A cross-sectional investigation of the relationships education, certification, and experience have with knowledge, skills, and abilities among aviation professionals

The aviation industry is a complex system with many different segments and as such, makes hiring the right person a complicated endeavor. Previous research suggested that knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are composed of elements that include education, certification, and experience (ECE). The relative importance of ECE is dependent on the type of job within the aviation sector. The objective of this mixed-methods concurrent triangulation study was to examine aviation industry professionals’ perceived relationship between their ECE and the development of their KSAs. The convenience sample consisted of 404 professionals in the aviation industry who completed the KSA Composite Measure (KCM). The study clarified relationships between ECEs and KSAs that managers in the aviation industry can apply when developing job openings, conducting interviews, reviewing applicant credentials, and building high-performance teams

BRAF V600E mutations in urine and plasma cell-free DNA from patients with Erdheim-Chester disease.

Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD) is a rare histiocytosis with a high prevalence of BRAF V600E mutation (>50% of patients). Patients with BRAF-mutant ECD can respond to BRAF inhibitors. Unfortunately, the lack of adequate archival tissue often precludes BRAF testing. We hypothesized that cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from plasma or urine can offer an alternative source of biologic material for testing. We tested for BRAF V600E mutation in cfDNA from the plasma and urine of 6 ECD patients. In patients with available archival tissue, the result of BRAF mutation analysis was concordant with plasma and urine cfDNA results in all 3 patients (100% agreement, kappa 1.00). In all 6 patients, BRAF mutation analysis of plasma and urine cfDNA was concordant in 5 of 6 patients (83% agreement, kappa 0.67). Testing for BRAF V600E mutation in plasma and urine cfDNA should be further investigated as an alternative to archival tissue mutation analysis

Debiasing egocentrism and optimism biases in repeated competitions

When judging their likelihood of success in competitive tasks, people tend to be overoptimistic for easy tasks and overpessimistic for hard tasks (the shared circumstance effect; SCE). Previous research has shown that feedback and experience from repeated-play competitions has a limited impact on SCEs. However, in this paper, we suggest that competitive situations, in which the shared difficulty or easiness of the task is more transparent, will be more amenable to debiasing via repeated play. Pairs of participants competed in, made predictions about, and received feedback on, multiple rounds of a throwing task involving both easy- and hard-to-aim objects. Participants initially showed robust SCEs, but they also showed a significant reduction in bias after only one round of feedback. These and other results support a more positive view (than suggested from past research) on the potential for SCEs to be debiased through outcome feedback

Validating the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities Composite Measure: An Aviation Industry Pilot Study

Recent research into the aviation management education paradigm shift indicated that education, certification, and experience (ECE) were all important in the aviation industry; however, the relative importance varied between managers depending on their field. Overall, the results identified experience as the most important factor, followed by certification, then education. Furthermore, the authors made a logical connection between the that study and knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), which would ultimately lead managers to a hiring decision. The purpose of this mixed-methods sequential exploratory pilot study was to develop, validate, and test the reliability of the KSA composite measure (KCM), a data collection device to measure the connection between ECE and KSAs. The three phased approach consisted of (a) an expert panel review by eight research, aviation, and human resource professionals, (b) an institutional review board (IRB) review, and (c) a live pilot using 45 professionals from the aviation industry. The pilot proved to validate and confirm the reliability of the KCM for future use

Prion protein lowering is a disease-modifying therapy across prion disease stages, strains and endpoints

Lowering of prion protein (PrP) expression in the brain is a genetically validated therapeutic hypothesis in prion disease. We recently showed that antisense oligonucleotide (ASO)-mediated PrP suppression extends survival and delays disease onset in intracerebrally prion-infected mice in both prophylactic and delayed dosing paradigms. Here, we examine the efficacy of this therapeutic approach across diverse paradigms, varying the dose and dosing regimen, prion strain, treatment timepoint, and examining symptomatic, survival, and biomarker readouts. We recapitulate our previous findings with additional PrP-targeting ASOs, and demonstrate therapeutic benefit against four additional prion strains. We demonstrate that \u3c25% PrP suppression is sufficient to extend survival and delay symptoms in a prophylactic paradigm. Rise in both neuroinflammation and neuronal injury markers can be reversed by a single dose of PrP-lowering ASO administered after the detection of pathological change. Chronic ASO-mediated suppression of PrP beginning at any time up to early signs of neuropathology confers benefit similar to constitutive heterozygous PrP knockout. Remarkably, even after emergence of frank symptoms including weight loss, a single treatment prolongs survival by months in a subset of animals. These results support ASO-mediated PrP lowering, and PrP-lowering therapeutics in general, as a promising path forward against prion disease

Orientation in high-flying migrant insects in relation to flows: mechanisms and strategies

High-flying insect migrants have been shown to display sophisticated flight orientations that can, for example, maximize distance travelled by exploiting tailwinds, and reduce drift from seasonally optimal directions. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and empirical evidence for the mechanisms underlying the selection and maintenance of the observed flight headings, and the detection of wind direction and speed, for insects flying hundreds of metres above the ground. Different mechanisms may be used—visual perception of the apparent ground movement or mechanosensory cues maintained by intrinsic features of the wind—depending on circumstances (e.g. day or night migrations). In addition to putative turbulence-induced velocity, acceleration and temperature cues, we present a new mathematical analysis which shows that 'jerks' (the time-derivative of accelerations) can provide indicators of wind direction at altitude. The adaptive benefits of the different orientation strategies are briefly discussed, and we place these new findings for insects within a wider context by comparisons with the latest research on other flying and swimming organisms

Ether phospholipids metabolism is a latent vulnerability for pancreatic cancer resistance

View full abstracthttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/leading-edge/1062/thumbnail.jp

PRMT1-dependent regulation of RNA metabolism and DNA damage response sustains pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive cancer that has remained clinically challenging to manage. Here we employ an RNAi-based in vivo functional genomics platform to determine epigenetic vulnerabilities across a panel of patient-derived PDAC models. Through this, we identify protein arginine methyltransferase 1 (PRMT1) as a critical dependency required for PDAC maintenance. Genetic and pharmacological studies validate the role of PRMT1 in maintaining PDAC growth. Mechanistically, using proteomic and transcriptomic analyses, we demonstrate that global inhibition of asymmetric arginine methylation impairs RNA metabolism, which includes RNA splicing, alternative polyadenylation, and transcription termination. This triggers a robust downregulation of multiple pathways involved in the DNA damage response, thereby promoting genomic instability and inhibiting tumor growth. Taken together, our data support PRMT1 as a compelling target in PDAC and informs a mechanism-based translational strategy for future therapeutic development. Statement of significance PDAC is a highly lethal cancer with limited therapeutic options. This study identified and characterized PRMT1-dependent regulation of RNA metabolism and coordination of key cellular processes required for PDAC tumor growth, defining a mechanism-based translational hypothesis for PRMT1 inhibitors