This approach reduces the runtime of OTU picking compared to traditional open reference OTU picking methods, making them feasible for large datasets. Additionally, we have implemented SOOP as part of the popular QIME software package, providing users with a convenient way to use SOOP. This article was authored by Chai Ramrite out, Yanhee, Jose and Navas Molina, and others.


When there is an air emergency, your basic problem is to get down to earth safely. But if you happen to be over hostile territory, you also have another problem, that of evading capture. Apart from the natural desire to get back home, the code of conduct requires you to make every possible effort to avoid capture and return to your unit. The means you will use to evade capture will depend largely on circumstances. But whatever means and actions you employ, you're going to have to rely heavily on camouflage. Camouflage is any measure or action taken to mislead or deceive the enemy and make it possible to evade without being seen. You couldn't do anything to camouflage yourself as you came down. But you should have been thinking about it and looking for the kind of terrain and conditions that can give you the best chance to escape detection. You need to avoid populated areas or those that show signs of habitation. Generally, the more people around, the easier it is to be detected. You should have been looking for a place to hide as close as possible to where you land. Once you're on the ground, your primary concern is to get out of sight as quickly as possible, taking your equipment with you. This means out of sight from the air as well as from the ground. There are two types of observation you must guard against. One is being seen directly, or leaving visible evidence of your presence. The other is being spotted indirectly by animals or by detection devices. What you do once you're out of sight, of course, will depend on the circumstances. But if you have the time, you should begin by carefully selecting the equipment you want to take with you. Your parachute is definitely worth taking if you can because you'll find many uses for it. The items in your survival kit will also be useful. What you can't or don't want to take, you must bury or hide. And here is where the camouflage begins. If you do any digging, the ground should be left the way it was. And any other evidence that you were there should be obliterated. Once you've taken care of these important details, your next job is to camouflage yourself and your equipment. The kind of camouflage you use will depend entirely on the character of your surroundings. But no matter what kind you use, the basic objectives remain the same. You have to blend with your background so that you become a part of it. In order to do this, you've got to work on the three factors that set you apart from everything around you. These are form, color, including both skin and clothing color, and texture, again of both skin and materials worn. If it hasn't already been done before your mission, you should remove any jewelry that could attract attention by shine or reflection. You also sanitize your clothing and equipment, removing patches, insignia, and anything else that would attract attention. Your form, of course, is the distinctive shape that identifies you as a man. And to change that, you simply have to change your body outline. A hood or floppy hat breaks up the familiar and characteristic outline of the head and shoulders. Darken the face, hands, and any other exposed skin to break up the outline and change the color and texture. Thus reducing any skin reflection and shine. Color and texture depends entirely on the surroundings. Woods or jungle areas normally require mottled greens, browns, and blacks. If you have nothing better, you can get this effect with dirt, mud, or even berry juices. You could also use charcoal and ashes and water if they're available. Or even the sea marker dye or shark repellent if you have water. Foldage can be used to break up the body outline. It also provides natural color and texture. In the desert or barren areas, the improvised clothing required for protection from the elements will break up body contours and can furnish the color for camouflage. The same can be said for barren arctic areas where white is the predominant color. Wherever you are, your equipment must be given the same treatment, so that it also blends with the background. The moment you begin to move, you must take additional measures to camouflage yourself. First, plan your movement to use foliage and terrain features for concealment and screening. Whenever possible, avoid open areas. The amount of light and shadow influence visibility, so constantly consider both of these factors during any movement, night or day. Moving without background or against a skyline presents the danger of a silhouette. Movement in shadows is difficult to detect, but you must be aware of your own shadow so that it cannot be seen. Since the background may change, for example from barren arctic to timbered terrain, you must be prepared to change color and texture to match. When a shelter is necessary, it too must be carefully camouflaged and the same principles apply. First, the location must be carefully selected. It should be an area that the enemy would be least likely to search and lends itself to concealment. The shelter should be secluded away from roads or trails. A natural shelter should be used if possible because it lends itself to concealment with a minimum of preparation. Whatever is used to make the shelter must be arranged carefully so that nothing looks disturbed or out of place. Not only must you match the surrounding grass or foliage, but the correct side of the vegetation must be exposed. If grass or foliage is used, it has to be changed when it begins to show signs of wilting. Any evidence of cut foliage or grass should be hidden. Freshly cut stumps and fresh earth also have to be concealed. If you have to build a shelter, be sure to camouflage straight lines and the angularity. In different areas you'll use different materials. In wooded or jungle areas you can use grass, branches, brush or leaves. But in barren areas you'll probably have to rely on the terrain using brush, stones and earth. Your parachute is particularly valuable in the desert where you generally have fewer materials available. The brown or beige section of the parachute may blend well with the surroundings and even other parts of the parachute can be used if covered with sand. In snow covered areas you have to take particular care not to leave tracks that can easily be seen and that would give away the location of your shelter. You'll generally use snow to build or dig a shelter. However the white sections of your parachute can be used. Bad weather can be very helpful in hiding evidence of presence as well as discouraging or reducing search activities. Natural cave-like shelters can also be used wherever they are found but they must be carefully selected. Obvious natural shelters near inhabited areas are dangerous because searchers normally check them first. When natural shelters are used all openings should be carefully hidden to avoid deep shadows which will attract attention. Fires in enemy territory are dangerous and before using one a number of factors must be considered. The proximity or suspected proximity of the enemy, the time of day, the weather, the type of available fuels and finally the purpose or need for the fire. Because they can be seen both directly and by reflection and smelled as well fire should never be used unless there is a vital need. And when they are necessary keep them small and carefully concealed underground if possible. Only dry hardwoods or other materials that produce a minimum of smoke should be burned. When possible trees or overhanging branches should be used to help dissipate any smoke. The best time for a fire is early in the morning at first dawn or in the evening at dusk when ground haze or fog will help conceal any smoke. In an evasion situation you may be alone or with someone else and whether or not you get out is going to depend to a large extent on you and your knowledge of camouflage. On how well you can camouflage yourself and your equipment. On how well you can camouflage a shelter and conceal any evidence of your presence. And this in turn calls for an understanding and constant awareness of the basic principles of form, color and texture and the part they play in camouflage. Learn to understand camouflage for evasion and how to use it because one day your freedom and even your life may depend on it.


It's Friday night in the A. You know what that means. Kelly Price and Troy McElhady coming at you on Rise Up Tonight. Presented by AT&T. I know it is really early on Saturday morning at this point, but let's get the energy up. Let's get hyped because it is red helmet week. Once again, Tori. Oh, I love it so much. And look, we have the red with the red helmet. I'm in blue for Team USA, of course. Of course. Hopefully we can get another World Cup dub. That'd be nice. Yeah, can't get any better than that. I'm here for that. Well, the Falcons want to get another dub as well. With the up and down Steelers coming into town, they have an opportunity to bounce back and build back. Let's huddle up about it, y'all. Let's huddle up with Kelly and Tori on the world of Falcons football. Well, no, I always want to keep it real around here. And I got to say that first half Sunday was pretty boring. Tied 10-10 at the half. Neither team was really doing anything splashy. And I say that to say this. The Falcons need more splash plays on both sides of the ball. We've seen them rally around some galvanizing moments in their close wins. And they just didn't capitalize even on the sparse moments that they did have on Sunday. Right. And you make a really good point about capitalizing on those splash plays. And two actually come to my mind the most from the most recent game. The first being Michael Walker's interception right before the half. Then there was the 44-yard Alameda Zacchaeus explosive ket in the Falcons' final drive of the game. And well, we all know how that drive ended. I won't belabor the outcome here. But all this to say, those are two splash moments the Falcons had last week that resulted in actually no points on the board. Yeah, you've got to capitalize in those moments. And we now know that Kyle Pitts is officially ruled out for the rest of the year after having a procedure on his knee this week. He's the kind of guy, as Marcus Mariota said, you need multiple people to really step up and replace what he does on this offense. Michael Pruitt, Parker Hesse stepped up, and shouted to all the D-Liemen filling in for Tequan Graham as well. Do you think that this team is faring well with all these injuries? Yeah, I've been fairly impressed with what I've seen from Michael Pruitt at Titan and Abdullah Anderson alongside Grady Jarrett within that defensive interior, because you're right that you're not going to replace Kyle Pitts or Tequan Graham either with just one person, but we've seen both Pruitt and Anderson play quite well for themselves considering that. But on top of that, if we're just looking at this offense, we're actually seeing Cordero Patterson's role as a pass catcher expand just a little bit too in the absence of Kyle Pitts. I think it's really important to remind defense is that he can be a vertical threat when he needs to be too. I like to see maybe more of that, maybe even some CP Tyler Alger lining up together with CP moving out wide every now and a half. I would like to see that, that would be fun. This week is also huge because the Falcons will be heading into their bye week after Sunday's game, win or lose.  How much do they really need this win right here and right now? They have to, they have to have it. I mean, there are no ifs ands or buts about it. You need to beat the Steelers on Sunday period because if you don't, the way that you feel about the final season's look and feel very differently for you, Marcus Mariota said after finding out about Tampa Bay's overtime loss to the Browns last week that you want to control your own destiny, not wishing for another team to decide it. And that's kind of how I feel about where the NFC South stands right now because if the Falcons do what they're supposed to do, it'll only help them. Right. The first place in our hearts are the Falcons Fitz. Always. We are walking in presented by Wells Fargo. First up, Cordero Patterson giving Starburst vibes. That's all I can really think of when I see this color combination. But you know, I love to see a fun fit, especially knowing how nasty it was on Sunday. And I can say I was there. Can confirm it was nasty, but this fit, not nasty.  I love it. I love it. Bringing the fun vibes even in dreary weather. Now for Isaiah Oliver, who's in clear agreement with me that not only is it sweater weather, it is leather weather as well here. That's the thing. I mean, don't you think that this kind of looks like the pants version of the leather shorts ensemble that Casey Hayward wore at the beginning of the season? Yes, yes, yes. I think so. I mean, the light blue, the leather, everything. Yeah, we go from shorts to pants here in this season as well. There's been some fun in the locker room around college football bets, but let's be real. Lorenzo Carter has the biggest bragging rights as the dog in the house. And we know how much word red and black means for him, not only in Athens, but now as well. So shout out to Carter for the dapper dogs, dirty bird suit here. So as a fellow dog myself, I respect this fit immensely and we've got an SEC championship coming up that I'd imagine Lorenzo will be keeping tabs on. He might even be able to go to this one. Well, finally, I feel like we talk about Grady Jarrett every week here, but like I said before, we have no choice but to stand a leather fit. Look, he could not look any cooler with the custom ice in the fabulous shades. Here's the thing. I think this is the second or third time that Grady has incorporated some type of shades into his fit. And let's be honest, I think they only bring the fit up. Gotta elevate it. And because the glorious red helmets are upon us again, let's elevate these to get a little commotion for the throwback merch that the Falcons have going on. Check this out, guys. You guys can get this on atlantafalcons.com, in this team store, in the stadium. I mean, come on, how fresh is this?  I will say, I feel like the Falcons have really upped their swag game. I agree, I agree. We've been covering that all year. You know, we have only the hard-hitting stories for you here on Rise Up Today. Well, now is normally the time when we air our question of the week. We show you guys a little bit more of the insight into these personalities on the team. But this week, we went even deeper under the surface narrative, as Coach likes to call them, asking the Dirty Birds about their hidden talents in our question of the week. My hidden talent. I'm a pretty good whistler. You think you're some? Nah, I save it for my dog. Oh, so it's like a high fan? Yeah, he has a special whistle that he knows, yeah. I'm very base level with the piano. I used to play really good growing up. In instrument, I played saxophone in the band growing up. I don't know a lot of people don't know that. And I was an all-park basketball player in middle school. So, but I can't do nothing about it. So, that's my old hidden very talent. I guess, try to record others, like other things that people felt usually, I guess. All right, so we'll get Lorenzo Carter to, I guess, whistle while Grady Jarrett plays the sax. And we have a whole jazz band. Yeah, I didn't know that about Grady. Yeah. I had no idea, but we could also get Dean Pease to play piano. Then you basically have a whole band together. Now we have a Christmas concert. I'm ready for it. All right, well, coming up later in the show, we're pumped to welcome the Queen of Falcons Twitter on the show. Gina Kelly joins us in the nest, and you won't wanna miss it. Plus, Grady Jarrett is on a roll, giving back this time with a my cause, my cleat surprise. That story is coming up next on Rise Up Tonight. Rise Up Tonight is presented by AT&T and brought to you by Georgia Lottery. Today could be the day. By Home Depot, how doers get more done? By Mercedes Benz, the best of nothing, and by Truist, committed to a better future. Well, in addition to Red Helmet Week, it's also my cause, my cleats week. Victor Prieto has more on a heartwarming surprise for one pair of cleats as we Rise Up for Atlanta brought to you by Truist. Writing helps him to just release that emotion and that energy that could be drained at a time. Writing about it, you know, you get to express how you feel.  Pion McMiche was born with sickle cell anemia, a non-curable disease which can cause episodes of severe pain known as crises. It's not easy. It's a lot of emotional turmoil. This last crisis that he had was very scary for him because it limited his mobility. It took him maybe two and a half weeks before he could get back to his regular stride. Sometimes it's been weeks, a long time in the hospital. That's the mission you love. For Pion, he turns to his journal where he writes and draws. Pion is a really good artist that he didn't need. Falcon's defense attack on Grady Jarrett seems to agree with Ian. Choosing design, Pion drew while in the hospital to be on his cleats this week during the NFL's annual My Cause, My Cleats initiative. Grady decided to surprise Pion at his house with the news. What's up, Pion? So you appreciate your design of my cleats for the game this Sunday? Oh. Yeah, that's right. So I'm gonna be rocking your design on the field, all right? Yes, sir. Yes sir, he's not talked about a lot, you know, so for me, it was important to use my platform to bring awareness to a cause that people, you know, sometimes can look over. To spread awareness about the secret cell and have a little bit of his team on the cleats still, so I designed them in love. I would say that. Pion and his family will be able to see Grady wearing his design in person on Sunday when he attends his first ever football. In Atlanta, Victor Pantel, Fox Five Sports. I'm just getting a little dusty in here after that one. I know, leave it to my house, my Cleats, to get me all misty-eyed. Ditch in the field, great story there, Victor, thank you. Well, the Falcons squandered a chance at taking over sole possession of the NFC South, getting back to 500 as well, and I was nodding my head in agreement so hard at your notebook this week that I almost gave myself some whiplash. You wrote, at what point does unfortunate become unacceptable? And that's exactly where I need to see this team take another step as well. Yes, exactly, and I know we have this clip coming up that we're about to play, but it really stems from a quote by Tyler Algier that planted the seed in my head where he's talking about how good teams are competitive, but great teams finish, and I wrote this, and I'll say it here. Good teams have unfortunate things happen to them. Great teams consider those unfortunate circumstances unacceptable, and they don't let them happen again if we're being honest. There have been too many unfortunate moments for the Falcons this year. Don't believe me, just go read the story on AtlantaFalcons.com. That is so true, and let's take a listen to that insight. You alluded to from Tyler Algier after Sunday's loss. It's so insane, especially like a rookie coming in, it's just, it's so insane. It's just, like, we are a good team, but in order to be a great team, just need to finish. But like, good teams all over the, but then just the ones that end up just finishing, like whoever wants it more and stuff, but I think all of our effort is there. We just end up coming short. And with the Falcons still in the thick of it, I have a message for the Rurakis coming up later during our hot takes, plus a very fun conversation about the Falcons. And yes, their progress as the Falcoholic's Gina Kelly joins us in the Nests just ahead. Rise Up Tonight is presented by AT&T and brought to you by Georgia Lottery. Today could be the day. By Home Depot, how doers get more done? By Mercedes Benz, the best of nothing, and by Truiz, committed to a better future. Welcome back to Rise Up Tonight. Let's head in the Nests with Kelly Torri and this week's special guest, she's brought to you by Mercedes Benz. So excited for this in the Nests, as Gina Kelly is with us here. She is a deputy NFL editor over at SB Nation, a huge Falcons fan. I like to call her the queen of Falcons Twitter. For me, on Sundays, you're one of my favorite follows. You know, that community is wild in a lot of ways. Wild, I think is probably the best attitude to describe it, but what does it mean to be kind of like a part of that community on Sundays that we're all kind of watching this game together and kind of going through these emotions every Sunday? You know, it's been one of the most special things about my time at the Falcoholic. I've been there for 13 years now and you know, we've seen a lot of, interesting I think is the nicest way that I could call it, making the Falcons over that span and what's stayed consistent throughout that time has been that community. And because this team has had so many ups and downs the lows are really, really low. It's essentially like a support group. I think that it means a lot to the entire community to know that, you know, yes, we are suffering through yet another terrible Falcons' blown lead loss, but we are doing it together as a family. And so I think that that's what, that's part of what makes it so special. How do you kind of reconcile, like being too hard on the team or realizing, hey, this is kind of a little bit of a rebuild going on here and how do you kind of find yourself towing that line of being too tough but also being fair and not being maybe as much a fan but also having that fair perspective? Yeah, and I think that the Falcons honestly have helped me with that quite a bit because if you asked me this question in 2016 before the Super Bowl loss, my answer might have been very different. I think that that experience kind of forced me to take a step back emotionally and to be more analytical when I look at the team. And yeah, I mean, I think just being realistic about it too, like I think that a really good example right now is the Marriota versus Ritter conversation. And yeah, there are a lot of, I mean, we've all seen Marriota being inaccurate from week to week. Yes, we would love to see what we have in Ritter but the team really is still in playoff contention. Is it the best idea to throw a rookie out here behind this particular offensive line and take that risk with his health and that sort of thing? So yeah, I just think that thinking more, thinking about it more comprehensively and not just like knee-jerk reactions. Like when I tweet every week, I hate this team during the games. Like that's not real analysis, but so if I'm actually doing analysis, I try to put some more thought into it than I do. But valid, then the less. Now I'm glad that you kind of shifted the conversation to this actual team because that was gonna be my next question. Just what are your overall thoughts on what Arthur Smith and Terry Fontenot have done throughout the last year and a half, almost to two years now being in Atlanta? So far I am sincerely impressed. What Terry Fontenot inherited was a cap disaster and he has really been able to rework that and to a huge opportunity for the team in 2023 and beyond. Obviously, I was not thrilled with the way that the whole attempt to trade for Shawn Watson went down. I wrote and tweeted extensively about that so I'm not gonna re-litigate it. But I didn't like the fact that the team was essentially forced to trade away Matt Ryan then. I think that they've done the best that they can. I think that Mario does a really good stop gap. I think that he's a really good leader and a good person for Desmond Ritter to be around while he develops. And I think that with the amount of cap space that they have and the picks that they have in their arsenal, I think that there are ways to actually be competitive next year. Like obviously they're still in playoff contention, but this team's had some pretty significant ups and downs. I'm skeptical about how far they could go if they do make it in this year, but next year I think that there's real potential there. And I think that it's a real testament to the work that Smith and Fontenot have done since they came to Atlanta. That being said, is this team better than you thought they would be this year? And what maybe specifically has surprised you or impressed you? I think that, yes, I think that we've definitely seen some growth on the defensive side of the ball, which is something that we have always been looking for. It seems like every single year that this offense team. And offensively, I've been genuinely impressed with the run game. I think that they have just done a phenomenal job of putting everybody on that depth chart in positions to succeed. Corderole Patterson is my favorite player in the National Football League. Seeing him experience this kind of a career resurgence at this point at his age, I've heard an old lady like me, like it feels really good to see. So yeah, they really have pleasantly surprised me. I've been genuinely impressed with the growth that we've seen from this team and it makes me really excited for the future. Kelly and I talk all the time about when was the last time that we could say that the Falcons were a run-first, run-heavy offense? Like, it's been well over a day. Successfully. Yeah, I mean, I think that there was a period of time where it was kind of close to that with Devonte and Tevin Coleman. But really, I think that run first was way back with Michael Turner.  So yeah, that's, yeah, it's been a very long time. You mentioned Redder a couple of times and I know Tori likes to call the Ritter-Ruckus on Twitter. There's these people who are pining for their favorite player on this team, which is the backup quarterback. I love the Ritter-Ruckus. Love, love to you guys out there. But, you know, realistically, what do you think they should do there? I think looking at their picture and being realistic about the fact that I do not expect the Falcons to make a lot of noise in the postseason if they get there, I think that it makes sense because you have to give him some playing time because you have to know if this is your guy going forward. And I don't know how you know that unless you actually see him. Well, thank you so much. You know, we really appreciate your time. Anyone who wants to catch a full conversation, make sure you head to Fox5Atlanta.com. You can find the full thing there and we'll be right back on Rise Up Tonight. This is Ed Crack talking and you're watching Rise Up Tonight presented by AT&T. It's like I don't get caught up in whatever narrative is after four weeks of the daily narratives. You can almost write some of these narratives and live and die every week by narratives because it sets up bad narratives. You can frame the narrative. You can write narratives. Those are easy narratives. Well, whether Arthur Smith likes our narratives or not, we're gonna just keep taking ones where we can get them right. I like to think that Arthur Smith secretly enjoys our hot takes. Now we're pretty tame in comparison, but I agree. And I think he's been listening to us. I think he's with me on this one as well. Falcons fans meet me on camera one. Let's be honest with ourselves. Like it or not, Marcus Mariota is doing just enough. So y'all are not gonna be seeing Desmond Ritter any time soon. And by the way, if you ask Arthur Smith, this is not a hot take. This is what makes the most sense, as we talked about earlier in the show as well. Three of the Falcons next four games are against losing record teams. So there is a legitimate chance they win those games, stay alive, and the NFC South comes down to the season finale against the Bucks on January 8th. And I'm not sure we see Ritter at all this season if that's the case, which is not ideal in my opinion, but I just don't see a scenario where Mariota is able to play or Ritter will be tapping in. Ooh, the Ritter Ruckus is not gonna like that, but nonetheless it makes sense. But we run the show, not that. Exactly, now my hot take is less hot take-y and just more what actually needs to happen. The Falcons need a decisive win. And I'm not talking about a game they win at the last second. I'm talking about a multi-score win, one that is never close, one that never lets the Steelers stick around. For the Falcons to feel good about going into the bye week next week, my hot take is that is what needs to happen. Nothing less. I think we'll all feel good about that. It'll be a lot less stressful as well. Well, the Falcons head into that bye and so do we. No rides up tonight next week, but catch us again on December 16th. Staying up late with us tonight. Thank you for doing that. Good night.


The Minnesota Supreme Court has upheld a Grand Rapids man's murderous conviction and life sentence for his involvement in the beheading death of a hymning man in June of 2016. The state's High Court issued the unanimous opinion Wednesday 38-year-old Joseph Thoreson was convicted of premeditated first degree murder in the death of 20-year-old David Heyman in Raleigh, Tasca County. When the conviction carried in automatic life sentence without any opportunity at parole, Thoreson appealed the case on the grounds that prosecution was based largely on the unreliable testimony of an accomplice and other witnesses who were under the influence of drugs. He also alleged that the district court aired by not instructing jurors about the credibility of those witnesses, but the Supreme Court rejected those claims. This was the Thoreson's final hope for securing a release from the mandatory life sentence. Thoreson remains at the maximum security Minnesota Correctional Facility in Oak Park Heights.


Hello and welcome to this lecture in the course on Introduction to Computer and Network Performance Analysis using queuing systems. I am Professor Varshaapte. I am a faculty member in the department of Computer Science and Engineering IIT Bombay. So in the previous lectures we were looking at closed systems and just like we did for open queuing systems, we are going to go through a real measurement study of a web server. So this is again a recap for you to just look at all the formulae of the closed systems that we studied. We have studied low load asymptote for when number of users or clients is going towards 1. Then when the number of clients goes towards infinity and then for in between the asymptotes, these are all the formulae. Just a reminder that in the case of non asymptotic matrix, we do not know yet how to calculate each of these independently. These are all interrelated. So for example throughput is in terms of R and number of servers also in terms of R and response time is in terms of throughput. So look at these, these are interrelated. We do not really know how to calculate them independently, we are going to learn that later. But today this is all we know. So again like recall the earlier lecture with where we had done this measurement case study of a web server, the setup is identical in terms of what is going on at the server. There is a web server which has multiple processes or multiple threads in one process. It runs a CPU bound script and there is a client server where basically multiple threads of this load generator software generates requests. Now the difference is earlier requests were just generated at a given rate. In the open system, when we were having open arrivals, requests were getting generated at a given rate. So this is no longer the case, now we are looking the studying flow systems. So these threads behave like users who are in the think and issue request loop, the loop that we talked about in flow systems where the users are going to think for some time and then issue a request. So this is exactly what the clients here are going to do, they are going to issue a request, get a response and then think and then issue the request. So now there is this think time. So the way we give specification to the load generator is we give this number of users, we denote by m as usual and the think time h and that is used as input by the load generator and each of these threads is doing this request response loop. So the execution time of the script just like we saw in the previous open experiment is approximately 50 milliseconds, there is one core and one thread at the web server just to keep things simple and this is the experiment is happening on the LAN, so we do not have to bother about or worry about network delays. So this is just a table for your reference for all the measured values, we may look at this table every now and then but this is mainly for you to see after the lecture what the values are of the experiment. So as we had done again before we will start with trying to figure out based on what we know about the system, can we draw the throughput graph with respect to varying load, here it is going to be with respect to m, can we draw the graph ourselves, what can we draw, what can we say about the drafts given what we know about the system. So remember we know that the tau the execution time is 50 milliseconds that means the mu is going to be 20 requests per second, this is going to be the maximum capacity throughput capacity of the system and also remember that we have studied the Klein rock saturation heuristic which is 1 plus think time divided by service time and that turns out to be 41. So using these two things we should be able to draw something about the graph, so let us try here this is throughput, this is m. So one thing is that since I know that the saturation is going to happen around 41, so I should not draw the graph that much beyond 41. So let us say we just draw till around 100, so this is 50 and this is requests per second we know the maximum here is going to be 20, so this is 10, 5, 15. So somewhere here this is 25, 12, 6, somewhere here is 1. So one thing we know that around here is where is m star 41, somewhere here the throughput is going to start going towards the maximum not exactly here but we can be sure that around here the throughput is going to be for 20 requests per second. So we also know actually the throughput when the low load asymptote remember we know this 1 over h plus tau, so what is 1 over h plus tau here? It is 1 over h is 2 plus 0.05, so 1 over 2.05, so it is almost around 1 over 2, so 0.5. So here we can say that the value at 1 is going to be around 0.5 requests per second, 1 over 2.05 is almost going to be equal to 0.5. So we know the value at 1, we know the maximum value and in the middle we do not really know remember that the middle values need this R and we do not really know that. So we can guess initially that it is going to remain low, so we can guess that when m is equal to 2 this is going to be 1 and so on but otherwise we just sort of heuristically connect this graph like this and this is what we expect that it is going to be. So let us see now the actual graph, the maximum here is very close to this is 20, it is very close to what we predicted theoretically, rest of it as I said we do not really have a handle on it. At 20 we are getting around 9 requests per second. If we take, remember the value here, m divided by h plus R let us put this for 20 and see what happens. So for m equal to 20 we have 20 divided by h is 2 and R we do not know but R we can maybe guess that it is going to be around not that much more than 0, what if it was 0.05, what if it was 0.05 we would get 20 divided by 2.05 which is around 10. So if the response time remained so low, if the response time remained close to tau, then actually we expect that the throughput at 20 when there are 20 users in the system would be 10 requests per second. That would be our expectation which is what this calculation is showing and it is very interesting to see that it is around it is close to 10. So even if we did a calculation assuming that R is close to tau, tau here is 0.05 in seconds, we get a close enough prediction to the actual value. We expect that it would not be 10 it will be something less because R will actually be greater than tau, it would not remain 50 milliseconds and therefore this will actually be less than 10 and we get around 9. So it is nice to see and you should try to do these calculations and predict actually this graph not only at 1 and at infinity but even at the middle points it does make sense. So now let us go to utilization, similar things can be done for utilization. Let us draw the graph. Now this is rho, it is going to be between 0 and 1. Again let us just draw it for m till 100, this is 50, 25, somewhere here is m star, 41. At somewhere around these points we know that utilization is going to be 1. In fact the nature of the utilization graph will be very similar to the throughput. So at m equal to 1 we can actually calculate utilization. What is the m equal to 1 utilization? We can look at this, utilization is going to be tau divided by h plus tau. Basically one user issues a request every h plus tau time and in that time or out of that time tau amount of time the CPU is busy. So that is going to be the utilization. So rho at 1 is basically 0.05 divided by 2 plus 0.05. This is basically 0.05 divided by 2.05 which is going to be very close to 0.05 divided by 2. So let us just do that calculation. This is 0.025 close to that. So that is our estimate here for m equal to 1, 0.025. In reality it might be turning out to be almost 0. So we start from there and again in the middle we have some values. Again they depend on R. Just because throughput depends on R, utilization also has R in it. So we cannot really calculate it exactly. But let us look at what the actual graph was and let us see whether the graph made sense. Again it is pretty perfect. And we can see by the way both in the throughput and the utilization chart this part at around 41 is where you do start approaching the high values of utilization and then it starts approaching saturation. And if you recall how Klein Rock heuristic is derived, it is actually trying to predict exactly this point. It is not trying to predict the full saturation point, it is trying to predict the approaching of saturation. So it is not bad. It is our prediction of 41 was pretty good. Now let us do the same kind of reasoning for 20 users. Now we actually know the throughput. So at 20 we know that the throughput was around 9. So if we know the throughput, can we calculate the utilization directly using utilization law? So suppose it is 9 requests per second. So at rho at 20 is equal to lambda at 20 multiplied by tau throughput at 20, which was 9 multiplied by 0.05. This is 0.45 approximately. Let us see what we get here at 20. So very close. This is 0.5. So little less than 0.5 is 0.45. This is exactly what one would expect just by utilization law. I would encourage you to do the same calculation at other numbers. So this value here should be equal to throughput at 30 multiplied by 0.05. And I would encourage you to do the calculation and see whether you get some number that verifies this number. But clearly even utilization graph matches our predictions well. We can look at 10 because some nice number 0.25. Let us see what happens at 10. At 10 throughput was 5 requests per second. This is 5. This is the point we are looking at. So throughput was 5 requests per second. So let us do the calculation here. This should be throughput at 10 multiplied by 0.05. This was 5 multiplied by 0.05, which should be 0.25 and lo and behold that is exactly what we get. So it is matching very well. The utilization law is a very, very powerful law. It will apply very, if it does not apply that should be an indication to you that something is very different in the system. Again either there is a measurement error or you are not modeling something about the system. So these kind of sanity checks to see whether whatever I have learnt as laws in my theory are they applying when I do this measurement. This helps in either confirming whatever you expect or pointing out that something is different or wrong about your experiment and it is not matching the theory. Now let us look at response time. Remember at response time at 1 should just be equal to tau. So this is 0.05 or 50 milliseconds. And response time asymptote, we had done this in our closed systems. It is remember m, actually m tau minus h. This is at any value of m and the asymptote is m tau minus h. So what is it going to be here?  We know what is large for this system. Anything after saturation is large. So 41 is where remember m star is 41. 41 is where the knee of the curves are. 41 is where saturation is approaching. So beyond 41 we have seen here at around 50 or 60 and onwards system is definitely getting saturated is going to 1. So we can say that 50 or 60 is after which this particular formula for response time should apply. So we can draw the graph accordingly. So let us do that. This is r, this is m. Again I am just going to draw 150, this 75, 25, 12 somewhere around 1. We know that this should be, if we are doing this in milliseconds then it will be some 50 milliseconds and let us plug this in for at 60 and see what happens. So if it is milliseconds then r 60 is going to be 60 multiplied by 50 milliseconds minus 2000. So this is actually 3000 minus 2000. 1000 milliseconds. So on 60 let us say this is 1000 and that is what this value is going to be. But what is going to be the shape? Remember that response time is not going to flatten. It is going to have shape like this where this part is linear and the slope is going to be tau since we have, so which is 50 milliseconds. The slope should be 50 milliseconds because r at this point is equal to m tau minus h, tau is the slope. So we have made our theoretical graph, let us see how it matches with the actual measurement. So let us check at 60. So this happens to be in seconds. This is seconds. Remember we had done r 60 is 1000 milliseconds which is equal to 1 second. So let us check here at 60 it is actually exactly 1 second. And again at 41 is where the knee is happening. Remember the Klein-Roch saturation heuristic was made by doing this meeting point of the low load asymptote and the high load asymptote. And this is exactly what is matching here and the saturation heuristic really turned out to be perfect for this. We can actually also do the same calculation for m equal to 100. This is just showing this graph on a larger scale here and in seconds. So let us do this for m equal to 100. So r 100 is equal to 100 multiplied by 50 minus 2000 in milliseconds. So this is 5000 minus 2000. So this is 3000 milliseconds. So let us see what it is here. So yes. So this is where we are finding. So exactly 3 seconds is what we are getting in the measured value. So really the theory that we learned for closed systems seems to be matching our measurement quite well. And so again if it did not match we will have experiments where it does not match. And that should make you just think as to what is different about your system. It may not be wrong. It says that it may not be as simple as the kind of closed system that we are modeling in theory. But it will help you find the differences. This is an interesting graph which is showing response time versus throughput. So we do something like response time versus request per second when we did graphs for open systems. But in that case the arrival rate kept increasing. Here what happens is beyond a certain point the throughput is not going to increase. The throughput flattens out at 20. So if we see that response time is like a impulse function where at the same value of throughput it just keeps increasing. So this is a very interesting graph to see. So there is a sharp rise because you are never going to get a value of throughput higher than 20 because that is just the maximum capacity of the system. Whereas response time keeps increasing. So it is sort of like having many multiple values going on increasing for the same x value. Utilization versus throughput actually because now by utilization law this should be a proper line. Remember that when you look at utilization versus number of users this is not a graph that is supposed to be actually linear. This part the slope is not expected to be tau. The slope is expected to be tau only when you plot it against throughput. So that is what this is doing. This will actually be tau because rho is equal to throughput multiplied by tau. And you can check this yourself whether you are getting. So for value 10 you can of course see 10 multiplied by 0.05 is equal to 0.5 and that is what you get here. So this is clearly just a straightforward application of utilization law and this is what is expected. We can do one more check actually for the response time versus number of users. This slope is supposed to be tau. We can check whether the slope is tau. So at 100 for example we had 3 and at 80 we had 2. So 3 – 2 divided by 20 or we can say so this is 1 divided by 20 in seconds. So that is 1000 divided by 20 milliseconds and this is 50 milliseconds which is exactly our tau. So that is also matching. So one more very interesting thing we can do for closed systems which is a sort of a think time verification. So by Little's law we should have for any low level this formula. Again m is equal to R6 plus h which is think time multiplied by throughput. If we rearrange this we can have the think time on the left hand side and this formula on the right hand side m by throughput minus R6 the response time basically. So if we use this formula and calculate think time for every value of m we should just get 2 seconds. So this also turns out to be a very good sanity check of your experiments and the next table shows that this has been done for each of these values and this is the think time which is calculated based on these values by the m divided by lambda minus R formula. So this is the m, this is the throughput and this is the R6 and this is the formula that is being used for calculating this. So these values should all be close to 2 seconds and if you look at them they are fairly close to 2 seconds. Now why do we do this calculation? Sometimes think time gets inflated. You configure 2 seconds but you are getting like 5 seconds, 6 seconds and sometimes this really means that there is some other time in the system that you are not accounting for. Sometimes it means that the client is bottlenecking and when this check fails this is a big indication that something is wrong with your experiment and you need to make sure whether your model is correct, your experiment is correct and so on. So this is a very again another case study of how you could use queuing systems formulae and compare them with what you are getting in measurements and in this particular study that we did this experiment the match was actually very good and often when in closed systems in some systems you can get a very good match. We are done with like closed queuing systems with just one node just like we did open queuing networks and there were multiple nodes and where request flow through various nodes we are going to next do closed queuing networks which is also the last topic of this course. Thank you.


Thanks, Dan. Shall I just speak from here? Whatever you like. I'll just speak from here. And I assume, okay, Mike's working. Before I started, I do want to say when I was interviewed to be chairman at George Mason back in 2001, Tyler Cowan asked me, he said, well, if you're chairman, who are the three people you'd like to bring to the faculty who are not currently on the faculty? And I said, no particular order. I said, Rush Roberts, Deirdre McCloskey, and Dianne Klein. And I got two of the three. That's two of the three. Rush has since left. We all became this close to getting Deirdre. But I'm really delighted to be Dianne's colleague. His work, as you can tell just from this symposium, is interesting. It's pioneering. It's certainly outside of the box of what most economists do. And I can't help but think that that fact in some way has some relevance to explaining these patterns that we see revealed in the questionnaires. So I want to congratulate Dianne. It's a great symposium. But I have to qualify my congratulations because it's not a great symposium for me because I can't find anything worthwhile to say that hasn't been said by the contributors, including Scott, or at least strongly implied by them. It's unsurprising that support for the welfare states highly and positively correlated with support for government regulation in the economy. And the reasons detailed by many of the symposium's authors, again, including Scott, are credible and pretty much complete. But let me at least try to say, offer a take that's somewhat different from the ones that I've encountered. So here's my proposed mental experiment. Dianne started with one. Here's my proposed mental experiment. I suppose you take all these 219, 229 economists and you ask them one additional question. You take these economists and you ask them to respond to Hayek's increasingly famous claim that he makes in his last book, The Fatal Conceit. And I'll read this Hayek quotation. It's a bit wordy, but he was Hayek. And just ask these economists to react to that quotation. Here's the Hayek quotation. The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. It's a typical Hayek quotation saying, look, the curious task of economics is to explain how little we know about reality. And what would be the reaction or the lineup of reactions of these economists to that quotation? I assume that some would be in fist pumping agreement. That would be me. Well, I wasn't in the group, but I would agree with that claim. And I'm sure that there would be a lot of economists who would be befuddled by the claim or even invigorous disagreement with Hayek's claim. Because I'm quite confident that the more strongly an economist opposes both regulation and the welfare state, the more strongly he or she endorses Hayek's claim. The more readily he or she sees the wisdom in Hayek's admonition to be humble about what we can design, what we can engineer from above. Opposition to both the welfare state and to government regulation can, and I believe it typically does, reflect in large part the understanding that reality is vastly more complex than proponents of the welfare state and of regulation supposed to be. Let's call, we need words, Dan is a stickler for proper terms. So let's call those who are skeptical of the welfare and the regulatory state marketists and those who support the regulatory state and the welfare state statists. Now, I can speak with more authority and confidence about marketers because I'm one. I have been for all of my adult life and because most of my colleagues throughout my life are marketers, so I'm quite prominent. So I know marketers better than I know statists, but I read a lot of statists. I read The New York Times regularly. Not just the times. And so I think I have some good idea about what status, how statists think. I'm not sure I'm doing psychology here or not. I'll leave that to the audience to judge. So here's one difference between marketers and statists. We marketers understand, or we think we understand, that the margins on which private people can adjust their actions are many. The number of margins on which people can adjust to changes are just huge in number. And that's true whether the changes are brought about by the market or brought about by the state. And not only is the number of possible margins of adjustment large, many of these margins are so small in size or so fleeting in their existence that they're undetectable by outside observers. Status in contrast seemed to me to suppose both that the number of margins on which private people can adjust their actions is relatively small and that these margins are mostly detectable in an objective way, measurable, by outside observers. This difference between marketers and statists results in marketers, at least compared to statists, being less pessimistic about markets and more pessimistic about state action. So why more pessimistic about markets? Because with many margins on which to adjust, private market actors have great scope to find or to craft market outcomes that are closely tailored to each actor's individual preferences. Why more pessimistic about state action? Well, the large number of such margins and the invisibility of their details to everyone who's not on the spot combine with the subjectivity of each person's preferences to make it practically impossible for government officials to assess how well or how poorly markets are working. Too much is unseen. Indeed, too much is unseeable to render imposed collective decisions likely to improve the general welfare. So my thesis is this, marketers understand, appreciate and respect the enormous complexity of reality, statists don't. Statists believe reality to be far simpler than it really is. Perhaps statists are misled into their misconception of, notice I'm on my elephant, status are misled by their misconception of reality, by their theorizing, for example. The variables, for example, conventionally used in economic models to express economic relationships and connections are easy to mistake for being realistic and exhaustive representatives of real world entities. You draw an economic model and you think you have a picture of the economy, just one that's smaller than the larger economy. Or perhaps people just don't think very deeply. Perhaps they're misled by words often used to describe collections of people, low skilled workers, the steel industry, retailers, college students, smokers. And being misled by these words, they miss the multitudinous differences that often separate the individual entities within any one of these categories from other individuals within the same category. Whatever the reason, the simpler one supposes reality to be, the greater of the prospects one supposes for outsiders to grasp reality fully enough to engineer it into a better state. That's true whether we're talking about making people richer through the welfare state or improving economic outcomes through government regulation. Let me end by offering a related hypothesis. The simpler one supposes reality to be, the more readily one forgets Thomas Sowell's observation that there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. Or put differently, the simpler one supposes reality to be, the more prone one is to fall for a good guy, bad guy account of reality. All problems are easily identifiable and are caused by evil doers, if you think reality is simple, and caused by deceitful business executives, hate-filled racist homophobes, stingy middle-class voters. And the solution is to send in the good guys, to defeat the bad guys, to exercise the devil, and to undo his deeds, to replace Satan, if not with angels, at least with noble public servants, bent on saving the day and doing what's right. When an economy is seen as a relatively simple mechanism, when society is viewed as one views a passion play or a Hollywood movie, in which a bad Hollywood movie, in which good and evil are unambiguous, and in which evil persists only because too few good people have yet to spring into action, then there seems to be a natural urge to call in a superhero to obliterate the evil and the misfortune. So I think that the, I think a decent hypothesis is that people who believe the world to be simpler, who don't appreciate the complexity, tend to support state action because it's easy. You create an entity to deal with these relatively simple problems. People who are on the market side have for whatever reason, I don't know if it's psychological, it's due to training, due to upbringing, but understand at some level the enormous complexity of not only economic reality, but of social reality writ large, and that makes people much more skeptical of the ability of government to improve things, whether it be in the welfare front or the regulatory front.


Fflawn da, fiwl uned morgan gweinidog i eich meddwl sesiant ar gymraeg yn Llywodraeth Cymru, ond blaeser i fi gal cynhadledd y wasg heddiw. Ar ddi ddweyn yr nath y prifweinidog yn cymryg adonhau y bydd angen i ni aros yn y cyfnod clô am dair oesnos arall, felly heddiw dwi am ffocusi ar y gwaith i ni wneud i'ch cyfnogi chi, ac yn ywedig eich plant a phobol i ddbank yn ystod y pandemig. Yn ddweud y Prif Weinidog yn gystaf winningdog yn ôl yn gweithio negri i arnod ar ddweud yn gweithio.  Felly byddwn i'r gwirionedd ar gweithio ar olau i ddechrau'n progrwm. Yn ddweud eich gweithio newydd am��edu llraedd, Mae'r gweithio amser ar gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'r GPs, a chyfnodol gondol, yn golygu'n cael ei gael gweithio'n cynghreifftol ymlaen gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'r fforddau dechrau ar y mynd i ni i gael. Mae'n rhaid i gyd yn rhoi cael 416,000 gwahanol ar gyfer y gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'n gweithio ar y gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. I know you'll be anxious to hear whether we've met the next marker in our vaccination strategy by offering vaccines to all care homes in Wales, and I'm pleased to confirm that we have. All older person care homes have either received visits from vaccination teams or have visits planned. Where visits have not taken place yet is because there have been live COVID cases in the past 20 days, and these vaccination teams will visit homes as soon as the public health advice allows to those who haven't yet received them. So I want to thank everybody for that huge effort and for everybody in care homes. I'm just really pleased that you are now protected. Every vaccine delivered is a small victory against the virus. I want to turn now to how we're supporting you. This time of year can be really challenging for many of us at the best of times. We've just made it through January and congratulations to those of you who managed to do a dry January. But spring feels like a long way off, but I think we've got to try and be optimistic. The days are getting longer, the mornings are lighter. The pandemic and the restrictions on our way of life have had a massive impact on us all, but it's been really hard on children and young people especially. We know that young people's normal routines have been disrupted. They've been in and out of school throughout the year and separated from friends and support networks. We know that around 80% of mental health issues start in childhood or adolescence, so early access to support can make the world of difference and stop these developing into potentially lifelong problems. Throughout the pandemic we've increased support for mental health services because of increased levels of anxiety and stress and because we anticipate an increase of mental health issues. Today we're going a step further and investing another £9.4 million to support children and young people struggling with the impact of the pandemic. £4 million of this will improve early access to emotional and mental health wellbeing in schools as part of our whole systems approach. There'll be more counselling and more emotional support available for school children. The rest of the funding will support child and adolescent mental health services providing care for young people who need more intensive support either in the community or in specialist mental health inpatient services. Today marks the start of Children's Mental Health Week and it's never been more important to ensure children and young people have the right access to the appropriate counselling and mental health support. One of the key things when it comes to mental health and wellbeing is to understand that we're not always dealing with a medical condition. There aren't many people who at some point haven't felt anxious because of the situation we're in or concerned about the unpredictability of the future or really finding it hard to live with isolation at the moment. These issues don't always need a medical solution but many people do need help and support to address them. We are determined to put measures in place to support you and prevent these issues which are often low level mental health issues from becoming bigger issues in the future. We know that there's a direct link between joblessness and anxiety so since the start of the pandemic we've done everything we can to provide businesses with support to ensure people have a job to go back to as soon as the public health situation allows. We've provided more than £2 billion in business support to help firms meet some of the costs they continue to face. This is in addition to the wage support schemes available from the UK government. But this doesn't mean that everyone's financial worries will disappear. Last week we saw another rise in unemployment. The unemployment rate is now at 4.6% in Wales. These are deeply challenging times and the sad reality is that many households are falling behind or struggling with their financial commitments. Financial worries and problem debt can be all-consuming but the Welsh government has made sure that there is support and help available. Our single advice fund helps people who are struggling to pay their rent or household bills and to better manage their financial situation. We've made more than 10 million pounds available to help resolve problems which include debt and employment. More than 115,000 people have benefited from this fund in the first year. It's helped people claim 34 million pounds of additional income that they're entitled to and to manage debts of £8.9 million. We're also piloting a scheme to refer people who are in extreme need of help because of problem debt to citizens advice. I want to return briefly to remote learning. Learning from home isn't easy and we're incredibly grateful for the support and patience of parents, teachers, children and young people. It's our priority to get students back to school as soon as we can. Fel gweni ddog y Gymraeg, rwy'n amrhoi gwybod i chi am rai o'r adnoddau sydd ar gael i helpu i roi i adnoddus pobl plant sydd yn cael ei adnoddus crigyfrwng y Gymraeg. As Minister for Welsh Language, I wanted to highlight some resources available to support children learning Welsh and children learning through the medium of Welsh. We've issued guidance to parents of children in Welsh medium education and we've worked with the regional consortia, Estyn, the BBC and S4C to make sure there's plenty of Welsh medium learning resources available on platforms like Hub. It's important for parents to know, especially non-wealth speaking parents, that the language skills children acquire will stay with them for life. While they're learning from home, please encourage them to watch and listen to Welsh on television or on the radio, even in the background, just so they can stay in touch with the language. If you need more help and support, the new website, www.welshforparents.comery launches today. These are difficult times and sadly we know we'll be living with the virus for quite a while yet. It's really important that we don't lose hope and we know that together we're going to get through this. If you need someone to talk to or some extra support, please reach out. There are people waiting to help. Our call mental health helpline is available 24 hours a day on 0800 132 737 or text HELP to 81066. I'll take questions now and as normal, all of these answers will be broadcast on our social media channel. So, I'll start with Megan Bout, ITV Wales. Diolch yn fawr. Realistically, how close is government funding to meeting the mental health needs of children and young people in Wales? Well, we know that the problem is increasing and that is something that we're very aware of. The mind has done a report recently where they've shown about three out of four children are experiencing more mental health difficulties than they were before. So, we know that there's an issue and we know that it needs to be addressed. We've already increased the funding in this space last year but we're hoping that some of the pilots that we put into schools in about six different areas in Wales or counties in Wales, we will now be able to roll those pilots up to the whole of Wales so that there'll be support in school to help people with mental health difficulties. So, what word would you use to describe the provision for children and young people's mental health at the moment in Wales? I think I would describe it as improving. I think we recognise that there was a situation where there is an increase generally even before the pandemic in the number of children suffering from mental health issues. But I do think that this isolation that many of them have felt has led to perhaps more concentrated problems. But I just want those children to be aware that that support is available and it is available online, it's available face-to-face if that's necessary and so I would encourage children to reach out and if we find that the amounts of funding are not enough then of course we will revisit that. Gwai ofen i te Llyr i Glyn Jôr's now BBC Wales. We now know that all care home residents have been offered the vaccine or will soon receive it. How soon then can families with loved ones in care homes expect rules on visiting to change and be relaxed so they can go and see their loved ones? Diolch yn fawr, Llyr i. Just i ddechrau i ddweud ein bod ni wedi rhoi cansawea gerbron y llefydd yma, y llefydd gofal yma, i sicrhau bod pobl yn ymwybodol bod yna mae'n bosibl unw i ymweld ar cartrefi yma, hyd yn oed nawr, os mae'n mysire mewn lle.  Just to repeat that we have put very clear guidance in place to support care homes in allowing people to visit loved ones. Of course we've got to get the balance on this right because we have to protect those people in care homes and from the virus and of course with that vaccine being rolled out in care homes now in a few weeks time it will be easier for us to allow people to visit but for the time being because we know that it takes about three weeks for the vaccine to work we would encourage people to make sure that they stick to the regulations the guidance that we've put in place around visiting care homes. We know that there are discussions ongoing this week with unions, local authorities on the plan for hopefully reopening schools after the half term. What are the kinds of safeguards, the extra safeguards that can be put in place to protect teachers and children from the virus and the wider community of course if it's begins to transmit widely in schools? Gydar i'n debyr hynna sy'n ma, i sicrhau yn bod ni'n cydweithio, dwi'n meddwl bod pawb yn ymwybodol bod angen i blant fy nôl i'r ysgol beth dynnu ddim ysiau gweld i'w y gwaith hynny aethau'n arbennig rhwng reini sydd yn dod o dylio'r clotach a'r reini sydd yn dod o dylio'r mwy cefnog yn ehangu a dyna un o'r ysysymau pam i'n siw sicrhau bod plant nôl yn ysgolau er mwy cael y cymorth emosiwnol yna sydd angen arnyn nhw. Fydd canllawu'r mewn lle, mae yna ganllawu'r mewn lle eisoes wrth gwrs fyddwn i'n cadw llygad ar lefel y virus yn y cymuned a fyddwn i'n sicrhau yn bod ni'n ei popeth i sicrhau bod plant yn saf a hefyd bod a thrawon yn saf. We are absolutely determined to reopen schools as early as possible and that's why there will be intensive discussions with unions this week to make sure that we can put all of the things in place so that we can ensure the safety as far as possible of those students pupils and teachers. There is of course already some very strict measures that have been put in place in schools. We have to keep an eye on the levels of virus within our communities and we will always be looking to the scientific evidence to support us in what we are doing. Thank you. As you say, the Welsh Government are in conversations with teaching unions this week about the proposed return to schools after half term. Can you give a definitive date when parents will know either way if this date is feasible and can you also clarify the age groups this proposed return applies to? The announcement said the foundation stage. Is it fair to assume all children between three and seven within that? The First Minister has made it clear that he wants to give two weeks notice to parents, to teachers to make sure that they can prepare for getting children back to school. So we're expecting an announcement on that on Friday but of course that will be determined by those negotiations that will be held this week. The focus will absolutely be on those children who are youngest who find it most difficult to learn online who need that socialisation perhaps more than some of the older children and we are very determined to try and get those foundation phase children back to school as soon as possible. The other area of course we're looking at are those people perhaps who are on more vocational courses who need to have that practical feel for their work and their studies perhaps in secondary schools. Thank you. Are there contingency measures or planning in place for assessment and grading in the eventuality it's simply unsafe for children particularly in the key exam years in secondary school to return to the classroom and how can teachers potentially grade students having not seen them other than through digital means if at all for many months? Well I know that those discussions are ongoing of course we've got to a different place now when it comes to the kind of more academic approach so we've we've got some clarity now on how those will be assessed that is why if we can we would like to get those students back to school on those more vocational practical courses so that they can be assessed correctly of course those negotiations will continue and they will be an effort to make sure that those children and those pupils can be assessed properly irrespective of the situation that we're in. I'd like to ask Daniel Bevan now LBC for his question. Thank you minister good afternoon to you. You've told us today that you've hitched your targets or offering your first jab to the elderly population in care homes and also staff there but last week the health minister couldn't tell us he said it would wait a couple of days because of a data lag about hitting the target from last Sunday why is that data lag not come into this announcement? Has it got something to do with the fact that you've hit this target but you missed last week's? No we have been working very diligently this morning to make sure that we have assessed those care homes to make sure that that offer has been made so we can it's much easier to find the data from care homes than to find the exact number of vaccinations that have taken place and so that may explain the difference between why we can give that assurance today in the way that it was more difficult last week. But the key thing is that we have hit that target the rollout of the vaccine in Wales is going from strength to strength. We are now in terms of across the UK doing extremely well and I'm hope that people will feel a lot more confident now that we will hit that target that we've set for those four priority groups by mid February. Thank you and you say you've got more data to hand on care homes. I wonder if you've got any data on the kind of take up that there's been for this first jab from care home staff and how do you feel about staff who are skeptical about the vaccine and are refusing it? We've seen reports from England that as many as one in five in some groups are turning down the vaccine. Do you think there needs to be more done here in Wales to encourage people who are caring for the most vulnerable to get that first jab? Of course we would encourage everybody in Wales who's eligible to take the vaccine. This is a really key way that we cannot just protect ourselves but protect the other people who we love around us. I think that is particularly important in care homes because of the vulnerability of the people who are living there. That's why we have really tried to make sure that people as many people as possible within those care homes who work in those care homes take up that opportunity. We are at a point where we are not making a mandatory for people who work in care homes to be vaccinated but of course we would be very very pleased if they would take up that opportunity and protect those people that they're working with. I'm terribly sorry Minister but if I can get some clarity on that last bit you say it there like that's certainly a possibility that you're living open mandatory vaccinations within care homes. We haven't got to that point but of course we need to think about protecting those people who are working in care homes and those people who are living in care homes but we will do our very best to convince people that this is the right thing for them to do. Can I ask Lidia Griffiths? Llywodraeth Llywodraeth Cymru. Ymni ddim yn hapus o gorbl i glwed nadw pobol yn gallu siarad Cymraeg mewn inrû le ac yn sicur mewn carchar sydd yn hymru ac felly wrth gwrs os maen nhw'n problemau mi fyddwn i yn sicrhau enbryd Mae'n gallu siarad Cymraeg, mae'n unrhyw lle, ac yn sicr mewn carchar sydd yn hymru, ac felly wrth gwrs os maen nhw'n problemau mi fyddwn i'n sicrhau e'n bod ni'n cysylltu gyda swyddfa gartreu sicrhau nawyd hyn yn parhau. Mae hwn yn rhywbeth sydd yn hollol anrbyn niol ac mi fyddwn i'n edrych mewn i'r sefyllfa os mae hynny yn bryodol. Diolch i chi. A'r chynaeth nath ych chi groesawu adroddiad o fynd wedi bod angen aelod ydylygu cychyddeb chiwrgell genedlaethol Cymru, a bod y sefyllfa brysenol yn angen eliadwy. Ti'n 1.5 miliwn o grann sy'n gwneud gol mae'r chywrgell chi'n ddweud sydd angen, dda chi'n cydnabod fod hynny'n chydig yn hi desun cychyddeb chiwodraeth. Dwi'n meddwl i'n dda i'n bod ni wedi gallu cynnal y gallu deb oedd yna sy'n edd yn gwineb y ffaith, byn bod ni wedi cael toriadau. Os oedd y toriad yn son Stephhan am dros 10 miliwn edd. Ac felly mae hi'n bwysig i'n bod ni hefyd yn talun yn elu'r ffaith i'n bod ni wedi gallu rhoi aden ychwanegol o ran cyfalaf i'r llyfrgell i helpu i nhw digiteidio, i gwaith nhw a hefyd i helpu nhw i digid i carbenedio yr adeilad. Dwi'n meddwl bod yn bwysig bod pobl yn cydnabod bod y broses cael ei debol yn dal i fynd yn ymlaen ac wrth gwrs, mi fyddwn ni yn edrych i fewnus y ffaith i weld os ydi chi'n bosibl i rhoi helpu chynegol. Gai ofyn am y cwestiwn nesaf, Andrew Nittle, y Llywodraeth. Diolch, Smylgr. Rwy'n fwy fyddwn ni'n meddwl, mae'n meddwl y byddwyr yn gweithio y ffaith i'r bwysig yn ymlaen o ran cyffredinol fel y gweithio'n ffawr. A oedd yn gymuned gan ddiffanfod yw'r cyffredinol, fe ydych chi'n meddwl i fynd i'r cyffredinol? Mae meddwl i'r meddwl i fynd i weld i'r gyflwystio rhan yn ymlaen o'r bwysig, wedi rwy'n meddwl i'r gweithio. Mae'r bwysig i'r meddwl i'r gweithio rhan yn ymlaen. worried about the choices in the last year at this age by turning for that difference at the moment. You are not alone as I mentioned, but every individual is different, with a different open sense of the issues in a different way. There is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of here, but I think it's important that we get rid of the stigma of talking about mental health, which is why it's important that we've got this clearly on the agenda. It has been on the agenda of the Welsh Government for the past eight years, ymweld, rydych chi fydd yn yn ei wneud bwysigrwydd travel ar fy mod, y gallai'r ffordd gymsod gyda'r cym cyfnod yma. Rydych chi'n fyddeu, dyna'r myfwiydd warych gyda'r cyfnod yma, ac byddwn i'n rhaid i'r gweithio gael gyrdd gyrdd gyrdd gyrdd. Mae'r gweithaf wedi arno, a ddim ein pob arleidydd yw y gallai'r gumad, ond roedd dw i'w ddim y gallai bod yn eithaf gael gyrdd gyrdd gyrdd gyrdd Connectwys? Dwi'n mod i'n rhaid i'r trif yn ychwanegwyr o'r ymdeithasidd yn mawr. Yn mynd i'w chythgof yn y mawr, thoseydd y fath yn gwneud hynny diwrnod yma. Uly Lilly, mae hynny am eich gyfre… Yn mynd i'n mynd i'n mewn y pmel o'r mawr, crefwyd yn helpu o'r cyfrifiadol neu yw'u rhaid i'n mynd i'r fath yn y mawr. Mae'n mynd i'n rhaid i'r fath o'r mawr, o'i gŷn fân o'r cyfrifiadol a'i gŷn oed i'r fath. ddigonwyr a'n ei boblhau. Mae'n gynnwys iawn i'w cael ddweud o'r gwahanol iawn gyda'r ddweud beth mae'n bwysig o'r ddweud o'r bwysig o'r gy independently of mae bwynt o'r ddweud o'r pwynt o'r hwnnw yn ei ddweud o'r cos oau lleolwyr a'r ddweud o'r colliOU oherwydd mae'n swyddwch ar y ddwyngh, lle oedd erbyn oedd diffwysgol o'r ddweud fel hyn o'r ddweud. Maen nhw'n oedd hyn yw rhywun i ddyliau, ond yma'r yma eich e�yneth o'u meddwl o'r gwahau a dwylau heb gweithio'n me thighs ymlaen. Mae'n rhaid i'r darllen. Ddiwydlariaeth o'i gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r reddweithio ar gyfer y llywodraeth i gweithio'r meddwl oherwydd mae'n gweithio'n halif, ac mae'n ddiddordeb gael iawn o'r iawn o'r gweithio'n meddwl, ddim o'uитbwyd, rydw i'r wych arbennig. I think there are lots of things that young people can do but the key thing is just keep talking and reach out for support. Diolch, Nathan, from the speaker. Thank you Minister. Good afternoon. You've announced new investment for children and young people's mental health support in schools today. With pupils learning remotely, though for least the short-term future, are you confident that pupils are aware of the support that's actually available to them? Are there barriers to young people accessing support due to them working remotely? We've made sure that that opportunity to access support is available not just online but where necessary face-to-face. We did put about £1.25 million into school counselling last year obviously with this additional funding we're able to roll that out further. We're also taking into account the fact that it's not just the older pupils who are suffering, there are some primary school pupils who also need our support and of course also we need to think about the teachers. They are really suffering a tough time at the moment and of course we have put a package of mental health support in place for them as well. We've also got access to those who are over 16 can access Silver Cloud which is our cognitive behavioural therapy offer which is online which means people can access that support when it's convenient to them so I would encourage people to do that. Of course there will be school nurses that people can ask for support with but there are plenty of platforms available for young people but if you can't find anything else please call our helpline call and that will give you a point you in the right direction. Thank you and we know that many young people indeed people of all ages support their mental health through sport and exercise often at leisure centre venues. In Wales this first lockdown leisure centres were among the last venues in society to reopen. Given the mental health benefits of sports venues, will ministers such as or self be considering these venues as a higher priority for reopening to help people's mental health recovery when lockdown measures do eat? We absolutely recognise the amazing difference that keeping fit can have on someone's mental health and that's why we were actually really reluctant to close down gyms and that's why when we reopen it will be one of the first things that we will try and consider. Of course we have a very clear pathway now for what gets reopened and when so gyms are very much in those early opening areas that we would like to focus on but I would like to encourage people to really start to take up exercise during this time if you haven't started already it makes a huge difference it punctuates your day it gets you fit and it gets you into a very different place when it comes to mental health so I would encourage people if you haven't done it yet why not make a late New Year's resolution to start that off even if it's just 15 minutes a day and of course now we've relaxed slightly the rules on being able to exercise with somebody from outside your family one other person during this time so you are able to do that and so in particular for young people I hope that will alleviate the situation of isolation. Diolch yn fawr, thank you very much.


Up a year to the 12-year-old Baxter taking on Waite Park. Scoreless in the fourth, Keaton Lingenfelter trying to get the bats going for Baxter. Bloops one high over the first baseman's glove. Puts a runner on third, but they can't get him home. It was scoreless into extra innings. Logan Bauer delivers for Waite Park. The home run over the fence in right center. That scores two. They get another to take this one. Three to nothing. Great pitching performance by all around in this one. Next deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.