coming up on DTNS an algorithm that may stop music copyright suits. You fear election manipulation, but should you and an exercise machine that helps improve your form, not just your reps? This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, February 26th, 2020. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer back from Surrey Duty, Roger Shane. Big thanks to Joe and Amos, who also helped cover for Roger today, just back from Surrey Duty. Good to have you back, Roger. We were talking with Roger Scott and Sarah on Good Day Internet about the new Surface Peak feature. We were talking about Adobe Fresco. We were talking about all kinds of good stuff. Get that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Foxconn is getting advice on virus prevention from Zong Nan Shen, who is credited with finding the correct way to treat SARS 17 years ago. Zong was recently appointed head of China's National Health Commission investigation into the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Panasonic will end its four-year joint venture with Tesla to produce solar cells and modules at a factory in Buffalo, New York. Panasonic solar manufacturing operations at the plant will cease in May. Panasonic will be out of the factory entirely by September. Tesla plans to continue operations at the factory on its own. Panasonic still works with Tesla on a joint battery cell factory in Reno, Nevada. The Brave browser now automatically offers you a link to an archive.org web page where the current, if the current page is unavailable, clicking that link takes you to the Wayback Machine and you can scroll through different snapshots of the historical record of that page you can't get and choose to look at an old version of it. Maybe you still find the information you're looking for. The Internet Archive also offers that function in extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. And research firm Omnia estimates Apple shipped 46.3 million iPhone XRs in 2019, making it the most popular phone worldwide. The XR, folks. Rest of the top five in order was the iPhone 11, Samsung Galaxy A10, Galaxy A50, and Galaxy A20. Xiaomi's Red Note 7 was the highest shipping phone not from Apple or Samsung. It came in at number eight. All right, let's talk a little bit more about a report on the Tesla crash that happened March 2018. Sounds good. The National, excuse me, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced Tuesday that on March or a March 2018 fatal crash of a Tesla Model X SUV was caused by a combination of Tesla's autopilot operating in conditions it couldn't handle and the driver is being distracted by a game on his phone. Oh, I saw something like this yesterday on the road. Anyway, the SUV hit a concrete barrier at high speed, killing the driver. A cushion at the end of the barrier had been damaged in a previous crash, and if replaced might have saved another driver's life or this driver's life. The board made nine recommendations, including Tesla prevent autopilot from operating in conditions it was not designed for and create a more effective method of ensuring driver attention. The NTSB also recommends phone companies lockout distracting phone features when it detects someone is driving. Yeah, it'd be easier to get caught up on that cushion at the end of the barrier. That was something that happened a week previously. It's sort of just noted in the completeness of the report that, well, if the cushion had been in place, that might have helped. But they really are pointing the finger and there's more pressure on Tesla now to take more responsibility for autopilot, because its misuse is causing these kinds of accidents. Now, granted, this driver was not paying attention. And if they had been paying attention, presumably, they would have been able to take control of the car and slow it down. But what happened was autopilot did not detect the barrier, possibly because of the sun, because the lane markings were faded, that they were unsure of, but it definitely malfunctioned. And the pressure is now on Tesla to not have autopilot operating and somehow do more to keep drivers from being distracted. I'm not sure how much they could be expected to do. I mean, really, besides yanking autopilot as a feature altogether, and we've talked about the idea that some people are like, it's just too dangerous. People aren't going to take it seriously or there's going to be little things that happen here and there. When Scott, you mentioned there was a center divide thing that happened near you. These things do happen, especially if there's construction, that computer software in a particular car gets confused. It is dangerous. I mean, the person who is distracted by looking at their phone in autopilot mode, also to blame. That person is no longer with us. So it's kind of hard to know what happened in those moments. But I really do wonder, I mean, how much pressure gets put on this very cool technology that, in theory, people are like, wow, autopilot, very cool. How much does it end up rolling back because it's just not safe? Sure. And also, I actually have this question, Tom. Do you think that them making that recommendation that phone companies look for ways of maybe if they can detect that you're driving, turning off games, turning off features of a phone that would otherwise distract, do you think that gets any traction? They respond? No, because you can always, the carriers will always rightfully say like, if you're a passenger, you should be able to make use of these features. And there'll be a way to say I'm a passenger, and there's no way to detect if that's true or not. Clearview AI, maker of facial recognition software, we talked about on the show quite a bit, disclosed to its customers that an intruder gained unauthorized access to its list of customers, the number of user accounts that those customers had set up, and the number of searches that those customers had conducted. Now, Clearview said that the company's servers weren't breached, they weren't compromised, vulnerability has been patched. And the company also said, because of course, this is sort of the hot button issue, law enforcement agencies search histories were not accessed. Other information, but not exactly what the police were doing, except maybe the names of police organizations that previously weren't known to be working with Clearview. The company's customers are mostly North American law enforcement agencies in Canada and the US. Clearview scrapes images from the public web, and then uses associated data to train an algorithm to provide possible identity matches. Yeah, I mean, you got to take you got to take an honest view of this folks. This is not the worst data breach that has happened this week, but it's getting a lot more press because it's Clearview and a lot of people are trying to make the connection of I don't like Clearview AI using facial recognition. Therefore, I'm going to make the connection that they can't even protect their data. They should be banned. And even if you don't like Clearview AI's use of facial recognition, I'm not sure this follows. It wasn't a server access. They didn't lose the images. The images are all public anyway. At worst, this will embarrass law enforcement agencies or reveal law enforcement agencies tools to people who wanted to know about them. Yeah, it's not a lot of other sensitive information here. The number of searches isn't terribly useful. It's not that it's not useful at all. But I feel like the only reason this is getting the type of headlines it is, the type of coverage it is, is that people don't like Clearview's use of facial recognition. We've talked about that separately on DTNS about, you know, how to form your opinions about whether this is a good idea or not. But this kind of data breach, sad to say, is fairly mundane and limited in its damage. I mean, this is a bit like if my local grocery store lost my information because I use a frequent buyer card there versus some big national chain. They're just getting more attention because they're bigger and or it's closer to it's because of facial recognition. Facial recognition sends a lot of people into irrational paroxysms. It sends some other people into very rational objections. But as soon as it gets in there, it kind of clouds the issue and people like data breach, facial recognition. And it conjures up the image of my private facial data has been leaked and that's not what's happening in this at all. Yeah, they're already, right? The imagery is already a publicly accessible. I don't know. It isn't it's low hanging fruit if you're trying to freak people out with headlines. That's for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's not a great thing, but certainly not the worst. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in January shows that 74% of Americans have little or no confidence in technology companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2020 US presidential election. When I when they say Americans, they mean people in the US. However, 78% of people surveyed say these companies have a responsibility to prevent such misuse. So three quarters of the people say they don't believe they will prevent misuse of the platform to influence the presidential election, but they think they should. Over the past decade, other surveys have found sharp declines in the shares from those associated with both Democrat and Republican parties. This is a bipartisan attitude here who say technology companies have a positive impact on the country. That has been in decline. As for the age breakdown, if you're like, oh, wait, what about the youngsters? Well, 31% of adults aged 18 to 29 say they are at least somewhat confident in these companies, but that's 69% not. So it's not that far under the 74% if you include all age groups. 20% of those aged 65 and older are at least somewhat confident. So that's 80% not. That's a little bit above but all within the range. So slightly more confident when you're young, slightly less confident when you're older, but mostly people are not confident. 70% plus no matter what age group you're looking at are not confident. Here's my problem with this. I don't have a problem with Pew Research doing this study. I think this is important to find out, okay, what are people's attitudes? But there's also no evidence that there was an effect on an election because of misuse of a platform. Plenty of evidence of attempts to misuse, plenty of evidence that things were done, but we haven't yet found out what effect those attempts have. And I keep hammering on this, but I think this shows that people are not worried about the evidence. They're like, I just believe that it is being misused. And that's dangerous. The reason I think that's dangerous is if you're believing without evidence, then it's very difficult to convince you that it's been fixed. Yeah, well then you can get into the meta of this, which is a huge part of the reason they don't trust these services or don't trust social media as a particular point is because they're doing the very thing that we're now applying to the overall social network. In other words, we may get some article on Facebook that seems slanted and you just feel like, well, that has no evidence. That's nothing to back it up. That's just a headline to get people all fired up. And so now it's easy for us to blanket statement and say, well, all of Facebook, I just don't trust them to be able to do this, to be able to keep this stuff at bay and not have it affect the election. We're doing it on top of the problem that we see with the same problem because we're not willing to look at the bigger picture and look at all the evidence as well. It's a super complicated mess. I'm not surprised by any of this, like any institution that has some trust up front and you start to see that erode through actual experience, whether it be throughout the last election cycle or even current election cycles, it's easier for people to be jaded. Like I don't trust it either, but I also just, I'm more like Tom these days, I look at a thing and go, okay, what are they talking about? What do they mean? And I look deeper before I talk about it. And maybe that's just on us, but at the end of the day, I'm not shocked by these numbers. And the reason I harp on this is because people want Facebook, Twitter and Google to stop the election from being influenced. And it comes from all sides, right? You either want them to stop favoring a candidate or you want them to stop being manipulated by outside forces for the favor of a candidate you don't like. And if everybody's right, then there really isn't any influence because it's happening on both of the major US parties. So that's useless. What's more useful to me is to focus on what can you do to make sure that you are not unduly influenced, to be able to check your biases, to be able to make a better decision. I think we should be focusing on what can these companies do to improve our news diet, to make sure that we are encouraged to eat right when it comes to news. There are lots of things these tech companies could do to help us improve, but if we're just battering at them to defend themselves against being misused, they're going to spend a lot of time trying to defend against something we don't properly understand and may have no effect if they've done it. Here, here to that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, before we move on, I mean, my thoughts on this is doesn't surprise me that overall younger people have a little bit more confidence in social networks, well, and other technology companies, but we're kind of talking about social networks right now. But still not very high, but at least a little bit more like, well, we understand how this works, we'll get there kind of thing. What I find interesting is, you know, the vast majority of people are like, yeah, we have no confidence in these companies being any help at all and can be very manipulative, but we're still using them to spread a lot of information. So that's on a lot of us. Yeah, I kind of agree. Well, let's talk about LG. The LG's V 60 think that's with a Q 5G is its third dual screen phone with a second screen in a case that could be separated from the main phone. The V 60 has the Snapdragon 865 processor and improved camera that can handle 8k video and a headphone jack. Both screens are 6.8 inch FHD plus OLED with a small notch. LG and Google Maps, excuse me, apps can span both screens. The 5G is optimized for sub six networks. But there will also be a model optimized for MM wave on the rear is a one and one point seven inch sensor 64 megapixel f point one eight camera, which uses pixel brining or binning rather for 16 megapixel images. The V 60 has 128 gigabyte storage, eight gigabytes of RAM, Wi Fi six and a 5000 milliamp battery. Prices will be announced by carriers, but will be less than a thousand dollars when the V 60 arrives in the spring. That's a pretty good deal for a premium phone. Yeah, this is not the best phone.  But it's a very good phone. It's got a great camera. Got a little bit of a bump on it. It's not flush like it was in the last model, but it's still a great camera. It takes good pictures by all accounts of the reviews that came out today has the millimeter wave, like you said capability. And so therefore, you know, it's going to work at 5G in lots of markets and it's going to be less than a thousand dollars. And it has a headphone jack. I know it has a notch, so it's not the perfect phone for the discerning phone. I feel like you want a headphone jack more than they don't want a notch. I don't know that they really want either because they keep buying phones in large amounts that have neither. But people say they want these things. Yeah, they keep buying. That's true. They buy the phones, but they have neither. But they're also very busy upping the wearable market and buying, you know, portable headphones and earbuds and things at a rate that I kind of think the predictions that that stuff was going to phase out anyway is kind of true. I think that days are limited. It's going to be soon where hardly any phone has a headphone jack, but the temple will have it. So you mean the V6. Sorry, the V6. Thank you. Thank you very much, LG, for your headphone jack. We appreciate it. Remember when we were all like, is it think or think you? Oh, was it? Is it think you? I think it's think. Yeah, because there was a there was a LG had an announcement and somebody said, thank you at the end. And we were like, Oh, all right, that was very clever. Speaking of tempo, Scott, tempo is a 42 inch HD touchscreen with Microsoft's Azure connect camera inside to track your exercise form while you take live streaming classes. So as you follow the on-screen instructions in strength training, cardio exercises, yoga, stuff like that, dots on the screen plot your movements and then instructions appear to help you perfect that form classes grade you on your form, not your number of reps. So it's not like, Oh, you bailed out early. It's how well are you doing this overall? The classes cost $39 per month for a subscription and the tempo cabinet screen and standard barbell and weights up to 100 pounds costs $1995. Deposits of $250 are needed to reserve one now shipping in the summer. Who wants one? So the the Peloton craze has as we saw at CES this year sparked numerous imitators. This is a interesting one because it's not a machine. It's not a treadmill. It's not a bike. It's just a screen so that you can see 42 inches is pretty big and it's vertical. So you can see your instructor and try to mimic them. They do the exercises that you were doing all through all the reps. They don't just do it once and stand there and watch you like my trainer did. So you actually get that ability to kind of watch the form. You see the dots that kind of give you instant feedback. You get instruction straight in your back. Keep your legs straight, bend your knees, all that kind of stuff as you're going. I never do these kinds of exercises anymore. But if I did, this sounds pretty great. I know 2,000 bucks is a lot. But you're also getting the barbell and the weights. You can use your own weights on that barbell as well. So maybe you don't want all these weights. I don't know. $39 a month is cheaper than Peloton. Peloton is cheaper than an actual Soulcycle class. But you're doing something different here. I don't know. This seems like a good one. Now also look at the connect living on as a technology in some way over there, Microsoft. And I'd forgotten that they were doing anything with it. Honestly, I kind of thought also Google Glass is not dead. Right? You dude, your predictions are really true. Most of them are not. These aren't predictions. These are me paying attention. Your your ability to read things and retain them. Unbelievable. You predicted them so long ago. They're just coming true now because you're a genius. Right. As somebody who I don't currently have a gym membership, this is going to be a problem if I don't address it soon enough. But I do work in where I am Studio Redwood has a plenty of space to kind of put together a home gym. And I actually have some weights that I that I got already. Kind of wish I would have known about Temple beforehand, but whatever. I've got a bunch of weights. I've got some yoga mats. I could, you know, mount a television. I love this idea because I'm kind of in a place now where it there are gyms around, but I'm going to have to get in the car. And that wasn't always the case before. And so just having something where I could like, I just got a really good workout and I have to leave the house makes a lot of sense. And 40 bucks a month for something that is a subscription is going to be, I mean, leaps and bounds better than anything. I'm going to get it 24 hour fitness. Yeah, you won't get all the machines you got there, but you do this. Yeah, if you want to be disciplined, I think I think this is cool. You don't mount this. It sits in a corner and it you store your, your weights in it. So it's really space efficient too. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines.com. All right, this is a, this is a story after my own heart. I've been following the, the DRM controversy since the mid 2000s. And, and of course the music industry, there was a story today that music industry makes 80% of its money off streaming. So the DRM wars have simmered down as Spotify, Apple music, etc. have become more popular. But what we have seen are a lot more court cases about the use of melodies. We had the Blurred Lions case. There was a case between Tom Petty and Sam Smith over a few notes. And those cases are big cases that can cost a lot of money and shift money from one artist to another. So Damien Reel, who is a musician, a programmer and an attorney and Noah Rubin, who's a programmer and a musician, got together and wrote an algorithm to basically brute force, create every possible eight note, 12 beat melody contained within an octave using modern programming and hardware to just write every eight note, 12 beat melody at once. They stored all of that on a hard drive and copyrighted the hard drive. So now they theoretically own the copyright on every single eight note, 12 beat melody. They released the algorithm under an open source license on GitHub, in case you want to play around with it yourself. And here's the clincher, released the melodies, all of the melodies, under a Creative Commons no rights reserved license on archive.org. No rights reserved basically is the same as public domain. Something can't in the United States anyway, legally be public domain until it meets certain criteria, including length of time. But you can waive all of your rights under a Creative Commons no rights reserved license, and it has the same effect. Anybody can use these. The idea is to reduce the number of copyright lawsuits based on simple melodies rather than whole songs. So by doing this, there is now prior art for every single eight note, 12 beat melody. And if someone writes a song and says, well, wait a minute, you took that from my song, this could be used as a defense to say, well, no, we actually took it from this hard drive from Damien Real and Noah Rubin, and they gave us a license for it, because they gave everyone a license for it. I'm not sure how this is going to affect preexisting melodies, because that's prior art to this. So it's obviously not going to hold up for that. I'm actually not sure how this is going to hold up in court at all, because at least in the United States again, fair use is a defense that you can use to convince a judge you aren't guilty of infringement. In fact, that's not even technically right, because you're still guilty of infringement, but fair use is a defense to say the infringement was justified. I'm allowed to do it, because I was commenting on something or using it for education or was using such a small amount of it that it wouldn't affect the marketplace for the original, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So whether this would hold up in court, I don't know. But Damien Real is an attorney. He thinks that he has a shot. And the way this stuff often works anyway is not even going to court, but having people work it out amongst themselves because they don't want to spend the money to go to court. And having this out there may dissuade people or reduce the leverage of people who want to take this stuff to court. I think it's a very clever use of technology to clear up a point and say, look, a computer can make all the melodies at that level. We shouldn't be arguing about that. Whole songs? Sure. My sweet lord, he's so fine level stuff where you're talking about the entire record. That's up to a court to decide. Why not? But these little snippets, these little melodies, they've just tried to basically take that out of the equation. Well, when you brought this up on TMS and your segment today, I immediately put my brain in this place of like, all right, well, does that mean everything is math? And you quickly corrected me and said, not really the point. This isn't about reducing everything to the argument that, well, everything's made of matter, man. It's all just light and sound. And you know, at the end of the day, nobody owns anything, man. It's all free. I realize after talking to you this morning, it's a little wrong headed to go that route. But what is the, what is the edge of this? What is the edge case? Like, sure, these, these arrangements of notes in this small group makes sense to me. And now everybody can just go use it and go for it. And we're not worried about whole songs. But when does it get close to being a whole song? Is it four bars? Is it two bars? Is it everything up to the stanza? Is it just the stanzas? Like, to me, there are legal questions to ask. And I don't know where that will get asked and what court will decide them. But it's fascinating to me. And I got, it made me get all philosophical today. Probably, you know, I probably didn't need to, but I felt like being that way. Well, and I think that what real and Ruben's intentions are here are good. That said, I can see an artist being like, no, this is just a place for someone to hide once they rip me off.  And now they can just say, well, it's just part of some open source thing. So I, it's, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about this. I think I think it's very clever. I don't know how much it's going to, to help artists who are battling against other artists in the future. But I hope we hear more about it. Yeah. And there are some limits. It's only one octave. It's not every melody possible. It's every combination. There's, there's, there's a few nuances to it. But essentially, they're just trying to take this level out of the conversation. And I'm curious to see if it will work, or if it will just stand as a instructive stunt that, that helps us understand better how this all works. It could go either way. It probably is going to be a little both. What was it 600 gigabytes of, or so? Yeah, when I looked at the, when I looked at the archive data or give us something like that. I love that. That's amazing. Well, another thing we can't predict yet is what will be at the top of our subreddit tomorrow. You can submit stories and vote on them at daily technewshow.reddit.com. You can also join in the conversation in our Discord happening right now. Happens 24-7. Great group of folks in there. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Oh, let's. Mike in Dusty Riyadh, his words, says he was struggling with the laptop or tablet debate that we had on last Friday's show. Mike says my laptop 2017 HP Spectre X2 had a battery that was starting to explode, so I needed something to replace it ASAP. I like Windows 10. I want my full keyboard. I want my touchpad. I agree that multitasking is easier in Windows. However, the contrast in price between a Surface 7 and an iPad Pro with 512 gigs of onboard storage had me seriously considering going for the iPad. One key reason, my workplace Office 365 account only lets me access my work files or apps through a web browser, meaning I need an internet connection to work on the go between public Wi-Fi paranoia, not wanting to burn through data tethering. This is a huge inconvenience for me. In contrast, I can access all my apps with biometric authentication on an iPad. It's great being able to take notes in one note, just go home, have it sync up over my home network, or work on a document on a plane and save it to the cloud later. Mike does say I ultimately went for the Surface, but I don't know if I'll do a Surface 9 or 10 when it comes time to replace this guy. I so identified with this where you're like, man, this could work. It might be better. But I am going to do what I want to do. You know what? That's funny because of the exact opposite experience when I was in the market for moving up to the next whatever version of a drawing device I was going to get. And I was like, well, how's the surface these days? Let's give this a shot. And I ended up going with the iPad again because in that particular use case, same deal. You're just going to be in a better position. And he just happened to be in a place where that's not a great solution. I think this makes perfect sense. And he went the right way. Yeah, I do appreciate you, Mike, for being like, you know what, though, there are some limitations with the choice I made. I know what I did. And I did it willfully. So we hope you enjoy your service. Let's also thank our patrons at our master and grand master levels including Dan Dorado Hankins, John Johnston and Chris Smith. Last but not least, thanks to Scott Johnson for being with us today, Mr. Frogpants. Where can people keep up with what you're up to? Well, all of it is at frogpants.com. And there's a lot of stuff, cool stuff going on. In particular, I have been harping on this for a few weeks, but it's because I'm proud of it. And I'm really happy about how it's going. So if you want to see the latest comic strips that I launched and I'm running right now, you can check it out. It's called Fred and Can. It's available linked right there at the top of frogpants.com as well as on its own page at frog, excuse me, Fred can comic.com. And let me know what you think of it. Some of your feedback and tell me what you like, what you don't like, that sort of stuff. I'm very, very proud of it right now. And you can follow me on Twitter. I'm over at Scott Johnson as usual. Hey, folks, we're getting near the end of the month. And that is a time when we're especially thankful to all the patrons who stick with us because we know sometimes it gets a little tight and you realize that next charge is coming and you might want to cut back. So we always hope that we get some new folks in for the new month. Two dollars is the base subscription to get ad free, get special bonus episodes, get all the inside information on the show. If you're looking at two dollars and thinking like, yeah, you know, I could waste that on a candy bar or something, or I could give it to Daily Tech News Show and help the show get better. We'd love to have it. Patreon.com slash DTNS. And you help keep us strong. If you have feedback for us, well, have I got an email address for you? Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Write us early and often. We're also live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2130 UTC. And you can find out more at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Justin and Robert Young. Talk to you then.


Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. This is Melissa with the Stocks With Show, and I'm here today to go over the staples play of the day. Like this, love this, did it. Didn't do anything wrong here. Staying with the trade, and I'm done, I'm all out. My day is over, my week is over, it's 11.56 on Friday afternoon, and I really don't think it's something that people should be trading Friday afternoon anyways, unless you're in something that's just falling like a rock, and you just want to stay with it. Staples work today as a short. It's not falling like a rock. If I hadn't had the exact entry and perfect, perfect position size I did, then I wouldn't have made as much money as I did today in this, so I'm really proud of myself, because I did a good job, and I played it right. However, this was skill, this is real skill today. People say what sets me apart, I'll tell you what sets me apart right here. This. So I liked the gap in staples today a lot. I really, really liked it. It opened it rallying. Here's the short, and then I did this. Woo, and now pretend you don't see this. So I'm short, this and all of a sudden this happens. So somebody tried to buy this here, or that would not have happened, because that was a big bar, and it had the lion, and it had the red bar, then it had the green bar, and it sandwiched itself in after the rally. But I had to stop at the right place, and luckily I knew where that was, because it actually went over the high, and I stayed in the trade, and then I took more. And then it dropped and broke. But if you don't know how to do this, you might kill the train as a short, or flip it and go long, and then you could stop that on the long, and you killed the short, and then you try to short again later, and then it doesn't go anywhere. I mean, it's a mess, unless you know what to do, which I do. This is what sets me apart here, this. This kind of thing here to know actually how to take the trade, which is a short. So, nice moving staples here today for the morning period. I didn't expect this to go hog wild today. I didn't expect it at all. And after I saw the open, I said, well, dream target off, but I was looking for realistic targets. And this still can have some more movement today, but I'm all out. I'm not gonna sit all afternoon in for four hours in something to get a little bit more out of something. It's because it's Friday. However, this was a nice trade this morning. A nice trade, good money booked, happy with the day, had the ad, played it perfectly, great entry in my part. It's all about getting the right pick and the timing. The right pick and the timing, and the right directional bias, obviously you have to be able to know which you're going longer short. And staples is a short. So, nice gap in staples today. I played it very well. And the week was a very unusual week. It was a weird week. It was a positive week. It was a good week. It was just strange because like for example, even this, I thought this would have more follow-through. It didn't, but luckily I played it very accurately. The market's very, very sloppy and choppy today. That isn't helping this or anything, but it was a weird week in reference to the market this week. Why? Because the market didn't follow through higher, but it's going to. And it's so clear to me that it's going to. And I do think that affected a lot of things this week. It affected longs and shorts, meaning everything is kind of in this holding, waiting period because of the market. Like shorts will follow through and do their thing once the market just breaks higher and does its thing, and same thing with longs. So, you know, this is just the, the week was a weird week off the start of the month of March because the market is in this positioning where it's going to go higher. It hasn't done it yet. And so I think a lot of things didn't have the full-on muster and bluster that they could have this week because people are like waiting on the market. A&F was the big, big, big, big winner this week though. And I can do another video on that maybe later today. But I, this week was a good week in the room. And for me, because of me, because of my level of accuracy in reading charts because I picked the right thing every day, had the right intro every day, had a good exit every day and just played it very, very well and very professionally. I do think the longer that you trade, you should get better. It's for training for a long time and you're not getting better at making more money than you're doing something wrong. When people tell me they're training for a long time, it doesn't really mean a whole lot to me because if you're training for a long time and you're not making money or you're not getting better then you have to change what you're doing.  But a lot of times what happens is people trade longer and their equity curve goes down and their knowledge base maybe, they may think their knowledge base is going up but if their equity curve is going down and their knowledge base they think is going up then it's not coordinated because it shouldn't be that way. If your knowledge base is going up and you're a good trader, you should be making money. As time goes on, you should make more. So if you'd like to learn how to train, you can email me at melissa at thestockswitch.com. Again, this is common sense. Common sense is my gap rating method, the 26-point rating system. I'm looking for the stocks to trade each day with a longer, short and the best rated gap. It's common sense because I'm looking for institutional positioning of the chart. It's common sense because I'm looking at the bigger picture of the day chart to make the decision for what stock pick and I'm getting the entry on the one minute chart as a day trader because I'm a day trader in a flat at the end of each day. And again, common sense, think about what I'm saying for those of you that are out there that are trading for a long time and you're not positive. Common sense says the longer you trade, the more money you should be making. Your equity curve should be going up in your P&L and your account, not down. And if it's flat line, you're still not getting anywhere either because you're wasting your time and time is very valuable. And the staples is rallying here now, but I'm allowed to set up again. Yeah, I could, but you'd be taking a trader two o'clock on a Friday afternoon. And that's just not my thing. Have a great weekend, everyone. Still, some spots left. If you want to sign up for the Golden Gap course, today is the last day though. March 7th and 8th, email me at melissa at thestockswish.com to sign up. Have a great weekend, everyone.


All right, so it is 12 o'clock a little after 12 o'clock noon central time. It's time for our lightning round sessions for today's big talk from small libraries online conference. I'm your host, Christopher Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. We have three great presentations for our lunchtime hour today. So if you did look at the agenda, there was originally four. One of our presenters was unable to be here today. And that's perfectly fine. A little bit more time for the other three. So up first is Emily Morrison, who is what our, let's see here. I'm just double checking. Our first Nebraska presenter. Yay. Hi Emily, she is from our Blair Public Library and Technology Center in Blair, Nebraska. I'm going to talk to us about genealogy, a, I know a very popular well of subject in libraries and how they did it in their library. So go ahead Emily and take it away. All right. So I'm living in the Blair Public Library as Krista mentioned. And already wants to do it. Okay. So just to get some background on the Blair Library, we're located in Blair, Nebraska, which is just north of Omaha. Our city population is roughly 8,000, although we have closer to 10,000 patrons. That's a mix of city, county and non resident patrons. So the library has roots dating back to 1877. The library was run by a group of women. And then in 1916, they accepted Carnegie funds. That's this building right down here. Unfortunately, that building burned down in the 1970s and was replaced by this building in the middle. And then finally, just as we outgrew that library moved to our current building in 2017. So one of the collections at the old library, the one in the middle in the 1970s was a local history and genealogy collection. This was something that was kind of organized and maintained by a local genealogy societies. The library staff didn't necessarily have much to do with it. When we moved into our new library, we were able to actually have an entire room dedicated to the collection, which was really awesome. But when it came over, it was all just kind of boxed up and then just put on the shelves as it is and hadn't really been touched since then. So that was very, very disorganized. This grew worse over time just with people coming in and using stuff and putting it back. The genealogy group was a little less hands on when the collection moved over. So that was another reason why it kind of got so out of control. And then lastly, people like to donate materials to the collection, but they wouldn't necessarily let us know they were donating. So they would just leave books on the shelf. So maybe half of the stuff in the room was catalogued, but half of it was not. We had no clue what was even in the room. People would ask us like for help finding stuff and we would just walk in there and tell them I can look a bit, but I'm not going to be able to necessarily find the screen. That was really frustrating because you think libraries are supposed to be these perfectly organized, perfectly run systems in this room. It's not how we wanted our library to be organized. So I didn't realize that I was going to be doing a presentation when I started this project. So I didn't actually take pictures of how bad everything was. These pictures that you see below are pictures of us trying to hide how disorganized it was just to try to show off the room. But as you can see, there's just not a lot of organization on the shelves. There's materials next to each other that have no reason to be next to each other. So it was definitely not very sustainable and the room was not usable. So as a new hire and someone with a history background, I was given the task of reorganizing the room and getting it back to where it should have been. I started this project in about June of 2021 and it's taken me many, many months. It was a really big overwhelming project. I didn't even know where to start at the beginning.  I started with three categories. So there was things that I knew for sure that I wanted to keep. They should stay in the room. There were things that needed to be weeded and then there were things that I wasn't quite sure what to do with yet. So I just kind of set those aside and hoped I would figure out as I went along. So for things that I wanted to keep, this was really easy. Just anything related to the purpose of the room. So anything that had anything connected to genealogy, local history. Then there were also just some items that had some historical value that I thought would be nice to keep if we didn't have the space for them. That might not have been the case, but for now we had room. So this collection right here is a pictorial history of World War II. So it's just some really cool volumes that have a lot of unique pictures that you wouldn't necessarily see elsewhere. We also had a really cool 1921 book on storytime programming recommendations. It was written by a librarian. It's just a rarer book, so I didn't want to just get rid of it, so we still have that one as well. For any of the general nonfiction books, I just used Dewey to catalog them. That's what we use for the rest of our nonfiction, so I wanted to keep it similar in here so people knew where to find things. For the numbers that I wasn't as familiar with, I used Worldcat and the library thing to look them up. For the most part, it was just genealogy and Nebraska history, so that was somewhat easier. There were a number of reasons I decided why something needed to be weeded. For instance, we had a lot of outdated materials that could actually be updated. We had a guidebook to Ancestry.com that was for an older version of the website, so it doesn't make much sense to keep that when it's not actually going to teach someone how to use the site as it is now. So we just went ahead and purchased replacement copies of things that we could. Anything we had more than two copies of, we decided to keep the nicest copies and then get rid of the rest. For instance, this book on the side over here is in very bad condition. The cover was no longer attached, the spine had fallen off, and we had probably three or four copies, so we were able to get rid of this one. We just don't have the means to preserve it as is. Again, anything that was in bad condition and the information was available online, we also chose to get rid of. In our instance, we were more trying to preserve just the information rather than the materials. We just didn't have the money to go send everything to be rebound. For instance, we had a collection of Daughters of the American Revolution books. We probably had about 40 of them and they were literally crumbling to the touch and just taking up a lot of space. So we contacted a member of the group and asked if they'd be interested in having the books and she told us that everything was available online and she didn't even want them. So we made the decision to weed those in that case. And then lastly, anything that didn't have a connection to genealogy or local history, with the exception of some of those cool historical materials, we also decided to weed. Anything we weeded, I first offered up to staff members to see if they'd be interested in keeping it as a display item. I also contacted the local archive and other community organizations so we weren't just getting rid of these materials that someone else would be interested in. So for the things that got set aside, these were things that I knew that I wanted to keep, but I wasn't sure what to do with them because they couldn't be shelved as is. For instance, we had a lot of materials that didn't easily fit into just the regular nonfiction of Dewey. So I ended up making specific categories, including yearbooks, directories and periodicals, and I kind of gave them their own sections in the room. So over here on the left is just our periodical section. And those all just got a call number that started with periodicals. We also had a lot of items that were in terrible condition but couldn't be replaced. I wanted to keep them but preserve them. So I actually ended up creating a mini archive in our storage room just to help preserve the materials. This definitely would help. It reduces the handling of the materials because they're not just sitting out on the shelves for anyone to touch. I have everything laying flat instead of on their spine so it puts less pressure on the spines. They're all in archival safe PVC-free bags to keep dust off. And then they're just out of the sunlight. They're a lot more protected in this area. And that way people can use them still but they're not just out for any old person to walk in and handle. Naturally, this was not an easy project. It had come across a lot of problems and came up with some solutions for those problems. For one, we had a lot of loose papers and pamphlets that had just been left on the shelves at certain times. So when I could, I collected related ones into three ring binders or I used a heat binder to keep them together. If there wasn't enough to make a collection of them, I ended up adding them to a hanging file storage cabinet in the room. Another big issue I ran into was our shelving in the room is very narrow. So as you can see, things are kind of just hanging off. When I could, I replaced them with deeper shelving but we didn't have enough to do the whole room unfortunately. So one solution I came up with was to use these little storage bins and it kind of helps stabilize the binders on the shelf. And I also split some of the bigger binders up into smaller ones. They're not as heavy if they do happen to fall off the shelf. And then lastly, just the sheer amount of material I came across. I kept thinking I was close to getting done and then I would find more books that needed to be catalogued. There was a cabinet in the room that was full of some books and then the director had a couple of boxes in her office. There was about 10 boxes in storage that had just been there since we moved in 2017. So there was a lot more that was supposed to be in there and it just never made its way over there. It is now all catalogued and in the room for people to use. So these are just some of the cool things I came across while doing this project. We had quite a few financial books from the library, so this one's from 1924. And it just lists the different expenditure columns, for instance, periodicals, salaries, utilities. It's just kind of cool to compare the budget back then to what it is now. This is a collection called Bear Tales and it's work by the local high school students. So we have short stories, poems, artwork, and essays. We have a few different years of these and it's just one of the more unique local resources that it is cool to have in that room. This is a stereoscope and some stereographs. So this is another thing that I just found in a box in storage that was pretty cool. You don't expect to find that necessarily. If you're not familiar with stereoscopes, they're kind of like an earlier form of 3D. So you have this little viewer right here and then you move the picture back and forth and it looks really cool. It's similar to a View Master, if you know what that is. And we had about 20 different sets on different topics, just sitting in boxes. And this was probably our biggest find, again, in a box in storage. This is Confederate currency that was sent specifically to the Blair Public Library by the Treasury Department in 1912. So this was money that was confiscated during the Civil War. And then the Treasury Department later reached out to different museums and libraries to see if they'd be interested in holding on to these to preserve the history. So we have probably about 20 different bills of different currencies and we have the original envelope, the original letter still. It wasn't well preserved because it was just sitting in a box, but I've now moved it to page protectors. So hopefully it should stay in good condition for years to come. That is very cool. And interestingly, the Treasury Department wouldn't have their own process of preserving them or wouldn't have thought Library of Congress or something like that. I'm sure they have some of their own too, but there just must have been that many that they have. So as of January, I am mostly finished with the project. I will go into why it's just mostly in the next slide. But definitely the collection is more usable now. Everything that should be next to each other on the shelf is next to each other. So it's a lot more browsable. Everything is also searchable in our online catalog. So you don't have to be at the library to know what we have. Staff members also are able to know what we have to offer. We're having programming in the room now as well. So we do these genealogy help sessions with some of the materials and using ancestry.com. And so it's great to see the room finally functioning as it was supposed to be. We don't have people walking in asking for help finding a book and having staff members telling them that we aren't sure where that book is. So it's nice to have it finally in order. There are some ongoing projects I'm working on and as well as future projects that I will tackle at some point. There's a lot of odds and ends that I still am not sure what to do with this. For instance, this cute little book down here, it's about the size of a quarter, which is it's cute, but in practical, I cannot shelve it as is. So that's something I'm going to have to figure out what to do with at some point. Our shelving in the room is very limited. There's not much room for expansion. If we were to get more donations, which we hope to, there's going to be a point when there's not going to be any more room on the shelves. So we would like to get some more shelving in there. There's also no oversized shelving. So all of our oversized books shown down here are just sitting on top of our microfilm cabinet, which is not ideal, but it's the best spot for them at the moment. I kind of mentioned the local genealogy society earlier, but I just want to go into a bit more detail here. There's kind of a fight for control of the room. Does the genealogy society own the room? Does the library own it? When they moved over, they brought some of their own stuff, but over the years, more material has been donated specifically to the library and staff has become a little more hands on with the room. So we are the ones who are primarily in charge of it at this point. However, the genealogy society still likes to exert some control over the room. They were initially opposed to some of the expanded shelving. They still have this corner of the room down here where they have their whole file cabinet and just some different boxes that I did not touch. That is their materials, but it just makes it a little confusing when there's these two groups who kind of claim ownership of the room. And then lastly, I would like to digitize materials. Eventually this is something I'm not super familiar with because I don't have a lot of experience with creating a digital library, but it'd be cool to kind of preserve some of the local materials and make them more accessible. So that is something I would like to work on eventually, but not now. I'm going to take a little break from doing all of that, but it was a really fun experience. It was a good learning experience. I have not ever really worked with archiving before, and I feel like I've learned a lot in just a few months. Okay. Thank you, Emily. Does anybody have any questions? We can grab a couple of questions if you have them before we do go on to our next speaker. We do have time for that. I think it was a great presentation that you did here. I understand why you wouldn't think you, we didn't know you're doing a presentation to have the before pictures, but the after ones. Pretty bad pictures if I would have known I was going to do a presentation. Look great. I do have a question here. You mentioned that it is easier for people to use the collection now, of course, but do you have, did you have statistics on usage before and after? Are people or surveys or anything from actual users, input from users? We didn't know because the materials in that room can't be checked out. There's not any circulation statistics. All we have really is anecdotal evidence from staff members who mentioned trying to help people find stuff in the room. And we had even genealogy members come up to me and ask me where material in the room was when I was new there. And I had to tell them I don't know. I'm sorry. You can try to look on the shelves, but the room might not be. And did you get, have any input from users on how to rearrange it? Did anyone have any ideas? I didn't really get input. No, it was, we knew that we wanted to do do we for the most part because that's what the rest of our library is so we didn't want to use some other system that would make it more complicated for users. I did get input from staff members on some of those other collections like your books and the like the newspapers and trying to figure out if I should try to integrate those or leave them separate. And so, yeah, I did ask other staff members for some input during the project. And we do have one other question from that will ask your how did you catalog the things that were really worn out that you preserved in another area. Oh, okay. Yeah, I meant I meant to touch on this a bit during the presentation, but I didn't. So, I kept everything with a call number of gr for genealogy reference, but for the items that were in storage. I made a shelf location specifically that was genealogy storage that is one way that people are able to see in our catalog that they're in that archival space instead of in the room. And then I also created a note in the record that says something along the lines of this items in bad condition. Please ask a staff member for assistance in viewing it. So it is located in the record people aren't just going to go into that room and try to find stuff that's in the archive. So what are these in your catalog? Is this something public that anyone can just see in your online catalog that's out there on the library website? Yeah, you just go to our Blair Public Library website and view the catalog from there. We don't have the best catalog for doing advanced searches, but you could search something along the lines of genealogy and then you could get a list of resources from there of what we have in the room. If you have other questions, we don't have time to get to all of them. You can reach out to Emily at the Blair Public Library and she'll be happy to answer your questions about anything. So thank you so much. It's so interesting.


So, today I will continue our discussion on the Indian Ocean Dipole which we began in the last class. We were discussing the processes that lead to the mean patterns of variation and then we will go to what leads to the formation of the IOD events. So, I continue the discussion of the present understanding of the processes involved in the evolution of the mean monthly SST and convection over the EEIO and WEIO. Now, we have seen that the SST of both the regions decreases from mid-May to mid-August and that again I show you here again that the SST of both the regions this blue is EEIO and red is WEIO both of the regions start the SST starts decreasing from mid-May right up to this point here mid-August or so and then both start increasing after mid-September. So, we have seen that SST of both the regions decreases from mid-May to mid-August and the EEIO SST decreases because cooling due to upwelling generated by southerly winds parallel to the Sumatra course dominates the warming by advection of the warm water from the west we have seen this last time. We have noted that the average OLR over WEIO decreases from mid-April up to end of May and then oscillates around 240 watts per meter square up to the end of August. So, now we are looking at what is happening to OLR over WEIO and that is in red here. So, it initially is decreasing here which means convection is building up and then up to mid-August it simply oscillates around 240 watts per meter square then it increases in September and remains high until the end of the season. So, it starts that means convection starts disappearing from here and then it just remains suppressed in this part of the year from about mid-September onwards the convection over WEIO suppressed and OLR of WEIO is high. Now the SST of WEIO we have said before that WEIO SST responds primarily to fluxes from the atmosphere and so SST of WEIO decreases rapidly with the increase of convection. So, here we have when the convection increases SST of WEIO which is here decreases very rapidly here up to about mid-June till when the convection builds up. So, the SST decreases rapidly because of the radiation cut off by the clouds and then increases until the end of November once the clouds go away. So, from mid-May until end of November the mean SST of WEIO is higher than that of WEIO. So, we have from about throughout from mid-May up to end of November the SST of EIO is higher than that of WEIO because WEIO decreases very much more rapidly in the first part of the season with the build up of the convection here. So, now what is the situation then we have also seen that from mid-May to mid-August the atmospheric conditions appear to be almost equally favorable over the two regions for supporting convection. So, what does that imply? This implies a decrease in the strength of the Westerly winds over CEIO from mid-May to onwards. So, now you have the Westerly wind is denoted by black here and you can see it decreases rapidly as the convection probabilities in the two regions become similar you have less of a gradient and therefore less of a Westerly wind and then from here to here which is to say from mid-June to about September it remains very low lower than 1 meter per second. See this is a reflection of the fact that the convection over the two regions is very close. So, we have low Westerly winds in that period. Now, let us consider the variation of convection over WEIO and EEIO. See the most commonly used measure of organized deep convection over a region is the outgoing long wave radiation OLR which is what we have considered so far. Now, the regional average of OLR is a reasonable measure of convection and its variability for regions over which it is uniformly low. So, if you have a region filled with grid points with low OLR then there is convection over all of them and then the average OLR makes sense average OLR is representative of convection in the region. However, when a substantial part of the region is cloud-free with large values of OLR the OLR of the cloud-free part also contributes to the regional average. So, the average values of OLR for a region with on the weekly or monthly and larger scales can be relatively high despite the occurrence of deep convection for some days and or over some regions. So, on a single day part of the region may be clouded will have less OLR, but it will not get reflected in the average OLR if the other part overwhelms this region the cloud-free part. So, but what we are interested in is really not the variation of OLR, but the variation of convection. So, it is important to focus on where the convection is and how large is the extent of the region with convection. This is why indices such as the frequency of highly reflective clouds you know so far we have been talking of long wave radiation. Another thing the satellite measures is the albedo and you know deep clouds are highly reflective clouds and this is measured in the visible in the albedo. So, there has been work done in actually consolidating data on frequency of highly reflective clouds and atlas has been generated and this has been used as a measure of convection. Now, instead of using frequency of highly reflective clouds what we can do is we can use a convective index CI which is a measure of the intensity and the horizontal extent of deep convection over a region based on daily OLR 2.5 degree by 2.5 degree resolution. That is to say we do not go to smaller units of space than 2.5 by 2.5 we ask the question is the mean OLR of every grid point 2.5 by 2.5 is it low enough to have convection there and from such grid wise analysis generate a convective index. So, what do we do? We assume that on any day deep convection occurs only over the grid points for which OLR is below 200 watts per meter square and take the difference of the OLR value from 200 watts per meter square to represent the intensity of deep convection. That is to say how much lower is the OLR than 200 watts per meter square. So, if it is 180 the difference will be 20 if it is 160 the difference will be 40 and so on. So, that gives a measure of the intensity of clouding now the CI for a specific region such as EIO which comprises typically several grid points for a particular day is calculated as following. See what we see is over how many grids on that day was the OLR less than 200. We take only those grids for those grids compute the intensity as 200 minus OLR and sum over all those grids that is to say CI is the sum of 200 minus OLR over all the grid points for which OLR is less than 200 all the grid points which support deep convection. Now, the variation of the mean CI over EIO and WEIO is actually not surprisingly consistent with variation of OLR. So, we have here OLR variation which we had before and we have the variation of CI. Now, we had seen that OLR of EIO is lower than that of WEIO and indeed CI of WEIO is lower than that of EIO. So, the thing is consistent even the variation is generally consistent variation of CI is generally consistent with this. However, when we talk of 240 being a reasonable limit so that if OLR is below 240 we can say the region is convecting we have here regions or days on which WEIO is above 240. But even then you see it has non-zero values of CI this is exactly reflecting what I said before that there is a considerable cloud free region which is leading to high values of OLR. But actually it is not indicating it is not an absence of convection which is what we would think of if we looked at only the mean OLR. In fact, there is convection of the order of 4 convective index of about 4 in this case. So, in fact the convective index is never 0 which is saying that there is always some convection going on in the mean over some part of WEIO and some part of EIO. So, while the convection occurs intermittently over WEIO and EIO in any season during a season with a strong positive phase of equino such as 94, 97 and so on the propensity of convection over WEIO is higher than that over EIO this is because there is a strong IOD event there. On the other hand in the negative phase of equino which again we will see the propensity of convection is higher for EIO. So, what you see here is a somewhat complicated figure but I will explain to you what it is these towers represent convection over EIO and this is the convection over EIO. The convection over WEIO convection over EIO is red convection over WEIO we multiply that by minus 1 the CI value so that we can see it because otherwise there would be too much overlap of the towers. So, this is the convection over WEIO and imagine that this means lot of convection and this means less convection. So, we have simply inverted the axis so to speak for convection over WEIO. So, this is CI for EIO the red towers and blue towers are for WEIO. Now, what you see here is the SST of EIO, SST of WEIO and various other parameters there is also this is the SST of WEIO and WEIO and you can see that in this case these are dipole events. So, SST of the west actually is larger than SST of the east over a large part of the region this is a reflection of it being a dipole. So, what do we see for 94 and 97 that initially there is convection over EIO, but then it is largely suppressed here you see the red towers are very few here and same thing here it is the blue towers that dominate the red when you have positive IOD events and exactly the opposite occurs in the negative equino phase where you have the EIO convection dominating the WEIO convection, but note that it is not as if convection is totally 0 rather the propensity of convection is less over WEIO in negative phase and less over EIO in the positive phase of equino this is to be born in mind. So, a transition in the phase of equino involves a change in the probability or chance of convection occurring in over WEIO or EIO it does not involve a total shift of the convection from EIO to WEIO or vice versa. This is something very important to remember that it is not as if an entirely new regime takes has come into place when we have an IOD event rather the probabilities have shifted from what they were. So, now it is important to understand what are the factors that lead to variation of convection various. So, let us consider one of the factors suggested how does the convection vary with local SST in particular we need to understand the relationship between EIO convection and SST. Because we need to understand the factors that lead to the anomalous suppression or enhancement of the convection over EIO and WEIO in any season. Now, important factors could be remotely driven descent or ascent over the equatorial Indian ocean. For example, we know that phenomena like El Nino do drive descent or ascent over the Indian ocean and that could that could be the so the suppression or enhancement could be a manifestation of remote factors operating on the region. However, the SST of the equatorial Indian ocean could also play a role. For example, it is believed that the suppression of convection over EIO during the positive phase of equino in 1994 is associated with the cold SST anomaly of EIO. So, because even in the original paper of Saji et al and in all the succeeding literature it is very clearly stated that the suppression of convection over EIO and the cold SST anomalies go hand in hand for positive IOD events. So, let us now look at the relationship between OLR over EIO and the average SST of EIO. The variation of the monthly OLR over EIO with the SST of EIO for all the months in the period 82 to 2009 we see here. So, what is this each of these points represents one month and for example, for this point this is a specific month in that period and for this period the average EIO SST is about 27.5 and the average OLR anomaly is about 15 watts per meter square. So, this is how all the data for all the months between 82 and 2010 are plotted because each month is characterized by a pair of values one for the SST and the other for the OLR anomaly. Now, when we plot this what do we see 27.5 is a threshold here for convection and what we see is once the SST is above the threshold it is a big mess you know you could either have suppressed convection or you could have enhanced convection. There is a large range of variation particularly above 28 degree, but once it is below 27.5 you see all the points you have positive OLR anomaly that means once it is below the threshold of 27.5 convection is suppressed. Now, to what extent varies it could be suppressed with an OLR anomaly of about 20 watts per meter square or it could be very much more suppressed with OLR anomaly is between 40 and 50 watts per meter square. So, the extent does vary here, but there is no month in which the OLR anomaly is even within 20 or negative. So, this is a very clear Lakshman ratio if you wish or a threshold of 27.5 which seems to be operating in determining what is the kind of convection that is possible for a given SST range of EIO. So, we have noted that the most intense suppression with OLR anomaly is greater than 45 watts per meter square occurs when SST here this is the most intense suppression. This occurs when SST is less than 27.5. However, while all the points with SST less than 27.5 are characterized by OLR anomaly is greater than 20 watts per meter square which we saw comparable anomalies also occur for other SSTs. So, you have here you know points like this and comparable anomalies here occur also for much warmer SSTs here you see that. So, it is difficult to given an OLR anomaly to say what the SST range would be unless of course, the OLR anomaly is so large as plus 45 or so watts per meter square in that case we can say the SST is definitely below 27.5. So, now all the colored dots here represent IOD events purple is 94 all the IOD events in that period red is 97 and blue is 2006. So, you can see that certainly for some months in each of the IOD years SST goes below the threshold and that is where you have sustained suppression of convection over EIO. But you can also see that in the other months before the IOD has attained a mature stage in fact, the SST is higher than the threshold for these IODs, but with cooling eventually it goes below the threshold. So, when the SST is below the threshold for several weeks what happens we expect sustained suppression of convection over the EIO and you see that here this is the case of 97. Again this black line corresponds to SST of EIO red towers are the EIO convection and blue towers are the WEIO convection and what you see here is actually that the SST of EIO decreases rather rapidly here and then crosses the threshold around here and once it crosses the threshold then there is hardly any days with convective activity over EIO. So, you can see the kind of suppression sustained suppression that occurs when SST is below the threshold. So, cooling of EIO to SST below the threshold appears to be a very important attribute of strong positive IOD events. Now, you know ever since the papers of Sahajie et al and Webster et al in 1999 which first talked about the Indian Ocean Dipole mode there have been lots of studies of the relationship of IOD and ENSO. Now, there is one school of thought which feels that the Indian Ocean is passive and merely responds to the atmosphere and inter annual variability of the Indian Ocean SST are forced mainly by ENSO through an atmospheric bridge. So, what they believe is that there are lots of activities over the Pacific namely ENSO. This ENSO through the atmospheric bridge has an impact on the atmosphere over the Indian region and equatorial Indian Ocean and through that influences the Indian Ocean SST. So, it believes that most of the events of the Indian Ocean are actually remotely forced Indian Ocean is passively responding to that and the bridge is through walker circulation which as we know climatologically we have ascending motion over west specific and descending over ocean motion over east specific which is the walker circulation, but this circulation changes during El Nino and what we get is descending motion over west specific as well as eastern part of equatorial Indian Ocean. Now, about 4 months after large scale SST anomalies are observed in the equatorial Pacific the whole of the Indian Ocean is covered with SST anomalies of the same sign. This we have seen in fact that when we looked at SST anomalies even of WEIO and EIO we could see in the plus plus or minus minus quadrants that is to say in the quadrant in which both the anomalies were positive that quadrant was dominated by El Nino years because there is general warming of the Indian Ocean during El Nino and cooling during La Nina. Now, however if that is the case then why do they think that IOD is forced by El Nino because the Indian Ocean warming associated with an El Nino is not based in wide at all stages of ENSO. In the early stages of development of an El Nino there are cold SST anomalies in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean, but they generally disappear as El Nino matures. So, as the El Nino is evolving the one important feature is suppression of convection over eastern equatorial Indian Ocean this is what they talk of the Walker circulation being anomalous and also cold SST anomalies of EIO. Now, people after the IOD papers came out people looked at simultaneous correlations between SST of the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and ENSO indices and these correlations tend to suggest that IOD events are forced by ENSO that there is a correlation between the two. And in fact, the strong IOD event of the recent types that occurred during 1997 coincided with a very strong El Nino. However, it is important to note that IOD events have occurred together with ENSO as well as independently and in fact, according to the second school an important role is played by the coupled interactions of the atmosphere Indian Ocean system in the IOD mode. So, the fact that the Pacific will could and does have an influence on the Indian Ocean is not denied, but the differences of the two schools are in what how much importance to give to the role of the coupled Indian Ocean atmosphere system and the second school believes that that plays a very important role. So, its Indian Ocean is not merely passive, but is an active player in this in the generation of an IOD mode. This is what the second school believes and in fact, the roots of this second school and in the very first study of the inter-annual variations of convection and SSD in the equatorial Indian Ocean which revealed the IOD mode. However, it was then not called an IOD mode by the authors. This was done by Reverend and Etel from France and they are the ones who actually revealed the structure of the IOD mode and this they did by studying on the basis of ship reports available the IOD event of 1961. This is the picture of DMI now that you have seen before, DMI positive means positive IOD events and you can see here this is a major IOD event of 61 after which one occurred here and another occurred in 82 and then bigger occurred in 94, but the one in 61 is comparable to that of 94 and then 97 which was a very large IOD event. So, this IOD event of 61 is what revered in another study and they suggested that coupled air sea dynamics over the Indian Ocean should be considered in order to understand the inter-annual variability. And from limited ship observations, they concluded that the SSD anomaly affects cloudiness rainfall and consequently causes westward wind anomalies along the equator. See, this is the key element of positive equino and positive phase of the dipole inverse the SSD anomalies. So, they actually talked about the coupled Indian Ocean atmosphere processes being important to the IOD event of 61. Now subsequently there has been a lot of debate on this and so discovery of the IOD and studies that followed demonstrate that the Indian Ocean can sustain its own intrinsic coupled ocean atmosphere processes. So, now it appears that we can say that it is true that the Indian Ocean is influenced by the Pacific, but it can also sustain its own coupled ocean atmosphere processes and about 50 percent of the IOD events in the past 100 years have occurred with ENSO and the other half independently. So, it is not as if all the events are associated with ENSO. Actually coupled models have been able to reproduce IOD events and process experiments by such models like switching ENSO on and off support the hypothesis based on observations that IOD events develop either in the presence or absence of ENSO. So, it is not necessary to have an El Nino developing in the Pacific for a positive IOD event to develop over the Indian Ocean. Now, there is a general consensus among different coupled models as well as analysis of data that the P IOD events that is to say positive IOD events co-occurring during El Nino are forced by a zonal shift in the descending branch over the eastern Indian Ocean. This is what I mentioned earlier that the major distinguishing attribute of El Nino is that the ascending limb of the Hadley cell shifts towards the central Pacific and the anomalous vertical velocity over west Pacific is actually descending and this is it descends not only over west Pacific, but up to the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean. So, this is now the after a lot of debate it appears that if one looks objectively at what are the data available and the modeling done so far then one has to concede that El Nino does have an impact La Nina does have an impact all this is very well known since the 80s, but Indian Ocean by itself also can generate IOD events or important variability of the coupled ocean atmosphere system this is the consensus now. Now, let us look at evolution of P IOD events so consider the P IOD events in the satellite era and which is here and what we see here again are the major events in the satellite era are 82 and then we had some here 87, 92, 94, 97 and another in 2006. Another interesting case is actually 2003 where we thought an IOD event is going to develop, but it got aborted. So, we have the major IOD events are May to November 82, March to December 94 and July to December 97. So, May to November 82, then 94 and 97 these are the major IOD events where DMI is consistently larger than one for several months these are the major IOD events. Now, during the strong P IOD events of 94 and 97 very large values of DMI occurred for several months. In 2003 and I mentioned this before a P IOD event was triggered DMI was positive and large from June to August, but midway through the season the event was terminated that is the case of 2003 and you see here midway through the season this event simply got terminated. A P IOD event occurred during the latter period part of the summer monsoon season and autumn of 2006 with large values of DMI from September 2006 onwards and that is this event here it sort of developed a little late. Now, positive IOD events are relatively rare frequency of occurrence is less than 1 in 5 years and it is believed that they are triggered by some event during April May. Important facets of the P IOD are now when we talk of triggering we have to say see what are the important facets of these events and the major facet of the IOD event is of course, negative SST anomaly of EE IO which we know now occurs due to upwelling in response to winds parallel to the Sumatra coast and positive oil or anomaly that is to say suppression of convection over EE IO. So, these are two very important features and we have to see how these features evolve. So, the important facets of triggering are suppression of convection over EE IO and strengthening of the winds parallel to the Sumatra coast which will lead to upwelling. Note that since in late spring W E I O is also favorable for convection this is what we have shown in the early part of today's lecture that from May onwards up to August both EE IO and W E I O are almost equally favorable for convection. So, what happens when we have suppression of convection over EE IO immediately you will get enhancement of convection over W E I O because there is a negative correlation between convection over EE IO and convection over W E I O. So, suppression over one will lead to enhancement of convection over the other thus triggering of a P IOD event necessarily involves triggering of a positive phase of equino. So, if we say we say of an event is triggered when the convection over EE IO is suppressed and those winds parallel to Sumatra are strengthened then as soon as the convection over EE IO suppressed necessarily convection over W E I O will get enhanced. This means that we get a positive phase of equino because positive phase of equino is characterized by having enhanced convection over the west and suppressed convection over the east. So, triggering of a P IOD event necessarily involves triggering of a positive phase of equino. Should be noted that positive phase of equino is triggered whenever the convection over EE IO suppressed irrespective of whether it is accompanied by enhancement of upwelling favorable winds that is irrespective of whether a P IOD is triggered or not. So, this is something to remember when we look at variation of convection over east and west that irrespective of what happens to the ocean if by some means we ensure that the convection over EE IO suppressed then convection over W E I O will be enhanced this is during May to August and this means that a positive phase of equino will be triggered. Now important phases of triggering which is suppression of convection over EE IO and enhancement of the upwelling favorable winds parallel to the coast of Sumatra have been attributed to different factors by different scientists. The among the many theories proposed the leading ones are change in the Pacific walker circulation which I talked about the intensification of Hadley cell in the western Pacific between the South China Sea and Philippine Sea. So, people have proposed that this intensification of the Hadley cell or intensification if you wish of the tropical conversion zone over South China Sea and Philippines will lead to triggering of positive I O D event this is one of the theories proposed and there is also a theory which is somewhat different from the rest in which it is suggested that severe cyclones over the Bay of Bengal during April May can trigger an I O D event. Now the proponents of the first school Annamalai et al incidentally they are also proponents of the theory that by and large Indian ocean is a passive entity and obeys whatever orders are given from the Pacific. Now, so Annamalai et al proposed that an El Nino can trigger a positive I O D since El Nino does lead to a suppression of convection over EE IO this I have mentioned already. Now, but then what about strengthening of the winds? So, they suggest that this suppression of convection forces an anti cyclonic circulation over the southeastern Indian ocean. Now, one has to remember that in the southern hemisphere anti cyclonic is also anticlockwise. So, if you have an anticlockwise circulation which is westward of Sumatra then the the circulation along Sumatra coast which corresponds to the limb from 6 o clock to through 3 o clock to 12 o clock in this anticlockwise direction is actually in the right direction for causing upwelling. So, we have winds which are south coming from the southeast or coming from the south parallel to the Sumatra coast. So, Annamalai et al proposed that actually this suppression of convection over EE IO associated with an El Nino leads to a circulation anti cyclonic circulation in near EE IO and to its west such that we have strengthening of the winds which lead to upwelling for the strengthening of the upwelling of Sumatra coast. However, there are some problems with this theory their experiments with an atmospheric general circulation model showed rather weak response of the EE IO rainfall to west central Pacific SST anomaly. See they say that the El Nino which is characterized by positive SST anomaly over west central Pacific is the one that leads to suppression of convection and rainfall over EE IO, but their atmospheric model did not show a strong response over EE IO at all to west central Pacific SST anomaly. So, no attempt was made to demonstrate that SST and thermocol and depth anomalies evolve into conditions favorable for the IOD. So, that part also was not convincingly demonstrated. One should also remember that mechanisms which involve and so in the initiation of IOD events obviously do not operate in cases like 61 remember 61 is the case that revered in studied and which first revealed the IOD and 94 in neither of the cases did we have an El Nino over the Pacific. Secondly the mode in 1967 IOD event in 1967 occurred in the presence of a La Nina. So, La Nina will have the opposite sign of anomalies in the walker circulation. So, it is not possible to explain all the observed IOD events if we insist that they are generated by and so in the Pacific. Now, there was another theory proposed by Japanese Kazikawa Etan which suggested that somehow the convection over south China Sea which corresponds to intensification of Hadley cell over the western Pacific can enhance the south easterly in EEO, SST cooling and suppression of convection. So, they are suggesting that if you have a lot of convection over side China Sea then one can get this kind of a response and which remember these are the factors that lead to triggering of an IOD. Suppression of convection over EEO and enhancement of the south easterly winds of the coast of Sumatra. So, they claim that this can then lead to the triggering of an IOD. But the intensification that they are talking of takes place during the summer this is during June and July and can be either due to Enso or Monsoon this is what they say. However, now it is well established that the wind anomalies associated with the IODs appear during spring which the above mechanism fails to explain. See they have suggested a mechanism which could have worked in terms of suppressing the convection over EEO, but the timing is wrong if we compare with the observations. Now, so far people were talking about Enso and its relationship to IOD and what happens to Hadley cell over west Pacific and its relationship to IOD in quite a deviation from all other theories Francis et al in 2007 proposed a very different theory. They said severe cyclones over the Bay of Bengal during spring season can trigger IOD events. In fact, they showed that all positive IOD dipole events during 58 to 2003 are preceded by at least one such severe cyclone. Now, severe cyclones over the Bay of Bengal strengthen the meridional pressure gradient. Why is that? Because severe cyclones imply that the pressure is very low over the Bay of Bengal relative to the equatorial Indian Ocean. This means that the north-south pressure gradient has enhanced and that would lead to an intensification of upwelling favourable south easterlies along the Sumatra coast. They also showed that severe cyclones can lead to a decrease in the integrated water vapor content over EEO and suppress the convection there. So, they actually generate conditions which are favourable for triggering. Now, I do not have the time to get into details about this, but I would just like to mention the jury is still out on what triggers the IOD events, but what would be interesting to look at is a mechanism which Francis et al. proposed to explain how once the convection over EEO is suppressed, the positive equino phase can be sustained for several days even after the end of the event that led to the original suppression of such as the severe cyclone in the Bay. So, this is an interesting problem in itself that you have an event on the synoptic scale. It could be intensification of convection over South China Sea as proposed by Kazikawa and others or it could be a severe cyclone in the Bay. Now, if this event has the kind of impact that has been suggested that is suppressing convection over EEO and strengthening the south easterlies parallel to Sumatra coast, it should all end once the event ends because these events are only few days. But for the triggering to take place for the IOD event to be triggered, this has to be sustained for much longer than the synoptic scale at least for timescale of the order of weeks. Question is how does that happen? Now, for this Francis et al. proposed the mechanism which is shown in this slide here schematically. So, initially state is the following. Initially we have convection over EEO and where is this is all this is the entire warm sea surface remember west is also warm east is also warm and convection is over EEO because that is where the propensity of convection is high. So, we have strong westerly winds here and what happens? We get a severe cyclone here over the Bay. Once we get a severe cyclone over the Bay, then it will enhance south easterly flow over the Sumatra parallel to the Sumatra coast and it will also suppress convection over here. Once it suppresses convection here the pressure gradient here decreases. So, the flow becomes weaker westerly. So, the equatorial winds become weaker westerlies equine is reduced the magnitude. So, once we have a severe cyclone this convection disappears and we have enhancement of upwelling favorable winds and weakening of westerly winds. Now, once this convection is suppressed because this region is equally favorable and there is a seesaw in convection between these two regions which you have seen. Once this cyclone forces this convection over EEO to be suppressed immediately convection will build up over WEIO. So, now, we get a situation in which the convection builds up over WEIO and this means that you have now the pressure gradient is switched it is the low pressure and the equator is here. So, the winds also switch if it is in terms of anomalies we get easterly anomalies here and eventually actually in the development of an IOD you get actually easterly is here when there is sustained convection here. So, the picture switches here and what happens when you get convection here? What happens when you get convection here is that a positive feedback is set up because now if we talk of anomalies this anomalous convection drives winds towards it which are winds which are easterly anomalies. Now, these are this means there is more convergence into this region more convergence means more convection and more convection means more convergence. So, once the system gets set up here it is a self propagating it is a it is a system which with a positive feedback which can lead to sustained increase in convergence and sustained increase in convection here and which is what happens when this happens actually what happens is instead of just having easterly anomalies you get easterly winds here. So, strong convergence contributed by easterly winds from here. Now, once the winds become easterly here the SST of EEO drops even further because not only do we have upwelling favorable winds parallel to Sumatra we also have like the Pacific you know surface water being driven away from this region which will lead to equatorial upwelling as well. So, this is very analogous to Pacific. So, if this process continues then we can get triggering of an IOD event and remember that all this mechanism asked for is some event it could be of a synoptic scale event also need not be of a larger scale than synoptic intracisional scale some event which lead to suppression of the convection over EEO is all that is required and then all these feedbacks will take place and we can go over to a system in which this develops a cold anomaly of SST along with the suppressed convection and if the process goes on actually the SST can go below the threshold and once it goes below the threshold there is no way the convection can revive here no matter what and we get a IOD event. So, they suggest that since WEIO and EEO are almost equally favorable for convection in April and May once an event such as the cyclone over the bay leads to the suppression of convection over EEO convection come and says over WEIO this leads to the weakening of westerly surface wind over CEIO and hence enhancement of convergence over to the WEIO this positive feedback can lead to further enhancement of convection over the WEIO this is what we just explained. So, this continues until the wind over the CEIO becomes easterly and the convection over the EEO remains suppressed for periods much larger than a synoptic time scale characterizing the cyclone. The strong upwelling caused by the easterlies along the equator and the south easterlies along the Sumatra coast can decrease the SST of EEO very rapidly provided the thermocline is shallow and a positive dipole event is triggered. So, we now have a story of how one could get trigger positive IOD events and why is a positive IOD event of greater interest because a negative IOD event is intensification of climatology. Whereas a positive IOD event involves reversal of the east-west gradients of sea surface temperature and convection over the Indian Ocean. Now, it is important to note that all these processes of triggering can lead to cooling of EEO only when the thermocline there is shallow because if the thermocline is not shallow the up welled water is not cold enough. So, you do not get as much cooling as you would when the thermocline is shallow. So, like the Pacific this is a constraint the thermocline has to be shallow for all this ocean dynamics mechanism to operate and lead to in fact an IOD event. Now, what you know we have seen in earlier lecture that the thermocline over the eastern part is deeper than the thermocline over western part in the equatorial Indian Ocean. Now, what leads to thermocline being shallow in April May over the eastern part is something I do not have time to get into in this lecture series. And you know this is what sets the stage for the possible development of IOD and Kelvin waves and Rossby waves and so on play a very important role up welling and down welling waves play a very important role in the changes of the thermocline along the east-west direction in the equatorial Indian Ocean. As I said I will not have time to go into it, but let me just show you how important preconditioning for the ocean is. You remember that we had two cases 97 and 2003. In fact, Francis et al have shown that the initial evolution of the OLR, SST and so on of EEO were very similar in the two cases, but in the case of 97 we got a full fledged IOD event developing with SST going below the threshold, but in the case of 2003 SST never went below the threshold and the event got aborted halfway through the season. And we can see here how it happened. This is in fact the thermocline depths in 97 and 2003 as well as climatology. This is from soda data which is analogous in the ocean to the encephry analysis data which we have been using. See this is climatology now and these are the months here you can see April to November so this is only for EEO. We begin with a very deep thermocline this is climatology. We begin with a very deep and warm thermocline in April and slowly as we have seen the SST cools and we have shallowing of the thermocline so that it becomes rather shallow in September, October and then starts deepening again. So, this is climatology the mean of all the years. Now what happened in 97 is here and it is a huge contrast. What happened in 97 is to begin with you can see that it was shallower even in April and June onwards you see it has become extremely shallow. So, that the thermocline here has become very very shallow now remember these are temperature contours this is 30 sorry this is 30 this is 29.5 29 and so on and so forth. So, the warm water is over a much smaller region in 97 even to begin with and then this 27.5 which is a threshold it actually surfaces around August. So, after August EEO is colder than the threshold. So, this is what is happening in 97 and you can see that initially itself the ocean was preconditioned with less heat content and a shallower thermocline. Look at the case of 2003. 2003 actually the thermocline was shallower to begin with all the processes of triggering and so on occurred in 2003 as well and the thermocline began to go shallow just like this. But the point is it started from a much deeper level and it never really got too shallow. So, that the water never became colder than the threshold and when for some reason the west convection disappeared the east revived and IOD event was about it. Now, I have mentioned at the end here several of the important references there are these are the revered in is the one who first described it Saaji et al and Webster et al 99 the ones who first talked about the Indian Ocean Dipole mode and Indian Ocean Zonal mode and then there are nice review articles one by Vinay Chandran et al one by short et al and some critical papers like the one on 94 by Vinay Chandran then that triggering papers that I mentioned at the end. So, with this we come to the end of a discussion on IOD it is a very hot topic and by no means have I been able to cover all the issues involved. But I think this should provide some guidance as to where to go from here. Thank you.