Okay good evening everyone, thanks for joining me again, you're all very welcome and I hope you're all doing well. This evening I want to cover something that I've wanted to cover for a while, been meaning to cover for a while and that is how religions are taught in schools. When I wrote Beyond Terror I looked into this and particularly in the secular United States and this is a west wide problem, a west wide issue including in secular America where it's unlawful to preach religion in public schools or it used to be. There is definite and I think I'll try and show you some of this tonight. There is definite bias and there is definite preaching of religion in American schools and in ours and it's a shift for America and it's become a really controversial issue there. There are religions that are taught differently to other religions and this is what I'm going to discuss. It's a bias in favor of and a bias against and if you can't guess it's a bias in favor of this one and against this one and it is of course because as we know the education system is dominated by the left all over the west and this is an attack on on Western, Western the West generally. This is the majority religion the traditional for the last couple of thousand years at least traditional heritage religion of the West and that's why the education system is biased against it. This of course as we know is a innocent helpless victim at all times and everywhere including in our classrooms. So I've had a read through. This is a curriculum book for Key Stage 3 which is 11 to 14 year olds. This is the teaching of these two religions the curriculum teaching of these two religions and I read these I read them just today so they're fresh in my mind and my thoughts on them are fresh in my mind and I read them in the with the awareness of the fact that I may given my given given what I do and my history and I may be biased in this I may find things that I'm putting there rather than that are there. So with my own potential bias in mind I looked at these and I'm confident and comfortable to say I've looked at them as objectively as I can and I've questioned myself on whether or not they are as different as I think they are and I've concluded that yes objectively they are completely completely different in their approach and I will show you the key reasons why. So we'll start with Islam and this book what it's from 2017 so it's three years old and I've noted a few key passages in the teaching and I'll show you how different it is from but the overall book is completely different between the two but the this book the Islam book it varies into praise I would say of Islam and certainly praise of Muhammad. This book varies into criticism of Christianity and scarcely bizarrely scarcely mentions Jesus whereas Muhammad in here is matter-of-factly praised. So let's start with the beginnings of Islam. Islam was founded after the other Abrahamic religions in brackets Judaism and Christianity but Muslims often refer to Jews and Christians as people of the book. This is because Muslims believe that God Allah in Arabic revealed himself to earlier prophets mentioned in the Bible such as Abraham Moses and Jesus however Muslims believe that over time the message of these prophets was changed and corrupted and so God sent one final prophet Muhammad. Now immediately to me and again and if you I mean do the same yourselves take my potential buyers into account here I'm trying to be as objective as I can but to me there's a hint of that Muslims are kind to Jews and Christians immediately that in Muslims have respect for Jews and Christians immediately in the first sentence tells you that Muslims refer to Jews and Christians as people of the book goes on to tell us that there is a final prophet who is Muhammad it goes on Muslims believe that God revealed messages brackets revelations to Muhammad about what people should believe and how they should live their lives they consider these revelations to be perfect and final the revelations that were given to Muhammad were memorised by his followers and collected in a book called the Quran after his death the Quran is written in Arabic but there are translations in English and other languages next little sort of fact box I like these fact box did most historians agree that Muhammad was a real person however when considering events from hundreds or thousands of years ago it can be difficult to separate facts and legends sometimes writers want to influence the way people are remembered so they may change or exaggerate events events this applies to all of history not just Islamic history I mean that's actually fair enough but again there is a discussion of Muhammad here I'm going to go through Christianity you'll see the difference so we go on to how did Islam begin at the time of Muhammad there were two main cities in Central Arabia Mecca and Medina Arabian desert Muhammad was raised by his uncle because both of his parents were dead and he was taken across the Arabian desert and where he gained a reputation as an excellent trader he was given the nickname alamin which means the trustworthy at the age of 25 Muhammad married a wealthy businesswoman and widow called Khadija she was 15 years older than him but she admired the skills he had learned from his uncle once again there's a lot of praise here for Muhammad he's very much being elevated by this scarcely a mention of Jesus in him now this this paragraph did make make me smile if in the seventh century there was much cruelty violence and poverty in the city of Mecca Muhammad disliked this and he would often retreat to a cool quiet cave in the mountains outside in order to think and pray I mean they are talk about it's a sanctification it definitely definitely amounts to praise it was in this cave at the age of 40 that Muhammad had a religious experience that would change his life and the society of Mecca forever they go on to talk about this being the night of power where the Quran began to be revealed just another noteworthy chapters in in evidence if you like of the praising of Muhammad the elevation of Muhammad in the national school curriculum of the UK and there's a another little sort of fact box called Bilal one man who was attacked because of his conversion to Islam was a slave called he was one of Muhammad's earliest followers when Bilal's master found out that he had converted to Islam he violently tortured him but Bilal would not give up his faith his master was angry that Bilal regarded God as more important than him and that Bilal would not honor the many idols that other meccans worship his master ordered that a large stone be placed on Bilal's chest to slowly crush him Bilal simply said a hard a hard God is one Muhammad was shocked when he heard about the treatment of Bilal and told his friend Abu Bakr to buy Bilal from his master after Bilal was freed from slavery he became a close friend of Muhammad there are several this is throughout the book this elevation of Muhammad into this wise and compassionate character who was who firmly disliked any violence or injustice in actuality and they're probably and I say this as an objective observer I don't believe in any religion I don't believe in any philosophy any ideology completely I take what I believe in from each and every one of them but as an objective observer actually that sounds more to me a peaceful teacher of tolerance and of a preacher against injustice sounds more to me like Jesus than it does Muhammad but they're taught very very differently the next chapter is Muhammad the politician where they credit him with all this wisdom um I'm not going to read it all obviously but there is next a paragraph couple of paragraphs on entitled Muhammad the warrior no actually I must read you Muhammad the politician this final part of it one of the first things that Muhammad did when he arrived in Medina was to write the constitution of Medina this was a set of religious laws that aimed to bring together Muslim Jewish Christian and polytheist tribes who live there and create a fairer society it included rules to help widows and orphans and it said that Medina should be a sacred place where no weapons could be carried this was Muhammad's first attempt at creating a community based on religious beliefs and Medina became the first Islamic city state that is how our curriculum is describing an Islamic city state a place where Muslim Jewish Christian and polytheist lived together and create a fairer society and that they are saying was Muhammad's first political act it's extraordinary the next is Muhammad the warrior at the time of Muhammad there were many violent disputes between tribes across the Arabian peninsula in 624 Muslims in Medina were being persecuted by tribes in Mecca Muhammad led his armies of followers into battle to defend the safety of Muslims in Medina against this violence the battle of Badir as the event became known confirmed that Muhammad was no longer just a prophet and a politician he was also a strong warrior as a result of his victory in this battle more people in Medina accepted Muslim or Muhammad's authority it is quite extraordinary isn't it it is it is it's almost preaching um it's preaching for Muhammad and preaching for Islam it is also a complete distortion of what he actually did which was conquer and brutalize and force submission he is known in their own scripture he was a killer and a a conqueror and the idea that people lived together in an Islamic state and that society became fairer they lived in an Islamic state as demis as servants as so entirely inferior to Muslims absolutely extraordinary if we go on a couple of chapters there's a chapter here why did Islam split that goes into sort of political the split between Shia and Sunni we have a chapter then about the Quran which describes it the fact that it is not in chronological order for example and that women that people accept it as the complete and final word of God it talks a little bit about the surah and it says each surah is named after an object or a subject within it for example surah two is called the cow because in it moses tells people to sacrifice a cow surah 29 is called the spider surah 35 is called the creator the most important surah is the first the opening which muslims must recite five times each day you can read this surah on page 18 i made a little note to that and that's why i just said the word women as i saw that they omitted to include the chapter entitled the women in which it tells what men can do to women including beat them if they are disobedient i wonder why that little ditty didn't come into discussion of how the sorrows are named after the subject within them we go on to talk about respecting the Quran next is what do muslims believe about god um fairly uncontroversial stuff they believe he was the one and only we go on to who are the prophets in islam and these are named as abraham or ibrahim jesus or isa uh muhammad now the part of jesus uh again it's praising of islam it's putting islam in a very very favorable light it opens with jesus is viewed with great respect by muslims and is an important prophet and we're told this over and over again and it's meant to be some sort of interfaith unity but actually of course what it teaches is completely antithetical to the message of christianity it reduces jesus to one of many prophets and completely defies and denies the central message of christianity and i think it's worth keeping that in mind i'm not trying to stir up trouble i just think it's it's worth keeping that in mind and that of course isn't stated here it's all very positive towards islam and islam is very very positive towards other religions and that is the prevailing message throughout this it also there's a key facts section these are not just facts but key facts section at the end of the book and this tells us that islam is the second largest and fastest growing religion in the world i hear this quite a lot that is the fastest growing religion in the world um i've yet to be presented with any concrete evidence and clear evidence that is the case but it is stated as a fact as a key fact here and again it doesn't offer any evidence that that's the case another key fact mohammed was a religious and political leader as well as a warrior who ruled over medina and then mecca he fought against persecution of early muslims and by the end of his life was the most influential influential well influential man in the arabian peninsula it's um it's quite quite extraordinary again how how this amounts to praise and it's praise generally i mean look at this one it's stood out to me there's a picture of a mask and it says underneath very matter-of-factly some of the most architecturally impressive buildings in the world are mosques we go on to eid eid al fatur is mentioned what isn't mentioned is the horrific at bloodbath um that comes with it funnily enough another one that stands out and this is one of those little boxes again sort of a fact box sharia law this one is entitled sharia law teaches muslims what is halal halal is an arabic word meaning permitted the word is most often heard when describing food but it can also be used to describe prayer fast and clothes or other things any object or action can be halal the opposite of halal is haram which means unlawful or forbidden any meat that muslims eat must be halal from meat to be halal the animal needs to be killed by cutting the jugular vein carotid artery and windpipe with a sharp knife all blood is then drained from the animal during this process an islamic message is recited muslims believe that eating pork and drinking alcohol is always haram it doesn't tell you here that under sharia law at the word of a woman is worth half of a man's it doesn't tell you that under sharia law the word of a non-muslim is worth half of a muslims it doesn't tell you that a man is permitted to beat his wife under sharia law it doesn't tell you quite a few things about sharia law and that it is practiced contrary to what is lawful in this country it is practiced in this country it doesn't tell you that people are forced into it it doesn't tell you it doesn't tell you quite a bit nor does it tell you about halal slaughter that the animal is conscious throughout and can take minutes to die and that almost every animal welfare group in the western world is opposed to it on the grounds that it causes completely unnecessary and what amounts to torturous suffering for the animal during the process of slaughter doesn't mention any of that and it doesn't mention also that in the matter of slaughter there is an alternative which renders the animal unconscious prior to slaughter and that muslims refuse to participate in it we do have a section now what should women wear the quran teaches that both men and women should dress modestly this is interpreted different ways by different muslims in many ways that's a statement of fact but it doesn't quite tell the whole story um the quran does say that men and women should both be modest but it also says that women who are not veiled are rather legitimately harassed and therefore that women the message in that is that women should veil to avoid being harassed and it's quite clear goes on to say some believe it means that someone that women should wear a hijab some means a some think it means a nikab some think it means a broker it does go on to say that there are disputes about whether or not this thing should be banned it gives a fairly standoffish message but it does do this thing that i i'm always really alert to some people would argue and then it goes on to argue itself if you if you if you see the distinction let me give you an example this is a paragraph on arguments for banning coverings it says sometimes the media have used images of women wearing a nikab when reporting on acts of terrorism carried out by other people claiming to be muslims some newspapers have done this when the act was not carried out by people wearing any covering this sort of treatment of islam may make people like the idea link the idea of coverings one one's body with terrorism so they feel threatened by it that is taking the side in the argument it is it's subtle but it's there they will say things like some people like to argue that wearing a covering like the nikab stops muslim women from integrating into european societies okay but why don't we have for example the ruling on the european court of human rights that agreed with this that said it did stop integration and that's agreed with france uh for banning it on and agreed on those grounds there's a completely one-sided message and the book is taking a side and language like this sort of treatment of islam it's taking a side we go on to talk about islam what is jihad we talk a little bit about lesser jihad which it claims is the includes militant jihad i'll read a part of it to you the arabic word jihad literally means to struggle and can refer to a physical or spiritual struggle lesser jihad in the years following the night of power mohammad and his followers were persecuted because of their monotheistic message again muslims are victims and have been persecuted and muslim and mohammad was a great warrior for responding to this persecution and it's written really is written throughout this leads to islamic militancy today the majority and this is a statement of fact as well and i'll compare this to something it says about christians in a moment the majority of people today believe that people should be free to choose their religion or no religion rather than having a particular religion forced upon them that's a statement of fact i want evidence that that is true among muslims they do say the majority of people today but they imply that it's the majority of muslims at least to me they do and in context of the whole book it certainly sings that to me it goes on to say the majority of muslims also believe that using violence to spread islam is unacceptable okay i can i can perhaps accept this but pay attention to the language the majority of muslims also believe that using violence is unacceptable i'll compare that to christianity in just a few minutes it goes on to say in a separate paragraph after mentioning after mentioning 9 11 it goes on to say the vast majority of muslims are appalled by the actions of these groups and reject both their violent interpretation of the quran and also their attitude towards people of different religions again these are statements of fact without any real evidence backing them up but more importantly to me is the language that is used now i'm going to go this is essentially the end of this book so i want to pick up with christianity where i leave off with islam here but before i do we do have we have a picture of sidik khan looking very masterful and very powerful in the islam in britain chapter with the caption underneath in 2016 londoners voted for sidik khan to be the first muslim mayor of london we talk about modern challenges and what is the first thing mentioned under modern challenges in britain with islam today it is of course you've guessed it islamophobia many muslims living in mainly christian or secular societies have experienced rising levels of islamophobia matter of fact this situation has worsened in recent years because of other terrorist attacks beyond 9 11 some people argue that poor reporting of islam in the media there's another example of some people argue when actually the text is arguing it but pretending it's someone else some people argue that poor reporting of islam in the media has further encouraged negative stereotypes and discrimination it's the text that is telling you this as a matter of fact but to avoid looking like it's doing so it's placing the some people argue in front of it always pay attention to this language they say there's some people who argue it it is unfair to judge the majority of peace loving muslims on the violent actions of a small group and that these militant actions are against the message of islam they say that the textbooks not saying that of course not that would be biased they say that we have a little caption book section here then on islamophobia they do acknowledge that it's a new word that has entered the english language phobia means either a fear or dislike of something islamophobia describes the way in which some people dislike discriminate and are prejudiced against muslims because of their religion in recent years there has been an increase in islamophobic crime in britain like what where this can involve verbal physical or online abuse of muslims so it is stating that this is a crime and they're probably right actually but they're backing up the idea that online abuse of muslims is a crime it does go on to acknowledge that some people dislike the word islamophobia this is an afterthought and argue that it may prevent people from making fair criticisms of islam it's true it does for example if someone says that it is wrong for women to be made to wear headscarfs in conservative islamic countries women are made to wear headscarfs and that's not conservatism that's slavery in islamic countries he or she if you object to this he or she may be accused of being islamophobic we are accused of being islamophobic however critics say that in free societies all religions and beliefs should be debated and that criticising a religion is not the same as making generalisations about whole groups of people um yeah i mean they they sort of have to do that don't they as an afterthought take into account the other side of the argument but they don't take its side in the way that they take the matter of fact crimes against muslims are awful and appalling and online abuse is appalling and something must be done they are they are absolutely taking a side there okay so that really brings me to the end of the muslim book so now i want to go on to the christian one and where are we for time 27 minutes okay now i want to go on to the christian one i want to pick up where i left off with the majority of muslims also believe that using violence to spread islam is unacceptable so let me go to christianity okay under the chapter the crusades of course let me just repeat to you what it says in the book about islamic militancy today it says pay attention to the language the majority of muslims also believe that using violence to spread islam is unacceptable the vast majority of muslims are appalled by the actions of these groups terrorist groups and reject both their violent interpretation of the quran and also their attitude towards people of different religions very very strong very matter of fact now let's see what it says about christians although most christians today believe that violence should be a last resort this has not always been the case do you see the difference it's not me right it's not my bias i'm not seeing what i'm putting there that is starkly starkly different in tone in attitude and in and in matter of factness again the majority of muslims also believe that using violence to spread islam is unacceptable although most christians today believe violence should be a last resort this is not always been the case you must see the difference between in the approach that to me alone it's obviously not enough evidence but it is stark evidence to show a completely different approach to the attitude towards the two religions to as an overall feel and i won't go through this in as much detail as i did that one frankly because there's not as much to say and i'll explain why there's not as much to compare i can't make fair comparisons and the reason being that this is a completely different book jesus isn't really mentioned in here and that's what i find so extraordinary about it muhammad the individual is roundly praised over and over again in the teaching of islam it amounts to preaching to my mind it amounts to extolling the virtue of islam to my mind and i think many of you will agree and i think you'll agree that it isn't a matter of bias that it's objectively uh observable the and a stark difference in how the two religions are approached and just with that those two sentences i think there's a stark difference but the books themselves are entirely entirely different there's a completely different vibe about this one it is very much a historical document this one and i'll give you an idea of what i mean while islam talks about the book about islam talks about christ about muhammad i think i need more coffee actually that's not a bad idea right that's better while the islam book talks about muhammad and talks about the positive aspects of his of what he taught actually lies about the positive aspect of who he was and what he taught and what he brought to the world this closely there's no recognition really of jesus in here and what he taught and what he brought to the world it's very much about the churches and about the history of the churches and about war between the churches and the general message of it is that christianity has a history of war and violence and bloodshed and uh it's it's extremely extremely critical actually um so let me start with where did christianity begin it says christianity began nearly 2000 years ago in present day israel which was then part of the roman empire i may be a little bit paranoid on this one i'll give you that i i may this may be me but to me what it's doing there is is de-westernizing there's a just a hint of de-westernization of christianity in there anyway that may be a little bit i may be overregging the putting a little bit on that one however it goes on to say the first christians had radical new beliefs they claimed that a recently executed jewish man named jesus was the long-awaited messiah i think that's rather um how do i put it it sounds a little bit like a mockery and i don't know why they've they repeatedly refer to jesus as a jewish man which sounds a little bit again i may be overregging it a little bit here and perhaps i may i admit i may be guilty of spotting things here that may not be there but tell me whether you agree or not they repeatedly refer to him as a jewish man which i find quite he was but i find quite odd how often they say it i don't know whether this is trying to be an interfaith thing but it does smack a little bit of propaganda of some sort to me i'm entirely sure what but does appear strange to me they believe that three days after being killed on a wooden cross jesus had been resurrected he appeared to many people before ascending to heaven christians claim that jesus had died so that people who believed in him could be forgiven for their sins and have eternal life these were extraordinary claims that's the second time they've said that they don't say that mohammed going to the cave and getting a message from gabriel and they actually put in there that he was he wasn't able to read but the angel gabriel put his hands around his waist and forced and they don't say that these were extraordinary claims uh twice in quick succession am i seeing this am i put am i being paranoid here or do you see it as well there's a there's an air of almost mockery of christianity here and i don't know whether there's i don't know why i've referred to to to um to jesus as jewish as well because he was but it's i don't know what this is there's something very odd about this it goes on to say christians are monotheists which means that they believe in one god however christians also believe that god is three this distinctive belief that god is both one and three is called the trinity the three persons of the trinity are god the father god the son god the holy spirit the doctrine of the trinity is an attempt to express how christians understand god for two thousand years christians have tried to understand how it is possible for one god to be father son and holy spirit at the same time does everyone see this i they're stated what they're saying is it's it's it's i guess true but there's a language here that is entirely different to the language used to describe islam Christians are united by their faith in jesus but there is no such thing as a typical christian over the past 200 years there have been many disagreements between christians and sometimes those have led to new types of christianity today there are over 30 000 denominations of christianity the largest of these is the catholic church again it's all very um there's certainly no praise it's all very um almost as if well we've got to tell you this so we may as well just get it over with i don't know what it is i i hope you can agree or at least see what i'm saying i can't quite put my finger on what it is it's dismissive it's it's yes it refers into mockery to me um it's certainly not anything like the approach to islam next chapter is how did christianity begin um again it's all very ob objective dispassionate historic recording if you like they refer to jesus again several times um as jewish which i which i again i have no problem with this i i i get as i say it was it's true i just i don't think i've seen that much um next chapter what was life like for the early church so again it's very much a historic almost a historic again jesus or his teachings are not mentioned in this it's about conflict it's largely the entire book is about conflict between different parts of christianity either ideological conflict or military conflict it very much uh very much a standoffish critical i will go as far as to say critical um in fact i'll go as far as to say very critical but we go on to the next one constantine on the council of nicaea again nothing about jesus in here except from a very the politics of the time a historical record of the politics of the time that's it that's it i've been searching for those words for the last few minutes that's it it's a historic documentation of the political and social elements of the time that's what it is so next part is the great schism and the catholic church and again there appears to be what what is to me almost a mockery of christian beliefs contained throughout this but at best dismissive as absurd or ridiculous at worst mockery whereas nothing of the kind appears in islam even when discussing the sort of more outlandish aspects of islamic belief we go on then to who is the pope the reformation and the salvation army quakers and the armish all very descriptive uh uh records of various different types of christians historical martin luther and the reparation the reformation the church of england um the armish the quaker as what else have we got christianity and the modern world what is the bible very even in here even in here there is essentially nothing about jesus or what he taught and for the record i very much admire and accept and even practice and believe in a lot of what jesus taught um i believe in a lot of what buddha taught as well and many others but he's not his teachings are not mentioned in here now here's an interesting chapter is britain a christian country christianity has been an important part of british life for over 1400 years but in recent decades belief has changed raising the question of whether it is right to call britain a christian country so again there's an immediate and in the first this isn't even the first paragraph it's the heading so we have that calling into question of and and highlight highlighting a demise in christianity whereas in the islam book it goes to great pains to show the growth of islam and the expansion of islam and how many people convert to islam and have converted to islam over the years here it opens by telling us that there is a decline in christianity how did christianity reach britain uh britain was the westermost point again it's a it's a historical record it may as well be a history book whereas that may as well be a pro islam propaganda book christianity's impact and influence christianity is still an influential influential part of british life this can be seen in the number of churches across the country and in the education system where 30 percent of children attend a christian faith school when someone becomes king or queen he or she also becomes head of the church of england and is given the title defender of the faith the national anthem refers to god three times and two of the main holiday periods in britain christmas and easter are christian festivals uh we have then follow-up chapters about um how britain has become more secular and religiously diverse about some debate between christians on public life we have one here about uh secularism and public life prayer and publicity it talks about a uh controversy back in 2015 when a cinema refused to show an advert for a christian a pro christian advert uh and was accused of limiting free speech including by the equality and human rights commission and for the record i think they were limiting free speech but again what i can only describe as a standoffish attitude throughout when it's not standoffish when it does when it is guilty of bias and it is it is hugely uh critical uh to my mind it some people may find it somewhat critical uh to my mind it as we go on it gets more and more critical now here's perhaps the most critical aspect of it slavery and the crusades there's no chapter in here about slavery and the quran there is no chapter in there about wife beating and the quran there is no chapter in there about killing apostates and the quran no chapter about muhammad slaughtering people cutting the heads off people nothing of the kind but in here when we have no mention of jesus so far i kid you not of course there is mention of him in historic terms as a character in the bible when they're discussing the bible there is no praise for him there is no mention of his teachings there is no he's scarcely in here at all while we have no mention of slavery and muhammad in that book we have a headline slavery and the crusades in this one i read a great chunk of this again pay attention to the vibe the attitude the wording the overall feel of this slavery is the heading between the 17th and 19th century white europeans and americans captured black africans and transported them to the usa in terrible conditions many africans died on the slave ships those that survived were sold to wealthy white christians and forced to work for them some slave owners tried to justify slavery by saying that in paul's letters in the bible he refers to slaves and masters showing he accepted slavery no mention of slavery in islam or in the quran coverage the curriculum of islam however other christians thought that keeping people as slaves was against the bible's teachings about equality and the sanctity of life christians led campaigns to abolish slavery in in many countries including the usa and britain after slavery was abolished racism remained a problem christian leaders such as martin luther king used bible teachings to argue that racism is wrong king encouraged his supporters to peacefully protest against racism and to follow jesus teachings to love and pray for their enemies that may be the only time that's jesus teachings are referred to and certainly the only time that they're referred to positively um but in fact the only time they're referred to but pay attention to the language first of all we are this to teach this and i've little doubt this is three years ago okay but i've little doubt that it's changed in the meantime it's probably actually i suspect next year's curriculum they will wrap it up a bit and we'll have a little bit of black lives matter in there i'm not saying this didn't happen it did happen but if we're going to talk about slavery let's talk about slavery there should be a chapter on slavery in there there should be a recognition of the fact that white people are not the only ones ever to keep slaves this is here and white is mentioned a couple of times as the slave owners white and european we if we're going to talk about slavery why are we only talking about it in this context and it is the only way we talk about it and it's the only way black lives matter talk about it and this is black lives matter ideology right here yes it happened and yes it was wrong and yes we should talk about it but we need to talk about slavery in the round if we're going to talk about slavery to talk about it in one context only is to attack one group of people guess who and and i love the way it states after slavery was abolished as if that was some sort of thing that just happened it was abolished actually sorry uh skill curriculum but it was abolished by the same white people that you've just dismissed as as as evil in the last paragraph so we go on to the crusades on the next page and this is where we get the although most christians today believe that violence should be a last resort this has not always been the case whereas muslims they the vast vast majority of them think violence is completely unacceptable and are appalled by it most christians think violence is a last resort but they haven't always been like that this is what we get in the 11th to 11th i do need more coffee in the 11th to 13th although to be fair that's not easy to say centuries christians fought in wars known as the crusades in 1079 a powerful group of muslims conquered jerusalem christians were concerned that these muslims muslim rulers might ban them from visiting the church of the holy sepulchre in jerusalem this was a popular pilgrimage site for christians because they believed it was where jesus was resurrected christians were also worried that islam was expanding into the christian city of constantinople christian city by the way is in quote marks okay there's a couple more paragraphs but let's look at this one first where we've covered the most christians believe violence is a last resort thing in 1079 a powerful group powerful group of muslims conquered jerusalem yes that will be muslims conquering in the name of Allah which they do and have done for centuries christians were concerned that these muslim rulers might ban them from visiting the church of the holy sepulchre in jerusalem no christians knew that muslims were conquering the world and subjugating all non-muslims as dimmies that's what they knew and they were concerned only because this was a popular pilgrimage site for christians they weren't concerned at all about the murder and the subjugation it goes on in 1095 pope orban the second called for an army of soldiers of christ to march across europe as part of what became known as the first crusade it was its aim was to defend constantinople and conquer jerusalem no it was to defend both the pope promised that take those taking part would be forgiven for their past sins and guaranteed a place in heaven barren up but that's exactly what you had is a promise too approximately 60 000 crusaders began the journey of nearly 5000 kilometers to avoid starvation some of them ate dogs and rats there were even rumors that they ate human flesh the crusaders looted many villages and killed a large number of jews on the journey only 15 000 crusaders survived the four-year journey to jerusalem despite their decreased number they managed to conquer the city once inside the crusaders looted the holy islamic site known as the dome of the rock and massacred the muslim and jewish population many were tortured and burned alive so over here let's let's go through it in summary again over here we have a religion founded by a man who is described with great affection throughout who is elevated throughout who is described as a great thinker a compassionate man a man of wisdom a great politician and a great warrior who defended his people from oppression he his message spread because it was simply such a wonderful message and he united people under his unity and he made for a fairer society it tells us that and the first islamic society was just that society and is therefore telling children that that's what an islamic society is where people of all faiths and none live happily together because islam is so merciful this is a lie and a complete distortion of reality it says nothing nothing at all about the horrors of the teachings of islam nothing this elevates islam and its founder and amounts to preaching it amounts to the propagation of islam by absolute stark contrast this does not mention the founder of this religion the man on which on whose teachings this reality this religion is based and the reality of it it scarcely mentions him and it does so only to put when discussing discussing the bible in a political or historic context this book focuses very much on conflict within christianity on the demise of christianity the problems with christianity and it paints christianity as an oppressive force one which used grotesque violence against innocent muslims it is a distortion of the truth of course but it is also a rewriting of history and it is very very obvious and clear that the british school curriculum is propagating for islam and demonizing christianity it's clear from that and it's clear from much more information that i have gained on this issue through researching it for some years but just through reading some parts of those two books i think that is very evident and very clear you may not agree you may not agree with some of the points do let me know in the comments and let's debate it and discuss it further it's crucial it's absolutely key and it's why i argue that we have to change the school curriculum i do want people i do want us to know the truth i want children taught the truth at appropriate ages when they're able to handle it but it must be the unvarnished truth and as i say one example is slavery if we're going to talk about slavery let's talk about slavery all of it everyone's guilt in it and who abolished it in the west who was it that abolished the slave trade that we are so focused on with black lives matter on what have you today let's talk about that too teach the kids the whole story but this is bias this is propaganda and this is why the school curriculum has to change and that's why it's for britain policy to change the school curriculum okay thank you all very much for joining me this evening i shall see you back on my livestream at half seven on monday thanks again and take care until then


Before jumping to GRPC, let's talk about REST APIs. So to give some context, we had some legacy apps, which are monoliths, something in Rails, something in PHP. We wanted to move into a more front end and back end separated way. So we started building services for our use, and we are separating the front end. So we started with REST APIs only. So there are good things about REST APIs, like well-defined HTTP verbs, and JSON objects can be easily consumed by any JS libraries. And it's curl-friendly, like you can access by any HTTP clients. And almost all the languages have matured HTTP libraries as well. So you don't have to deal with any underlying things. But when we are using that for microservices, we face some of the problems, like not everything is a resource. Because consider an example of calculator service. Maybe the rates, which can be properly represented in a REST way. But consider an endpoint, like calculate premium. So these are functionalities. These are not necessarily a resource. So it would become a JSON APIs from REST APIs. And the problem with using multiple languages is whenever you write some services in one language and you want to consume in another language, you have to create all these tub codes. For example, you have a user service, which provides user information, let's say getUser and createUser. So when you want to consume in Ruby, you have to create classes for request and response. And you would create some service clients, which would make abstract HTTP calls for you. Similarly, when you write in Go, we're sorry for the rest of you. So this is a Go code, like the same set of code you have to write in all the languages you are going to consume for the internal services. And there are other problems, like for internal services also, you have to maintain your API documentation. And if something is rapidly changing, you have to keep up with those libraries, which we have created in different languages, whenever the service is changing. And you have to update the API documentation as well. And JSON is text-based, which allows unnecessary performance burden when serialization and desalization. And before a couple of services, you may not feel the performance burden. But considering a workflow involves multiple microservices, and each time for a workflow to work, it will make sequence of calls. And each time you are marshalling and unmarshalling into JSON, you will feel that a performance. So GRPC is similar to any other RPC systems existing before, but with some better features. I used to work in Java, so I used EJBs before. So GRPC is simple. You have a GRPC server, and you have a couple of clients. So each client will have its GRPC stub to interact with the GRPC server. So from your clients, you will just call methods in the stub, which internally it will make a request to the GRPC server, and receive the response, and give the output of that method back to you. So you will feel it's like a local method call. Instead of an HTTP call, everything is fed on. And here GRPC is some of the features. It is a high-performance RPC system developed by Google. And it uses HTTP2 for the transport. And it uses protocol buffer as the message format. So typical, our REST APIs would use JSON for request and response. It uses protocol buffer, which is a binary message system. And it supports different communication modes, unary, client-side streaming, server-side streaming, or bidirectional streaming. And you can add the middleware layers. We have discussed it's difficult to add the authentication layer into the graph kills. So that's an inbuilt functionality to add authentication system on top of GRPC. And if you want to add additional middleware layers, like logging or anything else you want to, you can do that as well. So protocol buffer. So it's a mechanism for serializing a structure data, similar to JSON or XML. It's another way of representing the structure data. So as I said, it follows the binary message format. And it's used to describe both service interfaces, as well as the message format. If you use the SOAP before, we have the similar thing called WSDL. So previously, we used to describe the services and the request and response messages, everything in the WSDL file. So similarly, we'll have a proto file. So it's a simple one. It's simpler than the WSDL. So here I defined service user data, which have a couple of endpoints, createUser, which accept the createUser request and returns the user. And similarly, for the getUser, it accept the getUser request and return the user. So what are the parameters in my createUser request? Everything is defined in here. So it has a first name, last name, email. Everything is string. Similarly, for the getUser request, I can either pass ID or email. And the response user, it contains the ID, which is integer, and string, first name, last name, and email. This is a simpler one. So all my service-related details, everything is in a single file. User protocol buffer has some advantages, like better performance by using the binary format rather than the text-based encoding. And it's easy to read and understand the service and message definition. So it's better than WSDL. And in some ways, it's better than the API documentation itself. So whatever your service accepts or what are the inputs and outputs, everything is defined in a single place. And this is the one to use to generate the service as well as the steps. One of the good things with protocol buffer is you can automatically generate the stub classes programmatically. Like currently, I think some 10-plus languages being supported. So you don't have to worry about this stub generation in the client side for each of your language. So benefits of GRPC. So as I mentioned earlier, protocol files, it acts as a service documentation itself. Like to any developer reading the protocol, it's better than going through the documentation. An automatic code generation for stubs using the protocol compiler. So each language has its compiler to read this protocol file and generate the stubs according to that language. For example, if I run the Ruby compiler, it will generate the classes for me. If I run the Go compiler, it will create the struts for me. And it provides the better performance by using two things, like HTTP2 for the transport and protocol buffer, the binary format for the serialization. Writing GRPC service. So writing the GRPC service, it's a simple like four step. First, you will start with the service definition in a protocol file format. And you will generate the client and server code using protocol compilers. Then it will generate some base classes for you. So you can extend the base classes and implement the server. And to use it in the client side, using those stubs generator, you can call the methods in the stub. You can configure the URL for that GRPC server. And you are good to use that. So let's see a demo. It's clear now. So we'll start with the protocol. So as I mentioned earlier, the same protocol I use here. I'm following the protocol file version 3. And I defined the package. I mentioned the version for this service. And we have a service user data, and which has two endpoints, create user, get user. The same request and response messages we defined. When I run the compiler, it generates these two files for me. Like this is the stub. I can use it in my client. And it created the service for me. And for the request and response, it created the model classes for me. So I used a gem called graph. So this is an existing Rails API. We added GRPC on top of that. So I extended that base graph controllers and bind with that service, which has been generated by using this protocol. So I defined these two methods, create user and get user, which basically create an active record whenever a new user is created. And if there is any error, it will throw in error messages. Get user is simple, like if it has an email, it will use the find by email. And if it receives the ID, it will do the find and return the response. Simple things, similar to our application controller. This is a sample Ruby client. So using the same prototype, I generated the stubs for my Ruby application, Ruby client. In the client, all I have to do is record GRPC, record generated PB files, connect to the GRPC server, constrict the request, and call the methods in the stub. So all I have to do is writing this file only. So I don't have to write all other files. It will be automatically generated. The same with Golang as well. The same prototype used to generate this big one. But in the client, so now with GRPC generated that code for me, all I have to write is the same thing. I set up a connection to the GRPC server. I constrict the request, and call the method in the stub. So without GRPC, I have to implement the same stubs code in Ruby as well as in Golang. But GRPC saves us time for me. So we start with the GRPC server. So I have two clients here. One is in Ruby. Another one is in Golang. So one is to hit the create user endpoint. And two is to hit the get user endpoint. So the first time, if you see, it returns the response properly because it created the record over there. The second time, I throw that error directly back to here. You can see that email has been already taken. So I can throw the errors created in the Rails service directly back to here. Similarly, to consume the same service in Golang, so I call it for this email ID. And it receives that user object back to it. And I'm able to receive it. So similarly, if I want to add a new endpoint to that prototype, all I have to do is add another RPC endpoint here. And then I have to regenerate the prototypes in each of the clients, only if I need it. Let's say in my go client, I want to use the new endpoint. But in my Ruby client, I don't want to use that. I'm not in need for that newly created endpoint. So I can still use the existing one. But in my go client, I can generate the stubs with the updated or the next version of this prototype and still communicate with this. Unless I don't change the existing message formats, I can still use with that older prototype versions. So let's try adding one more service. So we're going to create a new endpoint, delete user. So which accepts the delete user request and returns the delete response. So I'm going to define these two messages first. So delete user request contains ID alone. And the delete response contains the Boolean flag, whether it's been deleted or not. So what do I have to do? So for the service side, I'm going to generate the stubs, service files again. So in that service file, the new endpoint is added. In the controller, I'm adding that one. So for the response object, it's also already created. So now my server side code is done. So I'm trying to destroy that record based on the ID from the incoming request. And if it's deleted, I'm sending the status true. Otherwise, I'm sending the status false. I'm restarting my server. I'm going to generate with the new profile changes in the Ruby client alone. So first, I'm copying that profile. And I'm generating the stubs again for the Ruby client. So the new endpoint is added. It's added in my client side also. Now I can go to my client and directly call those methods in the stubs. So I have to construct the request first. So I construct the delete request.  Let's try this. This has to be converted into a number, because I can name it later. Okay. So it's though the error, couldn't find the user record with ID tam. So let's try with some other ID. It's deleted in the response. So for the normal web client, there are, you can use, but there are still proxies being involved to convert into the JSON or other easily considerable. So it's more suitable for your internal services, as well as your mobile clients, because it supports for Objective-C and Android Java version as well. So you can use for the internal services and your mobile clients. Web clients, I would still go with JSON services. It's still much, there are not many mature libraries in Ruby. So even when I tried, I found one big graph, but if you will go with HTTP or, if you want to write JSON library in points, there are a bunch of libraries available in all the languages, right? It's still evolving. And one of the good things, okay, bad things are, still we are exploring, like, they're selling these performance and other things. We have these rest end points and we are slowly adding this GRPC as well. During the usage in life, we will get to know what are the disadvantages of that. So there are different ways we are thinking. The first one is like adding the version of the package itself, or keep the different protocols for different versions itself if it's a drastic change. For the minor version, we are planning to add this version 1.1, 1.2 in the package level itself. So in the same client, I can use the different versions of that GRPC services. Yeah, so for your internal services, developer is your consumer, right? So I would rather read this service definition file and the message format rather than going through the documentation to understand. Maybe for the purpose of the services and usage, you may still need that API documentation for sure. But what is my input? What is my output? And what are the methods I'm exposing? I would rather go with this definition file rather than the API documentation. But yes, yeah. No, but consider the number of lines it's generated in this tab classes, right? So once I write the service definition file, I can directly write my service and client. It created the base classes or base threads needed for me. So for the GRPC server itself, it's production ready, it's already used. But the graph thing, it's for the rails, if you want to add on top of another rails API which you are using the rest. So the graph is easy to add. So that's why we are using the graph. But still, is it production ready? That's debatable, like. I don't think that graph is still production ready. Yeah, yeah. You can manually run your server with GRPC implement, but you have to write some basic code at the moment in Ruby. Yeah. Yeah.


OK, it was moving here. OK, great. My name is Natalia Bailey. And thank you for having me and coming to the talk. And it's an exciting week here. This coincides with the 50th anniversary of Apollo, the moon landing. So I was here at MIT for my PhD in course 16, aeroastro, and spun my research out into a company called Axion Systems. And we work on a new type of ion propulsion for small sats, eventually large satellites, and beyond. So generally, a lot of us are here today and this week because of this, a CubeSat, or a little bit more broadly because of the factors that led to the development of such a satellite standard, a more affordable, a smaller spacecraft, and then the resulting ideas and innovations and enthusiasm in the industry today. But one of the areas where there remains much innovation to be done so that we can realize all of the potential of small sats and the new space industry is in propulsion. Satellites typically need propulsion on orbit, which is different from launch propulsion for doing things like staying in orbit, maneuvering to reach their intended altitude, avoiding colliding with debris or other spacecraft, station keeping, and more. The requirements and drivers for successful missions and businesses built around those missions are very different for small sats compared to the more traditional school bus size satellites. Large satellites care about reliability first, and then things like size and simplicity and cost much later. Small satellites kind of flip those requirements on their head and care first and foremost about cost and size and simplicity. So large, traditional, let's say geostationary satellites often used an ion engine like this one here. So a neutral gas like xenon or argon would be injected into the ionization chamber and a high energy stream of electrons would also be injected into the chamber. And the job of those electrons would be to find and collide with one of those neutral atoms and turn it into an ion. Then here at the extraction and acceleration grids, there's a voltage applied between those, so there's an electric field. And some of those ions would happen to make their way to this grid through the holes, and they'd be accelerated out the back of the spacecraft, producing thrust and moving the satellite in that direction. So this type of engine is not low cost. It's not small, and in fact it doesn't even scale down to fit on a small satellite. The pressure vessels that it needs to store the xenon can preclude it from being launched on a rideshare launch. It's complex, and it was designed to be made in volumes of about one or two per year. So that's like the opposite of all those things I mentioned that small satellites care about as far as requirements go. So in order to overcome some of those challenges for a new class of spacecraft and new hierarchies of requirements, Axion, that's my company, we've introduced a new type of ion engine based on a technique called ion electrospray. And we use a liquid propellant instead of a gas. So this equation here basically says that you produce an ion beam by applying that same electric field that a traditional ion engine uses to accelerate ions. You apply that same electric field and you can not only accelerate ions, but you can also produce them. You can extract them from the propellant using just that same field. So in this way there's no need to spend energy ionizing a gas. There's no need for a big chamber for that ionization to happen in. And this mechanism occurs naturally on an incredibly small scale. So there's no need to try to shrink something very large down to fit on a small satellite. Instead we can actually massively parallelize this technique to produce thrust for satellites of all sizes. So it's inherently small. The liquid is stored, unpressurized and the resulting feed system is very simple. So these systems are easy to launch on rideshare launches. All of the components are mass-manufacturable without any specialized processes or equipment. And the technology has the potential for thrust and power levels currently not attainable by any other means of electric propulsion, actually. So that makes us excited to continue to work on this for larger satellites and one day interplanetary missions. You'd think I'd know my talk by now, but here we are. So here's a video of the electrospray techniques. There's an electric field applied between this electrode and another electrode you can't see here. It stressed the liquid. And as we kept increasing, maybe I can play it again. As we kept increasing the field, the liquid eventually assumed this a conical shape. And then a beam of ions actually starts issuing from the tip here. So this is an individual ion emitter. This isn't actually operating in ion mode. You wouldn't be able to see this here if it were, but more for demonstration, illustrative purposes. But this is essentially what's happening over and over again in our devices on hundreds or thousands of tiny ion emitters. So all of this ion extraction and acceleration magic happens here in a thruster chip. We can place any number of these anywhere on a spacecraft and connect them to the propellant supply system and then connect that to the power electronics, like so. At the end of last year, we sent finally our first two ion engines into space. And we're currently in the process. This next year for us will look like transitioning from mostly pure research and development into some commercial manufacturing and starting to sell the first commercial generation of these engines. So I like to include this fellow because putting liquid in a tiny electrical device comes with plenty of, you like to call them, opportunities for technology advancement and development. So a big effort at Axion recently has been into microfluidic control of the propellant. So we're finding that there aren't a lot of great existing off-the-shelf solutions for controlling really small amounts of fluid, things like self-priming valves that work with our propellants and that also happen to work in micro or zero gravity and in the vacuum of space. So these aren't typical requirements that you'd find a biotech or a medical device company having to work with. So we're doing a lot of in-house innovation around microfluidics at Axion, working on some neat things in that area. And then another big area of work for us at Axion has been in the geometry of the individual ion emitters. So I showed you that video. That would be happening from each of these emitter structures here. So these are where the ion beams form. And the geometry of these emitters affects how straight and collimated the beam of ions is. And this has a direct effect on the performance and lifetime of the propulsion system. So we started with emitters that looked like this and we've had a big push in micro and nano fabrication, materials, coatings and various processes. And now we're starting to produce ion emitters that look more like this. And the result has been improved performance and longer lifetimes. So I always try not to spoil exciting announcements but just recently because of a lot of changes here we hit a performance target for satellites up to about 75 kilograms. So yes, it was exciting. Okay, so aside from what we're working on specifically in the materials, emitter geometry, microfluidic valve control, there's some other activity in the industry and in propulsion that I wanted to spend some time touching on. So we heard earlier today from Larry from JPL about insight. But what's a little bit less well known is that along with the insight lander, NASA sent two CubeSats on the same launch to Mars. And the mission of those CubeSats was to relay comms from the dark comm side of Mars where it could normally take up to an hour for that transmission to get to the Mars reconnaissance orbiter and then back to Earth. So this relay setup using CubeSats wasn't a requirement for insight but NASA was demonstrating a new capability and it was a success. And this could be used on future Mars or lunar missions where timely communication is really important like when you're trying to land, for example. So this pair of CubeSats use cold gas thrusters but those could be replaced by an electric propulsion system like electric spray for savings in mass and volume on future escort missions of this type. So the next area I wanted to mention is satellite servicing. So this picture is from DARPA Phoenix which has been kind of a wild ride if you've been following that. But in general, satellite servicing to me seems quite exciting because it's an important stepping stone on the way to more prolific proximity operations in space like those that will be necessary once humans are spending more time there. So satellite servicing missions include tasks like refueling or repairing defunct spacecraft or attaching a new propulsion and attitude control system to the spacecraft to take over. And then of course, these servicing spacecraft will require their own precise propulsion to achieve this. One of the first such missions is Orbital ATK, Northrop Grumman, their MEV-1 mission. The mission extension vehicle will approach Intel SAT-901 which is in graveyard orbit. Rendezvous and dock with it and then provide its attitude control for up to another 16 years. So the satellite has already been in orbit for I think almost 19 years. And so because of this mission it could be given another 16 years of lifetime. And this was supposed to launch in February. I think now it's going up in May but straight out of a science fiction novel that this is happening and it's starting to happen really soon. So that's pretty neat. And then lastly, I wanted to touch on deorbiting. So I realize this is a picture of launchers but I think it's all quite related. In this discussion around deorbit and debris requirements isn't going to go away anytime soon, especially with the proposed rules from the FCC recently. So part of me is quite happy that spacecraft intending to operate above 650 kilometers may soon be responsible for getting themselves there from a much lower orbit. I would be happy to sell them those propulsion systems. But I think in general the industry is a bit concerned that this could end up pampering growth. And while at the same time not actually avoiding the critical debris problems like failed deorbit systems or generally incapacitated satellites. So let's say you want to raise an orbit from 550 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers. If you have a $200,000 CubeSat you're going to spend another million dollars on propulsion. And it's now going to be a refrigerator-sized satellite. But more realistically, the mission is just not going to happen. So even if you made it through that hurdle, that spacecraft could still just fail when it gets to 1,000 kilometers exacerbating the debris problem anyways. So instead, what I expect we'll start to see is being able to use these dedicated launchers or perhaps even a new kick stage or more capable third stage to drop spacecraft off at their intended higher altitudes. And that there will be much more of a focus on innovation in deorbit technologies. And I learned when preparing for this that several organizations, including NASA, have flown CubeSat deorbit systems successfully in recent years. So a lot of them are TRL-9 already. One of them was called Terminator Tape, which I thought was fun. So I'm going to wrap up here. I think we're at an extremely exciting time in the industry and in propulsion specifically. So I look forward to any questions digging into this more here in the Q&A and throughout the rest of the day. Thank you. How does your system, compared to ISP-wise, compared to cold gas or in that last picture, I guess that was sort of warm gas? Sure. So typical cold gas is 150, less than 100 seconds. So ion electrospray, today we're operating around 1,800 seconds, but theoretically up to about 4,000. Wow. Yeah. And you're small. Yes. See? Yeah. I get it. Yeah. Totally get it. Great. We didn't plan that. Yeah. Oh, I guess I'll let. Yeah. Hi. I think mostly CubeSat is decided to be working in a short period of time. Like Marco, they decided to work in less than one years. And the idea of CubeSat is to be replaceable, like the planet labs. So my question is, is it worth trying to implement such an expensive technology like electric propulsion into the satellite will be last maybe not more than one or two years? Yeah, that's a great common question I get. So generally, I think if you're going to spend money to put something in orbit, you don't hope that it only lasts one year. And if, in fact, it could last a bit longer, and economically all of that made sense, you would hope that it would stay in orbit longer and keep operating. So that's one part. And the other part is that CubeSats, I think, have evolved into more of the kind of technology demonstration and academic program sort of realm. And so most of the time, we're talking with customers with slightly larger satellites. So about 25 kilograms to 150 and then up to 400 kilograms. Yeah. Yes. Thank you very much for your speech. Your technology is so fascinating, but may I ask you about your business? Because I'm from Sloan, business school. Yeah. Who is the most significant customer who buys your technology or does this make profit now or business side? So soon. It will be profitable very soon. Our longest anchor customer has been DoD. And when we first started the company, we thought that our earliest adopters would be other space startups who needed to be adventurous in the technologies they adopted. But it turns out that they're very risk-averse because they themselves are very risky. And we're all trying not to further compound our risk by doing these missions. So it's actually been companies like Lockheed and Boeing and organizations like DoD and NASA that we've worked with early on. Hi. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about any of the technology challenges you had moving from kind of an R&D type environment into a commercial product. Yes. Well, the one part that maybe wasn't our fault was that when we spun out the company from MIT, everybody was still focused on CubeSats as being basically the majority of the commercial new space market. And the technology at that point was very close to ready for in terms of performance and maturity for that market segment. And then while we were busy productizing that for CubeSats, the industry sort of decided that, no, we need to use larger and larger satellites. So CubeSats aren't going to quite cut it for most of these missions. So then we had to go back into lab and improve the performance to be able to address these larger satellites. So that ended up being much more pure R&D than an engineering or product effort. And we ended up needing to approach a lot of things from a blank slate and kind of completely start over in some areas where we had assumed it was going to be small tweaks that would get us there. So that was probably the biggest challenge. Can you talk about your experience fundraising for not only a hardware company, but a space company, and then also touch on how you used government contracts to kind of help kickstart your company in revenue? Sure. So as far as fundraising, it's been fine. I think what helped us early on was coming from a kind of strong foundation in the lab here, where we had actually already launched the technology into space and had checked off a lot of the proof points. So then that made fundraising a lot easier. If you have specific questions on that side, I'd be happy to dive in more. But I don't have any other fundraising for any other company experience. So it just kind of is what it is. And then, sorry, can you repeat? Yeah, so we've raised venture capital and then also raised almost the same amount of money in non-dilutive funding from the government. But those contracts were kind of the follow-ons to ones that we already had here at MIT. And there are contract vehicles that exist when you're trying to take an academic research project and spin it out into a small business. So that was kind of where we focused since we already had those relationships. And then there was a lot of interest in commercializing technology the government has already spent money on academically. So that was kind of a sweet spot that we found that I would suggest people look into. Any other questions? OK, great. Yeah, got one. Reusability, for instance. Last year, the Goldman Sachs report on space noticed that for nano-sats, the average cost actually increased. Small launches made it possible, but there was no decrease in cost. Now, when you look at like 1,000 K telco constellations, what is your vision of average cost when you add grapple solutions, your proportions, and the cost? What do you see it is for something maybe 50 K and a satellite or, let's say, 300 K in orbit 1,500 in the next few years? Yes, so I think there's kind of a line that separates them up to a certain size of satellite or mission. I'm not sure how I would categorize it, but I would say if you're able to take any launch and then get yourself exactly where you need to be, that ends up operationally and launch cost-wise saving you quite a bit of money until you hit a threshold where you're needing to move yourself by 700 kilometers and then I think that's when there currently is no good solution. And that's why I mentioned on the launcher deorbit slide that I think there needs to be something like a kickstage or I think folks were looking at putting chemical propulsion on an ESPA ring and using that to drive around and drop satellites off. So doing that part right now is still incredibly expensive to add your own propulsion and there's no other great solution. But if you're able to maneuver yourself for the smaller adjustments, I think there can be a big cost savings. But I don't have the exact numbers. There's a number of other startups in the EP field, the small EP. And so how do you position axion systems to sort of differentiate it from the field? Yeah, what I'm seeing mostly are many other companies that are trying to take the existing EP systems and scale them down. And so a lot of focus is on hall thrusters because traditionally, if you scale a hall thruster down, the efficiency falls off to below 10%. And so several of these companies are working on incrementally bringing that back up by improving the cathode and the chamber materials and so on. So I think we're still seeing efficiencies like 20%, 25%. And on these small satellites, power is still incredibly important and precious. So that's very challenging. And then the other very real competitor that we have and that we're watching closely is a company called Enpulsion. And they do something quite similar to what we do, actually. But they use a liquid metal. So same, they even form those same cones and have small emitters. But the propellant is a metal. And it turns out that to extract, you have to ionize the metal atom and then extract and accelerate it. And that power draw to do that is about six to 10 times greater than from the propellant that we use.  So I think there's a lot of very viable stuff out there happening in propulsion. But it might be missing some of the marks like on power. Following the launch of those two engines at the end of last year, I was wondering if there are any important lessons that you took away from that event that you're going to be bringing with you into this commercialization space going forward? Yes. A complete redesign of one of the components. Yeah, we learned a lot about the environment during storage and even on the launch pad that we had been designing to the average case. And then we ended up seeing the extreme cases and realizing that we probably couldn't design to the average. So to get a little bit clearer, especially around humidity. So we did not expect to sit on a humid launch pad or nearby it for nine months because that wasn't the average case we were designing to. And then that happened. So now we've had to redesign the parts of the system that that affects accordingly. And then the other thing that we learned internally that maybe we should have known sooner, but that even if you think the integrator knows that they shouldn't do something, you should probably still say it explicitly. Don't take it out of the dry bag six months before it's going to be integrated just in case something gets delayed. So things like that we learned just to be more clear about and explicit about. Good question. Actually, just to build on that last question, can you elaborate on what the operational and management structure of your teams look like when doing this kind of work? Because I know it's one thing to have a research project kind of structure. It's another for commercialization or technology application structure. Do you work in feature sprints? Can you just sketch what the work process looks like? Yeah, I'll say a couple of things that come to mind. So as far as the structure of the company, we're about 32 technical people, engineers, and researchers, and then three business and office manager type people. So very, very technical. My VP of engineering comes from industry where he's taken products to market several times and gone through that iteration and spun things up for manufacturing. So that's been very important because we were operating just like our lab here until bringing that experience on the team. And yeah, I think. Anything else specifically? Oh, we do some form of agile. So we do work in sprints, but we rename them orbits. Sorry, do you have any parameters for the reliability of your solution when operating in space? Yes, so we have the three different components. So as far as subcomponents that are off the shelf, we have data sheets, and we do our own testing there. As far as our custom, unique components, we're just now starting to spin up the test machine to be able to get some statistically significant results. So we have early models of the reliability for each component with a lot of curve smoothing happening right now, and then we're going to keep building those up. But our first customers will have to be OK with the fact that they're buying something that's research grade. You can get a head start on lunch ahead of the other room. OK, thank you.


URL Display a web link With Moodle it's very easy to display for our learners Links to websites or links to files uploaded on the internet This saves them having to go and find them themselves They get a direct link which you the teacher have chosen So to do this we click the turn editing on button top right Or we scroll down to the administration block and click the turn editing on link there And then in the section where we want to add our link, or URL We click the link, add an activity or resource It doesn't matter if you choose the wrong section because you can always move it afterwards This now brings up the activity chooser And we go down to the resources section because URL is a resource We can either click twice or we can click once and then the add button And this will display the screen where we can add the name that we wish to give our URL It doesn't have to be its actual name but a descriptive term that the students will see on the course page We can add a description of it and if we want to display that description on the course page We can check the box And then we actually paste or type the name of our URL, our web address The link to the website or an uploaded file If we don't exactly know where our uploaded file is We can click the choose a link button and this will take us to the file picker There are several other settings which you might like to explore in your own time For instance appearance, how exactly you would like this URL to be displayed But for now let's scroll down, click save and return to course And we can see that we very quickly added a link to our website for our learners to access


As a history major, Will had to keep track of many different sources, scholarly articles, books, and even primary sources. He frequently found this frustrating. He kept copies of PDFs on his computer, but he often struggled to find the specific source that he was looking for when he needed it. He also became annoyed with how long it took him to create citations and bibliographies for his paper. He knew that most databases had a feature that would allow him to copy a citation for a source. And he learned that many databases also had an option to create an account and save citations to his account. This helped, but he still had to create a different account in each database. He asked the librarian about tools he could use to better keep track of his sources. She recommended that he consider using citation management software, such as Zotero. The librarian explained that Zotero is a free citation management tool that he could download to his computer. With Zotero, he could save the citation information for any sources he found in a database with a single click. After he saved a source to Zotero, the citation information for the source would appear in his Zotero pane. In Zotero, he could create folders to organize his citations. And best of all, he learned that Zotero communicates with Word so that he was able to insert citations and create a bibliography while he typed. He could also create an online Zotero account so that he could have access to his sources no matter which computer he was using. The librarian did caution that the citations created by tools such as Zotero are not always perfectly accurate and it was his responsibility to make sure he checked each citation to make sure it was correct before he submitted his work. The librarian explained that, in addition to Zotero, there were other available citation management tools, including EndNote Basic and Mendeley, both of which had similar features to Zotero. After trying a few of the different citation management options, Will found one that worked for him. And afterwards, he found it much easier to manage his sources and to create citations and bibliographies.


Get it if you want it get the stuff in get the stuff in at 50 Shoo, we barely made it today with my internet issues targets 98 here be in it if you want it 98 97 I'm lucky. I got back up here 98 98 98 Here 97 it's going and I can switch I can switch internet companies again I'm still having problems with this company, but I don't think it's gonna be any better So it was worse at the last place. It's an issue. I Think it's the wiring here. I think the whole apartment needs to be completely rewired and I think that's I think that's the reality Here we go. Hopefully you got it doesn't really matter where you got filled Hopefully you're just in it 98. I probably did lose zoom, but it probably just bounced back Whereas with my platform when it when the internet even shakes it all it just zonks me right out Here we go 98 98 98 we'll talk about the market when we're done Shoo so glad I got back up in time Here we go 98 through 98 Hang on Here we go. It's gonna break it. Here we go. It's breaking it right now. Here we go Here we go Here you could be out Hand of the bud here one more push up one more push one more push under 50 Oh, and I think I didn't have any internet You could still be in it. Who knows this could go to 95. This was the best guy All right, let me get situated here. Whoo. What a morning


The abstract summarizes the findings of a large-scale proteomic analysis of Alzheimer's disease brain tissues from multiple studies. The results suggest that proteins involved in synaptic function and vesicular transport are affected earlier in the disease progression, while those related to mitochondria are only affected later on. Additionally, certain brain regions are more susceptible to the disease than others. This article was authored by Manna Askenazi, Thomas Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Pires, and others.