What I've Learned in My First Days as Delta's New CEO - ED BASTEN

For more than 15 years, Delta Air Lines has been my second home, and its people have been my extended family. So when I was named incoming CEO in February, I knew how I wanted to spend the first few months on the job: Connecting with my Delta family across the globe and hearing firsthand their advice, their questions, their worries and their hopes for the future.

 Now that I’ve been officially in the role for about a month, here's what I'd tell anyone starting a new job or getting promoted.

The experience will be both exhilarating and humbling. I've gotten great advice from experienced Delta veterans on how to maintain our profitability as we continue to grow as a global company. Younger employees have shown me their infectious enthusiasm and they have taught me a lot about how to reach out to the next generation of travelers and earn their loyalty. And the countless suggestions and examples I have heard on how we can do things better have shown me firsthand that the spirit of innovation is alive and well at Delta.

Get out of the office. Visiting old friends and making new ones among our flight attendants, pilots, engineers, maintenance technicians, customer service agents and others reminded me of why I’ve always been enthralled by Delta. It’s because the deep culture here that puts employees at the center of the enterprise. Our culture is what makes us unique, and it’s the most powerful advantage we have over our competitors.

Respect the culture. CEOs always talk about their company's culture. But it is especially critical at a global airline like Delta, where the performance of our people is the chief factor ensuring a smooth operation and making sure our customers receive the experience they deserve.

Just consider that on every flight, a small team of Delta pilots and flight attendants operates a $100 million asset. They ensure the safety and comfort of more than 100 people. And at 35,000 feet, they do it with virtually no oversight from management. The performance of that flight crew and those on the ground supporting them can impact multiple other flights, because every delay slows other flights later in the day in a "ripple effect" than can snarl operations nationwide, leaving customers frustrated and unhappy.

The level of trust that we must have with our people to make everything work on nearly 5,000 flights every day is unprecedented.

Recognize — and reward — your team. When I'm asked how Delta achieved the status of the most reliable of the major airlines, and one routinely recognized for great customer service, I always point to the performance of our people and the culture that underlies it. During the difficult years after 9-11, it was the employee-focused culture that kept Delta alive, even after many had written us off. Our employees literally saved the airline, and they are similarly responsible for Delta's success today.

But keeping a values-based culture vibrant and alive isn't easy. It takes a relentless focus and commitment, and it has to be more than just lip service. That's why we have invested heavily in our people, and they know they will share in the company's success.

One of the first things I did after being named incoming CEO was celebrate Profit Sharing Day, when we paid out $1.5 billion to our employees — the equivalent to 21 percent of their annual pay. It was the largest single profit-sharing payout in the history of U.S. business. Just a few months before we had given 14.5 percent raises across the board.

Even more importantly, our people are empowered to take ownership of what they do, to innovate and find solutions to the problems that confront them on a daily basis. They know that if they are trying to take care of our customers, Delta will back them up. That is a powerful tool to get people engaged in what they do and can turn them into passionate ambassadors for the company.

All the time I have spent with Delta people has both energized and humbled me as I step into this leadership role. It makes me confident that we have only begun in our quest to become the No. 1 airline for our customers, employees and investors. I plan to continue keeping the pulse of Delta people in the months and years to come. Because with all the responsibilities that come with being CEO, acting as the steward of our shared culture is by far the most important.

Written by


Ed Bastian
Chief Executive Officer at Delta Air Lines

Study shows that One Person’s Cancer Can Be Fought Using Someone Else’s Immune Cells,

In new research, scientists use a 'borrowed' immune system to help an existing immune system 'see' cancer cells for the first time.
For the first time, scientists have shown that even if a patient’s own immune cells are incapable of recognising and attacking tumours, someone else’s immune cells might be able to.

In a new study, scientists have shown that by inserting certain components of healthy donor immune cells (or T cells) into the malfunctioning immune cells of a cancer patient, they can ‘teach’ these cells how to recognise cancer cells and attack them.

“In a way, our findings show that the immune response in cancer patients can be strengthened; there is more on the cancer cells that makes them foreign that we can exploit,” says one of the team, Ton Schumacher from the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

“One way we consider doing this is finding the right donor T cells to match these neo-antigens,” he says. “The receptor that is used by these donor T-cells can then be used to genetically modify the patient’s own T cells so these will be able to detect the cancer cells.”

It’s now abundantly clear that existing treatments that try to kill off cancer cells by pumping the body full of harmful chemicals (aka chemotherapy) or incredibly hot bursts of laser light (radiation therapy) are woefully inadequate, so scientists around the world have been looking to something called immunotherapy as the next big hope.

Rather than using lasers or chemicals to attack cancer cells (and also healthy cells nearby), immunotherapy is based on the idea that certain treatments could bolster a patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer on its own.

Ideally, when a patient gets sick, their own T cells – or white blood cells – are responsible for detecting foreign or abnormal cells, and once they’ve locked onto their target, they bind with them and signal to the the rest of the immune system that they need to be attacked.

But when it comes to cancer, T cells can fail for two main reasons: either certain ‘barriers’ are in place that interfere with their ability to target and bind cancer cells, or they simply don’t recognise the cancer cells as something they need to take note of and destroy in the first place.

Scientists have recently seen some really promising results in a trial where defective T cells were extracted from the blood of leukaemia patients, reprogrammed to target the specific type of cancer, and inserted back into the body to more effectively fight the disease.

“In one trial, 94 percent of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia saw their symptoms disappear entirely,” Fiona MacDonald reported for us back in February. “For patients with other types of blood cancer, response rates have been above 80 percent, and more than half have experienced complete remission.”

Another way to address a malfunctioning immune system is by using a healthy immune system to kick it back into gear. In this most recent study, a team from the Netherlands Cancer Institute and the University of Oslo extracted T cells from healthy donors, and inserted mutated DNA from a patient’s cancer cells into them.

They identified the correct DNA sequences by mapping certain protein fragments called neo-antigens on the surface of cancer cells from three patients at the Oslo University Hospital.

In all three patients, the cancer cells seemed to display a large number of different neo-antigens, but none were picked up by their own T-cells. Fortunately, they did stimulate an immune response in the healthy donor immune cells.

The team inserted active components from these donor immune cells into the immune cells of the three cancer patients, and found that this prompted their own immune cells to effectively recognise the neo-antigens on the surface of the cancer cells, and kickstart an immune response.

So basically, they’re using a ‘borrowed’ immune system to help the existing immune system ‘see’ the cancer cells for the first time.

While this is just a proof-of-concept study with only three participants, the results are promising enough that the treatment will hopefully be tested in a much wider clinical study in the future.

What we’re beginning to see more and more is the idea that cancer treatments need to be more personalised, and quite simply smarter than what’s been offered for several decades now, and addressing the things that are holding back an individual’s own immune system from doing its job just might be the answer.

If you’re not convinced, this billionaire just invested US$250 million into getting immunotherapy to the forefront of cancer research.

“Our study shows that the principle of outsourcing cancer immunity to a donor is sound. However, more work needs to be done before patients can benefit from this discovery,” said one of the team, Johanna Olweus.

“We are currently exploring high-throughput methods to identify the neo-antigens that the T cells can ‘see’ on the cancer and isolate the responding cells. But the results showing that we can obtain cancer-specific immunity from the blood of healthy individuals are already very promising.”

IBM Is Working on a Molecule That Could Eradicate Viruses

IBM has created a macromolecule that prevents specific viral infections, like zika and ebola, and stops them from spreading. The team asserts that, one day, they hope this work can up used as a baseline for defeating disease wholesale.
Part of the difficulty in tackling viruses like Ebola and Zika is that they’re all so different, and each one can regularly mutate to create different strains within the same virus.

To address this, scientists have been busy looking at common characteristics of viruses that could be used to develop an all-powerful vaccine capable of fighting off any infection, and researchers over at IBM say they’re getting close.

It’s exciting stuff: A macromolecule – a giant molecule made up of smaller units – has now been developed that could have the potential to block multiple types of viruses, despite the many variations involved. It’s still early days yet, but the results could lead to drugs that aren’t tricked by mutating virus strains.

The scientists, from tech giant IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore, ignored the RNA and DNA of the viruses they used for testing – these would traditionally be the areas to target, as they give the viruses their characteristics, but they also tend to vary from virus to virus and mutation to mutation.

Instead the team looked at glycoproteins–large molecules attached to the outside of all viruses and capable of latching onto cells in the body, which is the process that actually makes us sick. The macromolecule that’s now been developed attracts viruses and then hitches a ride on these glycoproteins, neutralising their acidity levels and making them less able to replicate in the process.

The macromolecule has another method of attack too – a sugar called mannose, which attaches itself to healthy immune cells and draws them closer to the virus, speeding up the fight against the infection.

Based on the tests already carried out by the team on viruses such as Ebola and dengue, the macromolecule works as intended. It binds itself to the glycoproteins, disabling viral ability to infect healthy cells, while the mannose was also found to be effective in stopping viruses from infecting immune cells.

In the short term, the researchers think the macromolecules could be used in antiviral wipes or detergents, Gizmag’s Chris Wood reports. With further study, we could see vaccinations that are capable of protecting us against a whole range of viruses.

“It’s almost a daunting task to design any kind of therapeutic for a virus,” lead researcher James Hedrick of IBM Research explained to Samantha Olson at Medical Daily. “[The glycoprotein is] kind of like honey. It’s kind of sticky. We can now competitively go after this cell faster than the virus can go after your immune cell. And once we block those receptors, we prevent infection.”

The group’s findings have been published in the journal Macromolecules.

“Viral diseases continue to be one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Yi Yan Yang, a group leader at IBN. “We have created an anti-viral macromolecule that can tackle viruses by blocking the virus from infecting the cells, regardless of mutations. It is not toxic to healthy cells and is safe for use. This promising research advance represents years of hard work and collaboration with a global community of researchers.”

Physicists Just Discovered a New Form of Light

A new form of light, one where the angular momentum of each photon takes only half of the value of Planck’s constant, has just been uncovered.
LET THERE BE LIGHT

It’s easy to take light for granted and assume that we know everything there is to know about it—after all, it’s everywhere. But as it turns out, we might have only scratched the surface.

Today, physicists announced that they have discovered a new form of light. It’s completely different from our existing rules regarding light and angular momentum, showing that light can take on new and unexpected forms, and these could fundamentally change our current understanding of electromagnetic radiation.

The TCD press release explains how angular momentum operated in relation to light:

“A beam of light is characterised by its colour or wavelength and a less familiar quantity known as angular momentum. Angular momentum measures how much something is rotating. For a beam of light, although travelling in a straight line, it can also be rotating around its own axis. So when light from the mirror hits your eye in the morning, every photon twists your eye a little, one way or another.”

Until today, it was presumed that light, regardless of form, would have a whole number for angular momentum (a constant quantity that measures how much light is rotating). It was thought that the value would always be a multiple of Planck’s constant (the physical constant that sets the scale of quantum effects).

However, researchers from Trinity College Dublin are claiming to have demonstrated that a new form of light exists—one where the angular momentum is just half of this constant value.

Their research has been published in the journal, Science Advances.

THEORETICAL PHYSICS

But what does this all mean? “The topic of light has always been one of interest to physicists, while also being documented as one of the areas of physics that is best understood,” adds one of the researchers, Stefano Sanvito. “This discovery is a breakthrough for the world of physics and science alike.”

Apart from completely changing our understanding of light, this new information could ultimately help improve speed and security for current technology, such as fiber-optic cables. Quite simply, it means, if this new form of light can further be developed, it will lead to safer and faster internet connections.

That said, it’s important to note that we still have a long way to go before we get the full benefits of this groundbreaking new discovery. A separate team of researchers will be needed to replicate the work originally done and ensure that the results from the TCD team wasn’t just a one-off (like an artefact).

ABA ETHNIC RIOTS 5th MAY 2016

—What would have been a major ethnic clash was averted yesterday in Aba, Abia State following protests over alleged killings of two Igbo butchers at the Waterside abattoir by soldiers.

Vanguard gathered that penultimate week, an unnamed soldier in mufti, reportedly went to the abattoir to smoke Indian hemp after which he refused to pay, claiming he was a soldier.

The situation led to a fracas with some boys in the area, who insisted he must pay, without knowing that the man was a soldier.

The said soldier reportedly came to the abattoir yesterday with four of his colleagues in a Hilux patrol van and started shooting indiscriminately.

There was commotion in the area as butchers and those who came to buy meat scampered to safety and when the shooting died down, a pig rearer, identified as Ojukwu, was found dead.

It was gathered that when some of the butchers, who saw what happened, sought to know from the soldiers what led to their action, that the trigger happy soldiers shot and killed another butcher.

The soldiers reportedly beat four others to pulp and forced them into their van and drove off to an unknown destination.

Their action angered the butchers as they were joined by other people in a protest that spread to all parts of the city.

Attempt by the protesters to dump one the dead bodies they took round the town in a wheel barrow at one of the military posts in the city was aborted by soldiers in full battle gear at the Ogbor Hill waterside bridge.

The protest which began at about 12.00noon later took an ethnic colouration, as the protesters marched towards the Mosque and the Hausa settlement on Hospital Road, but were quickly dispersed by soldiers who kept watch over the places.

As at the time of filing this report, some Hausas in the city had to take refuge at the Aba Police Area command.

When contacted, Commanding Officer, 14 Brigade, Ohafia, Brigadier General Lawrence Fejokwu, said investigations are ongoing to unravel the cause of the incident.

E

BAD HABITS YOU MUST BREAK TO BE MORE PRODUCTIVE

THE CANNABIS ORDEAL. as told by my Friend

+Don't Let a Bully Boss Affect Your Mental Health+

 

+Don't Let a Bully Boss Affect Your Mental Health+

How can I use emotional intelligence or Mindsight to manage a bully boss?

That’s what a Brainpower webinar participant asked me and my friend and colleague Dan Siegel during a recent webcast. I’d like to expand on the brief response I gave during the webinar.