Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. Today we're gonna do the Try a Chapter tag video. Is that a tag? I don't know. We're gonna try a chapter vlog reading vlog. This is bad already. So uh, so uh, in this video I'm gonna try the first chapter of three different books and whichever chapter I enjoy most of the first chapters we're gonna read that book together. I'm really excited but I am also very sceptic is the right word because I lasted this about a year ago and I thought like I'd read a great first chapter and I hated the book. It was, it was the silent patient which was like one of the most popular thrillers and I'm one of the only people who hated it. I really didn't like it. So we're hoping that this is gonna be more successful and I'm not gonna give whatever book I read two stars. Wishful thinking.  Are you dream a lot in your sleep? No, not really. So I have picked out three 2021 new releases that I really want to get to. So we have got Fire Keeper's Daughter by Angeline Booley. This is like a kind of like mystery thriller about drug related deaths in the indigenous community I believe. I know it's very hard hitting, very emotional and yeah I've just heard really great things. One that I haven't heard great releases for but I'm really excited for and I'm really upset I haven't read it yet is A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel. This is like something to do with the race to the moon, like the space race. I could be making that up. I think it's about this family of women who are like trying to stop the Russians getting things from the Germans in the 1940s. I don't really know. I've heard this a bit strange, a bit weird but I really want to get to it. It's like one of the 2021 new releases I was most excited for. So we're gonna give this first chapter a go and then I have also got Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas. This is the kind of like not sequel to The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas but we're following Maverick which is the dad of the protagonist from The Hate U Give. So we're following him when he was a teenager, dealing drugs, finding out he's gonna be a teen dad, yada yada. So we've got like a contemporary, we've got a historical sci-fi I think and then we've got like a contemporary thriller thing. I think it's like contemporary plus thriller this one. So we've got three different kind of books. They're all, I think these are pretty much like some of my most anticipated 2021 releases. So they're all books I'm really excited for. I tried to pick three where I've got like similar levels of anticipation for all three. So excited. So that is not gonna cloud my judgment. Like I'm equally excited for all of these three. We're just gonna judge it on the first chapter. So I think I am gonna read the first chapter of Fire Keeper's Daughter first and I'll say what I think after a minute. Okay let's go.  Okay so first chapter of this, I really enjoyed the writing in it. I feel like the writing style is just very easy to read. So basically not much happened, obviously it's only a chapter. But the first chapter was very much like examining the tension and like the difficulty I think she feels, the main character feels between her indigenous side of the family and her non-indigenous side of the family. I believe her mum's side of the family are French or something and that's who she lives with and so it was kind of like examining yeah like how the indigenous side of her is in conflict with that and like the difficult time that her family has had over the past couple months and how she is like postponing going away to university for that. I found it very readable. I was very engrossed in it. I really enjoyed the writing but at the same time there wasn't anything in that first chapter that like has me like oh I have to read on. Do you know what I mean? Like nothing big happened. Push me up against the wall, give me a kiss then I might get excited. Possibility, we may go with this one. I think I'm gonna go downstairs and I'm gonna read the first chapter of the history of what comes next. Next. So basically this isn't really like necessarily a first chapter it's an introduction so we we're hearing from the perspective of who I believe is the grandmother actually no let me not let me not doubt myself who was who was the grandmother of our protagonist that we're gonna follow throughout the rest of the book. Basically detailing how there are these generations of women mothers and daughters who are numbered so the grandmother was part of the 97 with her mom and then part of the 98 with her daughter. They are like scientists who are into science and they like affect really well known moments in history so it's like intimated that they affected elections or wars and stuff through the science and they're like secretive whatever and she details how there's these pairs and they can never be through for long so her mom killed herself. The grandmother's mom killed herself after the grandmother had her daughter and she's detailing how her the grandmother's daughter has now had the protagonist. They're on this boat escaping Germany going to America and the grandmother's husband finds her diary and she's like well let me drive a penderous brain. What? I was just like huh? Very matter of fact that I know and I was like did I did I just read what I thought I read? And then because there can never be three for long this isn't a spoiler because it's literally the introduction. The introduction says a bag of silverware tied around the ankle should be good enough. I think I will wear the blue dress. Amit will like that. It was always his favorite. So here's the thing this is why I was talking about the other book. The other book didn't have anything major happening in the chapter one. This I'm gagged. I'm gagged on page five like excuse me like what? So I'm very intrigued by this but at the same time I preferred the writing in Fire Keeper's Daughter. Some of the writing in this I wasn't like 100 vibing with but I do know that I like Sylvain Nouvelle's writing. I've read like a four star and a five star from him so I do have a very good success rate with Sylvain Nouvelle. So I don't know you guys. I really don't know what to choose. Look I'm like indecisive already. I don't know what to go for. Okay I'm gonna go read the first chapter of Concrete Rose our last book and then I'll come back to you with a decision. So I just finished the the first chapter of this and I gotta be honest like it didn't really pull me in. Oh my god. And I don't really know why because I loved both of Angie Thomas's other books so I'm just a bit confused. So basically in this Maverick is basically going to find out whether he's a dad. I just was a bit bored like throughout the beginning and I've never had that with Angie Thomas's book so I don't really know what's going on there because this is like one of my most anticipated releases. I'm not going to pick this. I think I'm feeling most drawn to a history of what comes next after that intro and that is actually the one that I thought I least want to read like out of the first chapters. I thought Concrete Rose would be the one I'd most want to read so that shows you how different it can actually be because I thought I would pick this but I'm not. Like I was really bored. I don't know. Maybe I've read the other two via audiobook so maybe I need to read this physically and with the audiobook maybe I'm just used to that. I don't know. But yeah I think I'm gonna go and read some more of a history of what comes next because that was the one that drew me in the most from the first chapter. Okay that's a bit crooked. The level of unprofessionalism far too much. Okay so hey I am about 100 pages into a history of what comes next. I thought about it and I may have fucked it for myself a little bit by like by picking the book with the lowest rating out of all of these to like not have a repeat of last time where I gave the book two stars because so many people who I have similar reading taste to have given this book two stars. But always a positive thinker. Me. Yeah I think I'm quite positive. Am I? What do you guys think? I mean let me ask the audience. I'm really enjoying it. Like I'm really enjoying it. I think it may be helped by having read Sleeping Giants maybe by Sylvain Niveau. I really enjoyed that. Let's put her here. So basically we are following like I said Mia who has kind of been hired by the Americans to give them Germany's leading rocket scientist basically. Her family basically these women like I said there's this lineage of them. She's like number 100. They're aliens basically they're called the like is it the kipsu? Yes kipsu. And their motto is something like get them to the stars before evil kills them or whatever. So basically the motto is like space travel for humans. Help humans get to space before the world kills. I don't know. Something along those lines.  They're like I'm just here to fight. I really like it. It's told in this very like dispassionate disconnected way. We have no speech marks. All speech is told in like dashes. So we'll have like a section of inner narration from the protagonist. We also hear from her mum's point of view. Sarah, Sarah's point of view. So yeah you'll have this inner narration and then there'll be dashes and it won't say who it's said by. Which I think I was thinking about this. Sylvain Neville has a thing about speech because the famous files with other series that I was talking about is told completely through interviews. So it completely avoids this kind of inner narration. And then this one is mostly that and not a lot of speech. And I think it's very interesting for an author to explore those two things like in opposition to one another. So yeah I'm really enjoying a dispassionate tone of voice. I feel like the pace is very interesting. We're having flashbacks to previous generations of the women the mothers and daughters and like the impact and the lessons that they learned that they've passed down to the generations the rules they've learned. Oh there's also a tracker who is so just like these women have this lineage there's a lineage of the tracker who is supposedly a man who is trying to kill them. The kibzu constantly talking about how the tracker is going to kill them. I've been aware of the killer since birth.  Oh the killer. And well what was she doing in the stairwell because that's where the killer is. We don't really know much about that yet other than like the tracker is near at the moment. So it's very interesting it's told right at the end of the Second World War so like right as Germany is losing. I think it's a very interesting take on the end of World War 2 from this complete alternate history point of view. Yeah I'm finding like it's going well so far but I'm the anomaly. I'm really enjoying it. I'm really enjoying it.  I'm not gonna start any series the next couple months because I need to just get through the ones I've started I'm just gonna read like standalone and continue series that I've started.  I think this is the kind of book where if you don't buy into it a hundred percent from the get go you're not gonna enjoy it.  I am loving the the uniqueness of this it's such a unique story both in imagination in how much thought has gone into this like alien race idea with these women and these daughters I absolutely love the flashbacks to different pairs of women like throughout history I can't describe to you I really enjoy this you guys I can understand why everyone hates it could not be me though I would rather die well I may live to regret that I may hate the last 100 pages who knows this whole idea of this alternate history with this race to the stars I'm loving Mia as a character is super fun to be in her head and she's kind of struggling against the idea of this pre-ordained existence and you know having to just like live the life of what that her mama says she has to in the universe says she has to and not getting to choose what she wants to do and the life that she wants to lead so she's kind of rebelling against that there's sometimes I think the pacing is a bit off if I had to complain about anything I don't think it's a five star and that would be my why it's not a five star reasoning but I just think it's such a unique science maybe I just don't read enough science fiction maybe here's the thing maybe I'm too much of a newbie to science fiction and so I'm just like oh my god it's great and people who have read more science fiction are like with mystery I can feel myself becoming pickier with what I want because I read more and more of it and I barely ever read sci-fi so that could be a reason but I love the combination of futuristic sci-fi with being in the past like that's so cool to me I cannot tell you where it's gonna go I am so excited I'm gonna go finish it and hopefully I'm still gonna love it at the end who knows I I feel like I will I feel like I'm gonna be the outlier here wrong with me if you're really enjoying a book but I really liked it I had so much fun reading it the reason I think I like Sylvain Nevelle's sci-fi so much is that it makes me feel clever I think a lot of sci-fi leaves me feeling dumb but Sylvain Nevelle does this thing where like I know that I don't understand a lot of what he's talking about and like the reasons behind it and it's like very advanced science but he says it in a way that has me going I'm a genius like I feel like I'm learning a lot whilst reading his stuff I feel like I'm discovering stuff I feel like I'm finding out new things that's probably my favorite thing about reading his books I can understand how people don't get into it because of the way it's told we don't have any like descriptors of the way people speak it's literally just lines like a script and it doesn't have people's name next to it so you're constantly having to like remember who's saying what but I still really loved it I thought it was such an imaginative way to tell a story at the end there's this really interesting authors note where he goes into the history of everything and his research and I didn't realize until that authors note how much of what is in this book actually happened and Mia is just plonked into it and like takes the credit over it so I thought it was so fun how so much of what happened actually happened and so you can really start to believe this idea of this girl who had to hide herself in history being the hidden force amongst all of that so that just added this element of like oh it's true isn't it it's true to me even though I know it's not true um I loved the idea of the kibzu this lineage of mothers and daughters who are really strong but have had to make sacrifices throughout history the idea of that going throughout history and the effect I just loved it I think it's such a cool idea um I'm giving it four stars it's only about 300 pages so it's not too long at all so I would really recommend it and here's the thing as well I know this is a series and I was like kind of like oh fuck I'm starting another series but I think this is the perfect kind of book where it can be read as a standalone if you want it to the way it ends you're like I could be satisfied not picking the sequel up I want to of course I'm excited for the sequel but it ends in a way where you're like well that's a nice closure to the story as well so I liked that as well I do I do think I prefer books that end with a bit of closure rather than like a really over the top cliff hanger to get you to pick the next book up like I feel like I should want to do that without an over top cliff hanger that means that the book can't stand on its own I think I like books in series to stand on their own and to be like separable so yeah I loved it I would recommend you read a history of what comes next everyone else gives it two stars I am the anomaly here but I really enjoyed it I really liked it I think it's fun sci-fi I think it's easy to read yet still pushing yourself if you're not like an avid sci-fi reader because I'm not I hope you enjoyed this video it was much more successful than last time I did try a chapter tag and we were against the odd tier with this book being universally like not like yeah I hope you enjoyed the video if you've gotten to the end comment a spacey emoji and I'll see you very soon in another video bye


Hi everyone! A big welcome back to my channel. So today we're going to be talking about a few books that I am really, really excited to read this October. I don't usually do monthly TBR videos but every now and again I get really excited about planning out my reads for a month, especially if the month has a theme. October, for those of you who don't know, is Victoria here on Booktube where people read all things Victorian lit. I will leave all relevant links to Victoria things down below. And it is of course also spooky season and for whatever reason I am feeling massively in the mood to embrace darker, spookier, more psychological reads this year. So I've put together a TBR. I'm very excited about the whole thing. Let's get into the books. First up we have Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. This is my Victoria pick. It was written in the 1850s, set in an English country town. This one tells a story of two middle-aged spinster sisters who are living in reduced circumstances. It explores rural community life and female friendships and I believe there is tragedy and death thrown in there as well. So there are many different prompts and fun things you can do to partake in Victoria. I'm taking quite a casual approach to the whole thing and just reading a Victorian novel and feeling like I'm joining in. Elizabeth Gaskell is one of my favourite Victorian writers. She is just one of my favourite classic writers. I fell in love with her when I read North and South last year. I am now wanting to read all of her work. This is one of her shorter works I believe is told through a series of little vignettes. I just love Elizabeth Gaskell's rural settings. I love her social and political discourse. I love all of her characters. I'm especially excited about the two female characters in here and exploring their relationship. I'm sure this is going to be fab. Next up we have Lily, A Tale of Revenge by Rose Tremaine. This is a new release coming out on the 11th of November. I was very kindly sent this proof copy by the publisher. So this is the first of my darker more Halloweeny reads and it's actually also set in 1850s England, I just realised. So set in Victorian London, this one tells the story of a young woman named Lily who when she was a baby was saved by a police officer. As a child she was sent to a hospital to be punished for her rebellious spirit and when she is finally released into the harsh world of Victorian London the police officer is still watching over her and Lily is harboring a terrible secret. I just adore Rose Tremaine. I was so excited when I heard that she was releasing this new book and this just sounds lush. I am so intrigued by this whole thing. I love me a dark, gritty historical novel, especially when they are set in Victorian London, especially when they focus on morally gray female characters. I will be reading this one super soon. Next up on my TBR we have House of Hollow by Crystal Sutherland. So this is a horror YA novel. Not the kind of thing I typically read by any stretch but for some reason this one has got me. I believe it tells a story of a 17 year old Iris and her two older sisters. Something happened to them all when they were younger. They all bear the same half moon scar at the base of their throats. Then Iris's elder sister goes missing. Strange things start to happen and Iris is sent on a dark and dangerous journey to figure out what has happened. So this may be the first straight up horror novel I have ever read and I'm very excited about this. I'm super intrigued. I'm here for the spooky vibes. I'm hoping for twists and turns and genuine surprises. I just think this is going to be really fun. I'm really hoping that I do enjoy it and also isn't this cover just stunning. Next up we have The Push by Ashley Audrain. This is described as a dark page turning literary novel. I believe it came out earlier this year. Basically all I know about this one is that it tells a story of a new mother who becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter. I believe it explores sanity and insanity, fear, and believability. So this book has been doing the rounds a little bit. I've been seeing quite a few people reading it and really liking it. I love novels that explore motherhood so this had me instantly. And I'm just really hooked by this idea of a super unreliable narrator. I believe you don't really know what is real and what isn't real throughout the whole book up until like the last moment. I'm hoping for really good things in here and addictive ride but also some really interesting insights we will see. And last up on my October TBR is Stun With Love Poems and Fragments by Sappho. So this is a bit of a random one, a bit of a wild card. This is a small collection of the surviving texts from Sappho from around 150 years after Homer's Iliad. This is lyrical poetry exploring themes of desire and remembrance and spite and celebration. So I adore poetry and I am wanting to broaden my poetry reading horizons specifically in terms of time period. This is one that we've had on our shelves for a little while. I actually bought it for Cameron I think because he loves reading Greek literature. And yeah, I just thought I would give this one a go really. I have read odd bits of Sappho's work in the past but I'd really like to read more. Excited to experience this one for myself and see how I feel about it. So there we go, those are a few books that I really really want to read this October. I am so excited for all of them. Please let me know if you've read any of these books, did you like them? Do you think I'll like them? Also definitely let me know what you're planning to read this month. Are you planning on reading any Victorian literature or anything for the spooky season? Let me know all of your reading plans down below. I would absolutely love to know. Thank you in advance to anyone who does say hello. It does make my day. I hope you're all doing really, really well. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you soon in my next one. Bye.


Anointed weapons people, I've been asked numerous times to showcase what I have and today that's exactly what I bring you. How's it going guys? My name is DP Jen, I'd like to thank you for stopping by and checking out the video. If you do enjoy it, leaving a like really helps out and if you're new around here and want to see more Borderlands 3 videos, be sure to subscribe. Also guys, I am giving away copies of Borderlands 3. To win one for yourself or a friend, simply make sure you are subbed and have notifications turned on. Drop a like on the video, leave a comment down below. Okay, so we have reirs, we have epics, we have legendaries and then we have those anointed versions of said legendaries, the ultimate end game weapon in my opinion. Getting that perfect weapon specially made for your character, I mean what else can you ask for? And today guys, I showcase all of what I've accumulated so far since playing Borderlands. Now only do you have a Zayn, I mean I've got an Amora, I've got a Flak but the end level 50 is yet so I can't really be using these weapons showcasing to you how effective they are on those characters. Like I said I've only got a show of love to Zayn, Zayn don't get much love in the Borderlands community so I'm a Zayn main 100% but yeah guys today I showcase what I've accumulated since the game has been released and I've got some pretty badass weapons for all kinds of character classes. So let's check them out and firstly people, we're going to check out this one right here, Nuclear, the Dictator. This is anointed for Beastmaster who is Flak and as we can see what it does, minus 20% weapon damage consumes 2 MO per shot, well fade away is active, gain increased accuracy and handling. Now the weapon itself looks pretty amazing, I mean look at that, that is one beautiful weapon it's actually really unique as well in the way it shoots, let me put you on, there you are right there I've actually got the bipod on which just makes it where you aim down sights, super accurate and powerful but you can't move quickly, this is the quickest you can move you can't, well can you jump, no you can't even jump it either, but you can see the way it shoots, it spreads that fire and it burns through that ammo people. Now if we take the bipod off, switch to a rifle and we can see, I don't think it shoots as many bullets while in that rifle form, it's a much more weapon and for you Beastmasters out there, this would do you good, okay so next up people we have the nuclear phaser and this is anointed for the operative who is Zane, while Sentinel is active fire rate is increased by 9% and reload speed by 23%. Now the weapon itself, it's not the best weapon in the game, it's okay and we can see it looks pretty cool though, look at that, I mean it does look pretty cool and it shoots quite quick anyway, super unique as well as the way it shoots. Now the right skill tree, the right setup, I think this could be absolutely monstrous, I really do what like I said, don't expect anything amazing for Zane, damage output wise unless someone finds that perfect build like I said, well I am working on it because I've recently just reset my skill points, so I've got nothing built into nobody so I can't even showcase to you guys how effective this weapon is once you do activate that Sentinel, but hey ho here we go, it's still a decent weapon for you Zanes out there and it's just one to my collection of a Zane anointed weapons. Next up we have the oozing vigorous, Rosen's thorns, now this again absolutely, it's a badass weapon when it ain't anointed, by the way guys, the expensive you guys want anointed is, if you can look at the top of the actual stats of the weapon, you can see the little Borderlands logo, when you got them it's normally anointed to a individual character, this one isn't though, as you can see an action skill end, projectile speeds increased by 100% for a short time, this is an amazing weapon not being anointed, I mean I've covered this before and it looks incredible too, I mean just look at this, look at the way it shoots as well, it does, it deals so much power and I've seen a few of them flak builds where they're using pistols and it's so OP, it's so OP but you can't do that with Zane, but either way this is one for you guys, it's an amazing weapon and I mean with the benefits of being anointed, it's going to be even better. Next up people we have the Vulcius Alliuda, this is anointed to the operative which is Zane, while Sentinel is active gain 50% of damage as bonus cryo damage, now you know guys, this is an absolute beast of a weapon and because it's anointed to my character, I am going to try and build a class for a maximum damage output, also looking to increase that magazine size, as it only comes standard for a magazine size of 10, I mean I've got, I think I've got a class mod which increases this, let's have a look, what was that class mod, it is an artifact so a plus 40% magazine size, so that gives me an extra three bullets, it's normally at 10 and it shoots ridiculously quickly, I mean I've seen flak builds with this weapon not anointed to him and I mean it's just the way it kills Grave Ward on that mayhem freeze on another level people, that's what I want, that's what I plan to do, that's what I plan to bring you guys for Zane, we need a build like that for us Zane players out there and you'll see the way it shoots, I mean it just burns through its bullets so quickly, so you need increased magazine size, I've seen somebody's dropped with 22 in the mag or 20 in the mag, but it don't have the damage output this one does, this one is a 92, like I said Zane and I think actually got this, actually my friend got this for completing all of Zero's Kill Assassin missions I believe, he was sent this VR Zero within his social mail and he was looking, well actually he wasn't looking enough because he plays as a mouse, so he give it to me because I play Zane so yeah, I'm lucky enough he did them all, great, okay so next up people we have the compressing storm, this is anointed for the goner who is Moles, after exiting I am Bear, Kill's increased I am Bear's cooldown rate by 30%, I mean that's pretty cool, it's got a 250 plush splash damage radius too, consumes 2 ammo per shot and then 7.9 times weapon zoom, now the weapon I've actually used, I messed about with Zane, I mean obviously I can't make the mouse, I've been anointed to Moles, but it's a weird one, it isn't nowhere near my opinion the best sniper in the game, but what it does do is it charge shoots, it uses two or three shots and it kind of like hovers like some orbs that just strike down shock energy on any enemy, I mean I don't think the initial target does any damage, but there we've got three orbs that will just shock any, well four orbs there so that'll shock any target beneath it, I mean it's okay, it's that amazing I mean I wouldn't say it's a must have, I mean I find it pretty boring, I mean I like I said I can't make the mouse of it being on Zane, but it takes way too long to charge, the damage these orbs do just isn't enough, so hey ho. Next up people we have the Dock, anointed to Zane, well Digiclone is active, regenerate 12% of magazine ammo per second, 12% of this is literally not even one bullet, because it's only got four in the magazine, so you literally need to wait three seconds to generate one ammo, and when it shoots like this people, I mean what's the point of it, I mean obviously you can extend the magazine size that and the other, but hey I mean like is it really worth it, I'm not sure, it looks pretty cool though, I mean I may try it out once I've built that Zane class, I mean if you see another video on this you'll never know, okay I'm gonna do videos focused on weapons for certain builds on Zane, because I just like I said I don't feel Zane gets enough love within the community, dude I mean everybody loves that high damage output, but there's much more in my opinion you can do with Zane, and I also meant to say as well people excuse my voice I've got a blunt nose, I've got a cold it's killing me, so if I pause for a second or the video cuts it's because I'm probably sneezing or catching my breath or choking, so yeah, but yeah guys I mean I can't really judge it at the minute, I mean the projectiles actually stick and then explode, I mean if I get a big magazine size modifier I know you can with Zane with the skill trees and you can get a few artifacts and class items that increase it, but I don't think I'm going to be able to get this over 15 shots if that I'll be lucky, but hey we'll see, okay so next up we have the double penetrating Devastator, this one a 92 Zane, after swapping places with your Digiclone your weapon is reloaded, you can see it's got plus 15% weapon fire rate, plus 203 splash damage radius consumes 2 ammo per shot and a 1.5 times weapon zoom, I mean it ain't spectacular in design not going to lie, but it shoots amazing, look at that, this is another weapon like I said, I will try out when I do that perfect build, optimizing DPS, this could be one to try it out, oh yeah the duck, pretty cool, it's pretty cool, okay so next up we have the unending Magnificent, this is a 90 to all characters, unaction skill end deal 125% more weapon damage badass, named and boss enemies for short time, it's highly effective versus shields, highly effective versus flesh and it has a 127 as standard in its magazine which is just ridiculous people and it's well I've got a 177 with a 40% magazine increase artifact, but like I said with Zane skill tree you can massively increase magazine size, so I could get this to weigh over 200 and it actually shoots pretty crazy, so again this could be a great weapon to try out when I've made the most of my build, I mean it just doesn't stop firing people, what can we switch to here because it's your taser, okay I mean I'm not sure how much damage a taser's gonna do but it's a pretty cool addition, but it is all about that magazine size, oh it's taser's shock so if you could stun an enemy with that then just load into it with your solar pistol that's just amazing, I like it, I like it again will be one I try out when I make the most of my build, next up people we have Ichida Boring Gun, this is a 90 to the beast master who is flak, after using attack command gain 30% life steal for a short time, plus 26 weapon damage plus 390 splash damage radius and a 2.6 times weapon zoom, this is well it seems like an absolute monster for you beast masters out there, let's check out how this thing, oh it's one of them ones where it just shoots things along the floor, I mean I can't see this being that great against someone like Grave Ward, but yeah I mean I can't really make the most of a weapon like this because I don't have a flak build but in all honesty I'm not too sure this would be that great anyway, I mean it could be great against obviously bosses that stand up on the floor, there's plenty of them in the game, but main end game bosses like the Clip Soul Twins that do hover or actually Clip Soul Tyreen doesn't, it could be good against Tyreen, but Herb Rovey is always in the air, there Grave Ward I mean he's floating about all over the shop so yeah let's move on, next up people we have a weapon I know is very very popular indeed, it's got the speed loading hell walker and this is referred to as the Doom Shotgun, this is anointed for all characters, so my demons your time has come, plus 57% weapon damage, plus 10% critical damage, plus 35% reload speed consumes two ammo per shot, highly effective versus flesh and anointed to all characters, an action skill end, weapons status effect damage and chance increased by 75% for a short time, now check out how this thing shoots and how quick it is, like I said I don't have any speed reload perks and at the minute and any of my artifact express items or load out, my skill tree load out, but it's still, and this thing is super super powerful people as you probably heard, so yeah I actually got this given to me by a pal, didn't earn this myself but it's definitely what I'm keeping in my collection, that is for sure, I mean just look at it, it's incredible, proper Doomgun, and lastly people we have a shield anointed to no one other than Flak, after issuing an attack command gain 8% movement speed for a short time, stutter step big brother blaster, what the heck, has a 60% chance to drop a booster that restores 60% shields, a grenade and heavy ammo, minus 25% recharge delay, plus 10% movement speed while shield is depleted, so this thing makes you quicker, drops boosters that restores shields, grenade and heavy ammo, I mean what more could you ask for, shame it isn't for my character though, and guys that is it, I don't think I have anything else anointed, I mean I emptied out my vault, I'll quickly check because I was just getting full, my items were just, everything was just full up, it was ridiculous, I mean there's a few things I gotta keep but the one chomp-pomp I would love an anointed version of because that weapon is incredible, the flakker, burning flakker, itchy flakker, any flakker, I mean absolutely amazing, and that's it, I don't really know, don't have enough girls in here, but you guys that is it, those are my anointed items collection, tell me down below in that comment section what's the best anointed item you have for your character, how does it affect your character, what does it do, let me know, but on that note guys we have come to the end of the video, if you guys enjoyed it leave a like real helps out, if you're new around here and want to see more broad land tree videos be sure to subscribe, and if you never want to miss a video I upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button, but guys thanks as always for stopping by, hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next, one!


Hi everyone, Joe for Jasper's CaseBreaks.com coming at you with 21-22, Panini Court King's basketball three box, pick your team number three. Now this is part of tonight's all-spot sold promo. If we get all those spots sold, we'll be able to give away some money. And we still have the break credit randomizer within this break as well. So some of you, if we fill up those breaks, some of you may be lucky enough to get two bits of break credit. All right, so here on Thursday, the 26th. Appreciate everybody getting in. Thank you. There are the three boxes right there. All right, so there's LeBron James. There's Works in Progress, Bones Highland. Slide Tobias Harris down here. It's Demarda Rosen, Sabonis. Joshua Primo. And we got a Jalen Green. I thought that was gonna be numbered. Jalen Green, KD. And then behind Tobias Harris, there should be a relic and then an auto. The relic is Artistic Endeavors, Paul George. That's for Andrew and the Clippers. The autograph is for the Mavs. Holding Court Autograph, Wong Zee Zee for Dallas. That is for Mike and the Mavs. Mavs surviving for now, 29 out of 75 on that one. All right, second box. First steps, Scotty Barnes, nice. Heard of him, he's pretty good. Your rookie of the year, that'll be for Toronto. That's gonna go to Adam. Not sure what these inserts go for, but Scotty Barnes is pretty popular. Giannis, Donovan Mitchell, they got some Jalen Johnson, Kai Jones. And Davion Mitchell, 96 to 149. That will be for Oliver and the Kings. Behind Cole Anthony is Rookie Expression, Greg Brown. Piece of his jersey going to Portland. That'll be for Travis. And behind Cole Anthony is CJ McCollum, nice. Impressionist, Inc. He definitely made an impression on the Pelicans when he arrived, kinda turned their season around. And that'll be for Lance and the Pelicans. Final box. All right, Vince Carter, Josh Christopher, Kuzma, CP, Jonathan Kaminga, more Scotty Barnes. I think some of these rookie cards could have different levels to them, if I'm not mistaken. This one usually has a Roman numeral on the back. Is it this one? No, there's the Roman numeral on there. Not this one. Warriors, Mike with the Jonathan Kaminga. Oh yeah, does have the Roman numeral right there. I think four is the shortest printed one. Those could go for a decent amount with the right rookie. All right, oh, there's one more. Triple J to 149, Grizz. That'll be for Rick in the Grizzlies. And we got Dahunta Murray, Art Nouveau, Relic for the Spurs, Andrew. And the final autograph is Grant Hill. Nice award-winning autographs, featuring his 09, 2010 Sportsmanship Award. Sun's edition of Grant Hill, on-card auto for Daniel, and the Phoenix Suns. Not numbered, but pretty nice. All right, there you go, ladies and gentlemen. That is that. Now, let's give away some money. So if you follow the instructions here, basically by an even number of teams, half of that becomes entries. Top two, 500 bucks of break credits to jaspyscasebreaks.com, 500 bucks each. All right, let's sort by column A, right here, Adam. Two teams, that's an entry. Andrew, four teams, that's two entries. Daniel with a lot of teams, eight teams, four entries. Good luck, Daniel. Four entries. Lance with four teams, that's two entries. Mike got two, that's an entry. Oliver got two, that's an entry. Rick got two, that's an entry. Travis got five, for the purpose of the promo. Four count, two are entries. All right, so we've got Adam, Andrew, Daniel, Lance, Mike, Oliver, Rick, and Travis. All right, great. Let's gather all of your names. Fresh dice, fresh list. Top two, after 10, fingers crossed, four into six, 10 times. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and once more, right? 10th and final time, fingers crossed. After 10, it's Daniel and Rick. There you go, guys. Thanks for joining the break. Sorry, Adam, very close. Not quite, though. Daniel, Rick, $500 of break credits to jaspyscasebreaks.com. Going your way, check your emails. If you don't see it, check your spam folders and we'll see you in the next break, jaspyscasebreaks.com. Bye-bye.


So, we are halfway through the talk sessions and so in this next session we're going to be looking and unpacking the word augment or how can we use biology and synthetic biology to improve or enhance the things that already exist. So maybe before it was a little bit about making completely new things, now it's about looking at the things that we have and improving them and augmenting them with these really great tools and technologies that we have in biological engineering. And so, to do that we're going to have four speakers in this section. The first is Pat, who's going to be talking about wearable organs and then we're going to hear from Ian Lim, the director of the MIT Design Lab, who'll be talking about wearables and a really cool collaboration with Puma. And then Ritu Rahman from the Wenger Lab will come up and speak about biohybrid materials. And then finally, we'll conclude with Deepak Mishra, who will be talking about some of the really cool work that he's doing in biological circuits. He's actually my TA for a course on that subject, so it'll be cool to hear from him. All right, great. At the speaker, as an organizer, I also feel that I need to kind of contain myself, so we kind of finish and have lunch on time. I'm Pat from the Fluid Interfaces Group and I'm going to talk about the programmable bio-digital organ. And usually I begin with dinosaur, but now I'm going to begin with space exploration. So we say that space is a final frontier of humanity. We try to augment ourselves so we can go to space. And many technology that we saw in sci-fi about space have actually inspired many technology from smartphone to Google Glass, wearable and so on. And one of the most profound technology for me is the idea of cyborg. We stand for cybernetic organisms, something that we saw a lot in science fiction. But this is actually a technical concept that was proposed by Professor Manfred Klein and Nathan Klein nine years before Apollo 11 in 1970. And the idea of cyborg is to augmenting biological organ with digital and artificial part that we put on our human body. And this is actually the concept that inspired the very, very first space suit that allowed humans to go and explore space. However, one thing about cyborg that I think is really interesting is that cyborg supposed to allow us to be free so we can explore more. So instead of having this clunky machine, we should make things kind of seamless and fluidly integrate with ourselves. So that's the philosophy of our group, the Fluid Interface, where we create technology that seamlessly sense the context and not just sense but also in between at the right moment, create the condition for the body to thrive and enhance us in multiple ways. Most of the current wearable look at electrophysiological signal, EEG, heart rate and so on. This is kind of easier to sense because it's purely electrical. The work that we are presenting and exploring here are looking at the biochemical signal, the DNA, the RNA biomarkers and so on, which are really interesting and are more difficult. However, as you see in many of the presentation, this is an emerging area that we are super excited about. So the idea of programmable organ that I'm going to present today is centered around these biochemical signals. How do we sense better and also in between in the right moment? Right now, the two projects that I'm going to present is kind of not working together yet, but this is our vision for the future. So start from sensing. There's no hospital in space. If you're sick, there is a medical officer on board that will come and put this different kind of device on you to shake your body. This is the process usually done in the laboratory whether you take the saliva, urine, blood sample and so on. But instead of having this giant lab that do multiple things, what if we can put the lab on the human body and then allow the human body to have access to all kind of information that we are actually already streaming out. And what I mean by this is that in the human body, when we sweat, when we have saliva coming out, when we pee, go to the bathroom, we release chemical from our body all the time. And this chemical can reveal about the state of the human body. We are interested in saliva particularly because as we know in Boston, we don't sweat all the time. We are kind of cold in our sweater. So saliva is something that is produced constantly and also contain chemical that we also take in. So not just measuring the body information, but also the thing that you input into your body. And saliva have been used to measure depression, fatigue, health failure, all kind of biomarkers as you see the bio fluid from the blood also diffuse to saliva. And the prototype that we are working on, we call wearable lab on the body, is a on-body fluid handling device taking saliva and put it on all kind of biosensor. Right now, the device is kind of huge, but we are working on miniaturizing it.  As you already seen in many presentation, people are developing all kind of biomarkers to send different type of information. And what we create is a platform that you can integrate different kind of biomarker in the strip and the device will keep rolling them. So we have new sensor every time we want to do measurement and also be able to switch between different kind of sensor. If you want to sense hundred things, you just add it into the strip. So we kind of think of it as like, you know, iPhone for biosensor instead of having different device for different thing, why not having one device that you can integrate multiple sensor and have that, you know, be able to scale. And in the device, we have colorimetric sensor that convert the reaction that happened on the strip into digital concentration of different biomarkers. And we can also contextualize it with the accelerometer information that coming from the device. So we know if the person is speaking, drinking, chewing, and then use that to contextualize. If you see a high spike in glucose and you know that the person is eating something, then you know that it's probably from the food not from the body. And in the future, when there's a pandemic like this where we have coronavirus everywhere, having a lab on the body can help you kind of check whether you are being contaminated or not. And if our vision is successful, we should have something much smaller and more fluid, more fluidly integrated with the human body. This is the vision we are working toward. So now, augmentation, right? Not just the sensing. How do we intervene in the right moment? When we think about biochemical interventions, how scary is something you might think of like coming out of guttuga or to sci-fi. But it's actually something that you guys, all of you might already had earlier just in the break. When you take, you know, caffeine, drink coffee, take serotonin before going to sleep, or even taking medicine, these are compounds that our body cannot biologically produce. Right? We kind of have this biochemical input to the body to intervene and make our body kind of heal better or be more active. So what if we can have an organ that can be programmed to produce these kind of molecules to help us, you know, have a healthier lifestyle or augment our ability. So now we are kind of focusing more on the biosynthesis reactor. This is building on top of many exciting research on bioproduction where we are using leaving cell to produce all kinds of bioactive compounds from therapeutic molecule and so on. And many more molecules are being researched and have been engineered for the bacteria to produce. For example, one of the most exciting things is to produce, you know, a cannabinoid compound so we can get high, you know, so we can get more healthier. Yeah, actually this is from Ginkgo and Autogro have been looking into bioproduction of cannabinoid and molecule from this family. So what we are proposing is a wearable biosynthesis reactor, an on-body fluid device for programmable cellular manufacturing. But how do we control the cell to produce what we want, right? We need to communicate with the cell. One thing that we can be looking into in collaboration with Chris Roy Group is to use light as the medium because light can be something that digital can produce, also the cell can receive. So this genetic circuit allow the cell to be able to sense different wavelengths and activate different genetic pathway. Allowing us to have a switchable program, so not just programming bacteria to make one thing, you can now switch them using digital output, which is the light. And you can kind of switch out the output to produce kind of three different compounds, different molecules and so on. And to demonstrate this, we're using a circuit that engineered to produce three different proteins as the output. And when we kind of counter the circuit inside kind of light activated reactor, we can see that we have a corresponding protein when we shine different light on them, allowing us to digitally control gene expression. We still have some leakage problem because, you know, when we turn off the light, there's still some, you know, leakage or production, but that's something that we are working on to solve it. But essentially, the vision is not just to have synthetic biology, but have bio-digital interface that allow the cell to kind of, you know, be in communication with digital system. And we also, thanks to the support from FormLab, be able to collaborate and characterize different ways that we can integrate this, you know, digital control cell inside microfluidic channel that we can wear on the body. The ultimate vision is to have a device that you can wear like an apple watch that in the future can produce molecules to help you stay healthier and so on. We are more focused, more focusing on for astronaut because this is more an extreme environment. And in the long-term vision, we want to be able to have this closed-loop system where we can sense the state of the body and then actuate at the same time. Also, how do we enable this beyond astronaut in the future far, far away? We hope that, you know, instead of drinking the caffeine, you can produce the molecule on the body, so then you reduce the risk of overdosing and then having the personalized kind of chemical intervention for each person. Yeah, if you want to be more creative, maybe a little bit of, you know what, you know what could help. We really believe that human augmentation is something that we need to be think serious about, so our group also carefully about the ethics of our work who has the right to control your metabolism and how do we prevent people from thinking that, oh, a cell is just a computer, so human is just a group of cells, so we can treat human like computer. We want to get away from that and think that this is an enhancement of human expression rather than exploitation and, you know, there's a lot of things that we need to think about. However, biotech is still in the infancy mode, so we have a little bit more time to think about, but I encourage everyone to look at different ethical kind of argument and discussion around this. NSF has a nice report on nanotech and human enhancement that outline all the important questions we should think about when we think about augmentation and with that, you know, I would like to thank our amazing team and then support Professor Hedimahs and all my collaborators, David Kong, George Church for being on my thesis committee. You know, when we do biotech, we also have a huge team because it's good to fail together and also to succeed together as well. So with that, I end with a dinosaur. Thank you so much.


So, you would have already seen how to handle non-linear systems which do not have an input. Now, a very clever thing which was done was that when you try to analyze these non-linear systems which do not have an input, you can actually decompose that into two separate things, one a linear system and the other you pack all the non-linearities together. And then, when you want to talk about the stability of the equilibrium point of this non-linear, the original non-linear system that is equivalent to talking about the stability of this interconnection between the linear system and that non-linearity. So, let me try and explain what I mean by this. So, suppose you were to look at an equation like let us say the second derivative of y plus let us say the first derivative of y squared plus let us say 2 times y equal to 0. Now, one wants to analyze this system. This system is a system without any inputs and there are well known methods of trying to analyze the system. But what I was just talking about was this clever way of thinking about this system as an interconnection between a linear system and a non-linearity. So, now let me try and give you how that is done. So, think of this equation d 2 y dt squared plus 2 y equal to u. This now is a linear system. Now, this is exactly like this equation except that you could think of this d y dt squared as minus u. So, let me put that as the next equation which is u equal to minus d y dt squared and this is a non-linearity. Now, the interconnection of these two systems then would give us exactly the same as this original non-linear system. So, let us look at what this interconnection would look like. So, if you look at that system d 2 y dt squared plus 2 y equal to u, this is a linear system which has transfer function given by ys by us. This is the transfer function gs which is equal to 1 upon s squared plus 2. So, now, let us think of this gs in this way and here is the input that you give which is u and the output that you get for this which is y. You take this y and put it to a non-linearity and this non-linearity has the characteristics that if the input to the non-linearity is psi, the output is psi squared. Now, in this case if we now feedback this thing with a negative feedback, then if this e which is the input of this feedback loop, if this e is set to 0, then what we would be looking at is exactly the original equation that we had which is d 2 y dt squared plus dy dt, the whole thing squared plus 2 y equal to 0. So, talking about this closed loop system being asymptotically stable for example, is exactly the same as saying that the original non-linear system is asymptotically stable. Now, of course, in this system we can clearly make out that the system would have the, I mean, if you draw a phase plane portrait of the system, then the origin is an equilibrium point. Now, the origin is an equilibrium point if one wants to find out whether this origin is, let us say, asymptotically stable that is the same as in this feedback system whether that given system, this feedback system is asymptotically stable. So, if you set up this feedback system and set y with some value and then you let this system evolve and if this system evolves finally, settling down to the value y equal to 0, u equal to 0, then what that would mean is this system is asymptotically stable and what that effectively means is that the original non-linear system is effectively stable. Now, this clever trick is, I mean, once this clever trick was discovered, this was used again and again. So, the non-linear systems were analyzed by looking at splitting it up into a linear system and a non-linear part and looking at the feedback connection of this non-linear system and this non-linear part. Now, once that was done, then people came up with some sort of a conjecture. Now, let me give you what this conjecture was all about.  So, this now can be split up into a linear system. So, the linear part would be given by a transfer function which is 1 upon s squared plus 3s plus 2 and the non-linearity that you would interconnect with this linear system is given by something where if psi is the input, the output is psi cubed. Now, if one looks at this non-linearity carefully, this non-linearity, so suppose I think of psi which is the input to the non-linearity, then the output to the non-linearity is here and this looks like something like that. So, that is psi cubed. Now, the conjecture which was made was made by a person called Isaman and Isaman made the following conjecture that suppose you have a non-linearity and let us assume that this non-linearity is memoryless. So, what do I mean by memoryless? What I mean by memoryless is that this non-linearity, the output of the non-linearity only depends upon the instantaneous input. Now, the earlier non-linearity that we looked at where the input was psi, the output was psi cubed and this output was independent of what the past values of inputs were. So, it is a sort of the output only depended upon the instantaneous input and so one could think of this non-linearity as a memoryless non-linearity. So, typically if you look at a non-linearity which is memoryless, it might be something like that. So, this here is the input to the non-linearity and this is the output to the non-linearity. So, when you have this as the input then the output is this value here and since it just depends on the, so this curve of course is a slightly twisted curve. So, it looks like with this input there might be multiple values, but let us assume that the curve was straight enough so that such a situation never arose. So, the output purely depends upon the instantaneous value of input. Now, the conjecture was made by this person Isaman and his conjecture was the following. If you look at this non-linearity at each point there is some tangent to the curve. Now, one way that you could talk about this non-linearity is you could limit the non-linearity. So, this particular non-linearity for example, one could say that 0 is less than equal to f of xi by xi which is less than equal to infinity. So, this is a non-linearity whose slope, instantaneous slopes lie between 0 and infinity. So, of course, I am sorry, but initial curve probably had slopes which were greater than infinity, but this one is some trajectory or this is a non-linearity which has its slopes lying between 0 and infinity. Now, if one looks at such non-linearity, so let me give some more examples of similar non-linearity. So, you could have a non-linearity like that and then clearly all the slopes of this non-linearity lie between this line. So, if I call the input xi, so this line is k times xi or k1 times xi and there is another slope here. So, this is k2 times xi and so this particular non-linearity one could say satisfies the characteristics that f xi by xi is less than is greater than this particular slope k1 and is less than this other slope k2. Now, suppose we interconnect this non-linearity, so this non-linearity is interconnected with a linear plant Gs in this feedback structure and then suppose this linear plant was such that if instead of the non-linearity, you used a linear gain k and this k was between k1 and k2 and the resulting linear system was stable, then Isoman's conjecture was that if you put the non-linearity instead of that linear gain, then the resulting system would also be stable, would be asymptotically stable. So, the idea being that if you are at this point and this was the input, then there is some slope here. Now, this slope when you put that linearity, the resulting system is stable or asymptotically stable. Now, if the resulting system is stable, then the guess was that for the non-linearity because locally it is like this linearity here, therefore it will behave nicely. So, now as a result of course the system evolves and you go to some other xi and at that xi there is some other slope.  Now, working in this way, the guess was that if you had a non-linearity which lay in some sector, so this particular non-linearity f of xi is set to lie in the sector, so it is a non-linearity which lies in the sector k1 k2. So, if you have a non-linearity which lies in the sector k1 k2, then if the linear plant is such that when you put feedback gain, any gain between k1 and k2 and the resulting system is asymptotically stable, then if instead of that linear feedback you put the non-linearity in there, then the resulting system is going to be asymptotically stable. So, this was Isaman's conjecture. So, perhaps I should just formally write it down. So, suppose that the linear feedback system is asymptotically stable for values of k in the range k1 to k2, then a non-linearity that belongs to this sector which is equivalent to saying that the non-linearity f xi by xi, this is less than, I mean k1 is less than equal to this and which is less than equal to k2, then a non-linearity of this kind in feedback with the linear system is asymptotically stable. Now, this is Isaman's conjecture and this was given roughly in 1949. Now, initially it was not clear whether this way of looking at non-linearities as approximation of linear systems is going to work. And in fact, in the literature for sometime this used to be called the method of linearization because the idea was that you have this non-linearity and at various instance for given input there is an output and there is also the slope of the output according to the characteristics of the non-linearity. And then Isaman's conjecture essentially said that if for all those slopes that you get in the non-linear function, I mean if for all of those, if the non-linearity is in that particular sector and for those gains it turns out that the given closed loop system is stable, then the closed loop system is stable if you put in the non-linearity.  So, some of the more famous names include Hahn who did this in 1963, then Willems. So, Willems showed a counter example that this does not hold. Willems did this in 1966, then there was Fitz who did this also in 1966. So, they constructed all sorts of examples which showed that this conjecture of Isaman is not correct. So, let me now give an example of a system where this actually doesn't hold. So, for this system, I consider the linear plant Gs to be s plus 1 upon s squared. So, if you take this linear plant in a feedback structure, then it should be clear that for all for all feedback k in 0 to infinity, this given feedback system is stable. That means if you take Gs and you give a feedback which is a linear gain k, then the resulting system is stable. We can see this in several ways. I mean, we have already looked at this Nyquist criterion. So, perhaps we can draw the Nyquist plot of this Gs. So, if this is the complex plane and we want to draw the Nyquist plot here, then as you start moving up, let us say from a small value epsilon, you start moving up. For the small value epsilon, you will get something here and you will have a curve like that. So, this goes right up to the top and then you have this infinitely large circle and corresponding to that, you will get something here like this and then you come up the negative slope and when you come up the negative slope, you essentially have the reflection of the original one and of course, this particular thing has double pole at the origin and has a 0 at minus 1. So, because of that to avoid this double pole, we can draw a small circle here of radius epsilon and when you draw the small circle, when you look at its image here, you will end up getting something like this. So, now this contour C, we traversed in this way, that means in the clockwise direction and as a result, the contour that we got here using the Nyquist plot was something like this. And then the critical point is the point minus 1 and we find that this Nyquist plot, this contour, the image of the contour f of C, this does not enclose minus 1 and therefore, the resulting system is stable for all gains from 0 to infinity.  Now, what do we mean by saying that a nonlinearity lies in the sector from 0 to infinity. So, earlier I talked about the slope, but it is not really the slope that we are looking at because the slope could very well be negative, but when we are looking at f psi by psi and this is psi and let us say the nonlinearity is like that, so let us say this was f psi, then when we are looking at this f psi by psi, we are really looking at this divided by this. So, when you say f psi by psi lies between 0 and infinity, what you are really saying is that the characteristics of this nonlinearity should lie in the first quadrant, that means when the input is positive, the output is positive or the third quadrant, that means when the input is negative, the output is negative, so the first quadrant or third quadrant. Now, the linear system that we looked at s plus 1 upon s squared, we saw that this particular linear system is stable when you put this in a feedback connection, when you put this in a feedback connection with this k lying between 0 and infinity. Therefore, if now because this is true and if Isomans conjecture were true, if we put in a nonlinearity here, whose characteristics lie in the first quadrant and the third quadrant, then the resulting system should be asymptotically stable. So, now what I am going to do is I am going to demonstrate a particular nonlinearity which lies in the first quadrant and the third quadrant, but the resulting system is not stable. So, here is the nonlinearity, so the nonlinearity is given by the following equation.  So, this is the equation for f of u for u less than equal to 1, but this if you look at this, this is like really linear. So, if you are going to draw the characteristics, you are going to get a line with slope 1 upon e plus 1 by e and this goes right up to 1, so this being the input u input. So, this is the first part and now the second part for u greater than equal to 1, what you have is this is exponential of minus u divided by 1 plus exponential of u. So, here the characteristic that you are going to get is like that. So, now if you look at this nonlinearity, it lies in the third quadrant and the first quadrant. So, this nonlinearity given by this f of u in feedback connection with that plant, so s plus 1 upon s squared and here you have the nonlinearity f, well by Iserman's conjecture because s plus 1 by s squared is stable when you put any feedback k lying in the range from 0 to infinity. Therefore, this linear plant with this nonlinearity defined in this way should result in asymptotic stability. Now, what I am going to show is that this resulting system is not asymptotically stable. I am going to demonstrate a particular solution to this particular system which is actually growing with time and if you have a trajectory which is perpetually growing with time, obviously that system cannot be asymptotically stable. So, here is the particular solution that I am going to give you. You see when you put this s plus 1 upon s squared and you feedback through this nonlinearity, then you know I reverse the earlier trick. This is the same as looking at a system with the equation d2 y dt squared plus f of dy dt plus y equal to 0. So, looking at this system is the same as looking at this system. Now, for this system, I look at a particular solution which is given by, so y of 0 is specified as e minus 1 upon e and dy dt at 0 is specified as 1 by e. So, one wants to solve this differential equation with initial conditions y at 0 is e minus 1 by e and dy dt at 0 is 1 by e. So, I claim that for these initial conditions, the solution for this is given by the following. So, dy dt is equal to exponential of minus y t minus dy dt dt. So, I am claiming that this particular equation gives us a solution to this original system with initial conditions y at 0 being this and dy dt at 0 being this. So, how do we show that this is a solution? Well, let us differentiate it. So, y double dot, that is the second derivative. This is equal to exponential minus y minus y dot and then I have to take the derivatives of these. So, the derivatives of these will give me minus y dot minus y double dot. So, this y double dot I take to the other side and I end up with 1 plus exponential minus y minus y dot. The whole thing multiplying y double dot is equal to exponential minus y minus y dot times, so there is a minus times y dot and so y double dot is going to be I take this below 1 plus exponential minus y minus y dot. But now if you think about this, I sort of this exponential of some negative quantity is 1 upon exponential of the positive quantity. So, if I normalize this, I mean or rather if I simplify this, I will end up with minus y dot upon 1 plus exponential minus y plus y dot. And for y dot, we had said that this is a solution. So, for y dot, we can substitute this and if you now think of y plus y dot as u, then this expression is the same as exponential of minus u upon 1 plus exponential of u. This minus sign is appearing essentially because when you take the f to the other side, that is a negative. So, this particular solution is indeed a solution to this differential equation with initial conditions given by y at 0 is e minus 1 by e and d by dt at 0 is 1 by e. Now, if you look at this solution, then it should be clear that once this and this are the initial conditions, this exponential of some quantity, so d by dt is going to increase. So, when d by dt increases, I mean d by dt is positive. So, d by dt is positive means y increases. So, y increases, d by dt increases and this is exponential. So, it will continue to have d by dt to be positive and therefore, y would continue to increase as time goes on, which essentially means that this system is not asymptotically stable. So, this particular example is an example which tells us that the Isomans conjecture is wrong. So, now at this stage, there was Isomans conjecture which was promising, but it was shown that this Isomans conjecture is false. So, now what can we do about analyzing general systems and what sort of general theory can be obtained, which at least makes use of Isomans conjecture and Isomans idea. And so, now we are going to talk about some things which essentially uses Isomans idea, but gets past the conjecture and gives an actual answer as to which systems when you interconnect, you will end up with something which is asymptotically stable. Now, the inspiration for this thing comes, this particular technique comes from electrical engineering and it comes from electrical circuits which are called passive. So, what do we mean by passive circuits? Now, you must be knowing very well that if you have a circuit made up of passive elements, whatever that passive element is, if you have a circuit made up of passive elements, then the resulting, I mean, then the circuit is passive. This really does not give you an answer. All it says is that I am using the same word again and again. I am saying, if it is made up of passive elements, then the resulting circuit is passive. What exactly is passive? Now, a sort of very layman kind of definition for a passive system is the following. A passive system is something that does not generate energy. So, what it means is, so if you have a passive circuit and you supply energy to the passive circuit, then that energy either gets stored in the circuit or it gets dissipated or lost. But a passive circuit does not generate its own energy. So, maybe we start by looking at some examples to get a generic idea of what passivity is. So, suppose we look at a circuit which consists of just a resistance. So, the voltage that we apply, let me call it V and the current flowing in, let me call it I. Therefore, the power that is fed into the circuit or the supply is V times I. Now, when you supply this, this current I goes through this resistance and it gets dissipated as I squared R, that is heat or something. So, if you look at V dot I in this particular circuit and you look at over a long period of time, that means, say starting from time t equal to 0 to sometime t, then this resulting thing is always going to be greater than 0. Now, one could use this as the definition for passive. So, when we talk about a passive system, then what we are talking about is that the amount of energy supplied to the system is positive. Of course, this definition of passivity may not, I mean this may not always strictly hold the moment we use some element like a capacitance or an inductance. So, let me try and explain what I mean by that. So, suppose now, instead of a resistance, you have a capacitance. And suppose you also have a resistance here and then we apply a voltage V and the current going in is let us say I. Now, let me also additionally assume that this capacitance is charged and so at time t equal to 0, the charge on the capacitance is Vc. And then let me short this. If I short this, then V that means the terminal voltage is 0. Therefore, if you want to talk about supply of energy, well the energy that is supplied in is V.I which is 0. But of course in this circuit, we know something is happening. Of course, even in this particular case, if you of course take the integral from 0 to t of Vi dt, this is 0 which is greater than equal to 0. So, we could still continue to call it passive. But now, suppose we apply a voltage V. So, instead of a short, let us assume that we apply a voltage V1 where V1 is less than Vc. Now, if V1 is less than Vc, then what is going to happen is from the capacitor, the current would flow this way. And so now, if you look at the supply, it is going to be V1 multiplied by I. But I, the actual current which is flowing is in the opposite direction to the convention that we use for I. And so this quantity here is negative. And so, when you take this integral, you are going to end up with something less than 0. But of course, you would already know that we call a capacitance a passive element because the capacitance does not generate energy of its own. But what is happening in this particular situation is that this capacitance at time t equal to 0 was already charged to some voltage Vc. And so the stored energy is being dissipated. So, if we want to also incorporate the stored energy, one way we could do this is instead of taking this integral from 0 to t, we take the integral from minus infinity to plus infinity. And if you take the integral from minus infinity to plus infinity of V dot I dt, then any circuit for which this integral V dot I, this is the power supplied to the circuit from minus infinity to plus infinity, if this is greater than 0, then we can call the circuit passive. So, how do we capture this particular notion of passivity? So, the basic idea is this. So, suppose we start off with a circuit and we assume that the circuit is at rest. What do I mean by the circuit is at rest? So, the circuit could have several energy storing devices like capacitors and inductors. The circuit is at rest by saying that the circuit is at rest, what I mean is that all the capacitors are discharged. And similarly, all the inductors have no current flowing through them. So, there is no stored energy in the circuit, that is what I mean when I say a circuit is at rest. Now, suppose to that circuit, you now supply a certain amount of energy. If you supply a certain amount of energy, what do you think would happen in the circuit? Well, this energy which comes into the circuit, part of it of course, will get dissipated, part of it will get dissipated in the form of heat in the resistances. But a part of it might get stored either as electrical energy in a capacitance or as magnetic energy in an inductance. So, in very broad terms, what we can say is that the total supply of energy, this would be equal to total energy dissipated plus energy stored. So, now the total energy, the total supply of energy of course, the expression for this would be V dot i. So, V dot i is the power dt if you integrate this from minus infinity to infinity. So, this is the mathematical expression for the total supply of energy. The total energy dissipated, well, the energy dissipated or the power that is dissipated is given by half, is given by i square r. And so, if you integrate this from minus infinity to infinity, that gives you the total, I guess there is no half here, it is just i square r. i square r is the total amount of energy that is dissipated and you put this integral from minus infinity to infinity, this is the mathematical expression for the total energy dissipated. And what about the total energy that is stored? Well, it could be stored in a capacitance and the energy stored in the capacitance will be something like this and there could be energy stored in the inductors, it could be something like that. So, mathematically this is the expression that we will get that the total supply, so your integral is equal to this integral which is the total energy dissipated plus the energy stored which is this. Of course, this is an integral form, so this equation that I have written down can be called dissipation equality. And I can state the same dissipation equality, this is the integral form, I can state it in the differential form which means I just take the derivatives in each of these cases and I would end up with an expression like v dot i is equal to i square r plus dv dt where dv dt is the rate of change of energy stored in the circuit. So, then coming back to an electrical circuit, we call an electrical circuit passive if the supply or power is, now the supply in terms of energy of course is the integrated part, power is the derivative part. So, perhaps let me talk about it as the supply in terms of energy, the energy supplied is greater than the rate of change of stored energy. So, of course, is the rate of change of stored energy, so actually I am talking about the power. So, the supply power is greater than the rate of change of stored energy than such an electrical circuit is called passive. Now, this stored energy is actually quite important, of course electrical circuits which have an input and an output and so when you talk about the stored energy, this stored energy is something that you have in a system with an input and an output and the stored energy plays exactly the same role as a Lyapunov function plays in a system without inputs. So, let me use an electrical circuit example to show that the stored energy plays exactly the same role as a Lyapunov function in a system without inputs. So, let us consider an RLC circuit, so this is R, this is L, this is C and let us assume that there is some stored energy which is half C Vc squared plus half L Il squared. Now, of course, this is a system which has an input and an output. Of course, one could think of the voltage as the input, one could say that voltage is the input and this is the voltage that we are applying and the output is the current. One could also think of the current, I mean one could think of a current source here and the current pushing in, being pushed in and the voltage that is generated as the output. So, it really does not matter whether you think of the voltage as the input or the current as the input, but here let us assume that the voltage is the input and the current is the output. So, this now is a circuit with an input and an output and there is a stored energy which depends on the current I L and the voltage across the capacitor Vc. Now, here the input is V. If you set the input to 0, that means you just shot here, then we have an autonomous system in the sense this is a system without any inputs. Now, when this is a system without any inputs, what is going to happen? Well, what is going to happen is there is going to be oscillations set up in this circuit and during this oscillations, the electrical energy which is stored in the capacitor gets converted into magnetic energy in the inductor through half the cycle, but of course the current, this transfer is taking place through the current because of which there is some energy being dissipated and then the magnetic energy in the inductor is going to return that magnetic energy, convert that magnetic energy back to electrical energy stored in the capacitance and again some more dissipation is going to take place and in this way this keeps oscillating until all the energy which was stored in the capacitor and all the magnetic energy which was stored in the inductor gets dissipated and then you would have no current in the circuit. But now, if you write out these equations, the equations for this particular oscillation that would take place, well, one way to write out is you just think of the current in this circuit and you can write down the write down the n drops in terms of the current. So, you will get the voltage drop here to be L dI dt plus the voltage drop here to be R times I plus the voltage drop here to be 1 by C integral I dt, this is equal to 0. This is a second order differential equation and this second order differential equation, I mean, take derivative once and you will end up with LC, the second derivative of I plus RC times the derivative of I plus I equal to 0. Now, for this particular differential equation, if you use this V as the Lyapunov function, then this Lyapunov function is positive definite and if you take the derivative of this Lyapunov function, you would find that the derivative of this Lyapunov function is negative which essentially proves that this circuit is asymptotically stable when you convert it into a system without inputs. So, let me stop here right now and we will carry on about this in the next lecture.


This review presents five representative remote sensing applications in agriculture, including biomass and yield estimation, vegetation vigor and drought stress monitoring, assessment of crop phenological development, crop acreage estimation and crop land mapping, and mapping of disturbances and land use slash land cover changes. The paper provides an overview of the main agricultural challenges and existing operational monitoring systems before describing and illustrating each application in detail. The review concludes with key recommendations for future research and implementation. This article was authored by Clement Atzberger.