Air Carrier Pilot Training, Supply & Recruitment Challenges

The route to airline recovery following the global COVID-19 pandemic is flush with opportunity for airlines, unions, and regulators to work together within current regulatory structures to recruit the next generation of aviation professionals, while continuing to ensure they are properly trained, qualified and mentored for safe flight operations. As an industry we have raised interest in pursuing aviation, but more still should be done. The pace of the recovery from the pandemic induced reductions in air travel is testing United States pilot training and recruitment systems. The reductions in air travel at the beginning of the pandemic led to extended leaves, early retirements, as well as seat and aircraft transitions of existing pilots and instructors. In many cases air carriers are now struggling to keep up with the extensive requalification training of them fast enough to accommodate the precipitous increase in passenger air travel. In addition, the need to hire new pilots and instructors is exacerbating the air carrier training department capacity challenges. In some cases, these heavy loads on air carrier training departments are leading to long delays during training, and even retraining due to the excessive delays, adding to the training capacity challenges. This presentation will focus on solutions to safely meet that need with a diverse supply of qualified pilots. This presentation will provide the audience insight into the unique perspectives from human factors, training, and pilot supply experts from the world\u27s largest pilot union on the current state of pilot training, supply and recruitment

Characterization of TAP Ambr250 disposable bioreactors as a reliable scale-down model for biologics process development

In recent years, biologic drugs such as antibodies, biosimilars and fusion proteins have continued to enter into the pharmaceutical pipeline. To shorten cell culture process development and accelerate clinical trials and regulatory filing, the disposable Advanced Microscale Bioreactors (Ambr 250) has burgeoned to be a useful tool due to the advantages of highly automated control and short turnaround. However, the traditional early stage upstream process development is normally conducted in 3L or 5L bioreactors. The usage of Ambr 250 instead of 5L bioreactors in the development has many benefits, but also brings necessity to establish a scale-down model of Ambr 250 to mimic 5L bioreactors. In our study, a comprehensive kLa characterization of Ambr 250 was conducted to define optimal operational conditions. Three different scale-down approaches, i.e. dimensionless volumetric flow rate (vvm), Power per unit volume (P/V) and kLa models have been evaluated using different cell lines. Since Design of Experiments (DoE) is often used in upstream process development, the response of Ambr 250 bioreactors to process parameters such as temperature, pH, seeding density, feeding strategy were compared to those of 5L bioreactors. In addition to process development, the suitability of Ambr 250 in the clone selection, which is traditionally conducted in 5L bioreactors, was investigated using six different clones. These studies showed that Ambr 250 generates similar profiles of cell growth and protein production to 5L and 1000L bioreactors. The data suggest that Ambr 250 can be used for early stage clone selection and process development as the replacement for traditional glass 5L bioreactors, and it has great potential applications in late stage process validation and process characterizatio

High yielding large-scale transient expression of Biotherapeutics in CHO: Beyond preclinical development

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The early summertime Saharan heat low: sensitivity of the radiation budget and atmospheric heating to water vapour and dust aerosol

The Saharan heat low (SHL) is a key component of the west African climate system and an important driver of the west African monsoon across a range of timescales of variability. The physical mechanisms driving the variabil- ity in the SHL remain uncertain, although water vapour has been implicated as of primary importance. Here, we quan- tify the independent effects of variability in dust and water vapour on the radiation budget and atmospheric heating of the region using a radiative transfer model configured with observational input data from the Fennec field campaign at the location of Bordj Badji Mokhtar (BBM) in southern Al- geria (21.4◦ N, 0.9◦ E), close to the SHL core for June 2011. Overall, we find dust aerosol and water vapour to be of simi- lar importance in driving variability in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiation budget and therefore the column-integrated heating over the SHL (∼ 7 W m−2 per standard deviation of dust aerosol optical depth – AOD). As such, we infer that SHL intensity is likely to be similarly enhanced by the ef- fects of dust and water vapour surge events. However, the details of the processes differ. Dust generates substantial ra- diative cooling at the surface (∼ 11 W m−2 per standard devi- ation of dust AOD), presumably leading to reduced sensible heat flux in the boundary layer, which is more than com- pensated by direct radiative heating from shortwave (SW) absorption by dust in the dusty boundary layer. In contrast, water vapour invokes a radiative warming at the surface of ∼ 6 W m−2 per standard deviation of column-integrated wa- ter vapour in kg m−2 . Net effects involve a pronounced net atmospheric radiative convergence with heating rates on av- erage of 0.5 K day−1 and up to 6 K day−1 during synop- tic/mesoscale dust events from monsoon surges and convec- tive cold-pool outflows (“haboobs”). On this basis, we make inferences on the processes driving variability in the SHL associated with radiative and advective heating/cooling. De- pending on the synoptic context over the region, processes driving variability involve both independent effects of water vapour and dust and compensating events in which dust and water vapour are co-varying. Forecast models typically have biases of up to 2 kg m−2 in column-integrated water vapour (equivalent to a change in 2.6 W m−2 TOA net flux) and typically lack variability in dust and thus are expected to poorly represent these couplings. An improved representa- tion of dust and water vapour and quantification of associ- ated radiative impact in models is thus imperative to further understand the SHL and related climate processes

The summertime Saharan heat low: Sensitivity of the radiation budget and atmospheric heating to water vapour and dust aerosol

The Saharan heat low (SHL) is a key component of the West African climate system and an important driver of the West African Monsoon across a range of timescales of variability. The physical mechanisms driving the variability in the SHL remain uncertain, although water vapour has been implicated as of primary importance. Here, we quantify the independent effects of variability in dust and water vapour on the radiation budget and atmospheric heating of the region using a radiative transfer model configured with observational input data from the Fennec field campaign at the location of Bordj Badji Mokhtar (BBM) in southern Algeria (0.9E, 21.4N), close to the SHL core, for June 2011. Overall, we find dust aerosol and water vapour to be of similar importance in driving variability in the top of atmosphere (TOA) radiation budget and therefore the column integrated heating over the SHL (~7 W m-² per standard deviation of dust AOD). As such we infer that SHL intensity is likely to be similarly enhanced by the effects of dust and water vapour surge events. However, the details of the processes differ. Dust generates substantial radiative cooling at the surface (~11 W m-² per standard deviation of dust AOD), presumably leading to reduced sensible heat flux into the boundary layer, which is more than compensated by direct radiative heating from SW absorption by dust in the dusty boundary layer. In contrast water vapour invokes a longwave radiative warming of at the surface of ~6 W m-² per standard deviation of column integrated water vapour in Kg m-² . Net effects involve a pronounced net atmospheric radiative convergence with heating rates on average of 0.5 K day-¹ and up to 6 K day-¹ during synoptic/meso-scale dust events from monsoon surges and convective cold pool outflows (‘haboobs’). On this basis we make inferences on the processes driving variability in the SHL associated with radiative and advective heating/cooling. Depending on the synoptic context over the region processes driving variability involve both independent effects of water vapour and dust and compensating events in which dust and water vapour are co-varying. Forecast models typically have biases of up to 2 kg m-² in column integrated water vapour (equivalent to a change in 2.6 W m-² TOA net flux) and typically lack variability in dust, and so are expected to poorly represent these couplings. An improved representation dust and water vapour and quantification of associated radiative impact is thus imperative in quest for the answer to what remains to be uncertain related with the climate system of the SHL region

Phylogeny of the macaques (Cercopithecidae: Macaca) based on Alu elements

Genus Macaca (Cercopithecidae: Papionini) is one of the most successful primate radiations. Despite previous studies on morphology and mitochondrial DNA analysis, a number of issues regarding the details of macaque evolution remain unsolved. Alu elements are a class of non-autonomous retroposons belonging to short interspersed elements that are specific to the primate lineage. Because retroposon insertions show very little homoplasy, and because the ancestral state (absence of the SINE) is known, Alu elements are useful genetic markers and have been utilized for analyzing primate phylogenentic relationships and human population genetic relationships. Using PCR display methodology, 298 new Alu insertions have been identified from ten species of macaques. Together with 60 loci reported previously, a total of 358 loci are used to infer the phylogenetic relationships of genus Macaca. With regard to earlier unresolved issues on the macaque evolution, the topology of our tree suggests that: 1) genus Macaca contains four monophyletic species groups; 2) within the Asian macaques, the silenus group diverged first, and members of the sinica and fascicularis groups share a common ancestor; 3) Macaca arctoides are classified in the sinica group. Our results provide a robust molecular phylogeny for genus Macaca with stronger statistical support than previous studies. The present study also illustrates that SINE-based approaches are a powerful tool in primate phylogenetic studies and can be used to successfully resolve evolutionary relationships between taxa at scales from the ordinal level to closely related species within one genus. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The contrasting roles of water and dust in controlling daily variations in radiative heating of the summertime Saharan heat low

The summertime Sahara heat low (SHL) is a key component of the West African monsoon (WAM) system. Considerable uncertainty remains over the relative roles of water vapour and dust aerosols in controlling the radiation budget over the Sahara and therefore our ability to explain variability and trends in the SHL, and in turn, the WAM. Here, new observations from Fennec supersite-1 in the central Sahara during June 2011 and June 2012, together with satellite retrievals from GERB, are used to quantify how total column water vapour (TCWV) and dust aerosols (from aerosol optical depth, AOD) control day-to-day variations in energy balance in both observations and ECWMF reanalyses (ERA-I). The data show that the earth-atmosphere system is radiatively heated in June 2011 and 2012. Although the empirical analysis of observational data cannot completely disentangle the roles of water vapour, clouds and dust, the analysis demonstrates that TCWV provides a far stronger control on TOA net radiation, and so the net heating of the earth-atmosphere system, than AOD does. In contrast, variations in dust provide a much stronger control on surface heating, but the decreased surface heating associated with dust is largely compensated by increased atmospheric heating, and so dust control on net TOA radiation is weak. Dust and TCWV are both important for direct atmospheric heating. ERA-I, which assimilated radiosondes from the Fennec campaign, captures the control of TOA net flux by TCWV, with a positive correlation (r = 0.6) between observed and modelled TOA net radiation, despite the use of a monthly dust climatology in ERA-I that cannot capture the daily variations in dustiness. Variations in surface net radiation, and so the vertical profile of radiative heating, are not captured in ERA-I, since it does not capture variations in dust. Results show that ventilation of the SHL by cool moist air leads to a radiative warming, stabilising the SHL with respect to such perturbations. It is known that models struggle to capture the advective moistening of the SHL, especially that associated with mesoscale convective systems. Our results show that the typical model errors in Saharan water vapour will lead to substantial errors in the modelled TOA energy balance (tens of W m−2), which will lead to errors in both the SHL and the WAM

A mobile element based phylogeny of Old World monkeys

SINEs (Short INterspersed Elements) are a class of non-autonomous mobile elements that are states, making them useful genetic systems for phylogenetic studies. Alu elements are the most successful SINE in primate genomes and have been utilized for resolving primate phylogenetic relationships and human population genetics. However, no Alu based phylogenetic analysis has yet been performed to resolve relationships among Old World monkeys. Using both a computational approach and polymerase chain reaction display methodology, we identified 285 new Alu insertions from sixteen Old World monkey taxa that were informative at various levels of catarrhine phylogeny. We have utilized these elements along with 12 previously reported loci to construct a phylogenetic tree of the selected taxa. Relationships among all major clades are in general agreement with other molecular and morphological data sets but have stronger statistical support. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Identification and quantification of dust aerosol emission over the Sahara from Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) observations

Dust aerosols are an important component of the climate system and a challenge to incorporate into weather and climate models. Information on the location and magnitude of dust emission remains a key information gap to inform model development. Inadequate surface observations ensure that satellite data remain the primary source of this information over extensive and remote desert regions. Here, we develop estimates of the relative magnitude of active dust emission over the Sahara desert based on data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). Utilising the unique vertical profile of aerosol characteristics provided by CALIOP our algorithm identifies emission from aerosol extinction and lidar backscatter in the near surface layers. From the long-term CALIOP archive of day and night-time orbits over 2006–13 we construct coarse resolution maps of a new dust emission index (DEI) for the Sahara desert during the peak summer dust season (June to September). The spatial structure of DEI indicates highest emission over a broad zone focused on the border regions of Southern Algeria, Northern Mali and northwest Niger, displaced substantially (∼7°) to the east of the mean maximum in satellite-derived aerosol optical depth. In this region night-time emission exceeds that during the day. The DEI maps substantially corroborate recently derived dust source frequency count maps based on back-tracking plumes in high temporal resolution SEVIRI imagery. As such, a convergence of evidence from multiple satellite data sources using independent methods provides an increasingly robust picture of Saharan dust emission sources. Various caveats are considered. As such, quantitative estimates of dust emission may require a synergistic combined multi-sensor analysis