Even though I can't read, I love books, and I especially love this book. David Wanderich's Deep Dive on Punches and Lightning. Before I was a bartender, it introduced me to many exotic ingredients that are now mainstays at home. It also turned me on to This Guy, which Wanderich recommends as a substitution for Jamaican funk bombs like Smith and Cross. Wood's navy rum is distilled in Guiana and blended and bottled in the UK. They updated the bottle since I got this, but I prefer this design over the new one. Awfully dark for a rum without an age statement. A lot of alcohol on the nose. Burnt caramel. Toffee, brown sugar, molasses. More burnt caramel. This tastes like an overcooked dessert, and I love it. It's not uncommon for Guineas rums to have added sugar or caramel, based on the color of this and no age statement. It's probably safe to assume there's caramel. I don't care though. This is a fantastic rum. The most forward note I get in this would be caramelized. Not necessarily caramel, but caramelized. Caramelized brown sugar. Toffee. Maybe even a little banana in there. This is terrific. Allegedly, the recipe dates back to 1887. The juice itself is a blend of three different Guineas rums, one of which is made in one of the world's last remaining wooden pot stills. How much of that rum from that pot still is in this bottle is anyone's guess, but still. A word about strength. When a rum says it's navy strength or navy style, it just means it's 57% ABV. I read somewhere that British naval ships in the 19th century would store the rum and the gunpowder together, and in the likely event that the rum would spill in the gunpowder, the gunpowder would still ignite if the rum were 57% ABV. I love this stuff. When I decided to do a video on woods, I realized what was left of my old bottle had mostly evaporated. Even though I'm still sore from yesterday's fireball reduction experiment, I had to try this. Oh, this will be fun. If you've ever had Sam Adams triple-bock, this kind of reminds me of that. Bitter prune notes abound. Much better. Tasting this makes me think of one thing, daiquiri. Psych! My daiquiri is complete. I use the Simon Differt spec, I'll leave it in the description. All those caramelized notes are there. There's just enough lime juice to punch through while still being balanced. Still being balanced. This is maybe the best daiquiri I've ever had, but if you subscribe, you will see a better one. It's terrific. It's perfect. I love daiquiris with white rum. That was my introduction to the drink. You use anything from Guiana, Jamaica, or Barbados. You have a totally different animal.  An amazing drink from an amazing rum. Too bad you can't get it here. If you liked it, hit like. Consider subscribing if you haven't already. And if there's something you think I should try, let me know in the comments. Stay safe, follow the advice professionals, and I'll see you tomorrow. Cheers.


Listen to me, okay. You need to get your own website, no matter what. Right now, that's what you need to do. You need to have your own website. You might not know anything about that, but you need to do it right now. You need to start making the steps to have your own domain, have your own VPS or server, and live.  It is so easy to be an internet landlord, to have your own domain, to be able to do things independently on the internet. But it's not that people are not doing it. It has never been easier than it is right now. Okay, let me go ahead and tell you. If you don't know the first thing about setting up a website, let's talk about how easy it is. Oh yeah, you have to do things to set it up, but it has never been easier and it's never been more rewarding. You can go right now. You can get a domain name. Domain names, they have a yearly fee. That yearly fee is basically the equivalent of a dollar a month. You can find that spare change on the floor. Even if you don't know anything about starting a website, go ahead and get a domain name you like. I have lukesmith.xyz. If you can't find a .com.org.net that you like, I got .xyz. There are a lot of lukesmiths in the world. I found one. There are so many different names to choose from. If you get one that hasn't been registered, it costs nothing. You just pay the fee for the year and you have your domain. If you have one that already exists, you got to buy it from them. Sometimes that costs a little bit. But you can usually get one that's not registered. Okay, here is the thing. You get a domain name. You don't have to know anything about it. That domain name is not going to be more available in the future. You can get it even if you don't know anything. And then you need something to host your website on. That could mean I use a VPS. VPS, you rent a VPS. It is a server in a place that gets great internet. So you don't have to worry about serving it from your home computer or something and wasting your electricity and bandwidth. I have a VPS. It costs, I don't know, like three and a half dollars a month or something like that. It's extremely cheap and that plan, which is like the most basic plan, is plenty enough for me. I have three websites. I have on that VPS, I host three websites. I've had a web form in the past. I've had a mumble form or a mumble server in the past. I've dabbled with IRC, like a chat server. Right now, I have, well, I have my own email server there. So I don't use Google or any of that garbage. I don't use Gmail. I do it myself. And what's the other thing? As you guys know, if you watch the channel, I started my own search engine on my website, a search instance. So that is fantastic. Being able to do all of that stuff and it costs me three and a half dollars a month. But even if you just have one website, it's worth it. Of course, there are free places you could host your website as well. You could go to Neocities or GitLab or something like that. But still, the idea is to be as independent as you can be on the internet. So there's so much you can do with it. It's so rewarding. And the main thing is you are not just doing yourself a favor.  It is a social problem that we are over-reliant on social media right now. The internet was not founded to be this place where there are only five sites and people don't exist independently of these sites. They just all have profiles on these sites and they interact in Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or something like that. That's not how the internet was supposed to be. It was supposed to be you are your own landlord. It's supposed to be empowering, but now people are just serfs. They are literally at the mercy of what Facebook will allow them to see or what Twitter says is according to their usage content, usage guidelines or something like that. And every year, we see that that is getting more restricted. And the people who use social media, I don't know if you can see this if you're ensconced in social media, but as someone who isn't, you just see people getting more and more brainwashed by these companies. They have so much control. They promote so much fear among people who use them that it really literally has changed the way that a lot of people think. And it's dangerous. So if you are independent on the internet, that is an asset to everyone else. You are one less person that's contributing to that. So I recommend you stop using Facebook. Just close it out right now. There's no reason you could do it. The best day of my life was when I closed out all my vestigial social media sites. Well, I never really had any, but I remember closing my LinkedIn. That felt good.   But close out all your social media. Have your own existence on the internet. And even if you want something like, here's the thing, I was going to do a video on RSS. Do you know what RSS is? It's a way of getting a social media feed without a social media site. That's actually, you know, it was invented around, I want to say the year 2000, and it's been really popular since then. But it used to be, what you could do is you could just go to a page you like. It had an RSS feed that is updated whenever that page has changed, and you get an update from that RSS feed when, you know, there's an update. Or you get a notification when that's updated. That is how I actually subscribe to things on the internet. I don't even subscribe to people on YouTube. I don't follow people on GitHub. I don't do any of these sites that I sort of use. I only use them through RSS. It's the only way to get unfiltered content. And that's how the internet was supposed to be. And if you are still using social media sites as your primary mode of communication, if you're not using your own independent system, you're sort of feeding into that. And as I said, I put up YouTube videos because this is a platform that gets a lot of traffic. There's a lot of discoverability. I would never use it as a normal user. Okay? Do not rely on YouTube subscriptions to get your subscriptions. Don't do any of that. Ideally, when I can have, when I have the, I guess, the bandwidth capabilities, I'd like to just have videos on my own website, frankly. I might look at, I don't know. I really want to end up doing something like that. But anyway, so that's it. That's about it. Get your own website. I'm serious. Get one now. I'll put links to the ones that I use and maybe some other recommendations. Just do it. Even if you don't know what you're doing, even if it'll be frustrating if you're trying to figure out things, it's worth it. I put up videos about stuff like this on my channel. I'll probably do some more soon. So anyway, that's about it.


Okay. So welcome to each one of you. Let's play and we'll start it for this class. Would like to request one to please lead me there. Thank you. Thank you. So people can start about authority. It's starting about power. It's starting about what authority means, what power comes, how to use it in a practical sense. And I've been saying that as we play, not just understanding but also applying this authority, we are in a better place to represent God and represent Him well, especially as believers. Because we have been given authority and power going on and we need to walk in that authority. Otherwise what happens, it's a defeat. Sometimes we say that we defeated Christian life, victorious Christian life. So our desire is that more and more we can live a victorious Christian life. We already have a victory. We can manifest that victory in our day to day lives. So with that perspective, we are learning about the different subjects and topics. We are discussing. So today we will try to understand more about Satan and the demons. So who is Satan? Who are the demons? That's a question that a lot of people have. And what does the Bible have to say about Satan? See in the Bible, we have passages that talk about the beginning. In the beginning, Genesis. So in the beginning is whose beginning? The beginning of the created world the way the Bible describes it. The name will change, right? In Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 2. However, when God created that garden, there was a serpent who came and tried to see at a plane. You know that the Bible teaches us there is an enemy of God who is working against God and after he tried to see it and he was successful, we were the earth got corrupted with sin. So he already existed. So even though we learned the beginning, we are noticing that Satan existed. So he was there before the so-called beginning of the world, got it? Now beginning is not something that people talk about for God because God has no beginning, He has no end. He is eternal. That's it. So that beginning doesn't apply to the world. The world has a beginning. Satan also has a beginning. Why? Because he is a created being who is God, he is eternal. He is God, a created being. He is the creator. But what about Satan? He is a created being. So there was a beginning. Where did this beginning start? So we don't really see things record and in a very systematic way about Satan and many others. However, we have certain passages of scripture where there is revelation, God has given revelation to inspired writers about the origin of Satan and the demons. So from there we get some understanding. You see there are many other you may want to call it not gaps, but there are things that are not addressed. Like we know God created man in his own image. We know he created man in the dust of fear. How did God create Satan? So did He use something? We have all these questions. But for whatever reason the Bible doesn't give us answers. So it's not a gap. But it is that God wanted to reveal certain things to us. He has revealed. Now we get wondered and we can ask certain questions. It's not wrong to ask additional questions. But in an unhealthy way we are going deep into the things that we cannot find specific answers to. It's not helpful. Because the Bible asks if it's silent on many of the questions that we may have. But there are people who ask so many questions that the Bible doesn't have speeches for us to get the exact answers to those questions. And we can find answers from the Word of God. Or we can sort of associate with scripture and come up with an understanding. But then there are many unsaid, unknown things. There's no point going deep into that. Because we may never find the answers. So what am I saying now? There are a few things that are said about the origin of Satan. We get an idea from there and that in many ways is good enough for us to continue our quest for victorious Christian life. So there may not be a reason why you have to go so deep and pull out everything there. What type of people won't have time to sit back and form a teaching for the theology. Because there are many theologies there are many teachings that exist. But we cannot substantiate with the scriptures. So we have to be very careful. So what are some passages where we find details about the origin of Satan. We know that even things like creation, Moses, God gave it. Nobody saw how God gave it. But through the Holy Spirit the revelation was given for Moses to record all those things. And similarly when we look at the passage of Isaiah we will get some revelation. Isaiah was given that revelation about Satan. And then we will execute it. That's another passage that we will look at it. So before that Trump will ask a question. Trump will go ahead. You want to ask something? What was that by mistake? So Trump will say, what do you want to do? What exactly? How about the others? How about the others? On the online class? Are you having the same problem? Okay. Then the others are saying echo. Okay. We will try to correct it. Please give me a moment. Thank you for pointing this out during the one we will try to fix this. Yes. Is it any better? Any better? Still the water is still echo? Okay. So it's fine here. How about the online students? Is it comfortable? It's fine. Thank you so much. Okay. Let's cut. So Isaiah chapter 14 Isaiah chapter 14 over here verses through very confined talk about Satan. And we won't read all the verses because quite long there. Here there is a description of the fall of the king of Babylon but don't talk about the king of Babylon there there are these comparisons so it's talking about the king of Babylon however there are you see the kingdoms here on the earth in a way you would see that there are parallel parallel you know like authority figures in the demonic realm which are referred to with the same name for example you remember when we studied in the book of Daniel we said the prince of Persia the prince of Greece they were hitting the prayers of Daniel in the like in the heavens so second heavens who is the prince of Persia prince of Greece they should be on earth right the real princess should be human beings but what's happening the bible helps us understand that the demonic realm they they have these sort of parallel rulers assigned to maybe those territories and that's why they called by that name so here we are reading about the king of Babylon but it's actually talking about Satan king of Babylon so let's read it from verse 12 verse 12 it will come to talking directly about Lucifer so could somebody read it out the little log the passage that we have called we are going to read it Isaiah 14 verse 12 i will say above the heights of the ground i will be like the most heart yes you shan't work down to this world to the low steps of the queen though to see you will be pleased at you and consider you saying is this the man from where the heart tremble who's the kingdoms whom in the world and say wilderness and destroy it from its city put it no problem the heart of its citizens for the kings of the nations for them to sleep in glory every one being his own heart when you are cast out from the grave like an abominable brahmasan like an abominable of those who are strange who go down to the stone of the feet like a corpse so that it's understood you can read till 25 you will not be trying to get there because you have destroyed your land and claim your people the throne of the holy throne shall never be named with your sloucher for his children because of the dignity of their father lest they rise up and possess the land of the world and destroy it for the people to rise up again and save the world and the throne of the people and of the spirit and of the hostility save the world I was also making a position for the poor king for the time and the worship of the money but I was creating it with the proof of instruction save the lord of the hostility the lord of the hostility has learned to say surely that I have thought so it shall come apart and that I have the host so it shall stand that I will create the ashen in my land and own my country then I will put then if you shall remove of them and his burden removed from their children thank you so much quite a lot of passage there but you notice here it's talking about the anger of god over earthly it seems like some earthly princes and all but then very clearly in between there is the reference to Lucifer the reference to Lucifer and how he some of the things that he have been grasped here is he was thrown out can we can we say that have you seen it here how you have fallen from heaven okay because it says here how you have fallen from heaven so he is thrown out and you have some references to this of him being cast out of heaven again in the book of revelation so you know bits and pieces we can pick up from here and there and understand okay so he was cast out from heaven now why was he cast out why he was he thrown out fallen from heaven it says oh Lucifer so Lucifer is the name and obviously Lucifer he was one of the angels so that is why he was in heaven because you know god created him as a an angel and we will see later on that he was not just any angel but he was very blessed very blessed it also talks here as son of the morning how you are cut down to the ground and then it goes on to say about this interview you who we condemn nations for you have said in your heart and that entire next section there says he was trying to claim equality and even greatness above god we will ascend I will sit on the throne so what are we understanding so far here is an angel by the name of Lucifer he had other names also son of the morning he fell from heaven but he was small in the pride okay pride in against god and so what is the kind of response that god has towards angel anger okay so that much we picked up about Lucifer now let's read on we will look at another passage let's go to Ezekiel Ezekiel chapter 20 28 Ezekiel 28 we we could actually meditate on verses 1 through 19 but what we do is let's look at verses from 12 Ezekiel 28 verses 12 onwards we will look at verses 13 verses 14 verses 15 verses 16 verses 16 verses 17 verses 18 verses 19 verses 19 verses 20 verses 21 verses 22 verses 23 versesogi they were perfect you were perfect but but then but then your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you can take your wisdom for the strength of your standard. I cast you to the ground, I laid it, put it, that they find faith in you.  All who knew, all who knew, to a month of people's heart as tarnished and new, you have become some father and shall be known to both forever. Thank you again for reading that long passage. So you see description, right? Description about Satan and it's helping us know who this Lucifer is and what is his standing in heaven. So from what we read, it seems like, you know, our God is saying you were made to perfection. So he was one of those angels who was made gloriously. And there are other things that I mentioned about him. You know, we see verse 12, it says, yeah, you were the seed of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. So full of wisdom meaning a good thing could understand, could make good choices, beauty, referring to, you know, he is exposed to, when we say beauty, it could also kind of refer to art, right? Like all the good imagination, those kind of things. So he is well first in all those matters. What else is so great about him? So we see wisdom, yeah, wisdom is something I mentioned verse 13. It also says that you were immediately the guard of, in every precious stone wall was your covering. And then, you know, all these stones are mentioned. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. So he had everything, precious stones. So if he has precious stones then what? Very rich, resourceful, wealthy is a term that we can use. So he was familiar with all these things with wisdom, with art, beauty, with now we just talked about wealth and also other things. He was given timbrels. So what's all that? Timbrels and all is from music. So as a worshipper he had the instruments he needed and he was obviously, he had a card to claim worship in heaven and that's what we understand. So music, it's not like he doesn't know music. He was like a chief up in heaven who knew music and worship very, very well. Okay, what else can we know about Lucifer? Well, there's the music and then verse 14 turns as you were anointed. Sheru, who covers, I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. Wow, he had a great place in the presence of God, mountain of God, before God, anointed. Okay, meaning privileged, favour, God's favour was upon Lucifer. Then of course, 28 was 16 says trading, iniquity of your trading. So trading shows us that business, he did something, some trading, something he did. Now people ask the question, what trading? We can give some answers but exact answer, I don't know. Because see, there are many things which is not mentioned. So then how to give the answer for those questions. So that's what I'm trying to tell all of us. There can be some to some level we can answer those unknowns, but not very deep. If we keep going deep, it's unnecessary. Okay, so we know that he was well versed as far as business and those kind of things are concerned. What else? A ruler of all nations, we saw that. As I have 14, 12 you ruled the nations, it said. So why am I pointing out these specific things? See because, saintly, he fell from heaven. Where is he now? He's on the earth. Because obviously in the Garden of Eden, he went and then God finally incursed him.  Jesus talks so much about the devil and all that. He's still here on the earth. From scriptures we know that he's defeated. And we are going to study that in our authority class. He's defeated, but at the same time, there is a timing at which God is going to put him. Like he will be banished. You want to use that word forever. He'll be removed from us or the people of God. But until such time, he's still around. And while he's still around, what are some of the things we know? See, he can influence all these areas. When we say wisdom, can he influence education? Yeah, Bible says he was very brilliant, full of wisdom. So he can influence the area, the field of education. Can he influence art? Can there be certain art forms that are influenced by the demonic? Yeah, it says beauty, wealth, he knows art. Different things, wealth, what about wealth? Can he influence the field of business? He can. He was very wealthy from what we see. All the resources that God gave him. It's not little business, wealth, money. He knows about all these things. So what are we trying to do? We're trying to understand, okay. So these are the qualities. This is the nature of Satan. He is not somebody who doesn't know or was not exposed. What about worship? He knew. He was right in the presence of God, anointed worshipping. So he knows very well. So what does it tell us? We have to be alert. Okay, not to create fear or anything. But we can understand his craftiness. When we know his sort of nature, his background, his exposure. So he knows all these things, worship. Yeah, he understands worship. What else? Yeah, rulership, rulership, government, you know, ruling over people, reigning over people, politics. Satan understands all these things because he has some exposure. Yeah, he was perfect at one point. He was perfect. But what went wrong? What does the Bible say? What went wrong in Satan's situation? Yeah, see it says until iniquity was found in you. God created him perfect. But you notice that pride. Pride is the issue. Well, he was not happy with how God created him. He wanted to become greater than God. So what corrupted him? What it says iniquity corrupted him. God made him perfect. He was so in pride. And the pride corrupted the perfection of God in his life. Which is why God got angry and he had to be thrown out. So pride, you could also say something like, you know, deception, deception, because how could he even think that he can become greater than God? He is just a creative being. God is uncreated. If you understand what God is, you never even go to compare yourself with God. But deception. Somewhere in himself, he felt that's a possibility. If God can be God, why can I not be God? So deception, he deceived himself. And we will see later on that he is named with his qualities. One of the things he continues to do today is deception. He tried to deceive Eve. So these are all his tactics, deception. He himself got deceived and now he is trying to deceive people who are created in Eve. So pride and deception. These are all things that actually caused him to be corrupted.  So you were very proud. I have everything. I'm so great. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. I made you to cook things that they might gaze at you. So it's showing a rebellion, pride, deception, rebellion against God. And that kind of an attitude he had towards God. And there are other passages that show that he took angels with him and he was cast on the earth. So he did not come alone. But he led a rebellion, not just him. There were other deceived angels with him. So when you read Revelation chapter 12, we will understand that. So we won't go through the passages. Revelation chapter 12 tells us there was a war in heaven. See in the Bible, sometimes you're reading one passage. A little bit talks about the natural world. A little bit talks about the heavenly kingdom. A little bit talks about the future. A little bit talks about the present. A little bit talks about the past. So Revelation chapter 12 is like that. It's talking about many things that will take place. But at the same time, there is a small section there that captures what happened. There was a rebellion in heaven. It captures that. So from all these passages, we understood what kind of a creature Satan was. He thought and he had a set of angels with him and he was cast out from heaven with one third of the angels and both him and the angels are here on the earth. Those angels who were cast down with Lucifer are the ones that we refer to as demons. Who are they? All this Lucifer and his whole gang, they are all angels. But we also use the term fallen angels. Fallen angels, demons and that is their origin. That is their origin. Now just think about this. The creatures that got created. So you have the angels that got created and man also got created. Did you notice in Isaiah chapter 14, it said, Satan said to himself, I will ascend. I will become greater than God. So God gave the angels free will. Till now we are talking about free will for man. But even angels God gave free will. That is why Lucifer was able to say I will, you need a will for that. You need a decision. So he made a choice. He made a decision that I will and God never stopped it. Has God given free will to all the angels? He has given free will. So those other one third of the angels who were cast out to the earth, they also used their free will and they joined the rebellion. They joined Lucifer. See God did force. God did force. Is it okay our choice? So I will go on. He will say, how could you? You made a choice. Go with it. So that is how Satan and his demons rebel. They have free will and they have been cast out to the earth. What are a few more things which we can understand about Satan? We understand that they have gained rulership of the world. I told you that. When we said that in Genesis God gave the earth to man and said, you have dominion. You be truthful and multiply. But when we need the account of Jesus in the wilderness. Then what is Satan saying? I will if you bow down and worship me. I will give you the kingdoms. So remember we said a transfer took place when sin came into the world. Satan got rulership of the earth. And that is why Satan and the demons can influence. They can influence because they now have the rulership of the earth in many ways. And this began in the garden. The first time when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and now Satan has access into people's lives. Remember we ask all these questions when people are suffering. When there are natural calamities. How can God do this? But God is not the only one who is in church. In the sense he is sovereign. We know that. But it's like an order and a tenant. If the house is given to a tenant the owner owns the house. But if the house is messy it has overgrown flats outside and it's not painted. Is it the owner's fault? No. It's the tenant's fault who has been given the in charge of the house for that duration. In the same way in the world man has to take responsibility because we are the people who have been given the stewardship to take care of the earth. We are here to represent God. At the same time there is some interference. What is that interference? Satan is also here. He is also creating trouble. He is also putting sickness. He is also oppressing people. So for everything to say how can God do this? How is it fair? Always blame God. If something goes wrong people immediately I did God do this. See God is sovereign but stewardship interference of Satan all these things are there on the earth. We need to understand that. One more point I will make about Satan and then we can ask any questions if you have. The next point is when we read in the book of Jude Jude 1 there is only one chapter there but verse 9 basically there we see one of the angels he wants to speak against Satan but he says may the Lord revoke him he doesn't put down Satan put down in the sense doesn't curse Satan may the Lord revoke him So one more principle you could call it a principle that we notice is yes Satan is a defeated enemy and we have dominion we have authority over Satan the demonic world give us a license to sort of you know or speak destructive like put down put down Satan in an irresponsible way because there are there is a certain way of dealing with things so heavenly beings we find that even an angel is not speaking against another angel instead that angel may the Lord revoke him whatever authority I have with that authority I will work with you but beyond that what needs to be done to you may the Lord do it so basically it just shows us we should know our boundaries and not try to behave like we are over Satan we have conquered Satan but I hope you try to understand what I am saying so we have conquered we have the victory but simply bad mountains speaking ill or demeaning that sort of sometimes very carelessly people talk so we shouldn't do that because we don't see that in scripture that's my singular point there so let's pause here we will understand little more about Satan demons their nature questions so far or any thoughts oh god hands are just going up even if you have questions please do post it to your online students yes let's take the questions we will go to one of them first ok if it's difficult you say it I will repeat the question we need to know what God is on everything we have to go by yeah good question so Mitz is asking see God is a holy shit he knows everything so did he know that there will be a rebellion and even though he knew why did he create me see God knew but he went ahead same thing with man but he went ahead we are all still here so God knows but then he has a way of involving he doesn't he didn't stop himself from creating because something might go wrong later on in a way you can you can see that God is like a redeemer, restorer isn't it so even though things went wrong there is an option Jesus and to restore the world world of redeem so I think God had another plan also there is no redemption for the following see from scripture I don't know I don't want to comment on that but knowing the nature of God I am saying this this is not in the Bible I am saying this I feel that before the beginning I am sure God would have given a safe opportunity I am sure God would have given a safe opportunity so options to both Lucifer and his team but if he has been thrown out my feeling is he went beyond ever so that is my suggestion I feel so because that is in God's nature so I am sure he must have given chances I don't know I hope you have some questions in the beginning when God created me so since then and maybe and heaven is also there and it helped me and why God created me and why God has created me in the beginning okay God created the heavens and the earth okay so see God created the heavens and the earth when you read about heaven I think Pastor also explained that we refer to many different things so God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis our understanding from there could be the universe the seed the perceived universe that God created the galaxy the stars so we term that also as heaven that also is heaven but the place where God and the heavenly beings or the angelic beings dwell that is also known as heaven so you see there are many heaven is not only one but we are understanding that there are more passages more places with the same term heaven so my answer is yes the heaven where God lived and all existed that is why when you say in the beginning it's the beginning of the created earth the created universe and on that part heaven is what we are referring to so definitely the heaven where God was angels were angels now your next question when was hell created frankly I don't know the answer but I know that hell was created for Satan it was created for Satan and his demons why God did not send him directly to hell I don't know I don't know if anybody knows please tell if he killed the hell he died is he killed 28 he was a person and he was a person who was a god so he was like he was a god and he was a god and he was a god and he was a god and he was a god no see how will interpret this you are a demon sounds like you present in such a way in English so we have to interpret scripture based on scripture what does scripture tell us in the beginning God created heaven and earth and when he made it man you put him in the garden that is our first reference to Eden so that was the time Eden was made why is God saying you are a Eden though it is it sounds like present tense that is the connection basically what here it's coming out in the revelation of Ezekiel is Satan was on the earth yes see unless earth is created how he can be on earth so before that he was not on earth but once earth was created he was on the earth that's what it's saying you are in the earth that's our that's what we can see Satan was on the earth he is still on the earth from other references we know he is still in the earth it's too heavy some point here on the comments Lucifer Lucifer's fall just a text just two times Lucifer's fall had already taken place in Eden when we tempted Eve it refers to him as a serpent Genesis 1 it says God created the heavens and the earth so by Genesis 3 he was cast down so Nina is saying by Genesis 3 he was cast down Nina what I would say is the earth was created only in Genesis 1 and we had reference that Satan was on the earth okay from the book of Genesis but God created the heavens and the earth so by Genesis 3 he was cast down I don't think that would be that would be true I think he was cast down or meaning he was removed from heaven much earlier he was removed from heaven much earlier but then in Genesis we see that he comes and he is here on the earth so that much I know from the scripture but to say that the timing he fell when the earth was created I don't think that would be I mean I don't see that in scripture so is that okay Nina or do you differ on that view all of those that happened before creation so he was already operating on earth he was cast down that point I can make earth was created in Genesis 1 and he was operating he was operating on earth from the time the earth was created so where was he in that internet period when God he fell and earth was not there where was Satan and that answers one was it here created me yes he is a created me but creation did not happen only in Genesis 1 no in Genesis 1 we see God created the heavens and the earth now this other heaven where God is where the angels are that existed before then it already existed so in that heaven there are created beings already in the form of angels and you know whatever other creatures so yeah I hope that answers your question she is fine alright so we run out of time but any burning questions that have to be answered right now yes why so many names of death okay it's just a description so it helps us understand what he does that's why like deceiver accuser we will see already deceiver and accuser lie so it just shows his activities what is the minimum there will be actually I haven't researched that okay I'll just see it just okay so when we look at the words for devil okay one answer says demon okay in the Hebrew in the Greek what does it say Greek it says demon supernatural spirit of bad nature other translation say false accuser slanderer hurtful evil in effect or influence so these are all the descriptions of that term which they have used for Satan but in English it is translated as so like a spirit of bad nature slanderer accuser Lucifer is a name Prince I haven't researched that also so Lucifer what does it mean okay let us look it up right away does it have a meaning yeah so it gives us something it comes from the Hebrew word called Heelal Heelal it means the morning star so it's a good name Lucifer is a good name but obviously nobody wants to keep that name anymore what must be Lucifer yeah I think there is a reference see it's just a name so it's okay we are not we are not attributing deity as you would have learnt in Christology we are not attributing deity but it's something which you know says that he is a good creation and that's why God gave him the name morning star so I don't think there is anything wrong with that we are all fine okay fine so with that let us wrap up the class today let's pray and close I want to invite Satyabit the online class to please lead in prayer just unmute and pray shall I Father God thank you Lord thank you Lord that you have given us an understanding from your word Lord of all that we have to know Father God Father you are a God of wisdom Lord and all that we want to know Lord thank you for teaching us Lord help us Lord to understand your ways from your word Lord increase our understanding Lord even as we sit in those online classes Lord and meditate from your word Father I pray Lord whatever that we have to take in our heart Lord and carry it I pray that you will carve in each of our hearts Lord so that we will have your understanding grow in your understanding and wisdom Lord and we will walk in your ways Lord in Jesus mighty matchless name we pray thank you thank you everyone for being part of this class we will connect again next week please to go away on notes if you have more questions you can ask and it will be nice to discuss all that we will proceed further ok so God bless you have a wonderful day bye


I want people to listen to me on YouTube, I want to influence people. I had some cases of drug abuse and actually I got freaked out from my mind. I spent 20 years of my life in education, but now I see my education is not useful for me. Ever since I graduated from engineering, the constant question has always been, when are you going to get married? As a generation we feel that we have a million things we want to try, but in this system we are not able to try those million things. Because in the end it's my life and I have to achieve what I want to achieve.  Youth means it's life in making. Youth means an exuberant energy. The problem with the youth is they don't have the necessary clarity, not balance. If you could bring ten percent more clarity and balance in their life, this energy would translate into something fantastic. So, as a part of this we are launching a campaign called Youth and Truth. I'm putting one full month of my time travelling across the country and causing a buzz about this among the youth. You'll see a very different Sadhguru because I will rest differently, speak differently, do everything differently with them. We did a survey and we found that a lot of students are under stress. Is there a way where we can be free of this? The significance of being in a technological institute is not about just getting qualified to get some job somewhere or a passport out of the country. It should become a way of creating life, making life happen better than the way it's happening right now. If you really want to address the issues in the world, this one should never be a issue, isn't it? Please make yourself like this, that you are never the problem. You're always a part of the solution. The major problems we all face are identity crisis and self-doubt. What advice can you give us? Doubt is a very good thing.   Otherwise every moment there's a doubt about everything. It's a good way to live. From the day you're born, your parents, every other adult in the school, everybody is trying to educate you about something that's not worked in their life. Whenever you ask a question for which they have no answer, people get angry. A question is only a tool to dig deeper. A question is a tool to enter new territory. My message to all the youth, you can ask Sadhguru all kind of questions. Why about monthly cycles, about sex, drugs, all scandalous questions, which… They know all those things. No, they don't. This is being pitched as youth and truth, unplugged with Sadhguru. Ask whatever you want. Ask whatever you want. Nothing is a taboo.


All right, we're at the top of the hour, so I'm going to get started. Greetings and thank you for attending this month's science seminar presented by the NSF's National Ecological Observatory Network, which is operated by Battelle. Our goal with this monthly series of talks is to build community among researchers at the intersection of ecology, environmental science, and neon. We are excited to have a dual presentation today by Adriana Oskanga and Nayani. Oh, I don't have the last name in front of me. I'm going to let our next presenter introduce their names very perfectly. Nayani and Adriana, our dual presenters, we're very excited for their talks today. But before we turn it over to those fantastic speakers, I want to go through a few logistics. So we have enabled optional automated closed captioning for today's talk. If you would like to use it, find the CC button in your Zoom menu bar. The webinar will consist of a presentation, actually two presentations, followed by Q&A. And we're going to do a short Q&A after each presentation and then try to leave a little time for more of an integrated Q&A, maybe reaching across themes that touch both talks at the very end of the session. So as you think of questions, please put them into the Q&A box. We also have a meeting chat, which you're welcome to use to share links or other items of interest, but add questions for the speakers into the Q&A. We'll facilitate discussion of those questions at the end of each talk and also at the end of the presentation. And there is also an opportunity to ask questions over audio by using the raise hand feature if you prefer. Neon welcomes contributions from everyone who shares our values of unity, creativity, collaboration, excellence, and appreciation as outlined in our Neon Code of Conduct. This applies to Neon staff as well as anyone participating in a Neon event. The full code of conduct is available via a link that I will share in the chat in a moment and is also embedded in the Science Seminars webpage, which I am showing on my screen and I will also share that link with you in a moment. This talk will be recorded, these two talks will be recorded and made available for later viewing on the Neon Science Seminars webpage. If you scroll down here to the list of talks, you can see that once a talk is passed, we soon thereafter make this recording available link appear and those will take you to the recordings of the seminars. To complement our monthly Neon Science Seminars, we host related data skills webinars on how to access and use Neon data. Registration for those is available on the same Science Webinars webpage. If you just go to the bottom beneath the list of talks, you come to the list of data skills webinars. Later this month, we're having a very relevant webinar on remote sensing of wildfire impacts. So if that is of interest to anyone, again, I'll drop the link in the chat in a moment. We would love to see you at that data skills webinar later in March. And lastly, if you have ideas for a talk for this seminar series, nominate yourself or a colleague today by filling out the form on our Science Seminars webpage. It's here near the top. Nominate a seminar speaker we would love to hear from you. So that's it for me. I'll turn it over to John Musinski to introduce our fantastic lineup of speakers. Thank you. Thank you very much, Samantha. I'm John Musinski. I'm a remote sensing scientist with the Airborne Remote Sensing Group. And I'd like to, I'm very pleased to introduce Dr. Adriana Uskanga, who will be our first speaker. Adriana is a post-doctoral researcher working with Dr. Kyla Dahlin at the Ecological Remote Sensing and Modeling Lab in the Department of Geography at Michigan State University. Adriana is a landscape ecologist who integrates field and remote sensing data to analyze patterns of vegetation change over space and time, investigating their impact on carbon dynamics and biodiversity. Adriana earned an undergraduate degree in biology and a master's degree in ecology and evolution at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She went on to earn a PhD in geography from the University of Oregon, where she analyzed the interacting effects of environmental gradients and land use intensity on tropical forest structure and field diversity. Currently, her interdisciplinary work seeks to improve our understanding of the influence that disturbance, land use, and land management have on forest structure, composition, and function across scales. So without further ado, please welcome Adriana Uskanga. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much. I will share my screen with you all. There, I hope you can all see that. So my name is Adriana, and today I'm going to share with you part of the project I've been working on with Dr. Kyla Daling at the Ecological Remote Sensing and Modeling Lab in the Department of Geography at Michigan State University. And the main focus of this project has been to characterize vegetation change over time or disturbance trajectories to improve forest structural models that in turn help us to make better predictions of forest carbon uptake. And for that, we've been using neon sites and Landsat data. So let's begin with some definitions first. Forests, when we think about forest structure, we're referring to the 3D arrangement of trees and other plants. And we measure forest structure with variables such as leaf area index, or which is the area of leaves per unit ground, or variables such as canopy height, which is the height of the trees, canopy rugosity, which is a measure of how complex is a canopy in a forest. And there are many other variables of forest structural attributes that we can, we can measure in the forest. And we care about these forest structural attributes because they are relevant in for different forest ecological processes and dynamics. So for instance, researchers have found that a higher complexity in cannabis is related to higher biodiversity in the forest, for instance. Understanding forest structure is also important for understanding the cycling of water or the water cycle in general. And perhaps more important for us, forest structure is very related to how much carbon forest can take up and sequester. So if we think about how leaves and trees are arranged over space, we can, for example, we can visualize how different, that will change how different leaves can intercept sunlight and in turn how those leaves can make photosynthesis and uptake carbon from the atmosphere, for instance. Just to give you an example of how forest structure is related to these very important functional processes that take place in forests. So really understanding the spatial distribution and spatial patterns of forest structure is really important for us to improve our understanding of this ecological process and specifically carbon dynamics. So these two forest structure and forest function are very related. And forest structure is determined by abiotic conditions, such as climate, soil and topography of a forest, but also by historical processes, by the history of that forest, such as the disturbance of a forest, for instance, if a forest had, there was like a fire in a forest, it will have a different structure than a forest with no disturbances. Land use and land management are also important for determining forest structure and succession, which is basically how vegetation grows after a disturbance. And in general, when we think about the models we have for modeling forest structure, we actually models make a pretty good job at including abiotic conditions, such as climate, soil and topography, but they don't, many models do not include these variables related to the history of a forest. So we don't have models in general lack this this part of like variables related to disturbance that are included into the models. So that's what we've been working on in this project. And part of this is because there's this general idea that disturbance and land use is only or are only relevant at very local scales. But actually, there has been a lot of research showing that disturbance and land use are also relevant, not only at local scales, but also at larger extent, such as regional, continental and even global scales. So we think about that there's about like 60% of the forest around the world has been modified by humans. Then it kind of naturally follows that we probably have a large effect on how on like this 3D arrangement of plants around the world. But the other challenge in including disturbance or variables related to disturbance and land use into forest structural models is the data, the type of data we have for doing that. So sometimes we use records of past land use or ownership and forest inventories, kind of to get that information of the history of a forest, but those are not always spatially explicit. So it's difficult to understand the spatial distribution or to model the spatial distribution of forest structural variables with that spatial explicit data. And sometimes we use things like land cover maps, for instance, but they tend to be cores and they simplify these very complex processes of disturbance and land use and succession. So what we really need is continuous data that represent the complexity of disturbance and land use processes with accuracy. And that's why we in this project, we've been using Landsat time series analysis. So for people that are not very familiar with remote sensing technology in general, Landsat is this mission run by NASA that they have launched satellites from the 70s. So we have actually Landsat is the longest record of the Earth surface that we have publicly available today. And each satellite has a repeating cycle of two weeks, and it has global coverage. So that means we actually have many images, or we can get many images from all the forests around the world. And in this figure, this is an example of one of these Landsat time series, where they basically stacked or they make a series of Landsat images ordered over time. They calculate a vegetation index to follow vegetation change over time. And in this example, you can see, for instance, that this forest in Oregon, there was a fire in the year 2002 represented here by these red colors. And then the authors could actually track how vegetation grew after the disturbance over time. So this is basically what we've been using for analyzing disturbance trajectories. So with that background in mind, the objective of this project is to improve forest structural predictions by integrating patterns of forest disturbance and recovery across time and space over the last around 40 years. So the idea is that using these disturbance trajectories and integrating these disturbance trajectories or data of these disturbance trajectories in our models, we can actually improve models of forest structure. So that's what we're testing in this project. And for that, we're using neon data, so the National Ecological Observatory Network. And in particular, right now, we're using, we're studying Harvard forest because Harvard forest has not only all the data that neon people have collected in that forest, but also data on previous land management and disturbances and things like that. So as many of you probably know, neon collects or like, yeah, neon people collect a lot of data in neon sites, field data on the ground. They also have flux tower in each site, but they also have an airplane with a LiDAR sensor and a hyperspectral sensor, which is great for us. So basically we've been mapping different forest structural variables using the LiDAR data from neon. And today, the results I'm going to show you are just for relief area index, but we've been also working with other forest structural variables such as canopy height and canopy rugosity. So we've been using LiDAR for mapping relief area index and for the disturbance trajectories, we've been analyzing Landsat time series using three different vegetation indices, the normalized different vegetation index or NDVI, the normalized difference moisture index or NDMI, and the tessell cap wetness. And to analyze this Landsat time series, we've been using this algorithm called LandTrender implemented in Google Earth Engine. So LandTrender is basically a segmentation algorithm. So it basically takes a time series and it splits that time series into different segments that are connected by vertices. And each vertex represents a change in trajectory. So a change in vegetation. Something that's really important for us and like that we really like about using this is that this algorithm and this method is that it's we get information pixel wide like by every pixel. So we get that disturbance trajectory per pixel. And each segment has a magnitude, adoration and a rate. So with that information, we can derive many disturbance metrics that we can later on use in our models. And disturbance metrics are things like the number of vertices in a time series, for example, or how many disturbances there were in a time series. The time since last disturbance, the magnitude of vegetation decline. And there are many, many other disturbance metrics that we've been using. And then we derive from LandTrender. So here I'm just showing three of these examples. On the left, you can see if NDVI for instance grew in every pixel along this like 40 years. In the middle, it's the NDMI magnitude change. So basically if NDMI increased or decreased over time over like the 40 years of time of time series. And also the standard deviation of NDMI over time on the on the writing in purple. But as I was saying, we have many of these. We derive 38 disturbance metrics per index. So we ended up with a pretty large dataset. So with that dataset, we've been feeding models of, as I said before here, I'm just showing models for live area index, although we have done it also with canopy height and other forest structural variables. And in these models, we include abiotic conditions. So information on soil and topography and solar incoming radiation as well. And we also include the disturbance metrics. So just to give you an example of how that looks on like maps. On the first row, there are some predictor variables related to topography and soil. Then we're also using the NDVI Tesla cap wetness and NDMI for the year where data was collected, which is to the year 2018. And then we're adding all the disturbance metrics we derived from land trender. And we've been doing two different approaches, modeling with ordinary least squares regression, which is basically just linear models. But we've been also feeding simultaneous autoregressive models, which are linear models that account for spatial autocorrelation, which is something that when you're analyzing these geographic patterns, it becomes really important. So basically SAR models are linear models that include a term for the distance matrix between pixels. And that helps for accounting for spatial autocorrelation in the models. And we've been feeding these models in three different steps. We've been feeding these models only with abiotic variables, then with abiotic variables and adding the vegetation indices for the year where data was collected. And then with abiotic variables, the year, the vegetation indices for the year of data collection, and the disturbance metrics. And we've been doing this to test whether this, including disturbance metrics actually improve the models or not. So here are some of the results for live area index. So in these scatter plots, I'm showing on the y-axis, the live area index, the observed values of live area index on the y-axis, and then the fitted values for live area index on the x-axis. And with, as I was saying, in these three different steps, abiotic, abiotic and vegetation indices, and also including the disturbance metrics on the third column. And with linear models and SAR models on the two different rows. So in general, there are two main kind of results or like take home messages that we can take from these results. The first one is that SAR models make a better job at explaining, in this case, live area index than just like simple linear models or ordinary least square regressions. And you can see this on the distribution of these points, but also on the r-squares of these different models. And the second, so actually like including this term of like correcting for spatial autocorrelation improves the models a lot. The other main like kind of like big result or take home message from these results is that actually model performance improves when adding the disturbance metrics. So as you can see for both ordinary least square regressions and SAR models. So for instance, for the ordinary least square regressions, the r-square improves from like 0.13 to almost 0.5 when we include the disturbance metrics. And for the SAR models, even if the r-squares between the model using only abiotic variables and the model using also the disturbance metrics is not that different. I want to draw your attention to this AIC value where you can see that AIC actually reduces or like declines a lot when we include the disturbance metrics. So our results so far have shown that data on disturbance trajectories that we have measured through these disturbance metrics improve forest structural models. And although the results I'm showing here were only for leaf area index, we have seen the same kind of the same trend with other forest structural variables. The predictors change with different forest structural variables, but it's kind of the same trend where SAR models work better than ordinary least square regressions and that adding disturbance metrics improve the models a lot. So we've been very happy with seeing these results. And in the future we would actually like to, so these models have been very helpful for explaining the spatial distribution of forest structural attributes, but we actually would like to make some predictive models to kind of use this similar approach, but actually to predict how forest structure could look like in other sites. We would also like to do these with planned functional traits using the hyperspectral data that Neon collects. And both for like especially for the predictive models, it will be very interested to test the same approach at larger extents. So we plan to not only include other Neon sites also in tempered forests, but also use, we would like to use these methods with like other forest and especially we're very interested in seeing if these methods hold true or if these methods hold true for other understudied regions. So regions where we for instance don't have that much information on the disturbance history and previous land use and land management, but also where we don't have for instance airborne LiDAR and things like that. So we're very excited to be working with Neon sites where we have a lot of data to then being able to test these same approaches in understudied regions such as tropical regions for instance that we really need to be working more on those areas. And finally, we've been also working on this idea of disturbance syndromes which is basically like a classification of the disturbance trajectories we've been analyzing across across different ecosystems. So that's for future for yeah for the future future results. So finally, I would like to also announce that we've been running this spectral ecology summer school spec school is a school for grad students and postdocs that are interested in terrestrial ecology and remote sensing. And we use a lot of neon data in this school. So if you know someone that could be interested or if you're interested in joining, we will open applications by the end of this year. And we're currently running the second year of spec school. And the in person portion of the school actually takes place in the mountain lake biological station, which is also a neon site. So yeah, fun times if you're interested, please join or send your application and spread the word. So with that, I would only like to thank you for listening and also thank Kyla and people at the AirSum Lab and the Sevmian Landsat and the Landsat mission and LandTrender and Google Earth Engine for making this project possible. And with that, I think we do have a couple of minutes where I can take questions. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Adriana. It was a great presentation. Yes, we do have a few minutes for questions before the next presentation. So please, if you didn't see the message in the chat from Samantha, add your questions in the Q&A box. Yeah, the first question we have is, have you noticed differences between sites or forest types in the influence of the disturbance on structure? So something important in this project is that we're actually not kind of studying how different disturbance have different effects. Most probably, I mean, if there's a fire in a forest that will have different effects than a pest outbreak, for instance, on like how forest structure changes. We're not, since we're working, like the idea is to work at landscape regional continental scales and make like a classification of these different disturbances. We want to see whether different forest react similarly, even if to disturbances, even if we don't know exactly which disturbance caused the, or what was the cause of that disturbance. So yeah, I don't know if that answers the question, but that's what we've been trying to do. And we haven't compared these results or like these trends with different forests. So I will look forward to do that, including like all other neon sites in this analysis. Okay, great. Hey, I think we have time for one more question. Hi Andrea, great talk. I was wondering if you use some sort of temporal interpolation for filling misting lens at images due to cloud cover? No, that's an excellent question. So what LandTrendr does is instead of using all the images for like the whole year, well, first of all, we do some like cloud screening and we do mask clouds from these Landsat images. But we also make a meteo image, so a composite image just for like a couple of months. So we use July, August, I think, for each year. So we don't use, so in that way we kind of remove the seasonal variation and we also remove the effect of clouds or like cloud covering. So that's what we've been using for the Landsat time series analysis. And I'm happy to talk more about that process later. Okay, great. We have a couple of more questions. But for the sake of time, what I'd like to do is save them to the Q&A session at the end of the talk and first give a chance to Neani to present and then we can open the floor to all the questions at that point forward. So to those of you who put these, send these questions in, thank you very much. We'll get to them in a few minutes. Thank you very much, Adriana. Okay, I'd like to introduce Dr. Neani Ilankakun. Neani is a research scientist at Earth Lab at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She earned her PhD in Geosciences from Boise State University in 2020. Her background is in remote sensing applications of ecosystem ecology and forest diversity. Her recent projects include post-fire recovery and carbon potential in western U.S. conifer forests using Jedi, spaceporn lidar, and unmanned aircraft systems, UASs. In addition, she works on model and algorithm development with Jedi data to estimate semi-arid ecosystem biomass density, implementation of UAS methods to understand post-disturbance vegetation regeneration, ecosystem transformations, and their impacts on carbon. Please welcome Neani Ilankakun. Thank you, John. Hi, everyone. First, let me share my screen. Hi, everyone. I'm very excited to talk to you today and thank you for this opportunity. So first, before I start my talk, I think I should acknowledge my funders, the NSF series and Earth Lab, and also all my contributors and collaborators for this research. So I'm Neani Ilankakun. I'm a research scientist at Earth Lab. So during this talk, I'm going to provide summary of some of the research that I did our past couple of years. They are all interconnected and mostly address the impact of forest diversity and ecosystem transformation due to disturbance. And I have used several remote sensing data sets from satellites, drones, neon data, as well as the drone data. So my outline of talk, like, I will briefly go through the Western U.S. forest ecosystems and the forest disturbance, and then some of the research highlighted, I did on the disturbance and the impact on the disturbance. So these two maps shows the forest distribution in the Western U.S. and the first one is once we talk about the different forest types. And I mentioned the right from the land change monitoring assessment and projection data set, as the map data set. So particularly that data set shows that distribution of all the land cover classes. And this map is from 1985. So we have that data set from 1985 to today. And I also overlaid the fire data set. That's one of the major disturbance in the Western ecosystems. So you see, like, there are a ton of fires happening in the Western ecosystems, especially in the forest ecosystems. And so the overarching question is that how Western U.S. forest ecosystems respond to disturbances. So in addition to fires, there are a ton of other different disturbances happening in the forest ecosystems, especially droughts, fires, beetle kills, and also climate warming, and also, like, the invasion as well. So the figure in the right, just to show that a conceptual figure that how we see, what is our assumption on it was in the disturbance and the recovery. So the state variable could be anything. It could be the carbon. It could be the land color. It could be a different index, or it could be anything. And so that all these lines shows, like, what we considered at the stable states, what's the transition can happen during the disturbance, and what if it's, if that ecosystem recovers, what's the recovery trajectory look like? For example, this green line with the uncertainty shows the recovering and then becoming to stable states after that. And also this yellow line on the bottom of the figure shows that if the ecosystem is not recovering, and maybe changing into an alternative state.  And so the first thing is that post-fire recovery in the western US. So the figure here is just to show, like, how many fires happened in last 30, 40 years in the western US forest ecosystems. So this record shows that both the number of fires and also the total burned area increases in the western US. And so when we have that, and it continually increases the frequency and the intensity, everything increases during the last couple of decades. So the question is, like, what actually happens after a fire? So there are a couple of ways that ecosystem can undergo after a fire. So if the fire, see, if the severity of a fire is not that high, it's a low severity that ecosystem can quickly recover back to its original state. But if the severity is really high, there could be a mortality phase and also that even with the mortality, the semi-co-systems are really resistant that they could recover back to the original state. But it could take some time, but semi-co-systems may not recover into the original state. So it could maybe during the recovery phase, they maybe have additional disturbance and also the available resources may not enough for the recovery back into the original state. So it can go different alternative states. So the first thing that we did to understand like the post-fire recovery trajectory in the western US ecosystem, so we did this study for three different ecoregions. I'm only showing one here. So we did this one for the southern Rockies, Pacific Northwest, as well as the northern Rockies. So I'm only showing here the southern Rockies. So in the southern Rockies, the dataset that we used to understand the post-fire recovery trajectory is the JLi data. So the global ecosystem dynamic investigation data. So it's a space-point LiDAR data. And the reason that we use that one is that it provides structural data near global scale. So we thought there might be a good dataset that we could understand the post-fire recovery in a regional scale. But the JLi data started delivering the data from 2019. So if we want to have that recovery trajectory, then we need to go back in time. And so this study from all the fires in the forested ecosystems, southern Rockies, northern Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest, and the fires that we considered from 1985 to 2017. But we don't have JLi data for the 1985 to 2017. So what we did was like we used the space for time or the chrono sequence approach. So our assumption was like if the ecosystems are the similar conditions, the topographic conditions and as well as other forest conditions are the same, we could use the space. We can replace the space for the time. So our results show that in the southern Rockies, the recovery trajectory, the figure in the right shows the person can have a change compared to the unburnt area nearby for the fires across different fire severity gradients. The red line shows the high severity, blue line since the moderate severity and the green line is the unburnt of the low severity. So it shows that if the fire happens at low to moderate severity conditions, it's easy to recover in the southern Rockies. But if the fire happened in high severity, then it's really hard to recover. And even like after 30 years, it's very low the recovery. But it shows like based on the trajectory, it shows like like if let that ecosystem recover for maybe next 30-40 years based on the extrapolation of this trajectory might recover back into the original state. And what other thing that we found is that not only the time since fire, there are other factors also contribute to the post-wire recovery. Some of those factors are the fire size, the distance to the seed sources, drought conditions. This PEI is the mentioned in the drought conditions and also the topographic conditions. And so as I mentioned that based on our trajectory, it shows like it's in the southern Rockies if time allows the ecosystem may recover back into the original state. But this data that we analyze our structural data, it doesn't show anything about the species composition or anything. And so one thing that we thought about is that when we talk about that post-fire recovery the images in the right side show two different things. One is the seedling, the top one that shows like ton of seedlings in one of the fire that we visited last year. And the bottom image shows that the same fire at high elevations. So it doesn't have any seedlings. So but when we measure those conditions, especially the structural conditions, both would show the similar pattern. But necessarily the first one actually shows the recovery and regeneration, but the second one is not the recovery regeneration. That's just a ton of shrubs that may be potentially this region is not recovering, may be transition into something else. So and so this is one of the study that I saw on Davis at all in 2023 paper that talked about the seedling generation and after a fire. So it shows that in high in the figure on the left shows like in high severity scenarios, what's the post-fire recruitment probabilities. So if the fire severity is high, it's really low probability for the seedling recruitment. And also some of the other factors that can control the seedling region treatment probability shows in the right. So it's the distance of seed sources mean to recover fire severity and some of the other climatic controls like the climate water deficit. Likewise, so there are a ton of other conditions that site-wide conditions that can potentially impact and the post-fire seedling regeneration and the seedling recruitment probability. However, this study was done with ton of in situ field data seedling counts plot level data, but we thought like it's really hard to like get ton of like field information, especially in the high elevation forest, like it's really hard to get into those forest and collect those data and have like information on where the seedling regeneration happens, what areas that we need to help for the regeneration of this. Anything that we could probably provide the right framework, like if the ecosystem is not recovering, what else we could do. So it's really hard to get into some physically get into some of those locations. So we thought might be a drone remote sensing might be a good option that could potentially collect more information and can probably go align with the in situ field data and that can cover large areas dancing in little field plots and can help to better understand regeneration after a fire in different ego regions. So in this one, what did it we again this one basically happened in the Southern Rock East Eco region. So we actually visited 10 fires in the Southern Rock East Eco region that happens around 20 years ago. We chose 20 years ago because we want to let them because those ecosystem to show some signs of recovery or transformation. So we could find that factors what helps for the regeneration, what does not help for the regeneration. So we collect the drone data. So the RGB images from the Phantom for drones, these drone images for like three centimeter solution images that could with the photogrammetry, a structure from motion we could delineate individual shrubs, even like smaller shrubs likely with height about 50 centimeters. So we could we were able to generate those individual trees or shrubs and also its spatial locations. And then what we did like we actually like use information from the drone images to classify into different categories. So we have eight different categories. So deadwood, ground herbs, live trees, rocks, seedlings and shadows and shrubs. So why we had like all these different categories, because like our assumption was like in different site, micro site conditions might also control the seedling equipment and the region version. So most of the studies consider like the macro scale factors, the climatic factors, the and elevation and top of victory in like regional factors. But we thought like maybe there are some other site level micro site conditions that might also control the post fire regeneration. So this is our workflow in the right that we develop to understand that micro site conditions on the post fire seedling regeneration in the southern Rockies. So in other study that it shows not only like other climatic and topographic gradient factors, but also like the sharp density, deadwood density, standing density also like impact the seedling regeneration in the, especially in the high elevation areas. So this is one figure that I'm showing the very wide that higher the sharp density, higher the shielding density in the southern Rockies, especially at the high elevation forest. So in this feature, so this is still undergoing. So our next step for this one is to evaluate the post fire configuration strategies against the micro topography and the site conditions. So in this one, like we are evaluating the sharp density, standing dead density and also some other micro site conditions. And so the all these first research that I talk about considered the fires that only burns only one times. But when we take a look at the fire data set, this is from the reality, the reality combined fire data set. So if we consider the fires from that data set that combine like different data sources with the fire records, and I only consider here the fires from 1985 to 2017. And it shows like some of the ecoregions in the vast fires that burn more than seven times. So what's the recovery if the region burns more than one time? So our preliminary, so this very minute, excuse me, this I'll show that some of the ecoregions in the western US likes burn new areas, but some of the ecoregions in the western US like repeatedly burn. So this could be like for us to turn into grass and the grass cycle helps more fires could be that reason or maybe there are some other reasons that potentially from it repeat fires and the new fires in those regions. So in this study that our next step is like evaluate the carbon recovery with repeat fires. So in this one we are planning us Jedi and I said to combine the biomass density data and evaluate that repeat fire carbon recovery potential across ecoregions and also against non functional types like so this research was funded by series IRP. So that's another research that I'm doing. And so the other thing like first thing I'm talking I talk about the fire and recovery and the next one is that the fire and diversity how that fire changed the diversity in forest ecosystems. So when so when we talk about the diversity we can measure time usually like we measure diversity based on taxonomic species composition like those data. But also we can calculate the diversity in the same way using other metrics the remote sense metrics. So if you could derive some of the remote sent traits, then we could use that trait in the same way that we could calculate the different diversity matrices. So in this one we have three different matrices the functional divergence functional evenness and functional richness. So to calculate these three different diversity indices we use three different traits. One is the canopy height one is the plant area index and one is the foliage height diversity. So we calculated this one using airborne full wave form data. So and so once we have calculated this diversity this is a figure that shows like the distribution of diversity across the word shed. So the first figure is the functional richness, the second one is the functional evenness and then last one is the functional divergence. So you see like the distribution of this functional diversity across the word shed is different and so there may be some reasons why this diversity indices distribution varies within that eco region within that watershed. So like next steps are to see like what's the signature of this distribution of diversity across the word shed. So our research shows that the diversity functional diversity distribution within that watershed where it is based on some other factors especially the topographic gradient and also some other factors like when we talk about the topographic gradient especially the elevation and aspect change functional diversity distribution within that watershed and also we found that some of the other factors like distance to water that also like change that distribution of the functional diversity within that watershed and also we found that if there's a disturbance like fire happens that also change that functional diversity. So we compared like four different fires that happened during the happen two different time frames like one is like very recent to the data the airborne data that we collected and one fire happened like 18 years before that the data was collected still like we see like a difference between the functional diversity of the burned and unburned side neighboring each other within this all four different fires. So it's so we see the difference in the functional trace as well as the functional diversity and we see like the difference in the functional diversity is higher than the difference in the functional traits alone and so that was like a functional diversity we did in a one watershed but we thought like maybe we could use the same functional diversity idea to see like how that change the how can help that understand that first the invasion. So in this study we actually use the neon data so we use the neon field data and also neon airborne lighter data. So what we did like for all those neon neon sites that represent the forested ecosystems that we calculated from the field data we calculated like a different diversity exotic and native diversity matrices and also we from the airborne data data we calculate a set of diversity indices and so the first three that they had that the left image shows that the principal component analysis in the pc one the first and second principal component analysis and how this where how the native diversity matrix varies across the neon sites and the right figure shows that we calculated a ton of maybe 10 to 20 airborne lighter based diversity indices and see like how they varies across neon sites and also we use that's for the native diversity and the lighter diversity and also we we have here calculated from the field data neon field data like how that diversity the the various invaded was not invaded. So in this one it shows like there's a clear signal of the diversity variation in the native of the invaded and the not invaded. So what our goal here is that whether we could use structural diversity signature that could tell us the invasion potential in these sites using only the structural data. So we could potentially find out like based on the structural signatures whether this ecosystem is prone to invasion or not. So in this study so our next step for this one is to find that the signature of structural diversity on forest invasion in the western use forest systems using neon airborne lighter and so the last phase is that disturbance and ecosystem transformation. So all this like fast things I talk about for the after disturbance assuming that ecosystem is recovering like what happens and how much how long it will take and how we can recognize that recovered trajectory and how we can what other controls that might help or not help for that recovery trajectory. And the other thing is that there are other than the recovery some ecosystem may not recover they may come into an alternative state so that so in this one what we are trying to find is that using remote to sense data the the ecosystem transformation in the north central region. So in this one what we are thinking about two different things fire in ratio species and climate so they are like very interconnected and one reason so there are frequent the number of fires as I early mentioned the number of fire increases and then the area burning increases and the repeat fire there are tonal repeat fire also like some areas that have ton of repeat fires happens to and also like climate warming continues. So we want to see like how interconnect this one and see like where the invasion happens and can we recognize this invasion with using remote sensing data before it actually happens. And the other thing is that in the climate data we see like between past and future the variability of climate records also varies and so we want to if we want to forest management perspectives like we also need to adapt our forest forest management practices based on these variables to help the ecosystems best. So in this study that by the way yeah so in this study like we have like we measure this one state level ecology and management polygon scale and so our goal is to recognize in mission before it happens and also like how that invasion changed the carbon storage on those ecosystems. So this is the preliminary resource that we found like in the southern rockets in the left two figures so like the three annual three cover change in the southern rockets in the last 30 40 years and also the annual brush up covers in the southern okay so they are completely opposite directions one is going down and the one is coming like going up and then in the last 10 years like it's like a steady down in the tree cover. And so if we go in the right shows that the same thing but had been did for the seven states in the north central region Colorado, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. And so in this one like what we are going to use that first like the indicators of ecosystem transformations and then find the location that transformation happened and use the remote sense data to recognize the threshold that would tell us that if this ecosystem is transforming and then finally to and just evaluate the carbon change due to this ecosystem transformation. So we haven't identified several indicators from different remote sense data sets so especially we are going to use the modest data for this one. And we had a workshop in last December which shows with the researchers and also stakeholders to identify the locations of transformation and potential causes for the transformation in those locations. And we are going to use that information as also the remote sense information to identify the vegetation stability and also vegetation sensitive to fire and climate. With those data we are going to develop the ecosystem vulnerability index and that would help us to map in the regional scale for the whole north central region like which areas that are vulnerable to transformed in the next maybe next decade or so. And with the data we are going to we see like clear signals of the biomass change in the burned and unburned. And so then the right figure shows like the what's the current biomass in this state level. But what we are going to use that we are going to make a connection with the time series data of the modest and sentinel data and the Jedi biomass data to develop time series of biomass data that would help us to understand the change of the biomass as a result of ecosystem transformations. And also finally like we want to link these transformations to the management practices so whether it's treated untreated if it's the treated like what type of treatments happens and how that helps to recover the biomass in this areas. So in this one there are five steps like find locations where the one location is vulnerable to future transformation and what's the impact on carbon storage. So with that I want to conclude that my the research that I talk about these are the basic conclusions from all these things that disturbance frequency and intensity increases. And also the disturbance victories the carbon storage and most of the studies that I did are from the fires. But there will be other signatures that we might need to have more research and also some ecosystems that creep it by us some are not and why that happens and so it's also needs some attention. And you know so it's really critically important to identify areas that transformations happens and then why that happens and how we can help. With that I want to finish my talk but these questions for you that would probably help us to improve our research. Thank you. Thank you very much Nayani for an excellent presentation. We have two minutes left for questions. One came in during your talk by Nayani based on your experience using Jedi data for analyzing height changes was the noise in Jedi light are so high that it overshadowed the signal in height changes due to fire. Did you use only the nighttime data as daytime data may have more noise. And I was curious about how you dealt with ground detection in areas with dense canopies. Yeah so in this one we use the daytime data and also we use some of the quality flags that Jedi data comes with to have like only the high quality data. And so we didn't consider anything dense versus not dense. We only considered what it comes as is. But we instead of not so one thing we did we did not use only the canopy height. We use the other two datasets to the two other indices the Jedi data calculus, plant area index and the foliage height diversity as well. So our final conclusions we developed the trajectory with all three different indices and so our final conclusion based on combination of all three. So the foliage height diversity can probably recognize the different densities within the canopy. And the one other thing that when we do this research so because the Jedi cannot recognize some of the seedlings that are very short. So that was the drawback in this one so that's why we move into the drone data to see like how much carbon or the trajectory that we have missed because the Jedi cannot recognize that one. Great thank you very much. Well thank you both Anayani and Arianna for your excellent talks. We look forward to seeing you again and any further questions will be sure to send to you via email. Thanks everyone I put a couple of notes in the chat but we if you're interested in fire and remote sensing please join us for a data-skilled webinar later in March and then we've got our next edition of science seminar series again second Tuesday in April. We hope to see you for those. Thanks again for two excellent presentations. We appreciate you very much and have a great day everyone. Thanks for joining. Thank you all. Bye-bye.


Boris, a smooth win with the white pieces, or at least what appeared to be pretty smooth, two and a half out of three. Are you happy with the way things are going so far? Well, it's okay. It turned out to be a good result. Of course, three is better, but okay, it's a long tournament, yeah. It's important not to get into shape and not to lose points, but okay, basically everything goes okay. And what about today's game? Were you happy with the quality? It seems so. I don't know. I didn't analyse it yet, but I think I got... It was a complicated position from the opening, but then I think he played in accurately and, you know, my pieces are more active, and I think I managed to, you know, coordinate them and to manage them pretty well. Now, when I was talking to you and asking you to come for the interview, you said that you wanted 20 minutes and you prompt because you weren't feeling that well, and you promised you will not check it with the computer just to make our life interesting. Why did you say that? Yes, because okay, I can check this computer and okay, I think for people who are watching us, it's interesting to see my impressions, my emotions. They can check computer assessment by themselves, nothing. You don't need something special, yeah, for this, but is that what I always like when I follow to see a reaction of the players and how they've used the games? Right, now you were here last year, Boris, and you've returned this year. Clearly, you had good impressions. Tell us what brings you back to Gibraltar? No, I think it's a nice place. It's a good tournament. Everything is fine. What's the most surprising? It's an open tournament, but out of three first games, I played with two same opponents like last year. It's the same as first and third round. It's really strange, yeah? What about the result? Well, last year I managed to make one and a half against Robert Bellin and Almagro, and this year I managed to get two points. So it's gotten better? It's better, but still it's two and a half out of three like last year. Right, and how's your experience been so far? It's the start of the tournament. How are you liking everything as of now? Well, unfortunately, I got some unpleasant cold on the way here, so I mostly tried to recover from it and to get back. But the place is great. The weather had been pretty nice. It should start raining now, as I guess, yeah? But basically, we'll have a lot of good days here and a good atmosphere. So I look forward to have a good tournament. And how is it to have your very good friend Lev playing here? It's good. We had some nice work in the morning, so it's good to have a good company, yeah, and maybe we'll sit together on dinner. So, okay, it's always, but okay, it's many players and many good friends, so it's also good from social point of view. You know, you see some players, you don't see so often and you can meet them, so it's really good and it's good to have Lev here, yeah? We look forward to a lot of exciting chess from you and we'll let you go now and recover and get some rest. Thank you, Boris. Thank you very much and I hope all of us will enjoy this tournament. That's very nice. Thank you.


Low-level light therapy, LLT, has been used for over 40 years to reduce pain, inflammation, and edema, promote healing of wounds, deeper tissues, and nerves, and prevent cell death and tissue damage. Despite positive findings from experiments in vitro, animal models, and randomized controlled clinical trials, LLT remains controversial in mainstream medicine due to the complexity of rationally choosing amongst a large number of illumination parameters and the publication of negative studies as well as many positive ones. A biphasic DOS response has been observed where low levels of light have a better effect on stimulating and repairing tissues than higher levels of light, which is described by the Arntscholtz curve. This review will cover the molecular and cellular mechanisms in LLT and describe recent results that provide scientific explanations for the biphasic DOS response. This article was authored by Yingying Huang, Aaron Chien, James D. Carroll, and others.