All That Has Breath

Outwardly we grinned and hooted for the day’s technological success, but inwardly we knew the day had delivered to us a richer treasure. Posting about ­­­­­­­­technology and aesthetics from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation. https://inallthings.org/all-that-has-breath

Engineering Education in Developing Nations: Progress on the School of Engineering at Northrise University in Ndola, Zambia

The engineering and technology capabilities of developed nations continues to advance and to be a major driver of the economies of those nations. Developing nations recognize this reality, and they accordingly recognize the importance of nurturing the growth of their own countries’ STEM capabilities. Engineering education in developing nations is thus a critical need; but it is work that, for a variety of reasons, tends to be under-resourced by developing nations themselves as well as by potential participants from developed nations. As followers of Jesus, we sometimes find our hearts stirred on behalf of our brothers and sisters in Christ in developing nations by needs along these lines, yet we also sense the staggering magnitude of the challenge. Thus, when the Lord opens an avenue for making a practical and lasting contribution, we might find it hard to resist getting involved. Over the past 5+ years, just such an avenue has been opened at Northrise University in Ndola, Zambia, and four professors—two from Dordt University and two from LeTourneau University—have indeed found the opportunity hard to resist. Led by these four, the development of a school of engineering at Northrise —specifically a 5-year bachelor’s degree program in Civil Engineering—is well along and is on track for a target opening date of February 2024. This paper will focus mostly on the practical aspects of the project, divided into three areas of activity related to the development of curriculum, facilities, and faculty. Where appropriate, attention is also given to some of the philosophical and cross-cultural questions that have naturally arisen as the endeavor has progressed

Impact of model physics on estimating the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet

Long-term predictions of sea level rise from increased Greenland ice sheet melting have been derived using Positive Degree Day models only. It is, however, unknown precisely what uncertainties are associated with applying this simple surface melt parameterization for future climate. We compare the behavior of a Positive Degree Day and Energy Balance/ Snowpack model for estimating the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet under a warming climate. Both models were first tuned to give similar values for present-day mass balance using 10 years of ERA-40 climatology and were then run for 300 years, forced with the output of a GCM in which atmospheric CO2 increased to 4 times preindustrial levels. Results indicate that the Positive Degree Day model is more sensitive to climate warming than the Energy Balance model, generating annual runoff rates almost twice as large for a fixed ice sheet geometry. Roughly half of this difference was due to differences in the volume of melt generated and half was due to differences in refreezing rates in the snowpack. Our results indicate that the modeled snowpack properties evolve on a multidecadal timescale to changing climate, with a potentially large impact on the mass balance of the ice sheet; an evolution that was absent from the Positive Degree Day model. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival