Highlights From the Annual Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society 2022

With more than 6000 attendees between in-person and virtual offerings, the American Epilepsy Society Meeting 2022 in Nashville, felt as busy as in prepandemic times. An ever-growing number of physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals gathered to learn a variety of topics about epilepsy. The program was carefully tailored to meet the needs of professionals with different interests and career stages. This article summarizes the different symposia presented at the meeting. Basic science lectures addressed the primary elements of seizure generation and pathophysiology of epilepsy in different disease states. Scientists congregated to learn about anti-seizure medications, mechanisms of action, and new tools to treat epilepsy including surgery and neurostimulation. Some symposia were also dedicated to discuss epilepsy comorbidities and practical issues regarding epilepsy care. An increasing number of patient advocates discussing their stories were intertwined within scientific activities. Many smaller group sessions targeted more specific topics to encourage member participation, including Special Interest Groups, Investigator, and Skills Workshops. Special lectures included the renown Hoyer and Lombroso, an ILAE/IBE joint session, a spotlight on the impact of Dobbs v. Jackson on reproductive health in epilepsy, and a joint session with the NAEC on coding and reimbursement policies. The hot topics symposium was focused on traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic epilepsy. A balanced collaboration with the industry allowed presentations of the latest pharmaceutical and engineering advances in satellite symposia

Observed Acceleration of Cascading Outages

Accounts of extreme power outages of transmission systems suggest the acceleration of cascading outage propagation over time and the splitting of the cascade into a slow phase and a subsequent fast phase. This is significant to network operators, as mitigation actions, such as load shedding, can only be effectively applied during the slow phase. During the fast phase, the network disintegrates too quickly for any manual intervention. To supplement the accounts of extreme outages, we describe the observed acceleration of smaller and more common cascading outages by analyzing transmission outage data published by one North American utility. Our results show that these common cascades accelerate much less than the extreme cascades. This justifies ongoing research in mitigation strategies.This article is published as Noebels, Matthias, Ian Dobson, and Mathaios Panteli. "Observed acceleration of cascading outages." IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 36, no. 4 (2021): 3821-3824. DOI: 10.1109/TPWRS.2021.3071028. Copyright 2021 IEEE. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Posted with permission