I enjoy very much the meeting, the discussions, talking to the colleagues. It's also a very special moment for me because it's a personal one. I met in three years, thank you, for organizing. I met in three years my teacher who taught me math when I was in college. There was not just a teacher who taught us math. There was a group of Jewish kids who didn't accept it to the university, went to a metallurgical college, and then the teacher from Moscow University taught us for three years, absolutely voluntarily. Every week we would go to the university, and we would be taught math by Yusuf Brovin, who is actually sitting there. So I'm very nervous now. His professor in three years, I met him after 30 years of not seeing him. And when I was there, I was kind of okay. It was obvious for me, we were studying math, but it actually affected me a lot. And I only realized later how it was important for me these three years of studying with Boris Anatolyevich to Brovin. So thank you very much. So I dedicate this talk to him. Sorry for the personal note, but I could not miss it. Okay, let's talk about our function. And so if I would be nervous, please excuse me. So our visual system usually performs very easy computation when we recognize faces independent of angles and lightning and sizes. We can do the task with very few pixels, actually. We can recognize the same face. This problem has been studied in the visual law, and this was the same problem in our function, and we kind of tried to attempt to solve this problem in our function. And in our function, we always need to recognize objects. We need to identify the smells. And the crucial parameter of this is intensity. So we can recognize odor identity independently of the strengths of the smell. Let it be, you know, kofia. I'm sorry for this picture. It's a very weak kofia. It shouldn't be shown in Italy especially. And very strong kofia near the nose. It's always kofia. You call it kofia, independent on intensity. What is going on in our brain during this process is how we sort it. We actually have some ideas and some... But we don't know how we identify different modes, different odors, independent concentration. Of course, there is always a big other problem that we need to identify odors independently of the presence of the background odor. And I'm not going to talk about it. If I will have a few minutes, I can speculate it, but I don't have any evidence and I just only can bring my speculation. So we're going to talk about odor identity.  There are very basic slides, maybe to explain how alfaltini works. So everybody will go on the same page. Odor gets to the nose, interacts with the receptor. The receptor located in the cell of alfaltini sensory neurons in the alfaltini epithelium. All the neurons that express the same receptor type converge to one small area in the alfaltini bulb called glomeruli. So we have a lot of integration on this stage. All glomeruli kind of collects information for the same receptor type and we can call it as a channel. All receptors converging to one glomeruli can be called one channel. So if you present an odor, it excites multiple glomeruli and different odors excite different sets of glomeruli. The system is very well set up for the imaging study. If you open the alfaltini bulb, if you open the bulb here and get an image with your favorite indicator of the activity, you get a picture like that. And here's the first problem. So here's an image that corresponds to two odors, the welder height and hexanone. There are different patterns and we can spend a lot of time solving how odors are identified. Now, these two patterns are actually different from these two patterns because these two patterns belong to the same order of different concentrations. So the brain needs to put all these patterns into one category, these patterns in different categories and also identify the concentration. So how it may do this? So I propose a very simple model. So the plan for the talk will be the following. I propose a very simple model, how the brain can do it. I bring some experimental evidence. I'll do a lot of speculations. And I'm apologizing for some people who heard this part, but it's kind of important. I want a discussion, so please. I probably don't need to ask you to interrupt me. And then, as time, because it's very hard to predict how the talk will go, I have two subjects to approach this. Two topics to approach this. I'm presenting the model of the concentration brain coding. I can present two stories, either our attempt to approach this problem from a very basic perspective, just coding problem using after genetics, or how our model may be implemented in the neuronal code of the alpha-3-bomb. So let's make this in the middle of the talk when we come to this. And I'll try to keep the time. So here's the problem. So receptor interact with the ligands usually in a very... So receptor got activated about some concentration, and we can explain it in a very simple fashion that it's a very steep function compared to the whole range of concentration that we perceive orders. In one order, we present multiple... If we plot here multiple receptors, we can see that different receptors activate a different concentration. And that's kind of often forgotten, because when we heard talks about this is a ligand, this is not ligand, I think that this may be often ill-posed because as you see at this concentration, these receptors are ligand and these are not ligands. And as you increase concentration, you recruit more and more receptors. What's going on in the brain? Imagine we have a factory bulb with 12 glomeruli. At a low concentration, we activate 2 glomeruli, then 4 glomeruli, then 6 glomeruli. And these all patterns belong to the same order. So what's interesting is the intensity of these patterns is not always informative because we often can see that the most intense glomeruli are not the ones activated at the lowest concentration. It may be multiple factors for that, but let's talk about it a little bit later. So if you know the identity of the first 2 glomeruli, you know what order is. So you know you can... This is a common feature across all three patterns. This is your order, this is your cost signature. But if you don't know how you solve this problem, how you put this pattern into that category. And I propose a very simple solution, is that that happens in time. So the most sensitive glomeruli is activated first in the SNF cycle. So at the lowest concentration you activate glomeruli HNF, HF AG, HF AG, LK. So if you know the first 2, you know the order. Very simple, but very simple model, but has a lot of consequences. So we call this model primacy coding. And basic parameter of the primacy coding is the number of first activated glomeruli, P, or the temporal window glomeruli activation. It's, as I said, oh, okay, first explainer, all models are wrong, some of them are useful. So this may be useful model. Why it's useful model? Because it's actually, first of all, it's explained concentration... Oops, I'm sorry. It explains concentration variance. Just by... It has been built to explain concentration variance. But there's an interesting prediction of this model. First of all, it's 2 glomeruli, the small number of glomeruli is enough to identify the order. And second, you don't need all of that. And this is kind of maybe disturbing, because when you look at the pattern, you think that all glomeruli are methods. Maybe not. So that's what I'm trying to discuss. So it's kind of... It's a special code with very first 2 glomeruli. The first few methods, the rest not. So the plan for the discussion of this model will be the following. First, what are the neural mechanisms responsible to creation of the code? How the code can be read? And then, what are the basic coding features that correspond to our psychophysical knowledge about alfactory psychophysics? And then, experimental data about the window of relevant information that is related to this model. So if... As we inhale the order of the concentration of the nose, this very simple model of how the code can be shaped. As we inhale the order of the concentration of the nose raises gradually, and excites glomeruli depending on its intensity. So the most sensitive glomeruli will be excited earlier. The less sensitive will be excited later. So this is exosensitivity or sensitivity of the acceptor to this order. Now what happens if you increase the concentration of the external order, you do the same thing, and it will move the glomeruli activation earlier. It will activate another glomeruli, but it will preserve more or less the sequence of the code. And Andreas Schescher talked about it. It was a great paper, first theoretical by Hallfield. And then Andreas actually did the work with some evidence for the latency code. So the latency shifts with the increase of intensity, but the sequence remains the same. But here we're saying that only the first of what is meant. So actually, it's indeed if we change the concentration, the mitral cells that are listening to the glomerulus shift their response first. So we should remember that this shifts for about 10 milliseconds before it changes. So how the code can be read? The code can be read in a very simple way. So glomeruli activate mitral cells in a sequential order, and mitral cells project to perform cortex. And some mitral cells converge to some of the preformed cortical cells and create some kind of symphony code. And those who are activated first, actually, the winner takes over. The first kind of the first who is activated, we can establish simple inhibitory network and only those who are activated first can define the order. The rest can be suppressed. What's interesting here that if you increase significantly concentration, you squeeze more glomeruli in the small window, and you cannot discriminate between first and second activated glomeruli because they activated very fast. And then you create lorax. You create something with your high concentration of very many mixtures. It's not that you have activated too many glomerulus. You've activated too many glomerulus in the first temporal window. And you change the identity of the order often. So some order smells differently at very low concentration and high concentration. It's over simplistic model but yes, kind of for given order, you think you have a projection. But it may be plastic. It may be long. I'm not talking about it. Now, actually, there was a nice paper published this year by Kevin Franks and complimentary codes of order identity intensity from Alex they actually measure timing. And they show that the order identity this is discriminant analysis of the cells recorded in the cortex. Order identity in the cortex arises very, very quickly, much faster than anything else. They did discriminant analysis and show the first wave of activity from the bulb what is metaphonic the order identity, not concentration. So how the code deals with mixture? Imagine we have the sequence of glomerulus C, A, T, M, W and based on our idea if prime is Cp equal 3 this is order ket. The second order is order dog. When we mix them together we get actually new percept that is reminiscent of the ket and dog but it's different from Cad and this has a different it's a different object.  This is your new gift was interesting that it actually depends on the relative concentration so by changing concentration of the components you can actually change from Cad to COd and this is different orders Well I mean do animals have concentration variance? Humans there is a lot of literature and controversy about some people we definitely have concentration variance because we can identify coefficient in the different concentrations and we can say that identity may change but anyway for the identification of some object we have concentration variance do animals have this? Yes they do there was beautiful, yes I don't so we can argue about it but we do have some concentration in variance. Now do animals have it? Now the exact meaning is a very beautiful experiment they train an animal to discriminate mixtures of order A and order B and this is a component of the mixtures that they put the decision boundary here this was 95.5 and 5.95 all the mixtures was along this line and this was this line so if animal maintain identity ratio between what this kind of ratio is if you proportionally change concentration of two components you think that the object is preserved so if animal paying attention to the order of the relative ratio between component when they in a probe change concentration they half make the half of overall concentration but they reserve their ratios then the decision line should be exactly the same exactly I don't want to go into details but they show that animal doing decision based on that line but not any other so if animal would be paying attention only to order A then it will be doing decision based on the green line but animal were doing decision based on the the yellow line that is correspond to the same ratio and the same thing happened when they increased concentration so they could actually change it also 10 times sorry I didn't show the data but it's actually in some range animal maintain concentration variance and it perfectly corresponds animal paying attention to the first few orders there are other mechanism but at least this is consistent okay what is the information capacity it's a provocative slide it's actually the description is absolutely provocative I tell you why so if you have N number of glomeruli and P number of relevant glomeruli then number of combination of P and P will be N to the power of P divided by P factorial will be if P equals 6 I have no idea why 6 but if P equals 6 for humans it will be 3 million orders I brought it just on purpose I was actually very excited about this paper hope to submit the P but this computation only tells us the code is you can convey a lot of information in reality I believe that not all the combinations are possible and Alex actually will talk tomorrow and that's why I actually appreciate that we switched and Alex will talk tomorrow talking about the prediction of how many orders can be encoded and what is actually the limitation for such a code yes said again sure I don't know this parameter I'm just giving that small number of 6 is give you huge combinatorial capacity I give it it's definitely not one but it definitely much less than total number of active glomeruli that many tens of hundreds of glomeruli that is my point basically the combinatorial capacity of this code is very high so now it's important part about the relevant temporal window and to do this we basically try to identify relevant temporal window of the information person this experiment has been done in my lab and the key figure was Chris Wilson he did the following experiment he trained the mice to discriminate two orders A and B and leaking by left and right and head fixed setup very easy to train the mouse the key point was we don't know how mouse is making decisions so maybe intensity maybe something else so we remove the intensity factor from here with scramble concentration two orders of magnitude presenting five samples of A five samples of B but mouse needs to make a decision only based on identity during the task we recorded the pressure in the nasal cavity and we very precisely timed the order delivery so we know that we order delivery time by onset of exhalation when mouse start inhaling we know that order was delivered in a precise concentration there you know very controllable expand the interesting part is that we use mouse that has channel adoption in the all factor receptors mouse leak left or right on the order A and B we use mouse that has channel adoption and we put in both nostril two optical fiber and we blast the light like that at a specific time so the idea we try to master order with the light and what happens is that we know when mouse start inhaling so the order processing starts here sometime after we start blasting the light so basically it's as if I do the following experiment show you one pattern and another pattern I may make it a little bit difficult I rotate the pattern so I ask you is it left hand or right hand and then I blast the light I try to blind you I don't want I don't activate some random subset of receptors it's not that I activate it all but I activate the substantial subset of receptors but I do it in a very time precise manner because this is a very controllable parameter I cannot do it with others maybe Andreas can I cannot so the idea is if I blast the light very late mouse can easily do decision but if I blast the light very early mouse wouldn't be able to make a decision and by moving this time I would be able to identify the minimum time okay good so okay what's important here that I do this experiments only on probe trials so I don't let mouse to learn the mask I do it only on a subset more subset of trials on the intermediate concentrations so without mask mouse perform at the level of 90% it's a little bit higher at a higher concentration at low concentration now when I present the mask the performance goes like this at a low concentration so I cannot completely mask the order at about 100 plus millisecond the performance goes to the level of unmask order if I do it at a higher concentration the whole mask shifts to the left and this timing is approximately 13 millisecond that slightly less than what we see in the in the mitral cell responses with the shift of concentration but order of magnitude more or less the same so in the first maybe 100 millisecond is enough for us for the mouse to do concentration-dependent decision of the order and the shift can be explained by the concentration shift of the mask but where we are located with this 100 millisecond maybe during this 100 millisecond all receptors got activated that's not the case mitral cell group publish the result on set of calcium activation of the glomeruli from the from the sniffon set for many orders and many glomeruli and you see the distribution with the peak is about 100 millisecond and some of glomerulus activated much much late we are here on the distribution we activated this small portion of glomeruli about maybe 10 or 20 percent yes yeah say it again, above 50 percent yeah that's above 50 percent yeah that's the we cannot mask completely so basically there is some leak of information probably we don't activate all the receptors we don't know but there is some speculation where this may be so but definitely in 100 millisecond we don't activate all the glomeruli and only small portion of glomeruli is the element for this experiment what we do also on the unmasked trials we measure reaction time how fast mouse leak left or right and what we found that concentration there is some speed accuracy so if mouse leaks spontaneously early the performance chance level and then performance goes up but the two curves shift more or less on the same time on the same time shift so everything so if you think that first processing depends on the order delivery or processing and the next is included in the decision time these two interval are the same tells us that maybe processing is concentration invariant the timing from the if mask tells us when the enough information in the nose and the decision time tells us when the enough information when the mouse starts moving the tongue so these intervals are the same tells us that processing is concentration invariant yes yes yes yes I agree I don't think that I will shift glomeruli activity at 300 milliseconds into the window of 100 milliseconds I'm not claiming any absolute numbers here but you right and I'm actually a very important point I don't know how to measure actual actual number glomeruli this is the but I'm sure that it's not there so it's not there so that's my point thank you thank you very much so what else we did what happens if we significantly increase the complexity of the task and we asked the master perform 6040 60 make sure we do exactly the same thing with we with trouble concentration and master from a little bit slowly you need a little bit longer mask but this timing also maybe 120 millisecond it still does not cover all the range of the glomeruli so we still located in this corner so this is kind of the main message the temporal window is relatively small we can argue it's 100 millisecond is 100 millisecond but it's smaller it's much smaller than all the activity in the bound and that brings us to the notion what we measured before we measure activity of many many mitral cells this is recording from one mitral cells in response to four orders the mitral cells activity is locked to the same cycle some of them excited some of them inhibitory this is multiple in mitral cells to one order and on and on and on so we collected all the data in the following graph so we recorded 460 cell order pairs third was excited third was inhibitory so it didn't respond to the order and we plot the activity of individual mitral cells it's cell order pairs and in the color diagram so red is excitation blue is inhibition and we order them in the sequence of the of the peak it's only excitedly cells and it was it's a difference from the spontaneous rate so that's why you have a blue blue side so we recorded 460 cells and if you believe that we sample the cells absolutely randomly and orders also randomly this is strong assumption then for one order that is exposed to 50,000 mitral cells 15,000 will be excited to respond so it changes the axis so that is what the bulk tells the brain and one inhalation of a new order you have this activity and it's actually over 400 also almost 400 millisecond so that is the flux of information one sniff going to the brain and it's a lot of information you can encode way way more than trillion orders here sorry I'm using this just as a number that is kind of it's a lot of information but what I'm trying to say is that the information for the order identity only here and this is very very important what the rest of the sniff cycle I don't know and this is the main message so I'm very curious I would be very interested to discuss it but until we find the behavioral relevance of the latest of the sniff cycle I will consider it's kind of it's not used the beginning of the sniff cycle is important for the identification we don't know and here's my analogy so I actually want nobody to ask the question yet here's my analogy you know maybe the rest of the sniff cycle has nothing to do with the order coding so it has a lot of correlation with orders but it's not relevant for the behavior and my analogy is the following if you would be observing the tennis surf you can extract a lot of information about where the ball meets by the end of the trajectory well only the beginning matters so the trajectory can be very different than the ball will go in different directions this part of the trajectory has nothing to do with the direction of the ball and if you put here if you ablate the movement here the ball will still fly to the step direction yes we have a lot of cells we have a lot of cells so I don't know it's a good question but there's this I don't know how to do envelope type calculations like that because we have a lot of responsive cells so look first of all it may be not 4 it may be a whole 10 15 and Alex will comment on the numbers actually he has some way to estimate the numbers from the information perspective but while we are normally carrying information cells 30 cells has some temporary situation in this time window you have a lot of capacity hold on a second what you're talking about you're talking about information capacity in the other space or in the concentration space that is all depends on the inhibitory network so the idea is how quickly the inhibitory network kicks in so my idea that you build up the activity and the inhibitory network kicks in actually happens in the ball and if I have time I will talk about the ball with that but defining the temporal window is super important so let me conclude the first story so what we're proposing is a primacy coding model that is a concentration variant we can use for forming the code we can use for reading the code some code is consistent with non-behavioral phenomena and small temporal window is relevant for other identification so here's a question that you may want to ask so if you want to ask the question that's the time you can just tell the number so how this model is different from latency coding or how this concentration encoded or the rest of the sniff cycle encode intensity concentration so is a primacy coding model consistent with the animal ability to extract order from the mixture is an animal using information in the rest of the sniff cycle or can it use whatever so this is the kind of question that I got during my presentation if you're interested in any of this I would be very happy to answer this question and what is the role of Fakti Babu network 5 ok what is the role of Fakti Babu network ok we change the pace anybody is interested in any of these questions please formulate but it's basically I can speculate on that and we can discuss it but I wanted to kind of see the what the most interesting here absolutely absolutely and so I like the exceptions because when the model fails we can learn much more so whatever exceptions you can bring in I would be very happy absolutely but it's a more general phenomena and you may ask when we perceive the wine the percept stuff stays along and we sense additional notes later in the sniff cycle of course it's all true it's a much more primitive model to describe all this phenomena and I'm super interesting how the model can be expanded for the more complex complex stuff so I it's an interesting question so as I understand that except the question 7 there were no questions more so how is the model different from the latency coding model the basic difference between these two models in their predictions we can both of them rely on the timing and one is saying basically the sequence tells us about other identity and you cannot derive the predictions that we derived from the primacy model that's the main difference that the temporal window number of timing is important we don't know if the sequence of the initial granular matters we don't know it maybe it's true maybe it's not my feeling that sequence of the first granular matters but the main difference is even not in that it's a redoubt model and it's small how the code can be read and it's model that has many many predictions and Alex actually builds up the theory based on this very simple assumption that other identity can define by small number of orders one interesting point that I wanted to make is the following I always was puzzled by the notion about the diversity of factors receptors if order is encoded by 100 or other receptors then if you knock out one you would not change any difference in the percept so what keeps the order what keeps the genome more or less stable if the order is defined by small number of receptors then the role of individual receptors is much higher actually it has been shown already that knocking out one receptor tar-4 it was shown by Michael it's actually make a behavioral phenotype so each receptor counts that means that each receptor is important for the coding if there is a multiple combinatorial coding if it's multiple by any any I'm recording from Michael's cell from TARS I'm recording by any physiological difference we cannot find the difference projections maybe somebody can comment in the cortex and OAN the property of the glomerally it's not OR but it's we don't see the difference from the from the circuitry perspective so in my opinion it's as an order as a receptor as other but the role of individual receptors is much much higher on the primacy model than any other model that has been proposed I agree with you it's not OR I know but it's the front end is not OR but the rest we don't see the difference yes but it's respond to other orders and it's activated as combinatorial features it's has timing the glomeral is exactly the same thing I don't see the difference from molecular biology perspective I completely agree with you and it's very nice model to study because we know the the ligands okay so how much time I have so I will just mention briefly so we try to with up to genetics we try to actually simulate the code and simulate the we try to create a special temporal cord with up to genetic pattern simulation find which features are important and by manipulating the artificial patterns but the work is still in progress and probably I will skip this part and go to what Andreas asked because nobody else asked so I'll go to that so the story is the following so actually so how much of the process this information in an ideal situation what we want to do we want to present an order no identity of each excited receptor and measure from the mitral cell that is connected to the first to the second to the third and so on so forth and see what's the differences but that's it's very hard experiment we don't know how to do the main problem how to preserve the identity how to know the identity of mitral cells glomerally it's just that's the hardest problem so what we decided to do we decided to switch the problem not for one other mini glomerular for one glomerular mini-order it's a little bit tricky interpretation but stay with me I try to make a case so what we did we focused on M72 glomerulus and we have a general adoption in this glomerulus so with what we can do we identify the receptors and the glomerulus and we can identify mitral cells connected to the glomerulus so we're working with one channel of information first thing what we did actually Tom Lab did they measured the responses of the receptors and recorded activity to the bunch of orders and this is at CETA Finan sorry I will be using just abbreviation and he took the concentration series and recorded these receptors and we have the whole battery of orders two heterocets at CETA Finan it tilt a glade the height I don't remember all of them I'm very bad with chemistry sorry but on the concentration axis they have different EC50 so we sequenced them in the activation profile the next thing we did and I always will be presenting two heterocets at CETA Finan the only thing you need to remember this is the strongest ligand so they activate the receptor in the lowest concentration next thing what we did we also conformed via imaging we created the mouse that has GFP in all receptors and RFP in M72 glomeruli and so we can sorry and we can sorry we can identify the response of this glomeruli so we can conform it in Viva so we put electrode in the mitral cell layer and we blasted this is the work of three students and two postdocs Nils now in the he left NYU to DeepMind and is a killer near the now in UCSD so we we take the mouse that has general adoption M72 glomeruli and we blast the light on the glomeruli and we find the responses with a short latency so the mitral cell responding to the light with short latency we will call light cells the one that will respond to the light versus all other cells either M72 cells or light cells this is a cell that connected to M72 glomeruli and Nils did a lot of analysis and this is sorry for not showing graspers because we have a lot of variability in the sniff cycle he removed the variability of the sniff cycle and this is typical response of three light cells or M72 cells to a bunch of odors so the typical response like that this is exactly the response the black line is the spontaneous ray the blue line is the response to the odor that in this case it was 4-meteor, etc. and the same cell response to the Zaldehyde was inhibited the black is inhalation no no no this is one sniff this is about 100 it all has been put in the sniff coordinate so black thick line is inhalation and the rest of the sniff so it's about 400 per second so it's all locked to the sniff side now at the same time we recorded activity for so this is all M72 cells collected together from many many it's more than three this is three typical but we also recorded not M72 cells but a lot of diversity of the responses ok so what you can see here that everything but the very right column it's quite a mess and here you see some dense stuff so this is a special case this cell responded only initially inhibited but this cell responded in different way so let me quantify this this result all the response can be initially inhibited and what we did for the beginning we just counted the number of inhibited responses for M72 cells and not M72 cells for given order exactly so green is excited blue is inhibited so at set if and on M72 cells have approximately third inhibited and third no responses all other cells recorded the same electrode but didn't respond to the light so we don't we call it not M72 has more or less the same distribution we have much more cells like that but the distribution was more or less the same ok this is a generic ligand at set if and on what happens with other ligands we see all of them so left column is M72 right column is the generic cell all of them are very very similar to each other except to hydroxyl set if and on the strongest ligand has a very different structure has much more excited responses ok now what happens with the latency of the responses the latency of the both actually excited and inhibited responses this is a cumulative latency for M72 and others they are more or less identical if you measure the time of deviation of the response from the background it goes more or less you know the distribution is more or less the same for all others except to hydroxyl set if and on to hydroxyl set if and on excited vital ligand cells or M72 cells early in average and we checked maybe this effect can be explained just by the level of activation of the glomerulus maybe to hydroxyl set if and on activated glomerulus stronger than others we actually did this imaging and we see that yeah it fluctuates this is low activation but it's nothing special to hydroxyl set if and on level like other orders so it cannot be explained by amplitude of activation of the glomerulus yes say it again I sorry I didn't understand the question yeah possible um ok let's I have an answer to this question thank you ok I'll answer in the next it's not in the amplitude effect yeah I agree that may be the case ok yeah that will be your decision that will be your decision I just give you the data and you decide what is good what is bad it depends on the experiment um so ok maybe this effect of the concentration maybe effective concentration of two hydroxyl set if and on is significantly higher than any others again we don't have infinite way of presenting concentration but we take two two orders two hydroxyl set if and on and main phone that is medium level ligand and we shift concentration of menton down and up and from two hydroxyl set if and on down and compare the responses and actually nothing change so again we always compare to the to the genetic population two hydroxyl set if and on behave in the same way independently on the concentration and menton behave in the same way independently on the concentration you you have less less differences but still well maybe let's look at the individual cells that was a big surprise for us look at not on the population but the individual cells yes yes no this is taking on this concentration yes this is actually strong correspond so we actually correspond to these concentrations exactly so it's not explaining so it's not saturated you see it's not saturated but the behavior the same this is what has been done in tom lab I I don't want to make state no no no it's actually was a little bit harder they moved the window on the site you know the M-72 so I apologize I should put the it's they cut the part of this they basically try to show the activity in this area it's not whole bulb it's probably on the level few tenths of the glomule sorry that's a good point I will put the M-72 we we know this is this is an arrow here this is M-72 this is M-72 that's the bar that shows the intensity of M-72 the bar nearby is just intensity of M-72 well this glomule is not saturated the second concentration exactly that's the most point maybe we saturate no we don't and we don't here so but the response is the same it's not an amplitude effect it's not a saturation effect well we decided to look at the individual self and we trace one cell for three concentration and if you increase concentration for two heteroxet and on the cell behavior in a very consistent way they shift their responses towards the beginning of this cycle now if you do it for menton it's a mess the responses disappear with higher concentration sometimes they flip the sign and the distribution the following so the number of flipped signs responses half drop responses and the consistent contribute very small portion of the responses versus most of the responses for M-72 is either consistent like this or one drop there were no inhibitors responses very very different behavior absolutely first of all my take on it this is all extraneous information we don't need so much information second thing what I'm trying to say the distribution of the latency for the strong ligand is much more narrow than for the weak ligand that's all what I'm saying but let's I will give the explanation for this result in a few minutes I cannot describe actually we recently did we measured the correlation with the depths of the recording and we found no correlation I cannot say exactly we didn't analyze relatively to flip not flip but the depth the kind of the distributions the latency we didn't find any significant correlations and we look carefully but we didn't look for example if that is correlated maybe I can imagine tafted as more consistent than my talk quite possible but I don't want to do this because it will be too speculative without identifying yourselves so how can we explain this result this result can be explained if we go back to our original idea and see glomerular for one order not one glomerular many orders one order many glomerular and when one order is presented glomerular activated in the following sequence for one order yellow green blue as this is more sensitive this is less sensitive and they will be activated in this sequence independently of the concentration so this glomerular project to mitral cells there's a lot of inhibition inhibiting network and I'm not I don't want to speculate which specific inhibition plays here all but what happening and I just this is a cartoon it may be PG cells it may be whatever cells whatever favorable cells but what happening then when the signals comes yellow glomerular activated first and create more or less stereotypic early response I don't want even to call it synchronous it's stereotypic and early synchronous means actually they fire synchronously and I could not measure it on the same experiment but there's a good chance that they kind of create an activity together when the green glomerular got activated it's actually got active so mitral cells green mitral cells got activated by this glomerular but they also feel they're very heterogeneous inhibitory network so they result their signals are scrambled some of them inhibitory some of them excitatory some of them delete some have first inhibitory then excitory and on and on and on and so the blue glomerular is same so basically inhibition in the bulb plays a very interesting role it lets the primary glomerules go through the signal by synchronous activity of the all mitral cells mitral and tafted maybe mitral cells go very early in synchronous with tafted it's one of the model but this is a channel of information that goes go get green light to the cortex and what Kevin sees this is the important signal the cortex in use the first signal the rest it's actually way expensive to suppress mitral cells you need a lot of inhibition much easier is to scramble them you just basically ruin symphony you still have all dynamics you still have all activity you know about the bulb but it's kind of scramble you can extract information yes you can but maybe it's irrelevant so mitral and tafted cells connected to primary glomerules have serious typical responses and potential of inhibition is to scramble not relevant signals kind of it's a temporal temporal yes so what I'm trying to say is a following let's say we have it shouldn't be the first one it should be one of the first we have 10 primary glomeruli and the 10 primary glomeruli activate let's say 200 mitral cells just random now these 200 mitral cells create the first wave of activation they're more or less synchronous and they'll wire specifically the wiring between these cells is super important I don't think that the wiring to the cortex is random I think that primary glomeruli for given order has a preferential wiring wiring for different mitral cells is different so now these mitral cells may be wired with another one but they're not in a different connection so when you scramble this this ensemble this motif is not activated that's what my idea of course you have a lot of activation but not all of them work together that's all what I'm trying to say I don't know it's a preposition it's a speculative model I cannot make the proof the only thing what we're trying to achieve now and we get the first result sorry I didn't have time to put it on there we did exactly the same thing with the optogenetic pattern simulation we find the mitral cells by optogenetic pattern simulation and we play around and we see if you present the glomeruli early you scramble this one but if you present the second one inhibitor later you don't attack it obviously yes I was waiting for this question so how concentration is encoded look so what is the dynamic range of concentration 6-order of magnitude what is the dynamic what is just noticeable difference maybe a few percent how many bits you need to encode concentration 20 bits if you look at the signal you can convey 20 bits so many different ways you can encode concentration in the latency of the first responses what Kevin for example Frank saw that concentration increased synchrony between cells in the cortex I'm finishing synchrony maybe by more synchronous activity you get more you increase the number of active glomeruli you may get more activity and intensity of first individual glomerulus also may depend on the concentration so you have so many ways to encode intensity we actually published a paper about how many different signals can single glomerulus convey and a single glomerulus can be timing, amplitude and the presence of the glomerulus in the ensemble all of the skews can convey concentration all of the skews are correlated with concentration the question is which out of these skews are actually animals using for making the perceptual judgments this is a big question I doubt it is here I think that animal can judge concentration very, very quickly but I can only speculate so we kind of trying to solve this and anybody has idea how to solve that I'm very open to discussion oops yeah said again the problem is that it's very hard to do it with mice what's interesting here that we did explain to a new stimulated glomerulus here and mouse can detect there's no problem so what I like to tell this is the usual span of attention this is a temporal phobia this is a part of the signal that mouse paying attention by default the rest is your is your peripheral vision if I allow this analogy I can use it you may extract additional feature it may be useful but in other terms it defy the face of 48 and my main notion that we kind of we assume it for granted that in vision the majority of the spikes from the retina completely disappeared you don't the cortex has no idea what's going on we somehow assume that every glomeral counts I propose that not so you get the input from your peripheral vision you don't know what color of the t-shirt Alex is wearing if you look at me but these photons are on your retina it's the same thing you do get this input and it actually reaches the cortex so that's fair enough but it's relevant for the defecation of my face the photo of the K shooting to your peripheral vision from your neighbor I might take on it and in order to understand other coding we need to start thinking in these terms well thank you very much the work has been done the experimental work has been done by Chris Wilson this is the masking strand Edmund Chung did the experiment with the up-to-genetic pattern simulation Zinke Arneada-Christine worked with the light of cells I'm 72-glamorous Romer collected the initial data he is now he was with me in Janelia my collaborators, while Neil Rebinovich analyzed a lot of data for the light of cells project Tom Bozer and his group from the US and funding from different sources thank you very much


Hello, this is faster Montgomery and double add ladders for short fire stress curves. I'm Mike Hamburg at Rambus So the goal here is to Speed up elliptic curve scalar multiplication So for this problem we're given an elliptic curve E a point P on that curve and a scalar K Which is just an integer and we wish to compute K times P another point on the elliptic curve More specifically we'll be working with short fire stress curves Which are the most common and most general form of elliptic curve used in cryptography? And we're given only K and P so we don't have access to for example a pre-computed table that has multiples of P And we're looking to produce a regular algorithm, which is better for side-channel resistance So in a regular algorithm no matter what K is the algorithm always does the same operations in the same order Although possibly swapping the data depending on what K is So Depending on the protocol in some cases P is given as X and Y coordinates and in some cases only the X coordinate is given and only The X coordinate of the output is desired So we'll handle both of those cases the main application of this is elliptic curve to be helman key exchange But in an embedded device it would also be very useful for ecdsa signatures key generation and so on So the algorithms that we'll be using are called the Montgomery and draw or double add ladders So for these ladder algorithms, we take two point registers Q and R or P and Q and we initialize them with the base point P zero or with double the base point and then we scan Through the bits of the scaler so for the Montgomery ladder We scan through from most significant down to least significant Whereas for the joie ladder we scan from least significant up to most significant at each step We conditionally swap the two points in the ladder state and then we double one of them and add it to the other points And then at the end one of the points in the ladder state is the desired output The ladder that I'll be working with in this paper is a three-point ladder So by adding either the difference of the two points to the Montgomery ladder or the sum of the two points to the schwa ladder We get a ladder in which the state is wider, but this may help with the ladder operation And in both cases for the three-point ladder the ladder operation takes P Q and R and has to output P Q plus R and to R Furthermore, we're given at the beginning of this ladder step that R is Q plus P or possibly due to swapping Q minus P Now it's worth noting that the representations of these three points in the ladder state need not be the same So for example in some of our formulas We will be representing the x-coordinate of P Q and R, but the y-coordinate only of P However for the Montgomery ladder Q and R have to have the same representation because you have to swap them with each other conditionally and likewise for the schwa ladder P and Q have to set have the same representation So so this will constrain the way that we can represent the ladder state There's been a lot of previous work on the subject of Montgomery ladders starting of course with Montgomery's work in 1987 which applies to the only to the so-called Montgomery curves It is however extremely efficient for these curves for short fire stress curves the more common case The Montgomery ladder has been less efficient But has slowly been improving in efficiency over the past decade or so So down from 14 multiplies per bit in 2011 down to 12 multiplies per bit in 2017 Down to 11 multiplies per bit today So we'll be using for for this work Jacobian coordinates So it's well known that it's best to represent the x and y coordinates of the elliptic curve in a projective form such as x over z And y over z so as to defer the costly division to the end of the algorithm However in some cases it's better to instead use x over z squared and y over z cubed because this homogenizes the leading term of the curve equation with a z to the sixth term It's worth noting that z equals zero is allowed And in fact there is a point on the elliptic curve, which is at infinity Which is the neutral point of the curve or the identity point of the curve? This is represented with non zero coordinates for x and y But a zero coordinate for z However if you ever get to the state 000 where x y and z are all zero Then you failed because you're representing the state as zero over zero um It's also possible instead of storing each a separate z coordinate for each point to store the three points So that they all have the same z coordinate So there's a the main benefit to this is that the first step of a point addition is typically to rescale the point So that they have the same z coordinates so that you can subtract their x and y coordinates So this is actually somewhat expensive especially for Jacobian coordinates where you have to compute z squared and z cubed So you might be able to save this if you could sort of statically guarantee that the three points all have the same z coordinate And it may be less expensive to maintain this invariant than it is to rescale the the z coordinates During the operation itself Furthermore you save instead of storing three z coordinates You have to store only one of them or in fact none at all and the reason is that well the main reason in the regular Ladder operations that you need the z coordinates is so that you can rescale the points so that they have the same z And here you're just sort of guaranteeing that they have the same z So you don't need it for that reason But you do need it at the end of the ladder to divide by so that you can get the final output however Depending on how the ladder is constructed you may be able to solve for z instead of Tracking it through the ladder step There is however a significant downside to cozy ladders for all their advantages And this is that you always fail if any one of the points pq or r becomes the neutral point This is because the neutral point has z equals zero So suppose that q becomes the neutral point it has z equals zero, but all three points have the same z coordinate So they also have z equals zero and therefore their representation is this invalid zero over zero representation Our work today is based on the Kim et al formulas from 2017 So this improved the state of the art from 14 down to 12 multiplications per bit The the representation that they use as a cozy representation that has seven different coordinates of somewhat complex interpretation This interpretation depends on an additional bit b which depends on the key bits And in fact the ladder uses two key bits instead of only one However Also in 2017 after reading this paper. I distilled it down to a Simpler and faster set of formulas that I presented at the chess 2017 rump session So from this I would say that the the key insight at least of the distilled version Is that the three points pq and r or rather pq and minus r or something similar depending on the sign? Add to zero which means that they all lie on a line intersected with the elliptic curve This line has some slope and it's better to calculate and store that slope rather than calculating and storing the y coordinates of all the points A second insight which is especially useful in the work today Is that for the addition formulas for elliptic curve points? You need the difference of x coordinates Or perhaps the difference of y coordinates, but not the x coordinates themselves So it may be that you can save effort by calculating directly the difference of the coordinates instead of calculating the coordinates and subtracting them So for the 2017 formulas, I used a modified Jacobian state in which the x coordinates are Represented with x q and x r which have to have the same representation because they're going to be swapped as their difference from the x coordinate of p Multiplied of course by z squared, which is a Jacobian form Whereas x p is represented directly further more only the y coordinate of p is stored and not of q or r and the slope m is Stored and it's got a power a single power of z so that when you multiply it by an x difference Which has z squared you get a y difference which which has z cubed One mistake in those original formulas at least from a performance point of view is that m is stored doubled as 2m z This leads to this having operation in the last line where I have to compute m prime over 2 squared It's better to compute only a Single m times z and then in the last line it won't have to be doubled or halved And it turns out that the rest of the computations can be rearranged to use the same number of operations So overall you save one having so this is the the baseline for the the formulas that I'll be discussing today The main observation of the new formulas is that x p is only used to compute the next version of itself XP prime Furthermore XP prime is only used to compute the next version of x RP and it's done by subtracting XP prime from something So that means that you know that XP doesn't have to be part of the state because you can recover it from the other variables of the state Mx Qp and x RP However, it might be that it doesn't save time to do this, but let's see what happens if we do a substitution here so if we substitute in The the recovered value of XP and then if we substitute This XP prime for the XP prime in the last line and then we do a bunch of algebra Which I don't really have time to get into in this talk Then we can come up with a direct formula for computing x prime RP However, this direct formula has quite a number of multiplications in it mostly by y p So we're calculating y p times z times this new intermediate term g However, we're also calculating in this formula y p times z squared and we don't or times z cubed And we don't use z squared or z cubed anywhere else in these formulas So by rewriting y p z cubed as y p times z times g times k Which shares a very large common sub expression with this last line We can save quite a few multiplications in it on top of that And so in the end we net out to one multiplication ahead So 11 multiplications per bit Three of which are squareings plus seven additions You can also massage these slightly to turn one of the multiplies into a squaring at the cost of a couple additions And so this is generally the form of the manipulations that I did to produce the the other formulas in this paper There's not necessarily a deep new insight, but just the observation that in these existing formulas from 2017 Some of the variables might be redundant or might not be computed in the optimal way And instead calculating some difference of them or some calculating them in some different way might produce a better result So this new Montgomery ladder as I said takes 11 multiplies and seven adds And it parallelizes on either two or three parallel units So you could get it down to a latency of only four multiplies It also requires six field registers worth of memory, which is pretty efficient It also has an advantage over previous work that it doesn't reuse the output of the ladder step within the ladder step itself And this gives an advantage for against correlation attacks There's also a different Montgomery ladder presented in the paper. So this stores yq and yr instead of yp and it Uses it can be simplified down to the same eight multiplies three squares and seven adds But it has a parallel version that's slightly has slightly more operations, but they're all parallelized four ways So the total latency is only three multiplication latencies and three addition latencies This makes it competitive with the most efficient formulas for the Montgomery ladder on Montgomery curves if you have a four-way SIMD machine I've also got a new formula for the schwa ladder So as I remarked towards the beginning of this talk, the schwa ladder uses the same ladder step as the Montgomery ladder However, the representations of the points need to be slightly different because you have to be able to swap p and q instead of swapping q and r In particular, you can't just have a y coordinate stored for p without having one stored for q So computing that extra y coordinate ends up costing after some simplifications one extra multiply So the schwa ladder With our formulas is slightly less efficient than the Montgomery ladder It does however use less memory and in fact less memory than any other Prime field elliptic curve formulas. I'm aware of it only needs five field registers Plus the scalars and the curve constants And in fact, you can do the setup and the finalization of the ladder with only those five field registers So you could do the entire operation with very little memory So, how do we do the setup now if you have x and y and you need to compute coordinates of p and 2p Then you can do this easily using formulas that you would find on the internet However, if you have only the x-coordinate, it's not totally obvious how to do this and the reason is that You don't have y and so how are you going to compute y times z cubed now? You do have y squared from the curve equation, right? It's x cubed plus ax plus b So it turns out that if you set z equals y Then all the coordinates that you have to compute are only functions of y squared and not just of y And so that means that you can compute them using the the y-square that you would recover from the curve equation A second interesting question is how do we Finalize the ladder which is to say given the ladder state that more or less represents xz squared and yz cubed for the three points How do we recover x and y? Well, we just divide through by z, but the ladder state doesn't contain z So we need to solve for z If we're doing the Montgomery ladder then this p in the ladder is the same as the base point And that means that if we've stored the initial point then we Have both that and its coordinates scaled by z squared and z cubed from this It's easy to solve for z or for 1 over z And then clear the denominators Except it doesn't work if the original point had an x-coordinate of zero in which case we would divide zero by zero So this technique is only working on the Montgomery ladder and only on curves where xp equals zero is not a possibility However, there's another way to finalize the elliptic curve ladder using curve invariance so If you take the curve equation and you intersect it with a line, then you get a cubic equation in x Furthermore, you know the three roots of this cubic equation And so because the coefficients of a cubic equation depend on the roots in the way shown on this slide You can recompute the curve coefficients a and b which presumably you also have stored in a ROM or something somewhere However, when you do this you get a times z to the fourth and b times z to the sixth because they have a different number of factors of x in them And so by dividing these two you can solve for z squared or 1 over z squared Which will give you the x-coordinate of the output you can combine this on the Montgomery ladder with the previous slide Where you can get z cubed from yz cubed and that will also allow you to extract yp However On the joie ladder this only allows you to output x it furthermore requires that the the curve coefficients a and b are not equal to zero So it won't work on sec p256 k1, but that curve doesn't have any points with x equals zero So you can use the previous slide for that curve In other cases for example, if you want to use the joie ladder, but also output the y-coordinate You can do this by tracking z Just add it to the ladder state and you'll have to multiply it by something on every ladder step So it costs you an extra multiply per bit, but otherwise it basically just works So a final question that we might ask is are these ladder formulas complete or do they have failure cases? But you already know the answer to this they're cosy formulas and therefore they always fail if they encounter z equals zero in particular If they encounter the neutral point in fact the neutral point is the only way that this can happen and they're otherwise complete And so for prime curves you can sort of work out that at least in the common case There are only at most four different scalars for which you will see a failure and in fact some of them are like the scalars zero, so Those sort of can't be salvaged anyway there the answer is the point at infinity And so if you're using this for ECDH for example, then you might just say well the probability is negligible that any of this happens because the scalar is a Uniformly random value that's not influenced by the adversary However in some applications you might want perfect correctness and for this you need to construct a ladder that avoids the neutral point so We have a way to avoid this at least if the the curve doesn't have any tiny prime factors its order is not divisible by two or by three and the way to do this is to Tract the number of ways that the neutral point can occur So remember the ladder step takes PQ and R to PQ plus R and to R Give or take a sign So I'll just be sort of ignoring sign here because it depends on on swaps so details are in the paper So if the curves order is odd, then you can't Encounter you can't have to R equals the neutral point unless like the state is already at the neutral point So the only way that you fail is if Q equals minus R so that Q plus R is oh And then this also means that because you know that P plus Q equals R you have P equals to Q or perhaps minus 2 Q And then once you're in the neutral state There's also only a few ways that it can go so for the Montgomery ladder you can stay in the neutral state the same neutral state or You can go to to this other state which ends up being 2 Q 2 Q and 4 Q up to sign so Let's let's map that out. So you have a state that starts 2 Q Q and Q And then you sort of add or subtract these right and you'll end up with zero So that would cause a failure in a cozy ladder And then finally you'll go to 2 Q 2 Q 4 Q Or you'll stay in that state for some number of ladder steps By laddering it, you know swapped and then and then later you'll exit to 2 Q 2 Q 4 Q So what we can do though is that we can do a different permutation on the state And this will allow us to sort of shadow the state of The the Montgomery ladder that would fail because it would go through the neutral point without actually going through the neutral point in In that representation So the way we do this is that we swap the first two points and then applying the ladder step goes to the state Q 3 Q 2 Q Which we call the shadow state because it sort of shadows the the the neutral zone without actually going there And this shadow state if you permute it and apply the ladder operation you get back to the same state so you can you can track as long as the The sort of ladder you're shadowing is in this neutral state. You can stay in the shadow state Using ladder operations and then when the when the ladder that the ladder that you're shadowing Sort of exits to the state to Q 2 Q 4 Q then you can do a different permutation of this state And then you'll end up in the correct output state again up to sign and the details are in the paper Um Actually, I should say that the details are in the auxiliary material whose URL is given on this slide Because while there's this whole state machine a complicated arrangement of swaps and so on so it has more detail than really fits into the 20 pages This ladder which dodges the neutral point is slightly slower It needs the extra y coordinate just like the schwa ladder Because you have to swap all three points instead of just two of them However, you don't need to use this representation for every iteration of the ladder Even if you're going for perfect correctness Because you can't get to the neutral point immediately, but only after some number of iterations So with the common case, which is the a prime order curve You can't get to the neutral point until like the last two iterations So you don't need to do anything special until the very end so this means that while the Complete version of these Curve operations is significantly more complicated It's not actually that much slower and it's entirely a viable option if you really need perfect correctness So that's all And please direct any questions to me during the question section you hear the references


Before I get into my remarks today, let me make one thing perfectly clear. As I end 40 years of public service and I don't find myself on the ballot that will be coming before you in May, it is a bittersweet departure and yet at the same time I want you to know that my determination to address the issue of homelessness in our city burns just as bright and just as strong as it did when we began the journey to create a 10-year plan. And Rosie and I are going to be right in the middle of that issue. I don't know how much the stock is worth of a former mayor, but we're going to find out when it comes to the issue of homelessness because this is a challenge that we can address and we can overcome. It's going to take all of us pulling our words together and I'll talk more about that in a moment. But this is an issue that I am very passionate about. I was talking to Otis earlier as we arrived and I said there's something I've noticed. There are less homeless people on our street. Y'all notice that? Is it just me? Is there a different attitude on the street about whether or not this city cares about not just the most of us but the least of us? Do you think that everyone is starting to understand that our city is only as strong as our weakest citizen and only as rich as our poorest? Y'all believe that? Well so do we. So do we. Council Member Carter, but dad is here. I want you to know a little something about Carter. Carter is known as a crotchety old council member. He sets his jaw, he sets it permanent and I think that goes back to the years of practice and law. It also goes back to his principles about standing up for what you believe is right and he has never wavered on this issue, Otis. Every time I have gone to him about our budget needs to address homelessness, Carter has never hesitated. Even though he is mighty careful about those tax dollars, every single one of them.  It is a plan that has led to having room in our shelter during this last ice storm when everybody else was focused on Superbowl, others were focused on survival. They didn't care about whether it was the Packers or the Steelers. They cared about the next day, getting through the one that they were in, getting through the next day. And we had room in our shelters for those who wanted to come in. That tells me our plan is working, ladies and gentlemen. Directions home is working. I don't think that's ever been the case, Otis, when we've had that kind of weather, that we actually had room. That tells me we don't need any more shelters. What we need is more permanent, supportive housing. That's what we need. That's what we need because it works. It works. You know, we learned three things when we took our trip to look at best practices and worst practices. And I know I'm way off our script. Hell, I don't even know if I'm going to give a speech. We learned three things. We learned that just putting someone who is homeless into a home with a roof over their head doesn't work. You give them a key to the door, but that doesn't work. We also learned that just giving them services without a home doesn't work either.  But permanent supportive housing has been the mainstay of Directions home, and that will take us where we need to go. That will take us where we need to go. I am very, very concerned about what is taking place at the state level because the money that was given to large cities to address homelessness at the big test of all of the large city mayors who went to Austin and asked to help us to address this issue gave us the dollars for case workers, gave us the dollars for project wish. How many of y'all have heard of that program? Works, doesn't it? Works, and those dollars right now in that budget have been whacked. Not some of them, all of them, all of them. Whether or not they will be restored, I don't know. I don't know where homelessness falls in the priority list of this Governor. I don't know where it falls in the priority list of the people who represent you, but you need to let them know that you're concerned about it. And if we don't get those dollars, then Mark, we have to do something else. We have to do what Fort Worth did when the ice storm came along with over 100,000 people for Super Bowl. We have to adjust, we have to adapt, and we have to overcome. It does us no good to whine about what we can't do. We've got to concentrate and focus on what we can. And if that means realigning our priorities, if that means redirecting Carter, those efforts to the council where y'all showed up in large numbers, worked before. I was sitting there, it did increase the pucker factor when all y'all showed up. And it got the attention of this council. And let me tell you something, that works in Austin too. Works in Washington. When folks show up, when they speak up, when they suit up, people listen. And you're going to have to do that. You're going to have to organize. You're going to have to take that message. You're going to have to take it to Austin. And you're going to have to visit individually with every member of this council. Carter won't be there. I won't be there. So you're going to have to educate your new mayor about this issue. You're going to have to educate your new councilman from the 7th district about this issue. And you're going to have to educate and re-educate those folks that are there. I don't think you're going to have to educate our city manager. Tom Higgins is a great guy and he's got a huge heart. And he knows how important this issue is, Jay. He knows how important this is. And so do you. So we have a challenge. And I say we because I'll be right at your side.  Not going to be behind you. Be right at your side. Directions home is working. We are reducing chronic homelessness in our city. All of our partners are working together. And if we're ever going to get this job done, whether it's in 10 years or preferably less, then we're going to have to keep pulling those oars in the same direction. I want to introduce a fellow to you right now real quickly. His name is Mark Hill. Might have heard of him. He's well known in the corporate world. And until not too long ago, I didn't realize his and his wife's passion about the issue of homelessness. I had no idea because prior to that, basically our negotiations were all about corporate issues and contracts and boring stuff like that. Instead of people issues, people issues. He understands that there is no cookie cutter mechanism for homelessness that every single person who is homeless is in that position because of bad choices, bad circumstances, things beyond their control, some things they could have controlled. But they're not there by choice, are they? Are any, any homeless individuals that you know or any that are here today, are you homeless because you want to be? Those who are raise your hand. Trick question. Trick question. And that's, and that's something that, that's something Mark understands. He also understands that not every program that we have fits perfectly into a given government grant. He understands that IDs and things that are, are products that will identify someone and give them a presence are more important than hot dogs and blankets. I'm not saying hot dogs and blankets aren't important.  But, but hot dogs and blankets will only take you so far, won't they? What you as those who are identified as individuals who are part of the Fort Worth family without a home need to know is that you too have a responsibility. You've got to help us. You've got to help all of these partners to help you. And the way you do that is by being honest. And I ask you to speak up. Don't stay silent. Speak up. Tell us what those needs are. Tell us what we're not doing right. Tell us what we are doing right. Tell us what you need more of. Tell us what you need less of. Let your team help you. Because they will. They will. Those of us who are on that team, all of these partners, I think we need to also realize that we need to help you to reach your dream, your goal, and make sure that it's not our goal. I need to repeat that. Pretty simple math. And sometimes we get those intermingled, not intentionally, but we get so focused on our goal, we what? We forget about yours. I could not be any prouder as mayor of this great city, of anything that we have done together than directions home. We started a journey together. A journey begins with what? That first step. We took it together. Carter, we took it as a team.  This is far more important than who is mayor of this city. This is far more important for us to finish what we started, for us to raise the bar for other cities. And let me tell you something. We have. We have. I'm looking at an example right now. And there's a story with every face in this room. To those partners who have been out here doing the Lord's work for a long, long time, I say, thank you. To those who feel we have made progress, don't rest on your laurels. Don't look back. None of us, like Andrew Jackson says. I think it was Andrew Jackson, Mark. Maybe I'm wrong. You're probably pretty good at quotes, but I think it was him. He said, don't look back. We ain't going that way. And we're not Fort Worth. We're moving forward. We're going to continue this journey together. I started out to introduce Mark Hill. I'm going to ask him to stand up. Mark, stand up. The mock of what it used to be called, the mayor's advisory committee on homelessness. Well, that's no longer what it's called. It is the city advisory committee on homelessness. There's a message there and a very positive message. If you listen, I asked Mark once I found out about his passion, and he came to me. He said, is there anything I can do to help on the issue of homelessness? I said, oh, yes, there is. Have I got a job for you? And so as one who cares, as one who is passionate, he steps up to that plate to work with all of you, to work with our current partners, to basically, in so many words, continue to do the Lord's work. That's what we're talking about. And I have no doubt that this faith journey will continue. The doors will continue to open. Our next challenge is to get that resource center. And one way or the other, we're going to skin that cat. We've got some great partners at the table. The county is there. The hospital district is there. We're going to get that done because it needs to happen. The current facility, I know you're trying. I know you're making the best with what you've got to work with, but we can do better. And it's going to take all of us to get there. That'll be just one of the many challenges you have, Mark. But I look forward to working with you in that regard. Mark is more than just the new chairman of the commission. He's also a good personal friend. And that's as important to me as anything, knowing that I entrust something that is so dear to me and so dear to all of you that it works so long and so hard to someone who is a friend. He's a friend of mine, and I'm sure you will all come to find he will be a friend of yours. Otis is our energizer bunny. He continues to maintain a focus. He understands the challenges we face. He understands how all of these parts of this puzzle have to fit together to make it work. For all of the times that we have met, the good and the bad, whether it was a 911 call and those were often, or whether it was I can't wait to share the news and hand you the 200th key, the 200th key of folks who were getting their own apartment. It has been a journey that I will always treasure and a friendship that I will always value. I'm not going to get emotional. Did that when I announced I wasn't going to run anymore. But what I am going to tell you is Rosie and I do care deeply about this issue. And we are not going anywhere. I might not be at City Hall, but I'm going to be here in town. And I'm going to continue to be involved and work with Mark, work with all of you to continue to reduce that number on our streets. And folks, that is the testament. It's working. I don't know what other cities are doing. I don't know how well we did in the county. I don't know anything but what I have seen. And even if we didn't reduce our number and we stayed flat in the last evaluation, that too would be a win given the fact that we've just come off a recession and the other populations around the large cities are going up because of that recession. So I don't know what those numbers are. I know there were a lot of folks out that were involved in the count. For those that were involved, I certainly thank them. But I want to thank all of you individually, collectively, for believing in us, for believing in yourselves, for believing there is a brighter day ahead, for believing that there is a light at the end of that tunnel that is not an oncoming train. Because if you didn't believe that, we'd be walking in circles, wouldn't we? We realized doing the same old thing was going to do nothing but get the same old results. And we changed that direction. We need to stay the course. We need to finish what we started. We need to do it together with your help and with his. And with his, we'll arrive at our destination. Thank you. God bless you.


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It's the season of sweets. You know that time of year between Thanksgiving and New Year's when everywhere you go you're just surrounded with sweets. So I like to find something that's a little bit sweet but a little bit salty at the same time and maybe a little bit spicy just to give people a little break from all the sweets. And today I'm going to show you one of my favorite snack mixes that I like to make this time of year. I always have it on hand. It makes a great little gift or an extra special treat. It's great for nibbling during the game. So let's get to it. I've got all my ingredients. You don't even need to put an apron on for this. It's so easy to put together. All the ingredients can be picked up at the grocery store. And I'm going to start by putting one cup of honey roasted peanuts into my bowl.  I've got some salted roasted cashews and then these little sesame sticks. I would never be without the sesame sticks in the snack mix. They're crunchy and that sesame seed flavor is so good. And I've got some pistachios that are roasted, salted. These days you can buy them in bags in the store. They're already out of the shell, really easy to use. Put those into the bowl and some dried cranberries. Give that little bit of tart sweetness. And then my favorite ingredient of all and it's really a surprise in this mix when people are eating it wasabi peas. If you haven't had wasabi peas, they're usually a roasted pea with, it's roasted with sugar and salt and horseradish. And that's what gives it a big spicy kick. So every now and then you get one of these wasabi peas in a handful of this mixture into your mouth. And it's a surprise, but it's a surprise that you'll love. So put this all in your bowl, just mix it up and it's ready to eat. Scoop it into a cellophane bag or put it into a pretty little jar, tie a ribbon around it and you've got a great little gift for someone special. I hope you'll give this sweet and spicy snack mix a try. I'm Sue Dodin sharing good food for Good Life 365.


easonable. You know, I would say as long as we're pulling zoning permits and building this project that I would prefer to just be able to use the staging area but that's your discretion on that. So we'll live with it either way. Okay. You said you might wanna use this for the commercial areas as well, not just the homes. Exactly, yeah. I mean, if we're finished the homes and it's conceivable, right? That just as a lay down area or keeping the job trailer there.  You have to have infrastructure for the toilets. You have to have electricity, power, cable, internet, all these things and a lot of times you pave the thing so that it's not such a nightmare in the winter and whatnot. So it's nice to keep it for a while but I understand the intention here. So we're happy to do what we need to do. Okay, we good board? So do you wanna decide in deliberations or do you wanna provide some feedback now? I think at the very least the language would want to include and or zoning for commercial. Because it says homes. If they for some reason switched up, we're just doing commercial for now then. What other members think? Sorry, I'm thinking has them. For the 18 months. But they would have to still pull the permit. That would be my understanding of this conversation was that would come up in the discussion of the commercial building, right?  So yeah, anyway. So yeah, I don't know if it would be appropriate to call out that in this permit given that this is just for the homes, right? Or is that correct this? Yeah, right. So that would be my thought around that. Other comments board? Yeah, I'm in agreement with the idea separate entity from the residential at this point. So I would just leave it as it's no residential permit for living in 18 months. The construction staging area to be restored. And if the applicant wants to bring that up with us when with the submission for commercial permit, we can discuss it at that time. Yeah, I agree with Mark. Okay. Anyone disagree? You do. Yeah, but that's what I mean. Okay. Okay. All right. In the prior meeting, we talked about the idea of there's this grand plan that we're only looking at this but we have to understand the grand plan and consider that. So it sounds like in this case, we're saying the reverse of that idea which we expressed the last time. I see. Yeah. Okay. Like I said, it's going to make sense to have it there for the next project and the board, future board. You guys, I'm sure that they'll realize it and I'm sure it'll all work out. So we're, it's great. You guys can, no issue. I can, I'll make sure it's highlighted in the draft decision and the board can talk about it. Yeah, okay. I'm going to read number 22, the city's public nuisance ordinance prohibits construction. Well, we kind of covered this. You're not, you're not going to do anything on federal holidays. It's great. Yeah. No worries. 23, staff has requested the DPW review of the proposed amount anticipates having an update at the time of the hearing. Yeah. I did get an update from Tom and let me just go back to read it. What he said is that 50,000 was an adequate surety, especially because the blasted materials will have an inherent value. Okay. So we're good with that. You want to know how easy it is to get rid of like 40,000 yards of blasted crushed stone. I just put a free sign up, watch it go. Is that right? I, it would disappear very quickly. That was our take on it too. If there's a pile of stone there, we can, some contractor will truck it away for free to have it, right? So it has a value. Okay. All right. The last comment. Staff recommends the board discuss whether to require a certain percentage of roofs be oriented for optimum solar gain. Right. The homes have, I guess what the applicant was saying is that the homes, you can take the same home and say, well, I want my roof pointed towards the front and I want, and somebody else could say the same home, but I want my room, my room pointed side to side. And so should there be a condition like we have on a lot of other development projects that says, well, no more than, you know, 20% of homes shall have their roofs oriented away for maximum solar gain. Just like on another project, we would say, no more than three homes can be of the same type or the same color or whatever, it would be a condition like that. So a certain percentage of roofs to be oriented to, so what would a percentage be? I mean, would you suggest a percentage? And how to, first let me ask, how do board members feel about having a requirement that a certain percentage be oriented for solar gain? I feel it's unnecessary. I stand by the original comments we made at preliminary. So you feel it's unnecessary, Dan? Yeah, I feel it's unnecessary given our previous finding at preliminary plat. This development does more to deal with climate change than these other requirements of micromanagement. Okay, other thoughts? I agree with Dan. So part of the reason we put this in here is the current review and consideration of a climate action plan. So this is one of those things that has become more important to the city since preliminary plat. Yeah, we certainly appreciate the sort of direction of the city. I think we're definitely committed to the efficiency and energy efficiency of these homes. We are currently analyzing all the aspects of how we're gonna be building the home and programs with car chargers and solar ready roofs, conduits running to the roofs, pre-wiring for electric vehicles. I mean, we're enrolled currently in the efficiency Vermont program. These homes are gonna be enrolled in the National Green Building Standard Program, potentially the Energy Star Program. We are definitely doing all these things. I think this particular condition would be challenging particularly since it wasn't something that came up at preliminary plat and all the home designs are already done and all the roofs are oriented the way they're oriented. So if the condition were written such that like the current plans would comply on the lots where the plans fit, maybe it wouldn't necessarily be a problem but it's sort of like the height question where it's like I can't begin to fathom how I would analyze which of these homes could meet this standard or what it means. And also the lots are just oriented the way they're oriented. So some of them don't run appropriately for optimum solar gain because they're running with the contours of the land. And I think it's something that certainly coming up at this point would be problematic for us. So I appreciate the feedback from that. Does anyone on the board feel differently than Dan and Frank? I just want to clarify it sounds like and I don't know if this is already a requirement but all the buildings will be, homes will be solar ready even if they're not oriented for optimal solar gain. Absolutely, yep. And we run a conduit inside the house as well from the panel to the roof so that people don't have to put everything on the outside and have it look all bundled up. So yeah, then I'm of similar thought to Dan and Frank, I think. Yeah, and I'm agreement as well. Okay, anyone doesn't agree? Okay. All right, that's it for the comments. So let's see if there's any members of the public who are interested in commenting. Do we have any who have expressed an interest or anyone raised their hand? Who's on the, looks like there are none. Okay. All right, thank you for your time. I'm going to ask for a motion to continue this hearing. To, yeah, so this is a bit of a discussion. I had originally held time on this on the November 1st agenda. Looking at all the things where we have said, or where the applicant has said, yep, we'll address that. And the fact that we don't have any of that stuff yet and that I have to send it to all the internal city departments. I'm pretty nervous about getting stuff done in time for the packet for the November 1st hearing because it has to be done five days before that. I'm inclined to recommend this be continued to the second November hearing. I don't know if that like gives you heart palpitations. I mean, do you have stuff ready to submit like tomorrow or is it going to be two weeks from now? And I, if we recommend to the second October, November meeting, I wouldn't be looking for stuff on, you know, two weeks before that, I'd be looking for it three weeks before that. So we'd compromise, we'd get three weeks and we'd get three weeks rather than you getting two weeks and us getting two weeks. Most of the plan changes we talked about are done. I think maybe there's a couple of minor things we talked about tonight, but. Yeah, I think it's definitely important for us to kind of move forward. I think we're sort of budding up against, you know, I guess if the intention is, I think I understand your point and like it would be nice to have a little bit more time to sort of get everything buttoned up. And if the intention is that we could sort of close the hearing at that point like and be done, you know, maybe that. Yeah, the intention is very much to close at the next hearing, whether it's a draft decision or just a set of cleanup staff comments may be the difference between November 1st and November 15th. To be more likely to have an actual decision on the 15th is what you're saying. And I can't guarantee that, but that'd be my objective. If we're aiming for the first, I think there's no way I can even hope to do that. Which means we're deliberating on the 15th with a draft decision either way. Right. It's just whether or not. Yeah, I think, I mean, look, we want to do what works for you guys. I think if that in the end is going to expedite things anyway, then, you know, why not take the time? But yeah, definitely. I guess the flip side is if there's things that you think or the board thinks need to be discussed more, take the standard date, get the discussion out of the way, and we'll, you know, maybe it's just a short night on the discussion stuff. And then we, you know, wrap everything up with a draft decision later. But if we don't think that there's other stuff that needs to be reviewed with the board before they open and do a final button up, then I think the 15th is probably okay. You know, we got through the comments from the last, you know, we got through the C1LR stuff. I'm not sure that there's anything else that we feel like we need to, I mean, like Scott said, I think the plans are largely done. I think, you know, updating the landscaping plans with the street tree stuff might take a few days, a week, I don't know if Carolyn's still on the call. We could certainly, I think we could. I am still on the call. Yeah, it's going to take more than a couple of weeks. It's quite an extensive amount of work. So, you know, why don't we go with the one, the later date and hope for the draft decision and the quick turnaround on the backside. We're talking about the 15th of November. Hey, Carolyn, can you go on mute again, please? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think, I mean, there's a lot of changes here and it probably makes sense to get them all summarized and to get a good, you know, memo back into you guys with everything, so. Let me ask this. Does any member of the board think there are any real substantive issues that we need to spend a lot of time on? Or are we really just cleaning up, reviewing, whatever?  This is the end. This is the end. The end is near. We haven't discussed ownership of the rec pads, I think, or not the rec pads, the rec open spaces because I think the board kind of tasked us with city and applicant. You figure it out. We are close to having that figured out. We've been having meetings with them. I gave them your feedback on phasing, particularly phasing of sidewalk on Old Farm Road and relocation of North End of Old Farm Road. We need revised plots to show subdivision that aligns with what you're proposing in the C1LR. Yeah, yep. Those are just the things that strike me as the big things. Yeah, the plots are done. I could send you to eat tomorrow. It didn't seem to me that there's a huge amount of. Yeah, I don't think so. No, it doesn't. Okay, well let's. I presume that you guys are, I mean, you can still be working on this, the decision stuff along the way, right? So it's not, it's gonna take some time to get this done. And I don't think, you know, if we meet on the first and we just haven't had any chance to work on it, it doesn't really help at all because we're still gonna get the decision on December 1st or 2nd or whatever it is. And if we meet on the 15th and then we get it two weeks later, you know, the first week has six weeks later, like. It's still the same endpoint, yeah. It's still at the same end. So I defer to your judgment on that, but absolutely like we are, you know, we have a company of folks who you want to get started and we're anxious to do so. Let's do what you suggest. I think we can, it would be a better use of the board's time to do it on the 15th. I agree. Certainly make all of our teams life easier for the next three weeks anyway, getting this into you. Yeah, so we'll split that time. You get three weeks and we get three weeks with it. So that's not fair.  So I would entertain a motion to continue this hearing until November 15th. I'll make a motion. We continue SD 2210 of 500 Old Farm Road to November 15th. Thank you, Mark. Do I have a second? Thank you. Thanks, Dan. Any discussion? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? Okay. We'll see you back here on November 15th. Thank you, guys. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Thanks for sticking it out with us for four years on this. Okay. Minutes. There were no minutes. I didn't think there were. Okay. The business. I guess the mess is over. Go in peace. Thanks, good to go. Good night, everyone. Good night. Mark, I hope you feel better. Thanks, staff. Appreciate it. Thanks, Dan. Good night. Night.