Why did Better Place fail?: Range anxiety, interpretive flexibility, and electric vehicle promotion in Denmark and Israel

With almost $1 billion in funding, Better Place was poised to become one of the most innovative companies in the electric mobility market. The system Better Place proposed had two novel prongs; first, to reduce the cost of batteries, and second, to reduce range anxiety, public infrastructure concerns, and long charging times. Yet, despite this seemingly strong combination, Better Place failed to make any progress in Denmark and Israel, the first two markets it operated in, and subsequently declared bankruptcy, selling off its collective assets for less than$500,000. Drawing from science and technology studies and the notion of “interpretive flexibility,” this paper posits several reasons to explain the failure of Better Place, including that Denmark is not as “green” as it seems nor is the Israeli market as attractive as believed, and that Better Place's solution to charging time and range anxiety resolved a psychological, not a functional, barrier of the general public to adopt electric vehicles. Before investigating these two reasons, the paper presents a short history of Better Place and explores the contours of its operations in Denmark and Israel. It then discusses why Better Place “failed” across both countries before concluding with implications for energy planning, policy, and analysis

A systematic review of studies measuring health-related quality of life of general injury populations

Background. It is important to obtain greater insight into health-related quality of life (HRQL) of injury patients in order to document people's pathways to recovery and to quantify the impact of injury on population health over time. We performed a systematic review of studies measuring HRQL in general injury populations with a generic health state measure to summarize existing knowledge. Methods. Injury studies (1995-2009) were identified with main inclusion criteri

Migration and Evolution of giant ExoPlanets (MEEP) I: Nine Newly Confirmed Hot Jupiters from the TESS Mission

Hot Jupiters were many of the first exoplanets discovered in the 1990s, but in the decades since their discovery, the mysteries surrounding their origins remain. Here, we present nine new hot Jupiters (TOI-1855 b, TOI-2107 b, TOI-2368 b, TOI-3321 b, TOI-3894 b, TOI-3919 b, TOI-4153 b, TOI-5232 b, and TOI-5301 b) discovered by NASA's TESS mission and confirmed using ground-based imaging and spectroscopy. These discoveries are the first in a series of papers named the Migration and Evolution of giant ExoPlanets (MEEP) survey and are part of an ongoing effort to build a complete sample of hot Jupiters orbiting FGK stars, with a limiting Gaia $G$-band magnitude of 12.5. This effort aims to use homogeneous detection and analysis techniques to generate a set of precisely measured stellar and planetary properties that is ripe for statistical analysis. The nine planets presented in this work occupy a range of masses (0.55 Jupiter masses (M$_{\rm{J}}$) $<$ M$_{\rm{P}}$ $<$ 3.88 M$_{\rm{J}}$) and sizes (0.967 Jupiter radii (R$_{\rm{J}}$) $<$ R$_{\rm{P}}$ $<$ 1.438 R$_{\rm{J}}$) and orbit stars that range in temperature from 5360 K $<$ Teff $<$ 6860 K with Gaia $G$-band magnitudes ranging from 11.1 to 12.7. Two of the planets in our sample have detectable orbital eccentricity: TOI-3919 b ($e = 0.259^{+0.033}_{-0.036}$) and TOI-5301 b ($e = 0.33^{+0.11}_{-0.10}$). These eccentric planets join a growing sample of eccentric hot Jupiters that are consistent with high-eccentricity tidal migration, one of the three most prominent theories explaining hot Jupiter formation and evolution.Comment: 35 pages, 7 tables, and 14 figures. Submitted to AAS Journals on 2023 Dec 2

Another Shipment of Six Short-Period Giant Planets from TESS

We present the discovery and characterization of six short-period, transiting giant planets from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) -- TOI-1811 (TIC 376524552), TOI-2025 (TIC 394050135), TOI-2145 (TIC 88992642), TOI-2152 (TIC 395393265), TOI-2154 (TIC 428787891), & TOI-2497 (TIC 97568467). All six planets orbit bright host stars (8.9 <G< 11.8, 7.7 <K< 10.1). Using a combination of time-series photometric and spectroscopic follow-up observations from the TESS Follow-up Observing Program (TFOP) Working Group, we have determined that the planets are Jovian-sized (R$_{P}$ = 1.00-1.45 R$_{J}$), have masses ranging from 0.92 to 5.35 M$_{J}$, and orbit F, G, and K stars (4753 $<$ T$_{eff}$ $<$ 7360 K). We detect a significant orbital eccentricity for the three longest-period systems in our sample: TOI-2025 b (P = 8.872 days, $e$ = $0.220\pm0.053$), TOI-2145 b (P = 10.261 days, $e$ = $0.182^{+0.039}_{-0.049}$), and TOI-2497 b (P = 10.656 days, $e$ = $0.196^{+0.059}_{-0.053}$). TOI-2145 b and TOI-2497 b both orbit subgiant host stars (3.8 $<$ $\log$ g $<$4.0), but these planets show no sign of inflation despite very high levels of irradiation. The lack of inflation may be explained by the high mass of the planets; $5.35^{+0.32}_{-0.35}$ M$_{\rm J}$ (TOI-2145 b) and $5.21\pm0.52$ M$_{\rm J}$ (TOI-2497 b). These six new discoveries contribute to the larger community effort to use {\it TESS} to create a magnitude-complete, self-consistent sample of giant planets with well-determined parameters for future detailed studies.Comment: 20 Pages, 6 Figures, 8 Tables, Accepted by MNRA

Identification of the top TESS objects of interest for atmospheric characterization of transiting exoplanets with JWST

Funding: Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. This work makes use of observations from the LCOGT network. Part of the LCOGT telescope time was granted by NOIRLab through the Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP). MSIP is funded by NSF. This paper is based on observations made with the MuSCAT3 instrument, developed by the Astrobiology Center and under financial support by JSPS KAKENHI (grant No. JP18H05439) and JST PRESTO (grant No. JPMJPR1775), at Faulkes Telescope North on Maui, HI, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory. This paper makes use of data from the MEarth Project, which is a collaboration between Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The MEarth Project acknowledges funding from the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. AST-0807690, AST-1109468, AST-1616624 and AST-1004488 (Alan T. Waterman Award), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant No. 80NSSC18K0476 issued through the XRP Program, and the John Templeton Foundation. C.M. would like to gratefully acknowledge the entire Dragonfly Telephoto Array team, and Bob Abraham in particular, for allowing their telescope bright time to be put to use observing exoplanets. B.J.H. acknowledges support from the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program (grant No. 80NSSC20K1551) and support by NASA under grant No. 80GSFC21M0002. K.A.C. and C.N.W. acknowledge support from the TESS mission via subaward s3449 from MIT. D.R.C. and C.A.C. acknowledge support from NASA through the XRP grant No. 18-2XRP18_2-0007. C.A.C. acknowledges that this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). S.Z. and A.B. acknowledge support from the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology (grant No. 3-18143). The research leading to these results has received funding from the ARC grant for Concerted Research Actions, financed by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. TRAPPIST is funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique, FNRS) under the grant No. PDR T.0120.21. The postdoctoral fellowship of K.B. is funded by F.R.S.-FNRS grant No. T.0109.20 and by the Francqui Foundation. H.P.O.'s contribution has been carried out within the framework of the NCCR PlanetS supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant Nos. 51NF40_182901 and 51NF40_205606. F.J.P. acknowledges financial support from the grant No. CEX2021-001131-S funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. A.J. acknowledges support from ANID—Millennium Science Initiative—ICN12_009 and from FONDECYT project 1210718. Z.L.D. acknowledges the MIT Presidential Fellowship and that this material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant No. 1745302. P.R. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant No. 1952545. This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant Nos. JP17H04574, JP18H05439, JP21K20376; JST CREST grant No. JPMJCR1761; and Astrobiology Center SATELLITE Research project AB022006. This publication benefits from the support of the French Community of Belgium in the context of the FRIA Doctoral Grant awarded to M.T. D.D. acknowledges support from TESS Guest Investigator Program grant Nos. 80NSSC22K1353, 80NSSC22K0185, and 80NSSC23K0769. A.B. acknowledges the support of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University Program of Development. T.D. was supported in part by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. V.K. acknowledges support from the youth scientific laboratory project, topic FEUZ-2020-0038.JWST has ushered in an era of unprecedented ability to characterize exoplanetary atmospheres. While there are over 5000 confirmed planets, more than 4000 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) planet candidates are still unconfirmed and many of the best planets for atmospheric characterization may remain to be identified. We present a sample of TESS planets and planet candidates that we identify as “best-in-class” for transmission and emission spectroscopy with JWST. These targets are sorted into bins across equilibrium temperature Teq and planetary radius Rp and are ranked by a transmission and an emission spectroscopy metric (TSM and ESM, respectively) within each bin. We perform cuts for expected signal size and stellar brightness to remove suboptimal targets for JWST. Of the 194 targets in the resulting sample, 103 are unconfirmed TESS planet candidates, also known as TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs). We perform vetting and statistical validation analyses on these 103 targets to determine which are likely planets and which are likely false positives, incorporating ground-based follow-up from the TESS Follow-up Observation Program to aid the vetting and validation process. We statistically validate 18 TOIs, marginally validate 31 TOIs to varying levels of confidence, deem 29 TOIs likely false positives, and leave the dispositions for four TOIs as inconclusive. Twenty-one of the 103 TOIs were confirmed independently over the course of our analysis. We intend for this work to serve as a community resource and motivate formal confirmation and mass measurements of each validated planet. We encourage more detailed analysis of individual targets by the community.Peer reviewe

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability

Another shipment of six short-period giant planets from TESS

We present the discovery and characterization of six short-period, transiting giant planets from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) – TOI-1811 (TIC 376524552), TOI-2025 (TIC 394050135), TOI-2145 (TIC 88992642), TOI-2152 (TIC 395393265), TOI-2154 (TIC 428787891), and TOI-2497 (TIC 97568467). All six planets orbit bright host stars (8.9 &lt;G &lt; 11.8, 7.7 &lt;K &lt; 10.1). Using a combination of time-series photometric and spectroscopic follow-up observations from the TESS Follow-up Observing Program Working Group, we have determined that the planets are Jovian-sized (RP = 0.99–1.45 RJ), have masses ranging from 0.92 to 5.26 MJ, and orbit F, G, and K stars (4766 ≤ Teff ≤ 7360 K). We detect a significant orbital eccentricity for the three longest-period systems in our sample: TOI-2025 b (P = 8.872 d, 0.394+0.035-0.038), TOI-2145 b (P = 10.261 d, e = 0.208+0.034-0.047), and TOI-2497 b (P = 10.656 d, e = 0.195+0.043-0.040). TOI-2145 b and TOI-2497 b both orbit subgiant host stars (3.8 &lt; log g &lt;4.0), but these planets show no sign of inflation despite very high levels of irradiation. The lack of inflation may be explained by the high mass of the planets; 5.26+0.38-0.37 MJ (TOI-2145 b) and 4.82 ± 0.41 MJ (TOI-2497 b). These six new discoveries contribute to the larger community effort to use TESS to create a magnitude-complete, self-consistent sample of giant planets with well-determined parameters for future detailed studies. © 2023 The Author(s).80NSSC20K0250; LE140100050; FEUZ-2020-0038, PGC2018-098153-B-C31; National Science Foundation, NSF: 1516242, 1608203, 2007811, AST-1751874, AST-1907790; David and Lucile Packard Foundation, DLPF; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA: GN-2018B-LP-101, NNX13AM97A, XRP 80NSSC22K0233; W. M. Keck Foundation, WMKF; New York Community Trust, NYCT; Research Corporation for Science Advancement, RCSA; Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium, PSGC; Ames Research Center, ARC; George Mason University, GMU; University of North Carolina, UNC; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT; University of Pennsylvania; Ohio State University, OSU; California Institute of Technology, CIT; University of Florida, UF; Michigan State University, MSU; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UNC-CH; Pennsylvania State University, PSU; University of Montana, UM; University of Texas at Austin, UT; Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, SAO; Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, H2020: 1952545, 724427; Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation; Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center, ABC-UTC; National Centres of Competence in Research SwissMAP; Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition, DPAC; European Research Council, ERC; European Space Agency, ESA; Australian Research Council, ARC: DP180100972, DP210103119, DP220100365, FL220100117, LE160100001; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG: HA 3279/12-1, SPP1992; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, KAKEN: JP18H05439; University of New South Wales, UNSW; University of Southern Queensland, USQ; Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico, FONDECYT: 11200751, 1210718, 14ENI2-26865, IC120009; Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, CREST: JPMJCR1761; Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Minobrnauka: 075-15-2020-780, N13.1902.21.0039; Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, MCTI; University of Toronto, U of T; Université de Genève, UNIGE; Ministry of Economy; Nanjing University, NJU; Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, IAC; NCCR Catalysis, NCCRThe authors thank the CHIRON team members, including Todd Henry, Leonardo Paredes, Hodari James, Azmain Nisak, Rodrigo Hinojosa, Roberto Aviles, Wei-Chun Jao, and CTIO staffs, for their work in acquiring RVs with CHIRON at CTIO. This research has made use of SAO/NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia ( https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia ), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium ). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This work makes use of observations from the LCO network. Based in part on observations obtained at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações (MCTI/LNA) do Brasil, the US National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU).Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission directorate. The authors acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive and the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which are operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). This paper includes observations obtained under Gemini program GN-2018B-LP-101. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. This publication makes use of The Data and Analysis Center for Exoplanets (DACE), which is a facility based at the University of Geneva (CH) dedicated to extrasolar planets data visualisation, exchange and analysis. DACE is a platform of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, federating the Swiss expertise in Exoplanet research. The DACE platform is available at https://dace.unige.ch .LC, KS, EA, JR, JER, JAR, PW, and EZ are grateful for support from NSF grants AST-1751874 and AST-1907790, along with a Cottrell Fellowship from the Research Corporation. CZ is supported by a Dunlap Fellowship at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, funded through an endowment established by the Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. T.H. acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28. JVS acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project Four Aces; grant agreement No. 724427). PR acknowledges support from NSF grant No. 1952545. RB and AJ acknowledges support from FONDECYT Projects 11200751 and 1210718 and from the CORFO project N◦14ENI2-26865. AJ, RB and MH acknowledge support from project IC120009 ‘Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS)’ of the Millenium Science Initiative, Chilean Ministry of Economy. The Pennsylvania State University Eberly College of Science. The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is supported by the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. KKM gratefully acknowledges support from the New York Community Trust’s Fund for Astrophysical Research. LG and AG are supported by NASA Massachusetts Space Grant Fellowships. EWG, ME, and PC acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant HA 3279/12-1 within the DFG Schwerpunkt SPP1992, Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets. BSG was partially supported by the Thomas Jefferson Chair for Space Exploration at the Ohio State University. CD acknowledges support from the Hellman Fellows Fund and NASA XRP via grant 80NSSC20K0250. BSS, MVG, and AAB acknowledge the support of Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under the grant 075-15-2020-780 (N13.1902.21.0039). BA is supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP180100972. TRB acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP210103119). TRB acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP210103119 and FL220100117). The authors thank the CHIRON team members, including Todd Henry, Leonardo Paredes, Hodari James, Azmain Nisak, Rodrigo Hinojosa, Roberto Aviles, Wei-Chun Jao, and CTIO staffs, for their work in acquiring RVs with CHIRON at CTIO. This research has made use of SAO/NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This work makes use of observations from the LCO network. Based in part on observations obtained at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações (MCTI/LNA) do Brasil, the US National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA’s Science Mission directorate. The authors acknowledge the use of public TESS Alert data from pipelines at the TESS Science Office and at the TESS Science Processing Operations Center. This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive and the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program website, which are operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). This paper includes observations obtained under Gemini program GN-2018B-LP-101. Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center for the production of the SPOC data products. This publication makes use of The Data and Analysis Center for Exoplanets (DACE), which is a facility based at the University of Geneva (CH) dedicated to extrasolar planets data visualisation, exchange and analysis. DACE is a platform of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, federating the Swiss expertise in Exoplanet research. The DACE platform is available at https://dace.unige.ch. MINERVA-Australis is supported by Australian Research Council LIEF Grant LE160100001 (Discovery Grant DP180100972 and DP220100365) Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation, and institutional partners University of Southern Queensland, UNSW Sydney, MIT, Nanjing University, George Mason University, University of Louisville, University of California Riverside, University of Florida, and The University of Texas at Austin. The authors respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of all lands throughout Australia and recognize their continued cultural and spiritual connection to the land, waterways, cosmos, and community. The authors pay our deepest respects to all Elders, ancestors and descendants of the Giabal, Jarowair, and Kambuwal nations, upon whose lands the MINERVA-Australis facility at Mt Kent is situated. MINERVA-North is a collaboration among the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, the University of Montana, the University of Southern Queensland, University of Pennsylvania, and George Mason University. It is made possible by generous contributions from its collaborating institutions and Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation, The David & Lucile Packard Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (EPSCOR grant NNX13AM97A, XRP 80NSSC22K0233), the Australian Research Council (LIEF grant LE140100050), and the National Science Foundation (grants 1516242, 1608203, and 2007811). This article is based on observations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by ABC, at Telescopio Carlos Sánchez operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide. This work is partly financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness through grants PGC2018-098153-B-C31.The work of VK was supported by the Ministry of science and higher education of the Russian Federation, topic FEUZ-2020-0038. This work is partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP18H05439, JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR1761. This article is based on observations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by ABC, at Telescopio Carlos Sánchez operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide.Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.This article is based on observations made with the MuSCAT2 instrument, developed by ABC, at Telescopio Carlos Sánchez operated on the island of Tenerife by the IAC in the Spanish Observatorio del Teide. This work is partly financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness through grants PGC2018-098153-B-C31.The work of VK was supported by the Ministry of science and higher education of the Russian Federation, topic FEUZ-2020-0038.LC, KS, EA, JR, JER, JAR, PW, and EZ are grateful for support from NSF grants AST-1751874 and AST-1907790, along with a Cottrell Fellowship from the Research Corporation. CZ is supported by a Dunlap Fellowship at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, funded through an endowment established by the Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. T.H. acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28. JVS acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project Four Aces; grant agreement No. 724427). PR acknowledges support from NSF grant No. 1952545. RB and AJ acknowledges support from FONDECYT Projects 11200751 and 1210718 and from the CORFO project N°14ENI2-26865. AJ, RB and MH acknowledge support from project IC120009 ‘Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS)’ of the Millenium Science Initiative, Chilean Ministry of Economy. The Pennsylvania State University Eberly College of Science. The Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is supported by the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science, and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. KKM gratefully acknowledges support from the New York Community Trust’s Fund for Astrophysical Research. LG and AG are supported by NASA Massachusetts Space Grant Fellowships. EWG, ME, and PC acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant HA 3279/12-1 within the DFG Schwerpunkt SPP1992, Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets. BSG was partially supported by the Thomas Jefferson Chair for Space Exploration at the Ohio State University. CD acknowledges support from the Hellman Fellows Fund and NASA XRP via grant 80NSSC20K0250. BSS, MVG, and AAB acknowledge the support of Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under the grant 075-15-2020-780 (N13.1902.21.0039). BA is supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP180100972. TRB acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP210103119). TRB acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP210103119 and FL220100117).Minerva -Australis is supported by Australian Research Council LIEF Grant LE160100001 (Discovery Grant DP180100972 and DP220100365) Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation, and institutional partners University of Southern Queensland, UNSW Sydney, MIT, Nanjing University, George Mason University, University of Louisville, University of California Riverside, University of Florida, and The University of Texas at Austin. The authors respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of all lands throughout Australia and recognize their continued cultural and spiritual connection to the land, waterways, cosmos, and community. The authors pay our deepest respects to all Elders, ancestors and descendants of the Giabal, Jarowair, and Kambuwal nations, upon whose lands the Minerva -Australis facility at Mt Kent is situated.MINERVA-North is a collaboration among the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, the University of Montana, the University of Southern Queensland, University of Pennsylvania, and George Mason University. It is made possible by generous contributions from its collaborating institutions and Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation, The David & Lucile Packard Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (EPSCOR grant NNX13AM97A, XRP 80NSSC22K0233), the Australian Research Council (LIEF grant LE140100050), and the National Science Foundation (grants 1516242, 1608203, and 2007811)

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