Patient-derived tumor xenograft, PDX, models, which involve transplanting tumor tissues from cancer patients into immunodeficient mice, have emerged as a valuable approach in translational research for advancing precision medicine. The first stage of PDX development is patient-derived orthotopic xenograft, PDOX, models that implant tumor tissue in mice in the corresponding anatomical locations of the patient. PDOX models have several advantages, including high fidelity to the original tumor, heightened drug sensitivity, and an elevated rate of successful transplantation. However, they present significant challenges requiring advanced surgical techniques and resource-intensive imaging technologies, limiting their application. Humanized mouse models and zebrafish patient-derived tumor xenografts, ZPDX, are promising alternatives that provide a cost effective approach for drug testing and reduce patient waiting time. This article was authored by Wei Jingwang, Yong Xiu Li, Kai Dalin, and others.


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Hello, everyone. Welcome to this webinar briefing of the National Academy's report, Health Considerations for Use of Unencapsulated Steel Slag. My name is Ray Wassell, and I was the National Academy's responsible staff officer during the study that resulted in this report. Can I have the first slide, please? Today's briefing will have two parts. Dr. Aaron Barczowski, who served as chair of the authoring committee, will provide an overview of the report. After that, Dr. Barczowski will be joined by other committee members and answering questions submitted by those who are live streaming the session. Next slide, please. The committee's report was released back in November and can be downloaded for free from the National Academy's press website. Next slide. Just a few words about the organization that the committee operated under. The National Academy's is an overall term for the National Academy of Sciences, Academy of Engineering, Academy of Medicine. These three organizations work together to provide advice to the nation. All three are private nonprofit organizations. And since they are not part of the government, they do not provide any legal requirements or federal policies. Next slide. The committee members of the agency such as EPA requests a study to help address a complex problem. A National Academy's committee is formed of people having relevant expertise and experience to carry out a written task. The committee members agree to serve as unpaid volunteers and work within the Academy's study process. They set up so that committee members gather information in sessions that are open to the public. However, they do their analysis and write their report in private meetings without the involvement of government officials or other stakeholders. After the committee's report is successfully goes through a rigorous review process. It is only then that it's submitted to the sponsoring agency and released to the public. Next slide. Here's a list of members of the committee members who wrote the report to be discussed today. I like each of them were attending today's webinar to briefly introduce themselves. We'll start with the chair. Hello, I'm Aaron barchowski. I am a professor in environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh, and I have expertise in mechanisms of metals toxicology. I'm Michael Aschner. I'm in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And where I'm a professor and my interest is in the neuro toxicity of metals. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dan Bain, an associate professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science the University of Pittsburgh research interests in the environmental behavior of trace metals. I don't know if Alan Kram has joined us at this time. Okay. Phil Goodrum, can you introduce yourself. Phil is on the phone. Hi, my name is Phil Goodrum. I am a principal toxicologist with GSI environmental, and my area of expertise is metals toxicology and environmental risk assessment. I'm John Kissel. I'm professor emeritus of environmental occupational health scientists, sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, and I am a human exposure scientist. Debney Meyer. I am Debney Meyer I'm a professor at the University of Maryland am I in a civil and environmental engineering and I work on equity and justice issues and the built environment. Peggy O day. Hello, I'm Peggy O day I'm a professor in the Department of life and environmental sciences at the University of California Merced, and I study environmental geochemistry primarily of heavy metals. Hi, my name is Ruth O'Donnell from 2013 to 2020 I work for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in the Bureau of waste management. And I was part of the beneficial use of industrial byproducts team. Hi, I'm Dave Walker. I'm professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. I specialized in mineralogy. My research career was already devoted to understanding the phase equilibrium and thermochemistry of crystallizing silicate and oxide liquids. Hello Bob right. I'm a pediatrician medical toxicologist and epidemiologist at the icon school of medicine at Mount Sinai and majority of my research has been in metal toxicity and children. Thank you. Are there any other committee members who did not get a chance to introduce themselves. Okay. Hi, I'm on Rebecca, Rebecca Fry met the university. Hi, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in environmental sciences and engineering. Thanks so much. Very good. Round it out. Okay. Next slide please. And this slide gives the names of the folks on our staff who supported the work of the committee. I just wanted to introduce them to introduce themselves. I just wanted to show their names. Now, before I ask Dr barchowski to provide an overview of the report. I want to mention that a video recording is being made of this webinar and an internet link to access the recording will be available on the event page for this webinar by as early as tomorrow. And then if anyone live streaming this session would like to submit a question to the committee. Please use the q amp a feature located at the bottom of your zoom screen. And then after Dr barchowski is finished with the presentation, then we'll get to the questions. Thank you. And now I'll turn it over to Dr barchowski. Okay, Nick. Next slide please. Hello and just to start off, let's all get on the same page and get a good understanding for what we're discussing. And what is slag, and especially electric art furnace slag. So, like our electric art furnaces produce slag. And the steel basically can be produced from iron ore or steel scrap using several processes. The electric arc furnace are used to produce about 75% of the steel made in the United States. The rest remain are blast furnaces. In this process, an electric current is used to melt scrap steel or other iron containing materials. And as a result of this process, a layer of molten slag is formed that floats on top of the liquid metal and can contain toxic metals at various concentrations. The position intended function and the quantity formed really depend on which type of steel is being produced and the various chemicals added in the process. After the slag layer is removed from the furnace, it's cooled and solidifies into a very hard rock like material. And this can be crushed into different sizes for various applications, often instead of using quarried rock fragments. Next slide please. As seen in this slide, there are the shows to slag. There are really two main uses of the slag or two types of the slag uses. The first would be encapsulated or bound uses. And here we're using these aggregates of the in concrete or encapsulated in asphalt for road beds. And encapsulated unbound form is used in applications such as loose ground cover for landscaping, driveway beds, parking lots and railroad beds. Next slide please. We do have some concerns. And those concerns come from the fact that the electric furnace slag can contain toxic metals at elevated levels. The US EPA said it is unclear whether unaccapsulated EAF slag use near residents in schools causes a risk. They do have some concerns. And one of their remedies was to recommend various steps residents can take to minimize contact with the slag dust and small particles in the slag. In addition, EPA has undertaken research to address key concerns and uncertainties. And as a part of its overall research efforts, EPA asked the National Academies to independently assess potential human health risks from the use of unencapsulated electric arc furnace slag in residential areas. Next slide. Using the available information analysis, the committee was asked to assess human health risks associated with using the unencapsulated electric arc furnace slag. And we were asked to include a number of considerations, those being where and how the how much electric arc furnace slag is used in the United States. Effects of weathering on the chemical and physical properties of applied slag over time. Ways in which humans can be exposed to toxic chemicals in slag and how those exposures compare with exposures associated with incidences of cancer and other adverse effects in other kinds of environmental studies. We're also concerned with factors that may lead to the highest health risks from slag exposures. And this would include looking at life stage of those exposed, for example, children, elderly, etc. socioeconomic living conditions that may lead to increase susceptibility to adverse effects. Research recommendations were also asked for addressing important information gaps. So where don't we have enough information. Next slide please. The committee heard presentations and received written materials from EPA, the National Slag Association, an industry group, and its consultants and other researchers, including studies of slag composition leaching of toxic metals from the slag and risks expected to under possible exposure scenarios. In considering the potential adverse health effects associated with exposures to the kinds of toxic metals contained in slag, the committee mainly considered manganese and hexavalent chromium as lead metals of concern. This focus was basically requested by the EPA, and they are potentially the highest risks that might be found. Manganese has posed high potential for concern in various slag assessments. It's a neurotoxic and hexavalent chromium is a site constituent for which exposure is associated with a theoretical excess cancer risk and has also been found in as a slag constituent. Because general data limitations, the committee did not attempt to develop an overall characterization of the health risk. We were not really charged with coming up with a full risk assessment from the unencapsulated slag use. We did provide insights and identified key data needs for a better understanding of this risk at the national level. Next slide, please. So the importance is the national level and the committee identified 117 different EAF steel plants in 33 states. So a wide distribution associated with these are 91 slag processing facilities that are serviced very locally. The amount of slag produced annually is about 10 to 15% of the amount of steel produced at these EAF plants. And that was roughly about 6.3 million tons of slag that were sold in 2022. The slag is really heavy and generally it's only distributed locally. So it's generally transported to projects in close proximity to those processing plants and primarily by truck. And quantitative information on how and where unencapsulated slag is used is actually limited. The majority of steel furnace slag use appears to be road bases and surfaces and this would include railroad track of certain beds. And however, you know, the annual amount of slag used for residential applications at the national level is really not tracked and is somewhat unknown. Next slide, please. So composition. The slag composition varies a great deal, according to the grade of steel produce the source of scrap that's used in speed for the for the steel, and also the operational practices. So this can vary quite a bit across those different facilities. The slag is rich in compounds containing iron, manganese, calcium, silicon and aluminum. And a majority of what's produced is stainless steel and the stainless steel EAF slags contain high levels of chromium. Other chemicals can be present at low concentrations and these can be metals such as nickel, cadmium, lead, zinc, vanadium, titanium, molybdenum, tin, arsenic, antimony and barium. Slag concentrations of manganese, chromium, vanadium, and in a few cases arsenic can be greater than the levels EPA sets for considerations of those metals in soils for site remediation planning. Also a potential concern are several poly aromatic hydrocarbons that have been detected in production at relatively low concentrations compared to EPA soil screening levels. But the PAHs are in general a class of chemicals referred to as persistent organic pollutants that are toxic chemicals, which take a long time to break down the environment. But again, assessment of the risk from these in slag has not really been adequately approached. Next slide please. A major concern is the size of particles that could be affecting human exposures. And exposure to the small particles are of most concern with assessment risk being limited in using the unencapsulated slag. The small particles can be more chemically reactive because they have a larger surface area and they also can be more deeply inhaled into a person's airways. Generally, what we're concerned with are particles that are maybe 100 or 1000 times smaller than a grain of sand. Much of the physical testing of slag has been done on its resistance to break down in various encapsulated mixes such as asphalt rather than its unencapsulated uses. Approaches for testing the strength of the unencapsulated slag fragments very widely and they focused on how much of the slag remains intact rather than on the amount of small particles worn off. Because of those data limitations, the committee could not draw general conclusions about the amounts and properties of smaller particles generated over time from the wearing down of the unencapsulated slag. Next slide please. In addition to the particles, there's concern about leaching of the toxic metals from the slag and that has been examined mostly using standardized testing in a laboratory not out in the environment. Short-term testing generally is focused, has found that minimal leaching of toxic chemicals or metals from the AF occurs and concentrations of the leached metals are not detectable or below regulatory limits. In general studies to date have not examined the long term state of slag chemicals released under variable environmental conditions. The most commonly reported result from weathering and leaching of slags is that in highly alkaline or basic leached water flowing from surface into surface water from the groundwater so again a very high level of base. A few studies have shown that alkaline water occurring in near old slag piles is neutralized rapidly and migration off site is limited. However, generation migration and neutralization of alkaline water from slag weathering has not been extensively studied in the unencapsulated applications such as in landscaping. Next slide please. So this slide has a nice scheme and it's an example of a generic model for how humans would be exposed to slag constituents in a residential setting. Assessment of human exposure to chemicals involves consideration of concentration of chemicals in food, air, water, soil or on surfaces that come in contact with individuals. Example would be dust coming into homes. Exposure pathways are the pathways the chemicals take from the source to the exposed person so source being EAF slag and then exposure route being that last column. Exposure routes refer to how metals or chemicals enter the body. This slide shows a generic model that may apply to sites where EAF slag is used in an unencapsulated manner in a residential setting such as for driveway cover or yard landscaping. It is important to note that the actual model at each site will depend on numerous factors and those include the amount and type of slag used human activity patterns around the slag use and local soil and climate conditions. Next slide please. Exposure considerations such as those climate conditions potentially important exposure pathways and routes include incidental ingestion of slag particles mixed in outdoor soil and indoor dust, inhalation and dermal contact. Also, exposure pathways for consideration include ingestion of home produced foods grown on properties with electric arc furnace slag being applied and ingestion and dermal contact with surface waters and groundwater receiving metals leached from slag. When mixed with outdoor soil and indoor dust, EAF slag may alter the overall human uptake and absorption of slag chemicals of concern. Therefore, use of site specific data would be preferable to using estimates from literature and laboratory experiments when making exposure calculations. Next slide. As I mentioned, we mainly focused on toxicity of chromium and manganese as potential metals of concern in the slag. There are many other metals but this focus was because we just wanted to look at the major leaders of concern. And there may be additional looks at some of the toxicities in the future. But with chromium, the major concern is cancer and the, and it's really only the hexavalent form of chromium that poses the hazard. That may be a bit complicated to understand, but hexavalent chromium is basically chromic acid, whereas a chromium III or trivalent chromium is actually thought of as a nutrient supplement and not a hazard. A few studies have really addressed the extent of formation of hexavalent chromium in slag directly, but the available data suggests that the amount under ambient weathering conditions is relatively low. The absorption of chromium is greatly limited by our body's protective ability to reduce the hexavalent chromium to trivalent chromium in the fluids that line the gastrointestinal tract and the lung airways. And it's not clear whether there's sufficient accessible hexavalent chromium that's coming from the slag or slag dust to overwhelm this reductive capacity. Based on limited data, it may be that pregnant women, young children, elderly individuals and individuals with particularly genetic susceptibilities might be more likely to be vulnerable to this effect of hexavalent chromium from the slag. The hexavalent chromium exposure might exacerbate health conditions in individuals with pre-existing pathologies or disease burdens in the GI tract, liver, lungs, and blood. But unfortunately, there is really a lack of epidemiological studies of environmental exposures to hexavalent chromium compared to occupational exposures. And so because of this, the data is insufficient to exclude the risk of non-cancer disease endpoints in susceptible populations. Manganese, as I mentioned, also poses a major toxicity. The primary toxicity with manganese is that it's a neurological toxicant with some evidence for other health effects such as liver toxicity. Again, pregnant women, early childhood individuals, especially considering the manganese effects on developmental neurological and cognition endpoints, and elderly individuals would likely be more vulnerable to manganese exposure from the slag. Those with chronic neurological diseases such as autism, Alzheimer's disease, and pre-existing liver disease can also be at increased risk in their vulnerability to manganese exposures. The exposures during pregnancy and early childhood have been associated with lower neurodevelopmental test scores, test and motor function, and depressive symptoms, amongst other effects. However, in general, the majority of studies are in adults and also mostly occupational exposures making direct comparisons with children's studies complicated, and there really is a large need for more environmental exposure studies. Next slide, please. Continuing the theme of increased susceptibility, especially in overburdened communities, the committee assessed whether people are exposed to numerous different chemical pollutants and other stressors from a wide array of sources over their life spans. Disadvantaged communities have a higher burden of cumulative exposures to multiple stressors, including chemical stressors such as the environmental pollutants that might come from slag, and nonchemical factors such as diet, healthcare, access, policies leading to residential segregation and socio-economics. Exposure to chemical stressors such as chromium and manganese can result from various sources in addition to slag in disadvantaged communities and other stressors such as lead and nonchemical stressors can exacerbate health effects associated with chromium and manganese. The committee examined two areas, one in Allegheny County, PA, and Pueblo, Colorado as cases, case examples to illustrate disadvantaged communities in reasonable proximity to slag processing facilities, and it might have access to the unencapitated slag use. Femalative exposures that are disproportionately borne by disadvantaged and overburdened individuals and communities can exacerbate health risks of EAF slag chemicals, including the risk of negative cognitive effects. Next slide, please. So the, with previous risk assessments of EAF slag use, the committee considered five past risk assessments. There's actually a large long history of this, but one main one was with the Wisconsin Department of Health Sciences that focused on slag from a very specific EAF steel plant. For others were funded by the steel slag coalition or the National Slag Association, again industry groups, considered a slag from multiple facilities. The concepts and approaches applied in assessments tended to represent rather narrowly defined conditions, which are likely not reasonable for extrapolating to the national level. For example, exposure scenarios in which slag covers only the driveway of a residence rather than a large portion of a property such as an industrial plant where you have a large parking lot, just surface hearing. Ranking chemicals. Next slide, please. So, again, a future consideration, there's a need to rank chemicals in the slag and to illustrate a method for identifying slag chemicals that weren't further considered consideration as potential risk contributors. The committee applied a hazard ranking approach in which data on slag composition were compared with EPA's regional screening levels for residential exposures to soil. Next slide, please. We also did a hazard ranking of the slag metals. And this graph shows that the highest ranking is for manganese, iron, hexavalent chromium, vanadium, and valium and antimony are also among the higher ranked chemicals. Next slide, please. So in identifying risks, the committee identified factors considering to have the potential to contribute to the highest risk from the use of unencapsulated EAS slag. The relative importance of these factors is expected to differ in a case-by-case basis. And again, this is primarily because all those different EAF facilities are taking in different sources of scrap, etc., so there'll be different composition. The relative importance of these factors is expected to differ in different locations. The factors also comprise key data needs. A greater understanding of these factors will ensure that the calculated slag-related risks are not overestimated or underestimated. Next slide, please. So this gets to be very complicated and elaborate, but we did identify key risk factors and data needs. So a number of bullets, but to go through them, the amount of slag used for residential application. The focus on this report is on residential applications of EAS slag. However, currently available information does not allow for characterization of the amount of EAS slag used nationally for that kind of application. In the case of slag particle size distribution, the small size particles that can be transported in air and stick to clothing and be tracked into the home and deposit into various outdoor and indoor surfaces are important. The concentration of some chemicals of potential concern can increase as particle size decreases, and the particle size distributions for fresh and weathered slag are very poorly characterized. Particle exposures, including indoor residential. Children can ingest slag particles while playing on the ground outdoors or on the floor indoors from dust. Adults may also ingest slag particles that adhere to food or their hands. Inhalation exposures may occur depending on the particle size, their distribution of slag, and the extent of areas where the slag is applied. Specific residential uses that may result in exposures, particularly to susceptible groups, is, and more broadly, it is a really key data gap. Nearness of humans to applied slag and the frequency of human contact. Exposure factors and exposure routes, such as those related to an extent of slag coverage for residential property, can substantially affect the result of at risk. Calculation and the exposure time factors associated with health outcomes of interest are another important consideration. For example, cancer outcomes are typically associated with longer periods of exposure than for non cancer outcomes. Chemical and physical weathering. Again, a key factor that needs to be looked at many environmental factors, such as climate conditions and factors directly related to slag influence the rate at which chemicals of potential concern are mobilized from unencapsulated slag. How concentrations of slag constituents change over time is an important uncertainty. The pH of the water or the alkaline water conditions from weathered slag, weathering and leaching of EAS slag can result in high alkaline water degrading the quality of surface water and groundwater. More information is needed about those effects and the long term fate of potentially hazardous slag metals released into the environment under different climate conditions. Exposure to manganese, exposure to high concentrations exhibits neurological toxicity with some evidence of other health effects such as liver toxicity. However, comprehensive re-evaluation of toxicological and epidemiological literature for manganese is needed, especially with environmental exposures. Exposure to exobalant chromium, estimates of cancer risk from chromium in slag are highly sensitive to estimates regarding the chemical form of the chromium present in the slag and to changes in that may occur over time. View studies have directly assessed the extent of formation of exobalant chromium in applied slag and how much of the amounts of people are exposed to gets absorbed into a person's body. Exposure to other high hazard chemicals, a number of chemicals other than manganese and exobalant chromium can occur within EAS slag at concentrations of interest, especially antimony, arsenic, iron, dallium and vanadium. Also, it needs to be determined whether analysis for persistent organic pollutants should be included in future testing of EAS slag risk. Susceptible life stages, we need to be cognizant of different life stages where there is increased susceptibility such as pregnancy, early life exposures and exposures during development such in childhood and adolescence in an old age where our defenses are diminished. Elevated manganese exposure during pregnancy and early childhood have been associated with lower neurodevelopmental test scores, but again, the epidemiology is really not there for understanding risks from the slag. Cumulative exposures in overburden communities is a major concern and inequitable cumulative exposures to people in communities can exacerbate health risk associated with exposures to slag components. And this is also of major concern since there are many other co exposures in these communities that may increase susceptibility. Next slide please. So in concluding remarks, the committee considered screening level analysis of residential use scenarios of slag that indicated an exceedance of established risk thresholds and assessment of other scenarios reported risk below those thresholds. Due to uncertainties in the current evidence stream, the committee was unable to make an overall characterization of health risk related to the unencuped slated use of EAS slag in the US. And until more environmental studies have been conducted and characterized a wider range of weathered EAS slag material and environmental conditions. The committee cautions against making generalizations from conclusions from the public risk published risk assessments. A greater understanding of the risk factors and data needs identified by the committee will help ensure that calculated slag related risks are not overestimated or underestimated. And with that, I believe I'll be glad to answer any questions or the committee can answer any questions. And please put your questions into chat. Oh, there is one question that came in. And maybe Phil could answer it. Do you want to read it? I'm not seeing it. Perhaps you could Ray in the chat. Okay, but the question is, can you please provide more information on the meeting of a hazard quotient exceeding one on slide 22. Sure, I can I can answer that. So, generally, what a hazard quotient means is that it's an estimate of an exposure relative to some reference dose or reference concentration. And finally, that's a ratio and a hazard quotient greater than one just means that the exposure might exceed that specific to that slide just to explain a little bit more what the committee did to run a screening level assessment. And so there's a series of PAs regional screening level approach. And so there's a series of equations that takes into account the various pathways that Dr Pichowski laid out so soil ingestion dermal exposure in elation. And we looked at concentrations that are reported in some of the risk assessments. So those are summary statistics sort of average concentrations that have been measured at various areas. And that gives us some idea of sort of the relative magnitude of concentrations of some of these models. So again, what what we did was to use those estimates that kind of represent an average, and we applied standard equations that EPA uses to estimate exposure, and then we related that to the established toxicity values for these compounds. And by applying the same process to each compound. It allows us to have some relative ranking. And so that's the basis for the grouping is sort of applying the same screening approach. Chemical specific toxicity values and estimates of average concentrations measured in soil that has been amended in some way with the unencapsulated slide. So I think the final thing I'll say is an exit. This is a screening level assessment and so an exceedance of a screening level in and of itself. It doesn't mean that there's necessarily a risk and again our effort here wasn't a risk assessment per se it was a relative ranking is a hazard sort of ranking approach. And what what we were really trying to do is take the composition information and come up with some way of sort of rank ordering the importance of the compounds and what we see is for example manganese and hexavalium in the entire there in that group that could potentially exceed a hazard portion of one. Maybe I'll stop there Ray unless there's a follow up. Sounds good. So in the questions from Renee guy.  Will you be sending out the presentation or I guess how does the public have access to this public to this presentation. The presentation will be part of the video recording that will be available after a day or so after today. And there'll be a link provided on the event webpage. Thank you. And from Tara Hubner. This one, I think we'll go back to Dr Goodrum but the committee recommends that the site specific exposure factor values as opposed to literature or guidance document based values be used when assessing risk from residential applications of slag. What approaches are available to develop site specific incidental ingestion rates of slag find particles. Now first say that I think that what we meant by site specific is trying to evaluate what exposures might be expected from the different plants overall but Phil you want to answer the second part of that for incidental ingestion rates. Sure. By and large when site specific risk assessments are done the, you know, the question is about the soil and dust ingestion rates specifically. And we do have estimates of those for young children as well as adults. And actually, that particular exposure factor, which is in an exposure assessment is based on a recommended guidance value and those guidance values are derived from the literature and most recently some publications that look at or rely upon really extensive data sets where we have measurements in environmental media and then we have internal measurements of blood lead. So there's been a recent use of lead exposure modeling to help inform the soil and dust ingestion rate. But again, especially at site risk assessment site specific risk assessments. We don't have a study conducted specifically of contact rates and soil and dust ingestion rates and instead we rely on recommended guidance values from the US EPA. Thank you and Thomas Simmons asked, can we speak about the particle size distribution? For instance, did you see in your research that EAF readily breaks down and that there's significant small particles? I don't believe that there's been adequate research in this area but I'll defer to Dr. O'Day if she's still on regarding the exposures. Yeah. Actually, if Dr. Bain is on, I think he's the one that actually looked at the particle size distribution. So if he's on, he's probably better positioned to answer. Sure. Sure. Thank you, Peggy. Thank you, Erin. We can't speak more because that is one of the glaring gaps in the information. We just, there's, and some, you know, there's limited data, the data that is there, there's quite a bit of variability and breakdown rates. And, you know, then the focus is on breakdown in terms of aggregate. So the really fine particles, there's extremely small amounts of data to evaluate that. So we really can't say much more than what we said in the report. From A. Gibson, what is the risk to environment if the slag is laying in a river? And I'm afraid that that's kind of outside of our purview is that wouldn't be a residential use. And I'm not sure whether there's that much information on that. And it suggests that if it was under water that's flowing and it's good in aerobic water that you'd have a limited amount of chromium exposure, but I don't think that there's any real data there. Follow up from Thomas Simmons. And further did you see any difference in metals concentrations at different particle sizes? I just echo what Dr. Bain said, and I don't think that there is adequate information out there on that. Phil might have a comment on that as well. Okay. Well, no. No, I think that's right. We don't have a lot of data on the enrichment factor, unfortunately. There's a lot of data gaps. Again, there are a lot of data gaps. Thomas Simmons. I just lost it. I just saw one from Thomas Simmons again, but. Thank you. We just answered that one. Okay. I think he had a follow up, but. Yeah, we did. We did so. Did you review and include in your assessment the leaf method, leach testing. And also particle size analysis on both fresh and weathered slag that the EPA and Vanderbilt University performed. Yes, we, we, the leaf was presented to us. And we definitely considered it. I guess this one for Dr. O'Day. Yeah, that's right. But I think one of the difficulties here was that we got a preliminary or presentation of the preliminary results. And the committee was never provided with the final results from the Vanderbilt group. Because they had not issued their report. So we saw some preliminary data, but we did not include that data in our report because we didn't have the final version of the data. The preliminary data was consistent with other leaf testing showing that at alkaline conditions that you don't generally mobilize metals, but we didn't have the full set of data so we couldn't evaluate everything. And Dr. Day, I think that's where my comments about alkaline water, et cetera, came from. Right. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see any open questions. Ray, it looks like there's no more questions in the queue. Correct. We're close to the end of our hour. Should we wrap it up or. Yeah, I think, I think we're, we're at the end. Since there are no more questions. I think we can send our thanks to, to the interest people showed in hearing about the report. And we hope the video recording will be available soon. We'll make sure it gets up expeditiously so folks have access to it. And remember the full report is available for free. Downloading for free from our Academy's website. And with that, I'd like to thank the committee members, Academy staff, and all the folks who listened in on the live stream.


I'm really excited to be talking about data communities and those who built them. I'm also excited for this Our Ladies Chicago power session with Catherine and me. So having that representation is very, very exciting. I'm going to start off with a little bit about me and then jump into some insights that I've pulled from working with various data communities. You can find these slides at bit.ly slash 2020-05-csvconf. If you want to find them, I've also tweeted about them. And you can use them for reference later. All right, so who am I and what communities do I build? I want to start off with a little bit of intro here because I think that's always interesting and relevant, especially if you're talking about building data communities. Introducing myself. I'm currently a researcher at the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago. I'm also in my free time, the maintainer community lead for the Carpentries. So this is something that I actually got written into my job. So five hours a week, I'm working for the Carpentries. I highly recommend this as a tactic if you want to work with a community, have your boss sign up on your work with that community. One thing that I'm very passionate about is thinking about underrepresented minorities in data communities. I do a lot of work thinking about how to make those communities more diverse, organizing things, trying to bring people into the fold. And you can find me at Civic Angela. This is sort of a remnant from what I did like an internship at a place called Civic Hall Labs and thinking about civic technology. So that's also been in the back of my head for a while. So as a data community builder, I'm bringing skills into my communities that have been with me before I even started working with data. So I'm thinking about my early days as a community builder. This is a picture of me working with a sort of positivity project called Make Chicago Smile. So this was back when I was still in school. One big thing that we pulled out from this was basically how to get people to organize together around a common mission and do things. So this was before I really even dove into data. And I learned a lot of lessons from just this early community building. Things I learned included how to get people to help out, how to plan a large-scale event, how to build volunteer teams, how to share out your work. Don't forget to take photos. And I'm happy to talk specifically about tactics for each of these. But I think today's talk is going to be a little bit more about the broader picture from working with a number of these communities. Recent days as a data community builder, here's some photos from recent events. Left is a workshop that I taught for Our Lady Chicago about data visualization with maps.  On the right is another workshop that I've taught with amazing Our Lady Stephanie Kermer, and we did a package workshop. I think Katherine is in this photo somewhere potentially. Oh no, she's the one taking the photo. So she's behind the scenes in this one. And we taught people how to write our packages in a weekend workshop. So very, very happy about that sort of thing. So I believe that community building is a skill just like anything else. I think the second talk of the morning about research software communities mentioned this. Basically, a lot of the people that you're working with have skills specifically in data or in technical fields. And they don't necessarily have the background in terms of community building specifically. So thinking that through, I believe it's a skill that you can accomplish, get through practice. So this is something that I picked up from the Carpentries, thinking about things as skills and various contexts. So I think thinking about it as a skill, I think there are two parts to community building. And I think this is true of most things. There's the vision and then there's the strategy. And lest this become just business buzzwords, I think this is sort of the big ideas and then the get-and-get done. I actually had a lot of trouble writing this talk because I wanted to write a talk specifically on how to get it done because I'm someone who loves details, loves thinking through a communications plan or how we're going to make this event, like how we're going to order the pizza and then do all this. But I realized that would be a very boring talk in terms of data communities and it might be not relevant to your specifically. So I'm going to talk about three big ideas that I think I pulled out from the communities that I've worked with. And those communities are, as I mentioned, our ladies, the Carpentries, which have already gotten so many shout-outs already. And then my specific research center, the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago. Quick overview of these in case you don't know what they are, our ladies is a meetup for gender minorities. These the programming language are. There's a local chapter structure. This is similar to things like Pi Ladies. Like I think there's one called Map Time. They're sort of informal meetups around the world. Differently, the Center for Spatial Data Science is my research center at the University of Chicago. We're focused on spatial analysis and open source software development. So we build a tool called Geota that helps with exploratory spatial data analysis. And we are heavily involved with social science research. So I'm currently doing work on the opioid epidemic. This is my job. It's sort of funny that I put it second, but I think it will, it maps well to sort of the topics I want to talk about. And then the most recent community that I've been involved with is the Carpentries. So this is a volunteer initiative, nonprofit teaching, computational skills to researchers around the world. As I said before, this is my sort of job, but I love their vision. I love sort of what they're doing and I want to get more involved. So when I was thinking about this talk, the things that stood out to me from these communities were three main ideas. And I think I asked myself, why do they work and what do they have in common? And I can't say that these are the, this is all of it, but I think there are three big ideas, which are excitement, empathy and kindness. So I'm going to start off with talking about excitement. I'm a pretty excited person. I think people have told me that that's something that I bring to a community is that my enthusiasm is something that they're excited about. But I want to talk a bit about Our Lady of Chicago. So this was like the most exciting. And I think this is most relevant when you're building or starting a community, building that momentum and getting started. So on the left, we have a picture of our launch. So this was the first event we ever did. We basically pulled it together in like three weeks, which I'm still astonished by. On the right is one of my friends who baked an R pie for the first event. So we had something sort of fun and exciting and just inspired people to get involved and see that things were happening. We had two amazing speakers and we filled up the entire room, got a lot of stickers. I think you could see them on the table. And people were excited. The momentum from that kickoff event led to a lot of good collaboration down the road. This is why things like sprints, things like workshops are important, getting people in the room and discussing and building that excitement and momentum is really, really valuable when you're building a community. So my question to you is how you can build excitement into your community, whether that's a kickoff event, whether that's sort of doing things that the people in your community value. And that might vary. So I found when I was teaching workshops that people find like really cool visualizations in my workshops and seeing those exciting and maybe not as exciting some of the data structures behind it. However, based on the first talk of this morning, that's exciting to some people thinking about metadata and schemas. Like that is exciting to many people and you might know that if you're someone who's excited, right? So in my experience, like some of my researchers are definitely more excited about the visualization than they are the data, but knowing your community is a big part of that. Similarly, maybe it's exciting to have a bunch of people in the room and maybe it's not so exciting to install R in your free time. However, maybe documentation is exciting to you and that's something that you should keep in mind as well. So knowing that need in your community I think is something that brings me to my next point which is empathy. Basically what is empathy? Knowing sort of what your problems like what the problems are of the people in your community and how you might understand like their frustrations, their needs and things like that. I think this is especially valuable if you have been there yourself. So early days of me doing data analysis, this graph of frustration and time I would get extremely frustrated in a very short amount of time.  And in my mind, you know, when would I ever get to this point where I was like doing things and not getting frustrated, right? One tool that really helped me in my early days was this resource called R for Data Science. I think it's an awesome book. It's a really good place to start if you're learning R specifically for data analysis for the first time. And I think the reason, one reason that it is so good is because the people who wrote it had empathy for the problems that people like me, researchers, people who had to analyze data were tackling. And the reason for that is actually really interesting. I read an interview of Hadley Wickham who's the guy who co-wrote this book and also played a big author role in GD Plot 2 and other R tools. And actually what he says is during his, I think PhD days, he got a consulting position where I helped students from other departments to do statistical analysis. This gave me a steady stream of people with statistics problems. And so he was seeing people come in with issues reshaping their data, issues visualizing in the way that they wanted to. These were problems that he saw over and over and over again as a statistical consultant. And so he decided to write software to basically fill those gaps and to think about how can we make this better? You don't have to go out there and write open source software and put it out to the world. You can if that's what you're great at. But I think a key lesson from this is how can you develop empathy within your community? And one way to do that of course is hearing people's problems. So this ties into some of the work that I've done at the University of Chicago. I teach these weekly workshops and I've done it for two years about spatial analysis, specifically for social scientists. So we're like mapping things. We're doing spatial analysis trying to figure out point and polygon things. And so on the left is me just like delivering my workshop feeling happy about my material. And then on the right is the real reality of what happens next after I deliver that workshop. It is sitting down, trying to figure out why exactly the Spatial Package Boat install, you know, figuring out this like very convoluted system that people have for a spatial data and like trying to work through that. And I think that really, really helped with my empathy for thinking through some of these cases. You may not be in a position where you can do that, where you can, you know, teach something and then immediately get feedback from people for what their issues are. But I think what is important is asking at least people in your community, what are the stakeholders? What do they care about? What are their big problems? What are things that they have issues with, you know, what data problems are they facing that could be tackled in a short amount of time that might have big impact? And having that empathy, I think is a starting point for really strong data communities. My final point is thinking about as we build empathy, it's important that people feel comfortable asking questions of you and bringing their problems to you, which brings me to kindness. This is the last point, but I think it is the most important one. And I think every community that you are part of should be a kind one, specifically for newcomers, but also to people who've been there for a long time. I bought this idea sort of from teaching tech together, another amazing free resource, highly recommend you check it out by Greg Olson. And the first sort of page, or I guess like the first webpage that you see in there has a list of 10 rules. And the first rule is be kind all else's details. I think this is a really, really good place to start. So if you are starting from a place of kindness, empathy with your communities, problems and understanding, I think the rest you can figure out how to run an event or you can figure out how to lead specific people through the package development process, but you're gonna start with this foundation of kindness. So my question is, how can you prioritize kindness as a key value in your community? I want you to leave you with that and sort of thinking about that, some sort of off the cuff ideas, make sure you don't tolerate unkindness in your community, make sure that that's not accepted, right? And that might be through a code of conduct, which the CSVComp organizers have so done a great job with and introduced that and set that as the norm. But it also starts with you being kind to others and you being kind to yourself. So I'm gonna talk about this because I think this is often overlooked in data community discussions, self-care and self-kindness. You're gonna be doing amazing work. You have the right to stop, take a break or leave when you need to. And this is coming from places where I've seen people working in communities for a long, long, long time and they get burnt out. And what happens is that because they haven't been kind to themselves, it's really hard for them to be kind to others and you start seeing people get crispy and sort of being harsh to newcomers and things like that. So it's really, really important that you are kind to yourself and what you could do as you build these communities. On the flip side of that, I think the flip side of being kind to yourself and stepping back a bit is that you have the privilege to bring others along so that they can grow. Maybe you stepping back means that, yes, you are less involved, but it also means that you can bring up a new generation and mentor people in your data community. I think this is especially valuable when you have helped someone come a long way, maybe they're now doing reproducible things. Now they're like opening their data and they're really excited about all of that. They are the perfect person to become the next leader of your community and to grow and to grow that community. So just a few thoughts there. So my three takeaways, excitement, empathy and kindness. And I think what you have all of these three things, they lead to something which is exciting and should be in all your communities, which is belonging. I think every community day I'm part of, I feel like I deeply and truly belong there and it's been amazing. It's totally changed my work. It's really helped me meet others doing similar things and finding other community builders is also a good part of this. So I guess maybe not the final question, but how can you stay focused and belonging in your community? I think this should come up naturally if you focus on the other three things. So I'm just a few thoughts there. One term that I found really useful in terms of thinking about belonging is communities of practice. So I would just Google search this term. This book is also helpful. I don't think it's free, but I learned about communities of practice from talking to Ted Luderis, who's an amazing educator at Oregon Health and Science, I think university. And he basically said to me in a private discussion, I think the key to educational sustainability is to build a community of practice.  But I think that's a really good way to frame it. People doing similar things and similar areas working together to increase their knowledge and understanding. So keep on building community, keep on getting feedback and keep working to make things better. You can find me on Twitter. You can find my website and I'm on very, very, very many slacks. I'll be on the CSV5 Q&A. I'm on the Our Ladies one. There's another one for scientific community builders that I'm on called, I think the Center for Scientific Community or something and communications and engagement. That's good. And if you're interested, I'm gonna put a plug in here and joining another virtual conference. We're running a conference on May 30th for USARS in the Chicago land area. So feel free to join me there and thank you so much. Thank you so much, Angela. That was fantastic. I learned so much and hope to help build my communities as well. We have time for a few questions. Are you okay to answer a few of them? Yeah. Awesome. So several people in the chat have asked, do you have suggestions for pitching to your employer to get this kind of work added to your job description? It is hard to get approval for dedicated time to train people. Yeah, I feel like I'm not the perfect person to answer questions about this because my employers have always been so, I think they've seen the value of having a community or I think they were the people who were like, maybe we should do some workshops because people are struggling. I think one thing that I've heard from others is that sort of some quick wins and showing what you could do with this community is. So basically like thinking about, I think someone told me that they wrote a package that helped automate 20% of the work that someone was doing and then it turned out that the company wanted the rest of the team to use that package. So thinking about, how can you show that you're making impact and then how can you make the case that that impact will be scaled if you have more people or like you're, I think like having something that is like, hey, like I'm doing this and like this will make us more efficient, this will make us 20 times more productive or something like that. I'm not the perfect person to talk about this. All right. Another question is, how do we generate excitement in the absence of an initial in-person meetup? Any advice there? Yeah, that's hard. I feel like that's something that we're all thinking about sort of virtual meetings and things. And I can't say that I figured out the right way to do it. I do think like getting everyone into the room in some way is important because like you get sparks between people like people are talking and like whether that's a video meeting or thinking about some sort of online launch, there've been a lot of people who've been doing work on this lately. And I think people in the chat might have ideas but I think like getting some FaceTime and not having it totally be asynchronous is important. Awesome. Let's see here, questions. I'm already skimming, I'm ready. So, love the negotiation, Tatek? Nope, did we already answer that one? I think we did. Clearly, I'm not very good at this. Apologies everybody, I'm learning, I'm learning. Everyone's commenting about your energy, that's fantastic. Yes, yes, empathy and excitement is very contagious. Let's see here. Can you say more about kindness and community building? It's not something you can enforce in the manner of a code of conduct and in global communities with very broad set of cultures represented, kindness, empathy, especially online can look very different. Yeah, I think like this is something that I think starts from you as the community, like as someone who is managing that community. So for me, a big part of it is gratitude. So when someone does something amazing, I say, thank you, like that was awesome. And I believe it, I'm like, oh my gosh, this person started with one question like one month ago and now they're leading a workshop. And I think being grateful for what people put in and acknowledging that is a big part of it for me. So that's been a tool that I've used in terms of, we ran a meetup, I thank every single person, I tell them what they did that I really appreciated. That's a big part of the kindness. And I think this other point about cultural differences is also important to take into consideration. I've worked across cultures, I think specifically with the Carpentries and they're just different norms for how people interact and just being aware of those norms and laying them out in the open is really good. For example, I think like, I'm trying to think of something like maybe Americans are a little bit more blunt with their feedback in some way than like East Asian cultures. And as someone who identifies with both, thinking about sort of the distinction there is important. And yeah, so two ideas on that. Awesome. Another question is how do you step back? How to step back when you are ready? Do you have any advice on that? Yeah, stepping back. I think this is something that I've been working through myself recently. I think a big part of it is trusting other people. You know, like I think there is part of me that's like, oh, I could do this like really efficiently and really well, I know what to do. But keeping in mind that you being there sometimes is preventing other people from having a chance to grow. So thinking about how you can coach and lead people to a way where they can become big players and important contributors in your community.  And I think for those of us who are really good at putting together communities, it's something that we don't wanna step back, you know, like we wanna keep working on it. But for me, sometimes it's like another thing has come up and I realized there's just no way I could do like everything at once. So I have to, you know, move back and off board myself. And like on the flip side, like people get to learn new things and they get to become leaders and it becomes their project, which is exciting. So. Fabulous.


It's time to consider the sensation coming from the face. So focusing on facial sensation, I brought my friend along here, and these green branches of the trigeminal nerve are going to give you an idea of the extent and the magnitude and the importance of the trigeminal nerve. So the trigeminal nerve has three branches from the vertex here. We have branches all the way down to the orbit, in the middle of the orbit, and we call that the ophthalmic division. Then below that there is the maxillary division, which includes the innervation of the teeth and the gums. And below that we have the mandibular division, also includes the lower jaw teeth and gums. Now if I turn this around, what you can see is there are green nerves on the posterior aspect of the skull. But these are not trigeminal. These are high cervical innervation of the back. So it's only from the vertex, and it only goes down and excludes the angle of the jaw. The ear, this is the external auditory meatus, the ear is very complicated because embryologically it formed from different regions so it's innervated partly by the trigeminal. It also has some innervation from the high cervical nerves. So the ear is not a good thing to test when you're testing sensation from the face. So now let's look at some of the internal structures that are also innervated by the trigeminal nerve. Here's a hemisection of the head, and I just want to remind you that the anterior two-thirds of the surface of the tongue and also the mucosa of your cheeks are innervated by the trigeminal.  Similarly, the menaceal mucosa is also supplied by the trigeminal nerve, as are the linings of the sinuses and most of the dura mater that covers the surface of the brain. So now we're going to quickly start with the pathway from its origin in the trigeminal ganglion. So these nerves have come in from the surface, and now sitting here in the middle cranial fossa, this cavity here, is the trigeminal ganglion. It's green and big. It's the biggest ganglion. These are the cell bodies, the primary cell bodies, coming from all those three divisions, and they are going to enter into the center of the pons, the middle of the pons. The pons recall is lying right here over the basal artery. So in the body, carrying sensation up from the spinal cord, we had two major pathways. We had one called the spinal thalamic, and we had the other called the dorsal column medial amniscus. We have that same two types of tracts coming from the trigeminal nerve, and one is going to involve a synapse in a descending or spinal nucleus, and that's going to be one route. And the other one is going to involve another nucleus, the principal or chief trigeminal nucleus. And so we have these two pathways, and the first one carries just like from the body, pain and temperature, hot and cold or warm and cold. And the other one carries vibration, two-point discrimination, like knowing if my face is being touched in two places or one when two points are placed on my skin, and also joint position. This must be jaw. That's about the only joint we have on the face. Now, light touch, just like from the body, is carried in both of these pathways. So light touch will tell you that something's working in the trigeminal, but it doesn't distinguish between these two pathways. I'm going to show you this animation which covers the entire nervous system from the tip of the spinal cord to the top of the cortex. And here we have the midbrain, the pons, the medulla, and the spinal cord. Now, pain and temperature, which we're going to go through first, comes in from the face, and it does something very strange. This first neuron, the trigeminal ganglion neuron, comes in and it descends, it descends all the way down, some people say C4, C5, to the cervical level. Then it synapses, and the second neuron crosses and forms the trigeminal thalamic tract and goes up to the thalamus and then on to the cortex. Let's animate that. You see, this is the first order neuron.  Information comes in and it descends from the middle of the pons to the top of the cord, crosses to the left side, and then goes to the left cortex via the thalamus. Now, let's look at fine touch, vibration, joint position coming from the face. It goes to a different nucleus. It comes straight in and synapses in the chief or principal nucleus right there in the middle of the pons then the second neuron crosses. It's always the second neuron that crosses and synapses on the third neuron in the thalamus in the same nucleus but different cells, the ventral posterior, and this time it's the medial part of the thalamus and then on through the internal capsule up to the cortex. Let's animate that. Information comes in, synapses, crosses, goes to the thalamus through the internal capsule to the face region of the cortex. This is only information from the face and it's out on the lateral cortex, the lateral post-central gyrus. So now we are looking at the ventral surface of the brain and the pons extends from here to here and right in the middle of the pons is the largest of all the cranial nerves, the large trigeminal nerve. So it comes in on the side of the pons on either side. You can see it better on a brainstem specimen. We're looking at the brainstem here.  And right here is the large trigeminal nerve burrowing through the pons here and here it is on the other side. So what we want to do is to follow this nerve as it comes in and makes its connections. Now we're going to trace the entrance of the trigeminal nerve that carries information for pain and temperature. So here we have in the middle of the pons the trigeminal nerve. So information coming in from the right trigeminal nerve enters into an area approximately here and then those axons descend. They're going back down through the medulla. We're still on the right side. Back down through the medulla. Down near the level of the decussation. Even down to the high cervical spinal cord. And there in these areas you will find the second neuron involved in crossing to the other side. So the decussation of this trigeminal thalamic tract occurs all the way from the middle of the pons all the way down to the high cervical spinal cord. Now we're going to consider vibration, joint position and fine discrete touch and how that enters. Similarly it comes in through the right trigeminal nerve and right here at the level where it enters there is a nucleus. The chief or principal sensory nucleus of the trigeminal. There the second neurons cross to the other side and are located close to the medial amniscus that we saw coming from the spinal cord connections. So we now have facial sensation located very close to the medial amniscus that is carrying body sensation for fine touch, joint position and vibration. Now the pathway that came up with pain and temperature is also in this area. And so we have both of these pathways converging in the middle of the pons and from there on they are called the trigeminal thalamic pathway and they run close to the body sensation pathway and they are going to head up toward the midbrain. This section is a transition between midbrain and pons and our fibers are traveling in this area here. Facial sensation for all modalities is very close to body sensation and everything has crossed so damage in this area is likely to result in the loss of pain, temperature, vibration, joint position, etc. from both the body and the face. One more level up is the midbrain. When we get to the midbrain our fibers now are right here on the surface on their way going around the midbrain and onto the thalamus. So finally we've arrived at the thalamus. So we have to be going to the left hemisphere so we are now in the left thalamus and facial sensation goes more medial than body sensation. So body sensation was in the ventral posterior lateral region and facial sensation is in the ventral posterior medial area of the thalamus. All of this is the thalamus. So we generically call these nuclei VPM for the face and VPL for the body. Label lines still exist.    So the face and larynx and pharynx in that area is all over in this most lateral part of the post-central gyrus. Let's look at the cerebral cortex and the whole brain now. We're back to our whole brain again and here is our central sulcus coming down here to the lateral fissure the post-central gyrus region here. All of this area is mostly regarded as involving the face. Don't forget that we have lips and tongue and all of these other areas but we also have facial sensation. So there's a very important take-home message about the pain and temperature pathway from the face. If you have a low lesion of the brainstem or a high lesion of the spinal cord and you see loss of facial sensation for pain and temperature that doesn't mean that the lesion is in the pons. It could be at any one of these levels and if all the sensation is lost from the face you know it's either the nerve or the middle of the pons farther forward or rostral anywhere from mid pons to cerebral cortex.


Hello there everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Armo, and I'm reviewing the last 19 days of results for an advanced risk. If you risk a minimum of $1,500 of trade, some were slightly less, some were a little more, but 1,500 is a conservative risk. So if you had risked that in the trading room with my calls, you would have made $41,565. If you'd like more information, you can email me at Melissa at the stockswush.com or call me at 929-3200-GAAP. So the best gap for the last month and a half without a question of a doubt was cake. And the reason I'm pointing this out is because it had huge amounts of institutional selling, which is why it was a big trade the day of the gap. It had earnings and also it has followed through. It has continued. It has held. It has held the weakness. Unless something drastic changes in this chart, cake looks lower to me. And so that is the beauty of my system or the genius, I should say, is that it predicts institutional selling and buying, and that's how you make money. Whether you do it as a day trade, whether you do as a swing trade, or whether you do as an opt-in trade. I mean, I'm showing this all the way back here for several years, but I'm making the point. This is going back eight plus years to show you the transition of cake and how it rallied and how it was in an uptrend and how it all looked great and it collapsed. I mean, it literally collapsed on the day of the earnings there back a few weeks ago. So July was a good month. Okay. Off the beginning of the month, this wasn't even a whole month period. It was only 19 days. Pet was good. Spy was rough. The first one was a loss. Second one was a winner. LB was a nice short. WFC, which was Wells Fargo. Another good one. Off in the 16th. Netflix was a tough.  Two shots at that just couldn't get it going. MS worked. UAL worked. eBay. Amazing. Amazing gap in eBay. Really nice short.  G was a winner. Off in the 23rd. Spy was a winner. General Motors was a winner. Facebook was rough, but it worked out in the end. Twitter was a very good gap. 30th off, LL was a winner on the last day of July and then started out the month with cake. I mean, cake. I had 100% conviction in cake and we went over in the room over and over. And people just, I don't know. A lot of people in the room didn't see it as well as I did. I was so clear on that. Trip was another one. 100% conviction. Loved it. Trip was a good gap. SYMC winner. Off for a few days. DPX was Dropbox. That worked good the first day on Friday, but the second day of money was even better. Didn't even watch it on Monday. Forgot about it, but that followed through. Q's was along on the Tuesday and actually, you know, that was Monday and Tuesday. Today's Tuesday.  So all in all, 41,565 for 19 days results. That's really good. Some people don't even make 40 grand in an entire year. They work the whole year to make it, let alone a month and a half or 19 days of work. And these trains, many of them were within minutes. OK, somewhere a little bit longer. The Q's took slightly longer today. Took into lunch. OK, took into a little bit afternoon. But the point is that many of these trades, first of all, all these trades happened in one day. OK, secondly, all of them were quick in and quick out, meaning you weren't in them from 9.30 to 4. All right. Either you got in and out in several minutes between 9.30 and 10, or you had to hold it a little bit longer, like today into lunch. And to have to hold a trade for an hour is really honestly not the end of the world. So you are looking to do this if you want a day trade to do something that does not require eight to 10 hours of work per day. It does not require a 40 hour work week. There's so much money in the market. It's about getting the specifications and about the focus and about doing it with that focus and actually acquiring the knowledge and the skill, which I have, which you would learn from in the class and then applying it in order to proceed to make money in the market. So if you want to learn what I know, I teach my method in the Golden Gap course. It's a two day class, the 18th and 19th costs of the class is 54.9. You can be anywhere in the world and take it. It's nine to five full on Saturday and Sunday with an hour break for lunch. Class is online and I'm doing the trends class on Monday. So you get a discount if you do and pay for both at the same time. It's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, 59.99. That class is online, too. You do it all at once. You learn how to do the long term trends, which is in the trends. And then the Golden Gap is a 26 points in all the entries for the day trades. So if you'd like more information, feel free to reach out to me. It has been really a very strong, strong year looking to close this quarterly earnings season as strong as ever into the Labor Day. And we'll see what we get. If you'd like to learn and start to trade and get in this month, email me if you want to sign up for the class this weekend at Melissa at the stockswush.com.