-August. Principal investigators, senior scientists and graduate students plus their assistants numbered over 70 persons. ... In all more than 100 men and women representing 30 Canadian and American colleges, universities, and research institutions and agencies participated in IRRP field investigations in physical, biological, medical, and social sciences. ... A nominal [glacier studies] program was carried out from mid-July to mid-August on the Rusty Glacier and two neighbours the Backe and Trapridge glaciers, three small surge-type glaciers for which there is evidence of a history of surging. ... During the 1971 summer field season investigations continued into significant changes in the level of Kluane Lake and shifts in direction of drainage .... Active loess transport and deposition studies began 30 May on the wide, dry floor of the Slims River valley. ... Examination of climate continued on three scales of observation here defined as micro-, meso-, and synoptic. ... Research on Dall sheep with emphasis on its range relationship continued throughout the winter. The study area encompasses Sheep Mountain (e. 1,954 m). ... Phytogeographical studies in the Icefield Ranges, begun in 1965 on nunataks and in the alpine zone above the 1,500-m level, were continued in 1971. ... Field laboratory studies [high altitude physiology] were planned to build upon and expand work which had been done in previous years and were for the most part directed towards better understanding of the role of water and salts in acclimatization to hypoxia and in acute mountain sickness. ... The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and the Arctic Institute convened a workshop at Kluane Lake camp further to refine and amplify the contributions of energy and mass balance studies. The workshop was held from 23 to 28 August. ..

The Icefield Ranges Research Project, 1970

In 1970 the Icefield Ranges Research Project (IRRP) conducted its tenth consecutive summer of interdisciplinary basic research in the St. Elias Mountains, Yukon Territory, and in the valley and plateau region to the east where all aspects of the environment reflect the influence of those mountains. Summer field investigations began in April and ended the last week in August. And for the first time since the Project's inception in 1961, two programs have continued through the winter (1970-71). This opportunity to continue studies all the year round was made possible by the winterization of a log house; the work, begun in 1967 on the north side of the runway near the Kluane Base Camp, was completed with modern facilities in June 1970. This short paper briefly reviews the programs which were accomplished during the 1970 field season within the broad categories of glaciology, geophysics, physical geography, biology, and human physiology

The Icefield Ranges Research Project, 1969

The Icefield Ranges Research Project (IRRP) - as was visualized nearly ten years ago - becomes each year more and more a complete study of the environment dominated by the St. Elias Mountains, Canada/Alaska. Since 1967, IRRP has been composed of three closely-integrated research units, planned to achieve the proposed aims of IRRP as defined by Dr. W.A. Wood, the original Project Director, accepted by the Arctic Institute's Board of Governors in 1961, and endorsed by the IRRP Advisory Committee. This report reviews the work accomplished by a total of over 65 scientists, their assistants, and support personnel, during the 1969 summer field season, which opened in mid-May and ended the first week in September. It is composed of post-field summaries by principal investigators researching in the disciplines of glaciology, geophysics, physical geography, botany, zoology, archaeology and physiology

A Systematic Mapping Approach of 16q12.2/FTO and BMI in More Than 20,000 African Americans Narrows in on the Underlying Functional Variation: Results from the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) Study

Genetic variants in intron 1 of the fat mass- and obesity-associated (FTO) gene have been consistently associated with body mass index (BMI) in Europeans. However, follow-up studies in African Americans (AA) have shown no support for some of the most consistently BMI-associated FTO index single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). This is most likely explained by different race-specific linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns and lower correlation overall in AA, which provides the opportunity to fine-map this region and narrow in on the functional variant. To comprehensively explore the 16q12.2/FTO locus and to search for second independent signals in the broader region, we fine-mapped a 646-kb region, encompassing the large FTO gene and the flanking gene RPGRIP1L by investigating a total of 3,756 variants (1,529 genotyped and 2,227 imputed variants) in 20,488 AAs across five studies. We observed associations between BMI and variants in the known FTO intron 1 locus: the SNP with the most significant p-value, rs56137030 (8.3×10-6) had not been highlighted in previous studies. While rs56137030was correlated at r2>0.5 with 103 SNPs in Europeans (including the GWAS index SNPs), this number was reduced to 28 SNPs in AA. Among rs56137030 and the 28 correlated SNPs, six were located within candidate intronic regulatory elements, including rs1421085, for which we predicted allele-specific binding affinity for the transcription factor CUX1, which has recently been implicated in the regulation of FTO. We did not find strong evidence for a second independent signal in the broader region. In summary, this large fine-mapping study in AA has substantially reduced the number of common alleles that are likely to be functional candidates of the known FTO locus. Importantly our study demonstrated that comprehensive fine-mapping in AA provides a powerful approach to narrow in on the functional candidate(s) underlying the initial GWAS findings in European populations

The 2018 GaN Power Electronics Roadmap

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a compound semiconductor that has tremendous potential to facilitate economic growth in a semiconductor industry that is silicon-based and currently faced with diminishing returns of performance versus cost of investment. At a material level, its high electric field strength and electron mobility have already shown tremendous potential for high frequency communications and photonic applications. Advances in growth on commercially viable large area substrates are now at the point where power conversion applications of GaN are at the cusp of commercialisation. The future for building on the work described here in ways driven by specific challenges emerging from entirely new markets and applications is very exciting. This collection of GaN technology developments is therefore not itself a road map but a valuable collection of global state-of-the-art GaN research that will inform the next phase of the technology as market driven requirements evolve. First generation production devices are igniting large new markets and applications that can only be achieved using the advantages of higher speed, low specific resistivity and low saturation switching transistors. Major investments are being made by industrial companies in a wide variety of markets exploring the use of the technology in new circuit topologies, packaging solutions and system architectures that are required to achieve and optimise the system advantages offered by GaN transistors. It is this momentum that will drive priorities for the next stages of device research gathered here

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment