Good morning and a very warm welcome to our side event on Ocean acidification in Africa. Can I have the slides please? Thank you. So ocean acidification affects the whole ecosystem Since the ocean is absorbing a lot of CO2 to waters getting more acidic and this impacts ecosystem so it impacts Coral reefs its damages coral reefs It leads to thinner cells of shelled plankton and shellfish and it also inhibits the growths and the fitness of fish and that in turn impacts communities and their their economies and particularly coastal communities in Africa which rely on the fishery resources and healthy habitats it damages Coral reef-based coastal protection as well and damage the fisheries and the recreational industry and this is why it is important to address Ocean acidification particularly in Africa raise awareness build capacity and also assess the impacts. I would like to introduce you to the speakers of our event Sam Dupont Sam Dupont is Associate Professor of the University of Gothenburg and he's also since many years a consultant at the IAE a marine laboratories in Monaco working for the ocean acidification international coordination center He is doing research into global changes on marine ecosystems and biology impacts of ocean acidification and within the Ocean acidification International Coordination Center. He is contributing to capacity building program and Innovative science communication methodologies Our second speaker very warm welcome in person is Naira Shaltou She is working at the National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Egypt She is Associate Professor of Marine Chemistry and Fisheries and doing research into pollution monitoring impact of climate change and ocean acidification She's at the same time a representative of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Egypt and the focal point in the blue-med initiative of the European Commission Our next speaker is Professor Steve Vidicombe The Plymouth Marine Laboratory. He is director of science and deputy chief Executive and he's doing research as a marine ecologist into Bantic ecology by a diversity and ecosystem function and he is the co-chair of Global Ocean acidification observation network Kirsten Isensee You are very happy to have you as a speaker here and Kirsten is a program specialist of the IOC UNESCO in Paris and Working into ocean carbon sources and things and she is also promoting women in ocean sciences particularly as well in the ocean acidification community and She facilitates collaboration between scientists policy makers and stakeholders We are networks such as the Ocean acidification International Coordination Center Another virtual speaker unfortunately she couldn't make it to our panel could I have the slides back, please with the speaker? Thank you Is Patricia Siveri? She is working at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University Could I have the speaker slide back, please? At the Autonomous University in Barcelona, she's research professor coordinating marine environment research and Coordinating the biogeosciences research group. She is doing research into threats To marine environment and their societal relevance such as ocean acidification and she's also working on Oxygen loss. She's a member of the advisory board of the ocean acidification Africa network Our last Virtual speaker is Shaq Sharif. He is working at the fisheries and maritime she's a fisheries. He's a fisheries and maritime professional and An advisor to the environment protection Agency in Liberia He has a background in marine and particularly fisheries management and maritime governance in the West Africa Subregion. He's the focal person of the Abidjan convention of the UN environment in Liberia With this we are going to our first presentation the keynote is will be given by Some dip on unfortunately couldn't make it to the conference in person. So this will be video Could you please pay the video? Thank you Thank you very much and good morning everyone. Let's talk about ocean acidification So I do not share the ocean acidification is another consequence of all carbon dioxide emission If we put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a significant part is absorbed by the ocean about one fourth and React with water to turn into carbonic acid Changing the whole carbonic chemistry of the ocean and making it a little bit more acidic It's a global and rapid and intense change in ocean chemistry that is happening all over the world And it is projected that if we don't cut carbon dioxide emission The ocean will be two times more acidic by the end of the century and we have Thousands of our scientific article today showing that today and in the future Ocean acidification will have consequences for marrying biodiversity and ecosystem services It is also a well recognized threat requiring urgent action as Illustrated by the fact that as the vacation is one of the target of the sustainable development goals So what can we do? Acidification is a global challenge is happening all around the world and the real only solution We have is to reduce carbon dioxide emission and concentration into the atmosphere. It's mitigation To convince people to do that. We just need data showing that as the vacation is caused by carbon dioxide emission And we'll have consequences and we have that we don't need more science We know more than enough to act just read the IPCC report all this report focusing on Africa So scientists are virtually certain the highest level of certainty that ocean acidification is happening and we'll have consequences But there is another side of acidification, which is more global acidification is a little bit different in different parts of the world and work In combination with a unique set of stressors depending on where you are and the consequences will also depend on the surfaces That are very consistent that are in every location So there's also a local challenge associated to acidification and to address that we really need local Data to be able to implement adaptation that will be only locally relevant so we really need data to understand what's happening locally and Develop adaptation strategies that will allow us to minimize the effect of acidification and by the time we need for mitigation So for that we need local data and unfortunately if you look what is available in Africa, we know very little Along the African continent there are only a few publications available today and very little monitoring happening there It's in getting better with time, but there's still a lot of Unknowns and that limits our ability to implement relevant actions So what we need is to co-design locally what kind of data is needed to Basically buy some time and develop the actions we need To do that we have also to understand the local limitations and that's why in 2016 the AEA through an in-project Organize a working group of experts to develop a questionnaire that could be shared within Experts and institution on the African continent So we try to evaluate expertise and motivation to work on ocean acidification What kind of equipment and infrastructure were there the Regional strength the challenge and barriers and so on the question was distributed all around the world And we received information on 69 institutions from 30 African countries And this is summarized on that figure you can see the map of Africa and every dot is an institution If the dot is dark green that means that You have institution with everything you need to perform ocean acidification research and probably already doing so If it's red that means don't even have access to basic infrastructure and no good labs and sometimes even stable electricity So what you can see from that picture is that there is a lot There are a lot of challenges on the West Coast of Africa That should be a priority in the future Another way of showing that is the average score that you have between zero and four For the different countries. So again, if it's dark green, it's good We've seen none of the countries are dark green at the moment You can see that many countries are red so lacking basic infrastructures and some are green so getting there I just wanted to pay attention to Egypt that is just there where you are at the moment Egypt at the moment is orange so quite low But if you check individually you have excellent institutions there and some of them have some equipment Some other have some other type of equipment and if you collaborate all together the country can turn green So that shows the importance of collaboration in the field of acidification if you want to be able to collect the data we need Based on this information, we organize a multi-level capacity building program with the OAICC So basically we adapt the level of training to the local needs So we have basic training for institutions that have legal with basic methodology or simplified methodology And for countries that have everything we try to be much more targeted and organize advanced training We've been organizing training since 2015 with the first one in South Africa And there will be more training in the future. The next one will be on West Africa in Liberia Just as an example, this is the picture These are pictures from the training that we organized in Kenya in 2019 And we do a little bit of everything some lectures some setting up labs collecting in the field Organizing experiments, so we really try to collect real data there And all these led to quite successful stories. So for example the OA Africa that we will hear about network in a minute Basically was the product of the first capacity building program in South Africa in 2015 Yeah, well so individual successes and just as an example you have Carla here Carla entered the field of education in a basic training in 2016 joined multiple other trainings in the future 2016-2018 became an assistant in some of those and also made a PhD that she could defend in 2020 in the field with excellent research at the is no Published in scientific journals, so she's not definitely one of the leader in the field in our country There's also a really interesting why young sub project that will be also presented a little bit later today and This week a report summarizing all the excellent work that has been done Monitoring and biological understanding is available online The way on some website So there's a lot to be done in Africa for sure West Africa should be prioritized, but There's a capacity program on the way with adaptive training to the needs The good news is that there's a lot of excellent resources in Africa with excellent institution excellent experts And these have been identified we can provide actually a database today That can allow you if you enter the field to find the key partners in your country or in your region But the key word is If you want to address this issue of acidification this global issue, we need to collaborate Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm good Thank you to some people for providing us this great intervention via video and I would like to hand over now to Naira for giving her presentation Adaptation and resiliency North Africa the impact of climate change raising 1.5 degree centigrade of temperature will affect the maritime and will decrease the fisheries production by a more than 20 percent 30 percent decreasing the rainfall and Affecting the climate and the resources by more than 30 percent And also North African countries suffers from sea level rise and sea water intrusion into their coastal lakes This shows how temperature increases for the Mediterranean Sea during the last 30 years and the productive for the next 30 years from to 2031 to 2016 and the diagrams shows that the eastern Mediterranean and the southern Mediterranean Highly impacted by climate change and raising temperature and global warming and how come these coastal area of Norsen Mediterranean or Thousand Mediterranean and northern African countries will be highly impacted During this model This model will show you how acidification of the Mediterranean goes will go for the next Decade for the next hundred years and how a Mediterranean will get us defied by a year 200 2099 and This is the final acidity expected by the 2099 2099 This also will show how the saturation omega saturation Will decrease and how the decrease of omega saturation is concentrated in the northern in the northern African countries Coastal water of Mediterranean and how these areas impacted by the land-based sources and the impacts Magnifies by these discharge so that solution will be high for the organism and habitats in this coastal area This in addition the climate to change and asification addition to multi stressors They magnify the impact of coastal of acidification and sea level and Sea surface temperature in addition to global warming pollution over Exhibitation and extreme events oxygen deficient will impact The coastal resources of these northern African countries So we need if we look to the socio-economic consequences We need to look for fishers and aquaculture tourism and ecosystem services jobs availability food and security trade and and profits Poverty and migration because all of these consequences lead to each other the decrease in resources in the the impact of acidification and climate to change where impact all these Aspects for economic for the blue economy of the Mediterranean Coast of the northern African coast of the Mediterranean For the fishers employment this diagram show how the employment involvement in the Mediterranean Sorry in the southern Mediterranean countries, which is the northern African countries and it showed that Tunisia is the highest country of the fishers employment Which mean that okay, which mean that these fisheries employment jobs in the one of the biggest Sector for the resources for the population in Tunisia and also followed by Egypt followed by Morocco So any impact of climate change or acidification on fishers aspects or fishers sector will will affect the socio-economic impact will have a great socio-economic impact on the Population of these countries in addition for maritime and transportation these sectors highly impacted by climate change for the Hardness for the movement and for the transportation of the trade in the Mediterranean coast so this leads to a big need for the Adaptation strategy to work for a decision strategy for the Mediterranean for the Sustainability sustainable agenda of the United Nations and this could be achieved through mitigation and adaptation mitigation is achieved during by decreasing the carbon dioxide emission and increasing carbon dioxide removal technology and Working for the innovative greening solution while for adaptation we need to more to be more adapted for fishers aquaculture technology and industries and the decreasing the impact of climate change and acidification by Transforming to another species which are more resilient and using more green technology for Facing this impact this is a short recommendation for the It's to establishment of national coordination such as recalling what Sam said that we need and cooperation and coordination for interaction and cooperation between national cities during in the same country and regional between the northern Mediterranean countries Cooperation and integration between national authorities to ensure validation of mitigation and adaptation strategies and we need to work for effective regional scientific adaptation between northern African countries We there is a strong needs for capacity building of stakeholders and policymakers at the national and regional level also We need to work for reducing marine water pollution and conserve carbon sinker ecosystem in order to control The carbon dioxide absorption and decrease the climate change and acidification in marine environment Also, we need to mobilize to high-level national and international funding agencies to support capacity building and to engage more Researcher and stockholders and policy Further studies Discussions are needed to ensure the full inclusion of climate to change ocean acidification and socio-economic Embed for sustainability and low-carbon society performance and transformational needs of Ocean governance policy policies and legalization. Thank you Thank you very much Naira for giving us this insight in the African perspective of the ocean acidification Challenges that we are facing With that, I would like to hand over to our next speaker Philip Vidicom For giving his intervention, please Thank you very much.  That's great. Thank you So we heard this morning already that the issue of ocean acidification is indeed impressing one We've also heard that we have enough data and information and knowledge to know that we must act at a global level to mitigate To reduce the amount of carbon dioxide It's clear that we also have a huge amount of work still to do to generate the data knowledge and understanding needed to Support those locally applied adaptation and mitigation strategies And I think I would Refer back to something that Sam said in his presentation that it's really important to Remember that they're a single finger cannot lift this pebble that we we need to lift but actually with ocean acidification I think it's more than the pebble I think it's a huge boulder that we're trying to lift so that the need for Collaboration is so much greater and I also like to refer back to to all the seas We need collaboration. We need capacity building. It's essential. We need co-design We need communication and Actually, we do need cash as well. So there's another sea we can throw in there But at the end of the day that that requires us as a community to really coordinate our efforts and our actions And the good news in ocean acidification is that there are some very Effective structures of communication that have ought that already exist and they're ready to be exploited And the one that's obviously very close to my heart is the global ocean acidification Observing network Formed in 2012 brought together the ocean community of Those people interested in observing ocean acidification its its trends and also its impacts We're now a network of approaching a thousand scientists from over a hundred and fourteen countries and provides a lot of that Communication to underpin all of those things we mentioned before The aims of go and really focus around through three high-level goals The first one is about improving our understanding of global ocean acidification conditions But not just global I would also say local conditions because we're conscious of the fact that Although there are global trends what we're really interested in is how those trends and Manifest themselves at a local level. So where is it happening? How fast is it happening? Why is it happening? And it's important to have that as data so that we can identify the vulnerabilities and the priorities When we start to take adaptation and mitigation strategies The second one is to improve our understanding of the ecosystem response So what what are the observed biological responses? How fast are they happening? Where are those? Impacts happening on what ecosystems are most vulnerable because it's the biological ecosystems that have provide that Connectivity between this biogeochemical change and real impacts on humans health and well-being And finally, how do we create reliable projections into the future because all well and good observing how the planet is Is being damaged and local environments being damaged But we really need to understand the what if scenarios if we do take change in action What would we like you to expect to happen into the future? But as you've heard from both of our Speakers so far, and I'm sure you'll hear from speakers subsequent that it really is important to have that coordination and collaboration at regional level because the context within which we are looking to adapt and mitigate has a huge Geological context associated with it some areas have a particular need for capacity building while others have other Priorities that they wish to pursue through through the network So go and is organized within nine regional hubs and we are currently developing some more hubs And as you'll see OA Africa is one of those hubs and we've heard a little bit about that already You've heard from Naira who's one of our co-leads in OA Africa You'll be hearing from Shek as well and a third co-lead is Rohan But as you'll see from OA Africa launched in 2015 Representing 210 members from 28 countries. There's still a lot of Africa that we don't reach There's still a lot of work to be done and a lot of capacity to be built in this country So in this in this continent cross its huge continent and also it's important to understand that Although our Africa is a great mechanism for coordinating We still need to have that intercontinental regional Organization as well to understand the contextual needs and of particular regions within Africa itself So stepping forward as well in terms of adaptation and mitigation. It's really important that scientists Think about the purpose of doing ocean acidification research the purpose of the data that we're creating and How how it is that we're going to use knowledge and data to be able to create better outcomes For those people who are relying on the marine ecosystem and the ocean acidification research for sustainability program is another Coordination mechanism by which we can kind of bring people together to allow them to do the work in the context of knowing Where it is that work is is aiming for what does what does the future look like? What is a great future look like? and These high-level aspirations and outcomes to land on the ground with real people taking real actions so so it's So that's why yeah, that's why at Goan. We invest so heavily in creating this regional structure So with that I'd like to to to leave my presentation for today Clearly ocean acidification is a huge challenge for Those communities who rely on marine existence right around the world There are there are effective structures in place We need to use them But we also need to ensure that we we create the environment in which we can generate the data that we need to Sustain healthy healthy marine ecosystems and the people that live and depend upon them thank you very much Steve for these insights into the Global ocean acidification Observation network and it only functions because of the many many regional hubs We are having and their contribution and it's very important to to emphasize that all this collaboration is done without funding it's Done just because people are enthusiastic because they know they need to act to combat ocean acidification So it's it's an initiative that is run without central funding and it really needs to be acknowledged So we thank all the regional hubs that make Goa on happen though Thank you all of you in case you are watching and or following us on on YouTube Thank you very much for your contribution Is that I would like to hand over to Kirsten Isensee and to provide the intervention and the few points of IOC UNESCO and ocean acidification, please Thank you very much And it's it's really great to hear where we actually started and where we are now going to hopefully to a place where we are to have the the capacity and the knowledge within Africa to actually address ocean acidification and ocean acidification in Africa of is Supporting the capacity to actually measure and also combat this impact is a priority for IOC UNESCO within our Yeah The government social graphic commission of UNESCO we have 150 member states and we are acting already more than 20 years or almost 20 years Okay, I'm doing it like this Almost 20 years now in the field of ocean acidification in the first ocean in the high sea a two world conference Actually happened at the IOC and the community was very small and in this row now more than 1,000 or almost 1,000 members Africa is a general Priority for UNESCO so our activities really focusing that and That works really spans from Humphill Algae blooms Blue Carbon and of course ocean acidification But why are we also really acting on ocean acidification there are two global calls for ocean acidification data actually out there The first one is a sustainable development Goal target 14.3 another goal 14 which addresses minimize and address the impact of ocean acidification includes including to enhance scientific cooperation at all levels and this is has a proxy and indicator for which IOC is custodian agency means we have to collect data on a regular basis for that average marine acidity pH measured it Agreed suit of representing sampling stations So there we already have this call for regular reporting all over the world and UN member states signed up for that The next one is also within the global climate observing system We have those essential climate variables and we From IOC all to provide these data to the world meteorological Organization on a regular basis every year and the state of the climate was just released as well on the Earth's info day I think and there we all to report on a regular basis the same data So these are a line that we are not trying to actually to report different things in different Places and that because ocean acidification is critical for sustainable development and it's part of climate change so those two there react and As we've seen there is So far still limited capacity and therefore some activities Where IOC of course with its partners Go on and also within OAS we are really We were active and are active in particular two projects right now as Sam Provided said earlier there was an initiative led by the OMSA also supported by IOC on increasing the capacity on the east coast of Africa in the western Indian Ocean and there We have now. I think at least the seed planted for continuous measurements on the other hand There's also still what Sam as well showed these capacity need especially in the in the on the west coast and so we were now supporting as well in Nigeria and Koteva and Which is none of us cause Madagascar with some additional instrumentation and also training and a big training online training will be launched early next year for All Africa and I think that is a big stepping stone Which is a little bit copy paste what we did in the Pacific Islands and Well, he had a big impact I think on on policymakers and also on the scientific community So all these capacity building Not of course not only done by us, but mainly as well by the OICC go on and and partners Results now in some regular reporting and this is here. Just a map of where we have SCG data 13.3.1 data this year and you can see there's there are now some blue Spots in Africa as well. I'm quite happy about that, but main Yeah, best parts of the ocean and best parts of the of the world are still gray and don't have any measurements Provided to the UN However, there's some good news and we started with that more lessons to solve 19 There was not one African country which provided data to this collection and now in 2021 we had seven countries already providing data Observation data for oceanification. I think shows really how this capacity building resulted in an additional measurements and really in sustained observation another and just very quickly you see as well as coordinating the UN Decade of Ocean Science and we have within that of course the the OIS program but also there is now a Ocean Decade Africa road map and this can be found on the IOC Website which has nine priorities and it's very tiny and you can't read it and I also can't remember them all but there are priorities on the digital train which I think is very important for us as well to have the predictions and to have the online Data resources and models available for for ocean acidification. There is a priority on ocean and human health seen how important ocean is The impact how important ocean acidification can be in the reduction of human well-being and we also have a And and priority on observation. So ocean acidification is definitely and should act in many of these areas for Africa and I think they are now Especially as well after the latest conference the biomes are conference in South Africa. I think many things will happen but as Said before I think we and we all agree there that in the on the West Coast of Africa we still need to act and we have to act fast to also Really create a level of of capacity which makes Possible to also act Thank you very much Thank you very much Kirsten for pointing the importance to the To the availability of long-term Monitoring data, but also the essential ocean variables for reporting to the Implementation achievement of the SDG 14 and also for assessing the impact of ocean acidification so We need to develop the capacity especially in Africa to provide these really essential data information so now The next Intervention is given as a video as Patricia savoury could not make it to to cop Could you play the video please contribution today? What I would like to focus on is really bridging the gap between social natural sciences in ocean acidification in Africa And I believe this is a very key topic for addressing Resilience and understanding also the way to go for adaptation and medication considering of course that Africa is a huge continent with very diverse type of community and indigenous people and traditions so we are very aware in that human and marine interaction is a very complex Systems and we need to consider also the diversity of the system and now Do people response potentially to climate change to ocean acidification and in general to environmental change? So talking about the marine human interaction in Africa I like to give of course an important example of Fisheries and fisheries is a key sector of course for the co-coaster communities and also for countries around the coast of Africa and Unfortunately, we saw that the projected changes in maximum catch potential and the climate change including ocean acidification Is actually showing a drastic decrease you about 30% in the tropic Regions and with some reason like in Central West Africa like the Gulf of Guinea Where these drastic decrease has been projected to be even more important as you can see here It is of course is as a major issue that Require adaptation and also require some resilience from the coastal community and transition So when we talk about fisheries also wanted to highlight that we talk about Small-scale fisheries. Small-scale fisheries is actually the sector that is the most important in fisheries 90% of the world fisheries even though small-scale fisheries is key for global food security also particularly in Africa and And of course is that we know also that the marine resources coming from the ocean including fisheries are treading back by ocean acidification and climate change With Different changing in the ecosystems and so on Now I wanted also to move a bit even more focused about what we could do in terms of understanding the resilience in this This transition that is happening due to this rapid change in the marine We need to better understand how different communities respond to this change and also learn from the different communities And I wanted to focus on gender and fisheries also because gender has been in the sector been very much Overlooked Since the rule of women Usually is considered a sector that is very man dominated, but in fact women make up about 50% of the fisheries world force globally However, of course women tend to fish in the different parts of the seascape And so they usually target distant species and all complementary knowledge Of marine resources and this complementary knowledge Of course can be very important to then understand What are the possible way of Removing towards a different or different or new way of fishing In just a final message that I want to deliver here In terms of addressing resilience and bridging the gap between natural and social science But specifically we talk about small scale fisheries and also the gender The gender perspective on climate change is that this integrated approach with the target natural data from from local communities Compare also with this perception of changes and Data social data from from the same the same Environment can better understand and allow to better understand this marine human interaction Also learning from local strategy And we also can learn much more about how do people govern the sea in which What are the different ways to do it and and so specifically how they preserve and make their Fishery resources sustainable and how do people use their ecological knowledge to interact with the marine environment Also the final message is that we really need to there's no time very much left and we need to accelerate this collaboration for strategic future regional Laboratories marine school and also initiative aggressive relevant integrated social and natural science research My contribution today Well, thank you for this intervention which was pre-recorded Unfortunately due to technical limitations, we couldn't bring the speakers in virtually So we had to pre-record the interview so that we can't we can't have any interaction with the virtual speakers I apologize for that our last intervention On the pre-recorded video will be given by Shaq Sharif. Could you please play the video? I've been told that we cannot hear Okay, so At this point we are stopping the presentations and are going straight into The discussion so Naira may I address a question to you? But the others could answer as well that can step step in So my question to you is the region in north africa is unique on the continent as it has coastlines on several oceans It's the atlantic ocean as well as the Mediterranean and the the red seas So what are unique? challenges facing north africa related to ocean acidification And what are the most important mitigation adaptation adaptation measures that could be taken to help north africa? resilience Is really bridging the gap Location and they are located surrounded by the red sea to the east and Extended to the atlantic ocean to the west and Surrounded by north of the Mediterranean coast from the north And this lake This coastal area is highly impacted by the invasion of other fissures So The biodiversity in this area in addition to the positions discharged from different land-based sources such as nile river and other land-based sources from The other cantors In addition, the higher population intensity in the coastal cities More than 65 percent of the population of each country increases the intensity of the impact of these Higher population and human activities of the coastal area which maximizes the impact of ocean acidification Lead to the shift in biodiversity and in addition for the real change In fact the fisheries resources in this also in this area also is more over when we Look for the impact of ocean acidification and biodiversity shift and migration of the Local fissures into the close in the north where Whereas the temperature is lower as a result of increasing temperature. This is the most of the Placing challenges for North african cantors for the proposed ways for the mitigation and Adaptation for the mitigation. It's the only solution to decrease the carbon dioxide emissions through direction from Fuel energy and to solar energy when energy and other sources of renewable energy and clean energy Which are environmentally friendly And that's all to decrease the carbon dioxide emission for the mitigate for this is for mitigation and I think for adaptation it's to Uh adapt and to be directed to More aquaculture techniques and more adaptation for The coastal area which is impacted by the seawater intrusion To have more implementation plans for this area and to move for more green biotechnology and also for mitigation To the best of my knowledge that most of the boards in the Mediterranean coast for the northern african cantors converted into green boards for Low carbon and low energy moving to renewable energy and decreasing the pollution I think this is a way forward that northern african cantors took for Decreasing the impacts of oceanification on their resources Thank you very much My next question goes to steve You have mentioned the goa on regional networks and That they are driven by the individual regions and share some of the unique aspects of the ocean acidification africa regional hub So from your experience with the other regional hubs What Are some best practices from other regional hubs that could be important for the oa africa hub Okay, thank you very much for that question. Um, I think my response to that is very much about Goa, Goa is not an entity that endeavors to impose Structure or rules or implications from from unhide It's always been a bottom-up community driven network of individuals Who want to collaborate and work together and share experience and share expertise Because they value the the um, the experiences of working with each other in the knowledge and And and they can gain from that The key thing I think for oa africa and for all of our hubs Is the priorities need to be set by the members of the hub and we've always been very very um We've been very strict in that the hubs themselves are created by and for the people in the region Who are looking to develop the work within that region? Clearly within uh within africa within africa being such a huge content and there could be Structures put in place that allow that to to happen in an even more Finely distributed geographical sense. So we've heard about some of the Requirements and needs in in in north africa Whereas west africa may have a different set of priorities and agendas which is which is absolutely great And we we we have the flexibility in the system to allow that to happen The other thing I would also say is that just because you're a member of a hub It doesn't mean you can't be members of other hubs as well And we've seen the strong synergies that exist between oa africa and the Mediterranean hub in the fact that you share We're sharing an area of research in a place we want to to explore But then again, there's elements of north africa which actually share very strong synergies with other parts of africa in terms of Communicating to to continental level policies to understanding capacity building So what I would say to oa africa is very much it's about and it's exactly what oa africa does It's about set the priorities, which are your priorities Use the goan structure and interactions with other hubs to facilitate your achievement of those And and and really focus in on on on on being Sort of community led Needs and aspirations. Thank you very much. Could you quickly answer? What would be the benefits of Scientists in africa getting involved with the oars program as you mentioned it in your presentation The oars program is effectively a A roadmap of where we feel ocean acidification research needs to be What that will then depend upon are Scientists or not just scientists ocean professionals right across the world Looking at the active activities that they undertake to be able to see how they might be able to contribute To the to the to delivering against the outcomes which have been proposed by the the oars The oars program the benefits are Is the fact that again? It's back to what sam said about the single pebble lifting A single finger lifting the pebble is that in order to really be able to move forward at the speed at which we need to move It's about back to those four C's. It's about collaboration. It's about Capacity building it's about It's it's about It's about the communication and and it's really about the co-design as a well as well So the benefit of being part of oars Is we provide a vehicle to allow that to happen and to really release your research into making greater impact Thank you very much my next question goes to not surprisingly to kirsten easonse and I would like to ask you as a custodian for the stg-143 and ocean acidification IOC unesco is responsible for gathering the data related to indicator 14 3.1 What are some of the difficulties the african region is facing in reporting towards this indicator? And do you have any examples of success stories for the region? Yes, I think I partly answered that in my presentation, but um, so clear needs are still having So in case there are observations, there's a need to have better data management. There's a need to have better instructions on What to do with my data and where do I deliver them? Also, there is definitely still for 14.3 point one It's currently just a one time measurement per year. So there needs to be Um, really the seasons need to be observed really identifying the natural variability is still one of the major threads also one big threat is actually leaving Uh, for continuous measurements leaving the equipment outside. There's a risk of um, that instrumentation gets stolen Um, which is all over the world, but it's really something we also identified and really going back to the individuals that um, the good talents which are also being Yeah, which are there in africa actually to maintain them in their home country and I think there we also really have to support Yeah countries in africa to be able to maintain the talents and to actually keep the talents they have and which were Also supported by this capacity training Thank you very much and uh at the end of our session I would like to play The video recording of sheikh sharif we overcame the technical difficulties and that would be a nice final To our side event, please Good morning everyone. My name is sheikh sharif. I am from ligeria west africa and one of the three group chairs of the ocean acidification africa network Where is the Gulf of guinean located in west africa? The Gulf of guinean spends 17 nations from senigado angura is a strategic region because of its abundant hydrocarbon mineral and fishery resources The Gulf of guinean contains 4.5 percent of the world's proven oil reserve and 2.7 percent of the world's proven natural gas Reserved accounting for 60 percent of africa's oil production These resources among others support the region's economic mortality and in the upcoming years its economic potential is anticipated to rise However, it tends to its stability and prosperity must be addressed before it can achieve and take use of this Recently the west africa hub commonly referred to as the Gulf of guinean ocean acidification network As and back on developing original strategies to support the creation of the west africa ocean acidification research center And the essential key objective will be to address problems Leading to the loss of ecosystem services due to deteriorating ocean and coastal health caused by ocean acidification climate change pollution And resource use undermining sustainable development And now there are a lot of barriers to addressing these problems And these are inadequate legislation and gaps in matching of all the same related ocean acidification Limited institutional capacity and coordination Emitted awareness and knowledge of the value of coastal and marine ecosystem Insufficient public and private financing Poverty and no robust monitoring integrated And to achieve these there are full over 18 objectives that have have been identified by the ocean acidification african network objective one Is enhanced science-based understanding of drivers impacting coastal and marine ecosystem health and services objective two Enhanced circular approaches in addressing marine pollution objective three Is the effective performance and integrated management of coastal and marine ecosystems And finally objective four is enhanced education and public awareness However, the success of the global ocean acidification observing network Which has led to a change in how society views the ocean in this relationship to the ocean Will be built upon by the west africa ocean acidification research center We expect at the end of this process If and when this center is established We have an improved management of coastal and marine ecosystem And poverty reduction about diversity climate change protection and sustainable development And all over the region is to include A focus on oceanographic process Regional policy actions in times to the observation Most importantly regional policy action which has to do with scientists and policy makers speaking On the common language and there should be needs To consider in the scientific advice needed to guide national and regional policy tackle The major challenges we face today Due to the complexity of the issues addressed by the strategy We are developing which include food Nutritional security global health Ocean acidification and climate change as well as the merit of ways in which these issues are Interconnected and integrated multidisciplinary approach is required Also, most importantly to consider as an overall for the region is our information Gathering on ocean acidification Meeting to an increase in involvement of developing states which are of course today for the strawberry West Africa There has been A lack of availability of instrumentation which has hampered the efforts Of most developing countries in the research organization stipulated To make sustained measurements in response to global needs The global ocean acidification observable network has developed Simplified methods and equipment kits for measuring water quality pH, total alkalinity, etc Which is commonly referred to as the geo air the go on In a box which happened this should be the scientists from system countries in Africa And that includes the Pacific regions and in America So due to these outcomes, we are hoping to support the global ocean acidification And their all strategy ocean acidification research for sustainability to ensure that our data Are gathered sufficiently and increase of course increasing the involvement of developing states Especially with focus on the West African origin and we're hoping to do all of this through the West Africa Ocean acidification research center which has been proposed by the West Africa Um I thank you and I look forward to inviting you forever Thank you Thank you very much to Shek Sharif for this very important intervention Since the the hour we are having is over. I would like to thank The speakers of this panel myra steve and and kirsten and also the virtual contributions or the recorded interventions very much and I would Provide you with the the take-home message of this side event that scientists ocean acidification professionals Original communities in Africa I encourage you to reach out to to go on to the global ocean Observation network and the regional hubs to us and to the ocean acidification international Coordination center if you need any support And I would like to close the side event with the african saying Alone you walk fast But together we walk further


U.S. officials really, really want you to know the U.S. is the world's leader. In response to questions he received during a press conference on Monday about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin cementing a new era in strategic partnership between China and Russia, the White House National Security Council's John Kirby made no fewer than seven assertions that the U.S. is the leader of the world. Here are a few excerpts from his comments. 1. The two countries have grown closer, but they are both countries that chafe and bristle at U.S. leadership around the world. 2. And in China's case in particular, they certainly would like to challenge U.S. leadership around the world. 3. But these are not two countries that have, you know, decades-long experience working together in full trust and confidence. It's a burgeoning of late based on America's increasing leadership around the world and trying to check that. 4. Peter, these are two countries that have long chafed, as I said to Jeff, long chafed at U.S. leadership around the world and the network of alliances and partnerships that we have. 5. And we work on those relationships one at a time because every country on the continent is different, has different needs and different expectations of American leadership. 6. That's the power of American convening leadership. You don't see that power out of either Russia or China. 7. But one of the reasons you're seeing that tightening relationship is because they recognize that they don't have that strong foundation of international support for what they're trying to do, which is basically challenge American leadership around the world.  Propagandists and empire managers often take advantage of this glitch in our wet wear, which is always what's happening when you hear them repeating key phrases over and over again that they want people to believe. You saw another repetition of this line recently at an online conference hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce in which the US Ambassador to China asserted that Beijing must accept the US as the leader of the region China happens to occupy. US Empire managers are of course getting very assertive about the narrative that they are the world's leader because that self-appointed leadership is being challenged by China and the nations which support it with increasing openness like Russia. Most of the major international news stories of our day are either directly or indirectly related to this dynamic, wherein the US is struggling to secure unipolar planetary domination by thwarting China's rise and undermining its partners. The message they are putting out is, this is our world. We are in charge. Anyone who claims otherwise is freakish and abnormal and must be opposed. Why do they say the US is the leader of the world instead of its ruler anyway? I'm unclear on the difference as practically applied. Is it meant to give us the impression that the US rules the world by democratic vote? That this is something the rest of the world consented to? Because I sure as hell don't remember voting for it. And we've all seen what happens to governments which don't comply with US leadership. I'm not one of those who believe a multipolar world will be a wonderful thing. I just recognize that it beats the hell out of the alternative, that being increasingly reckless nuclear brinkmanship to maintain global control. The US has been in charge long enough to make it clear that the world order it dominates can only be maintained by nonstop violence and aggression, with more and more of that violence and aggression being directed toward major nuclear armed powers. The facts are in and the case is closed. US unipolar hegemony is unsustainable. The problem is that the US empire itself does not know this. This horrifying trajectory we're on toward an atomic age world war is the result of the empire's doctrine that it must maintain unipolar control at all costs, crashing into the rise of a multipolar world order. It doesn't need to be this way. There's no valid reason why the US needs to remain in charge of the world and can't just let different people in different regions sort out their own affairs like they always did before. There's no valid reason why governments need to be brandishing Armageddon weapons at each other instead of collaborating peacefully in the interest of all humankind. We're being pushed toward disaster to preserve American leadership around the world and I for one do not consent to this.


Echo and Narcissus, I'm in my echo apartment, the apartment with the debris and echoes of a previous life, a life that ended in my mid-thirties surrounded by memories entombed and rarefied in paper. This is my echo apartment and the apartment that you are used to is my Narcissus apartment. Echo and Narcissus, I apologize for the lighting, here it's always very, very sunny and very difficult to get the right mixture of artificial lighting and natural lighting. So today's topic is gut bacteria, the gut microbiome, what goes on in your intestines. Does it somehow interface with your brain? And if it does, what are the outcomes? A hint, borderline personality disorder is intimately connected to your gut bacteria. Yes, I knew it would capture your attention. But before we proceed, I have an address to make, fellow non-countrymen, Germans and Germanites. The German people have been accused of everything imaginable under the sun, but they've never been accused of having a sense of humor. So my apologies for attempting a feeble joke in the previous video that I've made, feeble joke in German. Having made the joke, like the USSR in 1941, I have been besieged by an invading army of gloating and gleeful Schadenfreude nitpickers, Semvaknien, they kept telling me. It's not Guten tag alles, it's Guten tag alle, or Guten tag une alle. Yes, I know, fellow Germans, I know. But this was a joke, alles in German means everything. So when I say Guten tag alles, I'm actually saying a good day, everything, because the narcissist perceives other people as objects, as things, and so the appropriate usage in German would be alles, not alle. Got it? Now, forward march! Okay, Schwanpanim and Schochanim, even Germans. As I said, today we're going to discuss a fascinating topic. We are beginning to realize that the brain is only one element, one component in our mental health, as far as our body is concerned. Every system or every subsystem interacts with every other subsystem to produce an emergent phenomenon, an epiphenomenon known as mental health or mental illness. Now, in the science of epidemiology, the Golden Standard is randomized clinical trial, but these are very rare. The proxy is known as Mendelian randomization. It's a method used to measure variation in genes in order to interrogate their effects on the body. So we approximate what goes on in the body by studying the genetic composition and makeup of people. So when I use Mendelian randomization, you will know what I'm talking about. Let's delve right in. First of all, this is a literature review. I would like to recommend a recent article published in, I think, 2022 in Molecular Psychiatry. It's a publication, the publisher is Springer, and the article is titled The Gut Microbiome in Mental Health, Advances in Research and Emerging Priorities, because authored by Andrew Shubridge, Jocelyn Chu, Alice Martin, and other non-pronounceable names, Vol. 27 Molecular Psychiatry. This is the best overview that I came across. Now, other articles are mentioned in the literature. In the description, the description is under the video, not over the video. In the description, you will find literature. Another article I refer to is Gut Microbiome Brain Axis and Inflammation in Temperament, Personality and Psychopathology. It was published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 44, April 2002, and the authors are Sumich, Heim, Lenzoni, and others. The authors in this article, this second article, postulates the temperament, personality, and even psychopathology are biologically grounded, and the biology of these things exceeds the brain. The brain is only one component, however crucial. In the absence of other components, there are no psychopathologies. So psychopathology, mental illness, is a collaboration, not to say a collusion, between various systems of the body, most notably the neurological system, the brain and neurons in the brain, and the gastrointestinal system. In our gut, in our intestines, there are 4,000 species of microbiota, of bacteria. Not only bacteria, to be very technical, these are not only bacteria, but okay, let's call them bacteria. There are 4,000 species of these things. They inhabit our body, they influence every aspect of human physiological functioning. So why not? Mental health and mental illness.  This is known as the dualistic problem. It hails back to the car in the 17th century, like mind-body problem. It's as if we have a body and then we have a mind, and the mind is divorced from the body, is not a part of the body, is not even influenced by the body, and of course we know now that it's very wrong. Many trauma-based, many trauma therapies are based on mind-body techniques. The body does affect the mind, and if it affects the mind for the better, it should be able to affect it for the worse. There is a bidirectional relationship between the gut microbiome and brain function that is established beyond doubt. The gut environment, for example, directly influences limbic function via the vagal nerve. It modulates effect and stress responsibility. So when we are stressed, when we are emotional, let alone hyperemotional, our gut bacteria are to blame partly. The effects of this stress and stress affect the ecology of the gut. They affect the ecosystem of the gut. They change the composition and the ratios and the frequencies of the various bacteria. This in turn creates a vicious cycle. This bacteria now affect the brain, which in turn experiences stress, which in turn affects the gut bacteria. Behaviors change, diet, social interaction, introversion, extroversion, agreeableness, numerous other behaviors, defiance, recklessness, all these behaviors involve an intricate feedback loop between our gastrointestinal system and the brain. The gut microbiome modulates the release of inflammatory molecules and hormones.  It's not only neural pathways that are formed, but the entire brain deforms, changes shape. And so the development of gut microbiome starts from gestation, in pregnancy. Even as embryos, we are beginning to absorb bacteria from the maternal environment in the womb and we are beginning to develop our own gut bacteria. Birth, especially birth, natural birth, through the birth canal, infects the emerging newborn with bacteria. Therefore, the newborn, as it sweeps through the birth canal and the mother's vagina, swallows literally bacteria. And this bacteria inhabit the newborn's intestines. During childhood, during adulthood and into old age, this bacteria continue to evolve and to reflect in their composition and interrelationships, the temperament, personality, psychological well-being of the individual involved. Even sexual differentiation and other psychological functions during puberty are the outcomes of gut bacteria. There's a vulnerability to developmental, psychiatric and neurological disorders if the gut microbiome is disturbed, if there is what we call dysbiosis. So what about nutrients? What about food and eating? There is no difference in principle between foods and medications, none. We put something into our gastrointestinal tract and through the gastrointestinal tract, the elements and the components of whatever we have put in are disseminated through the bloodstream everywhere, with the exception of the brain to some extent. So foods are medicines. They are differently packaged medicines. We don't conceive of them as medicines, but they are medicines. They contain, for example, nutrients and micronutrients, which affect gut function, which create or subdue inflammation, fatty acids do this, for example. As we said, gut function and inflammation are intimately connected with temperament and personality. This has been established in clinical and non-clinical groups in multiple studies, but these relationships reflect not only the influence of the microbiome on psychology, but the influence of the psychology on the microbiome. It's a two-way street. It's a never-ending loop. The organism explores the environment, seeks rewards, for example, tasty food, socially interacts. It develops food preferences and so on and so forth, and by interacting and assimilating the environment, because when we eat food, we are putting part of the environment inside our bodies. When we interact with people, we are putting part of the environment inside our bodies. People's smells, the molecules that people emit, HPA molecules and others, they're all digested by us, ingested by us. They all penetrate and invade our bodies. People invade in each other's bodies, and so this internalization, introjection, if you wish, of the physical environment and the social environment, they in turn reconstruct the gut microbiome, which in turn affects the brain. No wonder talk therapy is that effective. So microbiome status is directly linked to psychological function. And here's the thing. Our bodies are gigantic zoos. Only 1% of the combined human and microbial DNA in our bodies is human. Yes, you heard me correctly. Only 1% is human. 99% of the DNA in our bodies is not human, and that includes 100,000 ancient viruses embedded in our cells. We are the world. We are a reflection of the total chain of being internalized, put together to become what we call an individual. Individuals are actually colonies of hundreds of thousands of life forms. And so temperament and personality are fictitious constructs. I've been railing against the constructs of personality itself for many, many years. I don't believe, I believe these are totally counterfactual, they're wrong. Temperament and personality are in flux all the time. They reflect perceived threats, and then we become neurotic. They reflect social interactions, and then we become extroverted or introverted, agreeable or not. They reflect the environment, and then we are open or not open. So interactions, interrelatedness, we are the confluence of numerous processes. We are like Venn diagrams. We are the common area in the two circles or three circles. So the resulting physiological and behavioral changes influence the gut microbiome community, including the genetic components of microbial diversity, biodiversity. And so this way, through these vectors, the gut microbiome functionality is affected. In short, when we imbibe the environment, when we drink it and eat it and smell it, inhale it or whatever, we're affecting our gut microbiome, which in turn interacts with our brains and changes them structurally and functionally. And this may be the explanation for the remarkable individual differences in gut microbiome diversity and composition. And why people have different physical and psychological states of health. The gut microbiota influences temperament and personality via bidirectional communication with the brain, as I said. But the communication is often direct. For example, cranial nerve X is directly linked to the intestines. The immune system, the endocrine system, these pathways go through the gastrointestinal system and are modulated and modified by it. Everything I'm telling you has been substantiated in studies. The gut and the microbial community in the gut and the intestines represent the missing link probably between psychological traits and psychological health and behaviors. The gut contains 10 to the 13th power microorganisms. They are anywhere between 1,000 and 4,000 unique bacterial species. The numerous, there's several major phyla, about four major phyla. So we have firmacutes, we have bacteriodeeds, we have actinobacteria and we have proteobacteria. These are the four families, shall we say. As I said, infants receive most of the microbiome via their mothers. Here's another major contribution of the mother to actually mental health mediated via physiological microbial vector. But the microbiome evolves over life. It's much more complex when you're 40 than when you're four. So how can we explain the emergence of early life temperament, the vestiges of personality and even personality disorders, for example, during early teenage years? If the microbiome is incomplete, how does it have the effects that it does? It seems that psychological developmental growth and evolution, including the evolution and growth and development, the unfortunate development of psychopathology, it seems that these incremental gradual trajectory reflects the fact that the microbiome is evolving. Between the ages of 18 and 27 months, also the ages where there's separation and individuation. The infant temperament is very, very protean, that infant is informed, is half-baked, is a work in progress. And the microbiome phylogenetic diversity in the infant is such that the effects it has on the brain is urgency and extroversion. What I've just told you is an amazing thing because it implies that gut bacteria are the ones that modulate the brain, structure the brain, affect the brain in a way that causes extroversion, urgency. In other words, gut bacteria push us as infants to explore the world, to separate from mommy and to individuate. Gut bacteria make sure through the brain, so they are using the brain. The gut bacteria are using the brain. Gut bacteria make sure using the instrument of the brain that we become extroverted sufficiently to be able to learn about the world and develop a workable internal working model. Now, Richard Dawkins suggested that we are the slaves of our genes. We are nothing but gene containers or gene conveyors. Similarly, one can easily construct a case that we are nothing but slaves to our gut bacteria, that we are nothing but containers, giant warehouses of gut bacteria, an ecosystem with the self-delusion of self-awareness and separateness. In boys, urgency, extroversion has been associated with overall diversity and relative abundance of certain types of femicutes and bacteria deets. So there is a direct correlation between certain types of bacteria, not all gut bacteria, but specific subtypes, families, phyla of gut bacteria, and extroversion and urgency, especially in boys. Here's another argument concerning the difference, the innate differences between boys and girls. It's not true that we are all the same, absolutely not true. And the evolution of these two phylas, these two families of bacteria reflects age, is connected to age, connected to diet. Generally, the relationship between phylogenetic diversity and urgency, extroversion, is unaffected lifelong as long as these two families are dominant and maintained when they become the minority or subdued by other types of bacteria, including very bad bacteria like rostridium. Then there is introversion and withdrawal and avoidance. Interesting, isn't it? Microbiome also affects personality in adults, not only in children. Gamma proteobacteria, for example, including, by the way, pathogens.   So gamma proteobacteria are associated, for example, with neuroticism. And the belief is that they induce inflammation. Inflammation crawls somehow into the brain, affects it somehow. We are not quite sure and this results in neuroticism, but the correlation is extremely high between specific gut bacteria and inflammation and neuroticism. Similarly, major depressive disorder, same vector, same story, same clinical picture. Conscientiousness is characterized, for example, by lower proteobacteria and higher lacno-spiracea, another type of bacteria. Bacterial diversity is associated with openness, agreeableness, you know, these qualities or traits somehow reflect the composition of bacteria in our intestines. The limbic and executive functions are intimately connected to the microbiome. There's a relationship between the gut microbiota and negative emotionality or negative affectivity or even fear. This increases with age and because the limbic region or the limbic networks change, you know, the differential sub-region development of limbic networks, responses to threat, fear responses, fear emotions, they change with age. And similarly, gut microbiota changes with age. So we know that gut bacteria affect the frontal medial temporal connections. They modulate the neuroendocrine system, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, HPA axis, and so on and so forth. This is established already. What we don't know if this is causation or correlation, we don't know which affects what. We don't know if A affects B or B affects A or there is a C which affects both. We don't know, but there is such a powerful correlation that we can no longer ignore these findings and pretend that there's no connection between our midsection and our blob up here. Development of limbic regions, for example, the amygdala, these regions, development begins soon after conception. There's progressive structural and functional segregation between subregions, even prior to birth. So gut bacteria play a role even then. And again, inflammation is a critical factor. Inflammation somehow negates our physiological defense system. It survives somehow, the attacks by our immune system. Inflammation is persistent, resilient, and systemic. We don't quite know what is the role of inflammation, what is the exact role. We are beginning to realize that inflammation is probably the major process, both physiologically and as far as mental illness is concerned. Adaptive inflammation collaborates with the microbiome in our guts to affect the registration of environmental threats and opportunities. Inflammation biases our perception, promotes harm avoidance, and facilitates recovery from illness. We are beginning to reconceive of inflammation. It's actually a positive process. Gassen and Hill suggested that there is a specific adaptive role for inflammation in social perception, punishment, reward, and associated personality traits. Similarly, the immune system is massively affected. As far as endocrine function, there's a complex relationship between the endocrine, enteric, and immune systems that influence this relationship's influence, physiological and physical health. Hormones act as bidirectional conduits of communication between the microbiome in the gut and the brain. The gut produces hormones, actually. Hormones impact temperament. We've known this for decades. We've known about the connection between hormones, personality, and vulnerability to psychopathology. Nothing new in this. But what is new is the realization that the intestines may be the center of hormonal production, not the brain, not even the kidneys. So for example, serotonin is manufactured 90% in the gut and only 10% in the brain, which explains why antidepressants suck. OK, what about sex? Sex steroid hormone levels in humans are correlated with gut microbial composition and diversity. Their animal studies show a transference of gut microbiota from male to female during intercourse. Section differentiation is literally determined by the bacteria in our guts. With regards to prebiotics and probiotics, meta-analysis suggests that probiotics do affect significantly mood in clinical populations, but not in non-clinical populations.  But if you're healthy, mentally healthy, find me one, then the effect will be either muted or non-designable. Some positive findings exist with regards to non-clinical populations, but they are not decisive. Petrochemical workers, for example, when they consume probiotic yogurt or supplement with several species, their levels of depression, anxiety, and stress abate. Prebiotics are more debatable. So there are several associations between gut microbiome, temperament, personality, and psychopathology across the lifespan, even before you're born. Direction of these relationships is not known. We don't know, as I said, what causes what. The correlation is undeniable. There is a role for gut microbes. There is a role in temperament and personality. The diversity and the composition of the microbiome in the gut somehow influences not only mood, affect emotions, depression, anxiety, et cetera, et cetera. They affect social functioning, environmental exploration during separation and individuation phase. They affect vulnerability to physical and psychological clinical observable facts and artifacts. These are very strong statements. I refer you to another article, alterations of the gut microbiota in borderline personality disorder. It was authored by Hannah Rösler. There are Flasbeck and others. And I want to read to you what they have to say. Again, you can find everything in the literature, literature section in the description under the video. This particular article is lifted from Journal of Psycho-Somatic Research, July, 2022. So the authors have this to say. A substantial number of studies has shown that the microbiota are altered in several psychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and eating disorders. As regards to major depressive disorder, for example, actinobacteria were found to be increased, whereas bacteriodeids were decreased in relation to other phyla, other families. Some studies suggested decreased microbial diversity in major depressive disorder patients. In addition, clinically active major depressive patients seem, active major depression, I'm sorry, seems to be associated with greater alterations of the gut microbiota, in terms of abundance of some bacterial genera compared to patients in remission. As long as there's a flare up of the depression, the gut bacteria composition and diversity is different than when the depression is over. Clearly, when you're depressed, the bacteria in your guts are different than when you're not depressed. This is shocking. A recent meta-analysis continued the authors, reported a relatively inconspicuous alpha diversity as a measure of species diversity of the gut microbiota, but altered beta diversity as a measure of the composition of species relative to one another, particularly less abundance of SCFA-producing bacteria in major mental disorders. In summary, say the authors, studies of the microbiota in psychiatric disorders are promising, as they may offer new insights into the functional connection between the gut and the brain. However, to date, findings are inconclusive, which may reflect the heterogeneity of the clinical population studies and the potential impact of psychotropic medication on the gut microbiota. In the present study, we sought to explore the gut microbiota in females diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. One specific point of interest concerned the potential role of childhood adversity. The gut microbiota begin to develop before birth and continue to mature within the first years of life. Therefore, the impact of early life stress on the gut microbiota may play a role in health outcome. A second objective referred to the confounding effect of psychopharmacology and other medication, a problem which precluded more consistent conclusions in previous studies. Accordingly, say the authors, only unmedicated patients were included in the present study. Our prediction was consistent with the recently published meta-analysis that the gut microbiota composition would differ between BPD borderline patients and healthy controls in terms of better diversity and perhaps SCFA producing bacteria. In addition, we speculated that some taxa would correlate with psychometric dimensions such as disease severity, childhood trauma and experience of chronic stress. In spite of these limitations, the current study is the first to explore the gut microbiota in unmedicated patients with borderline personality disorder. While diversity indices did not differ between the groups, the bacteria-deeds-frimicutes ratio was found to be higher in patients with borderline personality disorder than in controls. So the overall picture was the same, but the ratio between types of bacteria was different in people with borderline personality disorder, especially when controlled for body mass index and depression. Differences in the taxonomic composition of the gut microbiota revealed a potential dysbiosis among SCFA producing bacteria in borderline personality disorder. Another article I would like to refer you to is progress in neuro-psychopharmacology and biological psychiatry. I mean, that's the journal. Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology and biological psychiatry, volume 98. And the article is titled Patho-Ethiology and Pathophysiology of Borderline Personality, Role of Prenatal Factors, Gut Microbiome, Moe and Kappa-Opioid Receptors in Amygdala, PFC, Interactions and so on and so forth. So one of the elements in this study concerned gut bacteria in during gestation, before birth, during pregnancy. What's the role of gut bacteria? During pregnancy, in producing borderline personality disorder, many years later. And the authors say the patho-ethiology and pathophysiology of borderline personality disorder have been relatively underexplored. Consequently, not targeted pharmaceutical treatments or preventative interventions are available. The current article reviews the available data on the biological underpinnings of borderline personality disorder, highlighting a role for early developmental processes, including prenatal stress and maternal dysbiosis, which could lead to borderline personality disorder, patho-ethiology in the newborn. Such factors are proposed to drive alterations in the infant's gut microbiome, in turn modulating amygdala development and the amygdala's two-way interactions with other brain regions. Wow! It means if the gut bacteria of the mother is disturbed, if the mother suffers from dysbiosis, she adversely affects the brain development of her fetus. And the amygdala is damaged and the amygdala's ability to interact and regulate other regions of the brain, which in turn could lead to mental illnesses such as borderline personality disorder, but also psychopathy. Wow! This is wow! The authors continue to say alterations in opioidergic activity, including variations in the ratio of the Mu and Kappa opioid receptors, seem a significant aspect of borderline personality disorder, pathophysiology, contributing to its comorbidities with depression, anxiety, impulsivity and addiction. Stress and dysphoria, say the authors, are commonly experienced in people clustered with borderline personality disorder. The growing body of data, across a host of medical conditions, indicate that stress and mood dysregulation may be intimately associated with gut dysbiosis and increased gut permeability, coupled with heightened levels of oxidative stress and immune inflammatory activity. It urgently requires investigation as to the relevance of such gut changes in the course of borderline personality disorder, symptomatology. Imagine if the problem is in the intestines, we could effectively medicate borderline personality disorder by altering the composition, diversity, genetics and ratio of gut bacteria. We could just give a pill or a series of pills and the borderline will be gone. This is an amazing direction of study. The authors continue accumulating data indicate that borderline personality disorder, symptom exacerbations may be linked to cyclical variations in estrogen, in turn decreasing serotonin and local melatonin synthesis, thereby overlapping with the pathophysiology of migraine and endometriosis, which also have a heightened association with borderline personality disorder. Future research directions and treatment implications are indicated. I couldn't agree more. Okay, I hope you had a fun ride with my gut bacteria and realized that we are a holistic system. It's wrong of medicine and it's wrong of psychology and definitely wrong of psychiatry to isolate a single subsystem and medicate it or treat it or operate on it. Because the body is interconnected. All the systems are interdependent, shape each other, cause each other to function or malfunction, alter everything and above all, our experience of ourselves.


Hey, folks! Many of you will remember that before I started talking about how to visualize climate change data, I spent a fair amount of time talking about the ecological problem and statistical problem of rarefaction and whether or not you should be rarefying your data, what are alternatives to rarefaction. If you haven't seen that before, I'll put a link up here in the video so you can go check out the rest of that series, but wait until you finish this episode before you go do that. Anyway, I have taken that analysis that I did with one dataset and kind of did, you know, in a kind of demonstration type format here on YouTube and I've been trying to formalize it and turn it into an actual paper. Well, because there's been a span of time between when I made those videos and today, some of the packages that I use changed, right? So, vegan was a package that changed and that's some of the arguments and some of the interfaces and some of the output from vegan changed from the version that I used back at the beginning of the year versus now. They released a new version of vegan in the meantime. Also, the computer that I was doing this analysis on for the paper I'm writing is on a high-performance computer cluster and it used a version of breakaway that was actually older than the version of breakaway that I had on my local computer, right? So, if you're getting the idea that versions of these different packages can matter, right? It can affect our interface, the arguments that we give to the functions. It can change the functions themselves, have more functions or fewer functions perhaps. It can change the algorithms kind of under the hood of those functions and change how those functions actually work. And it can also, of course, change the output of those functions. And so, if any of that changes, then it's going to cause our code to break. I know that I am not great about documenting the version of the software that I'm using. I might be doing an analysis on my computer here, on my desk here, right? Using one version, you know, perhaps our version 4.1 and up on the cluster, it might be our version 4.2 and I might have different versions of ggplot in the different places. Most of the time, this doesn't really matter. But again, if we kind of scan forward months or years, that can certainly matter. So I'm going to spend today's episode talking to you about a cool package called RNV that allows you to keep track of your R package versions so that you can always have the correct version of the packages for your project in your project. And that what this also allows you to do is then share your project with somebody else. And they then will also have all the same versions of the packages that you're using as well. This is really good for improving reproducibility in terms of keeping track of the right packages that you're using from the R environment. For today's episode, I'm going to be building off the project that we've been developing for visualizing change in climate data. If you want to get a copy of this project, go down below in the description to a link to a blog post that will get you everything you need. I don't know that you necessarily need a copy of my version of this project to follow along. But you know, if you want to, that would certainly be awesome. All right, so we are in my session of RStudio. You'll know that I'm in the climate vis directory that project, because up here in the upper left corner of the console, it has the path to my climate vis directory. Alternatively, I have another RStudio session running at the same time that is in my home directory. Okay, so I'm going to be using these two instances of RStudio. As I go through to illustrate to you how our end works and how we can use it for a project. So first things first, let's go ahead and install our end. And so I'll go ahead up here to install. And then I'll type Rnv to install the Rnv package. Wonderful. So that's installed. One thing I could do would be to type library Rnv. Alternatively, if you don't want to run that library command for some reason, an alternative to library would be to do Rnv colon colon, and then the name of the function that you want to run. So the first command that I'm going to run from Rnv is init. So init is a function that will initialize this project. Again, I'm in my climate change project. So we'll go ahead and run that. So running Rnv init took a while to run. I'm going to come right back to the top and do a little bit of a dissection of what happened when I ran Rnv init. The Rnv init function starts by initializing the project, discovering the package dependencies, it basically looks through all of the R scripts that are in my project directory system, right? So I'm in my project root directory, I'm in this climate vis directory I've got here. And so it's looking in all the files in that directory, as well as the files and all those other directories that I have in here, and looking for any place where I called library to identify that package to install that package, and all of its dependencies, right? So when I call library tidyverse, Rnv init says, ah, we need to install the tidyverse packages. Okay, the next thing it does is copy packages from the cache. And so it identified 27 packages that I need to have dependencies of in this project that I already have installed on my computer. Basically, what we have on our computer is a library directory, typically off of your home directory, where all of our packages are getting installed. What Rnv is doing is creating a library of packages within our project, right? We'll see that here in a moment. But instead of redownloading installing all those packages that we already have installed on our computer, it's basically copying those over into our project library. Next, it goes through and identifies those packages that I didn't have or perhaps had older versions of, and then comes through and installs newer versions of those or just gets them from scratch. And so I have a handful of packages in here that were a bit out of date. And so it goes through and installs all those things or updates them for me. Then it says at the end, the following required packages are not installed lattice and mgcv consider reinstalling these packages before snapshotting the lock lock file. So I'll go ahead and install those. So what we can do is Rnv install. And we can say mgcv that installed. And then we can also do lattice as it suggested. And so now we've got everything installed and we've resolved all those problems. So what we see from Rnv in its output was that it wrote to what's called a lock file. And so this is in my climate viz directory, my project directory, and there's a file now called Rnv lock. And so if you look down here in my files, and go Rnv lock, we then see all of the different packages that are required for this project, right? And so we can see all these different packages, many of these like blob, I've never heard of that package, right? That's getting installed because it's a dependency for something else. And so I don't need to worry about that, right? And again, you can come down through here. And there's, you know, hundreds of lines of dependencies in here, specifying the package name, the version, where it got it from, and some information, like the hash, so that it knows that when it downloads this package again in the future, that it gets the right version, because it'll have the same hash identifier. Anyway, I'm not going to go through all that because I don't know if we look at that that's 1343 lines of stuff that I don't need to bore you with. Okay, so let's go ahead and close that. Some of the other things that were created. We can see in our git history or staging area, actually, that we have a variety of files that were created. So as I already mentioned that are in block, there's also an dot our profile, and the RN directory. So if we look at the dot our profile, so this dot our profile file is run when R is started. And so the first thing that R does is it runs this activate dot R script from the RN directory. And so then if you go into our end, we see that there's a variety of different files in here, including activate dot R, which has a whole bunch of code for loading and making sure you have loaded the right packages and the right versions. You'll also see library and staging. If you look at the dot get ignore file in here, it tells you to ignore the library, the local seller lock, Python and staging, right? So it's ignoring the library and the staging. The library is where we have our R packages, right? And so here, then you can see all the different R packages that go with this project. And again, this is a library directory that's off of my climate vis directory. Okay. And so again, the dot get ignore is nice, because I don't want to be committing all those packages up to GitHub. So I'll go ahead and close this dot our profile file. And I will then go ahead and take a snapshot of my project. So I can do our end colon colon snapshot. So the output tells me that there's three packages that are going to be updated matrix lattice and MGCV lattice and MGCV. You saw me just install with our end install, Matt matrix must have been a dependency of those, right? So do you want to proceed? Yes. And so now it's updated the lock file, right? So one of the things to note is that the snapshot basically gives a save, if you will, of the current packages in your project. And so I could do our end restore. And that will take all my packages back to the previous snapshot, right? And so the snapshot is always a way to take a time capsule, if you will, of the way your project look, I told you that this creates a library path within your project. So if I do dot lib path, so the dot lib paths function gives you a listing of the different directories that are looks for packages. And so what you'll see is that the first place it looks is in my climate vis project, right? The second place it looks is on my computer. So this is like the system library, so packages that are available to everyone using my computer. But that it puts this project library first means that it's going to look there first for say ggplot or dplyr package, any package that I'm using in my project, right? So it's basically putting that before everything else. So if I come back to this other version of our that's again in my home directory and not under the control of our end and do dot lib paths, I then see I've got three paths. So the first is off of my home directory. So users pshloss is my home directory, which is this tilde forward slash right. And then I've got the system wide computer wide library. And then the third is a library that the University of Michigan tax on as well. And so what you can see is that when I'm outside of my project and not under the control or watch of our end, it's going to grab my packages from my home directory library. Whereas again, if I'm in my climate vis project under the watchful high of our end, it's going to grab all those packages from this library that's within climate vis. So that's really cool, right? So for every project I have on my computer, I can have a separate library and keeping track of the different versions of all the different packages that I'm using in those different projects, I might be using three different versions of GG plot to across all those different packages. So you might be thinking like, Well, wouldn't you always want the latest greatest version of GG plot to? Yeah, well, maybe. But sometimes there's only small incremental changes when they release a package. And so I don't really feel the urgency to update that and worry about what other things might change. You know, when I run my scripts, right? So to help illustrate how these paths work and how they're different between the two different instances of R that I have going, I can do find dot packages, find a package and let's do GG plot to. And I see that it's again finding GG plot to when I'm in my climate vis directory within that library. If on the other hand, I come over here and do find dot packages on GG plot to. So what I find when I'm in my home directory actually, is that the version I'm using outside of the climate vis project now is coming from that my workspace library, which was the third path in the output of dot lib paths. Okay, so again, hopefully this illustrates how you can know where it's grabbing the package it's using, right? And so if I were to do like find dot package, dplyr, it's probably the same place. Yeah, it's the same place. Again, if I did it in my climate vis, I'd get dplyr here and I spelled it wrong. I can find it my project library. Let's go ahead and install a couple other packages. You've seen me do this where we did our end install, right? And then I put it in like MGCV. Well, I want to install the Wes Anderson package. And so Wes Anderson is a series of color palettes inspired by movies produced by Wes Anderson, what you can do instead is install dot packages. And we could then put Wes Anderson. And so the RN environment is smart enough to know that install packages is the same as our end install. And so again, we see very similar type of output to what we saw when we did that RN install MGCV, again, downloading installing Wes Anderson and moving it into the cache. And so now I can do find dot package, Wes Anderson, and find it is in my, my project library. If I come to my home and do find dot package, Wes Anderson, it says there's no project called Wes Anderson, right? So Wes Anderson as a package only exists within my project, right? It doesn't exist out here in the rest of our on my computer. So that's again, highlighting that we can install packages and versions of packages only within the project that we're working on. So I've installed that Wes Anderson package into my project. And if I'm in my RN block, and I do Wes Anderson, I don't see anything there. And that's because I haven't taken the snapshot yet of the of the project. So again, I need to do our end snapshot. This then writes to the lock file. I'll go ahead and close the RN block file and reopen it and do another search for Wes Anderson. And nothing is there. And that is most likely because I haven't actually used Wes Anderson anywhere in my project. So I will create a new dummy script that I will put in code and save this as dummy Wes Anderson. And in here, then I'll do library Wes Anderson. And I'll save that. And then I'll go ahead and source code forward slash dummy Wes Anderson runs that everything is good. And now let me do another snapshot. And so now it's saying the following packages will be updated in the lock file, Wes Anderson from nothing to 0.3.6. Do you want to proceed? Yes, I'll do that. It's now been written. And now if I come back up here to my lock file and do a search, I'll probably have to close the RN block file, reopen it and do a search now for Wes Anderson. And there we go. It's been updated into my RN block file. So now I would need to be sure to go ahead and commit all these different changes I've been making, especially after I make those snapshots and the RN block file gets updated. I need to be sure to commit that change so that whenever somebody gets ahold of this in the future, including myself, we have the correct version of those files, right? So I can now go ahead and do commit. And my commit message, I will say, initialize our end control of project. And we'll commit that. I'll close that. And then I will push that up to GitHub. Now on GitHub, I can see that I've got the RN files and directories all pushed up to the repository. What I want to do now is simulate what would happen if you were to get a copy of this project. So I'm going to go ahead and copy this link to the repository. And I'm going to go ahead and create a new project. And we'll do that from version control. And it's get. And so we'll put that there.  And I'm going to put that in my home. So let's come back to my home directory there and we'll do open create project. So this is my new climate viz test project. And as you can see, there's some new output here when we started are. And so it says bootstrapping RN 0.15.5. That's the version of our end I'm using. So it downloaded and installed that it loaded that it then said project libraries out of sync with the lock file, use our end restore to install packages to the lock file. So I'll go ahead and do that. And this now says that we're going to basically install all these new packages. They're going to be updated. And so do you want to do that? And I will say yes. And if this went very quickly, because of course I already have these installed on my computer, it's stored in the cache where it can look for libraries. And it just went ahead and copied all that stuff over, right? So again, if this were you using this version of climate viz, you would be good to go using the same version of the packages that I've been using. More immediately, for my own use, I can develop on my laptop, and I can also develop on my high performance computer, right? I can be pushing things back and forth with version control, using the RN block file to keep track of the different versions I'm using. If I want, I can go ahead and update the version of a package I might be using, or I can downgrade it to use the older version. Again, RNV is really nice as a way to keep track of the different versions of packages that you're using for your project, and to maintain that consistency and reproducibility at the software level. So I see RNV as a great gain, because not only can we keep track of our code and keeping our code reproducible, but we can heighten the reproducibility of that code by also linking to that now, the actual versions that R is using. So it's one thing to say that I'm using dplyr version, whatever, right? But it's another thing to have R enforce that. And I write that down effectively into that lock file, and then R is getting that actual version of that package. And so that enforcement is really nice. And so I don't have to worry about what versions I'm using. One place where this does fall down, however, is on things outside of R, right? And so a lot of our packages depend on things outside of R. So one example that's often used is for our markdown documents, it depends on Pandoc. And so Pandoc is not part of R. And so RNV doesn't install Pandoc. And so that's a challenge, right? The other thing it doesn't keep track of really is the version of R. And so while that lock file says what version of R I'm using, it doesn't actually install whatever version of R that I had been using, right? And so if you're depending on other software outside of R, outside of the R package environment, you're going to have to come up with another solution for that or just, you know, manually keep track of those versions. Please make sure that you subscribe to the channel because in the next episode, I'm going to show you yet another approach to keeping track of different versions of your software. And so this is going to be something using a tool called Kanda, also known as Mamba. They work together. But that will allow us to keep track of all software across our computing environment, not just our packages. Again, I think RNV is really powerful. But it does have these weaknesses that I think Kanda really helps to solve. That being said, Kanda isn't perfect and has a little bit more friction to getting going and maintaining. So I hope that you join me for that next episode. Go ahead and try to use RNV on your own projects. And we'll see you next time.