Forecasting the Air Race Classic: Lessons in Interdisciplinary Aviation Weather Support and Decision-Making

The Air Race Classic (ARC) is an all-female Visual Flight Rules air race held each June. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach (ERAU-DB) has had primarily student race teams participate and frequently place strongly in the ARC since 1996. The ERAU-DB Meteorology Program has provided successful weather support to ERAU-DB race team(s) for the past decade, including as the terminus host institution in 2016. In 2014, the weather support was formalized as a three-credit interdisciplinary summer course, incorporating a mix of aeronautical science (pilot), dispatch, and meteorology students. Using concepts of service and experiential learning, the ARC course has successfully integrated students from varying educational backgrounds into cohesive weather support teams that serve the ERAU-DB air racers. As such, students from primarily aviation backgrounds have had to learn about aviation weather support tools and techniques they were not previously aware of, while students from primarily meteorological backgrounds had to integrate aviation concepts such as fuel burn and service ceiling into their forecasts. The ARC weather support experience has helped to expose students to real-world situations and decision-making, given them an increased sense of purpose and service to the ERAU-DB community, and improved their ability to combine aviation and meteorological thinking for the purpose of real-time aviation weather forecasting

Transitioning Traditional Aviation Weather Instruction to a Space Launch Weather Support Course: Operational Considerations

Weather support to space launch operations, while similar to that for traditional aviation, presents significant additional challenges. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) currently offers three courses in traditional aviation meteorology, two needed by aeronautical science students seeking private pilot through airline transport pilot (ATP) FAA certifications, and one to provide meteorology majors with operational experience supporting an actual air race. However, with the advent of a new degree program in Commercial Space Operations (CSO), the need to modify and extend traditional aviation weather instruction to include space launch weather requirements has become increasingly important. While the traditional aviation meteorology coursework is beneficial, it does not cover the full-spectrum of weather impacts on space launch and suborbital space flight operations that both CSO and meteorology students will need. To address this challenge, ERAU (with guidance from the 45th Weather Squadron at Patrick Air Force Base) is working to create a new course focused on weather support to these operations, utilizing the new suborbital space flight simulator and lab housed in the Department of Applied Aviation Sciences. This presentation explores the operational considerations of transitioning traditional terrestrial aviation weather instruction to a suborbital space flight weather support course. These considerations include: more stringent spacecraft and system weather sensitivities, triggered lightning, vertical wind-shear profile analysis, attention to atmospheric conditions above the troposphere, and space weather impacts

Broadening Traditional Aviation Meteorology Education to Support Spaceflight Operations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the expansion of traditional aviation meteorology education necessary to support the growing commercial space-operations industry. While spaceflight meteorological considerations do overlap with those of traditional aviation operations, there are notable differences schools must address for appropriate education and training of both meteorologists and operators. These include knowledge of increased weather sensitivities, space-weather impacts, triggered lightning, triboelectrification, and high-resolution vertical wind-profile analyses. An added challenge in the educational process is the more limited amount of publicly available weather and space-weather products necessary to support spaceflight education. Furthermore, in comparison with traditional aviation meteorology, real-world experiential learning opportunities for students to support actual space-launch and on-orbit operations are limited. However, flight simulations employing historical meteorological and space-weather data may help provide the basic educational tools necessary to overcome these limitations and better prepare students pursuing careers in spaceflight, either as operators or as meteorologists

Prognostic Variables and Surgical Management of Foot Melanoma: Review of a 25-Year Institutional Experience

Introduction. Cutaneous foot melanoma is rare, challenging to manage, and not adequately examined in the literature. This study evaluated the prognostic variables and surgical management of foot melanoma.Materials and Methods. Foot melanoma cases managed at an academic center from 1985 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. Results. 46 patients were identified with a broad range of demographic characteristics. Overall recurrence was 32.6%: 19% acral lentiginous, 57% nodular, 66% superficial spreading, 30% melanoma unspecified, 50% severely atypical; 53% ulcerated, 23% nonulcerated; 29% on the dorsum of the foot, 17% heel, 60% ankle, 22% toe, 50% plantar; 0% \u3c1 mm thick, 47% 1–4 mm, 33% \u3e4 mm. 13 had positive nodes, 4 (31%) of whom recurred. Prognostic factors and recurrence did not correlate, and survival was 96% with a median followup of 91 months. Conclusions. Aggressive management of foot melanoma may result in excellent long-term survival even following disease recurrence

A method for the reconstruction of unknown non-monotonic growth functions in the chemostat

We propose an adaptive control law that allows one to identify unstable steady states of the open-loop system in the single-species chemostat model without the knowledge of the growth function. We then show how one can use this control law to trace out (reconstruct) the whole graph of the growth function. The process of tracing out the graph can be performed either continuously or step-wise. We present and compare both approaches. Even in the case of two species in competition, which is not directly accessible with our approach due to lack of controllability, feedback control improves identifiability of the non-dominant growth rate.Comment: expansion of ideas from proceedings paper (17 pages, 8 figures), proceedings paper is version v

Ketamine Dysregulates the Amplitude and Connectivity of High-Frequency Oscillations in Cortical-Subcortical Networks in Humans: Evidence From Resting-State Magnetoencephalography-Recordings

Hypofunctioning of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-receptor (NMDA-R) has been prominently implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia (ScZ). The current study tested the effects of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic and NMDA-R antagonist, on resting-state activity recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) in healthy volunteers. In a single-blind cross-over design, each participant (n = 12) received, on two different sessions, a subanesthetic dose of S-ketamine (0.006 mg/Kg) and saline injection. MEG-data were analyzed at sensorand source- level in the beta (13-30 Hz) and gamma (30-90 Hz) frequency ranges. In addition, connectivity analysis at source-level was performed using transfer entropy (TE). Ketamine increased gamma-power while beta-band activity was decreased. Specifically, elevated 30-90 Hz activity was pronounced in subcortical (thalamus and hippocampus) and cortical (frontal and temporal cortex) regions, whilst reductions in beta-band power were localized to the precuneus, cerebellum, anterior cingulate, temporal and visual cortex. TE analysis demonstrated increased information transfer in a thalamo-cortical network after ketamine administration. The findings are consistent with the pronounced dysregulation of highfrequency oscillations following the inhibition of NMDA-R in animal models of ScZ as well as with evidence from EEG-data in ScZ-patients and increased functional connectivity during early illness stages. Moreover, our data highlight the potential contribution of thalamo-cortical connectivity patterns towards ketamine-induced neuronal dysregulation, which may be relevant for the understanding of schizophrenia as a disorder of disinhibition of neural circuits

Immunogenicity and safety of a quadrivalent high-dose inactivated influenza vaccine compared with a standard-dose quadrivalent influenza vaccine in healthy people aged 60 years or older: a randomized Phase III trial

A quadrivalent high-dose inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV4-HD) is licensed for adults 6565 y of age based on immunogenicity and efficacy studies. However, IIV4-HD has not been evaluated in adults aged 60\u201364 y. This study compared immunogenicity and safety of IIV4-HD with a standard-dose quadrivalent influenza vaccine (IIV4-SD) in adults aged 6560 y. This Phase III, randomized, modified double-blind, active-controlled study enrolled 1,528 participants aged 6560 y, randomized 1:1 to a single injection of IIV4-HD or IIV4-SD. Hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) geometric mean titers (GMTs) were measured at baseline and D 28 and seroconversion assessed. Safety was described for 180 d after vaccination. The primary immunogenicity objective was superiority of IIV4-HD versus IIV4-SD, for all four influenza strains 28 d post vaccination in participants aged 60\u201364 and 6565 y. IIV4-HD induced a superior immune response versus IIV4-SD in terms of GMTs in participants aged 60\u201364 y and those aged 6565 y for all four influenza strains. IIV4-HD induced higher GMTs in those aged 60\u201364 y than those aged 6565 y. Seroconversion rates were higher for IIV4-HD versus IIV4-SD in each age-group for all influenza strains. Both vaccines were well tolerated in participants 6560 y of age, with no safety concerns identified. More solicited reactions were reported with IIV4-HD than with IIV4-SD. IIV4-HD provided superior immunogenicity versus IIV4-SD and was well tolerated in adults aged 6560 y. IIV4-HD is assumed to offer improved protection against influenza compared with IIV4-SD in adults aged 6560 y, as was previously assessed for adults aged 6565 y

Ultra-Fast Oleophobic-Hydrophilic Switching Surfaces for Anti-Fogging, Self-Cleaning, and Oil-Water Separation

Smooth copolymer–fluorosurfactant complex film surfaces are found to exhibit fast oleophobic–hydrophilic switching behavior. Equilibration of the high oil contact angle (hexadecane = 80°) and low water contact angle (110°), which, when combined with the inherent ultrafast switching speed, yields oil–water mixture separation efficiencies exceeding 98%