So today we're going to be discussing the role of analytic validation in next generation sequencing tumor genomic profiling. And let me congratulate all of you who have dialed in for such an exciting appearing topic. And to stress how complicated this topic actually is and the fact that we're going to spend some time together beginning to scratch the surface of the intricacies is just very applaudable. And I hope that after this conversation it will inspire you to ask questions and continue to dig. So today what we're going to cover is an initial overview of the technical challenges of doing tumor genomic profiling and why this is particularly germane to the specifics and extent of the analytic validation that each individual lab performs. And we're going to go into depth on exactly what we mean by analytic validation. And who in the regulatory community currently is evaluating the quality and extent of each lab's analytic validation. And then some clinical implications and then some questions at the very end that hopefully will guide your discussions in the future. So let's frame up this discussion with a clinical case, which I think really emphasizes what we all hope to see within our lifetime, the promise of personalized cancer care. And here are two patients who have diffusely advanced metastatic melanoma and who have failed all forms of conventional therapy. So the concept in personalized cancer care is that the tumor cells depend on abnormal signaling and growth for survival. And this is related to genomic changes, changes at the DNA level, which have driven these cells to become different from the normal and well-behaving cells in their body. So the first step is to identify the genes of interest that have been mutated and that are potentially producing the protein target. This is where the diagnostic test comes in and is so important in discriminating next steps for patients. Step two is then to treat with small molecules that inhibit abnormal pathways or hit the achilles peel of the tumor while preventing eating. I'm sorry, there's a lot of noise on the line. Treat with small molecules that inhibit the abnormal pathways within these cells and spare the patients a vast majority of side effects. So in this rubric, this patient had an accurate test that identified genomic alteration in each case, which allowed the prescription of a medication that specifically targeted their tumor and resulted in a dramatic change in the course of their illness. So in this case, the rubric of diagnostic tests predicting a specific therapy worked well. But this is not as simple as it might appear, because we have not just one drug or one genomic alteration, but we have over 150 intracelular targets that we know have compounds in the pharmaceutical industry in development that will be hitting the clinics either in clinical trials or for use in actual treatment of patient cases in the next five to 10 years. So getting diagnostic pairing correct has never been more important. So we've now established that there are molecular technologies that are moving into the clinic to predict responsiveness to drugs, and that patients' positions are going to rely on these results for clinical decision-making. And with this complexity of potential therapies, labs and healthcare as a whole have moved towards multiplex technology to more broadly assess the genomic drivers. And this has added a level of complexity that we've never experienced before to effectively divide patients into the most relevant groups for whatever clinical intervention, which may actually mean withholding a particular therapy when a particular driver is not present. In order for this rubric to be successful, we have to separate two very important concepts. The concept of technical variability that happens at the level of the assay, this must be minimized so that we can begin to understand the inherent biologic variability present in each patient's tumor. And these two sources of variability are not able to be separated as rubric is not as effective at predicting what patients should go on a particular therapy. So let's take a look at an example of a next-generation sequencing assay workflow. So people talk about next-generation sequencing and sometimes think of all of these tests just because they employ this technology known as MGS as one uniform type of test. But that's not the case. So this describes only a single test that's in the middle of this sequencing of this workflow diagram. It is enumerated here as the Illumina High Seq under the word sequencing in the middle. The assay itself is actually comprised of a number of upfront processing steps that starts actually at the moment that a specimen is procured in an intervention in an outside hospital and doesn't end until an informative clinical report is issued. So what we have to capture here is there's multiple steps. It's a highly complicated workflow with multiple tests that each have to be validated and understood. And in particular, there has to be an appreciation for the preanalytic variables that are outside the control of the MGS laboratory. These include the fixation of the specimen, the procedure that was used for collection, the age of the specimen, the storage conditions that this is an archival piece of tissue. And this needs to be evaluated so that each individual assay understands the impact of each of these on the results that will be eventually delivered. So the second level of issue that we need to kind of address that is part of the complexity of a validation scheme is that there are not just one or two analytes that need to be evaluated. This is just a selected list of a number of genes that have been recognized and that the presence or absence of a mutation directs the patient to a particular therapy or away from a particular therapy. The issue that confounds this list that we're adding to every day and the scientific and medical literature is adding to every day is the fact that any one of these genes listed there can be altered not just in one way by a point mutation that people typically think of when they invoke the word mutation, but can be altered in four discreet and different ways. So here we have a cartoon which illustrates one mechanism, which is copy number alteration, where the gene sequence itself is totally normal, but we just have instead of two copies in the normal diploid cells, have more than two copies. This is the case that occurs in her to amplify breast cancer that we know is a target for perceptive therapy and other drugs. The second mechanism is base substitution, and so this is again the most commonly considered alteration, and this is where one area of the sequence or one base in the sequence is changed to another one, and this leads to a change in the coding and the amino acid of a sequence of the eventual protein. The third category of alteration are insertion deletion events in which small areas, particularly potentially regulatory areas are either duplicated or deleted, or possibly insertions or deletions that are in non-multiples of three, which cause frame shifts in the coding sequence of the protein that eventually leads to early termination of the protein and a lack of a complete sequence being produced by the cell. And finally, rearrangements, where two pieces of the chromosomes interchange with one another, forming chimeric proteins that function in novel ways and sometimes drive tumor cell growth. And this is the case for the EML for alpha fusions in lung cancer that you, I'm sure, are aware of. The third complication to this entire process is that the testing needs to be performed on the clinically available specimens that patients are having collected in the course of routine care. And as we've moved towards smaller and smaller biopsies with minimally invasive procedures that have less recovery time and complications associated with the sampling, the tests need to accommodate for this lower input amount of material as well as the routine processing that occurs in a diagnostic pathology lab, such as formal infrexation and the effect that it actually has on the nucleic acid within the cell. And finally, an analytic validation has to address and understand the fact that in routine care, sampling of a tumor is often dominated by the background normal cells from the patient. And that only a small fraction of any piece of tissue that is collected has tumor in it. And so what we see here, represented from an experiment that we did in our laboratory, was to look at the relationship between the purity of the tumor, i.e., the relative proportion of the extracted DNA that's coming from the tumor cells, because what you have to understand in this type of an affin, all of the DNA from all of the cells that are present in a particular sample are being extracted together to form the input that's being sequenced. And the frequency or the sensitivity that different techniques have for detecting alterations is affected by the amount of tumor that goes in to begin with. So in this example, if there's almost 100% pure tumor, a heterozygous mutation, like a dominant base substitution mutation, a KRAS alteration, could be detected as it would have a mutant allele frequency of 50% in a 100% pure tumor, meaning half of the DNA coming from this tumor would have this alteration. And the sensitivity in a standard capillary sequencing assay, this is the older type of stanger sequencing, would only be 93% for the detection of this in 100% pure tumor. If we drop down to a 40% pure tumor where the mutant allele frequency would be 20% or less, the old version currently considered the gold standard would only have about a 55% sensitivity for detecting these alterations. In reality, what we need to do is to be able to detect alterations in a very low tumor purity and mutant allele frequency. Or at least to understand the performance characteristics of an assay to know when we have to caveat the results that would be negative to also include the concept that it could be a false negative because of the mutant allele frequency following below the limit of detection of the assay. How are we going to address these challenges in oncology next generation sequencing and genomic profiling? Especially in light of the fact that there are numerous different tests being used by different laboratories. So how do you assess the ways in which they are different from one another? Well, especially since they may have different genes that are being analyzed, they may have different amounts of each gene that's on the test being assessed. They have different approaches to enrichment of the particular genes that are on the assay, PCR versus hybrid capture. And each of these approaches has implications for the sensitivity and specificity of the test. Which instrument is being used? This is kind of the concept of which box do they have? From which manufacturer? And then which types of those four mutations can be detected and in what clinical context? So on top of all of this, how do we know that one of these various approaches has value and can be trusted to provide accurate and reproducible results for a patient population? Well, here's a comment from the NIH DOE Task Force on Genetic Testing, which says the reality is that there is no assurance that every laboratory performing genetic tests for clinical purposes meets high standards. So with this framing, what do you should do? Well, a lab should start in order to understand the product that they are producing and that's the results that they'll be delivering with an analytic validation. So what is this? This is a process by which you determine whether an assay is able to discriminate the presence or the absence of an event that it was designed to detect. And these have two basic components, a measurement or an assessment of accuracy versus precision. So accuracy you can envision this as dark being thrown at a dark board. So accuracy is how often does the dark hit the bullseye and how close is that? So that is described by measures such as sensitivity, the ability to correctly identify patients who have a disease, specificity, the ability to correctly identify the patient who don't have the disease. And then based on the prevalence of a particular condition in the population, the positive and negative predictive values of the test. So in this particular patient with a positive result or negative result, how likely does this reflect the actual status of the patient? Precision, on the other hand, is the concept if you are throwing darts, how well do the darts cluster, even if they're nowhere near the bullseye. So this is the measure of how much random variation there is in a test. And it's described by reproducibility and repeatability. Why does analytic validation matter? Well, 70% roughly. Somebody has been heard to say medical decisions are based on the diagnostic test results of one kind or another. And these results stratify patients into subsets, which get very different types of interventions or counseling. So the analytic validation helps assess the reliability of the data that's being given to the clinician, which is feeding their medical decision-making. So right now, who evaluates analytic validation? Well, in general, there are few organizations that provide this assessment and licensing. But in the area of next-generation sequencing, there is no single standard or guideline which regulates what is the gold standard for an analytic validation. So we're just going to briefly go through these agencies to describe their role in this environment of regulation. So CLIA is the minimum bar that allows a laboratory to deliver tests which will prompt clinical decision-making. And they're charged with ensuring accurate and reliable test results. They inspect laboratories on an every two-year basis, and we'll do a review of both the tests, which are FDA-cleared and approved and being utilized in the laboratory, but also the laboratory-developed tests. So these are tests that the lab has either assembled from other or modified from other FDA-cleared or approved products, or has generated entirely on their own to meet a clinical need. So within CLIA, there are no minimum thresholds that must be met specific to NGS testing. The second regulatory body to consider is the College of American Pathologists. So this is a credentialing agency that laboratories can voluntarily subscribe to for inspection and accreditation. The inspections are also performed on every two-year basis, and mainly these checklists try to assess the quality management and quality control of lab testing, personnel, and lab safety. They have recently added some molecular pathology-specific checklists with sections that address next generation sequencing, validation, and the ongoing QA and QC. But the recommendations are fairly broad and open to quite a bit of interpretation. The next regulatory body is New York State Clinical Laboratory Evaluation Program. This is a license which is required by every laboratory that wants to perform testing on New York State residents. And they have elevated the bar for licensing of molecular tests and next-gen sequencing to acquire a New York State license. And it's currently considered one of the most rigorous certifications that a test can go through outside of the FDA. Recently, the Palmetto MOLDX program has also, in this lack of sort of clear regulatory guidance, established some components that they will be evaluating in their technical assessments, specifically around the analytic validation of NGS-based tests in order to qualify them as covered tests. And these components include sensitivity, specificity, and precision. And when a test has gone through this technical assessment and it's been deemed to be covered, they'll be listed on the MOLDX website. And finally, FDA. So FDA typically is informed of tests and the performance characteristics before a test goes to market if the test is going to be FDA-approved or clear. However, they have been practicing enforcement discretion with regard to the laboratory-developed tests for many years. And in reality, most genetic and genomic tests are not FDA-approved products but are lab-developed tests. And because of this and the implication for the pairing with FDA-regulated drugs, this is a keen area of interest and has led to a draft LVT guidance that was issued in October of 2014 and a diagnostic test workshop that included a number of thought leaders just about a year ago to advise the FDA on how they should proceed. So the next two slides just show some comparisons between the New York State MOLDX and CAHPS guidance around things that you would want to consider in a validation. So New York State is the only one that specifies how many clinical specimens they want to see results on for licensure and this is just 50 specimens. The analytic sensitivity and specificity requirements by MOLDX includes assessment of a limit of detection to be established for the minimum amount of DNA that is input into a test. New York State also wants an assessment of the lowest mutant allele frequency that can be detected by a particular test. And this is going to become more and more pertinent to oncology specimens as we continue to have low tumor purity samples where the risk of false negatives is very high and as we proceed into an era where patients will have exposure to targeted therapy and will subsequently develop subclonal alterations that are resistant mutations, which will indicate that the patient should cease receiving a particular drug. Some other things that are specifically addressed in these guidances include precision, the stability of the sample and reagents, reference intervals, and some quality control issues that need to be in place. And then the differences between these guidances are listed here and only New York State and CAP have established key performance metrics for the entire process from that beginning stage of extraction through data analysis. And as we already touched on, the lower limit of detection has been called out specifically as important by MOLDX. And finally, and sort of surprisingly, the only group to address a positive or sensitivity control is the New York State guidance. And this is really important when we think of other lab tests and the fact that we would be routinely doing a test without including a positive control for the assay seems pretty improbable if we were thinking about a chemistry or a CDC or some other blood test. So let's look at an example of an NGS validation for a complex next-generation cancer genomic profiling assay. So here's an example, and this is the test that we run at Foundation Medicine, where we're assaying 315 genes. And the claims that are being made around this particular test include that the full exonic coding sequences for the entire 315 genes are going to be assayed and there's statements about validated accuracy, coverage, and amount of input tissue. So how did we establish this? Well, we'll go back to this picture here of the next-generation sequencing assay workflow to say that in the absence of a regulatory environment that prescribed what to do, we have the opportunity and resources and the personnel here with the background to set up an extraordinarily rigorous validation that allowed us to understand our test performance characteristics in a way that is very important to the quality of the data that we're delivering. So in brief, EMA and or RNA is extracted from a block or a slide, the formalinfect paraffin-embedded tissue. This step and the preanalytic variables that happen in the collection lab were evaluated for their impact on downstream processes and extensively optimized, as I'll show you in the future slides. The next step is the CNA that is extracted from the sample, is made into what we call a library. This is the genomic DNA that represents a mixture of all of the chromosomes, all of the DNA content that is present in both the normal cells and the tumor cells in that initial block of tissue. Now, how do we focus in on those 315 genes out of the thousands of genes that are possible in this library? And this approach is through a technique called hybrid capture. So this is one of several sequence enrichment approaches that can be utilized. And again, this step was optimized and validated. Once this wet chemistry part of the assay is performed, it's loaded on what we all think of as the box, the Illumina High Seq. And then the sequence that comes out, the other end, has to go through computational biology processes to call out the different mutations in any one or all of those genes that are on the assay. And each of these analytic pipeline algorithms also have to be validated for their accuracy in being able to pair the output from the sequence or trivial events in a particular sample. And then this needs to be matched to a reference sequence. So even if we detect a difference in sequence, it needs to be matched to a database that describes the normal human variation versus those that are seen in tumor cells. And this leads eventually to a clinical report being issued. So the next few slides are going to show you some data, not because I'm going to spend very much time at all. In fact, I'm only going to fly through these very quickly, but to understand the complexity of the type of evaluation that needs to be performed in this type of evaluation. So here is a first slide which shows the impact of DNA extraction before and after optimization. And what this scatter plot shows is this is a 100% pure breast cancer tumor where no optimization has been performed. And if you don't know what you're looking at, it just looks like a bunch of dots. But when you compare it to what 100% optimized sample preparation shows, you can see that now we see discrete bands within this chromosome extracted from this tumor. And this allows us to reduce the amount of tumor in the sample from 100% down to what's more clinically realistic, 20%, and still pick out the loss of an important gene that's seen in lobular breast cancer known as CDH1. As I mentioned, we have to validate a variety of different things in this testing world. We have to be able to call out any alteration type, substitutions, insertion deletion, amplification, and homozygous deletion, as well as fusion at any position in the 315 genes, which is over a million bases of individual coding regions, and be able to detect this at any mutant allele frequency from one to 100%. So you can imagine the complexity of designing a positive control that would allow us to push the assay to let us evaluate all three of these parameters. And so there isn't a patient sample. There isn't a reference sample that can be purchased or wasn't at the time that was complex enough to evaluate all of these parameters simultaneously. So what we did is we created a pool from a variety of cell lines where the DNA mutations were very well known, and this allowed us to model somatic mutations. The beauty of the cell line approach is that there are tumor cells and matched normal cells from the same patient so that by combining these in different ratios, you can understand the performance of the assay down to very low or high mutant allele frequencies. So these next few slides just underscore the numerous, numerous experiments that we did to show that we could detect mutant allele frequencies of less than 5% of the total DNA across a large number of different genes covered in the test. And we also looked at the performance over various amounts of median X-ray coverage to understand where we needed to put a quality control cutoff so that if our test wasn't performing on a particular day up to this specification, we would repeat the test rather than releasing a potentially incorrect result. We repeated these over time and looked at the correlation between the measured mutant allele frequency and what was expected based on the proportion of the normal and the abnormal cell that were added to the mixture, and we saw a linear relationship. We also did these same sorts of experiments for cell lines that had known insertion and deletion events to confirm we could detect these at different mutant allele frequencies. And we repeated this for copy number alterations. So cell lines with mixtures of different homozygous deletions or amplifications of particular genes were also challenged in this way and repeated so that we understood that when we had a 20% tumor fraction and a gene was amplified at eight copies or more, we had a sensitivity of detection of 93%. And this went up to 100% if our tumor fraction was more than 30% of the total DNA we were extracting. This allows us to confidently give results on specimens that are gauged at a tumor content of 30% and to qualify results for patients who have a tumor fraction of less than 30% if we find reasons to believe that it's possible that a copy number call may have been missed in a particular sample. We also tested our platform again, other tests that were available on the market, such as Piquinone. There's a large variety of FFPE samples and looked at the concordance between the calls of both of these panels. There was 97% overlap here, or overlap of 97% of the mutations, with a few more being called in NGS. And then we looked at the additional mutations. The ones that were in this area detected by NGS and not by the Piquinone were the ones at lower mutinomial frequencies. So likely are true calls that were below the lower limit detection in the orthogonal platform. We also tested this against fish and IHP results with excellent concordance. And ran multiple experiments to look at the reproducibility between the sequencing results from the same specimen in inter- and intrabatch comparisons. And we did this reproducibility over time, so months and months and months. 79 and 71 replicates of two different tumor samples where we knew what the alterations were that we were looking for. And every time we called the exact same alteration and we called them almost the same mutinomial frequency, which is the little bit of zig-zagging of the line that you see here. But in every case, all three alterations were detected. And this resulted in our ability to describe our analytic validation results based on sensitivity and positive predictive values across a range of mutinomial frequencies, i.e., the tumor, contents, presence in a specimen for all categories of alterations. And we didn't just submit this to CLEA or CAP or MOLDX, but submitted it to a group that had no stake in verifying these results other than scientific interest. So this was the submission and publication of the analytic validity to nature biotechnology. And the kind of scrutiny that the scientists have on these editorial review boards is much higher than the scrutiny that is performed at a regulatory level. And on top of this, they require you to submit all of the data so that they can go through it in a fine-toothed comb and make sure that you've drawn the correct conclusion. So if you go to this publication, this also has extensive supplementary data that includes the raw sequencing and mutant allele calls here so that anybody can draw their own conclusions about the validity of the test. So what are the implications to patient care? Here are three examples from our experience comparing in an ongoing quality assurance process internally for a subset of lung cancer cases. So we know that the MCCN and a variety of other guideline issuing agencies recommend both EGFRs and ALC testing to be performed on patient samples to direct care. So we were curious to see the samples where we have to identify an EGFR X on 19th elation, which is known to activate this gene. How many of these tests, or how many of these specimens were previously tested and what were the results? Did they agree with what we had seen? So we looked at a variety of cases. We had 250 of these where the pathology reports were available and reviewed them for the presence or absence of information, presence or absence of previous testing results, and this was available for 71 cases. And we identified that 12 cases had prior negative testing results which represents a 17% false negative rate. And you might say, how do you know that these were true positives and not some false positives that were detected by the assay? So the clinical information and treatment that followed for one of these patients supports these being true results. So here's a patient that benefited from empiric or latin therapy despite the fact that she had been given a negative EGFR testing result that fell into this category of a positive result by the MGS assay and a previous negative result. When we look at the less common alterations that are just outside of the classic range, 83% of these patients were missed by orthogonal methods. And again, here's an example of a patient that responded to EGFR targeted therapy. We repeated this evaluation looking at the cases that we identified as being out positive and found that similarly, about 32% of the cases we identified as being out rearranged had been previously called negative by fish testing. Most importantly, of these patients who were then subsequently treated with crissatine, 70% responded to therapy, which is the same response rate being in patients where the fish health results are positive. So again, these are true biologic positives that were fish methodology negative. And finally, here's an example of cases that were evaluated by a very well-known laboratory that had had testing for a variety of markers, all of the ones that are in NCPM guidelines, by a combination of modalities including hot spot testing and multiplex sizing assays for EGFR, HER2, K-RAS, VRAS, and a few other genes, as well as fish assays to identify ALC, ROC1, and RET rearrangement. And these patients were negative for all of these markers by the prior testing results. When these samples were run on the NGS-based profiling assay, a quarter of them had alterations that were within the genes recommended for testing by the NCPM guidelines. So a quarter of these pan-negative patients, the best in-class standard of care testing at the time, had alterations that had not been recognized. An additional 40% had alterations that allowed them to enroll in a clinical trial for a targeted therapy agent that was available at their treatment institution. So in summary, when you're thinking about the validation, you need to remember that the quality of the lab validation and their understanding of their performance characteristics very much impacts patient care. So some key questions you might consider asking of a lab that's presenting you with the possibility of a test is, number one, does the lab either have a peer-reviewed published analytic validation, or have they successfully completed the MOLBX tech assessment? If not, would the lab provide you with the raw data from their validation for review? Is the lab New York State approved? What were the validation specimens that were utilized representative of actual patient samples? Meaning, are they complex enough and reflect the low tumor purity of samples they're likely to encounter in clinical testing samples? Did they validate all types of alterations from various... Is that what they're going to see if we're going to go get the handout? That would be represented in clinical testing. Were the sizes of the validation set large enough and were the statistics appropriate to ensure narrow confidence interval? Was the entire process from an extraction all the way through reporting validated and to a degree that ensures reproducibility and robustness? If the comparator method was used, what was it? And is the data available? And finally, does this assay validation include intra-assay and intra-assay precision studies between different operators over multiple days?


Flying Tigers, this is your time. This is the moment to put your hard work and training to the test in July The 23rd wing along with airmen from multiple partner wings will participate in agile flag The exercise intended to challenge the ability for the 23rd wing to conduct command and control as well as agile combat support For multiple fighter force elements personal recovery task force and integrate base defense squadrons special operations and contingency response teams The exercise will pit nearly 1,000 airmen against a simulated enemy that will use both kinetic and non-connect capability to disrupt our ability to generate combat power In order to preserve combat power. We will dynamically deploy across the southeast United States Operating from multiple locations to support operations The outcome of this exercise will be certification of the 23rd wing as a lead wing an initial Operational capability of air combat commands lead wing concept The road to this moment for the flying Tigers has been long Over the last 18 months. This wing has built command and control concepts like the a staff develop rapidly deployable communications capability Created operational concepts for the air base squadron and refine multi capable airmen training for contingency locations and forward operating sites Each of these concepts has been tested and refined through mosaic and ready Tiger exercises in coordination with multiple wings and air combat command staff We've learned from our fellow lead wings and adapted tactics and procedures from Air Force special operations and contingency response teams The agile flag exercise was built to challenge every aspect of the lead wing concept and it will not be easy Our role as the first combat ready lead wing is to set the vector in pace for the rest of the air combat command in the Air Force Something the flying Tigers have done throughout our history. We didn't become world famous by waiting for guidance or help Since Claire Chenault's American Volunteer Group in 1942 Flying Tigers have been in the first to fight and it's time to be ready to do it again anytime anywhere I have no doubt that you'll be successful. Never forget that you're flying Tigers Never forget that you're critical to the mission attack rescue prevail Tigers lead


Hello everyone and welcome to the final episode of the Fishville Pain Campaign series. What an amazing journey it's been creating awareness for sea animals across Australia. We had a lot of ups and downs and highs and lows and did some epic stunts and we got a lot of media which is great. We had some you know intense moments and clashes and battles on the streets but all in all I think it was a really great campaign to raise awareness for so the forgotten victims of the ocean and shout out to Sea Spiracy the documentary which inspired us doing the tour. Thank you to the team for all of your help so we're going to leave you with the top 15 moments from the Fishville Pain Campaign series and we hope you enjoyed watching them as much as we enjoyed creating them.  I like supporting the the fish industry because yeah I like the taste. If it used to be alive I'll eat it basically just anything that used to be alive. Yellowfin? This is a yellowfin tuna I think. Have you seen this? So this hole in the head here is where they this tuna has been stabbed in the head on the boat to kill them see straight through there. I think these crabs they might be alive yeah they're just barely alive it's in there tied up this one here is looking to terrified probably. Hello hello Mr. Pelican they think we're going to feed them I reckon the other guys feed them eh I've never I don't think I've ever seen pelicans up this close maybe when I was a little kid I've never had a photo with pelicans that's a great that's the coolest thing ever.


Going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards ripping one box of the sports card almanac Multi-sport personal box edition volume six for James W. Got box number 41 Forty-one. Oh, we are not three. We're not three guys. Come on. Really? I don't think Sam is that great hashtag bot? Whoa, is that a time-out for Cortes? Wow, that's so sick man 15 of 25 immaculate collegiates Charles Woodson Nice one there from 2022 peony immaculate collegiate football 1997 national champions So sick man That is awesome. Congrats on that one there James. Take that all day, buddy. Hell yeah, man That'll do it for your break there James. Thanks again for the sport get him out to you, buddy


You know, really it's a great exercise for us, really to shake out the dust and really to exercise that principle we say so often here in Battle Group Pulling that we're stronger together.


The United Way of Crow Wing in Southern Cass County has held its annual small business splits today in hopes of raising a few dollars. Clayton Castle wrote along this morning and has that story. From the same group that brought you last week's poverty simulation, the United Way of Crow Wing in Southern Cass County has hit the streets today to visit and chat with local small businesses and hopefully raise a few dollars. Intent is to really reach out to small businesses throughout our area to help them get involved. I tagged along with Executive Director Jennifer Smith as we went from small business to small business in the Brainerd Lakes area. All of them were more than happy to give back to the community. Our whole business is based on local people and we like the opportunity to do what we can to help others and always have and we want to thank everybody that's been a good customer of ours. Stonehouse coffee owner Mike French says it's his company's duty to give back to the community that has given so much to his business. We love supporting people in need. Stonehouse does a lot of that. United Way is just a special thing for us that we can show that we care and give back to the community. From a coffee house to a realtors office and from a dry cleaner to a vintage boutique store, Jennifer says that these businesses are important to not only the United Way, but they're also vital to the fabric of the local economy. When we look at even statistics for our region, our counties, we have an enormous amount of small businesses. If you talk to the Chamber of Commerce in our area, they'll back that same thing up. It really is the backbone of our community. The United Way of Crow Wing in Southern Cass County is hoping to eclipse last year's total of $4,000 raised in the small business splits. Reporting in Brainerd Clayton Castle, Lakeland is. The total amount raised from this year's small business splits will be announced a week from today. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


So, we're here at the Mobile World Congress 2019. My name is Mohamed Awad. I'm a VP of marketing for the infrastructure business. And so, there's been some new launches of Hamar recently. What are these new chipsets? So, last week we announced our N1 and E1 Neoverse platforms. N1 is really all about the compute plane and managing all of that compute that's happening from the edge of the network all the way into the core data center. It's highly performant, scales really well, and we expect it to have a very broad footprint from enabling diverse solutions from edge of the network all the way in. The E1 platform is really all about the data plane. Arm has a leadership position in the data plane today within the infrastructure, and this is really about extending that leadership position as we look to onboard the data from a trillion intelligent devices and just kind of managing that data as it moves through. It's got about two and a half times the throughput efficiency of the existing cores which are servicing that infrastructure. In this case, we're talking about the A5X family. A53 is one of our more popular designs in that space, but A55 as well. This networking, what is special about this processor is not just like a server processor, it's like a client-side processor. How is it optimized for networking? Yeah. So the E1 platform is really optimized for networking in a couple of different ways. Primarily it's designed to shuffle bits back and forth. It's a very efficient design, so if you think about things like a 5G base station where you've got to live within a 35 watt power budget, the E1 is designed to do that and move those bits very efficiently. It's a multi-threaded design as well, so it's specifically architected to move bits around. And the other one? You're talking about comparing A53 and A55? Now, with the E1 platform, I'm referring back to Cosmos platform, which was A72 based. A72 based? A72. Yeah, so our Cosmos platform was A72 based. This E1 platform is about, on spec-based benchmarks, about 60% better performance than that. But if you look at specific workloads, things like Nginx, Memcache D, Java-based benchmarks, we're seeing significantly better than that. So Nginx, one of the top web-based front-ends, we're seeing about two and a half times the improvement over in A72. For things like Memcache D, we're seeing about two and a half times performance over the Cosmos platform. And then when you talk about things like Java, we're seeing about 1.7 times. Is it on par with the Cortex A75, but re-optimized somehow? No, back in October, what we did was we actually bi-procated our roadmap. So our Neoverse cores are really designed for infrastructure, so it shares some of the same micro-architectural implementations as A76, but then it's really been optimized for the infrastructure and is reflected in some of the other features that we've added, things like RAZ support and some of the other performance enhancements that we put in place. All right. And the other one is the smaller one? The E1 platform? Yeah, so you're talking about a bigger one and a smaller one? No, we're really talking about the E1 platform, which is really data plane, and the N1 platform is really about the compute plane. And is infrastructure, the businesses are building the 5G feature and all that stuff? And when I say infrastructure, really what I'm talking about is all the devices that exist from the edge of the network. I think the wireless base station area where ARM is historically been very strong all the way through to that core data center in HBC. So that's kind of what I mean when I say infrastructure and if you look at that, those devices, ARM actually has architectural preference within that area with about 27% market share, which makes us the market share leader.


Thank you everyone for joining us today. I'll just introduce myself quickly. My name is Jamie Smith and I am the Director of Planning and Marketing for Green Mountain Transit. Also on the call is Chris Damiani. He is one of our transit planners and Dan Jones from Sustainable Montpelier Coalition. The project that we are going to be talking about is very much collaboration between Green Mountain Transit, Sustainable Montpelier Coalition and Vermont Agency of Transportation. So today's agenda, we're just gonna start by talking a little bit about the current service that GMT operates in downtown Montpelier. A little bit of the service area summary, a history of the microtransit project, some current route performance of the three routes that we're talking about. And then a brief introduction to microtransit including a feasibility study that was conducted, a service model scenario that was studied in that feasibility study, a timeline of the project, and then we'll open it up for some questions and comments that folks might have. So to start, I just wanna say GMT operates several routes in downtown Montpelier, but today we're actually just gonna be focusing on three. The reason for that is we are proposing to replace these three routes with the 82 Montpelier Hospital Hill, the 92 Montpelier Circulator, and then the Route 88 Capitol Shuttle with this microtransit project. The other routes that we operate downtown will remain operational as they are now. So the Montpelier Hospital Hill Route for those who are not familiar is a service that runs from downtown Montpelier to the hospital Hill area, Berlin Mall, Berlin Shas, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. That service operates Monday through Saturday and currently has a fare of one dollar. The Route 92 Montpelier Circulator is two loops that operate in the downtown Montpelier area. They serve the Hunger Mountain Co-op, the Community College, Montpelier Pool and Recreation Center, and National Life. And that service currently operates Monday through Friday and is free. The Route 88 Capitol Shuttle is our seasonal service that operates between the Vermont Department of Labor Park and Ride, the State House and National Life. So that operates seasonally during the legislative session and it's every 20 minutes from Department of Labor and that route is also free. In addition to those fixed route services, we offer some non-emergency medical transportation, which is transportation services or Medicaid eligible folks. We have a call center at GMT. Folks do have to call and schedule those trips. And then we operate some elderly and disabled services, which is for folks 60 years and older and individuals with disabilities. And those trips are for non-medical appointments, usually to meal sites, senior centers, shopping, pharmacy and additional daily needs. So you can see in this service area, the three routes that we're talking about. And then the outline of this is the proposed service area for micro transit. And so this is about a seven and a half mile radius in downtown and it goes up to the hospital hill area. So just to talk a little bit about how this project came about, in 2018, the Vermont Agency of Transportation convened a micro transit working group to explore the possibility of on-demand transit in Montpelier. You can see from the participant list, there were lots of people involved in the start of this working group, including Sustainable Montpelier Coalition, Capstone, the city of Montpelier, et cetera. So that group in December of 2018 issued a request for information to seek potential technology vendors for micro transit. And in the end, they were able to work with two of those vendors via Entransloke. And through the work they did with via Entransloke, this group was able to develop a white paper talking about the benefits of micro transit. Via Mobility was the company that was engaged further. VTrans used them to conduct a service analysis and a feasibility study to dig a little deeper into what this potential pilot project would look like. And last, after the feasibility study, VTrans submitted an application for a federal grant that would support the launch of on-demand micro transit in Montpelier. Unfortunately, they did not receive that grant, which brings us to where we are now. So VTrans took the opportunity to engage GMT further in the process. And they asked us to be the primary operator for the pilot project. And so we took into consideration the strong local support for this project and the support by elected officials. We have lots of engaged community partners, as I've mentioned, which will be integral to the success of micro transit. And so GMT and Sustainable Montpelier Coalition will take the lead on the marketing and outreach efforts. And a lot of the communication for this project. So then our biggest consideration is those three routes that we're talking about, the hospital hill, the circulator and the Capitol Shuttle are none of those three routes meet the successful performance metric, according to VTrans metrics that they give us every year. So they look at lots of factors to determine if a route is successful or acceptable or underperforming, including two that I've listed here, which is boardings per hour and cost per passenger. And so they look at these metrics and they determine if the resources that they're allocating to these routes is being used properly. And so you can see that Montpelier hospital hill and circulator sort of fall somewhere in between acceptable and successful on their chart. And the Capitol Shuttle is slightly below acceptable. So it allows us the opportunity to take the funding that we're given and operate this in a more passenger friendly way. So the three routes that we're talking about make up about 75% of our rural system, sorry. And so losing those three routes would be a huge impact to the rural system. That impact is made even greater by the fact that we transferred some service this last July to RCT. And so we no longer operate the Route 100 commuter or the US two commuter or two services in Morrisville. So the percentage of service that we're talking about is pretty large for us. Brief introduction to microtransit for those who are not aware. It's an on-demand travel model. It uses technology to help improve the passenger experience. It's sort of like Uber for public transportation. It allows folks to book their trips at a time that's convenient for them versus relying on a fixed route schedule. And something that we talk about a lot in public transit is that first mile, last mile challenge. So if folks don't live very close to the fixed route there's a challenge getting to and from that service. And so on-demand microtransit will allow you to go from point A to point B in that service area. And it's really more like a door-to-door experience. So the via mobility conducted a feasibility study. And so what they looked at were all of these metrics providing transportation in areas of Montpelier that are currently underserved. So a lot of the neighborhoods downtown they looked at the underperforming fixed route services in that area and looked at the load, the passenger load, the ridership, the service hours. And they really looked at what retiring those services would mean. They looked at that first mile, last mile connection challenge. Really the purpose is to mitigate traffic congestion, reduce parking in downtown Montpelier and is an upgrade to paratransit offerings because again, it's not relying on a fixed service. It's more on-demand door-to-door. And so the two primary goals that we're looking at for this service is increased ridership and improved quality of service for the folks in downtown Montpelier. And then upgrading the existing transportation services using the same fleet that we're currently using. So to start microtransit will utilize the small cutaway buses that GMT already uses in downtown Montpelier. Certainly there are lots of conversations at a state level about other vehicle options, electric vehicles, vans. If those opportunities become available to GMT we'll certainly consider adding to our fleet as appropriate. So the feasibility study really looked at four scenarios. Scenario one was what would happen if we just replaced the three fixed routes. Scenario two focused on replacing the fixed route service and the specialized on-demand service that we already offer in that downtown area. Scenario three looked at what would happen if we did scenario two and then there was an increase in demand. So if ridership, you can see here, if 27 trips, 27 is our peak hour ridership, what if that grew to say 35 people in peak hour? What would we need to operate that successfully? And then scenario four studied the same thing but an even greater need. So if we had to add capacity because our peak hour ridership grew to 45 trips per hour. So you can see here, it gives us all the information we need, how many vehicles, how many vehicle hours, what is the average wait time if we had three to five vehicles? GMT is really starting this project focusing on scenario two. So we'll start just assuming a replacement of our fixed route service and our on-demand service downtown. And given the metrics that we have in place right now, it's determined that we'll need three to five vehicles to operate that successfully, which would give folks an average of 10 to 15 minutes wait time. So if you look at a route like Montpelier Hospital Hill, that runs on our headways. And so this provides some flexibility and a lot more convenience for folks who might need to get to that area. So the proposed service for now, when we launched Microtransit, we're proposing that it will operate Monday through Saturday, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. till 6 p.m., Saturdays from 8 to 6 p.m. And so those service hours were really determined by the peak ridership hours that we have now on our three fixed routes. Monday through Friday, we'll have three dedicated transit vehicles on the road all day long from seven to six. In the event that this is a really successful program from the get go, we do have demand response vehicles and additional drivers that we can utilize so we can have up to five vehicles on the road if needed. On Saturdays, we'll have one dedicated vehicle in the early morning until 10 a.m. And then we'll add a second dedicated vehicle from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. So similarly, it's a little harder to make changes on the fly on Saturdays because we don't have a dispatcher in the office, but we will monitor our Saturday ridership to determine if we need additional vehicles or additional resources for the following week. And so we will be monitoring and adjusting. So the timeline so far, again, we started this process, GMT started this process in June. And so from there, we have conducted an RFP process. We issued that RFP that went out in June and we received 11 proposals at our deadline in July. So we conducted a scoring process. We had members of sustainable Montpelier Coalition, VTRANS and GMT on that scoring committee. So together we reviewed all 11 proposals and scored them based on a series of metrics. In August of this year, the GMT board approved the implementation of the service as well as approved the RFP award. So we are working with Via Mobility on this project, the same group that did the feasibility study. And in same time, August 18th, we issued that award to Via. So right now we're in this October stakeholder public hearing and outreach process. And this coming Tuesday, I will be bringing all of the public comment that I've received on this project to our GMT board of commissioners for our final planning process. So they will review the public comment in the final service design. And then we'll start working with that microtransit advisory committee and all those partners that we talked about earlier to discuss the implementation, the marketing of this service. And then we'll spend from now until the end of December on the marketing, the technology implementation. We'll have our kickoff meeting with Via Mobility. The goal is to have them provide us some simulation, some videos and some information that we can share publicly with folks. So we can really teach people how to use this service before it hits the ground, January. It says fifth, I thought it was the fifth, it's actually the fourth. So that first Monday in January is our implementation date. And from between now and then, we're really hoping to do a lot of things. We're hoping to identify spaces where current riders might be able to house a tablet or places where folks who don't have a phone can seek information. And so we do have a modular transit center that's currently closed due to COVID. Once that's reopened, we will have both the tablet station there and a customer service representative on site to help folks navigate microtransit to plan their trips. Additionally, we have a call center at GMT. Those folks will still be available to help riders plan their trip on microtransit. And so we're really hoping to dig into this process and to teach people this new service. So hopefully that implementation is seamless for folks and really to show the benefit and the flexibility of this service. And so today is really just to talk about the replacement of our current routes. We're not really prepared yet. We have not had our first kickoff meeting with Via Mobility to talk about the actual technology at this point. I know Dan is on the call and he has seen a simulation from Via. So he might be able to answer some of those questions but we will be conducting another series of meetings once we have some of that information. And so from there, I'll open it up to questions and comments from folks. Yeah, I'm gonna start with a question, Jamie, because I've just heard this from other places. The hours of operation, at least for some limited availability, there are people who have said, well, they work longer shifts and something where 6.30 in the morning to 7.30 at night gives a lot more flexibility. Is there any way of talking about that for some other vehicles or is that your current experience and where you intend to start? So I think this is where we intend to start, Dan, but certainly we will be monitoring this regularly. And I did have a comment at our first public meeting on Monday from Jim at CVMC who was talking about his staff and their shift is from seven to 7 p.m. And so I think the standard process for GMT would be to gather some of that data. I think if there are folks expressing an interest that we should put out some, probably some survey information and do a little digging about what service hours might be most beneficial and then we'll monitor the start of microtransit and adjust from there. Sure, hopefully the community advisor committee is gonna be able to help with that as well. Oh, for sure. Jamie, it looks like there's a raised hand from Rebecca Davidson. Oh, I can't see your raised hand, Rebecca, but feel free to jump in. I think this is fabulous. Congratulations, you guys. This is a long time coming, I know, and sorely needed, and I'm just hoping it will be a success. One of the questions I have is though, how does this work in COVID times? Sure, so we will be using our same vehicles and we will have the same boarding restrictions that we currently have, assuming those restrictions are still in place in January. And so essentially what would happen is when VIA is configuring the technology piece for us, they will set that boarding maximum in the app and the app will aggregate trips. So it's going to look at people's start and end destination and it's going to dispatch vehicles accordingly. And so the app itself will prevent us from overcrowding our vehicles. Great. Okay. Thank you. Can I say one more piece on that? This was a interesting perception. We had back in early days when they were only allowing two boardings per vehicle and the fixed route system, basically like the circulator in town, only allows one trip per hour.  But with the microtransit, as Jamie was just pointing out, that could be configured so that it could be back literally within 10 or 12 minutes to pick up the other two people, even learning so that we could triple or quadruple the number of people per hour handled even with boarding restrictions. Right. And Zoe, I see that you missed. Oh, somebody answered you. Thank you, Chris. Zoe had routes were affected. And so Montpelier circulator, the Montpelier Hospital Hill in the Capitol Shuttle. I have a question. Sure. And thank you very much for the presentation. It's, it's interesting to see this all starting to come together. I'm just wondering about what, what age. A young person would have to be to use this service. Sure. So this actually came up at our first meeting as well. Internally, GMT has a policy in place that children six and under the age of three. So we have a program that allows children as young as seven to ride the bus. It's sort of a discretion call for parents, but we do offer some services that go to and from local elementary schools. And so our restriction. We don't have a restriction because we would be able to provide the service for those kids. So, I guess what I meant is like, how old would you have to be as a, like a teenager to ride this by yourself? Oh, so I think. Honestly, I think as long as a parent is, um, Is willing and able to allow their child to read, they could read as, as young as seven. The Jamie. Um, one of the things that I talked to V on this, because we were looking for where school system support had kicked in and other places around the country for such service. And they were, they were saying where more places were comfortable was 13.  I was just saying what the national experience and, uh, tends to be allowing people to ride without parental, uh, care. Right. So at this point, we don't have a policy that would prevent anybody from riding as young as seven, but certainly, um, And I actually just this week sent that same question to via. So thank you for that, Dan, because I hadn't heard back from them yet. Um, we don't currently don't have a policy in place for microtransit. It's definitely a conversation that we started this week. And so. Yeah. Yeah. I have a 17 year old. So that, that's helpful for me. Yeah, but I'm also just curious for other parents because. Um, It would be nice if this, if this change doesn't, then eliminate certain kids from being able to use services that they've been using so far. Right. We had a question on Monday about middle school age where we had a lot of children who currently use the service to get to school. So, um, the goal would be for this not to impact any of our current ridership. Uh, so Liz has asked a question in the chat. Uh, what would the cost be for the rider? So right now, right now we haven't decided on the final fair, but it will be roughly the same as the current fair. Um, so, um, I'm just going to go back to the slide. Um, so Liz, using, setting up your ride through the transit center or through our call center would be, um, if you were scheduling your trip in advance. And so we, we have the ability to, um, configure with via how far in advance we want people to be able to book their trips. We have some programs, um, in place now where folks need to book their ride. Um, so we have a, we have a, we have a schedule here or by Friday at 4pm when we don't have staff on site on the weekends. So the, we'll probably mirror those exact same things. So folks will be able to book their trips in advance. Um, likely at least 48 or 72 hours in advance. But the, But the app will also allow for immediate response. Wanted, uh, If you book your trip by when you want to be picked up, if you book your trip, say, you have an appointment at the hospital at 11am. And you say you want to be there by 1045.   And if you, right, if you don't have a social, Liz is also saying if you, if you don't have a phone, there would be no way to cancel your ride. Um, do you. That's, that's a good point. So when we meet with via, uh, we will work through some of these scenarios. Um, this is not the first time that has come up, but we are hoping to have tablet stations, um, at various points in the downtown Montpelier area where folks can use folks without a phone could utilize, um, the app and they could schedule or change or modify their ride from there. At least my understanding from the, uh, Jamie was also that with the app or with the call, you can also actually do an immediate on other words. I can. It's eight o'clock in the morning. I'd like to go downtown. I can do a request and there's, uh, you know, I could probably get a ride within 15 minutes, right? Yeah, there's, yeah, they'll give you a pickup window. So it's not like I have to go 24 hours in advance. I could do it. Right. So you can, it'll be up up to 72 hours, roughly in advance. Um, up to when you actually want to be picked up. So you can book your trip anytime in that time period. Jamie, there is a second part to Zoe's question earlier about how, uh, micro transit will affect people traveling between Montpelier and Berry. Uh, So it's really just going to affect folks on those three routes. Um, You'll still be able to get to. Berry on our other services that go from Montpelier to Berry. Jamie. Yes, Bonnie. Um, I was in a group this morning where we were talking about folks were celebrating the. Uh, The social services sector was celebrating the transition to micro transit, but they had a question. If I'm in Berry and I would need to get to Montpelier, How will that intersect with micro transit? So micro transit will only be available to folks in that seven and a half mile radius of downtown. So they would still take the service, um, from Berry into downtown Montpelier. And then once you're in Montpelier, you can utilize the micro transit service. Would I schedule my ride while coming from Berry? You could do that. I guess the question is, how does the transfer occur with micro transit? Um, it depends on where folks are trying to go. But my guess, um, when we put out information, Bonnie, we, what we would suggest is, folks, um, Scheduling their trip as, uh, from the Montpelier transit center. So when that bus from Berry comes into the Montpelier transit center, they would schedule their micro transit trip from there. And that could act just like a transfer would now. So once folks get to the transit center, um, their micro transit trip or bus would pick them up at the transit center. Okay. They had some concerns about getting to the transit center and heading to wait another 30 minutes to. Once they've scheduled their rides, wait an additional 30 minutes before their next bus came. Right. The longer distance, uh, buses typically don't go off track very often. So I think if they're scheduling their micro trip, um, around the same time that they're, the trip from Berry is dropping them off downtown, they shouldn't have, um, too much of a wait at that point. Great. I'll relay that. Thank you. Thank you. So, um, Elizabeth Parker actually put in the chat. To me, uh, we will be conducting an onboard survey for folks, um, who have questions or who don't have phones. And by then we will have some answers from via, we'll have some, we'll have had our kickoff meetings so we can address some of those concerns for folks, um, at that time. Right. We've become very conscious of the needs of current riders, both for information on how this is going to work, how the transfer going to make, et cetera. So, uh, you know, as part of sustainable Montpeliers work with you as to, uh, try and assess that as clearly as possible. So the current ride, um, feel as comfortable as possible in the transition. Right. And we will be adding a page dedicated to microtransit on the GMT website. And so we will have, um, what I envision as a, an FAQ section that would, um, answer some of these common questions that we're receiving from folks. And then we can put the survey data and results up there as well. So the other thing that I put in the chat, for those who didn't read my welcome information at the top, um, I'm starting a, uh, a microtransit mailing list for folks who want to stay involved and connected throughout this process between now and implementation. So, um, I encourage folks again to sign in to this meeting via chat, but also to indicate if you'd like to be added to that mailing list. And if, if so, um, please include your email address and you can send that to me privately. If you prefer not to put it in the, in the chat. Does anybody else have any questions? Well, if they don't, I want to thank you, Jamie. That was very informative. It was a really good presentation and very helpful to understand for folks to understand it. Thanks, Dan. Okay. Well, my contact information is in the chat. Um, Dan, I'm not sure, uh, yesterday Laura put up the contact information for sustainable Montpelier coalition. If you'd like to put that in the chat as well. Um, we, like I said, we're very much working on this, this, uh, implementation together. And so no matter who you contact, uh, we should be able to answer your questions accordingly. As we, as you speak. Great. Jamie, this is Bonnie. Several things being in the chat. I'm not seeing them in the chat on my end. Oh, you're not. Okay. I don't know if others can see it or. Whether they're with you. Some of the questions Bonnie were sent to me privately. I don't know. I think the easiest thing would be for me to give everybody my email address, which is Jamie. J. A. M. I. E. At ride. GMT. Dot com. And then for folks who might want to contact you. Some of the questions Bonnie were sent to me privately. The information you just talked about with your contact information. Isn't in the chat that I'm looking. I don't see it either. Okay. Um, I think the easiest thing would be for me to give everybody my email address. And then for folks who might want to, um, contact me by phone. My office number is five four zero. One zero nine eight. Uh, so John Charisakis just sent me a question. Um, will bus drivers accept flag stops? I think at this time we are not going to allow flag stops, John. Um, I think that's the most important thing. I think that's the most important thing. Um, is the following nature of micro transit. However, if folks are, um, at some midway point on the route. Um, and going into a similar direction as the folks that are already on the bus, I think they'll be able to just schedule their micro transit trip. And it will show up. Um, and it will show up on the map. Um, the app will aggregate that trip with other passengers who are going to a similar location. Um, and it would dispatch a different bus. Will this presentation be available after the fact? I can certainly make it available. Sure. I can post it on the GMT website. Great. Thank you. Sure. So. There is a, a there's a project from the market. The project is called in transit where there's a, like a rotating carousel of updates. And I'll make sure to post it there for folks. Jamie question on the hospital Hill, So, when that goes into the micro transit, will you have to schedule both the drop off on the pickup separately, or how's that going to work? those trips together. Thank you. But one of the things is we'll be talking with GMT about this, but hopefully there will be a for those who don't have a smartphone, a pad up at the hospital that you could call because if you're like waiting for a long time for the doctor appointment, it goes longer than you want, you'd be able to request the ride from the hospital directly. Great. Okay, so not hearing any other questions. Folks have my contact information down, put the contact information for sustainable Montpelier Coalition, and we are available to answer any questions after the fact. My contact information is also in the presentation that I'll be posting on the website. If you're not familiar with the GMT website, it's ridegmt.com. And with that, I thank everybody for coming to the public meeting. And thank you. Sure. Thank you. I hope you all have a nice evening. Thanks too.


A warm welcome to the eleventh lecture on the subject of wavelets and multirate digital signal processing, in which we proceed further on the theme of the two channel filter bank. You will recall that in the previous lecture, the tenth lecture, we had looked at what happens when a sequence crosses a down sampler and an up sampler. I would like to put before you the effect in the z domain once again, when we cross a down sampler and when we cross an up sampler. So, today's lecture as I said is entitled the two channel filter bank and we intend in this lecture to talk about this structure which we have been repeating often again, but today we intend to analyze it threadbare so to speak. Now remember that H 0 was a low pass filter, H 1 a high pass filter, you know it is helpful to get this structure firmly embedded in our consciousness. It is a structure often used in the implementation of a discrete wavelet transform, for example of the Haar multi resolution analysis. So, it does no harm to repeat the structure more than once. We have been looking at the structure almost in every one of the last 2 to 3 lectures, but no harm done. Anyway, here is the structure once again and what we intend to do finally today in this structure is to relate the z transforms at every point in this structure. Let us start doing that and to do that let us first recall what happens when we go past a down sampler and up sampler. So, as I said let us look at the up sampler first, a recall from the previous lecture noted from the previous lecture that if you have x in n going to an up sampler by a factor of 2 to produce x out n here then x out z in this case may be to be specific we could say x out u to denote up sampling here. So, x out u z is x in z squared in this case. Let us similarly see what happens when we go past a down sampler. So, for the down sampler by a factor of 2 remember we had analyzed in detail the case of a down sampling by a factor of 2. We had indicated how to generalize, but it was a little more complicated. So, here we have x out d n if you please and in fact we had noted that this operation of down sampling by 2 was equivalent to 2 operations and let me spell out those operations once again following which I shall write down the z transform here. So, we had agreed that this operation of down sampling by 2 can be split into modulation with half 1 raised to the power of n plus minus 1 raised to the power of n first followed by inverse up sampling by 2 inverse you know we had noted that up sampling by 2 or up sampling by any integer factor for that matter was an invertible operation and in fact this is also evident in the z domain and therefore, we can talk about the inverse here. Now, based on this we had write we had written down the z transform. So, we had said x out d z here is half x in z raised to the half plus x in minus z raised to the half. We had derived this towards the end of the previous lecture and of course, if you did not wish to go beyond the inverse up sampler at this point instead of z raised to the power half you would simply have z. So, much so then for the z domain effect of down sampling and up sampling. Now, what do we intend to do next? We intend to use these relationships to build up the relation between the z transform of the output and the z transform of the input. So, essentially we wish to establish the input output relationship in this 2 band or 2 channel filter bank in the z domain. Now, of course, I must make a remark here before we embark upon this activity. We are assuming that the z transforms exist at all points. There are rare situations or may be not so rare where that may not be true, but for the moment we shall ignore those situations. They are not very frequent in practical applications and therefore, we can comfortably begin with the assumption that the z transforms exist at all points. Of course, I do not mean the Fourier transforms exist they may or may not. Anyway coming back then to that 2 channel filter bank that we began with earlier on in this lecture I put it back before you here. I intend now to relate y z and x z in this diagram and towards that objective let us number the z transforms at different points. In fact, let us give the sequences names. So, let us call this y 1 let us call this y 2 and so on and the very output we shall just call y without any subscript. So, accordingly this becomes y 3 this y 4. This y 5 y 6 y 7 y 8 and then of course, y 9 is simply y. So, with this then let me write down the expressions for each of these. So, let us begin with y 1. y 1 is easy and so is y 2. In fact, if we look at the z domain relationships y 1 z is simply x z times h 2 0 z and similarly, y 2 z is simply x z times h 1 z. When we filter with a filter of system function h 0 z the effect is to multiply the z transform of the input by the system function of the filter to produce the z transform of the output. And therefore, y 1 z and y 2 z are easy y 1 z is h 0 z x z y 2 z is h 1 z x z. Now, we have before us the relationship that emerges between y 3 and y 1 and similarly, between y 4 and y 2. As I said down sampling by 2 is equivalent to a modulation and then an inverse upsampling by 2. So, you know it is easy then to jump from y 1 to y 5 first and y 2 to y 6 because if you think of this down sampling by 2 operation as a modulation followed by an inverse upsample by 2 the inverse upsample by 2 cancels with this upsample by 2 leaving only the modulation here. So, this is a strategy which we might find useful in some circumstances in analyzing multirate operations particularly when you have a down sampler followed by an upsampler. You know if you have a down sampler followed by an upsampler of the same factor it is sometimes easier to go past both of them and then jump back behind the upsampler we will do exactly that here. So, we will put the relation between y 1 and y 5 and y 1 to y 5 is essentially just a modulation. Modulation by 1 raised to the power of n plus minus 1 raised to the power of n multiplied by half and therefore, the z transforms are easily related y 5 of z is half y 1 z plus y 1 minus z and there is a very similar relationship between the y 2 and y 6 put this back y 2 and y 6 are related by the same modulation let us write that down 2. So, we have y 2 is modulated to obtain y 6 and therefore, y 6 z is half y 2 z plus y 2 minus z. In fact, this jumping across the down sampler and the upsampler was useful because it brought us quickly towards the output. Now, we are only almost one step away from the output that step is also not very difficult to take. We just have 2 filters followed by a summer which is easy to do in the z domain. So, let us complete that exercise. So, now we are here we know what y 5 z is we know what y 6 z is y 5 z is acted upon by a filter with system function g 0 and therefore, the z transform at the output here after g 0 is the z transform of y 5 multiplied by g 0. Similarly, the z transform at the output of g 1 is y 6 z multiplied by g 1 z and in fact, let me take you one step even further. After all y z is obtained by adding y 7 z and y 8 z and therefore, we already have y z before us. Let me write down those steps quickly before you now. So, we have y 7 z is y 5 z times g 0 z and y 8 z is y 6 z times g 1 z where upon y z which is y 7 z plus y 8 z becomes you know let me put before you the expression for y 5 and y 6 once again. So, let us take y 6 as an example now you are going to involve y 2 z and y 2 minus z y 2 z if you recall is x z times h 1 z as an example. Now, when you take y 2 of minus z you would get x of minus z multiplied by h 1 minus z. So, in fact, let me put that down what I am trying to do is to identify a form of the expression. So, you know this y 2 of minus z has two terms embedded in it. So, let us focus let us say for example, on this term here y 8. So, y 8 z as I said is going to be y 6 z times g 1 z y 6 z is going to be related to y 2 z and then y 2 z is further going to be x z times h 1 z. Where upon y 2 minus z is going to be x of minus z times h 1 minus z. What I am trying to bring out from this argument or these equations is that each of these terms is going to have a contribution from x of z and a contribution from x of minus z. Now, later on we shall interpret these terms x of z and x of minus z, but for the time being all that we need to do is to identify that there is an x of z set of terms and x of minus z set of terms which we can together write down as follows. So, we will say y z in total is of the following form. It is going to have some system function multiplying x of z and some other system function multiplying x of minus z and using all the equations written so far we can write down these two system functions call them tau 0 z and tau 1 z. Indeed tau 0 z has the following form it is it just requires a little bit of algebra to get here. So, I would not actually do all the steps I am sure all of you can do them and now we write tau 1 z as well. So, tau 1 z would be g 0 z h 0 minus z plus g 1 z h 1 minus z. Now, you know it should be noted that in tau 1 z which is what multiplies x of minus z you involve h 0 of minus z and h 1 of minus z. So, you never involve g 0 minus z or g 1 minus z the z replacement by minus z is only for the analysis side. Anyway with this little observation we now write down y z once again for clarity. So, y z is a linear combination I mean in the z domain you know of x z and x of minus z. What is this mean? What you mean linearly combining x z and x of minus z you see if the x of minus z term were not to be there then we have a simple expression there y z is some function in z multiplied by x z. That is the good old linear shift invariant system for you with a system function and in this case if tau 1 z were to be absent the system function would be simply tau 0 z tau 1 z is the troublemaker here and we need to understand first what this x of minus z is what does it do spectrally what does it do in the time domain. So, let us understand that now what does x of minus z do and to answer this question we put z equal to e raise the power j omega as we always do to interpret things in the frequency domain. Now when you replace z by minus z you are replacing e raise the power j omega by well minus z is e raise the power plus minus j pi times e raise the power j omega for z equal to e raise the power j omega. Recall that e raise the power plus minus j pi is minus 1. So, now we have an interpretation for multiplication by minus 1 in the z domain. Essentially we are replacing e raise the power j omega by e raise the power j omega plus minus pi. In other words we are shifting on the omega axis by either pi or minus pi. Now it should be noted that shifting by pi and shifting by minus pi are the same thing that is because there is periodicity on the small omega or the normalized angular frequency axis. A periodicity with a period of 2 pi. So, there is no problem if we replace plus pi by minus pi there. Shifting by plus pi and shifting by minus pi are the same thing. With that little remark and observation what we have done in replacing z by minus z as far as the normalized angular frequency is concerned is to shift by pi whether plus pi or minus pi. And we would best understand what the shift implies if we took an example spectrum. So, let us take an example spectrum to complete this discussion. Take this spectrum consider an idealized spectrum like this essentially with lines line between minus pi by 2 and plus pi by 2 and 0 outside. So, this is the spectrum of some sequence. Let that sequence be x of n. So, this is the normalized angular frequency omega. This is capital X of strictly e raise the power j omega. But as you know in discrete time processing we sometimes abuse notation a little bit and we write just capital X of omega instead of capital X of e raise the power j omega which is more correct. But anyway I must emphasize that as far as we are concerned from the context capital X of omega and capital X of e raise the power j omega essentially mean the same thing. Now with that remark what happens when you shift by pi here. So, recall that actually this is what x e raise the power j omega is. So, we will do a bit of zoom here periodically repeat it with a period of 2 pi. This is what x of e raise the power j omega actually is. So, you can visualize if you shift this either forward or backward by pi it is going to give you the same thing and what is going to appear after shifting by pi is the following would therefore appear like this. Again we shall do a bit of zooming here and so on here and so on there. So, now your triangles are around the same around pi and then 3 pi and so on and here around minus pi and then minus 3 pi and so on. So, now again if you take the principle interval which is here this is what we get. Now, you know we must be a little more explicit in our relationships here. So, in x of e raise the power j omega if you look at the principle interval minus pi to plus pi. We notice there are 2 segments here for the positive side of the omega axis and the negative side of the omega axis. Let us call the segment for the positive side a and the segment for the negative side a bar and in fact there is a reason for this. You remember that the discrete time Fourier transform has conjugate symmetry for a real sequence. So, it is with that reminiscence that we are writing a and a bar. I agree that if the sequence is complex this conjugate symmetry would not be there, but very often we deal with real sequences and therefore, it is useful to put the symbols a and a bar there just for emphasis. Anyway, now what we will do is in x of e raise the power j omega plus minus pi we shall mark the a's and the a bars carefully. So, here again in the principle interval this was actually a and this was a bar is not it and therefore, this was a and this a bar and now what we need to do is to expand the principle interval for our convenience. So, expanding the principle interval this is what we get. We get an a bar here and we get an a there. Now, you know just for convenience I shall show in dotted on the same diagram what we had just for capital X. So, what I am saying is the solid lines here are x omega plus minus pi and I shall show in dotted x omega just to be clear. Again forgive the abuse of notation where we have replaced e raise the power j omega by just omega for clarity here. So, you know in x of omega you had a here and a bar there and now you have a bar here and a there. So, what has happened is in effect these so called negative frequencies between minus pi by 2 and 0 have now appeared between pi by 2 and pi. So, two things have happened the order of the frequencies has been reversed. So, for example in principle a frequency let us say of minus pi by 4 here is more than a frequency of let us say minus you know here you would have 0 pi by 8 pi by 4 3 pi by 8 and so on and the same on this side. So, if you take a minus pi by 8 frequency here and then a minus pi by 4 frequency there the minus pi by 4 frequency appears as a smaller frequency here one can see that because the order of frequencies from 0 to pi or 0 to minus pi by 2 has been now reordered between pi and pi by 2. So, increasing magnitude of frequency here becomes decreasing magnitude of frequency there. Secondly, the frequencies themselves change. So, you know actually this is exactly what happens in what is called Eliasing. Many of us will recall from the theory of sampling and Eliasing. This is something very fundamental in a course on discrete time signal processing or in the process of sampling a continuous time signal to get a discrete sequence these things happen. So, if we do not sample at an adequate rate we get a problem called Eliasing. What is Eliasing? Eliasing is a phenomenon where a sine wave assumes a false identity and there are two things that happen in Eliasing. One of them is of course that the frequency of the sine wave appears to change. The other is that when you increase the frequency of the sine wave the apparent sine wave or the sine wave produced by impersonation if you would like to call it that seems to have its frequency reducing. So, an increasing frequency and increasing actual frequency seems to appear as an apparently reducing frequency. These two things together make up the concept of Eliasing and what we are seeing here is just an instance of Eliasing. Why are we seeing Eliasing? It is not very difficult to understand. What we have done is to down sample. You know in the process of down sampling we have in fact introduced the possibility of Eliasing and this x of minus z term is bringing before you the consequences that would be there if Eliasing were allowed to remain. Think about it x of minus z is therefore called the Eliasing term because it tells you the contribution of possible Eliasing. In the two band perfect reconstruction filter bank which we shall soon see this Eliasing should be absent by perfect reconstruction I mean if y is to be an exact replica of x. As is the case for example in the Haar system when you have chosen the filters properly. So, you analyze or you decompose and then you synthesize or reconstruct and if the reconstruction is perfect there should be no Eliasing. So, this x of minus z term is a troublemaker term in general troublemaker in this sense. Let us make a note of this. So, the x of minus z term or equivalently the x of minus e raised to the power j omega or x e raised to the power j omega plus minus pi term is the consequence of Eliasing. What is the consequence of Eliasing? We should put it down very clearly. Eliasing does two things. One, one frequency manifested as another increasing actual frequency leads to decreasing apparent frequency. So, in fact just to emphasize let me put back before you and stress this point. As you increase the frequency from 0 to pi by 2 here the frequency appears to decrease from pi to pi by 2 there. The first thing we have to do if we want perfect reconstruction is to do away with Eliasing. So, we put down a condition for Eliasing cancellation. If we want y z to reconstruct x z we must first do away with Eliasing and how can we possibly do away with Eliasing? That essentially means we want tau 1 z to be equal to 0 or in other words we want g 0 z h 0 minus z plus g 1 z h 1 minus z equal to 0. And in fact if we wish to explicitly express the synthesis filters in terms of the analysis filters we could do that as well. Let us rearrange this equation to get g 1 z by g 0 z is minus h 0 minus z by h 1 minus z.  This is a very simple choice of synthesis filters from the analysis filters which can give us Eliasing cancellation. Now in fact we can even spend a minute in interpreting what we just said here in this very simple choice. I must of course emphasize this is a simple choice but definitely not the only choice. In general you should note that there would be a factor cancelled in the numerator and denominator. So, more general choice would be as follows. g 1 z is of the form plus minus some factor let us say r of z times g 1 z is of the times h 0 minus z and g 0 z is respectively minus or plus r z h 1 minus z. So, r z is you know in some sense the factor cancelled you know when you divide g 0 z by g 1 z some factor has been cancelled and what is left is h 0 and h 1 that is the way you should look at it that is the more general situation.  So, let us take the upper one g 1 z is h 0 minus z the other one follows similarly. You see ideally this is what the frequency response of h 0 should be it should be an ideal low pass filter with a cut off of pi by 2. So, this is what the frequency response should look like this is 1 the height here. So, what would h 0 erase the power omega j omega plus minus pi look like or in other words what is h 0 of minus z h 0 minus z with z replaced by e raised the power j omega is essentially of course, as you know h 0 e raised the power j omega plus minus pi and that as you can very easily infer looks like this again let us use the strategy of zooming and then contracting back again. So, I have pi minus pi there 2 pi 3 pi and so on this is what h 0 look like taking note of the periodicity remember this is minus pi by 2 there this is pi by 2 this would therefore be 3 pi by 2 and so on. So, this zoomed h 0 e raised the power j omega plus minus pi would look like this it would have an appearance like this and so on here these pass bands. So, to speak are now going to lie at the odd multiples of pi and you can continue that drawing. Now, once again we confine to the principal interval. So, the principal interval is here and when we do so and then zoom back to emphasize only the principal interval what do we get we get this low and behold from a low pass filter with a cutoff of pi by 2 we have a high pass ideal filter of course again with a cutoff of pi by 2. So, this falls into place very well in fact the equation g 1 z is h 0 minus z makes a lot of sense all that we are saying is that on the synthesis side if you had an ideal low pass filter with a cutoff of pi by 2 at h 0 you should put an ideal high pass filter with cutoff pi by 2 at the point g 1 and you know if you look back at the other one of the two namely g 0 you would make a similar inference g 0 z is h 1 of minus z with a minus sign.  So, exercise shows similarly that an ideal high pass filter h p f with a cutoff pi by 2 on replacing z by minus z becomes an ideal low pass filter with a cutoff of pi by 2 and that also makes a lot of sense for the other of the two requirements for alias cancellation. So, today we have looked at the condition for alias cancellation and we have interpreted the simplest of the conditions. Now, if you do not stick to the simple condition and if you have the factor of r z all that we need to do is to say that we are also modifying that filter a little beyond just this low pass to high pass and high pass to low pass conversion that r z factor would carry out that modification. So, we have taken one out of two steps today in building a perfect reconstruction two band filter bank we have taken the step of alias cancellation. In the next lecture we shall take the second step namely perfect reconstruction. So, we have done away with tau z I mean tau 1 z, but now we need to see what to do with tau 0 z which we shall do in the next lecture. Thank you.