From this distant vantage point, the earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.  The aggregate of our joy and suffering. Thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization. Every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader. Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mode of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties spilled by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds, our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in this universe are challenged by that point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The earth is the only known world so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes, settle, not yet. Like it or not for the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. Carl wrote these words 20 years ago, at a time when the space shuttle program was in full swing. Plans for the International Space Station were just announced, and 11 of the 12 men to set foot on a celestial body other than our earth were still alive. Today, however, only the governments of Russia and China have human and orbit-capable space abilities. Our space station, never built to full specification, has only a decade of funding remaining, and the youngest living person to set foot on something other than our earth turns 80 next year. In 20 years, we haven't progressed 20 years, we've regressed 30. The only difference between now and 1964 is that in 1964, people actually cared about space. We love comparing the Apollo guidance computer to the phones we use every day like it's some sort of joke. In point of fact, the iPhone 5S is 12 trillion times better than the marvel that landed 12 men on our moon. And what praetel do we use these devices for? To look at cat pictures. Now, that's not fair. If you want a real indictment of our society, we invest seven figures in an app that says yo. Insecurely. We plunge tens of thousands into a potato salad Kickstarter, while 8,000 children under the age of five die every day. The finale, the season finale of the Cosmos TV show garnered a lower Nielsen rating than the show that appeared just before it on the same channel. A rerun of the family guy. Our priorities, it seems, are a bit misplaced. So where does that leave us? In the absence of any scientific leadership whatsoever from our so-called elected leaders, we still have hope. A cornucopia of private space companies ranging from the familiar to the new and exciting are steadily pushing forward. And we have you. You, the crafters of code. You, the designers of delight. You, the experts of agile. You have a place in all of this. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Brad Griziak, and it is my job today to convince you of your place in our space-faring future. Welcome to the final talk of Cascadia Ruby. I'm honored to be here. It is customary for a presenter to establish credentials. Allow me to present mine. Since the age of 26, I've been acting as co-founder of a software consulting firm called Bendyworks. I also thoroughly enjoy reading science fiction. Should this pedigree not impress, allow me to continue. Prior to Bendyworks, I led a different life. I have an undergraduate degree and half a master's degree in engineering mechanics and astronautics out of the engineering physics department at University of Wisconsin-Madison. I've been classically trained in satellite dynamics, composite materials, and hypersonic aerodynamics. I have spent over 12 minutes in zero gravity aboard NASA's Vomit Comet. I worked on a habitat for rats aboard the International Space Station. Consequently, I know the exit velocity of rat you're in. It's on the order of one meter per second. I designed, built, and tested a prototype lunar mining machine. I applied to be an astronaut, unsuccessfully. I worked on a project that is currently in space, growing the first space-born food designed for astronaut consumption. Through these experiences, I've become ever more fascinated by the idea of space. It is my privilege to share some of that passion with you. This will be a talk in three parts. Launch, orbit, and land. I've warned you all on the abstract of this talk that there won't be much ruby at all. So instead, please sit back, relax, and enjoy learning something new. But first, let's talk about rocket science. Ever since the term existed, rocket science has exuded an error of superiority, an insinuation that only the brightest minds could possibly have any expectation of success. I feel the main reason why rocket science and aerospace engineering are held in such reverence is that because it requires a lot of difficult math. While this may be true sometimes, the same could also be true of programming. Tell me, do you know the Fermi energy equation for semiconductors? How about the assembly code that is generated from your Ruby program? So it goes with rocket science and aerospace engineering. The math is still there. It's just that someone else has done it for us already. Much like programming, aerospace engineers and rocket scientists need to build up a mental encyclopedia of practices. That's what we'll learn today. For example, when coding a web application, we know when to use get versus post. When launching a spacecraft, we know that it's usually best to launch from the equator. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about launch. A stable, simple two-body orbit requires four things. One body needs to be significantly more massive than the other. There needs to be some amount of circumferential velocity. Gravity needs to be the only force in play. And bringing this into reality, we need to make sure that there's no intersection between the two bodies. Less we encounter some other forces other than gravity, like air resistance by going into the atmosphere or plowing straight into the ground. So if we have a planet such as Earth, how much circumferential velocity do we need to achieve during launch in order to have a proper orbit? Let's do a physics. Imagine for a moment that there's no atmosphere on the Earth whatsoever. We live under water or something. Imagine also that the Earth is a perfect sphere. There's no bumps, no valleys, no mountains, nothing, just a perfectly smooth sphere. You may have heard that being in orbit is like being in a perpetual state of falling. Let's apply that to our hypothetical Earth. To get from Portland to Seattle, we need to travel 2.1 degrees of latitude, basically due north. If I run toward Seattle in a straight line, and I'm not talking about a long Earth surface, but in a literal straight line along that arrow, by the time I get to Seattle, I will be using high school mathematics and geometry. I'll be 2.7 miles above Seattle. From high school physics, we know that in the absence of air resistance, it would take me about 30 seconds to fall 2.7 miles in Earth's gravity. Think about the implication here. In order for the Earth's curvature to fall away from me at the same speed that gravity is pulling me towards it, I would need to get from Portland to Seattle, which is about 145 miles in 30 seconds. That's 17,000 miles an hour. Let's check our math. What does Google have to say about that? Yep, that's about right. To get something moving that fast in a vacuum, we need to give it a lot of kinetic energy. In fact, we need 29.6 megajoules for every kilogram that we accelerate to that speed. And note that I said in a vacuum. Around the Earth to have a stable orbit, we need to get outside of the atmosphere so that air drag isn't an issue. The International Space Station is 330 kilometers up, so let's use that as an example. In order to get 1 kilogram that high up in the absence of air resistance, we would need to only spend about 3.2 megajoules per kilogram. That's an interesting result. It takes about 10 times more energy to move something sideways fast enough for orbit than it does to get it up there. Earlier, I mentioned that one should usually launch a spacecraft from the equator, but I didn't explain why. Armed with our new knowledge about the relative energies required to put something into orbit, we should be focused on cheating physics by getting more sideways velocity than cheating physics by getting more altitude, say from launching from a mountain. Because the Earth is spinning, we can use that momentum to reduce our sideways velocity burden. The surface of the Earth at the equator moves along at a blistering 1,040 miles per hour. By launching at the equator, we only have to add 16,000 miles per hour instead of 17,000 miles per hour. That's a 6 percent savings on 90 percent of our energy burden, or 5.4 percent. It's not bad, I think. I should mention that you don't always want to launch from the equator. There are a few situations that I won't go into today where you don't want to do that in order to reduce the burden on your rocket engines. Anyway, how do rocket engines work? Anyway, the reason rockets can send spacecraft skyward is the law of conservation of momentum.  We also know that if instead of throwing a ball, we fire a gun, we'll get pushed back a little bit more. Even though the bullet is going to be much less massive than the ball, its speed gives it much more momentum. Momentum is simply defined as mass times velocity. That's it. And the law of conservation of momentum states that the sum of momentum before an action needs to equal the sum of momentum after the action. Before throwing the ball, everything has zero momentum. And after throwing the ball, the positive momentum of the ball summed with my negative momentum needs to also sum to zero. So it goes with rockets. You basically just have to add a K to everything. And how do we get our rockets going so fast? Oh, of course, we have to use one weird trick. We'll use what's called a converging diverging nozzle. When a highly pressurized gas flows through a tube, it gets choked at its narrowest point. At this choke point, physics dictate that the gas can go no faster than Mach 1 or the speed of sound for that gas, no matter what. But once it starts expanding after that choke point, as long as the back pressure is high enough, the gas speeds up. That's why rockets have bell-shaped nozzles. The space shuttle main engines, for example, get their exhaust velocity up to Mach 13 or so. Now that we've established what it takes to launch, let's learn about orbits themselves. More specifically, let's learn about stable orbits. In the early 1600s, yes, 1600s, Johannes Kepler made this a lot easier for us. Much like Newton, Kepler gave us three laws, Kepler's laws of planetary motion. These laws were originally identified for orbits of planets around the sun, but they hold equally well for any two-body system, where, again, one of the bodies is much more massive than the other. A spacecraft orbiting Earth would be one such example. The first law is the orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the two foci. We tend to think of the Earth as in a circular orbit around the sun, but that's not true. Our orbit around the sun is actually elliptical, but it bears a closer resemblance to a circle. In astrodynamics, we measure the oblongness of an orbit as eccentricity. Coming from the Greek words of out of and center, the value of eccentricity for an orbit can range from zero to almost one. Values one or higher indicate a flyby trajectory, either in the shape of a parabola or a hyperbola. A value of zero means a perfectly circular orbit. The Earth's eccentricity is 0.0167. This makes it the third most circular orbit amongst our eight planets, followed by Venus and, surprisingly enough, Neptune. I learned something during the research of this talk on that. When a satellite orbits the Earth, we call the point of closest approach, the perigee, and the farthest point, the apogee. Around the sun, we call that the perihelion and the aphelion. And the generic terms, when orbiting around anybody, we call the periapsis and apelapsis. So that's Kepler's first law. Orbits are ellipses. The second law is a bit complicated, though it does have a simple takeaway. It states, a line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. The implications of this law are quite precise, but for us, we can establish a rough takeaway. Given a stable elliptical orbit, the closer you are to the main object, the faster you go. For a circular orbit, this means that your speed will remain a constant. And for a highly eccentric orbit, you will speed up and whip around the main body at the periapsis and slow down to a crawl near the apoapsis. Kepler's third law of planetary motion is this. Bear with me here. The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. Hold on. More succinctly, the bigger the orbit, the longer the orbit takes. We define one year as the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun once. That takes 365.26 or so days. Venus, which is 27% closer to the sun, has a year that's 38% shorter. And Mars, which is 52% further away than the earth, has a year that's 88% longer. So in review, orbits are elliptical, orbits are faster when you're closer and slower when you're farther away, and big orbits take longer. Putting these three laws together, we can sketch out an idea of what a trip to Mars might look like. Here we have the earth around the sun. Even though I said our eccentricity is not zero, we're going to assume that it is here because circles are much more easy to deal with. Here's the Martian orbit. Again, idealized as a circle. We're also going to assume that these two orbits are coplanar, which in real life is not the case, but it's close enough. Since we're restricted to only elliptical orbits, we need to construct an additional orbit around the sun that is tangent to both the orbits of earth and Mars. And this is simple enough. Let's zoom into earth first. Here we see the stable orbit. We don't have to do anything to stay in this orbit. And here we see the orbit that we want to get into. Remembering that we're orbiting the sun, we want to turn this point into our perihelion. The second law states that the perihelion is where we're going the fastest, so let's do exactly that. Let's speed up by about three kilometers per second. So we light up our engines for a few minutes and we're on our way. We're on our way to Mars. So zooming into where we would intersect the Martian orbit, we're now at our apheleon. The second law states that we're going the slowest for our orbit. To put ourselves in Martian orbit, we just need to speed things up again to match the orbital speed of Mars. Using the precise definition of the third law, we would find out that this trip would take approximately eight and a half months. One last thing we should probably consider is that we want to make sure that Mars is actually there when we arrive in its orbit. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to arrive in Martian orbit only to have Mars on the other side of the sun. So how do we do that? Well, we've already established how long our trip will take, eight and a half months. So all we have to do is leave Earth eight and a half months before Mars is going to be where we're going to meet up with it. Et voilà! We've mastered what's called the Hohmann transfer orbit. If you're interested in how you might apply this to your everyday life, I suggest you check out Kerbal Space Program. It's a pretty great game. Last, I want to talk about landing. The three major celestial bodies that we would want to land humans on in the near future are the Moon, Mars, and the Earth. Let's talk about Mars and the Earth first because they have atmospheres that help us out here. In our previous example, we went from the Earth to Mars. Let's now consider going in the opposite direction from Mars to the Earth. In such a situation, instead of speeding up at both burns on the Hohmann transfer orbit, we want to slow down. The first technique we can use to slow down is aerobraking. Since we need to slow down to match Earth's orbital velocity around the sun, we can simply got our spacecraft, which has been traveling about 364 million miles or so by now, to within about 100 miles or so of the surface of the Earth. Then we can use the atmospheric drag to reduce our velocity. If we do this accurately enough after this amount of distance, we can actually land on Earth without any approach field whatsoever, though it might be handy to have some just in case. Another method of deceleration is parachutes. Obviously, parachutes won't work at all on the Moon, and they don't work particularly well on Mars, either. You can use them on Mars in the upper atmosphere to scrub a bunch of speed, but the atmosphere is just too thin to ensure a soft landing. So in order to have a soft landing, we would need to use retro rockets. Retro rockets are just rockets that fire in the opposite direction of where we're traveling, slowing something down rather than speeding it up. So as our spacecraft approaches the Terran, Lunar or Martian surface, the retro rockets are a great way to ensure a perfectly soft landing. It's what the Apollo missions use to land on the Moon, and it's what SpaceX plans to use for their first stage rockets to land back at the launch pad for reuse. Sometimes, however, the simple application of retro rockets is just not enough. Enter the Sky Crane. Used for the first time in 2012, NASA's engineers designed the Sky Crane to lower the one-ton curiosity rover to Mars without the need for a surface deployment mechanism. That is, once curiosity hit the ground, it was ready to go. The principle of the Sky Crane is actually quite simple. You separate the rover from the retro rockets by a long tether. Once the rover hits ground, you sever the tethers, and without the mass of the rover keeping the retro rockets down anymore, the retro rockets will have more than enough thrust to take it safely beyond the landing area for the rover. And this is where I finally bring some Ruby into the presentation. I mentioned Kerbal Space Program earlier. It's a game where you get to build and fly rockets. It's very easy to build a rocket that doesn't work in Kerbal Space Program. I made one that doesn't work, though. I'm going to fire up Kerbal Space Program right now because it takes a while to load. And my computer would be on fire if I started it at the beginning of this presentation. So anyway, someone created a rocket part in Kerbal Space Program that effectively spins up an HTTP server. This provides both remote control and remote sensing capabilities to your rocket. While there are other more powerful custom parts that you can add to your rocket in KSP, I chose the Telemachus because of its simplicity. So what did I make? I made a spacecraft that launches itself and hovers at 150 meters all by itself. Here we see part of the Ruby program that I wrote. It's up on GitLab if you'd like to see it. This first part just sets things up, and there's not a whole lot interesting going on here in terms of control theory. Here is the run loop. This is the important part. It reads the current altitude and adjusts the throttle so that the ship hovers at 150 meters. It's in the form of a PID controller, proportional integral derivative controller. The proportional part determines the present error. How far above or below 150 meters are we? The integral part determines the accumulation of errors so far. This helps the ship accelerate quicker towards the goal height. And the derivative part helps predict the system's behavior, letting it settle out at the goal height quicker. Combining these with coefficients that we figure out mostly by trial and error, we get a desired thrust. Now, keep in mind the types of input and output that we have here. The input is the throttle, which is effectively a force, and the output is height, which is a distance. Converting from force to height is not an easy task for a hovering rocket. Thanks to Newton, we know that force is equal to a mass times acceleration. The problem with controlling rockets, however, is that both mass and acceleration change over time.  That is, the rockets get lighter the longer that they're firing their engines. So the one knob we have, the throttle, needs to be converted through a nonlinear relationship between mass and acceleration. Then that acceleration needs to get integrated twice to get to distance. That is, the problem that we're facing here is a second order nonlinear differential equation. Fortunately for us, PID controller doesn't care about that. We tell it our goal, and we give it the reins. So let's see it in action, shall we? Hopefully it's fired up. All right. We may have a problem with the size of what we're playing with here. So I'm going to load up the rocket that I made called Hovercraft, and it's down below. And go to the launch pad. There we go. So up here, you see the altitude. We're at 79 meters because we're above sea level. And down here, we see the throttle. Have this Ruby Hover program that I'm going to run, and then quickly switch over back. So I'm going to hit that and switch over, and there we go. So it went to full throttle, and it's going to 150 meters, and you'll be able to see, oh, it cut out the throttle already, and it's kind of figuring it itself out, getting back to 150, settling out a bit, and there we go. It's hovering. All I did was hit Enter in the terminal, and this happened. It is slightly moving to the left. I haven't figured that part out yet. One thing to notice, though, is that I mentioned the rocket gets lighter as it continues to fire. And if you watch this, this slowly goes down, because it doesn't need quite as much throttle to keep the lower mass at the same height. So that's that program. It's up on GitLab, like I said. We're going to quit this. We're just going to go back here. Launch orbit and landing. The three main components for space travel. I hope you all enjoyed learning about space today, and I urge you to jump onto Wikipedia and start learning from there. For a fun starting point, I suggest you check out the article on nuclear pulse propulsion. You might be surprised to learn how far the United States got on that. I'd like to thank Cascadia Ruby for the opportunity to entertain you on the topic of space today. It's something that I've been passionate about for a very long time, and I hope some of that has rubbed off on you. I thought about, I thought long and hard about how I would end this presentation, and I kept coming back to the pale blue dot by Carl Sagan. I never did finish that passage at the beginning, so let me do that here. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. Thank you.


We're joined by another NFL star, Pro Bowl running back from the New Orleans Saints. Everybody give a warm welcome to Alvin, Camara, Alvin. Thanks for joining us, my man. No doubt, thanks for having me. Yeah, Alvin, I want to get this out of the way first. You and I were on Sports Center together a few years ago and I don't think I asked you on camera. If you watch a game broadcast, the entire game back and forth in the booth, your name is pronounced two totally different ways. Camara and Tamara. So from you, how do you pronounce your name? Well, I say Camara.  I say Camara. Some people say Camara. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. However you say. So you prefer Camara? I say yeah, that's what I say. My mom says Camara though. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm right or my mom right. I was about to say let the record show and then you threw that wrench in there. Yeah, okay.  All right. How are you doing in quarantine? What's life like for you these days? Good. I mean, it's definitely a little different, but just try to keep it as normal as I can considering the circumstances. But everything's good. Just trying to stay safe, trying to stay avoid obviously the pandemic that's going on. Right.  You've been okay? Thankfully, you know, well, and everybody's been good. My sister, brother, everybody, you know, my whole family, they're safe. Man, it's just clear of the virus. So that's definitely a blessing. Yeah, God bless. Thank God. Hey, man, I know you just got to Houston. I don't know if you know this, but you got a season to get ready for. So tell me what you've been up to. What's your workout look like for these days? I've been my workout been normal.  So it's been, it's been fine. You know, I've been, I've been, you know, doing what I had to do to get ready. So whenever we, you know, whenever it is that we do have to go back, I'll be ready. All right. So take us, I mean, everybody at home is like, what does that look like? Definitely doesn't look like what I'm doing. Give us like a quick overview of like what you do on a typical day for your workout. All right. So I wake up before 15. Um, yeah. So I wake up before 15, have like a little juice or snack or something. Okay. Get to the weight room around like four or 45 workout from like that time to about like six.  Might fall asleep for a second. Take like an hour.  And that's when I go through all the, all the, you know, all the balanced workouts and all that stuff that everybody's been seeing. So it's so crazy. Yeah. So from about 830, 845 to about maybe like 12 o'clock, 1230, that's what I'm doing. And then I'm done for the day. I'm good. Anything else? Massages or just taking care of my body. That's what I'm doing. It's kind of like my day. I mean, I usually get a third workout in. I'm usually up at like 413, but you know, I'm saying that's pretty good still. I'm playing, um, you know what though? I've been seeing you in your basement. You've been gaming this entire quarantine. Are you a gamer? Are you good? Yeah, I've been, I've been gaming. I've been, I've been on it hard. So I've been on crowded duty.  So I've been on Twitch like heavy, heavy, heavy. So that's what I've been doing. Just, you know, giving everybody a little glimpse. Right. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I love that you're training. I know a lot of Saints fans cannot wait to get this thing going, especially because you got a new, a new quarterback in that division over there in Tampa Bay. You ready? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm ready. I like, I like Brady, man. I'll talk to him a couple times, you know, just adds another, another little bit of flavor to our division. It was already loaded, but now with Tom and what they have, or what they're getting ready to have going on down there, I think it's just more competition, you know? Yeah, no doubt. Bring it on. I mean, I could keep asking you questions all night. We could keep doing this, but we have got a ton of awesome fans on this call, exclusive, exclusive people joining us and fans that have a lot of questions for you. So I want to get to those questions right now. And then the first question comes to us from, boom, Brandon K. He says, what did you first buy when you got your first NFL check? Great question. Brandon, all right. When I got my first check, first of all, now I'll tell you about all the taxes. My tax first, then when I actually got my check after the taxes, I ain't do nothing. I went and got some food. I literally went and got wings. Like I went and got something to eat. And I still like to this day, I have yet to like really buy myself anything with like any of my football money crew. So good for you. Good for you. That's how you make it last, right? Talk to the young kids. Yeah, don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. No matter how tempting it is, don't touch it. There you go.  Yeah, it was a gift. That's beautiful. All right, let's move on to number two here.  How did you prepare for that? All right, Allie. So I know it might sound strange, but I didn't prepare for it at all. I got it from my mama. I literally, like, so they're all through draft prep. Like I didn't do, I didn't even like, I didn't do a fake Wonderlich nothing. I didn't do a test Wonderlich anything. I just the first time I took the Wonderlich or saw what the Wonderlich looked like anything like was when it was administered at the combine. So, all right, you know, it was God giving. There you go. Own that. Awesome question, Allie. Thank you. Let's get to our next question here for Alvin. And that comes from Andre E. Alvin, you want to know besides the Superdome, what is the next best stadium that you like to plan? Man, so I've been, let's see, I've been the Dallas, I've been to Minnesota, I've been, I've been, I've been everywhere. I haven't, let me see.   And then when I went, like, I went out for warm ups and I'm just looking around like, dang, this Lambo field. So I think like I definitely enjoyed playing there just because of history. That's very cool. What's the coldest place you've ever played?  Yeah, I don't got to deal with the weather. Yeah, you get you get up north and you're like, they said they for me. But I'm trying to think. Like actually having to deal with the elements probably buffalo. Yeah. And it wasn't even there, but it was still cold. All right. All right, let's move on. Next question is from, we're gonna see it in a second. I got you. All right, with the possibility of no fans in the stands, Alvin, how may that affect your play as opposed to having a full packed roaring stadium? This question is from Sal M. It's a great question, by the way, very topical. It's a good question. And I think, like, you know, a lot of me of my coaster friends that also play have been talking about it. You know, it's definitely different because we're used to the energy that the crowd brings. So, you know, stadium noise is a thing.  So without that, I don't know. It kind of changes the dynamic of the game. It's like, when you score touchdown, who's cheering? Like, I don't know. Some guys, I don't know. I feel like it's going to be it'll be weird if that would happen. I don't know how I react to it. Or I don't really have a I don't know if I really have an answer for that.  Perhaps like now your coaches will just have like absolute silence to get you ready for that. Just completely conversely, like flipping the scripts. I don't know. Sano has something good. I don't know. That's what it comes down to. Sano has something. I'm sure. No doubt about it. All right. Let's get our next question, Alvin. This comes from Jerry D. Do you still talk to Mark Ingram? Jerry, I talk to Mark every day. I was with Mark yesterday, literally. So that's my boy. Like, that's one of my closest friends. So I talk to him every day. It's like, he might as well still be in New Orleans. Like, we still get as close as we were when he was with us. You guys train together? Let him know that you got a shout out on the Fandall virtual event tonight. Very exclusive deal. Got a shout out. All right. Okay. Next question here. It is not sure who it's from, but tell us a fun fact about Drew Brees that people wouldn't know. A fun fact about Drew Brees. Drew actually has a lot of knowledge about 90s hip-hop.  Somebody might play like, might be playing like some Dr. Drew. That's cute.  Like, he's in it. Like, and you'll be like, what?  Nah, Drew, real cool. Like, super cool. But that's one fun fact. Like, I was surprised when I saw him do that. I was like, what the heck? I can definitely see that little DMX, little rough riders mix in there. I love it. Respect, Drew. Okay, let's get to this next question here for you, Alvin. What's your go-to song to get you right before a game? Oh, my go-to song? Yeah. Dang, I don't really got to go to song. I'm all over the place. But let me see. Like, I'm from Atlanta. I just, I, any, I just, you could put on future essentials and let it ride.  Be ready to go. Yeah, you will hear something. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Next question. What has been your favorite thing you've watched so far during quarantine? What you watching? This is from David C. I don't really, you know, the crazy thing. I don't really watch a lot of TV, but I did watch it. I think I was watching, um, what was that the other day? The evolution of hip hop. And I was like, the first episode, or I think it was the second or first, one of them was about New Orleans, like Coincidentally, it was like about, you know, like cash money and stuff like that. Like Master P and all that. So I was watching that. That was pretty interesting because it was some stuff I didn't know. And just to, you know, know that and actually be in the city and like see stuff on the show and where they were at. And like, now I'm in the city and I'm like, oh, I've been there or like, I've seen that. And like, Hey, that's when, that's when they were doing that. Or that's where they were doing that. It was dope to see. That's really cool. Probably taking a little bit through your childhood as well. Coming through that history. Just a little bit. Okay, let's get to that next question. And it is from Justin H. Do you feel that you were limited last season by your injury? I know you had two injuries in those two games. And do you expect any impact going forward? How are you feeling? Well, I was definitely limited last season, like a hundred percent.  It doesn't hurt my feelings. But, you know, fans, they always expect perfect product. But, you know, realistically, we deal with injuries. We deal with other things like we're still human. But, you know, just dealing with dealing with dealing with that knee injury. I mean, it just limited me. I couldn't really move. I wanted to move. I was in pain every game I was playing. And, you know, I just I could have sat down like the extent of my injury. Like it was a serious injury. Like it's not really an injury you play with. But I just decided to keep playing and try to fight through it the best I can. That's what that's what I try to put out on the field every year. I try to give my all every every game. And, you know, it was a down year, but I'm not worried about it going forward. I'm a hundred percent healthy now. So I'm good. I know a couple of DFS players that needed you for those two games, Alvin. I'm just saying, got you got you next season, for sure. Yeah. Okay. Question number 10 for you. What's your favorite spot to eat in New Orleans, maybe a spot that you're missing right now during quarantine? I know you said that you're in Houston right now to train. So what's your favorite spot in New Orleans to eat? My favorite spot in New Orleans to eat. My friend has a restaurant. Larry Moro shout out to Larry. It's called Moro's. And it's just kind of like Louisiana. It's Cajun cuisine with a little Korean twist.  She's Korean. So we've got some Korean twists with it with some Cajun cuisine and like, you know, just some home cooked good food. So shout out to Moro's. That's that's what I'm missing right now. All right. All right. Sounds good right about now. Let's get this last question for you, Alvin. Who was your favorite player growing up? Ah, man. I feel like you knew this was coming.  Who was your favorite player? Who was your favorite team? Who was your favorite running back? But my favorite player growing up probably just, I mean, I was in Atlanta.  He was electric. Like he redefined. I mean, he really redefined the game. And it was just like every time you watched him, he was on the edge of the FC. Like just trying to, like, you know, what's next, trying to see what's next. So Mike Vic for sure. Like me fast. If you said Patrick Kearney defense events with Atlanta Falcons, that would not have been an incorrect answer. Alvin, you're the best. I'm pretty cheap to you. Thank you so much for being here. Great insight into your world. Enjoy Houston. Keep it safe during this quarantine. Thank you so much for joining us for the Spandool virtual event. And man, good luck this season. We're going to be cheering for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right, we'll see you soon.


The study aimed to evaluate the biological properties of silver nanoparticles produced from the herb ageratum conezoides and explore potential applications. The optimal conditions for synthesis were determined using varying pH levels and concentrations of silver nitrate. Characterization of the particles was conducted using FECM, HRTM, and UVVIS spectroscopy. The particles were found to be between 30 and 90 nanometers in diameter and exhibit irregular shapes. Antimicrobial and antioxidant activities were evaluated, along with the ability to inhibit alfamilase. The results suggest that the particles are safe and effective for use in various applications. This article was authored by Deepak Parmasivam, Balamuralikrishnan Balasubramanian, Ramya Suresh, and others.


Thanks so much for joining us here at ACMI today. My name is Summer Maxwell, and we will be discussing a topic that has been a long-standing source of heated debate here in Arlington, affordable housing, more specifically the effects of the new multi-family zoning requirements for MBTA communities, of which Arlington is one. I have the great pleasure of being joined today in studio by Erica Schwartz, the executive director of the Housing Corporation of Arlington, and Claire Ricker, the director of Arlington's Department of Planning and Community Development. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Glad to be here. The MBTA community's law was passed in 2021 and has many complex nuances. It created the concept of zoning capacity, which determines how many units of housing a land parcel can hold, regardless of what structures currently exist on the property. The law assigned each MBTA community, of which 175 towns and cities across the Commonwealth qualify, a minimum number of zoning districts that must meet the standards for multi-family housing. So let's get right into the discussion. My first question is for Erica. Can you explain a little bit more about what HCA does and how the MBTA's community act ties into that? Sure. Well, the Housing Corporation of Arlington is an independent, nonprofit, community development corporation. That's sort of the type of organization we are. And this means that we are Arlington based and Arlington driven, so our board and our members are of and for Arlington organization. And our focus is on both creating, sort of building, creating, and providing affordable housing, which is increasingly needed as, you know, I started doing this work well over 20 years ago, and it felt like a crisis then, and that crisis for housing has just gotten somehow astronomically worse over time, so providing that affordable housing. And then we also have a set of social programs to support families in other ways so that they can remain stable and strong. And we do also do some civic engagement. Certainly we'll be engaging people more to help particularly low-income people, but also anyone get more involved in decision-making locally. Excellent. Thank you. Now, Claire, why did the Commonwealth make this MBTA community's law, in your opinion, and what was the intended effect? Well, the MBTA community's law is the most significant housing legislation that has been passed by the Commonwealth probably in the last 50 years.  This law was passed, I think, as a way to promote multi-family housing through administrative function that the state does actually have a say in. The state does, you know, cities and towns do derive their power to zone from the state. It's a delegated power, so the state does, indeed, set the terms for the zoning. And I think there was just real recognition by the Baker administration, honestly, which is very interesting, you know, considering, you know, that was a Republican administration. And very clearly they felt the need to respond to, I think what people were seeing is sort of this large hurdle to development of multi-family property, where a lot of the carrots that were out there, different other pieces of legislation that were more carrots than stick were working somewhat but weren't really resulting in any significant, you know, moving of the needle in terms of housing inventory, in terms of the number of housing units that were being produced. And so, through a series of legislative actions, the MBTA communities law reduced the threshold for passage of zoning bylaw from a supermajority to a simple majority. So often, many of these projects were able to be sort of derailed by one vote of a planning board member. And so, you know, I think this was just a real response at the state level to recognize the authority that they have in, you know, in zoning and to reset the rules to, you know, provide for development of more and more housing. I mean, it's very clear that we're in a crisis. Now, and is Arlington already in compliance with this law, or is the town going to have to make some changes to be in compliance? So Arlington is not in compliance with the MBTA communities law, but we are not alone. Not many places are automatically in compliance. The MBTA communities, I think the real, you know, the item that we're discussing is this idea that the state wants to promote development of more housing close to transit stations. And initially, this was, you know, the kind of the strategy that we were going to take on. But as we started to work through, I think, the guidelines and requirements of doing something like that, the state was actually quite responsive to communities like Arlington, who would have then had to concentrate, you know, a certain number of units, a certain, the capacity to develop a certain amount of units very, very close to the ALY train station. And last August, the state, I think, you know, in a very positive way responded to, you know, these critiques and said, you know, we are going to, you know, detangle Arlington, for example, and a few other communities from needing to respond specifically to heavy rail transit and start responding a little more to, I think, the transit that we use all the time in Arlington, which is bus. And so in allowing Arlington sort of the freedom then to not necessarily plan for additional units around the train lines, you know, now we have both, I think, the wonderful opportunity and the very, very complex problem of deciding where in our, you know, five and a half square miles, we are going to put these kinds of zones that can, where we can develop the kind of housing, multifamily housing that the law is providing for. Thank you. Now, Erica, back to you. What are some of the potential benefits you could see this change of this law being implemented for Arlington? Well, you know, it's complicated and difficult to build housing at all, and it's a little more complicated and difficult to build affordable housing. And part of those complications and difficulties of building anything is cost. Right now Arlington zoning is a little complicated and there's sort of layers of changes that have happened that aren't always kind of uniform. You find one rule here, and then you're referred over here, and then there's sort of another layer of requirement that might negate what you found over here. And that can make it really difficult for us to find sites that are, that are suitable and that are feasible. It can make it difficult for us because unlike a large developer, we can't sort of buy a parcel and then take our time to figure out the zoning and take our time to figure out if it'll work. We don't have the resources for that. So it makes us less able to compete on the market with developers who might have much deeper pockets and who in some cases might be less preferable for local people than the local nonprofit. This MBTA communities, once the town figures out what's the best place to have these zones, those will be areas where it's much more known for us that we can do multi-family and it eliminates some of that layer of time and cost and use of our zoning attorney and it makes it a little more certain what we can do and how we can move forward. And I think it also will set these zones where there has been a lot of thought already put into where does it make sense to have these multi-family zones and then we can come in and say, okay, now let's add another layer of thought to that and how can we make some really beautiful affordable housing. Thank you. Now, Claire, this next question is for you. How might all of this affect the life of the average Arlington resident? Oh, wow. That's an interesting question. I think there's an argument to be made for a number of things. First of all, I think what I want to say is that when we're talking about multi-family housing, what we are really talking about is three families and larger. So a three-family counts as multi-family housing. I mean, we're not necessarily talking about a project that's 50 plus units in every instance. What makes sense? What's contextual is obviously, that would be great. This is what we want to see built. But again, we're not necessarily talking about big housing developments, five, six stories. I mean, we could be talking about a three-family, a four-family, a duplex that has been replaced by a four-family. I think one of the things that's really interesting and talking about how would this impact just an Arlington resident now, Arlington has just really clearly articulated values about the community that they are, about the community that they're looking to be. And so I think an example of how that plays out, unfortunately in our zoning by-law is we do have an inclusionary zoning by-law, which means that we are requiring an affordable unit, 15% of developed units need to be affordable. So if we build 100 units, 15 need to be affordable. If we build four units, zero need to be affordable. It's only until you get to six units that we can require an affordable unit. And so not having a pathway to build six units with our one affordable unit, that's clearly counter to the goals, the stated goals of this community. This is an opportunity, I think, for Arlington to really, really design a future in line with their goals. And again, this is going to happen slowly, incrementally. It can happen six units at a time. And it could happen with larger projects. But again, we are talking about potential and we are talking about outcomes. And so I think just one really easy thing to think about is, hey, yeah, as a community, six units doesn't seem so bad, especially since it gets us that inclusionary unit and allows us then to therefore see the values and the goals of our community played out in the built environment. Now pivoting back to Erica, what is your overall takeaway from this law? Do you think it's a good solution to the affordable housing crisis? The affordable housing crisis requires many, many, many solutions. And I think this is one vital tool of many. There are a lot of communities with, I would argue, not as positive values as Arlington that Claire was referencing. And I think one reason why this MBTA communities law came along is because statewide there are so many communities that are so determined to keep out certain populations and to keep out rental housing and to keep out even a two unit or a three unit or a four unit that it's just become impossible for people to live there. And then you have huge and increasingly larger populations in our state who are barred from living in some places. And some of those people are still barred from living in Arlington, not I think because of most people's values here, but because our zoning and the way development plays out just simply doesn't allow them to afford to live here. So this is one tool that I think is essential, one part of like a many, many piece puzzle in approaching this from a lot of different ways. Zoning is one way, more money is another. There's a lot of tools, but I think this is one essential tool. And I think in my experience in Arlington, there's so much thought that goes into how things play out here that I'm looking forward to seeing how that process plays out and where these zones will end up being and it will be a public process as I understand it with lots of opportunities for input. So I think it's an important tool and the way it's going to be implemented I think is equally as important for the benefit of the whole town. Excellent points from both of you in support of this law, but Erica, I understand not everyone in town is on the same page. For those that disagree with you, what are some of the arguments you've been hearing from them? Why are some people opposed to this? For me? For me. You know, there's a few things that I'm hearing and I can understand that this is sweeping legislation and it will be impactful.  I mean, I think there are a few things to keep in mind. One is that this is applicable to 175 cities and towns. We're all working towards passage. There are only, there are a very, very small amount of cities and towns that are pushing back and saying no, eight out of 175. So we, it's in Arlington's interest to comply. I think just generally for participation and just, you know, the regional responsibility of housing. I think another thing I'd like to point out is that, you know, we don't know, and I can't tell you, and I think this is again something else that makes folks uneasy, what the development pressure really is in Arlington? We don't know. We don't know if we are more attractive to develop than say Newton, who's also working on there by law, or Belmont, who's also working on theirs, you know, and the list goes on. I think that there is a lot of concern that, you know, once MBTA communities gets passed, that's it. We're going to see this tidal wave of development immediately come in and we're not going to have the, you know, the ability to handle it. I don't see that happening given, you know, just generally the expanse that we're talking about.   These sorts of people are the folks that live in Arlington. And when you get to a median home price, it's in the top 95% of the country. If you're buying a home in Arlington, you are paying in the top 95% for your property. Those aren't the people who are necessarily buying homes here any longer. These are folks who are looking for a second home, you know, they're moving out of their first home into their second home or whatever. And this is where we start to run into, you know, I think a real something that I'm hearing a lot of is, you know, we're getting these tear-downs and then they're being replaced by these large homes. Well, first-time home buyers are really looking for, you know, these smaller homes that they can start out in.  And that's not something that Arlington can provide right now. And so we're really seeing a lot of these like kind of big, small, big, small, you know, developments going on honestly just because of the demographics and truly because of the income of folks who are looking for housing in Arlington right now. Erica, what have you heard from people who are in opposition to this law? What are they saying? I don't know. I haven't heard, I haven't necessarily spoken to that many people about this law in particular. I do know that there's, you know, naturally for all of us, because as humans there's a discomfort often for change. And it's scary when you don't know exactly what the change is going to look like and when maybe you're not completely in control of that change because you don't own all the land in Arlington and you can't control what happens on it. I think from our perspective, we are made up of residents in Arlington who care deeply about this issue and are really thoughtful. So we will never develop anything that we can't feel proud of, you know, we build housing and then we own it. It's ours. That's, and my board members live in Arlington and, you know, we are always advancing things that we think are best for this community. But when we develop something, it's new and it's different. And it, you know, we've acquired a lot of existing buildings that were already there and kind of kept them looking more or less the same. But we've also developed lots that were more or less vacant or severely, very underused and we've put something larger than what was there before. So I think people are nervous about change and will that somehow change the feeling of their community. And I think we probably all just need to be continuing to have conversations that maintain the culture that we care about and the values we care about. And I think that's the way you can absorb change in the built environment while not changing the fabric of the community or the culture of the community. And hopefully this conversation is part of that. Now, Claire, back to you. Arlington has until the end of 2024 to be compliant from my understanding. That's correct. How do you see this playing out here in Arlington and what can community members do to have a say in these decisions being made?  So we've already had two meetings of MBTA Communities Working Group, which is a group that I set up under the jurisdiction of the ARB, the Arlington Redevelopment Board. There are 11 members. Everybody who indicated interest in being on the working group was accepted to the working group. We've had two meetings so far where we've really started to talk about what our community process will look like, what community participation will look like. We have a tentative first public meeting scheduled, we think, for March 9th. I will absolutely have to confirm that, but we think we're going to have our first public outreach session on March 9th. And what we've been doing in the working group is trying to find a way to communicate what is a, it's not a problem, but what is an exercise in vision and what is an exercise in potential with a public who is watching this play out on the property they own right now. And so having a conversation where we're saying, you live in a single family house today and one day maybe someone would be able to build four units on this. This is hard. This is a hard thing to kind of wrap your mind around. Well, is it going to happen today? Is this going to happen in the next year? I mean, I think these are some of the things that we're having in the working group, having conversations about communicating this challenge. But there will be ample opportunity for public involvement, for community comment. It's clear to me that the answer to this, where the district goes, what it's going to look like, the best answer will come from the community. And we're very, very involved in the community process and outreach that we think is necessary for Arlington. And fair, I think, you know, we should be as transparent, as communicative as we can be about what's going on and how we're looking at implementing this, because we are looking to implement it. I want to say, oh, hold on, so they would have an opportunity to participate. So what we're looking to do, I think, in terms of, you know, the scheduling is we have kicked off our working group meetings. We'll be kicking off community outreach. We are looking to a special town meeting in the fall for passage. So this year, at Spring Town Meeting, there will be very few zoning warrant articles to be discussed. We are moving most of the zoning warrant articles to the fall town meeting. We are tentatively have circled October 18th for that meeting, which is the Wednesday after Indigenous Peoples' Day. Again, we'll have to confirm. The reason that we are planning to do this is because we are also looking to participate, the town is also looking to participate in a fossil fuel band pilot. And in order for the town to participate in this pilot, we need to have passed MBTA communities zoning by the time of the application for the fossil fuel pilot in February. So if we pass, no, when, excuse me, when we pass in October, we will have November, December for review by the AG and then January to apply for the fossil fuel band, which will be available to us in February 2024. So our schedule is really kind of, again, guided by the community's desire to participate in this fossil fuel band. And this is just one of the things we need to do to get us to there. Well, this has been so informative. You've clearly given me and our viewers a lot to think about. Before we wrap up, Eric, is there anything else you'd like to add that you want our viewers to know about the HCA or the MBTA communities law? Well, I just want to say thank you. There are so many people who are very supportive of not just our organization, but more importantly, our mission of affordable housing. And I have found that this is a very warm and welcoming and compassionate community. We owned 150 units of affordable housing throughout Arlington, very integrated. So you might not even know where they are when you pass them. But I just appreciate this community that is so involved and just very thoughtful and caring about so many of these issues. And Claire, anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up? No, I just, I think we like to keep in mind we need more housing of all kinds everywhere. And this is a real good opportunity for Arlington to participate in where they'd like to see it and what it should be. All right. Well, thank you so much. This has been a conversation with Erica Schwartz and Claire Ricker. I'm Summer Maxwell. I hope you have all learned a bit more about affordable housing in Arlington and the MBTA communities act. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again soon.


you were called to pinch hitting a huge spot in the eighth inning two ounce bases loaded take me through at a bat how were you able to get the job done I mean I just the guys in front you know Hicks having a good at bat Joey was 0-2 and and grind it out a really good at bat know he punched out but he tires him down in a big situation with all the fans on their feet I get two strikes you just don't try to do too much and luckily it got through there and it feels good to coming no you enjoy when you get a day off kind of enjoy just watching the game in a relaxed state but when it's time to get going you get going for it and and luck that came through tonight you've come up in a lot of clutch spots throughout your career you'd mentioned trying not to do too much what's the key in doing so how do you make sure you prevent yourself from trying to do too much you know those are the those are the good moments you know you have the big situations and you just enjoy them you enjoy those moments and you enjoy the at bat and just don't try to hit the four-run or six-run home run you just try to get a base hit and you know usually when you don't try to do too much in this game you're pretty good off Jameson tie-ons pitching a perfect game heading into that eighth inning as his teammate how badly did you want that for him man I've been just our whole staff top it's almost they just are feeding off each other right now and their chemistry the bond in there I know we have some guys hurt but the bond in our clubhouse is really strong team now 21 games above 500 just what do you think of the success so far to start the season and what has been the biggest thing that has allowed you guys to find that success I mean it starts with pitching a defense I think when you when you're when you're getting zeros and when you're playing good defense it puts yourself in a good position every night and we just have so many guys in this lineup that could really do damage at any given time so it's kind of a strength by numbers thing and you know it's just one guy guitar one guy maybe doesn't but we just keep going and and we're a relentless lineup


Welcome to the NTN Nightly. I'm Nisha Charles. This edition stops stories. A modern, secured transactions framework to enable businesses to have increased access to finance. The Ministry of Education completes remedial works at the Sir Iris Simmons, Bocache and Anthropos Secondary Schools. Invest St. Lucien Bachs on a land rationalization plan. All that is the latest in youth development, sports and the NTN Nouvelle Arquéon. The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council has partnered with the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group with support from the Government of Canada to develop a modern, secured transactions framework to enable increased access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, using movable assets as collateral. Research indicates that approximately 70% of a firm's wealth is concentrated in its movable assets, such as equipment, inventory and accounts receivables. In a bid to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs and St. Lucia's ease of doing business ranking, the Government of St. Lucia is moving to introduce legislation under the security interest in movable property bill. Access to finance has been a long-standing issue for the private sector, particularly SMEs. Last week, representatives from the banking, finance and legal sectors, alongside government officials, participated in a two-day workshop on secured transactions and collateral registry. Pullman and secretary in the Department of Finance, Cointe Thomas, highlighted that the lack of access to finance inhibits the firm's competitiveness and productivity, its ability to expand its operations and provide much-needed employment. This is important as 70% of firms' wealth is said to be concentrated in their movable assets. To support this initiative, a legal framework and a registry system will be put in place for providing credit using movable assets. The International Finance Corporation works with governments across the globe to develop frameworks that allow borrowers to obtain loans by using their collateral resources to help create new alternatives for SMEs to obtain financing. Elaine McEachern is the senior financial sector specialist with the IFC. Approximately 57% of the firms in St. Lucia have access to finance challenges. Only 24.5% of those firms have a bank loan or line of credit, and 98% of those loans to small and medium-sized firms require collateral over 1.9 times the loan amount. St. Lucia is currently ranked 161 out of 189 economies on the World Bank ease of doing business getting credit indicator. However, this ranking is expected to improve with the passage of this new legislation. Once the security interest in movable property bill is tabled and approved by Parliament, the design and development of the collateral registry will be the next step in creating and enabling infrastructure to increase access to credit for SMEs. Partner Grant Thornton, Richard Peterking, said though this piece of legislation is very technical, and many persons may not initially grasp the concept, it can increase access to credit for SMEs. I think many instances there are bits and pieces of legislation that we still need as well. One of them is the Insolvency Act, which again, we have a bill, but it's not being passed. And without that, the lenders are not really going to get into lending to movable assets. So we need a number of things that have to change over the next year or so in order to open up our markets to a lot of new types of products that will allow transactions to flow and finance to be available to those who traditionally have a problem getting it. Business Development Officer Axel Finance, moving ages, said this bill aligns with his company's model of credit financing. It is, of course, heartening to see that everything is coming into place through legislation and, of course, institutionalization. So Axel Finance will definitely continue in the path that it has been to ensure that our small businesses continue to grow through the use of movable assets to secure their financial stability. Over in spring, Business Development Manager at First National Bank indicated that the passage of this bill will go hand in hand with a new initiative his bank is pursuing. We're actually going to be launching a SME Competency Centre in the coming weeks, which will be providing products and financial services to the SME sector. So the first secure transaction bill not being passed will actually enhance this effort. The IFC is hopeful that other member countries in the currency union will be motivated by Saint Lucia's advances and consider making this solution original one. The two-day workshop was held at the Finance Administrative Centre, November 5th to 6th, 2019. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, Glenn Simon reporting. The Department of Health and Wellness is advising the public more specifically pregnant women about the importance of serology testing during pregnancy. Serology testing involves taking a blood sample to test for HIV, syphilis, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HDLV1 and 2. All pregnant women must have serology testing done twice during pregnancy within the first three months and within the last three months. Senior Medical Officer for Infectious Diseases, Dr. Gail Gujada, says pregnant women can get these tests free of charge at the Ezra Long Laboratory at Victoria Hospital. Testing ensures early diagnosis and treatment of the affected mother where necessary. Testing can also ensure that the affected mother can inform their partner so that they can be tested and treated as well. Early diagnosis and treatment reduce the chances of the baby getting HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B while in utero, that is while in mommy's womb. Early diagnosis and treatment reduce the chances of the baby dying while in mommy's womb from any of these diseases. Early diagnosis and treatment reduce the chances of the baby dying from any of those diseases after birth. Dr. Gujada says that the goal is to have healthy mothers and healthy babies. Any mother who does these tests for HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and HDLV1 and 2 are exempt from paying any fee for those tests at the Ezra Long Laboratory at Victoria Hospital. What this means is that all those tests are free for pregnant mothers. And that was Senior Medical Officer for Infectious Diseases, Dr. Gail Gujada. The Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development has informed parents and guardians of students attending the Bocache, Antripo and Sir Iris Simmons Secondary Schools that the necessary post assessments and tests have concluded and that the schools have been confirmed safe for occupancy as such classes at these institutions will resume on Thursday, November 14th, 2019. Parents and guardians on meantime asked to note that the schools are putting in all necessary measures to make up for their instructional time lost. The Ministry thanks all parties for their understanding and patience during the period of remediation. The Caribbean Secondary Schools Drama Festival ended here to rousing applause. Anise Antoine has the details. The Caribbean Secondary School Drama Festival held a seminar for St. Lucian teachers and teachers of the visiting contingent on UNICEF rights of the child in performing arts education. The initiative forms part of a collaboration between the Caribbean Secondary School Drama Festival and UNICEF to commemorate World Children's Day. Cantelia Louie, coordinator of the Caribbean Secondary School Drama Festival, stated that the purpose of the seminar was to discuss and formulate guidelines to enforce the rights of a child in the drama sector. Miss Louie deemed the drama festival a success in all aspects. I am very happy with the festival and in terms of the responses I'm getting from it. There are persons who came for one day and have come every day because they are surprised as to what the children can produce. And I've been saying that because for the longest while, not because they are children, it doesn't mean that they can't produce wonderful performances. And so persons are seeing that. I see the students getting to know each other, what it doesn't mean anything right now. They're all friends. They all understand they're part of a tradition together, no matter where they come from. And of course, for our St. Lucian students and teachers, it gives them an idea as to where they are placed regionally in terms of arts education, in terms of performance, and has given them some ideas as to what they can do to further develop themselves. Sophia Edwards Gabriel, who is the Curriculum Officer for Health and Family Life, made a presentation on UNICEF rights of the child in performing arts education. We are now almost at the mark, the 40th year mark of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. And we realize that many persons are still unaware about what this treaty entails, the importance of the treaty, the articles that are in there. Most people understand that there's a concept about the rights of the child, but they don't have much detail. And given that we are now celebrating this whole week of creativity, the Caribbean Secondary Schools Festival, I felt it was a great platform to advocate and to sensitize persons about the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Edwards Gabriel emphasized on the rights of a child to express his or her views freely and engage in cultural activities. If we looked at some of the productions that we'll put on this week, we realize many of them spoke to culture. We saw ideas of the masquerade culture. We saw our folklore and our folk tales coming through with the jab-jab, with the dwein, with oboea, with religion. Children have a right to a religion, a right to an identity and nationality, and their hair representing their countries, putting on their performances, sharing part of their culture. And so that in itself speaks directly to the idea that we need to engage children. We need to empower them and we need to recognize these rights. The Caribbean Secondary Schools Drama Festival commenced on November 3 and culminated on November 9, 2019 at the National Cultural Center. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. And this is the NTN Nightly, Ryan O'Brien is up next. Everyone is at risk forgetting a foodborne illness. While most foodborne illness cases are mild and go unreported, long-term health complications and even deaths can occur from a foodborne illness. Foodborne illnesses are caused by contamination of food at any stage of preparation. If you are a food handler involved in home-based food production, meat, fish, chicken or a big shop, as a food vendor, how you prepare food can put your customers at risk. Do you know the risks and how to avoid them? The San Lucia Bureau of Standards can help you. For more information, contact the San Lucia Bureau of Standards at 4560546 or email SLBS at candw.lc or visit the website at www.slbs.org.lc. San Lucia Bureau of Standards, making quality and standards our way of life. Welcome back. We join Ryan O'Brien for the latest happenings in youth development and sports. I'm Ryan O'Brien, if you update from the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports on the NTN Nightly News. Cass Street's Comprehensive Secondary School and St. Joseph's Convent retained their respective titles as the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports in collaboration with the National Table Tennis Association held the Inter-Secondary Schools Table Tennis Championships recently. The girls' finals saw St. Joseph's Convent A winning three love over their BT. St. Joseph's Convent A, Zadia and Anthony defeated Convent B, Nige Myers 11-3, 11-5, while Convent A, Joale Sinclair defeating St. Joseph's Convent B, Lenore Ajuda 9-11, 11-9, 11-7. Zadia and Anthony then made it three love when she defeated Lenore 11-7, 11-12. The boys' finals saw Cass Street's Comprehensive Secondary School winning three love against the current secondary school. Cass Street's Comprehensive is D'Andre Colgen defeating Corrum's Snell Bernard 11-5, 11-1. Cass Street's Comprehensive is Ishmael Moise defeating Ronaldo St. Jesus 11-2, 11-5. Shona Janki taking it home for the Cass Street's Comprehensive Secondary School winning defeated Kerval Snack from the current secondary 11-6, 11-5. Table Tennis action at the secondary school level continues on Thursday at the Boise U Indoor Facility from 10 a.m. Boys and Girls Open Singles, Mixed Doubles and Boys and Girls Doubles will take centre stage. Minister responsible for youth development and sports, the Honourable Edmund Estefan, says the recent donation of a vehicle to champion female high jumper Laverne Spencer was but just a small token of appreciation being shown by the government and people of St. Lucia for many years of dedicated service and promotion of St. Lucia due to her success in athletics. Minister Estefan made remarks recently during the handing over of the vehicle. Every young St. Lucia must follow your example of dedication in representing our country and persevering in doing so. Today, the government of St. Lucia in partnership with a long-standing corporate citizen in the name of Northwest Limited makes this presentation to you in appreciation for your endurance, your athletic accomplishments and the humility you have displayed throughout. The government of St. Lucia wishes to thank Northwest Limited for coming forth and following the very example of the person we are honouring and rewarding today. The Youth Development and Sports Minister urged other St. Lucia sportsmen and women to follow Spencer's example of determination and dedication. Some news now on Big 8 Netball, St. Joseph's Convent defeated Miku Secondary 47-36 for St. Joseph's Convent. Bradneet Desiree scored 23 from 36 attempts. Gracie Alcide scored 24 from 34 attempts. For Miku Secondary, Goldschutz and Marge Marguerite scored 27 from 38 attempts and Golatak and Jermia Sonson scored 9 from 10 attempts. Quarter-time scores all in favour of St. Joseph's Convent. And in the finals, Arthur Lewis defeated Souffre Comprehensive 46-27. For the Arthur Lewis Community College, Goldschutz-Mélanie Antoine scored 32 from 39 attempts. Golatak, Melika Destang scored 14 from 17 attempts. For Souffre Comprehensive, Golschutz-Rachel Didier scored 11 from 16 attempts and Golatak, Tansy Pascal, 16 from 19 attempts. And that's where we come to the end of our update from youth development and sports for today. Thanks Ryan. Investing Lucia is embarking on a land rationalization plan which according to ISL's Chief Executive Officer, Roderick Cherry, is in the advanced stages. He explained that assessments have pointed to areas where individuals have been squatting on lands for decades. What we try to do is to put in as the utilities, the roads, electricity, water and give the people who are there already, depending on the length of time they are there, preferential rates for the land. We have a formula that we work with, depending on the length of time that you are on the land. You get rates for those lands, which is lower than what the market does. We are going with it because our rates are not market rates, they are below market rates. The issue of squatting according to the CEO has existed for several decades. Cherry highlighted ISL's aim to ensure that every St. Lucia is able to afford and own a piece of land. He explained that priority will be given to those who have been inhabiting the lands for lengthy periods of time at very accessible rates. This is a legacy issue. I mean the squatting on what is now in Western Lucia lands, that existed 40, 50 years ago. So we have come in and the land has been invested to us in Western Lucia. It is only right that if people have been occupying lands for a long time, that they should be given first title to those lands. The CEO explained the process when deciding upon a fair price for both ISL and Squatters. Before we decide on a price structure, there are two different things that we do. We examine the market rate for lands in the area. In the areas where we do land rationalization, we also do social surveys to indicate to us the amount that the people who actually occupy those lands how much they can pay. So based on that, to be able to look at the cost of the infrastructure, the return that we could make. When it comes to non-rationalization, we do not expect a return, but at least we want to break even. And that was CEO of investing Lucia, Roderick Cherry. You can stay with the NTN Nightly. Up next, Primers Hutchinson is here with the NTN Nouvelle Arquell. I'm innovative. I'm competitive. I am productive. I'm creative. I constantly improve what I do. And how I do it. I provide excellent customers to visit. I never stop learning. I give all my best, always. The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council embracing excellence. Welcome back. We join Primers Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle Arquell. We say madam, the Department of University of Saabliti with information on government solicit, the GIS. Assume we tell the National Payee NTN Caposito Nouvelle Arquell. We say to Primers Hutchinson. We are here with Alain Chastney. And we see twice the performance of the Global Citizens' Affairs on the 12th of November in London. We are here with Chastney to offer investment programs for citizens in the tourist sector and business properties in the country. We also want to participate in the discussion on the investment of citizens. Thanks to all participants and all of you, we have Dr. Joseph Mierskat from Malta, Dr. Marcovic from Montenegro, from Albania, Edi Romer from TIG from Gaston Brown. The strategy is much more effective than other companies in the world, the industry, business with the biggest official government to assist in. Chef Pogam, who has made investments, as well as Mr. Alfred, who has also assisted and participated in their discussion on their vision of the Caribbean. We have a special minister here, Mr. Pogam. Minister of Economic Development. We have Gaye Joseph performing in the position of a minister. The agricultural ministry has established a certification program to help the cultivators develop their own production with the place where they produce them. The government of this country, the Taiwan government, has organized this training with the help of the T-Shirt Money Program. In order to strengthen the production and distribute it effectively, we have the regime in this country. The objective is to make these cultivators able to produce and improve their production, to manage the place where they produce, to reduce the amount of social security that the country has to spend, in order to buy, to buy fruit in this country. Assistant Director of the Ministry of Agriculture, Barry Innocent, has declared that this country has spent almost $4,000 to buy fruit in the region, with a lot of fruit in the country. If I recall, the psychological difference is the significant amount that the country has to play to develop this. That's why I developed my economic career. I have studied the importance of food security, especially the importance of farming. Agriculture is a way of improving the situation in this country. Mario Chang, Mr. of the Taiwan government, has worked in the field of agriculture, in the field of technology, which is well advanced and has increased the production of agricultural facilities. The farmers of this country, Cameran Augustine, is the only country that is capable of doing this, because that's why I'm here to make the government have a good trust in the security ability of this country. For the past three years, the project has been growing, with tomatoes, bananas, truffles, and many other things. A continuation of our conversation today, and the Ministry of Agriculture, for the social transformation of the country, Leonard Montoute, has paid attention to this project that has been financed by the development of the CDB. Minister Montoute has talked about the institution of the children who are able to build a diverse community and have a lot of fun in this place. It's not easy for us to build a community. We have a lot of projects to do, because when we arrive here, Prime Minister Melani has a lot to do, and I'm sure he'll be able to do it. So we have a lot of patience, because we have a lot to do, and we can start right away, in the coming years, with the establishment of the Gozile. Yes, with the ability of the good side, about 10 years ago, we had a lot of projects, but I have a lot of good time, with the direction of doing it, I have a lot, but people who have been able to get close to the good side, they will not have any connection. So we have a lot of work to do in these places that we can connect to, and that's the second phase of the project. We have started, as soon as the other year, no, as soon as December comes, the project will be complete. So that's what we have done, we have had a lot of projects, we have done the SSDF, that are not to do it for the children, but for the family, with the government, that's all. If we do it, then the Ministry of Social Affairs will continue to do a lot of work. If we do it, we can do something else, we can do some other things, and when we have a lot of projects, we can do a lot of projects. We have a lot to do, That was a great mission. Merci Opil Primus, and here's a look at what's happening to us weather-wise. Partly cloudy skies, occasionally becoming cloudy with some scattered showers, mainly over the southern part of our region, for the north it will be generally fair. Moisture and instability in the lower atmosphere will cause some showery periods, mainly over the southern eastern Caribbean region, during the next 24 hours. A tropical wave located over the central tropical Atlantic is moving westward, near 12 miles per hour, or 19 km per hour. Tropical cyclone formation is not expected over the tropical Atlantic during the next five days. The tide for Castris Harbour was high at 3.43pm and will be low again at 10.27pm. The tide for Villefort Bay was high at 4.50pm and will be low again at 11.54pm. The sea is slight to moderate with waves 3 to 6 feet or 0.9 to 1.8 meters. The sun will rise Thursday at 6.03am. And that brings us to the end of the NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7am. You can also catch up with us anytime on the Saint Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I'm Nisha Charles.


Hell yeah, what's up guys this is Chris Pike my friends call me Big C back in action today I want to show you how to create your own songs for free using stable audio 2.0 the 2.0 just launched and here's the thing. It's pretty darn good It's not as good as Suno AI v3 in my opinion I'd rather be upfront about that but it has some really good things going for it and you can do three minute songs with This so keep that in the back your head in Suno AI v3 You can make up to two minute songs, but they're usually like a minute 40 And then you got to generate another minute and then you got to combine them stable audio 2.0 Well, they could do three minute songs right out of the box. So there we go in a nutshell. Let's start from scratch here I'm in stable audio comm forward slash generate links in the description below free to sign in free to use So here we go the first thing you'll notice here on the left side is the prompt So I mean I don't really have anything in mind So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and click on this option here prompt library when I click on that It just sort of has pre-packaged ideas. So if I was to go with I don't know. Let's select epic rock There we go I just clicked on it and it gives you the prompt of course you can go in and add in whatever you see fit These are just ideas. So keep in mind if I wanted, you know, if I wanted it to be a hundred and fifty BPM Then that's it. I can go ahead and do that. So there you go The model uses audio sparks 2.0. This is interesting because it was trained on the audio sparks Model or on the audio sparks, I guess library, but Creatives and artists were allowed to opt out if they wanted to so according to stable audio This is all above board. There's no stealing, you know creative from creatives as far as I know again I can't verify that but that's their Position on it and I will put a link to the FAQs so you can double check that also notice here You can increase and decrease the size of the song. I've got it at three minutes So the maximum and then the last thing I want to show you it's really cool here You can add your own audio So if you've got like your own beat that you kind of want to add in or maybe you've hummed along and you know You got a drum beat that you've kind of hummed along and you know You're making a beat with your mouth even for that matter or just a couple of sticks and a table You could upload that as a prompt to give stable audio some ideas So just keep that in mind now basically all you need to do now is once you've got where you where you want it I'm gonna go ahead and click on generate and it's gonna go ahead and start generating a new song now While this generates you're gonna notice here that I've got three songs Already done so I can give you a bit of a background as to how good or bad this is and I'm gonna be up front here You know the electronic dance trancey type music It's very very good at that But it struggles with the heavy metal and like the hard rock stuff I found because it just doesn't have a very believable Crunchy guitar style. So if that's your thing, you may want to keep a suno AI v3 in mind Let's click on a few examples. So just so you can see what I'm talking about. Here's the trance Which did a pretty good job. Let's go ahead and click on this one. Yeah start slow It's got a nice riser at the beginning Not bad and then it starts to pick up There we go All right, so I mean I see where it's going and also you can read the exact Prompt that was used to create this as well as the seed and the number of steps taken So if you want to go ahead and recreate this in a similar style, it's very easy to do You can use the prompt again You can also copy the prompt here or you can use this as an input for something else So keep that in the back of your head. Also, I guess, you know what? Let me show you what we just created while I while I explain that to you Here's the post rock guitar drum kit bass thing 150 beats per minute. I just created. Let's listen to this I have no idea how this is gonna sound, but hopefully good Here we go. All right Starting slow, but not bad All right All right, so you're not gonna win an Emmy with that don't get me wrong But hey, it's still pretty cool And if I want to download the songs I can just go ahead and click on the download track button right there And I could use though. Wow. I'd like to see what the video looks like. That's interesting I'll click on the mp3 of course, but there you go If you want to download go ahead and do that. It also creates a video. I did not know that until now But there you go guys. So that's how you do it. Let's take a look at the video actually before I go anywhere Let's go ahead and just open it All right Kind of simple, but you know, we'll take it It's got that nice cool little sunshiny look and there you go If you want to go ahead and check out all of the other parts I recommend going to the FAQs here when you do that It'll explain to you why it costs two credits is every piece of audio unique Yes, it is and also the commercial side of things where if you want to use your Use the content. Where are you allowed to upload it and stuff like that? So Yeah, it will pass copyright checks. It should get past past copyright checks and all that other stuff here That's important. There you go guys. It's all in here and the licensing as well. So there you go guys That's all there is to it. Try it out. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for watching


So here you have Zephyr running on the ARM Cortex M33 new class processor, right? That's right. This is a demonstration of trusted firmware for M-class devices. We took on ourselves to integrate Zephyr with trusted firmware. We started this work on Monday when we actually reached here. You started on Monday? Yes. And right here we're looking at a special kind of configuration right here. There is an ARM Cortex M33 in there. So yeah, this is a MPS2 FPGA board where you can program Cortex. This is basically a programming board where you can put all the M-based systems or any Cortex M3. So there's an FPGA? And it has an FPGA. If you look at the board on this side, this is running a caster subsystem. This is a caster subsystem which is essentially based on CM33 with a lot of security IPs integrated with this. And this board is hardware level isolation. So you might have heard about the trust zone on for V8M. This hardware supports all V8M trust zone related IPs. And this demonstration showcases the integration of trusted firmware M project with Zephyr. Where Zephyr is actually running on the non-secure side. The trusted firmware is actually a trusted firmware running on the secure side. If you look at the demo, this is showing interaction between non-secure world and secure world. On the non-secure world, Zephyr is running as the, well, your hard task. It's running the scheduler, it's running some other tickers. And in one of the tasks, it's essentially making calls to the secure world and it's storing certain objects, then reading it back and comparing if it is the same or not. So it's showing the whole path from non-secure world to going to the secure world and coming back. And at the same time making sure that all the parties which is secure as well as non-secure they're happy with the whole setup. So it's essentially showcasing that the non-secure world of RTOS can happily integrate with the DFM without much other problem. The fact that we started only on last Monday is kind of proof that it's a step in the right direction. It all makes sense. It took less than two days to integrate a completely new RTOS which did not have any security or trust zone awareness in the past. And we did not have to make a single line change in the trusted firmware M. I think it's another proof that it's headed in the right direction. So is there a real Cortex M33 or is it emulated on FPGA? This is a well, it is emulated on FPGA but it's actual RTL. It's not a simulation or a simulation. So it's the actual design of the M32? It's actual design of the M33. In just five days you were able to modify Zephyr to support it? I would say less than two days because the actual time spent was much less than four days. We got it running yesterday morning but in between we had a lot of sessions, a lot of other discussions. So the actual effective time spent on doing this demo is probably less than two days. And this is the ultimate secure IoT platform for the future? This is the ARM's reference platform for showcasing how an IoT system should be done with ARM's IPs with hardware security? With hardware security which is ARM plus zone. And as I said in the past it provides hardware level isolation between the secure and non-secure domains. And this demo is essentially showcasing that separation and showing that it's the software that we have designed for secure world is compatible with the already existing non-secure operating systems. So this is going to be 100% secure? What do you think? I think that's the step in the right direction. As I said the trusted firmware project we just made our first release in December last year. So it still has a lot of miles to cover but it's a step in the right direction. And at this point we would like collaboration and basically feedback from all the involved people. All the people who are doing IoT security or security in general. I would like to invite them and start looking at the implementation and start giving us feedback. Start getting involved in the trusted firmware.org project which is now open governance project. And this is the M33 chipset and the M23 are coming very soon. They're like Nordic Semiconductor announced one and the other company also. NXP maybe? I may not be able to comment on the chipsets coming from other partners. But from ARM the Caster and the Muska solutions are the one which is basically codex M33 based. I think there are solutions coming up but I may not be able to talk about the partners specific details.