Weather Avoidance Guidelines for NASA Global Hawk High-Altitude Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)

The current Global Hawk flight rules would probably not have been effective in the single event of greatest concern (the Emily encounter). The cloud top had not reached 50,000 ft until minutes before the encounter. The TOT and lightning data would not have been available until near the overflight time since this was a rapidly growing cell. This case would have required a lastminute diversion when lightning became frequent. Avoiding such a cell probably requires continual monitoring of the forward camera and storm scope, whether or not cloud tops have been exceeding specific limits. However, the current overflight rules as strictly interpreted would have prohibited significant fractions of the successful Global Hawk overpasses of Karl and Matthew that proved not to be hazardous. Many other high altitude aircraft (ER2 and Global Hawk) flights in NASA tropical cyclone field programs have successfully overflown deep convective clouds without incident.The convective cell that caused serious concern about the safety of the ER2 in Emily was especially strong for a tropical cyclone environment, probably as strong or stronger than any that was overflown by the ER2 in 20 previous flights over tropical cyclones. Specifically, what made that cell a safety concern was the magnitude of the vertical velocity of the updraft, at least 20 m/s (4000 ft/minute) at the time the ER2 overflew it. Such a strong updraft can generate strong gravity waves at and above the tropopause, posing a potential danger to aircraft far above the maximum altitude of the updraft itself or its associated cloud top. Indeed, the ER2 was probably at least 9000 ft above that cloud top. Cloudtop height, by itself, is not an especially good indicator of the intensity of convection and the likelihood of turbulence. Nor is overflying high cloud tops (i.e. > 50,000 ft) of particular concern unless there is other evidence of very strong convective updrafts beneath those tops in the path of the aircraft. center dot Lightning, especially lightning with a high flash rate, is well correlated with convective intensity. Lightning with a minimal flash rate (say 13 flashes per minute) is indicative of updraft speeds of about 10 m/s in the mixed phase region where charge is being separated, generally at altitudes about 2025 kft in a hurricane. That is still stronger than typical updrafts (more like 5 m/s). An unresolved issue is whether there is a high and instantaneous correlation between vertical velocity in the middle troposphere (necessary for lightning generation) and near cloud top (more direct concern for overflights)

Toward a comprehensive view of cancer immune responsiveness: a synopsis from the SITC workshop.

Tumor immunology has changed the landscape of cancer treatment. Yet, not all patients benefit as cancer immune responsiveness (CIR) remains a limitation in a considerable proportion of cases. The multifactorial determinants of CIR include the genetic makeup of the patient, the genomic instability central to cancer development, the evolutionary emergence of cancer phenotypes under the influence of immune editing, and external modifiers such as demographics, environment, treatment potency, co-morbidities and cancer-independent alterations including immune homeostasis and polymorphisms in the major and minor histocompatibility molecules, cytokines, and chemokines. Based on the premise that cancer is fundamentally a disorder of the genes arising within a cell biologic process, whose deviations from normality determine the rules of engagement with the host\u27s response, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a task force of experts from various disciplines including, immunology, oncology, biophysics, structural biology, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, and bioinformatics to address the complexity of CIR from a holistic view. The task force was launched by a workshop held in San Francisco on May 14-15, 2018 aimed at two preeminent goals: 1) to identify the fundamental questions related to CIR and 2) to create an interactive community of experts that could guide scientific and research priorities by forming a logical progression supported by multiple perspectives to uncover mechanisms of CIR. This workshop was a first step toward a second meeting where the focus would be to address the actionability of some of the questions identified by working groups. In this event, five working groups aimed at defining a path to test hypotheses according to their relevance to human cancer and identifying experimental models closest to human biology, which include: 1) Germline-Genetic, 2) Somatic-Genetic and 3) Genomic-Transcriptional contributions to CIR, 4) Determinant(s) of Immunogenic Cell Death that modulate CIR, and 5) Experimental Models that best represent CIR and its conversion to an immune responsive state. This manuscript summarizes the contributions from each group and should be considered as a first milestone in the path toward a more contemporary understanding of CIR. We appreciate that this effort is far from comprehensive and that other relevant aspects related to CIR such as the microbiome, the individual\u27s recombined T cell and B cell receptors, and the metabolic status of cancer and immune cells were not fully included. These and other important factors will be included in future activities of the taskforce. The taskforce will focus on prioritization and specific actionable approach to answer the identified questions and implementing the collaborations in the follow-up workshop, which will be held in Houston on September 4-5, 2019

Correction to: Toward a comprehensive view of cancer immune responsiveness: a synopsis from the SITC workshop.

Following publication of the original article [1], the author reported that an author name, Roberta Zappasodi, was missed in the authorship list

The role of cognitive inhibition in different components of arithmetic

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Research has established that executive functions, the skills required to monitor and control thought and action, are related to achievement in mathematics. Until recently research has focused on working memory, but studies are beginning to show that inhibition skills—the ability to suppress distracting information and unwanted responses—are also important for mathematics. However, these studies employed general mathematics tests and therefore are unable to pinpoint how inhibition skills relate to specific components of mathematics. We explored how inhibition skills are related to overall achievement as well as factual, procedural and conceptual knowledge in 209 participants aged 11–12, 13–14 and adults. General mathematics achievement was more strongly related to inhibition measured in numerical compared with non-numerical contexts. Inhibition skills were related to conceptual knowledge in older participants, but procedural skills in younger participants. These differing relationships can shed light on the mechanisms by which inhibition is involved in mathematics

Correction to: Toward a comprehensive view of cancer immune responsiveness: a synopsis from the SITC workshop

Following publication of the original article [1], the author reported that an author name, Roberta Zappasodi, was missed in the authorship list

Toward a comprehensive view of cancer immune responsiveness: a synopsis from the SITC workshop

Abstract Tumor immunology has changed the landscape of cancer treatment. Yet, not all patients benefit as cancer immune responsiveness (CIR) remains a limitation in a considerable proportion of cases. The multifactorial determinants of CIR include the genetic makeup of the patient, the genomic instability central to cancer development, the evolutionary emergence of cancer phenotypes under the influence of immune editing, and external modifiers such as demographics, environment, treatment potency, co-morbidities and cancer-independent alterations including immune homeostasis and polymorphisms in the major and minor histocompatibility molecules, cytokines, and chemokines. Based on the premise that cancer is fundamentally a disorder of the genes arising within a cell biologic process, whose deviations from normality determine the rules of engagement with the host’s response, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) convened a task force of experts from various disciplines including, immunology, oncology, biophysics, structural biology, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, and bioinformatics to address the complexity of CIR from a holistic view. The task force was launched by a workshop held in San Francisco on May 14–15, 2018 aimed at two preeminent goals: 1) to identify the fundamental questions related to CIR and 2) to create an interactive community of experts that could guide scientific and research priorities by forming a logical progression supported by multiple perspectives to uncover mechanisms of CIR. This workshop was a first step toward a second meeting where the focus would be to address the actionability of some of the questions identified by working groups. In this event, five working groups aimed at defining a path to test hypotheses according to their relevance to human cancer and identifying experimental models closest to human biology, which include: 1) Germline-Genetic, 2) Somatic-Genetic and 3) Genomic-Transcriptional contributions to CIR, 4) Determinant(s) of Immunogenic Cell Death that modulate CIR, and 5) Experimental Models that best represent CIR and its conversion to an immune responsive state. This manuscript summarizes the contributions from each group and should be considered as a first milestone in the path toward a more contemporary understanding of CIR. We appreciate that this effort is far from comprehensive and that other relevant aspects related to CIR such as the microbiome, the individual’s recombined T cell and B cell receptors, and the metabolic status of cancer and immune cells were not fully included. These and other important factors will be included in future activities of the taskforce. The taskforce will focus on prioritization and specific actionable approach to answer the identified questions and implementing the collaborations in the follow-up workshop, which will be held in Houston on September 4–5, 2019