I want to introduce you to Professor Kiran Moran, who is a professor of biomechanics in the School of Human Health and Performance in DCU. He leads a large research team in the Insight Centre in DCU, and his research focuses on the use of sensor-based technologies, primarily wearable sensors, to quantify human motion outside of the laboratory setting, and to try and understand more about the causes of musculoskeletal injuries, particularly running injuries. He is currently co-lead of the Running Science Research Program in the Insight Centre, along with Barry, and he's going to speak to us about work, and I think this is on behalf of yourself and End of White. He's going to speak to us about, I think, some really nice work that's already been completed, but I think more importantly, some upcoming research, very exciting upcoming research that is about to take part, and we would very much encourage people to consider taking part in that research. Over to you, Sean. Thank you. Perfect. Thanks very much. Yep, my name is Kiran Moran. I'm a biomechanist. I study human movement, and I find this fascinating. It gives me an opportunity to see the way people move, to try and understand what might be causing injuries, and I'm giving this on behalf of myself, and End of White, who's here, who's a physiotherapist, and this is some of our team on the left-hand side here. So you're all aware of the risk of injury. We've just completed, well, I say just completed, it was over four years, and I say we, I mean my PhD students, just completed a research where we tracked runners over an 18-month period, and we found over a year period, over 52% of people got injured every single year. So it's a very significant effect, and I probably don't need to preach to you about this. And if we take Aschling's presentation earlier on, this 52% is when we have a very stringent definition of injury. If we take in the niggles to this equation, it goes up to 80-85% of people would become injured. So really what we want to know is, what's the risk of injury and can we prevent it? So what causes injuries, mainly around technique I'm interested in, but I'll allude to other aspects, and is there evidence to support this? And this is a big bug-bearer of mine, is the amount of information that's out there that isn't evidence-based against that, which is evidence-based. And then can we effectively address this? If we know what causes injuries, do we have a means of addressing that so we can reduce the likelihood of injury? So what causes injury? At one level, it's really simple. All injuries are caused by high loading on the body relative to tissue strength. And if we could understand these factors, then we have a way of moving towards identifying the likelihood of injury. So if you take rope or a spoon and you apply a load to that spoon at some point, it will break. It's wooden, by the way, it's not metal. I'm not that strong. Okay, it will break and it's that simple, except for when we look at injuries in the body, we have biological structures. And our bodies are amazing. We apply loads to them and it becomes damaged. This is like an image of micro damage in the tissue. And this is brilliant because when you train and take a rest and train again, this is what leads to tissue development and you're getting stronger tissues. The downside of it is this balance between the tissue damage, the degradation and the protein synthesis, the repairing of the tissue. And it's the balance between these two that determine our injuries. Now, the challenge to understanding this is that we're generally in running the chronic-based injuries. It's not like ACL in a sport that involves landing and we can see the event that causes that actual injury. It's very rare to see a runner, particularly a recreational runner, running and saying, yes, that action there caused the injury. Occasionally it's been captured in a lab, someone's been injured in a lab and the scientists go, yippee. But in general, we don't know this. And that's the challenge to us. And if we bring into this, Ashling's point about the different types of injuries, particularly those lower level injuries, they obviously, because of what we're saying here about the micro damage, contribute to the later injuries, what we would associate more with an injury, but very little research has been done on those. So this makes it all the more challenging. Also, the difference with the spoon, for example, is if I took five spoons, I applied the same load, each of them would break at the same point. We'd understand that relationship. The difference is that each of you are made up slightly different in the design of your body, the strength of the various tissues. So for us to identify what's causing injury becomes more complex. And what adds to the complexity of that even further is if we could measure all of that in you today on a given run, how much tissue damage you have, and we measured you tomorrow and we measured you a week from that, your body would respond slightly different in each of these situations. So this is my caveat to the whole area, the complexity of it. I'll try and give some insight to it. So we've said that injuries is high loading relative to tissue strength. Well, that's what biomechanics does. It measures all of these factors. So we have various technologies, we have motion captures, you might have come across these put little markers on people's body, and we can track to an accuracy of about two millimeters, how you use your body when you run. We have force plates embedded in the ground or in treadmills. And we can see how hard you're striking the ground and combine this information to the loading on different parts of your body. We can use muscle activity, look at pressure plates, even yourselves on your mobile phones now, you can record yourselves or your friends running with a high sampling rate and slow it down. You can see quite a bit of detail about how people run. And we use inertia sensors a lot. They can also measure the angle of your various joints and segments in your body and the amount of loading applied to different segments in the body. So from a biomechanics perspective, we have quite a lot of tools available to us, as well as our understanding of how the body works. So can we use that information? So I'm stepping forward now. Imagine I could identify the causes of injury. Can we actually change the way in which people run to reduce the likelihood of injury? In terms of changing the way people run, certainly 10 years ago as a biomechanist, we thought that we couldn't change the way that people run. But with the availability and the ability to take this technology outside of the lab, it's become very clear that we can change the way in which people run. I don't know as runners, if you feel as that's possible, but we've done numerous studies where, for example, we attach these inertia sensors, the size of a bottle cap on your water bottle there, attach them to someone's tibia, for example. You go for a run, we record that and we say, right, we want to reduce the amount of loading, how hard you strike the ground by 10%. It's very simple. We've got an app that you can go running with, it's not publicly available, but we have an app, you can go running and you can self-teach yourself to run softly. So we've been able to reduce the amount of loading on various parts of the body from 30 to 40%. Simply by giving people this feedback, each time you run, your foot strikes the ground. If it's not as low as you want it, the predefined value that you set, it gives a beep in your ear and you simply teach yourself to run softly. And various groups around the world have used this and motion capture systems and force plate systems to change the way in which people run and not just while they're using the technology, that people can retain that information and a year later still run without auto technique. So from a biomechanics perspective, we can change the way in which people run. Going back to what causes injury, high-loading relative to tissue strength, well, we also, it's not just biomechanists, clinicians can also measure things around flexibility, muscle strength and joint alignment, the way your body naturally orientates itself. And all of these factors have been looked at with regard to injury. Now on one side of this, it's still a fairly simple process of claiming that you can identify the causes of injury. I've said that all injuries are caused by high-loading relative to tissue strength. Well, if we can measure all of these, surely we can identify the causes of injuries. So in terms of load per stride when running, that means every time you strike the ground, do we know the factors that determine higher-loading or lower-loading? With regard to the number of strides, do we know what affects the number of strides? Because these two factors will combine to determine loading. And do we know what factors affect tissue strength? The answer is yes. There's good scientific evidence here relating to these factors. For example, the technique, the angle that your knee is at when you strike the ground, if your knee is more extended, you apply more loads to the knee. If it's more flexed within reason, you apply less loading to the knee. So all of these factors, how much your body goes up and down when you run, stride length, foot strike pattern, you'll be familiar with lots of these factors because there's evidence that these factors determine the amount of loading on the body. A little bit less so with regard to terrain, that's a very complex area. And I won't go into at the moment, but I can chat to people about that afterwards. Same with number of strides, same with tissue strength, all of these factors, including disease that was talked about, they all affect the strength of the tissue and the likelihood that will become injured. But there's a real challenge. There's a big difference between saying these factors are affected, load are affected by these factors, tissue strength by those mechanisms, those factors. There's a big difference between saying that and saying those factors cause injury. And that's where there's a misconception in the area. And unfortunately, to a certain extent, where beliefs are formed about certain, I can change my technique, I can change to a forefoot strike pattern and it will reduce the likelihood of injury. Because the evidence isn't there to support that. So I suppose we could take it, what approach can you take or do people take or what clinicians take to addressing this issue of injury? Well, what we could say is, well, all these factors relate to injury, so let's address them all. But that's not feasible. There's too many of them. You don't have the time to address all of these factors. Well, we could say then, let's target runners for these possible risk factors. But for factors that you're predisposed to, well, it still raises the question is, which ones? We need to know what are the cutoff values? What value of your knee flexion will it predispose you to injury? And what is that risk factor? Is it 2%? Is it 70%? Because that's going to affect whether you're going to address it or not. Or we could say, let's target particular runners who are exposed and have a previous injury. Because if we know what the specific injury is that they might get again, that would give us a better target to work with athletes. And that's probably where we apply most of our attention at the moment. But with regard to all of these, is there evidence to support this? And I think that's where the majority of my take home message is to you today is to be careful of what people are saying out there about reducing the likelihood of injury because you might be doing something that increases your risk of injury. Unfortunately, I don't have the answer that each of you could come along and say, well, this is my injury, how do I reduce it? It's a very complex area. And in some ways, that's my take home message to you. Now, I just want to say one other thing before I go on to talk about some of the risk factors is that there is this idea that we can predict the likelihood of someone becoming injured from a biomechanical perspective I'm talking about now. I'm not aware really of any evidence of this. In our large-scale study, we did a prospective study tracking these athletes for at least a year where we analyzed them. We actually tracked some people for 18 months. With all of that information, with all of these variables on the left-hand side related to loading and some of the variables on the right, we were only able to predict the likelihood of someone becoming injured to an accuracy of 30%. That was after measuring everything. Now, you might think that's quite good. I think it's extremely poor because we miss loads of athletes and we misidentify some who would become injured. And I'm still left with the question, which of these factors do I now use to predict the likelihood of someone becoming injured? So I think at the moment, it's not possible from a biomechanical perspective to predict who's going to become injured. But we might be able to identify some risk factors to give you a nudge towards the types of practices that may be effective. Okay. I just want to talk about the quality of evidence. To me, if there was something you were able to go away with from my talk today, it would be that I better understand what is good evidence when I come across it, because then you're better able to make decisions on whether to change your running technique or your training practices. Unfortunately, most of what we read out there is just people's anecdotal evidence or their opinion. And some people are very good at putting their opinion across. I mean, this goes to the side of national newspapers. I like reading The Guardian. I know this is back in 2004, but it claimed that having your foot too far out in front of you resulted in a heel strike action, and this heel strike action increased the risk of injury. Yeah, there's no evidence out there for this. I mean, does studies that some studies find that it does does equal amount of studies that don't. And when you look at the quality of evidence overall, it's not there that heel strike increases the risk of running related injuries in general. It might be related to certain specific injuries, but running injuries in general, it's not related to it. So then yesterday, I thought, well, is this still true? So I went on Google yesterday, I just put in heel strike, overuse injuries, causes injury, and I restricted it to the past month. And this was the very first site that came up. And I clicked on it. And I've just copied and pasted it here and said, the recommended foot strike for not most, but for all runners is forefoot strike, not a heel strike. Studies continue to pile up. Wow. This is amazing. Great to hear from me as a researcher, where all of these injuries are completely resolved by turning to forefoot running. Now I'm not saying you would believe this, but I'm just trying to point to the fact that people put across the idea that does evidence out there for things. And we need to understand what evidence is. So I suppose my take home message to you, one of them, I haven't finished yet, unfortunately for you, but one of my take home messages is if possible, read the original research and look at the quality of evidence there, use sources that directly refer to the original source, that reference it, and if possible, directly quote it. Then it raises the question, well, first of all, before I say how we judge quality of research, it's essential that researchers like myself, then put across information accurately in a way that you can understand them. And I think that's one of the problems of the scientific community. But if we then want to know what is the quality of evidence, I just want to point to some things that you should look for. You should look for what are called prospective studies. These are studies that will measure something now, track athletes, runners, and see if they become injured. And as scientists, we sit there for months with our fingers crossed, waiting for you all to get injured, would you do? And then we can look at the data. Unfortunately, there's lots of retrospective studies. There are studies that would take a group of injured runners, for example, not always, but a group of injured runners, a group of uninjured runners compare them and say, well, whatever the difference must have caused that injury. And unfortunately, most of the time, it's the injury that's probably caused a change in running technique. And so to a certain extent, without belittling my own research, and those of my colleagues, does not much evidence that you can take from those studies. They should only point us towards prospective studies. Okay. So you should look for prospective studies. You should look for studies that look at multiple variables, not just one, because it's that complex interaction of all the factors that's important. It should be relevant to what's important to you. If you're interested in reducing all of your running injuries, then you need to look at studies that are looking at that as a definition of injury. If it's for knee injury or patella femoral pain syndrome, or some particular injury, only go to those studies that look specifically at your injury. Assessment points. From a biomechanics perspective, most studies are down here, where we measure people at the start of the study, and we assume that no one changes the running technique. But from Ashling's work, it's clear that people have niggles, and these niggles will change the way in which you run. So even though we just spent four years, it was all based on a one off assessment at the start of when people were running. And that's a real limitation to even our own research. We need patient participant numbers up into hundreds, three hundreds plus to really have an insight, while in fact we'll see most studies are down in the area of 15. And the participants need to be similar to yourself. So if it's a study done on novice runners, does it apply to you as someone who's been running for six, seven, eight years? If it's on males, does it apply to females? So you need to take all of this into account. So that's what I mean about the quality of evidence. And I think that's really important for you to be able to read information and find out, is it of value? Now beyond that, the number of studies, we should be looking for at least 10 studies in an area before we start believing it and having consistent findings. And the effect, that it's a 20% reduction in risk or a 2% reduction in risk or an 80% reduction in risk, they need to be taken into account as well. But in terms of the quality of the study, to me, this is really important. So as I said, let's look for this evidence. So I thought what I'd do is I'd pick one study to me, which is a really good study. And it points to evidence that I think may be relevant to you. You can decide whether you would adopt this or not. But it was a study done by Zoe Chen in Hong Kong. What they did is, if you can see here, this is the trace of someone striking the ground. And it has what we call this passive peak here. And the steepness of this, it's called a rate of force application. The participants were asked to reduce this. This is a biofeedback study. So they ran, they trained over a two week period, three times a week, and they were able to teach themselves without any instruction how to do it to reduce this value here. So this wasn't a steep. So what they had then is they had a prospective study and it was an intervention study. Although it was targeting one variable, it controlled for a lot of other variables. But by definition, intervention studies can only really target one variable at a time, or very few. It was all lower limb injuries. I think that would appeal to everyone. They want to reduce any lower limb injuries. While it was only assessed a two week intervention point, at the end of the study, they reassessed all the runners to check, were they still running with this reduced load without them seeing the screen and they were. So they altered the way in which they run over a two week period. They retained that they think because they exhibited at the end of the year. And it was over 300 participants and it was novice distance runners. So you have to decide is that relevant to you or not. Okay. And what they found was that those people who had the intervention at the top there, they were able to reduce their impact loading. And amazingly, I think amazingly now is that over the 12 month period, the occurrence of injury was 62% lower. In essence, if you can run softer, if you can reduce this, those runners, novice runners, were able to reduce the number of injuries or the number of people who became injured by 62%. Now to me, that's evidence. That's what we should be looking for when we're trying to decide how to train or change our training practices. So if I flip now and try and give a summary, because I think maybe some of yous would have thought, well, tell me how I should change my running technique to reduce the likelihood of injury. Unfortunately, apart from that study, I'm just going to present to you, where is the evidence overall at the moment. And the take home message is, we don't have a huge amount of evidence at the moment because of the quality of research that's been done to date. It's getting better. But that's where Brian was alluding to the fact that there might be better ways forward. So previous injury, I put this up here because the strong evidence, all of you, I would imagine know this. If you have a previous injury, you are far more likely to re-injure yourself. And if you have a previous injury, in fact, it's not just an injury in the same location, it can also move to other locations. And you can imagine why, because you adapt your running style. And you have to remember, if you change your running technique, sometimes you're going to put loading on a different part of your body, increase loading in that area, and that's what leads to your new injury. So put that up there just to compare it to other factors. So with regard to whole body loading related to the study we just looked at, is that the rate of loading does moderate to good evidence. And we've seen this in our own research that the rate of loading on your body when you strike the ground does moderate to good evidence that that increases your risk of injury. So if you can address that, you have this capability of reducing the likelihood of injury. And there's whole debate about how it affects your performance or doesn't affect your performance. But we've had runners come in using our app, reduce the amount of loading on the body, and they can still run at the same speed. We haven't tested it for endurance capabilities, long term for a marathon, but certainly over short distances that doesn't change the amount of energy consumption. With regard to peak loading, so rate of loading, we know, by the way, from a mechanical perspective, the faster the speed of loading, the more tissue damage. We see this in animal models as well. There's only lower evidence that that increases the risk of injury. With regard to foot strike pattern, there's low evidence that foot strike pattern has an influence on overall lower limb injuries, maybe for specific injuries. But in fact, there's higher evidence that changing your foot strike pattern increases the risk of injury. So before anyone changes the foot strike pattern, they should really consider that because there's stronger evidence of that leading to injury. With regard to your knee kinematics, kinematics refers to technique. I just have to earn my money by using complex terms to justify being here. But your knee technique, your hip technique, it's unclear. There's very mixed findings. So there's not one change in technique with regard to your knee and your hip that you could change that would reduce the likelihood of injury. Now, clearly, you have to change these factors to change the rate of loading. It's just in terms of what evidence is there, and that's what I'm looking for as a scientist, it's low evidence of this and very unclear. With regard to the pelvis and trunk, there's even less in evidence because no one's really looked at them. Now, in saying that in our study, we found findings in relation to all of these with regard to foot strike pattern, we actually found that those who use a non-rear foot strike pattern, so midfoot or forefoot, had a significant higher rate of calf-based injuries. So we have to be really careful with forefoot strike patterning. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but we should be careful of it. With regard to the pelvis and trunk, insufficient research has been done, although we've started to see now that when people are running, if they don't rotate their pelvis enough in a horizontal plane like this, that we have an increase in lower limb injuries. Now, the reason why I've said that there's insufficient research and I've even indicated that it's lower, that's only one study. I've said that we need 10 studies out there with consistent findings to be able to get people to change or advocate for change. So even though it's something we found in what I think is a very good research design, we have to be careful with it. We also found that people who had a contralateral rotation, excessive rotation of the trunk, had an increased risk of injury. But again, I wouldn't advocate for change until we can confirm these findings in multiple studies. If you want to find excellent reviews of running technique and the research that supports it, these two researchers, Dr. Sarah Jane Dillon and Dr. Eva Burke, they've just submitted their PhDs. And in fact, they got them in on Thursday and maybe are still inebriated. And their family's good to see them and their parents thinking at last they might make some money. But I'm not sure if they're in our library yet, but you can go on to DCU Library, search for their names under thesis. If you put it in the library, you'll see where it is. You could download the whole PhD, you know, four years of work. And I guarantee in the review of literature, both have done have done an amazing job of summarizing for all the factors you might be interested in, knee extension, foot strike pattern. We together, led by Eva Burke, published a systematic review that you would have been referred to earlier on foot strike pattern. And that's in the thesis as well, which said, there's no relationship or very little evidence of any relationship between foot strike pattern and general running related injuries. But they've got two excellent reviews, very table orientated, all the values, they're all the studies very easy to follow for those who want some bedtime reading of, you know, a couple of hundred pages. Okay, but it's there, it's very well summarized. And this is not to belittle the whole research area and biomechanics. I'm a biomechanist, I need people to believe me. But I suppose if we look at specific injuries, there is a bit more evidence for it. Okay, but I thought given the length of this talk, it would be much better to give another talk on another day on a specific injury. There is a little bit more evidence around specific injuries, and how you can change running technique to address them. But my word of advice to is to be cautious of people who are claiming that they have this panacea of reducing running related injuries by changing techniques, because at the moment, that evidence isn't there. And I think the problem is, is that most studies are retrospective, looking at a single variable, measuring people on a once off, very low participant numbers 15 to 30, 40 participants. And that's what we need to change. We need to make in particular from a biomechanics perspective, we can't just do one off assessments. Yeah, we must reassess people, or if possible, get them some assessment of technique on every single run. We also have to bring in Ashling's injury continuum, because I think there's a wealth of information in terms of monitoring at this lower level to understand how this feeds in with technique, and the change in technique associated with the upper level. And at the moment, as far as I'm aware, no one is researching that area. And so we need to move all of this up towards this high quality research. And that's what we're aiming to do, myself, Brian Barry, lots of colleagues. I'm going to pose this in terms of from an injury perspective, but they're also interested in performance. And a lot of the ability of what I'm about to say now is going to build in the ability to determine performance levels and types of training people are doing, so they can look at that research question. But as I say, I'm part of the Running Injury Surveillance Center, and the second major study that we're going to do, which we think will be the largest of its kind in the world, will be around an app-based approach to research. And it will capture a whole host of information, but very quickly from runners. And Ashling's been working on that to find out what information and how much information runners are willing to do. And it will allow us to do prospective and interventional studies. It will capture data on a run-by-run basis, yeah, so that people will input information such as around menstrual cycle, how they slept, how they feel, how prepared they are for a run, how they feel after a run, because all of these are really good indicators of recovery from runs. We hope to have thousands of runners, we hope as well for some elements of it that don't need sensors across multiple countries, and will do different studies. So it won't be just one study. For example, what we want to do, I'll just go down here, is some people to wear sensors or a single sensor when they run, so we can get an indication of the technique you're using. For example, how hard you strike the ground. Some people will be willing to wear a sensor every run, others won't. And depending on which study you want to be part of would determine how much, what elements of this app are made available. So we will capture all the information along Ashling's injury continuum. We will look at multiple factors around training metrics, menstrual health, subjective measures of recovery and wellness, and others, and we'll be able to capture sense data. And what we hope then within insight is to be able to take all of this information, apply AI machine learning to it, so that we can really identify the risk factors for running injuries. That we can allow individual runners to identify factors that predispose them to injury, because what would be amazing if we had this and we collected, imagine we had data on an aspect of your running technique and how you felt and related to your recovery. So in that equation of load versus tissue strength, if we had indicators of those, but every time you went for a run, that opens the possibility of identifying the factors for you that are related to injury, rather than on an average, where we start adding noise to the information that we have. And eventually it would allow personalized and recommendation systems to be used that would say to you, you need to run softer or you need to do less training or you're too fatigued here at this stage, you shouldn't be running at all today, which you might or might not want to here, but if they're accurate and can reduce the likelihood of you becoming injured would be effective. And I'll finish there by saying if you are interested in participating, you can send an email to risk at dcu.ie and we'll eventually respond to you when the studies get up and running. I would like to say that I've got answers to how we can reduce people's running related injuries. But as I said, in general, there's a lack of evidence out there. This type of study, I hope in the future, will change that with all the expertise that insight brings together. Thanks very much. Thanks very much. Just leave the mic on just in case. Does anybody have any questions for Kieran up at the top? What is the whole of the country? Yeah. So what we'd like you so it can also link to Strava to take down all that data as well from a performance perspective. But we would like to also for only for those people who allow us to do because there's not everyone wants to share order data, but there'll be GPS data captured as well so that we can we want to do things as well. We have other experts around that could potentially determine what surface you're running on automatically because it'd be reasonably accurate GPS. And then we can start relaying it to have people what surfaces people are running on and how often they're changing those surfaces. Yeah. And now what I would say is I haven't researched it so I can't answer it. I suppose the the answer to this question is that when you strike the ground harder to enable that energy to be stored in the carbon fibers, you know, the carbon material, does that carbon material cushion you when you land? The answer must be to some extent, at least yes, else it couldn't store the energy. So it has to be cushioning, but someone would need to research that to find that out. And we have to remember to me, it's a fascinating area. In general, when you run, and this is the real challenge around running softly, is the harder you strike the ground when you run, the more efficient your running is, because your body stores that energy and releases it again afterwards. And that's why we have evolved to strike the ground hard when we run. The problem is that from an evolutionary perspective is injuries tend to lag behind. So you've passed on your genes by the time that your injuries become so delivered, strenuous, that you can no longer use that running technique. So we're designed to strike the ground hard, but that doesn't necessarily mean we should. In fact, we have shown that, you know, by striking the ground really softly, as an extreme, you burn more calories. Yeah, which would be an amazing thing to do for those who don't want to run for performance. So if you run with this type of running technique, and you have to decide whether you want to or not, you would burn more calories, reduce the likelihood of injury, potentially. Sorry, yes, sorry, God, if that wasn't clear. If you reduce it, yeah, if you reduce the rate of loading. Cadence does affect it as well. In this study, the way it was generally achieved was that people were striking the ground softer. So that can be achieved by flexing your knees a little bit more, flexing your hips a little bit more. Some people might have landed a little bit more towards the midfoot rather than hugely heel pull, but they never measured it. Okay, but they did show that by reducing that rate of loading that it significantly reduced the likelihood of injury. One more, yeah. Yeah, I'm very cautious in this. There's no evidence that it reduces the likelihood of running related injuries. When you look at those studies where people have done it and haven't done it, it's very mixed findings. So, and it probably comes down to all these other factors having an influence that have not been taken into account. And that's why we have this dream of using this app to collect really relevant data. The answer to it becomes to what extent the warm down that you do helps you, your tissues recover to become stronger earlier. And I'm not sure the evidence is out there with regard to that. But what I would say is don't abandon warming down. And there's also another side to warming up and cooling down at the end or warming down at the end. And that is the psychological aspect of it and calming your body. And I would think that's also very important, not rather than as well as any physiological adaptations that take place. Thank you very much for that. But I know from your talk, what you were trying to say was when I'm trying to conclude that my feed is that you're trying to say we should change our form. Now, I don't know if anyone in my time has changed the form of running. It's a natural way of running and it's very, very difficult to change it. But because of you on that? Yeah. So what I'm saying is definitely you can change your form of running. There's plenty of studies out there now that use this biofeedback where you use technology to help you change your running technique. I would say it's very difficult for anyone to go and change their running technique without this biofeedback, something that keeps telling you each time whether you're achieving this change or not. And what they do is you might use this technology for three of your runs in the first week, three in the second week, and then in the following week you only use it on one of your runs for two weeks and then it's withdrawn completely. And there's really strong evidence that you can change the way in which you run from the amount of hip internal external rotation you have. Slight changes of two degrees have been shown to be consistent in changing people's running patterns where someone has advocated for that change. So my belief is in the evidence is yes, you can change running technique. Where I think the evidence is lacking is what should you change to reduce the likelihood of injury? And that's where we need to catch up. I think it's not to say that it's not very difficult to change for them. It's not a switch. We're going to take one more question and then we'll... Yeah, they never looked at this. And they struggled to look at it and that's why I suggest they didn't report it because they were tracking novice runners who were training and therefore they had adaptions taking place. So no is the answer. They didn't look at it. In our own studies where we've reduced the amount of loading, we've done it on a treadmill and people were able to keep running at the same speed. But that doesn't mean that as a performer, if you wanted to train over a period of time to improve your running speed would change your running technique, reduce your capacity to run faster, if that makes sense. And again, the evidence hasn't been presented one way or the other with regard to that. Okay. Thank you very much, Kieran.


This video will talk about consecutive integers in applications of quadratics. Consecutive integers would be like starting here at negative 4 and then we want to put an x above every number or integer up to 1, just for examples. But as you can see, as we go from negative 4 to negative 3, we went one place and then from negative 3 over to negative 2 and so on every time we were just adding 1. Well consecutive odd and even integers, let's start with the consecutive odd because those are the funny ones. So we start here at negative 1 and we skip every other. So we skip the 0, go to 1, skip the 2, go to 3, skip the 4, go to 5, skip the 6, go to 7. Notice those are all odd numbers and to get from 1 on to the next we had to add 2. Well is it true to be the same thing if we do starting at an even number? So let's start at 2. If we start here at 2 and then I skip 3 and go to 4 and I skip 5 and go to 6, again I'm going two places to get from 1 to the next. So we do add 2 whether it's even or odd. So when we're at consecutive integers then we would say that we had x and then the next integer would be x plus 1 and then the next integer would be x plus 1 more or 2 and the next one would be x plus 1 more than 2 or 3. So if I put 0 in here for x then 0 plus 1 would be 1, 0 plus 2 would be 2, 0 plus 3 would be 3 and I'm getting my consecutive integers. If I'm doing the consecutive odd or even I start with x, the next one would be x plus 2 and the next one I have to add 2 more so 2 plus 2 would be 4 and if I were to do the next one I have to add even 2 more so 4 plus 2 would be 6. Okay so let's do some work then. The product of 2 consecutive integers is 90 so that means that my numbers are going to be x and consecutive would be x plus 1. So if I want the product I'm going to have x times x plus 1 is or equal 90 or multiplying x squared plus x equal 90 but remember we can't solve a quadratic until it's said equal to 0 so we have to subtract the 90 from both sides so we have I'll do it over here x squared plus x minus our 90 then equal to 0. So now we're ready to factor and if we do our x we have negative 90 up here and on the bottom our b is 1 and it's a positive but I have a negative 90 so I have opposite signs that I have to work with if I just change our color here opposite signs and I want to get to a 1 so if I'm thinking about those real quickly it's a positive 1 so I want the bigger number which would be 10 and 9. 10 is positive 9 is negative if I add those together I get a positive 1 and remember again when x is 1 then we can just say x plus 10 and x minus 9 x plus our m and our n. So now we're ready to see which what the possible integers are so if x plus 10 is equal to 0 when we subtract 10 from both sides it's going to be negative 10 and if we come over here and say x minus 9 is equal to 0 and we add 9 to both sides x is going to be equal to 9 and now you can see that we have some options here so in those options I would in my sentence I would say the numbers are or integers would be better the integers are negative 10 and if I add 1 to that x plus 1 or negative 10 plus 1 would be negative 9 or they are 9 and if I take x plus 1 then that would be equal to 9 plus 1 or 10 so my numbers are either negative 10 and negative 9 or positive 9 and positive 10 okay so the next one says consecutive two consecutive odd integers so that's important for us to see that we have odd integers and it's again a product of those two odd integers and then it is 143 well I don't really know what those are right off the bat so I'm going to go back to my calculator and bring that in here and I'm going to go to y equal and I put my 143 divided by x the trick is I have to look for consecutive odd integers but when I go to my table and I looked in here and there's a whole bunch of decimals anyway but when I get down to 11 I see that it's 13 11 and 13 would be 143 and those are consecutive odd integers so those must be my values so I'm going to say then that I have when I factor over here it's 143 and let's write the factors first my numbers are x always x is always the first one times a consecutive odd so that would be x plus 2 and that's going to be equal to 143 so when I multiply I get x squared plus 2x equal 143 and if I subtract that 143 from both sides I have x squared plus 2x minus 143 now we have negative 143 b is 2 so that makes our m and n negative 11 and positive 13 again we have x squared having a coefficient of one so we can just write x minus 11 x plus 13 and those two factors are equal to zero and if we work those two out so x minus 11 equals zero add 11 and x is equal to 11 if I take x plus 13 equal to zero and I subtract 13 from both sides I'm going to get a negative 13 on this side integers are negative 11 and negative 13 if you take 11 plus 2 you're going to get 13 so you have 11 and 13


So, welcome back to the second segment of the discussion on the semiconductor and metals band structure. So, in the previous section we have discussed that the band structure is actually coming as an extension of molecular orbitals that are coming together and over there we are actually showing you that this is the band structures possible for different systems. So these are the bands coming say from the different set of orbitals S band, P band and even D electrons can give you the D bands and we also discussed their difference of the band energies and the band gap that depends on how many atomic orbitals are actually participating in the bond formation and also what is the initial energy gap between the different sets of the orbitals. Over here I am showing you the band structure of the metal. So in the metal as we know we already have very less number of electrons present because it likes to leave the electron very easily. So over here what we found that this is two different bands say one of them is lower energy band over here, one of them is the higher energy band over there and it has so many electrons that it cannot even fill up the lower energy band. So this dark color over here show that up to that much is actually filled up and the light color show they are actually empty so there is no electron present over here. So what happens this electrons which are present in this occupied orbital if I try to look very closely into this particular section where a different sets of molecular orbitals are actually present. But in the same band that means the energies are very close to each other they are different electrons present which is shown by this right numbers and then it stops up to here we have that many electrons. Now the next levels are empty the no electrons are there however they are lying so close to these orbitals that the electron can easily jump over here without much effort because they are so closely lined. So the energy of the orbitals are so close that it can trigger a movement of the electrons with very easy movement there is not much energy is required because they are very close to each other because they are belongs to the same band. So over there and half filled band always shows a very good conductivity because the filled electron can travel to the empty part of the same band without much effort because the energy gaps are so close to each other. And that is the reason why do we see a very high electrical conductivity in metals because they always have a half occupied band structures. So where the occupied section of the electrons can travel very easily to the empty part. Then over here at different temperatures the electrons will differ on their position higher the temperature they will start moving in the higher region lower the temperature they will start moving in the lower segment. So we want to make sure we know exactly where the electrons are at a particular temperature and for that this particular term is developed Fermi level. Fermi level is nothing but it is the highest occupied orbital at T equal to 0 Kelvin. So it is the lowest temperature possible over there if we want to measure where the electrons are where we will find the electrons are at the maximum energy that will be called the Fermi level and it has a huge impact because generally up to that much level it should be filled up if you are not putting any kinetic energy with respect to the temperature to move the electron up. So that is called the Fermi level and that is the scenario in metal where we have a half filled set of bands where we will see a huge electrical conductivity because of the facile motion of the electron through the band. Now we come to the semiconductor. Semiconductor have more electrons and generally it has such electrons that the lower level is already filled up. So there is not much any further the electron can go because in this band there is no such space left all the available space are filled up by an electron. Are there any space available in the system? Yes, it is available in the high energy empty band. So over there if I can transfer some electron to there only then I can see an electrical movement. However for electrons going from this occupied lower level to unoccupied or empty higher level it has to cross this energy barrier which is nothing but the band gap we just discussed earlier. And to cross this band gap it has to have some energy. So that is why the electron movement is not as easy as it was in the metal where there emptiness in the same band over here that is not present. So that is why in a semiconductor the actual conductivity is quite low because unless you cross some electrons from this occupied level to this vacant level you cannot see an electrical conductivity. And in generally in semiconductors this occupied levels are called the valence band whereas this empty band or the high energy band is known as the conductance band. The logic behind this particular naming valence band means it is actually formed from the valence electrons. So that is why it is called the valence band and an electron if can go to this particular high energy band only then it can show conductivity so it is known as the conductance band. So that is the basic difference between metal and semiconductor with respect to the bands in metal it is actually having a half filled band and in the case of semiconductor it has already a filled band. So to create some conductivity it has to cross this energy barrier to the empty band where it can find some empty orbitals and the electron can move there and show some conductivity. Whereas for the metal the empty orbitals are present in the same band so it is much easier to see and that is why an increase in conductivity is seen for the metals compared to the semiconductor. In the next section we are going to discuss about how the energy bands are actually populated because we have different levels of orbitals but are there same number of electrons present in each orbital that is actually not true and that is actually defined by this particular term known as density of states. So what is the density of state? So over here I am again showing you the band structure. So previously we have shown the band structure a very equispaced molecular orbital but in reality they are not always equispaced. They are actually if we look very closely what we will find they are actually not equally distributed. At the middle of the band they are quite highly populated whereas on the edge side they are actually sparsely populated why? That is because if I want to have this molecular orbital which is actually the lowest energy possible over here I can produce that with only one combination. When all the atomic orbitals are in the same phase just to give you an example say I am taking this s orbitals again four of them and there is only one particular way I can have all of them in the same phase and if I increase it to n numbers and so on and so forth there is only one possible way to have this particular symmetry present where all of them are in the same symmetry. Similarly the other is the anti-bonding will be possible and each of them are in the opposite symmetry next to each other. So every other atomic orbitals are in the opposite symmetry. So I can have anti-bonding interaction between each of them. Now there is only one possible combination to do that this one one possible arrangement for this one for the bonding one possible arrangement for the anti-bonding. Now say I want to have n by two number of nodes and then I have multiple possibilities to do that. So it is now a game of formulation and combination. So that is why there will be much more different possibilities to do that which will share almost similar energy. So that is why they will be densely packed almost at the center of the band and now if I look into that how the energy is actually dispersed with number of electrons over there very less number of electrons there is only one possibility over there is only one possibility and as I increase it slowly increase and maximum number will be exactly at the middle of the band and then it slowly goes down again. So that is shown over here with this particular function which is known as the density of states where in the y-axis it is showing energy in the x-axis it is showing number of possible state and over here you can see at the middle I have the maximum number of possibility. So that is why just not the band but this density of state is actually true picture of how the electrons are actually arranged in a solid not only with respect to the energy but also with respect to the number because band structure do not give us the correct idea where most of the electrons are actually situated. So that is why we are going to represent everything with respect to this density of state. So how much this density of state will be spread with respect to the energy scale that depends how many atomic orbitals are actually combining. If you have a huge number we will have a huge number of molecular orbital and we have a huge spread like this however if we are only contributing very small amount of atomic orbitals their spread will be pretty low. So it is nothing but we can say with respect to the previous one it is much more narrow down it also have the same shape but because the energy spread is quite low it looks like this one it is quite narrow where it is much more width when we have a huge number of atoms present and that is very crucial as we are coming in the later part of this section that when we actually put some impurity in a huge amount of a semiconductor or any metal that is going to show this kind of band structures because it is going to remain in a very small amount that impurity in that original sample and that is known also as a dopant. We will look into the effect of that a little bit later. Now over here I have redrawn the metal and semiconductor bands with respect to the density of state. So instead of just only band now I have shown that with respect to the density of state for both of them and over here I am showing you how far it is filled up and you can see in the metal it is filled up up till only half and not only that you have a huge number of electrons are actually available which can easily go to this empty band and show me the conductivity whereas in the semiconductor it is something different. In the semiconductor what we are seeing that we have this particular empty band and over there we have this occupied band and if we really want to have some electron density transferred some of the chunk should go to the empty band and over here you can see not only this has a very high energy with respect to the filled up band it also a very low population. So not too many electrons are present to go to there, however only little bit of electron movement is needed to see some conductivity, however the how many electrons are moving there that will matter with respect to the magnitude of the conductivity. So this particular energy gap has to be covered and over there this energy gap is covered with respect to the temperature because higher temperature produce enough kinetic energy to the electrons. So they can jump from this occupied valence band to the empty conduction band and that is why in semiconductor we have observed that with an increase in temperature we see an increase in conductivity because as we are increasing the temperature more and more electron is going to move up to the conduction band and that is going to increase the conductivity. So that was actually happening in semiconductor. Now what happens in the metals because in metals also we expect that similar amount of electron movement should be happening as the temperature is increasing and that should be the case. However what we have shown earlier that metal conductivity actually decreases with an increase in temperature and that is a huge question why because you have to understand in the metal most of the conductivity is happening over here in the same band structure and this band structure is formed due to the interaction between different atoms which are precisely positioned in a lattice in a metal. But when we start increasing the temperature we are increasing the vibration on the atoms. So the atoms started vibration and then the atoms are going to move from their original position and with this position movement the atoms are actually breaking the overall lattice structure and if the overall lattice structure breaks down the bonding interactions are now affected and the electron movement is also affected because the electrons are actually moving through this bonding interaction through space. And as now the atoms can be present in multiple spaces compared to one precise space at low temperature the electrons can move not only a particular direction but at any different directions as the temperature is increasing and that is known as a scattering of the electron movement. So it is not that the electrons stopped moving but it is not moving in the direction it should be to show a very good conductivity. It is moving all around the place and they are cancelling each other's movement and out. There is no such directional movement happening in the metals when we increase the temperature and that is why when we increase the temperature in metal it actually decrease the overall conductivity that we have shown over here and we have seen that the density of state we represent it very nicely that the semiconductor are actually going to increase the conductivity whereas metal is going to decrease the conductivity. Now we come to another very important aspect the doping. So as we just show that the semiconductors are actually can show some conductivity but the issue is that there is an energy gap between the occupied level and the empty band. And if we want to cross over this band we have to give enough energy from that temperature so that the occupied electron can come to the conduction band. However, there is another way possible we can add some impurity over there to create another energy band in between which can emphasize the electron movement in the system and which can improve the electron movement in the system. So for understanding that we take silica as a material silica is the basic material which is creating the template which is actually giving me this occupied and this empty band and the silica has an electron density electron distribution 3S23P2. Now we have added arsenic over there now what happens when you have arsenic. Arsenic have an electronic contribution 4S24P3 now it has 1 extra P electron P3 versus P2 so it has a P3 it has a P2 in silica and where we are putting this arsenic in the structure in the solid state structure where we have this array of silicas present over there in the beginning in one of them I am actually replacing the silica with an arsenic and that is going to bring a very similar structure because I am not adding a huge amount only small amount so it is not going to deviate from the original structure a lot but it is going to bring one extra P electron and this extra P electron because only a very small amount of arsenic is present it is going to bring its very small amount of its own atomics orbitals and that is going to create this very narrow dopant band with this extra P electrons and this electrons are already present and this is going to be higher in energy compared to this occupied level of the silica so this is coming from this arsenic and now you can see there are some electrons available near to the empty band based of silica which has much more lower band gap previously it is having a huge energy gap now it is closed down because of the presence of this dopant and that is going to create a very good electron movement around the system and that is going to improve the conductivity of the system so that is why a very minute amount of doping with arsenic in silica is going to improve the conductivity and over there this conductivity is improved because of presence of an extra electron which is known as the negatively charged system so the actual charge is carried over here by a negatively charged electron so that is why this is known as the n type superconductor where we actually created a system where we doped that with a different material which has extra electron compared to the original material now go to the other difference system what happens instead of silica if I take gallium so I start from the same silica system but instead of arsenic now I am putting gallium so in the periodic table gallium is in a different group than the silica it is in the previous group so it has one extra only one p electron which is actually one less p electron so now we are considering p2 versus p1 and what we are actually going to do again we have an array of silica present and over there with all the silicas around this place we will replace a few of the silicas with gallium and what is the effect of this presence of this gallium over here this gallium is going to bring one less p electron and that is going to create a hole in the system because where you expect two p electrons now you have only one p electron so you can say it is actually one less electron or you can say we have one extra hole so this hole formalism gives us a very similar result but instead of an less electron we are considering we have one extra hole over there now this extra hole present over here will help us to create nothing but a unoccupied orbital system because a hole means a lack of electron where the electron can go and that is shown over here that is the effect of the gallium which creates an empty band with this holes very near to the occupied level so previously this empty band belong from silica it is way out but this empty band coming out of gallium now it is very close so the band gap is much more closer to the silicon-based occupied system the silicon-based valence band so with respect to that now we do not need a huge temperature to transfer the electrons to this level from the silicon occupied level to the gallium field level so we can easily transfer the electron from the silicon valence band to the conduction band a narrow conduction band created over there by gallium and that also improves the electron movement however over here the electron movement was supported by the presence of an extra hole so we can say it is a positively charged carrier which is actually improving this electron movement so that is why this kind of system where we put such a dopant which actually has less electron compared to the actually the template system which is known as a p-type semiconductor so now we would like to wrap up this full section of the band structure so over there we have discussed four different system in details the first system how we differentiate between metal and semiconductor the definition come how the conductivity varies with temperature if the temperature increase brings the conductivity down then it is a metal if it brings the conductivity up it is semiconductor so it is the trend of conductivity change with respect to temperature defines whether it is a metal or semiconductor not the absolute values but if we really want to look into the absolute values we can see the metal generally has higher conductivity compared to the semiconductor and then there is another particular kind of semiconductor which we say insulator which is so less conductivity even compared to the semiconductor there is almost very negligible electron transfer so we say it is almost insulating then you understand how the electrons are actually behaving in a solid so what we found it is nothing but an extension of molecular orbital theory in molecular orbital theory we take particular atomic orbital and combine them together and over here what we have is different kinds of atomic orbitals contributed by each of the atoms present in the solid we started from the one-dimensional system and we found we can create number of molecular orbitals if we consider n number of atomic orbitals to start with we will create a number of molecular orbitals which will lie very close to each other and that will create the band and this interaction although we start from one dimension it happens in all the three dimensions so that is why these bands are very well packed set of molecular orbitals and depending on which orbitals are actually contributing to the system so you can say s band p band in metal system you can also have d bands and the difference between these bands are known as band gap which is actually tuned by how many atoms are participating because that controls the width of this band and also what is the energy gap between these two orbitals in the at each of the atoms then we look into one of the very important fact density of state which says that when we are creating these bands we are not only creating very well packed atomic orbitals but it also matters how many electrons will be present there and that depends how many different way we can combine them because in certain places in the middle of the band they are very much well spaced and over there they are so close packed that they are actually going to have similar combination with very different orientation but with very similar energy and that gives us a high number of possibilities of electrons orientation in those states so this is known as the density of state. Now coming back this density of state we can use to define a metal and semiconductor and over there we can also define how we can include a dopant system because otherwise we have to cross this full band gap to give electron from the occupied valence band to the empty conduction band of the semiconductors. Now if I put some dopants it creates another hub of electron ridge band if I use a system which has one or two extra electrons compared to the material or we can create a low lying empty band or conduction band which is coming from a dopant such a way that it has less electron one or two less electron compared to the original material and we actually include only a very small amount of that because if you add a huge amount it breaks down the overall symmetry of the system and this band structure which is totally dependent on what is the geometry and what is the arrangement of the material that will break down so we cannot use the same band structure again. So you have to use a very small amount of dopant and that is how we can increase the electron conductivity in the semiconductors if I use an extra electron as a dopant so it will be a n type semiconductor because it is the negatively charged system is carrying the charge if I use a dopant with less electron we can say it is the holes are actually carrying the charge and we call them the positive type or P type semiconductor. So with respect to that we will conclude our section on the band structure of solid and metals over here. Thank you.


Today we're going to be doing a wonderful tutorial with this thing right here, which looks basically just like a bit of memory foam, which it is, but this is the stands out makeup sponge. And I can't wait to talk all about this, show you guys it in action and how much I am loving this. Let me just start this video by saying to you that I had this sponge about three years ago when it came out, I used it once and I put it to the side because I felt like, you know what? That just does not work for me. It is not something that is going to work for me. But I know that Risa from Risa Does Makeup, she uses hers all the time and she talks about it all the time. But what really got me was there was another person on TikTok and she was a mature woman and she was showing how she used this all the way through her routine of doing her makeup and how amazing it was. So I'm about to show you my makeup application on my 54 year old face. How this sponge does, how I use it in between also to get a beautiful airbrushed finish on all of my makeup. But right now I do wanna put up on the screen right here. This blouse, I am not feeling the greatest so I'm not gonna stand up right now. I just wanna show you what I have on. I also wanna show you that I have on the cutest pair of gold kind of chunky hoop earrings. I love these, I've been wearing them like crazy and they go with so many things. Let's get into the tutorial using this very unassuming, weird shaped sponge. I don't know how they do it, but they do it and I love it. So I'm starting out, I'm using the KVD Good Apple Cream Foundation. I have really been enjoying this lately because it is one of those ones that you use so very little, but if you're a mature woman, a cream foundation can be a really good friend to you because it hides perfections with very minimal product. The other thing is that since it's a cream, it's going to give you a lot of hydration. So I'm using the BK Beauty 107 brush right now. I hope that's a 107, it's a 107 brush.  And you know, as I'm doing this, I want you to keep in mind that usually when you use a brush, you need a very small amount of coverage and that is true in this case as well as with any other foundation. If you're using a liquid or anything like that, you usually need so very little. For me, it's gonna require a little bit more, especially around my neck bands. Those are really bad. I don't know exactly why I wore a white shirt today, but the neck bands are really bad. And then I also go down onto my chest because the discoloration there is bad. So yes, there is always a little bit of transfer, but that's what happens. Okay, I have put one coat on. That was really simple, really easy, but I do have a little bit of extra that I want to just look at right here and underneath my eyes. I may not use a concealer today. I may just use this foundation because it has such pretty coverage and I love it. All right, beautiful coverage, right?  However, with using the Stands Out Makeup Sponge, you can use almost less than you used with the brush. That's because you're just tapping into it very slightly. See how much it picked up? That amount is going to completely cover the whole side of my face, though. So pretty and we're gonna go underneath the eyes. I'm trying to pick up about the same amount that I did with the brush to be fair on both sides. And you can see how pretty it is just blending in everything underneath my eyes where all that discoloration was. And again, we're gonna go down onto the neck bands and down onto the decollete. And I need to cover up this little zit that I got going right here. All right, that's one coat. I don't need to go back in necessarily with another coat with the sponge because it did such a good job. However, I do feel like I need a little bit more coverage underneath the eyes just like I did on the other side. But if you could see me close up, you would see that I really do feel like this side looks airbrushed and this side looks like it could get a little bit more attention and getting a little bit more perfected. So I'm gonna take this sponge and I'm not using more product because I didn't put any more product on it, but I am going to go over all of this makeup on this side with the sponge to make it look airbrushed. So if you do use a brush when you're doing your makeup, then you might want to think about going back over it with this sponge and what happens is the most beautiful coverage no matter what foundation you use. I've used this with liquid. I've used it with tinted moisturizers. I've used it with just about anything and it is phenomenally beautiful. Okay, I've been using the BK Beauty 109 brush. This is their new middle brush between the Angie Hot and Flashy concealer brush and their foundation brush. And I've been using it to apply my bronzer and I really like it. So I'm using Denysa Myricks bronzer. This actually, this is considered her contour balm. I love the texture of this. I love how this blends so well with my very light skin. So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna put this everywhere that I normally would which I'm gonna start out right up here in the hairline because that is my most troublesome area where I need help disguising this super high forehead. And as you can see, the brush is doing a really good job it's making sure that it looks very blended. I like that about it very much. And then I'm gonna turn this brush and I'm gonna go high on the cheek here down here on the jowls. I'm blending everything now. So I'm just going in and I'm putting this brush to work and blending everything and making sure that it all gets blended around. That's a beautiful application with just the brush. But what happens when I go back in with the stands out makeup sponge again? What happens is it's going to perfect even more. Once again, we're going to see a more blended look. I don't know if you can see this, but boy, I am seeing it. It just really has perfected it. It doesn't take up much of the makeup onto here, onto the sponge itself, but it does perfect the blending process. This is lunch money from the Super Shock line from ColourPop and I'm putting this on with a fairly dense brush. And I'm just gonna go right here onto my cheeks. My viewfinder's right here. So that tendency to look that way and I apologize for that. I'm trying to look straight on into the camera. You can see how absolutely gorgeous lunch money is. It just looks so pretty. Gorgeous beaming highlighter, but we're gonna go back over it with the sponge one more time and we're gonna take a peek at what it looks like. Even though I don't have my blush on yet, it's still softening that every single time. You're layering different creams or different powders or whatever on top of each other and you want a more seamless look. The trick is to take this unique sponge and just go over and over and over it. And you'll see that in the next few minutes. Found a really beautiful blush on Amazon and we're gonna try it. It is a very liquidy blush. You can see it right there. I'm not going to put it directly onto my face, but you can see how pretty it is and how thin it is. I'm gonna use the other side of the sponge, not the side that I was working with to blend everything out, the other side of the sponge. So I'm just picking it up and I'm dabbing it around so that when I do dab it onto my face, it won't be quite so much there at one time and you will be able to see how pretty this blush is. And I actually don't know if you saw that or not as I was blending right then. It really did show that I was making little dots from picking it up off my hand. But as soon as I went back in and I started to tap it around, super quickly it blended out the imperfection of having that blush just be in one spot.  And oh my goodness, I love the softness in this. You can see my highlighter underneath. Now I'm gonna go back over it with that other side that we were just talking about and I'm just going to dab everything. Even under my eyes, I'm going to do that. It's so pretty this way. I'm gonna go in with the LA colors mineral pressed powder. This is one that I've got a while ago on recommendation from one of you. And I'm using the BK Beauty 102 brush, really fluffy blending or really fluffy powder brush. This is beautiful. I'm going to just go in very lightly because I wanna set that under eye. So I'm dabbing it into there and then I'm kind of just wiping it off in the lid. I'm going into the parts where I know it creases. Then I'm going a little bit underneath my eyes going underneath the cheekbone there and making sure that everything is dusted together with the brush. Brush is a beautiful tool for applying powder, especially for a mature woman. Because what happens is when you're applying it, you can get really heavy handed if you're using a powder puff. Now what am I going to do this time?  And then lastly, I'm gonna take the Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Diamond Setter Setting Spray. Nice mister on this. I was really pleased with this. Put the spray on pretty thick there. So I'm just going to take the sponge and go over everything. If you haven't tried that spray yet, it is really pretty. It does add to the luminosity if you're looking for a glowy look this summer. It's really beautiful. It looks quite iridescent. That's not a really good word. It just looks really dewy without looking shiny and I really like wearing it. All right, I'm gonna put my lipstick on. I'll be right back. My lipstick combination is from Maybelline, one of their crayons. And then also I'm gonna top this with a little bit of gloss from Juvia's Place. You can see that that gloss looks a little bit gold. It's not really gold, but it really does help make that lipstick look just super beautiful. All right, I was able to put some earrings on. I hope that you did enjoy seeing this tutorial. This little sponge has been invaluable to me and I hope that you enjoyed seeing it. I will continue to look for a dupe because at $20, I do feel like it's a little bit expensive, but I've been using this nonstop for about two and a half months now, maybe longer. And there's no tears, there's no rips and I'm pretty cautious about making sure that it is clean at least three or four times a week. So it's being cleaned a lot. It still stands up. It's a gorgeous product that when I first got it, I didn't know what I had. Now I do and I'm enjoying every minute of it. Have you tried this sponge before? And if you have, please tell me how you've liked it or not liked it down in the comment section. I'd love to hear that from you. Please take care of yourselves. Come back around in my next video. I love you so much and we'll be together again very soon. Take care of my friends. Goodbye.


Taiwan and the United States, allies of the St. Lucia government, and affiliates of the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, GCTF, chose St. Lucia to host the regional launch of its latest Women's Empowerment Initiative. Prime Minister Hon. Philip J. Pierre delivered the opening remarks at the August 25th launch event. The Hon. Pierre welcomed the GCTF program, which dovetails with his administration's efforts to create jobs and also make available more opportunities for women and youth in the island's emerging economic space. These opportunities provided by the government of Taiwan are a huge investment into our human resource, which is the main capital of our nation. As a government that has promised to put people first, I'm very grateful that Taiwan is a formidable partner and ensures that we deliver on that promise. People are and must remain the main priority of nation-building and we aim to keep it that way. The well-being of our people must be first in our deliberations and our decisions, and we thank Taiwan for helping us in this venture. In addition to Taiwan, I applaud and welcome President Biden's America's partnership economic prosperity, which aims at a new model of cooperation between the U.S. and countries of the Americas. Accordingly, the GCTF event jointly hosted by these three parties, the Taiwanese Embassy, the U.S. Embassy in Barbados, and my government, demonstrates our pursuit of a better future for the peoples of the Americas. After all, in the final analysis, it is the people who matter, and youth development and human empowerment must be a vital part of the solutions being prescribed. The GCTF Women's Empowerment Launch in St. Lucia, Honorable Pierre Hopes, will have hemispheric reverberations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean region. It is imperative that the countries of the Americas work together to adopt political commitments and policy decisions to address the challenges confronting us. All we ask, as a small country, is to allow us the scope to develop and the opportunity. We believe that our islands have the human capital, we have the human capital, and we have the urge to develop our people. All we ask is an opportunity. This event is being held as Taiwan's solution to the U.S. continue to collaborate in ways to raise awareness and broaden support for women in Latin America and the Caribbean. By the end of today's proceedings, I hope we could have fruitful discussions to identify our challenges and explore opportunities to create a more women-enabled environment in Latin America and the Caribbean for a more sustainable, resilient, and glorious future for our people. Taiwan and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the global cooperation and training framework in 2015. Taiwan uses the GCTF to build human resource capacity in other countries. Australia and Japan have recently become full partners of the GCTF. To date, dozens of St. Lucian's have benefited from Taiwan-sponsored workshops and training programs. From the office of the Prime Minister, Rihani Isidou.