Welcome to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from the Foundation for Economic Education. My name is Richard Lawrence. Today, on our final episode of the year, 2018, it's been a great year. We have our panel, Anna Jane Perrell, Dan Sanchez, and Mary Ann March. Hello. Welcome all. Hello, hello. How does it feel to have come to this point in 2018, 30-some episodes into the FeeCast? Well, I'm a late joiner, so I would just say honored to be here. You guys have made a wonderful, you've created an environment where I can ask as many questions as I want, and I love hearing all of your voices, which are, you know, each have their own pitch, each have their own opinion. Yes, yes, and it's important that you mention pitch there, because of course, not only can people watch us, but they can also listen to us on Spotify. No, not saying. We're not going to sing, but we're on Spotify, we're on Apple, and we're also on Google. And so if you don't want to see Beardwatch 2018 progress into 2019, you can just listen to the pitches and the sounds and the timbre and all the other vocal qualities that we deliver here every week on the FeeCast. Well, so this week, I'm going to open up our conversation with a question. Are you more or less likely to believe a study if it comes from an institution named Harvard University? Just out of the blue, knowing nothing else about the study, if it's attached to Harvard, is that something that makes it more believable or less? It depends on the department. I was going to say the same thing. Oh, wow. Really? Oh, I'm going to be like, absolutely. Those are smarties. Okay. So with departments that you lend credibility toward at Harvard? Right. So anything with the physical sciences, anything with the word critical studies in it, probably not so much. Very critical and critical studies? Well, you know, anything where it's just really dense jargon and obscurity and nothing's provable and it's just... And nothing is tested after it's published. Right. Right. Let's talk about being uncritical. What about you, Marianne? Harvard, yay or nay? My ears would perk up a little bit, but then I think like Dan, it would depend on the topic. So the jury's out for you. You actually want to read the study before actually making a judgment about it, Ann and Jane? On my best day. Yes. If we're Goldilocks, I'm definitely on the far end of I'll believe anything, whatever you have, it comes from Harvard that must be right. Well, so I wanted to ask that because we have a very popular piece on feedoutorg this week and it opens with Harvard study colon, gender wage gap explained entirely by work choices of men and women. And this is by John Fallon and it's getting a ton of traction on our site and it's a big, big claim. And it seems like people are interested, not only in the subject matter, but also the source. And what it basically finds is in a working paper that some scientists at Harvard issued recently that looks at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which is a heavily unionized rules-based shop, it finds that any kind of discrepancy between the wages of men and women is explained entirely as the title mentions by choice. Well, and it's a very controlled experiment because since it's such a union shop, everything is very regimented in terms of how you can climb the hierarchy within the system. So it's based on seniority. It's just pure seniority and the seniority determines what kind of preference you get to exercise over the routes you take, whether or not you do overtime. There are choices within working at the institution, but it's just based on seniority. And so there's very little room for discrimination because there's very little discretion on the part of it. So basically you're saying the pay is all based on seniority in this study? No, not the pay necessarily. I mean the pay to some extent, but the choices of what kind of work you do. So one of the quotes that it says is that male and female workers of the same seniority have the same choices for scheduling routes, vacation, and overtime. And so what happens is that people make different choices about those things and then it results in a difference in pay that female workers earn 89 cents on the dollar of male workers. And so that says two things. Of course, it speaks directly to the commonly used number of the gender wage gap being 80 cents per every dollar. So in that case that women are making only 80% of what men are making. But it also speaks to the fact that indeed there is a gap. This gap exists even when it is a tightly controlled environment such as a union shop where seniority isn't based on much preference that a boss might exert at all. And the point here is that there might actually be choices that at least these bus drivers are making, these men and these women, that say, you know, look, if it's up to me, I as a bus driver am either going to take the harder routes and then not have to work as much time or I'm going to work more time and do the easier routes. For example, male train and bus drivers worked about 83% more overtime than their female colleagues and were twice as likely to accept an overtime shift. Right. And so they accepted overtime the men did as opposed to the women who just wanted to get work done with and, you know, they ended up making less for it. Or maybe they had other things to do at home. Right. So one of the things that they said is that parenthood turns out to be an important factor for the men too, but in different directions. So fathers are more likely than childless men to want the extra crash from overtime. So family made them work more overtime, whereas mothers were more likely to want time off than childless women. It's interesting. So this all kind of flies in the face a little bit of what we've all been hearing for a long time, unless I assume you're under a rock, which is that there is a wage gap at 78 cents, 80 cents, difference to a dollar, women making less than men. So basically the study is saying, not so much. Yeah. Well, and I think what the study is reinforcing is, and many other studies have, have posited this as well, that again, it comes down to choice. The gap exists. But also the big thing that we need to take into account is that when you're looking at aggregates, you're not getting the full picture. You have to look at individuals at whatever stage of life that they're in. Well, I remember, and this is kind of where I remember one of my first aha moments in my relationship to Austrian economics is I was in an econ class and we were talking about the wage gap and the teacher goes, don't tell the ladies over in the women's studies department that the wage gap is actually not what we think it is. Because if you talk about, talk about individual choices and how that affects, I mean, of course, they break it down in the article that we posted on fee, on fee.org. You can see kind of how that number, the traditionally talked about number has been arrived at and it's really rudimentary and it really isn't speaking to individual choice in the labor market. Right. Because basically they just take the just all full-time workers and the total pay for men and divide it by the number of full-time working men. Right. And then they do the same thing for women. And so it's not disaggregated at all. Yes. Like it's not, it's comparing apples. And it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't take into account. I mean individual choice. And that was my first, again, my first aha moment that I realized that we can, we can try and look at numbers and we can try and look at studies and the results of, or we can talk about aggregates. But one of the things that is fundamentally true is that humans are, it's a difficult thing. The human component will always be a variable that's not easy to measure. And there are a lot of different factors. You can't just say, pull a woman out of the population, she makes this amount of money, pull a man out of the population, he makes this amount of money. I actually had the opportunity when I was a student at Georgia State to take a class about policy data analysis. And we got up to the elbow in that data, running regressions and all kinds of linear things that I could barely repeat now. But tell me the R square later. Yes. And through getting into the data, I found that when you controlled for grades, for years of education, for federal experience, for the title of either a supervisor or a manager, once you control for all these different factors, the wage gap pretty much disappears. And this is, there's a possibility for everyday people to, to look at the numbers and see this kind of thing, but it's, it's just so deeply ingrained in the culture that there is a gap that even bringing it up is a little, like, can we even discuss this? Yeah, I mean, I think that you may, you and I may feel this, like kind of like we're betraying our gender by suggesting that, okay, this isn't the full picture, and we need to talk about choice. So, you know, what kind of career path are women versus men more likely to choose? And what, what is, what are they, what are they motivated by? And is that something that is, you know, we're talking about socialized identity and behavior and also things that are maybe evolutionary, maybe, I mean, psychology, socialization, all of this stuff wraps into our individual choices. And it's so hard to measure and just say that it's a systemic problem, right? Right. Well, and, and it does go back to choice and, and also maybe some other factors which we'll talk about in a bit. I think one of the most interesting things in that piece from my standpoint, the one that I mentioned at the top is that it details a couple other studies. There's one from the Institute for Women's Policy Studies, I believe it's called. Yes, the Institute for Women's Policy Research. And it basically does bad science. It basically combines in a similar fashion to how Dan mentioned, all the women working in the country and compares them against all the men working in the country. But it doesn't even look just at full-time jobs. It looks at people working part-time and even occasionally. And it finds magically, as you would expect, that the gap is even larger. And so I think there's a lot of difficulty with measuring this kind of thing. And it, it brings up all kinds of questions about, you know, what's the validity of looking at the aggregate for the entire population and trying to say that it then pertains to an individual. You can't find individuals represented in aggregate studies. It just does not exist. There's actually a fallacy. It's called the ecological fallacy. I discovered as I was preparing for today's show, it's the conclusion that what is true for the group is true for the individual. And the ecological fallacy doesn't really seem to play out all that often. Yeah. One interesting thing that I did find was that when we control for all these different things, the, the gap becomes about 98 cents, $2, just a couple of cents different. But the gap widens back again when you're talking about executives. So I think there is still room to talk about, to talk about that, about an under representation of women in the very top pools of talent. And it is, it is my personal belief that perhaps we as women are still making, making choices as we've discussed. There's, there's a lot of temptation to, to leave the boardroom and go home. And, but I think that when we are comparing executive apples with other executive apples, there still is a little bit of a gap. So I don't know if we're out of the woods just yet. People are people, individuals are individuals. They're going to make different choices, you know, between folks. So let's, let's talk about the reasons for this gap. There are many ideas behind how this could come about. You know, people say the good old boys club still rules in the boardroom and various other places. That's obviously cultural, historical. What other reasons are there for this gap that we're really talking about quite often these days? Well, yeah, I want to highlight that. Yeah, like you're saying, this is about how we as individuals make choices. I think just so much, and I have a background. So I mean, I study economics, but I also study gender and sexuality studies. So my, my perception is definitely a sociological one in the sense that people are socialized around these values that we see. But I also think, so that's my perception is that we need to stop thinking about it as a systemic problem that is essentially an external force acting on us and talk about how we all interact with each other. That's socialization, how we exchange values and how we promote our values. That's an individual choice. That's individual interaction. And so what I think we're seeing is the result of choices made based on social socialized values, which is women. And this is a deep, a deep generalization, but a good to me a good example of what we're talking about when we talk about how it's not measuring the choice of a woman who may have been socialized her entire life to believe that caregiving is ideal. So she would go into a career as a nurse rather than as a doctor or, you know, something like that where, or every woman in her family has been a nurse. So even if she has the medical, even if she has the knowledge and the, you know, the intelligence to understand medical practices, she may choose to go into nursing because, you know, because her family has done that. Or something like that, which again, generalization certainly, but I just wanted to kind of talk it through when you're talking about an individual, the values they've been socialized with and the choices they make based on that. Well, talking about society, you're talking about generalizations. Unless you know these people, you have no other basis to go on. And then, and then with these generalized tendencies that if, if to the extent that it's not socialized, it's going to have more of an impact out on the edges than for the bulk of the population. So, so for example, executives, like, like that is a very slim sliver of, of the population. Making a whole lot of money. Right, right. And so are, like, murders. It's also a very slim portion of the population. But then you find males way overrepresented among murderers too. Because so there's a certain, there might be a certain, maybe it's socialized, maybe it's, maybe it's natural. There might be a certain tendency towards aggressiveness that for the bulk of the population, it's not going to make that much of a difference between the representation of men and women among different things. But among murderers, like it makes a huge difference that that like that small difference is going to really make a big difference in terms of how men are represented among murderers. And so, so maybe it's the same kind of thing when you're talking about like super high competitive, high aggressive, you know, the executive realm, that like a small difference in like psychological tendencies might have like a big impact. A huge impact, yeah, to influence a statistic to a large degree, right, for such a small population. Oh, and I think you're, you get to you to do the marginal analysis. I mean, that's where a lot of the insight can be gleaned here. Well, I think that also yes. And it's, you know, of course, just my background pushes me to say, Oh, it's a socialization problem. But I think that Dan's pointed out some really good, some good points as well, which is when we talk about, you know, evolutionary psychology, that's, that's a challenging topic when you talk about what is a nature versus nurture, a classic, a classic argument. And I think that it's just, it's a, it's a healthy mix of both. And I think that we see, yeah, kind of over emphasized results of that on the margins. That's a really good point. One thing that we haven't touched on a lot yet is the amount of unpaid labor that women do in the home. Women are more likely than men to take care of things like cleaning and food preparation and just general child care and things I've read on an average day, maybe three hours more a day, women spend on these kinds of activities versus men. So I think that's kind of where a lot of, a lot of the frustration might lie and where people would be more likely to accept a number like 78 cents. It's like, well, yeah, as a woman, I work hard at my job and then maybe I go home and then I spend time on activities that are beneficial to the home, but to the community and society at large that are unfunded and there's no, and how would you even go about funding that?  It's, it's kind of a weird idea, but, but there is this difference in society of unfunded labor. And if people did have to start funding it, what would that mean? And I just, any thoughts on that?  I think that women would be more likely because they are rewarded, not rewarded per se, but perhaps derive value or feel paid by the experience of taking care of the family from a socialized perspective. So they are, that they've been socialized to believe that maybe their role is part as a caretaker, not that, not that men are not socialized that way, but I would say more so. And again, huge generalization, maybe that's what women experience at least in our culture. I know my dad, you know, he definitely felt the most good about taking care of his family when he was working long hours, which is so different than thinking about my mom who was willing to take a lower paying job so she could have more flexibility to come home, which is again, two expressions of love of care, but look very different, especially when you're talking about pay. I think it would be foolish to fall into the trap of trying to explain every part of human behavior, especially in the home with loved ones, in economic terms, right? I think there is something to the notion, however, that there's some value being created, even if it's unpaid labor around the house, by that type of work. And I tend to think too, I mean, when you just have to continue going back to choice, you have to continue going back to what do people who, you know, either have a long term homemaker job, what's going through their minds? I mean, is this something that makes sense for them? I would think, unless it's an abusive situation, of course, there are those that in most of those cases that this is obviously something that they choose to do, that they feel compensated for, maybe not monetarily. And maybe again, that's not the right way to look at it in economic terms. But, you know, the ties that bind family together are obviously valuable in and of themselves. Like a love currency. Sure. Right. I mean, that is, it's a value you're being given. Well, yeah. And the way that compensation actually, what it's ultimately for is for higher living standards. And the thing, so... I think that's a great point, Dan. It's not compensation for the sake of compensation. That's what, you know, the pay gap and the income gap and wage disparities and income inequality, it all goes back to what you're saying right here. It's not pay for pay's sake. Right. The reason why we want to be paid money for work is so that we can increase our quality of life. So that we can buy goods that make life easier and more comfortable and enjoyable and fulfilling. And the thing about household labor is that it still creates that, but more directly. So just the labor creates like a higher quality of living directly. And so it ultimately translates to the same thing. Oh, that's what you're saying. But not through the money nexus. Your quality of life, yeah, is increased or preserved based on that labor. And it's not just the money is the middleman that speaks to that. But I see, but and then this is more direct. Right. You can't eat cash. You can't cash. Cash does not in and of itself make a beautiful place for you to live. So I've got a question for you. So of course we're talking a little bit now over the past couple of minutes about homemakers, right, people who choose to do work in the home and not get paid for at least not directly, right. But should women who choose not to work in the home be, I suppose, punished by sort of the expectation that their their peers who work in the home have set, meaning should women have to put up with lower wages of whatever amount, even if they don't choose to work in the home at all? Does that question make sense? So you're saying that regardless of my personal choice to have a family or to contribute any to even clean my house, whatever. If I don't need that extra time or I don't need that flexible schedule, shouldn't I be paid more because I don't need you know, I'm taking a little job to speak to that. I don't know. I hate saying should I don't like shoulds. That's a really I don't like phrasing questions that way. I don't know. That's a hard question. Working woman's out there and she's chosen to dedicate her life to a paid career outside of the home, and yet she's still bound by this social expectation that women don't work out of the home as much. If I'm gonna should, I would say individuals should be compensated based on market prices, regardless of whether or not their social expectations. I do feel that we've shifted a little bit away from that being the norm, the kind of the premise that you're basing your question around. I think that these days it's maybe the opposite. I think that women, there's a greater expectation that women will do everything. That we will be rock star moms at every soccer game, but also kicking butt in the boardroom and also looking good while we do it. There's there are these different kinds of pressures. So I don't even know. I don't think that there's a judgment about leaving the home if that's what you're saying. I think it's maybe a little bit more the opposite that women are probably more likely to be judged for just working in the home only. Does that answer your question, Richard? It's a tough thing. And so, you know, of course, it's obviously something we're talking about. People are talking about it. I think Ivanka Trump has some thoughts on how to address these issues, whether they exist to what degree or not. So what are the solutions? I mean, what would what would the fee gang, the fee cast gang here say? If, you know, we have this problem, let's just accept that for argument's sake. How do we address it? Yeah. Well, I want to jump in. I, you know, again, as I'm saying, if I perceive socialization as the key problem or at least the only thing we can control and identify as the social component where we're socializing certain values in this culture. If you want to fix that and you want to take a free market approach and you don't want, you don't want the government to have to be responsible for fixing this problem. My solution would be, okay, I am, I'm going to lean in. I really care about other women. Oh, you're leaning in. Hearing that message. I care about that. I am going to start Anna Jane Perrell's Foundation for the Progress of Women. And I am going to get all of my donors who are, you know, providing their funds willingly to buy, lean in for, you know, for girls, for high school girls, or, you know, start a really cool marketing campaign that speaks to the social values around women as executives. Or something like that, right? You, I think that you create resources and access to information that either changes the conversation or encourages social behavior in the direction you want it, rather than creating prohibitions or creating regulation around it. You empower people to make their own decisions by providing resources that you feel promote the values you want society to value. So you would develop individual women instead of trying some massive society-wide campaign or government. Well, see, I feel like you can still do massive campaign, but you can do that with the free market, right? I can create my organization where my donors are, like I said, giving us money freely, and then we're going to create a national campaign. You can do that, but I don't think that that's the government's responsibility. And ultimately, I mean, like we all would agree, I don't think the government would do it most efficiently. All right. So equal pay for equal work laws, yay or nay? I don't like big brother looking at my stuff. I mean, I know the IRS pretty much already knows about my financial situation, but I don't like the idea of being forced to give up that information in a different setting outside of the IRS. I mean, I don't like to give it up to the IRS. Let's begin. Let's be honest. But so I think when you say there ought to be a law, you're saying there ought to be a lot of bureaucrats running around with a lot of power to tell me what to do. And I don't like that. So I think I kind of take a page out of Anna Jane's book. And actually, if you'll allow me, I would like to just address the audience for a moment.  Go ask for a raise. Women, if you're listening, we have to take some personal responsibility for being tenacious and for taking control of our financial lives. And I think that since we've spent a lot of time talking about the individual versus the aggregate, let's talk about some individuals. First line supervisors of retail sales workers, these are the most likely people to earn less. Women in these positions are more likely to earn less than their male counterparts versus other industries. So first line supervisors of retail workers, go get your money. We've got to we've got to play it where it lies. And if there are specific industries that are more guilty of paying people different wages than others, let's start there and start with talking to those people. Yeah, and it's a conversation also. So if we're talking about, yeah, we every time you say there ought to be a law, you're doing it. What is it at the barrel of a gun? I love, I love that. I mean, that's the reality what it is. And so theoretically, if a company wants to hire good employees or wants to create an environment where people want to stay long term or be good employees, you'd say, okay, we're going to have a salary transparency policy. But again, that is to me a private organization's decision. And it could be in their interest to do that, to encourage those conversations. What would you say about the people who would argue against sort of what each of your approaches would be, which are very similar, I think in nature, you're instructing women to go out and get it, negotiate, actually take their career by the horns and just, you know, get what they need. Yeah. And I'm not saying that's easy, but I would imagine it's not easy for a lot of men who engage in salary negotiations either. There's plenty of blogs out there. You can read, get some good tactics. There's ammunition. Yeah. Yeah. And individual women and men too can take that advice to heart and actually act on it. That's small scale, right? So that takes people doing it one on one. When we're talking about individuals, it's all small scale. All politics is local. And then your education campaign with the Anna Jane Perle Foundation for Empowering Women, that's going to take a while, right? Right. So small scale take a while.  What's wrong with that kind of law? So philosophically, we've said we don't want anyone forcing us to do that. So sometimes force can make better choices. I'm putting question marks on that. It's an interesting thing because that seems to be a solution a lot of people are pushing toward these days. Well, the same job description is not necessarily the same what is being paid for. Because again, it all depends on what people on the market are willing to pay. And ultimately it comes down to the consumer. Ultimately it comes down to whether the output of this production is satisfying consumers in a way that's making people's lives better that they're willing to pay for. Just because it's the same job description doesn't mean that there's the same productivity, the value productivity. Sure. It's interesting too because one of my favorite economists who's actually on our wall behind Anna Jane, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, he has a video on YouTube. He didn't put it up there. It's of him. And it basically, in it, he's posited with the question, why not equal pay for equal work kind of legislation? Why not? He says what you're doing not intentionally, but by misunderstanding when you try to get equal pay for equal work laws is that you're reducing to zero the cost imposed on people who are discriminating for irrelevant reasons such as race or gender or whatever. And I would like to see a cost imposed on them. And so the point that he's saying is when you make it illegal to have different wages for the same work, you are therefore removing any bargaining power that the person that the boss might be discriminating against had to get the job in the end. You're basically reducing to zero the tax they have for discriminating. And I think that's just a brilliant way of looking at sort of the unintended consequences behind a piece of legislation. So the way that might play out might be if Dan and I both apply for the same job and the person who's hiring maybe has a preference for hiring male employees. If I can't bargain on my salary, then I don't stand a chance. Is that what? That's it. That's exactly right. Well, and also if he chose me for that arbitrary reason, that's going to affect his, the business's success. Because if you were more productive than me, but he chose me anyway, that his business is going to suffer for that. And then someone who was not arbitrary, they're going to do better because the consumer ultimately, they look and they care about quality and price. And the person who made the non-arbitrary economic decision is going to be able to compete better and the consumer is going to choose that person. That's the kind of discrimination that ultimately the consumer has that reduces arbitrary discrimination just based on arbitrary factors. Let's all say it all at once. It's Dan's favorite concept, consumer sovereignty. What were you saying? I was going to say that.  And we just have so much information these days that we can employ to make those decisions that if we sense the slightest bit of sexism, racism, homophobia, whatever, we can choose the person who's not or the boss or the company that's not exercising those prescriptions. Yeah. And with I think kind of what you're saying is that and if we do an equal pay, if we institute some sort of equal pay law, we have now leveled the playing field for both morally-objectible companies if that is what they are doing and that's how you feel and good companies. And so you're giving them an equal playing field to be successful when in reality, maybe they should be, maybe they should incur a cost based on... You're giving them an out. Yeah. And so if you guys believe in your power as individuals, wouldn't you want the playing field to be not necessarily level based on a law, but reflective of reality so that you can make good decisions? Ultimately, you can't coerce people to be moral, to be good. Like if anything, all you're doing is taking away from them the responsibility to choose to be moral. And so that's why a lot of people say like, no, I want to know who the bigots are out there. So that if someone is a bigot, but then that never gets revealed because they're forced to hire in non-bigoted ways, then they never actually learn to not be a bigot because they never actually have to pay for the bigot. Yeah, exactly. Well, we are not going to force our watchers or our listeners to listen or watch us anymore because we have to wrap it up, but it's been a great conversation and it's been a great year. So thank all of you for everything. And of course, Brittany and everyone who was part of our panel ahead of time. And we look forward to seeing everyone in the new year of 2019. Again, check us out on Apple, Google and Spotify and have a great year, everybody. Thanks for watching.


Okay, better late than ever. Is that, are you asking me that, Henry? I'm asking yes, Marion, if you've been to one of our three committee meetings before. Is that a special, another meeting? A different meeting? No, you've been to them. I've seen you at these meetings. Yes. Yes, I've been to lots of them. Yeah, so never mind. Okay. This is my third meeting. You're frozen. Hello, hello. Okay, now can you hear me? My internet faded out for a bit. So I had Gina speak to the committee as it was her first time, but it's not either your first time, Claudia and Marion, right? Okay. I have one other comment about the, I have one comment about the planning that I just wanted to quickly notice that when I was explaining to my wife kind of how it went down that day, I realized that there are so many women who are coming out and doing this. And it makes me, I'm like, where are all the middle-aged guys who have shovels? So it's a testament like the women getting it done.  Cause we could have used, we had a lot of people out the other day. We could have used more. That was a lot of trees. So it would help if I had been able to send out the email beforehand, maybe. So that's on me that just wanted to note that it's pretty impressive. And I haven't been publicizing it the ways that I often do because well, this was the first one. So, you know, because of concerns if we have too many people, but I don't think that'll be a problem. So yeah, let's try for more people next time. All right, what's next on the agenda? Now that I got rid of it. Oh, so October planting. Have we finalized the location? I have not. I need to do that. What did we talk about for plants, possible places? We had discussed going across this, across West Street to Mill Lane and planting some along there and in the park area. There was another street which you had suggested and I'm trying to blank on it right now. North Pleasant Street near the cemetery. Correct, yes. East Pleasant Street at the top of East Pleasant Street. Yeah, so that's another location. What do people think? Preferences? I mean, the North Pleasant one would be, East Pleasant one would be easier in some ways. It's difficult to plant inside the fence line because everything there is owned by all the plots there and owned by people, not the town. And I can only plant where trees have been removed recently and the stumps have been removed. So I don't have a lot of options inside the cemetery but on the outside, you know, on the road side there's six or eight locations along that stretch. Are there any along Pine Street or further down East Pleasant Street? I know somebody on Lincoln Ave who's just itching to have her trees planted. We could probably do Lincoln. Or something like that. There's easily 10 to 12 locations on Lincoln Ave to plant trees. Okay, so that's all good? Yeah. Works for me. See a few nods and one. Works for me. Yep. Okay, let's do Lincoln Ave in October. Okay. The John Kinch was still interested in doing some bare root stuff but it would have to be after they've gone dormant which would probably be later than the second Saturday of October. So there's, you know, opportunity for the committee to be involved in a planting later in the fall. Okay. We also talked about the November planting being setting up the nursery at Marion's place. Yes. So we can use some of the bare root trees then. You better come and approve it. I can, you can meet each other. See what you think. Who? Well, Henry, you and I, I imagine would go. Okay. We can discuss, yeah. All right, we'll talk to Marion separately and pick a time to go up there and look at it. Yeah. I've been there once, so yeah. You didn't look at it. You didn't see it's downsides or it's upsides but it's, I think it's gonna be part of it as good. Okay. Great, thank you. Yeah. Good. All right, anything else about the tree plantings? Nope. All right. One thing is I really need volunteer hours, all the hours that we volunteer for the committee being at the meeting, being at plantings. We used to pass around the paper and get all the list of hours and then that all gets tallied and we use it for the Tree City USA application to show that Amherst has done a lot of volunteer work towards helping trees. So most of you have not sent me your hours since March. I mean, I forgot to ask for it but recently I have and I haven't got much response. So let's go now and I'll write it down. So Sarah. This is since March? Yeah, since the last time we've collected hours we haven't met at all this year, so. Okay. Sarah, I'm gonna give you some cover and say that I'm gonna, I hear by Val to send you my hours over email. I just, I'd be at a loss to put it, to tally all the countless hours I've put together. All right, so if everyone will tally their hours up and send them to me tonight or tomorrow that'd be awesome. Then we don't have to take time now. Okay. I have a question actually. Um, when I do like stuff like the videos, that's also including Arwen's time. Should I send in Arwen's time too? Yeah, you can send it in separately, that'd be fine. Okay. But all those hours, yeah. Anything you do for tree committee or helping trees in Amherst, we count.  So like, anybody under- Okay, so Arwen and Julian can both be in the child. Yeah, if they're under 18, they can be counted in the child. It sounds strange saying that, but child category of hours versus the adult hours. Okay. But if you're not a committee member but you come to meetings. Anybody who comes to a planting or a meeting or does any help, we can count. Okay. So, yeah, so Gina and Claudia and Marion all should send hours too. Well, you can give them to me anytime, but sooner is better. Good, don't forget, please. Let's see, placards. Sarah sent me most of them. The big question is, and Sarah and I talked about this and we thought we'd be good to still do it this year. In the past, we've done it in the spring. So, since we missed the spring, we could wait till next spring or we could get them up right away. Does anybody have an opinion? Well, people do like admire foliage in the autumn, so doing it during, you know, before peak foliage might be like a goal. We've approved spending the money, I believe. Is that correct? Oh, is that what we're talking about? Sorry. No, no, no, spending the money. That was deadlining. No, Shoshana, you were right and I agree. I think there's still worth in putting them up now. And on a separate note, I think we did approve the funding for it back in March or February, quite a while ago. Okay. So, if Nani's not on the committee, we no longer have a treasurer and I have to get the treasurer to sign the form. So, does anybody want to be treasurer? Has to be a committee member, which means Gordon, Bennett, Sarah, or Shoshana. I have to say the death knell of this committee would be my being treasurer. There's not a lot of work to this task, but it's an important one. I can do it. I don't have a lot of bandwidth to take on a ton of extra stuff. I want to make sure I'm doing a good job at what I've already signed up for, but if it's not a lot of time, I can be the treasurer. As far as I know, the job has two roles. One, signing the forms, and the other is before our meeting, checking with Town Hall to see how much money we have in the account, and if it's changed, we have to figure out where did we get the money from or where did we spend the money. Okay, I can do that. Nobody else is dying to do it. We might have some new people who can take it on, but for now, Sarah, they're gonna approve of Sarah being treasurer. Aye. Thumbs up. You guys can vote too, even though you're not of the committee. All right, good. Sarah's treasurer. Yeah, so as soon as I get the rest of them, Sarah, I will contact the place. Does that have to be Amherst copy? That's what we did it before. They're a vendor, so it's easiest, you know. I will bring them there and get that done. So you need to get the quote, you know, for it, and then we can, if it's under $250, we can make an invoice us, and we'll just pay the invoice when we get it. If it's over $250, then we have to do a purchase order. Okay, I can note to myself. Good, okay, that's good. It's been long delayed, but it'll be really nice to get them up. They're quite beautiful for those of you don't know. Actually, Sarah, you probably can't share a screen. Let me see if I can call that up and see if everyone can see. Share screen is an option for me. Can you do that? Yeah, let me open it. Just one of them. Now, do we have actual people to install it? Because I would be interested in something just like going and doing something like that. Well, Sarah, you said you would be happy to install too, right? Yeah, but if Shoshana wants to take the lead or divide and conquer, I'm more than happy to share or pass that along. I think it's good to have two people, especially you know all the locations. So if you guys do it together, it'd be great. Okay, that'd be fun. Yeah. Yep. All right. So while we wait for Sarah to share the screen, t-shirts, maybe we missed so many meetings and then we're totally confused. Here we go. That looks great. Oh boy. It's nice having them be more colorful like that. Nice. And they have different shapes for the different shapes of the trees. So like, you know, the elm is that kind of classic vase shape and then the maple or the conical. So I used different tree silhouettes to kind of match with the different species. Within reason, you know, it's still kind of clip art. Yeah, it's nice. Graphic, but a little bit of a little bit of variety. Very nice. Great. Well, thank you, Sarah. They really came out good. So. Yeah, awesome job. How so, how big is, is one? Roughly. Nothing like. PDF. So we can print them pretty much any size we need. And I think we were gonna do like a 12 by 18 or something. Oh, huge. Yeah, 11 by 17, 12 by 18, something like that. Yeah, 11 by 17, but they're PDFs, so they're scalable. So I can make it however big we need it to be. I also have a nice file set up in Illustrator and InDesign. So it'll be easy to plug in new numbers and new information to make them for next year or subsequent years. And we could also easily change colors while using the same template. So that's all set up for making it easier and faster for future clackers. And multi-talented. Thank you. Okay, so let's move on then. Good, let's see. T-shirts, didn't we? I'm not sure we approved both the T-shirts and the plackers and I don't remember which one we approved. Let me see if I can find, it's gonna take too long. I'm not gonna do that. I thought you did approve the T-shirts last time, but I wasn't, I'm not actually sure. Were you waiting for quote or? No, I think we just approved it in a mile based on what the last one was, but Shoshana, do you remember? No, I don't. Not in anything. I don't even remember talking about the T-shirts since like, I don't know, last time we got T-shirts. No, we have talked about it since then. All right, can we approve spending up to $250 on T-shirts and up to $250 or on the plackers? If we can approve that then just to officially know that we've done it tonight, then we're good, right? Yeah, I feel like we could do that. That could happen. Okay, all in favor? No, okay, unanimous. So we've approved both. And if it's a little more than $250, then I don't know, we'll fudge it, I guess. All right, so what should I do about this T-shirts? Cause I'm the one who's got the relationship with the printers and all that. It'll be a little easier now that they have our imprint. They can just shoot off some more without having to make a new graphic. So what do we actually need with the T-shirts? I'll send you a list of what I think. I know Bennett needs extra large, somebody needs small. So, yeah. Okay. And I forgot a T-shirt, Claudia. You wanted a medium one, right? Yeah, I said medium. Yeah, I had one with me in the car and I just spaced out giving it to you. So next month. Yeah, don't worry about it. Okay. Who's the Shoshana? Who's the vendor that you used last time? They're in Belcher Town. There's some, they're called like Sun Ray or something like that. They're, it sounds like something that's completely unrelated to T-shirts. Let me look in the file. But did you use some, I think last time around, you didn't use a town procurement system, right?  Everybody paid upfront. That's right. We agreed that that was cumbersome. We were going to buy them with the town and people can make donations. Okay. So then I need to, I need to get the name of that vendor. Oh, the name of the vendor, okay. And I'll need to make sure they're approved vendor to use. Yeah, okay. Which I expect they will be because they do, I always recommended them because I was trying to find somebody in town and it turns out that there wasn't and that they used to be in town but then they moved to Belcher Town because they're like the official T-shirt printers of UMass. They do all UMass' stuff. And so I will find that. It's in my stuff somewhere here. Okay. All right, just email Alan as soon as you can and Alan, let me know if it's any problem. Otherwise we'll go ahead with it. All right. Good. All right, placards, T-shirts, we're moving along. Anything new on the website, Facebook, Instagram? I know the video, the new video is great, starring Bennett. Yeah, we just finished that today and published it. Oh, here it is. Soundscape merchandise, screen printing and embroidery, Belcher Town mass. I've got a phone number here, Alan, if you want it. And an email address. The phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And their email is info at soundscapemerchandice.com. Okay. This is what it looks like, they're like, can I get the logo on there or no, there it is. Yeah, thank you. Okay, good. Or the Instagram, Claudia and I have been working on it. So if anyone wants to go check it out, it is, oh wait, I have to, my phone. Kind of be linked to the Facebook so that when like a new video like I posted today could like automatically get posted to the Instagram as well. So to do that, I need the password for the Facebook or something, like. Oh yeah, yeah, that would be Henry, Henry's got that. Yeah, so I don't know, but it's Amherst Shade Trees. So if anyone wants to come check that out on Instagram, like if you're on Instagram, it's at Amherst Shade Trees. And I don't know, it looks semi-official. Like I made some graphics on Canva that twice. So I don't know, yeah. So we've been working on that. And oh, Claudia took pictures at the tree planting on Saturday, so I'll post a few of those. So yeah. And it's actually really cool too, because like we're getting like follows and stuff from like people in town like, or like businesses in town and things like that. So like that's cool, but then also like tree committees in like New Jersey and like Virginia and like all over have been like following and stuff. So it's cool that it's getting like both. Yeah, I love this thing, this like little. Yes. That I don't, I can't make it show up, but like the little. Video-ish one. Yeah, the little video kind of thing, the little GIF with like the Amherst and the little. Leaves. Branches. Yeah, cool, thanks. And somebody. Yeah, I saw that and I was like, wow. I was like, that is so cool. I don't know how you did it, but it's awesome. It's so easy, I have no talent, so no worries. Can somebody pull it up in their computer and share it with the group? I probably can do that. Okay. Can you share a screen? I think you should be able to. Yeah, I just have to go to it. That's a Piliated Woodpecker calling. This morning, super early this morning, I heard some sort of warbler that kind of sounded like a prairie warbler, but a little different, but I was too tired to get up and check it out. I could hear it though. It woke me up in the morning. It was like at, you know, like five o'clock in the morning. Is this showing? Yes. Yes. I took our logo and then I took Shoshana. I think you made that. Yeah. She's with us. Yeah. But then I also just have like what we do. So like we preserve, protect and promote town shaped trees.  But yeah, just that's what's there right now. Great. I'm gonna have the link to our like website. That's it. I don't know. Yeah. So when thirsty Thor likes anything on that page, that's me. Okay, cool. That's my drinking horn business. That's the only Insta I have. That's great. Thank you, Becky and Shoshana for that and Claudia. Yeah. So please do get Arwen's new video up on that. I'll try to find the password. Although Shoshana, you should have the password too. No, I don't have the password. I've never had the password. You made me an administrator, but that never actually gave me the password or anything. Can I make Becky an administrator or? Probably. Might work. I'm not sure. So like it was asking me to sign in as Amherst Public Shade Tree Committee and I couldn't do that to like connect them. So I'm not sure if administrator will work, which it might work or I need the password. I'm not sure. All right. It's often hard for me to find passwords, but I will understand. Yeah. I will get one of both of those to you. Okay. All right. On the website, Henry, who do I, this is recurring. Has anybody done anything on the website? And last time I didn't even know I was supposed to do anything on the website, but now I do. Who do I talk to at town to figure out what the parameters are for doing stuff? Like for changing things, changing menu items, things like that. Or maybe Alan, you know, I don't know. Yeah. There would be somebody on the IT department is the web sort of. So just, I'll just look it up. I can find that person out for you. And is our goal for this just to expand on what's already there or is it more just to better organize what we've already, like the types of things we already have and bring them up to speeds and some of the stuff is outdated? Like, is it, should I be thinking like white space started all from scratch or is it like, that's mostly works and that's just update what needs to be updated? I would love for you to start it from scratch, although the town, because it's a town website, it's constrained by their format. Okay. Just, you know, maybe start looking at what's there and thinking about, yeah, how you'd like to change it and then talk to someone in the IT department. Okay. Yeah. Okay, I will do that. Thank you, great. All right. Now, I think nothing's happening with a new brochure. I want to table that because I want to get to significant tree ordinance which Sarah has been working so much on. So I'll pass it on to Sarah. Thanks. I sent that out in July. I don't know if everyone got a chance to read it. I sent a follow up over the weekend and it might not have gotten sent until yesterday. I had a draft in my email that I didn't hit send on until later than I thought. So everyone should have gotten the draft again and it would be great if you guys could read it and give me your feedback, your edits, your thoughts. Ryan and AJ who drafted it, the UMass students who put that together for us have checked back in again, asking about how it's going. You know, they're done with their course requirements but they just are interested in being part of the process and seeing how it changes and develops and what comes of the work that they did. So it's gone through like two drafts of revisions already to get it to the draft that I sent out and it would just be great to kind of crowdsource and get some feedback from all of you so that we can fine tune it and then take it before the town and I'm sure that's gonna be a revision process as well. So the sooner that we get started and can start circulating it to a wider audience, the better. It looks really good. You have put a lot of time into it and the, I can't remember the names for UMass, put a lot of time into this and it really kind of whittled it down to the necessary, absolute necessary components to it. So I did have a couple, you know, questions or edits and I can get those to you. Nothing major looks really nice. And for those of you new to this, we have a town ordinance that protects street trees and our role is to protect street trees. We don't have jurisdiction over trees and conservation land or trees on private property but we've been, Sarah's been working on this issue of trying to protect significant trees on private property and that's what this is all about. So if the tree's large in a certain size, maybe it should be, have some restrictions on who can cut it down, even the property owner. Right. And the idea behind that is that very, very large trees or specific trees of certain species and that's left for us to develop but to Alan's point earlier, if there's a large and healthy sugar maple that might have some years left and we're trying to kind of preserve that population, then we could, you know, ask someone to not cut down that tree if they don't have to or they, you know, they could pay a fine that would let us plant more trees if they, you know. So there's options about what the violations would be and what would trigger a violation. Obviously we don't want to infringe on individual rights but trees of a certain size give back more and have significantly more benefits than smaller trees. So, you know, 20 trees that are one inch caliper are not the same as one tree that's a 20 inch caliper. It's, they're just not even comparable in terms of like what they do for the environment, for, sorry, I have a cat who's trying to walk on my computer. Air quality, water quality, shade, food production, all of that increases dramatically with age and it's just not replicated in the first couple of years of a tree's life. So trying to protect larger and significant trees on private property without infringing on individual rights and what people can do on their own land. So all of those things are kind of, you know, we went back and forth with Ryan and AJ to really try to hash out what's gonna be appropriate. And that's just something that all as individuals and committee members, it'd be nice to get more people weighing in on so that it's a really an egalitarian effort. And the idea is that this is really gonna serve the town, not just be an extra needless bylaw that people have to go through. Just to refresh my memory, this is the type of thing that would, I assume this will go in front of the town council eventually. In order to get passed into an actual bylaw, I would have to get approved by the town council and passed by them, which is, so there's gonna be another iterative round of edits and stuff, you know, it's gonna be kind of a long process. And I think the more that we can vet this amongst ourselves and really get it into a shape that we're happy with, that we think really walks the line of benefiting the town and not hindering individual rights or creating too much red tape, that sort of thing. The easier it will be in the later stages of bringing it before town council hearings, whatever the next steps may be as this develops. Right, so we need to, from, I look at that and think, okay, then we do need to be really careful about it and give it a close look because it has a potential, like, you know, I mean, not that it'll blow up in the media, but it could totally, if we have something in there that's an artifact of a bad idea or whatever, it could land us in the pages of the Gazette, which may not be a bad thing, but it does mean we should take a close look at it. Right, we want to be able to stand behind everything that's in here. And it's gonna be a public document and if it gets passed, it'll be a public bylaw. So one of the things that I really insisted on when Ryan and AJ first came to our committee and asked to do this project was that I really put a lot of emphasis on having sources because the more that we can reference what other bylaws are, what other communities are doing, especially communities of a similar size, similar makeup and a similar location, the more weight this document will have and we can look to those communities as examples of what's working, what maybe isn't working, any addendums they made, that sort of thing. And they did a good job of listening to that kind of feedback. And so there's an extensive references in the appendix which they used to kind of come up with these ideas and Northampton has a good example of a significant tree bylaw that we can use that's right next door. So that's kind of where this came from and what this started with, but having everyone read it with a different lens and so that we can really edit this and make sure that we're not leaving any lingering things in there that nothing's unclear or too severe or too lax or whatever. So the more that we can read through this thoughtfully and have a good editing process now amongst ourselves, I think the better time we'll have of it later once we bring it to Town Council. Yeah, at some point I'll talk to, we'll get this in the Gazette and it's gonna be, it's not gonna be an easy battle to get this to pass, especially without town meeting. We passed our tree ordinance, we got pretty well, pretty good support from Paul Bockelman, the town manager and from a lot of support from the, brain stopped working, sorry, from the town meeting. And we went in front of town meeting, we went to a lot of hearings. This is gonna take a lot of work but I think we, it has a shot of passing and I think you've done a good job of making it, of explaining the need for it. So yeah, anything else on this? Thank you, Sarah. Yeah. You're welcome. Thank you. Yeah, however, I would really like to get feedback from everyone. So however, that looks to you if you want to like just take notes and send me an email with your impression and feedback or if you wanna get into the document and actually mark it up or whatever works for you. If you could just send me your feedback, I can compile it so that next month that we meet I can kind of summarize everyone's edits and we can also start to draft more updated versions of the documents which I will send out again. So. Do you wanna set a deadline? Just even if you just make it up? Just so we have a deadline. Yeah, that's a good idea. Here we are on the 15th and our next meeting is the 13th. So it's two weeks enough time. If I say the 29th. Sounds good. Calendar. Yeah. Tuesday the 29th, two weeks from today. And I'll send out a reminder next week just to say, you know, don't forget. And for those, Becky and Gina, Claudia and Marion, I'll send out the link to the document so you guys should feel free to comment as well. I responded to the email. I relinked it. But if you, anyone didn't get it, Henry and anyone else on the committee or anyone who has it, please feel free to forward and share and let other, you know, the more eyes we get on it, the better. So and send feedback too. Thanks. All right, thanks. Chapter 87 is the law, state law that governs trees, street trees and defines Allen's role and our role. And there was a move to update it.  But I think that nothing's happening with that right now. And I don't think we have really time today to do that. But at some point I want to get back to sort of statewide initiatives too. Because a lot of things that affect our street trees happen on a state level and we don't have control over it. The tree inventory, I think nobody's doing anything on that, updating the tree inventory, but that's a project that somebody could take on. Well, let's postpone. I do want to talk about the junior tree committee, which I think is just a great idea. And with Arwin and Julian and Julian thinks he can get friends involved. So I'm not sure how we started junior tree committee. Julian was going to do some research and he was supposed to be at the meeting tonight, but he's not here. So does anyone? Well, Shashan, I'll put it to you as the mom of Arwin. Okay. How would we get a tree committee, junior tree committee moving ahead? I honestly have no clue how that would happen. Cause I don't think there's any sort of like junior committee anything, but maybe I could go or not go, but like contact maybe people in town hall or something and see like, you know, what I can muster. Okay. I mean, it doesn't have to be an official town committee like we are. Yeah. But it would be kind of cool to like have some sort of, you know, official yes from town hall or something. Yeah. You think Paul Backelman would talk to Shashan about this Alan? Yes, I would say yes. I'm sure he would. I'd start there. Okay. Great. I'll email him tomorrow. Okay. And I'll check in with Julian to see what he's found out about. He was going to research whether other towns have one and what the national Arbor Day committee, you know what they thought, you know, if they had any ideas about it. Okay. I'll look into that too. Great. All right. Anything else? No? Oh yeah. Everyone flocked now to the Facebook and see our newest video that we shot on Saturday about tree planting, starring our very own Bennett Hazlitt. My wife was like, did you know you were doing that? Could you have worn something else? I was like, no, I did not and probably could have. I know. Well, we were really going to have Henry do it but then he got whisked away to other stuff and well, I don't know. It was crazy. It was crazy, but we did it. It's done. No regrets. I don't want to be in every, you know, it's good that we're all shown doing stuff, you know? So take initiative, you know, be the voice of the committee or the actor of the committee or whatever. Be the drawing accent of the committee. Yeah, your pronunciation of drought has me like questioning my perception of reality. I'm sure you're doing it wrong. How should we say it Bennett? I don't know. Drought. You said like draw for some, I don't know. It was very different. Drop, drop. Yeah. Gina, how would you say it? All right. Is there anything else that I'm missing? Becky, you'll get the minutes and highlight all the things people are going to do. Yep. So I'm going to contact the, I promise to do this before the next meeting. I'm going to contact the apartment complexes on East Hadley Road. I will send you, Becky, the password for Facebook or some way to get into Facebook. And I'll send everyone else who hasn't seen the significant ordinance, a copy of that. Anything else I said I would do? No. And everyone is going to send me their hours. Shashana is going to work in the junior tree committee. Sarah is going to work on the ordinance to send me the rest of the placards. Shashana is going to order the tree, the t-shirts after we figure out the details of that. Ben, it's going to start working on the website. All right. Yep. Okay. So Claudia, Marion and Gina, as you get more involved in the committee, start thinking about how you want to be involved, like what type of project you might be interested in. And you don't have to decide today or even next month, but think long-term about that. And Marion, I think the tree nursery will be your project. Oh. Do I have to water them every other day? Well, no, it depends when they first get started. Yeah, but then once a week or... Unless it rains. It might never rain. I don't have enough hose yet, but I'll keep buying it. That's something the committee could buy if you need it to. Well, you'll see when you come up, it could be kind of far away from the house. Okay. Well, we got time, that's not for two months, so probably next month, Alan, and I figure out time to come up. That's good. All right. Well, thank you all. And I'll call this meeting to adjourn unless there's anything else to be said. Thanks, everybody. Nice to be with you all. Have a good week. Good to see everybody on Saturday. See you, Gina. Before we go, Gina and Claudia, do you have any questions or anything? No, I'm still wondering what that word was that Ben had said. Watch the video to find out. Yeah. Claudia? No questions on my end for now. Okay, thanks, everyone. Have a great week. We'll see you at the planting in October, second Saturday, and then the 13th for meeting. Thank you, bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.


Hi, my name is Kaizuin and I'm presenting a video abstract of the article that designed a long-term effective uranium bioremediation strategy using a community metabolic model. Uranium contamination is a serious problem across many sites in both North America and around the world. Uranium would seep through the topsoil and enter the aquifer as Uranium-6. In the soluble form, Uranium is carried by the groundwater towards the river stream and eventually contaminates the river stream. Microbiomediated uranium immobilization is a novel strategy that takes advantage of the microorganism pre-existing within the aquifers such as geobacter species. The addition of substrates such as acetate into the subsurface would stimulate the oxidation of acetate and the simultaneous reduction of iron-3 and uranium-6 by this microorganism. When uranium-6 is reduced to uranium-4, it is converted from a soluble form to a precipitate form thus immobilizing it within the aquifer and preventing it from entering the river stream thereby achieving the bioremediation goal. It's important to recognize that within this setting, iron-3 is the primary electron acceptor for geobacter because it exists at a much higher concentration than uranium-6. In order to assess the viability of this strategy, a number of field-scale in-situ experiment were performed at rifle Colorado. During these experiments, the abundance of geobacter species and the concentration of uranium were measured over time. During these experiments, it was found that bioremediations rather short-lived. Maybe after the addition of acetate, geobacter grows rapidly and soon dominates the microbial community. In response, the concentration of uranium-6 is reduced to a relatively low level. However, soon after, the growth of geobacter stops and the number of geobacter begins to decay. As a result, the reduction of uranium slows and eventually the concentration of uranium-6 returns to a relatively high level. It seems that in most cases, the reduction of uranium does not last past 50 days. Previously, it has been hypothesized that this is due to competition with sulfur-reducing bacteria. The idea is that sulfur-reducing bacteria, which also oxidizes acetate, is able to outcompete geobacter for the acetate, thus preventing the reduction of uranium by geobacter leading to the termination of bioremediation. Our objective is to develop an effective and long-lasting microbial-mediated bioremediation strategy. Our approach is to first develop a community metabolic model of geobacter and sulfur-reducing bacteria and then use this model to investigate the community metabolism during bioremediation. Previously, we found that the addition of acetate strongly favors the fast-growing geobacter species. However, the continuous addition of acetate depletes the iron-3 in the subsurface leading to the decay of geobacter, the dominance of sulfur-reducing bacteria, and the termination of the bioremediation effect. Based on this insight, we propose that the simultaneous addition of acetate iron-3 may be a viable bioremediation strategy. In order to demonstrate the viability of this strategy, we used our community metabolic model to simulate a number of scenarios in which both acetate and iron-3 were added to the subsurface. We were able to demonstrate that the addition of iron-3 to the subsurface indeed is able to restore and maintain the bioremediation effect. Finally, using our computational model, we were able to optimize the addition of acetate and iron-3. In conclusion, our objective was to develop an effective and long-lasting microbial-mediated bioremediation strategy based on our simulations we propose that the simultaneous amendments of iron-3 and acetate may be such a viable strategy. We'd like to acknowledge our funding sources, the U.S. Department of Energy, Genome Canada and CERC Canada, Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, Canada Foundation for Innovation. Thank you very much.


60 federal House of Representatives lawmakers have proposed a transition from the presidential system of government. The country operates today to the parliamentary system of government. The federal lawmakers who briefed newsmen in Abuja on this new proposal say the bill was listed for first reading today at plenary awaiting second reading. The federal supported their argument by pointing out that flexibility in the operation of the parliamentary system of government, which was adopted by the founding fathers of Nigeria, further mentally promoted the peace, unity, and prosperity of the country, as observed in the six years it was practiced between 1960 and 1966. Despite several alterations to the constitution to address the shortcomings of a system that has denied the nation the opportunity of attaining its full potentials, among these imperfections are the high costs of governance, leaving fewer resources for crucial areas like infrastructure, education, and health care, and consequently hindering the nation's development progress. And the excessive powers vested in members of the executive who are appointees are not directly accountable to the people. The bills that were presented today for the first reading seek a return to the system of government adopted by our fathers, which made governments accountable, responsible, and responsive, and ultimately less expensive. With the presentation of these bills today, we hope to achieve the following. Number one, ignite and provoke a national conversation about the future of Nigerians governance system. The group of lawmakers also proposed a transition period of 2031 as ideal to enable Nigerians to make inputs to the bill. We expect that the process may not necessarily terminate with the current administration. In a natural world, we expect that it will even go beyond 2027, but what is important is that we have set the ball rolling. So it may go as far as the actual commencement, it may even be 2031, so we are not expecting that it will take immediate effect. It's a process that we have ignited. Thank you. The country at independence in 1960 was handed the parliamentary system of government by the British but opted for the American style presidential system during the return, the return to democracy in 1979 after a long year of military rule.


way again, since we're mentioning sensor 2, I should have done this intro already, but there's absolutely no way that we're going to be uploading this live stream that we're holding on Twitch, which is a discussion about the rise of fascism in the Western world onto sensor 2. We can't upload it to all of it to sensor 2, so it will not be available on sensor 2, and if you want to watch this full live stream, if you're watching this one minute or two minute little segment that I'm going to snip out of this full live stream and load it onto sensor 2, you want to go to Bitshoot, Rumble or Odyssey. The full live stream will be available there, just a heads up regarding Bitshoot. I'm having a hard time uploading some of the longer videos we have, live streams we have to Bitshoot. I'm guessing it's because there's a huge, huge flood of creators going on to these three platforms and more going away from sensor 2 because they are being censored on the platform. So there's a flood taking place right now and a lot of creators are moving away from sensor 2, and they're going to these three platforms and others. So I'm guessing Bitshoot is having a hard time processing a lot of videos and whatnot. So my apologies, I'm going to try to get everything on Bitshoot until in during this transitional period where they're trying to build something where they can handle the influx. Rumble has had a couple of outcomes as well because they're getting like 30,000% growth per year and stuff like this. So if you can't find what we're doing here, go to Rumble, Odyssey, and we're doing three platforms right now. My apologies to everyone that's been following us for years on sensor 2, but it is beyond our control. If you want to get access to information that you should have access to and discussion that you should be participating in if you want to, then sensor 2 is not the place for you. Bitshoot, Rumble or Odyssey. Aside from that, I'm going back to the chat.