I study whiskers because they're just the best. Most mammals, they have whiskers. And what's exciting about them is that there's so much stuff that we don't know. I like to look at something that we see every day and then find out really cool and interesting things about them. Lots of people, when they hear about whiskers, they think immediately of cat whiskers. But actually, other animals have much better whiskers – they're more sensitive, they're bigger, they move more than cats' whiskers. Porcupine whiskers are just the longest whiskers I've seen. The one I've got back in the lab is about 45 centimetres long and they move them almost continually and then they kind of bump and move and vibrate around over the material that they're on so you can really see that they're moving all the time. Hi gorgeous! It's very difficult to study the evolution of whiskers because hair isn't really preserved in the fossil record. So we have a look at this little hole here which is called the Infraorbital Foreman, or whisker holes. And all the information from the whiskers, from those sensitive follicles, travel through that hole and into the brain. Humans are really quite unusual to not have whiskers but we do still have these whisker holes where our whiskers would have been and also we even have some remnants of muscles similar to what we see in animals with whiskers. Whiskers are very much like human fingertips. Lots of animals can move their whiskers and then some animals engage in what is called whisking. So this is cyclic forwards and backward movements that the animals make with their whiskers and we might think of this as scanning. So when we walk into a room, we might be looking around everywhere trying to see all around us and that's what these guys are doing. And the fastest whisking that I've seen has been in harvest mice which reach up to about 25 times per second which is some of the fastest movements that mammals can make. The most sensitive whiskers are in aquatic mammals. Lots of seals will have kind of just under 2,000 nerve fibres surrounding all of those whiskers in the follicle and their whiskers are so sensitive they can do this amazing thing which is called hydrodynamic sensing. So as a fish swims through the water it leaves behind a wake, a trail of water movements and the seals are able to detect this and they use only their whiskers for this. These are porcupine whiskers and you can see that they're arranged into a grid or whisker map so you have rows and columns of whiskers so they're very ordered. This same grid-like pattern can be seen in physical structures through the brain and our neuroscientists love this because it means that they can actually tweak one whisker here, so a middle whisker and they can follow it through the entire brain to see where that sensory signal goes and each physical structure will light up in turn. In many animals, whiskers are their primary and most important sense so it's very, very important not to trim them. They wouldn't hurt them but they'll suddenly remove a sense so it'd be like if you blindfolded us and then put us in a room and so we've got to feel around to work out where we are and that is what these animals are doing all the time. We can see that when we look at rats and mice that some of them will actually engage in a behaviour called barboring so this is when you have a dominant individual that will trim the whiskers so bite off the whiskers of their family or other people that live in their box and so when they do that those individuals will become more submissive so it establishes this hierarchy within the cage. Whiskers can inspire lots of new technology and innovations. Firstly, we could have a look at their shape so the undulations of seal whiskers has inspired, for instance, turbine blades so turbine blades can be extra aerodynamic because they have these amazing undulations or waves along them. These could also be applied to tidal energy as well. Then you have the fact that they are sensors can put these sensors onto robots so then you can have tactile robots or whisker bots and these could be really useful for something even like a robot hoover but also to make sure that robots can go into hazardous, dark or complex environments. These are the environments we need our robots to go into so people don't really think about whiskers at all you probably go home and look at your cat or your gerbil or your rabbit and you think oh yeah they're fluffy and have whiskers actually what we're doing is trying to understand well how do they work and how sensitive are they and what do they use them for and they think that that's super interesting to find out.


ちゃん बतabor- दश्यचएन घब स्रज़़ा के मेक मेक सगल सढ्ता, लेग आघने , दश्यचएन धफ सचना के thi लैये, अणलोबन आप ह़द़ा चिडद मा है. और भई भई परख्षम इस नीदे इन थी तोब और रिएा च्डई � trap वर्टम्योटा करता पाभ्टूपलिलेशातचा तूर आपाद् उठ्तlocks में। उसमभित आप्टूपलिलेशात करता औरने करतिखाटा आबस्टीख्याण्प् से अपभुगत करे रहा रहा हरु बाद एक। इसे श़तम दीवार मट्रें ग़िल्चाः रफ्वादा करहाईए। अपस वो बवो वो वो रहा है कै क्छीखा वो ज़े कातेवाईए। अ land production quantity or a certain parametric value for that product that you give. For example, if we give a certain flat product. And we may say that the flat product has a certain strength property. Now we cannot test each and every product to have what strength property it has, तो अधन्फरे दीर of the product produced in an industry is the population.  To analyze the data, the small sample realization that we get from thehstrend properties is the question we are trying to answer through parameter estimation. So we talked in the previous session that there are two types of estimator. ह हcam is called a point estimator, which would for example give you the exact value of say yield strength of the product. चन दे� worthy another estimator, in which we give an interval estimator. So, we say that instead of saying that the yield strength will be exactly 1300 MPa, we instead say that it would lie in a certain interval wave for ninety-five percent of the time. idaćс that 95% of the product, which will come out of this industry will have real strength falling in this interface.  alarmingly, we have been starting a discussion in previous session about the point estimator  chronically, we talked about maximum likelihood estimator in which we said that ,Ч rest of its state, that we know the population distribution but somehow we know the form of the distribution special, but we do not know the parameter of the distribution. So, that parameter we say is if it is theta then we say that take a joint density function of all the sample realization that we have got, which is independent and identically distributed. So, it is simply a product of their individual densities and then this function contains all possible स्य formulation that you can get from the sample for the population with respect to theta. ग बावास बाधा। this is what we called a likelihood function of theta, unknown parameter and then we maximized this likelihood and the point that give you the gave you the maximum value, we called it a Point estimator, maximum likelihood point estimator of the parameter theta. three examples. Two examples, burn 복ley trials are normal and very simple and straight forever where you take the derivative of the maximum likelihood function equate it to zero and then you find what is the value of the one or two unknown parameters. But then we also took the case of Weibull distribution in which we found that you। ञीज़ी, चीज़ी। और जबी दाई, आप रव मुडिकाया वो नहीं धूल्चाím। तक अरोगार, तुई वह थहाँ तुए पवाझ्तार, चीच़ क। शाहँज भी कुपॉञ। चीच्चचचचचचचचचचच चचचचचच। जो सामेंजा। ड़ at at same 1 22 22 22 22 22 And then let us denote mu1, mu2, mu3, mua so on and so forth as a raw moments of distribution function f theta and let m1, m2, m3, ma etc correspond to the sample raw moments. Let us recall mu, the kth raw moment of a population is defined as expected value of x to the power k, while the sample raw moment of level k that is kth sample raw moment is defined as 1 over n summation of xi to the power k. Now, what we do in method of moments is that we equate the population moments with the sample raw moments. We take the population raw first raw moment and equate it to the sample first raw moment, population second raw moment and we equate it to the sample second raw moment like this. Now, if there are q number of unknown parameters then we take the first q raw moments from the population and first q raw moments from the sample and we equate them and we solve these equations because on one side when you talk about the population moments there is an unknown parameter theta in it while the sample raw moments are not unknown because there is a realization of data and from data we can calculate it. So, we have an equation with q unknowns, q equations with q unknowns and we need to solve them simultaneously. Let us take an example of Bernoulli trial which is the simplest of the kind. x1, x2, x3, xn come from a Bernoulli population where the probability of success is p and xi is 1 if trial is success and xi is 0 if trial is not successful. Then you know that probability of xi is p to the power x 1 minus p to the power 1 minus x where x takes on a value 0 or 1 and there is only one unknown parameter which is p. So, we need to compare only the first raw moment of the Bernoulli population and the first raw moment of the sample. The first raw moment of sample is a sample mean. So, we have to compare expected value of x is equal to sample mean and expected value of x in the Bernoulli trials is p and therefore the p curl this is the notation I have used. This is the notation I have used p curl is a method of moment estimator of Bernoulli parameter p probability of success p which is equal to x bar. Remember we got the same result in the maximum likelihood estimator. This is not a rule, this is an exception. Anyway, let us continue another thing which will look like a rule. If you take a normal distribution, we take a sample x 1, x 2, x 3, x n instead of calling it every time random I have chose now to call it independent identically distributed sample which is called IID sample from a normal distribution with mean mu and variance sigma square where mu and sigma square are unknown parameters. The distribution now there are two parameters. So, we need to have two population raw moments and two sample raw moments. So, the population raw moment is mu and the second raw moment is sigma square plus mu square. While the sample raw moment is sample mean and it is summation of xi square over n. This is the second raw moment. Now, if you equate the first moment with the first population moment with the first raw sample moment, you get the mu curl is equal to that is the MME estimator or method of moments estimator of mean value of normal population is same as the sample mean or sample average. Now, you find that you have to equate the second moment that is second moment of population with the second raw moment of the sample. And if you simplify it you will find that the method of moment estimator of variance of normal distribution sigma square curl is equal to actually this is MLE of sigma square which is we call it sigma square hat. You please confirm this. This is also a good case. But now let us consider the case where this may not always hold true. And this is why I am going to I have decided to discuss this method here. Method of moments is a very attractive method. And as you saw in the two simple examples, they very easily give us in a very much simpler manner the maximum likelihood estimator for the unknown parameters in the case of Bernoulli trials as well as in the case of normal distribution. Remember maximum likelihood estimator you have to find a likelihood function then take a log likelihood then its take derivative then you equate to 0 and then you solve the equation. Compared to this in these two examples you must have seen that finding a method of moments estimator MME is much simpler. But at times there is a disadvantage connected to this method of moments estimator or at times it is called moments matching estimator. Sometimes they are inconsistent with the data and number of times they tend to be biased estimator. This we are going to define later but here I would like to show that it may not be very consistent with the data that you have got. And one example will suffice for that. Please note this example I have picked up from the Wikipedia and I have given the reference at the end. You are also welcome to go through and read through it. It gives a very good description of method of moments. So let us consider a uniform distribution with two unknown parameters a and b. I hope you recall when x is distributed uniform with parameter a and b. It means that the density function of x of f of x is 1 over b minus a if a is less than x is less than b and it is 0 otherwise. This is the uniform distribution function which is a continuous uniform distribution function over the interval a, b. So let x be a uniform random variable where a and b are unknown parameters. So there are two parameters. So the first two raw moments of the data and the population need to be compared. So the first raw moment of the population is the average which is a plus b by 2. The second raw moment of the population is a square plus a b plus b square by 3. You are welcome to calculate it out. It is very simple because our function itself is very simple. Now you consider x1, x2 you remember every time we say that x1, x2, x3, xn is a random sample. So I am taking a specific sample from the uniform distribution and its realization is like this. It is 0, 0, 0, 0, 1. It is a sample of size 5 and these are its realization. You remember we used to write x1, x2, x3, xn small x1, x2, x3, xn. This is what it is. My n is 5. Then the first raw moment of the sample is the sample mean. So it is 1 over 5. And the second sample raw moment is summation of xi square divided by n. So it is also 1 over 5. Now you equate m1 with mu1 which is the first raw moment of the population and m2 with the second raw moment of the population. We get that a curl which is the mmE estimator of a has to be written as m1 plus or minus this. This is only simplification of these two equations. Please note that these two equations have been simplified. To write that a curl can be expressed in terms of m1 and m2 while b curl can be expressed in terms of only m1 and a. Further simplifying you will find that a curl now equals to 1 over 5 minus 2 square root 3 divided by 5 and b equals to 1 over 5 2 square root 3 divided by 5. So it is a is minus 0.49 and this is plus 0.89. Now you see we are saying that the data has come from this interval. Can you imagine how one can fall in this interval? Zeroes are fine. But one not fine. One cannot fall and this is the inconsistency. And this is what I wish to bring it out to you. That method of moment estimators are easy to calculate and very attractive. Very easily these days available on variety of software including R programming. But be careful when you use it. It is much better to use the maximum likelihood estimator compared to matching of moments estimator or method of moments estimator. Then why do we have it? It is a natural question. Why do we have this estimator? Well sometimes finding maximum likelihood estimator is difficult. Finding any other estimator involves lot of numerical calculations or very complicated equations. At that time we fall back on the method of moments estimator. But what this example tells us is that we have to be very careful. We have to solve it and we cannot say that these are the good estimator unless we put it through certain tests and certain observations. So with this we summarize what we discussed just now. We discussed the method of moments estimator and we said that it is based on comparing distribution raw moments with the respective sample raw moments. So if you have Q unknown parameters you take Q distribution raw moments and equate them with the corresponding Q sample raw moments. You get a Q set of equations and you have to solve them simultaneously. We gave two examples in which it actually resulted into maximum likelihood estimator only. It was a very simple example of Bernoulli trials where we tried to estimate probability of success. Then we took the normal distribution where we tried to estimate its mean and variance. But through the uniform distribution giving a one very specific sample that we may observe, we found that there is a disadvantage connected with the method of moments estimator that they give inconsistent result. Of course I have not showed you whether how they become biased but they also tend to be biased. I have given you the reference to the Wikipedia from where this example is taken. You are welcome to go through it. Thank you.


President Joe Biden says the United States will give nearly $100 million in additional humanitarian aid to Lebanon. On Wednesday, Beirut marked one year since a catastrophic explosion on the city's port devastated the capital. Since then, the country has been mad in a financial depression worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. On this day of mourning, I send my deepest condolences to all those who were injured or lost loved ones, and all those still struggling to recover from this trauma. We also recognize that the people Lebanon have suffered more over the past year because of a avoidable political and economic crisis. The United States is proud of our long-standing support for Lebanese people. I've been to your country many times. It's absolutely beautiful. And today I'm announcing nearly $100 million in new humanitarian assistance. That's on top of the $560 million in humanitarian aid that the United States has provided to Lebanon over the last two years. And I urge my fellow leaders in capitals around the world to also step up their support for Lebanese people.


Now this is obviously the wrong slide set. Hang on a minute while we get the right slide set. It should be the right set. Wonder if you want to go to the next one. It's got Niagara's set. No, that's fine. Don't worry. We'll nip through these quickly. Oh, we're in the same place anyway. That's interesting. Okay. We've had a couple of blips today, I have to say. Okay. So let me tell you a little bit about the background here. I visited Iran in October last year. I was invited to go to speak to as a result of the VIDM actually from this from last year I was invited over because the midwives and the government in Iran are trying to promote more physiological birth. Now there was a presentation during the night for those of us in the UK which is recorded and I will put the recording up shortly onto the website that you could go to at which they talked about the background and differences between Australia and Iran actually but the differences are similar if you're talking about any developed country. So there is a very medicalized maternity services. There are many more obstetricians or what they call gynecologists there than there are midwives and they are in charge of all births but the government are wanting to promote physiological birth because they're wanting to encourage an increase in the population size which has become a bit stagnant and with so many people having cesarean sections they are choosing to have smaller families. So there's a big move on there to introduce physiological birth. So I was invited over to Iran and I run with another midwife friend aboard a workshop introducing the concepts of physiological birth and water bath. So as a result of that Fatima was at that workshop and when she went back to her own city which is the city of Koramabad in I think southern Iran she wanted to practice this physiological birth particularly water birth. So this is the story of her water birth. So Fatima Aras Hussaini has got a master's degree in midwifery and this is the case study of her water birth and this is Fatima you've seen that picture up as well very pretty don't you think? She is an experienced midwife she's done a variety of courses she is a teacher as well she's been a midwife for 12 years and she works in a governmental run maternity hospital they are both governmental and private hospitals. The medicalization of the private hospitals is worse than it is at the governmental hospitals. So as she has told us here childbirth in Iran is very medicalized with gynecologists in charge of all the births and I've told you a little bit more about that already. I'm not too sure I had some conversations with gynecologists in Iran and I think they're part of the system too in that they're having difficulties seeing beyond the medicalized side of it. It is a powerful match isn't it? There's a nice one to offset that when we get towards the end of the presentation. So it's very medicalized in Iran and also and which makes it a lot worse is that the midwives are given very little responsibility there they are what in this country we would call obstetric nurses they just do what the obstetricians the gynecologists tell them to do. Although they have a four-year degree course to become midwives they don't have accepted responsibility for the women that they care for. They do run private clinics they do have private clinics and they do take on private patients so to speak or women clients. I found it difficult to understand exactly what the place of that clinic was because I believe that even in their clinics they then have to negotiate with the gynecologists to be allowed to manage the woman's birth. Can women be gynecologists? Well I didn't see any men I only saw female gynecologists which to some extent surprised me. Maybe Fatima you could text me and tell me how many if there are men gynecologists because as I say I only saw women and I saw quite a few. So caesarean sections are very common women tend to think in Iran that a caesarean section is an indication of wealth and they also consider that this is safer a less painful birth and there is the issue of the vaginal bypass I was told by some in that it does retain the integrity of the vaginal canal. So for all those reasons caesarean section reaches 90% in some hospitals and of course there are there's increasing evidence that caesarean section is not a safe option and there are many complications and I suspect that that will also reduce the number of babies the women have. So about eight years ago the government began an initiative yes it is to promote physiological birth the problem with that is you can't just say everybody else everybody's got to have a nice normal birth now that you've got to change people's attitudes towards this and this could be this is something we were going to ask all of you there are there's the gynecologists there's the midwives and the women so how do you think we we can have that we can suggest to the the midwives of Iran would be a good way of encouraging women and midwives and gynecologists that physiological birth is a good option what do you think how do we change society's views number of children what do you mean by number of children all right so to explain to everybody that and that of course is from what I understand and I only spent nine days in Iran and I have been talking to Iran almost nonstop ever since from what I gather that is the reason for encouraging physiological birth the government seems to be on board with that but it's everybody else you've got to get on board education education education yes yes have community outreach programs yes the government's got to be behind it while I was in Iran we were actually asked to go and speak to the government it was a very interesting meeting we had just got off the plane having traveled all night we hadn't had much to eat for the last few hours and we were going to meet them over breakfast but breakfast was some fruit but they were telling us that they they have a large amount of money that they want to put behind an empowering woman project in order to empower the women to become entrepreneurs actually and start thinking about running businesses etc etc so education has to be part of it interestingly enough I did speak to one of the lecturers who at the university where they train them midwives and she told me that they only have one textbook I don't know whether this is totally true remember there's a big big language barrier here too she said that they just use one of the American obstetric textbooks and that's the only way the only way in which the midwives are taught so they are already getting a medicalized a medicalized culture of coming through their education something like Sweden's public commercial but appropriate for that culture has Sweden have they have they developed some kind of education I don't know about that yes I agree I'll you I'll you family that some women in some countries are not terribly keen to face the challenges of physiological birth and to be honest we have a speaker later on who's going to talk about the media and how the media has influenced that because I don't know about in your country but in my country there are lots of programs showing childbirth as it is like one born every minute and they show a very skewed version of childbirth where women scream and are very frightened and it's very frightening to people so I think you're a little bit unfair in some extent olufemme but it's not um you're not wrong either a bit of each jame what's your thoughts you got any ideas how we can hear me okay sorry can you hear me okay you're a bit faint can you hear me so don't worry if you sorry can you hear me now yep a little bit better yeah yeah let's just wonder any thoughts about how to um how to encourage women and obstetricians and midwives to accept physiological birth rather than a medicalized birth well I think it really feeds into our talk last night it's all about the and saying intervention is important in the right place but we need to have you know at least 80 percent of our population should be able to have normal physiological birth with low intervention and being cared for by midwives so I think knowing um knowing what's normal and knowing what's not normal and then having services that all work cohesively together I think that's important yes yes indeed and ginger ginger ginger is that how you pronounce it what do you mean by less people at the birth ah okay are most of the people present a caesarean male or female well again I don't really know I know that in Iran um the husband is not encouraged to be present at the births so that's one male out of the way and as I've already said all the gynecologists I met were female so um it's possible that's true as well um I think part of the problem is that they the the women in Iran from what I saw and what I gathered are used to submitting to whatever is thrown at them they don't seem to have an awful lot of empowerment so we're back to that again of course you can post a link please do it's in the chat box so that would be wonderful if you would like to do that how long there's there been a history of caesarean section um so what I gather it's at least 20 years or something like that we have male midwives in this country too so there's a few suggestions there for Fatima to mollover and her midwife colleagues anyway so um and I've already said this is part of what I've already discussed that um the women themselves believe that caesarean section was better than a normal birth so this is this is us in Iran with Fatima this is me in the middle and to my left to the left is Allison who is a wonderful midwife from here in Scotland who is a midwife led unit midwife so to speak and in fact was my daughter's midwife and that's why I took her because she was fabulous and on the right is Fatima so she's we had this workshop there were something like 30 odd senior midwives came to the workshop to um to discuss and consider how to change the different maternity hospitals in Iran to consider physiological birth so after that workshop Fatima says she was thinking about water birth a lot and she thought about how can I do that how can I find a mother to speak to her about it because in my country mothers do not have enough information about water birth and then about two months after the workshops a mother was referred to her own private clinic or her own clinic and um this mother was 23 years old a primagravada and was at 34 weeks of pregnancy I will answer that question Becky yes there were a few gynecologists popped in and one which one of them we were talking about episiotomy at the time which is mandatory for all primagravadas in Iran do you remember when that used to be the case here in the UK um and um she agreed with us that episiotomy was not necessary so some people some of the gynecologists do not agree with the kind of standard care there's um family size tends to be quite small but that's I don't understand too much about that one and I would have to ask for more information about that so anyway so Fatima saw this woman and thought that maybe she was an ideal candidate for a water birth and the woman told her that she was really frightened about the label the label pain um and the episiotomy um and I suppose was swithering about what type of birth she would have now I don't really understand despite asking her several times why Fatima chose this one in particular although I do know that she was low risk or didn't have any um I shouldn't say that we're trying to get away from the risk word now she had didn't have any um history that would stop her from having a physiological birth so she um Fatima realized that this might be a lady who would be uh susceptible to some conversation about her choices including that of water birth so she asked her did she want any any information about water birth shall we have a talk about it shall we educate you about water birth and she welcomed the idea and that was why Fatima decided that this was an option for this particular woman and she said that she wanted Fatima to talk to her husband and her mom um and uh this Fatima did at 36 weeks and they explored the whole process of water birth and as Fatima said she she tried to give her a very balanced view about what all the benefits and complications are about water birth about a normal vaginal delivery as she's put here about cesarean sections and she showed them some films about water birth now it that's just reminded me actually um we had a speaker last year called Layla who was the in fact the one who invited me to Iran and she um she works in the private maternity system and she does water birth and to native classes and she and her colleagues had produced some advertisements which they put onto the tv to promote laboring in water so there is an ongoing changes in the um in Iran okay so Fatima said that she told them quite honestly that this was her first experience but she would do this and she had been educated about this and the woman and her family decided that they would trust her and she was very proud and honored that um they would trust her to um conduct their first her first water birth with them so this is the facilities and we were discussing this last night their their physiological birth room which is an interesting concept is quite small and it does not appear to have many of the things that we think would be useful in a physiological or physiologic birth room that we would like um i asked if the lights could be dulled and she said that um no they can't um that they're stripped lights and so you can't do much about that so they're very much at the beginning of the whole process of um offering physiological birth so um this is the room and that's the water pool that they've got and you can see all the facilities like that there so when the woman rang in her 38th week she called her to tell her that the pains were starting and um and then of course she uh she examined her to make sure all was normal and she made sure all her equipment was ready um for this birth now someone has asked physiological birth medicalized birth and water birth and i'm missing the difference um medicalized birth is one that is managed physiological birth is one that is left to um work left to um to be very natural and follow the hormones of birth and a water birth is kind of a subset of that so this is the equipment that she had for a water birth sorry i'm still here i was just i'm still here it was just that i had um some students popped in so i just had to explain to them what was happening okay so this was their their uh facilities that they've got in her hospital anyway so the mother came in at 38 weeks and um Fatima makes the point that she was actually quite an obese slave at 93 kilograms but she was admitted at nine o'clock at night was four centimeters dilated and she spent her labor educating her and her grand and the grandmother of the baby about um using breathing exercises movement in the water pool using the birth pool and using massage etc um she she made the point she told me last night that the grand that she the woman chose to have her mother with her as an attendant attendee um and i heard previously that um the partners the men are not allowed in but it did seem to be an option for this woman so that might not be the case everywhere and one of the biggest problems of course is to get um reliable information and Iran is a big country and they do not um they do not have protocols and procedures anything like we do in the UK and in many other countries that kind of direct um how maternity care is given anyway where are we so oh no i wanted to say so what do you all think about the fact that this woman was 93 kilograms in weight and was for a water birth yes i know i agree jane um i i uh this is an issue for many people and in fact my daughter as well was um my question was merely what does anybody think about the fact that the woman was 93 kilograms and was considered a good candidate for a water birth especially one that was the first water birth um Fatima did tell me that she had absolutely no history whatsoever that would uh mean that she was not a suitable candidate really for a water birth so she was quite happy to go ahead with this water birth and as someone said just then um it does make um a lot of difference to people if they are quite heavy it seems to be an advantage really well it doesn't seem to be it is an advantage to them it still needs to be low risk yes i know i know is there a better word i have no idea and yes the bmi above 35 is an interesting concept because um it might be above our protocol but i don't know what country chatting girls in i'm guessing in the uk but we do follow the rules that women are entitled to choose their place of birth um and with negotiation well not negotiation but with um full discussion they should be able to give birth input in water even if they are outside the so-called protocols and that's another story for another day of course day go that's a very good good point that joy has put there that um the risks of a caesarean section are greater from a caesarean section than it would be from a normal birth so i also feel that uh water birth would be idea ideal well sorry so we've agreed really that uh this woman there was no reason why this woman should not have a water birth so this woman is just this is this woman's first baby and i was quite surprised but pleased to see that uh the she delivered it or she gave birth i'm sorry at midnight she came in at nine centimeters nine o'clock remember four centimeters star eight a damn it was born at midnight now this is that baby i asked that last night this is that baby um at the moment of birth just after birth uh 3.6 kilogram baby 36 centimeter head circumference and everything happened within the water the mother didn't need an episiotomy but had a little laceration that she repaired with five sutures and so it's absolutely wonderful to hear that the birth went so well and it's also very nice to see the picture too there are so many questions i would have about things like delayed cord clamping and about um you know um what kind of cares were given during the process of birth but i think um the language side of it makes it difficult to ask those questions um and it does worry me a little bit about things like the depth of the pool and such like yes because you'd expect the water to cover the abdomen etc so there's a whole load of things that we've been able to get to within the UK for example we've been able to develop fine tuning such as optimal cord clamping etc um but they're not ready for that yet so i'm good for them to be trying to um encourage physiological birth okay so that was her story about how about her first water birth and she tells me that she's had another one since then which also went um very quickly and she's very pleased with her experiences on giving women this choice and the fact that the women trust her to um to support her throughout this she says that she feels that god is supporting her in this um pursuit of physiological birth and water birth um but how to actually expand this within her practice and within Iran is another issue um she was telling me that the people she works with thinks that she's um she should not be um promoting physiological birth um because it's not safe i was just looking at the comment here about allowing the cord to pulse anti-physiology yes it's like um in the third stage whether or not you ask the woman would you explain to a woman about active and physiological third stage because actually if you just are going to do a physiological third stage why explain an intervention unless it's necessary so rather than say would you like an active or a physiological third stage because this is this and this is that well do you need to have that conversation at all unless there's a reason why you might need to say okay so it's not working physiologically um therefore we do have to think of an option and what we could do is do obstacles and blah blah blah yeah no physiological birth is not unsafe provided the woman is well supported and has good midwifery care from educated people are you femi so you're quite right there is it's not unsafe the problem is that people can people see childbirth as being um something that needs to be managed and yet women have been having babies for donkeys years from eons quite successfully and the the um mortality rates are quite low so it's our intervention that are causing the problems really so that's um Fatima's story have we got any questions and i'll ask if she wants to add anything can i ask a question of course i'll ask if i can i don't know how is my cell is it really quiet again it's it's audible it's fine i just wanted to know uh all the wonderful midwives and birth attendants that are here um who actually uh participates in water birth uh on the call here today and who's able to actually provide this care for all our wonderful women we could just talk maybe chat in the text box about that so the question was how many of you out there get involved in water births that do water births multiple people balance it claudia has families in washington becky in virginia katie in detroit this year we we do a lot of water births in the uk um we have many midwife led units now in the uk and water birth is generally um offered in all of those places standard care in chatman chatom i'm assuming chatom the girl you are from chatom okay so katie page says they don't currently offer water birth in the hospital okay so you don't because you haven't got a policy and you haven't got your staff training oh jill hi jill okay so um is there other plans in um whatever va is what is va in the us i'm not very good at my us states katie is their plan to train up people and um start offering water births of virginia sorry i probably should have known that katie so are you planning water birth what if a woman comes to you and says i want a water birth does she have that right it's possible to begin to change the culture yes jill you you should be the person to be able to answer some of these questions and i'm sure you have a sense of the difficulties that the midwives in iran must be happening i keep saying to them we need to need to make changes in small small chunks because um i feel that uh going straight for water birth is maybe a little bit quick and maybe they should be thinking about the environment of birth and reminding themselves about hormones of birth and um i feel that i would like to go back to iran now that i know more about it and do a different kind of workshop from the one we did in which water birth would be a very small part of it and the most of it would just be about um providing the perfect environment to um to support the women and um and encourage physiological birth so katie says that uh they try to get women out of the tub before birth to birth on land but if they don't well they go and if they do give birth underwater then um they um they have to fill in forms et cetera this was the same here i might add um just what i know 15 years ago probably before uh they became memory 20 years ago before water birth became quite so uh accepted i can also add that in um in iran um the physiological the gynecologists um are telling everybody that water birth is unsafe as they are saying that physiological birth is unsafe um and i was trying to encourage the midwives to think about evidence and provide the evidence and having the evidence at their fingertips about the whether or not any of these things are safe or not they need to know the evidence and when i was talking about the risks of caesarean section they were quite surprised that there were risks of caesarean section because it's obviously being marketed very well as a supposedly um safe option what about the idea that water birth opens the discussion for physiological birth not too sure what you mean there becky yes joy was saying that um and that's the same in most of the birth centers i know as well that uh most of the women use water and most often stay in the water to give birth seems the most natural thing to do yes you're right kathryn um they do say that first water births were in russia in the sea i think um and then there was michello don was was uh promoting it in his um french clinics um yes and i think that's the point i made when i was over in ron uh joy that confidential inquiries that we do in the uk that look at the statistics show that women are three times more likely to die from caesarean section than they are from a normal birth and that's that's uh what's not been mentioned in this country let alone elsewhere it's it's a huge big discussion area isn't it the whole um issue of physiological birth and stopping the medicalization how do you reverse that trend having said that i would say that we've done that pretty well in the uk because we got to that kind of low area um a few years ago and we had to um fight really to get back the um autonomy of midwives and uh the empowerment of our women and now we are still got a lot of medicalization but we've also got a lot of that um midwife led unix which encourage physiological birth so yes um i think the problem is that when people in a country find um start hearing about something like water birth that seems to epitomize um physiological birth that that it seems to be like that's that seems to them to be a a wondrous thing a very normal natural thing and it does of course help with pain relief as becky has just mentioned water is for drinking in my country water is for drinking well i always say that actually water birth to me water birth is not natural because if you look at the animal kingdom um not many land mammals choose to give birth underwater i think the hippopotamus or something like that is the only other one that does this um so i've always said that when we when we were trying to change um childbirth to becoming more less medicalized and more physiological in the uk people were a bit like teenagers they kind of rebelled and went further than they needed to in order to do that rebellion against medicalization and chose to have water birth i think one of the other problems about iran is that they don't the midwives do not have their own regulation they're regulated by the medical council um and they don't have protocols and uh they do not have seem to have any um method of um proof of education before practicing something so i think there's a big huge political change needed there as well before they can take charge of their own education and their own practice batima seems to have disappeared as she come down did she log out and come back in again nope she seems to not be here maybe that storm has thrown her out altogether question i posed from earlier talked to the husband of the mum is this a cultural component i know in some cultures you have to get them a husband and mother-in-law or the mother on board yeah i think that there is definitely that issue also in iran okay so any more questions because um batima has left and i really can't give you an awful lot more about um what she was going to speak about um and we could perhaps does anybody have any general questions about water birth or physiological birth i think you're absolutely right ginger that um once you get some women um experiencing something like water birth or physiological birth um they will then spread the word won't they yes the issue of physiological birth can be addressed by asking people what their traditional practices sometimes women know they're all right of course i hadn't thought of that i know that some in some areas where that it's not they don't have an awful lot of medical support that there are tribal practices and home births and such like this there are no home births at all in the cities that's not an option yes i totally agree becky that we should thank batima for trying to challenge the system um she's asked if i will keep in contact with her after the conference and um hopefully i keep sending her blinks to various papers etc to enable her to be educated and hopefully um educate uh her colleagues and the women that she's caring for it is a huge topic it is a huge feminist topic yes i agree and i'll pass that on to her so i'm still reading all the comments that are coming up in the chat books this is a really useful and interesting chat going on here interesting that you're talking about um those links that are growing um i had a midwife colleague stay at the weekend and she said that i'm a web weaver because i keep bringing people in from different places and weaving them into things that i'm involved with and then throwing them out and they're going out together to work together and i think that's what the social media is all about is is weaving people together and taking on opportunities thank you for that compliment in gaiana you do not have this practice is that this practice of water birth yes is it very medicalized in your country childbirth so you'll have some of the problems to um fatima then i'm not too sure tracy what you're saying no it's not too do we have any tips for student midwives you might be struggling with demands of working within the nhs all that's another big huge subject isn't it rose you know we've got a student cafe later on this evening i think it's at um six o'clock no seven o'clock no eight o'clock i'll get it right a minute it's at eight o'clock and although it's going to be talking about student electives we expect to be talking about other things as well so um you'd be very welcome to come to that uh at eight o'clock this evening you really enjoyed this presentation well that's a great thing to hear okay so maybe we should have a break and um move on to the next person who happens to actually be in the same room as i'm in right now so you talk about web weaving oh sorry yes there was a comment about napal wish they were midwives from napal in this chat well do you know i sent um lots of uh social media information in their direction to invite them to the vidm so um joy i will work with you anytime to encourage people from these countries to come to the vidm and discuss what they've been doing yeah we will sort that one out we actually have already referred to the rcm some information about electives joy so we know about that i'm i'm doing that session as well i'm kind of overseeing it thank you chat and girl we kind of anticipated it was a possibility we might need to do this okay so i'm definitely i'm going to sign off now um and finish off this presentation in the usual fashion and it's recorded joy so um you you once we've got it on the website maybe you could direct your colleagues in napal to um listen to it and it might help with what they are seeking to do and my thanks to fatima as well so i'm just going to start to stop


Welcome to the World Summit on the Information Society 2017. My next guest here is Mr Manoj Sinha, who is Minister of State for Communications, Independent Charge and Minister of State for Railways, Union of India. Sir, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. So, I suppose the first question is, what role do ICTs play in sustainable development goals? See, ICT has become the focal point of sustainable development goals regarding economy and society both. ICT has played a vital role, pivotal role, whether it is health, education, financial inclusion, agriculture, any field you consider. I think ICT has enormous effect on the society in poverty, eradication, in education, health everywhere. ICT has done a tremendous job and it has connected far from area of rural people to the knowledge and information societies can be changed in the knowledge society with the help of ICT. And sustainable development goals can be achieved easily with the use of technology, particularly ICT. And it has enormous effect on the society and particularly rural people, deprived people, ICT has made a lot of changes in their life. So at the UN process level, what efforts can be made together to link the sustainable development goals and WISIS, for instance? See, WISIS is a platform of many stakeholders and it is working with ITU in the edge of United Nations. So WISIS has an advantage also and it has done a tremendous job. But I feel that ITU and WISIS should work in some more areas. Internet, though it is the finest contribution to human society, but few people are misusing it for, say, terrorism and other purposes with the black and every type of arrangements. And ITU and WISIS must consider this issue. And cross-border terrorism has become a serious threat to the society and WISIS forums would consider it, though we believe the openness of Internet and multi-stakeholderism, which ITU has already taken, India supports it. But yes, of course, Internet protocol must be discussed in this session so that the world knows and it cannot be misused. When used wisely, ICT can be a formidable force for inclusion and development. So can you give us some specific examples of efforts you are making in India in terms of ICT and SDGs? Yes, in the last three years, under the dynamic leadership of our Prime Minister, Mr Modi, we have launched a digital India program, an umbrella program, and three important factors. One, to digitally empower every citizen. Second, governance. And third, everyone has equal rights on this digital development. These three are the main focuses. And we have launched a program called Bharat Net. And we are going to end this program by December 18. Already we have led to 104,000 kilometers of optical fiber. And we have connected 92,000 gram panchayats. Gram panchayat means cluster of villages. And our target is 250,000 villages will be connected through this program. And approximately 600 million people will be digitally empowered by this program. Many more programs of financial inclusion, that is Jam, Jandhan Yojana, Mobile, and Adhar. Adhar, I think, it is indigestionally developed by India. And it is the biggest platform of identification, by biometrics. The third one, we have plugged the holes and direct benefit transpose. We have underserved, different schemes, $30 billion have been saved of the country. And that Pradhan Mantri, Digital Saksharta Yojana, we have launched. Then so many programs, EGM, to procure the government purchases. We are doing a lot in this regard. And I think in two, three years, India has moved a lot. A lot of activities is going there. And as we believe, Vasudhaya Kutumbakam, we are ready to share our knowledge and the development with the rest of the world, so that the fruits can be better exercised by the humanity. And naturally, we have taken a big leap in this regard, and we will continue to do it. By an Africa project and so many projects, we are running. And we have assured to continue it for five more years. Mr. Manohar Singh Ha, thank you very much. Thank you.