Hi, everyone.  As always, we have with us Dr. Anrita Madan-Bihel. Anrita is a psychosexual therapist. She brings the psychological perspective to the advice that the Kamasutra has to give, but we also have with us today Dr. Nivedita Manukaran. Nivedita is a sexual and reproductive health clinician. She's based out of Sydney. You've met her over here on our podcast before talking about the all-important STIs, the sexually transmitted infections, but she's back today talking on an other extremely important subject that never actually gets spoken about, but we feel that when it comes to sexuality and pleasure, it is probably the most important thing to speak about. And yes, I am talking about contraceptions. Nivedita, welcome. Thank you so much for having me today here and it's been a pleasure being with you, Seema. So as Seema said, this is really, I think, the most important thing to talk about. And I feel like if we bring it in, as soon as we start talking about sex, I think we should start talking about contraceptions because they really change the game. They change the game with safety, with pleasure, with pressure, with stress, with tension. More importantly, today is the idea of STIs. What we're not known before now are very much part of our lives and we really need to make sure that prevention and safety is there. So let's start with Dr. Nivedita like talking about what are the different contraceptions that are accessible to people. Let's just lay it out for them, like for starters and then we'll talk more in depth about them. Thank you, Nivedita. There are a billion contraceptions available these days. This is how I should start because I don't think anybody can say there's nothing that suits me because there are so many.  There are contraception which you can remember to take like every day, like the contraceptive pill, which has been around for a very long time. And then if you want to stop, you can stop them. There's the emergency contraception pill, just in case you forgot, and there is a plan B. And then we have like a middle contraception where you don't have to remember to take it every day, but at the same time, it doesn't last with you for years. There are some contraception like the Nuva ring. For example, it is a ring that you put inside your vagina. It sits around your cervix for three weeks.   If you don't want a period, you can go one Nuva ring after another, if all one patch after another as well, it works like that. Long-term contraception like can last for three years, five years, 10 years, depending on how long you're willing to or how convenient it is for you to not think about the contraception and spend time on it. So there are some things that you can use for three years. Intrautrient devices like the copper T has been around for such a long time. You can use a hormonal IUDs also, and you can use it for like three years, five years, 10 years. So this is a whole range that is available for you on Meda that is there these days. So I think basically what you're saying is people who come and say, oh, I couldn't find anything, that option doesn't exist any longer. Oh, sorry. No, I think. But let's, you know, let's talk with the king of all, can we call it the queen of all contraceptions, which Seema really truly supports and believes in the condom. So absolutely. I think the condom actually is like you said, it's a game changer.  This was the fun. This was the first thing that was introduced, which said, have sex for pleasure. This is about saying this is just about you having fun and enjoying yourself. So yes, maybe the floor is on you to tell us about all about the condom. Sure. See condoms is my all time favorite. And I always vouch for condoms independent of whether somebody is on contraception or not. Because according to me condoms is the only thing that prevents you from falling pregnant acts as a barrier against sexually transmitted infections as well, which is very, very important, especially when you're in your short term relationships or casual partner when you're going out tonight and hoping to meet someone, you know, and things like that you definitely want to use a condom. The best bit about a condom is there's no fuss about going and able to buy a condom because almost every supermarket, every, you know, small store, a 7-eleven these days sell condoms and lubricants, which is I think absolutely brilliant. You don't need to go and discuss this to a doctor. You don't need a prescription to buy condoms and you don't have hormones or anything like that, you know, for you to be worried about or side effects and things like that. It's a use and throw thing. And condoms come both in latex and non-latex. So for those who say, oh, I'm allergic to latex, well too bad. We've made latex free condoms these days. So you're not getting out of it either.   So I'm sure that's again, that's not going to work. And for those who say pleasure, you know, is impaired and stuff like that. Again, we do have dotted, ribbed, you know, and a whole range of condoms. What is very important is you do also have ultra thin condoms. But occasionally condoms do impair people's, you know, sensuality. And if that is the case, it is always weighing against, do you want to have an STI? Do you want to use a condom? Do you want to have an STI? Do you want to use a condom? So I think it's always the balance there where, you know, you have to prioritize to be safe rather than sorry. So my condom condoms definitely go to, I think what's come out recently is the female condoms. But the female condoms have been around, I think, in some parts of the world for a very long time. It's a very old school thing. Because, you know, it's larger, it's of its bigger size.  However, nowadays you have, you know, female condoms also made out of latex, really nice and thin material. And women can actually insert the female condom a few hours before they're going out. They don't have to go and insert the condoms while they're going to have sex or remove the packet or anything like that. Because it has a ring on the inside. You can use the condom on the inside and, you know, and put it in into your vagina around the cervix. And you can leave it in even a couple of hours before you're going to have sex. So in that way, I think female condoms have, you know, fantastic option these days. And very important about condoms before I wrap off is you can also use them for oral sex, especially, you know, to prevent against STIs.   So yeah, so you, so that's amazing. You can use condoms for all of those things. So definitely condom is a big, it's a hero. It's an easy thing. It's a hero. And you should be doing it. No excuses. You know, one of the things that Navy people generally come up with is that, Oh, it's about, it's so awkward. Or, you know, they've been having this very exciting foreplay, and they're all aroused. And then suddenly you have to stop to start putting it on. And of course, you never see that in a movie because films never show people sitting by using condoms, struggling to put on a condom.  Don't do it for the first time in situation, like practice beforehand.  And that would go two ways for all the people who say, yes, let's have a little demo on your hand. That's a good thing because I can show it on my hand because my hand's so like really large.  So I'm going to show how to use a condom and condoms, you know, the tip of the condom, usually like that condoms are pretty good. Even if you use on your hands, there is a good chance that this is going to tear in my hand because I have really long nails, but usually it doesn't.    So I'm sure it's not going to be larger or bigger than that. So yeah. So condoms are great. They come in various sizes, and you can have really extra small ones to extra large ones that can definitely fit you. Lubricants are going to be your best friends so that you don't rip them off and they don't tears or breaks or anything like that. So always use a lubricant with a condom. I'm also going to show a female condom if that is okay. So yeah, so this is a female condom by one of the brands called PSafe or Domina. They're just pretty much centered to me and it's amazing.   You can go and push it in as deep as you want. And then this just sits out on your vulva like this. And you can actually put it in two to three hours before you're going to have sex and it'll just stay in like that. Yes, it will be a little unpleasant because of course there's a small rubber in there, but it's not too bad because it's pretty soft and it's pretty flexible as well. So it's really good. The best bit about this female condom is if you notice this rim is so large, so it not only covers your vagina, but it will also protect your urethra and the chance that people are getting UTIs over and over by, you know, things going into the urethra. Actually a female condom can try and protect that because there's a big rim and it also covers the urethra which is fantastic for prevention against UTIs. So condoms, both male and female are fantastic and they have their own benefits. And they are the only things that protect you against both contraception and SDIs. So it's a definite good. And I'm so glad that you showed the female condom actually because I think one of the things that I've always found with the politics of who controls contraception and who controls use of contraception has been always problematic, especially in places. I actually would say globally because then the control leaves it to the man and the choice of will it be used, won't it be used. And also like you said, now it's easily accessible, but to actually go and buy a condom becomes the responsibility of the man. The taboo and shame is as much on them.  But I really think condoms was a problem. So it's the best thing ever, but it was an interesting politics around it because the choice and access was left to the man in some ways. So once again, women couldn't control if a condom would be used when it would be used, how it would be bought, what would happen. So the female condom feels like for women who want to keep, make sure about their safety and make sure that there is something for them in some ways. And I think it feels like them taking control of the situation. I think that is very, very important in today's time and either. And you're right, because I think sometimes buying contraception is one thing. Negotiating for someone to wear it is another thing because a lot of the times I have patients who tell me, yeah, we did have condoms, but it's just that I couldn't convince him to wear it. When you're in the middle of having sex, when everything is all heated up and the last thing you want to do is to stop and argue about using a condom or it becomes awkward. I think as clinicians or somebody else who's not at the point, I understand, I keep telling them, but you have to or you have to talk about it before you start the whole sexual thing, because this is not something that you can talk in the middle of a sexual act and things like that. But a lot of the times I find both men and women who find it extremely difficult to negotiate use of a condom. A lot of times the excuse that is left and it is very hard to argue with is I can't feel anything, the sensation goes. And I remember when we used to do sex education, we used to do the exercises where there used to be small condoms, latex condoms, and we used to ask people to dip in hot and cold water and dip their fingers in ketchup and everything. And basically to help them see that the sensation, you could feel hot, cold, texture, everything if you were feeling a condom. But what do you say to your patients when they come and say, oh, with the condom, the feeling goes or I can't really have the same sensation during sex? I always tell people when it comes to, if you can use a condom but you still don't want to use a condom, like I said, it's between whether you want an STI or you don't want an STI. Sometimes it'll be too late. If I'm going to diagnose you with an STI like HIV, let's just say. And for the thing of, let me not do it, it won't be me or all the time people think it won't be them. That's why they're not taking it seriously. So always tell them it's always HIV versus whether you want to use a condom or not. I usually, I know it's scary but I do like to scare people like that. I want them to take it serious because we're talking about serious illnesses, infections and things like that versus finding excuses not to use condom. And we can use different kinds of condoms. These days you have condoms which kind of have like a tingly lube on the inside, which kind of gives them that kind of a tingling sensation to keep it a bit more erect and feeling tingle. There are like very sensitive, ultra thin condoms where you can encourage them. So to be honest, from long gone, now we have come with a whole range of options and choices which we can give men. And I think not able to use it in spite of having casual sex with casual people is probably the last resort and probably not a good way to do it.  And if that is the case, there are prevention strategies in place these days called the PEP or the PREP, which is the post-exposure prophylaxis and the pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, which is probably something that is very, very important that you need to talk to your doctor. If you're just so spellbound that you will not use a condom or you cannot use a condom no matter what, then that is a conversation that you need to have with your doctor. I think what really needs, it needs is a normalization process. So because we don't talk about it, yes, you have ads which say you was a contraceptive or use a condom, but that's it. That's not really called normalizing it because it's not in situ. Again, it's not showing two people in the middle of having sex. And then where was the last time you watched a film where the two people suddenly in the middle of their passionate moment pull aside and the guy says, okay, hold on, let me take this out, put it on carefully. Oh, I'm fumbling with it. When was the last time anybody showed you that? Never, never, ever know that that's okay to do. And I've always put in that particular episode from Friends, which I think is fantastic where Monika and Rachel are fighting over the last condom because I mean, I just think it's the best scene because one is here are two girls who are actually taking responsibility and having a tug of war over it. Can you see that happening in an Indian film? I can't. Two girls saying, this is my condom. And then what I thought was even better was that Rachel gets it, Monika goes back into her room and Richard is waiting over there for her and he said, so did you get it? And she says, nope, we're having sex tomorrow. And that was amazing because, you know, it wasn't like, okay, I didn't get it, but what the hell, we'll do it this way. No, it's not okay. And we don't flag up things like that enough. I just think it's one of the best things. And just to this point, I want to throw in something because so many people will write in and say, but it feels so awkward. Oh, but you know, how do you start and fumble and blah, blah, blah. I'll tell you what, in the Kamsutra, it says that when you have your foreplay, at the point where the woman feels that the foreplay has been sufficient, now she's actually ready to have sex, you know, you have to move your body apart to then come back together to have sex. When you're kissing, and when you're cuddling and doing things like that, your bodies are in a certain position.  And that doesn't happen just kind of naturally, it has to be positioned. At this point, the woman would actually sit up, she would make a pawn for her partner, and offer it to him as a sign to say, I am now ready for sex. But in actual fact, that's what gave them the time to get ready for the act of sex. So there was no fumbling involved. It was part of that whole process of coming together. Okay, this is so sexy, she's making me that pawn. Now I will do this. So it was almost like the Sringar for sex, you know, getting ready for the actual act. And I think we need to bring back some of these rituals just because it takes away all the awkwardness. And it makes it something simple. Absolutely. And I think part of that is why the industry has, and like maybe was mentioning the flavored condoms and everything, because people again and again would say, make it part of your foreplay, it doesn't need to be, okay, now it's the, we need to stop, because we need to take out the condom, we need to remove it, like make sure that you have it out or in the moment or make it part of the foreplay. And this myth that sex needs to go in one flow. And if there is a cut in the middle, it's all over, is actually not true. You can really, a little break or something is not going to change the arousal or thing, you can bring back the arousal, you can, you know, it is about making it part of your love making rather than seeing it as a thing. Yeah, so definitely, definitely. And I think that is why I feel Lube plays a very important role, because you don't need to necessarily use Lube only with, you know, a condom, you can use Lube as a part of your foreplay. So you are reaching out to a Lube, you know, just to keep the moisture, just to keep, you know, everything going on. And it's like that. And then you reach out to the condom, just place everything on the side table.  And, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to do that. That's right. You just have to normalize, you know, before the act, just, just keep everything, just make the ambience, make it all ready for it and go with it. And I think that's very important. Yeah, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't, you know, mostly condoms are hidden. So if you have hidden it somewhere behind four doors and in the middle, I think the four doors, maybe not a good idea. I actually want to add to that, because I find that particularly in India, the subject is so taboo. We don't talk about anything. So we don't talk about what sensations you feel when you're aroused, what can happen when you're aroused, when you get to a certain point, when you sort of lose a little bit of excitement. Nobody talks about any of that, you know, basic sex education is, this is one part of the anatomy, this is another part of the anatomy, and that's it. So I get questions literally from people thinking that anything that they go through during their intimate moments is not okay and should they be seeking help. And I'll give you an example. I had an email the other day from somebody said, why do I shake when I masturbate? Should I be seeking medical help? And yes, I know now everybody's sort of confused and thinking, but that's, you have to shake when you're masturbating. Well, so that is the level of ignorance that we have actually developed amongst society, amongst our young people. People have absolutely no knowledge of what their own body should react like when they're in the midst of desire, or when they're having arousal. And so unfortunately, literally anything, you know, when you say that, okay, you pull apart by the time you put it on, and it's gone a little bit flaccid, a lot of people will start thinking, that's their medical issue, that's their, you know, should they be seeing somebody? Oh, I can't do this. Yeah, I think we just have to make condom use a bottom line for everyone. Because I just, you know, we just hand out free condoms and give free condoms and condoms for everyone. You know, not using a condom is an excuse.  Because like I said, a lot of the time it doesn't people's head. And you just, you don't need to talk to someone, you need to address this as to why you're not able to do it, because it may not be a problem. It may be something that you don't want to use it, or you're not, you know, you're not educated enough, you know, to be able to do that. So I think I agree with you, Seema. A lot of the times people do make excuses and there is no excuse to not use, like I said, there are 1 billion options and condoms even these days, you know, whether it's size or sensation or everything. So they should be able to use it. And condom use is very, very important in order, you know, for anything, STIs, contraception. And just in ease, you know, then not being anxious about, am I getting a period or not? Am I going to fall pregnant or not the whole anxiety thing? So yeah, definitely condom use, definitely. Well, I just hope that we've managed to convince everybody out there, because as you said at the beginning, I am a huge proponent of the condom. I think it's the hero in our society. And the lubricant is the heroine. And, you know, we don't use enough of either of them. We need to bring them back. We need to secondly, have some Netflix films, where the sex scenes actually are shown, or the intimate scenes actually show people pulling apart to wear the condom. I think that's really, really important. That's the wish that I'm putting out there, just so that we can normalize it. And I think that we need to have maybe, for any podcasters, any erotica writers out there who are actually creating erotic content, please include this as a little ritual in your writings, so that people out there can understand that this is not something bad. It's not something foolish. It's not something awkward to do. It's a really fabulous part of making your intimate act wonderful in every way. So that's the top of my wish list. Ladies, as we sign off, I'd love to hear if you have one wish list point that you would like to see come true. For me, the wish list is women carrying condoms and, you know, negotiating it before, because I really, as an, I, so my wish list would be another episode where we honestly just talk about, and please send in your questions of what has been your situation where somebody has said no to using a condom or you found it awkward to ask for a condom use, because I think we are at that stage where condoms are available everywhere, but actually talking about the use is very tricky and very complex. And we all understand that it's not an easy conversation. So I would love to do an episode on how to do that conversation. So send in questions where it's been tricky for you. And Nivi, do you have a wish list? Yeah, well, Anvita stole that wish of me. But I always, I think, look, I mean, I understand female condoms are there at the moment, but even with the male condoms, I don't feel like male condoms or lubricants should be only a man's responsibility to go and source it or carry it or have it. I think anybody, all of us can have condoms in our bags or wallets or wherever it is. And even lubricants come in sachets. So you can have a condom in a sachet and, you know, in a lubricant to go with it in your bags and handbags. And like I said, I want both men and women to take the responsibility of being to negotiate condom use and be successful at it. And like I said, yes, availability was a problem, judgment and taboo and stigma and all this. But I think the real problem is even when you have it, a lot of the times, the negotiation, the convincing that people need to do in order to make someone use a condom still seems to be a bit of a problem. So yeah. So I think that conversation, how do you exactly bring it up in an awkward situation? I think it'll be a good conversation to have and see how we go with that. Maybe maybe you need to write a script for a Netflix. Yeah, I think so. A few films on that.  Yeah, and it'll help people. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so till that just doesn't actually get made, people, I want you to use your imagination to see how you actually get there. Please don't compromise on this. This is extremely important.  If you have found it useful, please do comment, subscribe, like on the video. We are over here to answer your questions. I'm on info.seema.ana.gmail.com. You can send your questions into me. If you have any kind of consultation that you need to seek and if you want to get in touch with Anvita for that, she is on Anvita.medan.gmail.com and if you need to find out anything more about any kind of contraception and if you want more details about it, if you have any kind of hesitation or any kind of doubts in your head, the person to contact is Nivedita and Nivedita is on. I would like to get DMs on my Instagram page at DrNivee underscore on Tables, so please send your DMs there and I will definitely answer as many as I can.  Take care of every bit of you. See you next time.


Hello, welcome to SSUnitex, so we will decide and this is continuation of PySpark tutorial. So in this video we are going to see about the ranking function. So ranking functions are coming under the windows function. So today we will see about the row number rank and dense rank ranking function. So these functions are very similar as SQL Server. So row number is going to use for generating a sequence number based on the order by clause on the any particular column and we can also do the partition. Rank will also going to generate the sequence number and dense rank will also do the same thing. What is the difference between these three? We will see in practical. Let me quickly go inside the browser and we will try to see practical. So here I am going to create one of the data frame and it is having total three columns with name, department name and salary. So now the requirement is we will see about the rank, dense rank and row number. So let's start with the row number first. So what I want to do? I want to generate a sequence number over here and it will be on the descending order or the ascending order of the salary. So for using the windows function we have to first import the windows. So we can use the from pyspark dot SQL dot windows. So we can import the windows function like this and we can also import the function. So we can use the from pyspark dot SQL dot function and I am going to import this all. Now first I am going to use the existing data frame that we have created and here I am going to add a new column. So for adding a new column we can use with column. We can go with the column first parameter asking about the column name. So column name would be serial number of row number. Now here we have to use the row number function. So simply we can use the row underscore number. So the syntax are very similar. Here we can use the over clause dot over and inside this bracket we need to use the window dot order by and inside that we can simply pass the column name. So I just wanna pass the column name as salary. Let me put this in another data frame and here I am going to use the display command with the df1. Let me try to execute and we will see the output. Okay so we have to use the order by let me execute now. Okay here we have to specify the bracket. So this syntax so here we can see it has generated a sequence order and it is starting from 1. So 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 like that it is added. And even if we are having the same salary then it is continuous increasing the numbers. So here we can also use the partition. So how we can do the partition on this. So after this windows we can add dot and here we can add partition by and inside this bracket we can specify on which column basis we want to do the partition. So maybe we want the partition on the basis of department name. Now let me try to execute and we will see the output. So here we can see the partition has been enabled and we can see the finance department. So the serial number is 1 2 3 and after that this serial number has been reset to 1. For the marketing it is 1 2 and for the sales we can see 1 2 3 like that. So this is very similar to the SQL server. Now this is all about the row number. Now we can also use the rank. So instead of row number we can simply use the rank and remaining everything will be same. So we can execute and we will see. So here it is generating a rank. So rank is 1 2 3 as we can see then 1 1 then 1 2 and here we have the 1 1. So why we have 1 1 here because as you could see the sales is having the same salary. So if we have the same salary then it will generate the same sequence number which is 1 1 and then we can see next number will be skipped in case of the rank and in case of the dense rank the next number will not be skipped. This number will be 2 so let me also use the dense rank here. Dense underscore rank let me execute it and here if you can scroll down then we can also verify it. So here for the sales we can see the number is 1 1 then it is having 2 2 then 3. So like that we can also use. So I hope you have understand how we can use the dense rank rank and row number. We can also put this value in a variable. So let me try to cut it from here and let me create a variable maybe with x and here we can specify it and here we can simply use this variable and try to execute. So it will be working fine. So either you can specify this partition by in a variable and after that you can also use that variable in your query. So either way you can use it. So I hope guys you have understand how we can use the row number rank and dense rank function. Thank you so much for watching this video. See you in the next video.


I welcome members to the 19th meeting in 2017 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. Agenda item 1 today is a decision on whether to take item 6, which is a discussion on commission on parliamentary form, notes from the clerks, if we can agree to take that and further papers on the commission on parliamentary reform in private future meetings. Thank you for your agreement. Agenda item 2 is for the committee to agree that its consideration of its approach to inquiry into sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct at the Scottish Parliament should be taken in private at a future meeting. Do members agree to take this item in private? And our third item today is for consideration on a proposed cross-party group on consumer protection for home energy efficiency and renewable energy. I welcome Claire Hockey MSP to the meeting. Ms Hockey is the proposed convener of the group and I invite Ms Hockey to make an opening statement about the purpose of the group. Thank you convener and thank you to the committee for meeting with me this morning. Over the past year MSPs have become aware of historic and on-going issues relating to the UK Government's 2012-2015 Green Deal initiative, which has affected hundreds of consumers throughout Scotland. Consumers have been experiencing severe financial issues arising out of the alleged missailing of energy efficiency products. Many of these consumers have been left without redress, either due to their suppliers going into administration or difficulties in obtaining resolution through the various ombudsman and agencies that are meant to address malpractice. In my constituency of Rutherglen, solar panels were widely sold to householders in Blantyre by an approved Green Deal operator, which has since gone into administration. People were told that they would not pay any more for their electricity, that they could save money and that they were helping the environment. So far, 60 individuals have attended a series of public meetings that I have organised in conjunction with the local citizens advice bureau in Blantyre. Attendance at those meetings quickly expanded to include disillusioned solar panel customers from Hamilton and from other areas. Feed-in tariffs, the money that householders were owed for generating surplus electricity, were signed over to a third party, with little, if any, explanation to the purchasers. Householders will have to repay the cost of the panels for up to 25 years through their electricity bills. I have seen one contract that specifically states that the feed-in tariffs pay for the panels. Many people, not only signed over their feed-in tariff but are paying for their panels again through a finance deal. Green Deal finance debt rests with the property, not the individual householder, and that has led to householders experiencing serious conveyancing and legal issues when they are trying to sell the properties. Multiple issues have emerged, including customers' bills tripling in many instances, poor workmanship, problem with building warrants that were not applied for by the installing provider, and lack of maintenance, particularly since the main provider went into administration. Simultaneously, in Glasgow North constituencies, MSP colleagues were experiencing similar issues, again affecting dozens of customers, although the main issue there was mainly related to external wall insulation or cladding products. We have also been contacted by customers from many other areas of Scotland and other parts of the UK who are experiencing similar issues. Citizens Advice Scotland has recognised that there are considerable consumer issues relating to energy efficiency products and schemes that are required to be addressed. The CPG will seek to look at the issues of redress for customers who are affected by the historic Green Deal-related issues, but it is also important to ensure that lessons are learned so that similar issues are not replicated with the introduction of new schemes, particularly since the UK Government is poised to relaunch the Green Deal through the now privatised Green Deal finance company. With the UK and Scottish Governments encouraging consumers to improve the energy efficiency of their homes through grant schemes or finance deals, it is important that customers have confidence in those initiatives. Thank you very much. Do you see this as a CPG that might have a limited lifespan, given the nature of the problems that you are trying to address? I would certainly hope so, convener. I would certainly hope that this will be a limited amount of time, and that we will be able to get some redress, but we will also instill some confidence in the Green Deal initiatives that are going forward. Thank you. Any further questions? The first question is about why a CPG in particular is the best way to take those issues forward. Although myself and Ivan McKee MSP have held public meetings in our constituencies relating to those issues, we have both been approached by constituents from right throughout Scotland. That is an issue that we are only seeing the very tip of the iceberg. We would hope that, through the CPG, we would be raising awareness amongst MSP colleagues, but it is also giving us an opportunity to, with the other members of the CPG, to let us resist it on a national level. I thank you very much for your attendance at the committee this morning. The committee will consider whether to approve the application at agenda item 5, and you will be informed of our decision as quickly as possible. I will just suspend briefly while the witnesses change over. Thank you. We now move to agenda item 4, which is to take evidence from Dugi Wans, the acting lobbying registrar on a draft parliamentary guidance and code of conduct for lobbyists. I welcome Mr Wans to the committee. He is no stranger to our committee, but it is different to be on that side of the table today. We would be delighted if he gave me an opening statement. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning. I hope that it will be helpful if I say a few words by way of introduction to this item of business. As you know, I have recently taken over from my colleague Billy McLaren as acting lobbying registrar. You may also remember, or some members of the committee will remember, that Billy appeared before the committee in September to discuss preparations for implementation of the Lobbying Scotland Act. At that time, there was a need to make a lobbying resolution and to issue directions to the commissioner for ethical standards as part of those preparations. I am pleased to say that those elements are now confirmed. Since then, we have announced the intention to bring the act into force on 12 March 2018. From 23 October this year, a couple of weeks ago, we have made the new lobbying register website available for a four-month familiarisation period to allow potential registrants to prepare for the act coming into force. The purpose of my appearance before you today is to ask you to consider the draft parliamentary guidance that the act requires the Parliament to produce in order to support organisations that will need to use the lobbying register. The act requires the Parliament to consult the Scottish ministers on the guidance before it can be finalised. You have also been provided with a copy of a draft code of conduct for persons lobbying members of the Parliament. Again, this is a requirement of the act, although in this case Scottish ministers do not need to be consulted on the terms of that code. The code is intended to be a set of high-level principles for anyone who lobbies MSPs and mirrors in many respects the rules contained in section 5 of the code of conduct for MSPs on lobbying and access. Both documents have been produced in collaboration with a lobbying register working group, which the lobbying registrar formed earlier this year. The group includes representatives from a wide range of stakeholder organisations, including public affairs professionals, third sector representatives and pro-transparency organisations. The lobbying register team has valued greatly the input and support that we have received from all members of the group during the development of the two documents that you have before you today. They have provided constructive suggestions and feedback from the sectors that each represents. As part of your consideration of the draft parliamentary guidance, I need to draw to your attention one minor change that the working group has identified needs to be made. That is on page 16 of the guidance document that you have in your papers. In the section relating to events, in the fourth paragraph, the reference to staff should be to employees or other office holders. That is in order to ensure that it reflects accurately the terms of the act. It is really just to draw to your attention. On that specific point, convener, I will conclude my opening remarks and I will happily take questions from the committee. In terms of a brief summary on what you think are the most important aspects for MSPs to be aware of how they act and what they say, what would be the top issues that you would identify from an MSP or an MSP's office's perspective? The first thing to be clear about is that the act places the onus on organisations that are lobbying MSPs to take action. That is to register communications that comply with the definition in the act of regulated lobbying. They will need to register those communications on the lobbying register from 12 March. That does not mean that MSPs, ministers and others—special advisers and the permanent secretary—do not have a role in ensuring that the act is implemented properly, because clearly when you are having those conversations with those lobbying you, you want to be aware that that is the nature of the conversation that is taking place. If it is helpful, the definition of regulated lobbying is communication made orally, must be spoken word or using signs, British Sign Language or other signs, in person, so face-to-face meetings with MSPs, Scottish Government ministers or law officers, special advisers in the Scottish Government and the Scottish Government's permanent secretary. They need to be communicating about either Scottish Government or parliamentary functions. The act becomes a little bit more complex because there are a number of exemptions to that definition, so some communications will be exempt. We are hoping that MSPs will help to promote the act to those that they engage with, at least to ensure that they are aware that they may have an obligation to register meetings. You will be interested in the register entries that relate to meetings that you have registered. We are ensuring that the system will allow us to alert you when a meeting is registered that you have participated in. You mentioned that it needs to be oral communications, so therefore it is not written. Is there any scope on which written communications could prove at all to fall within that? Consider that a lot of information comes via email, etc. Secondly, it is also on content in terms of it being specifically related to an MSP's function. There are a lot of great areas in terms of whether things relate specifically to an MSP's function or there are sometimes social comments and social conversations. Did you have any guidance on, first of all, the written communications and secondly, if you were at something and having a conversation over a quick cup of coffee? I think that I can clear up the first point very quickly. Written communications are not captured under the act. They are excluded from the definition. It is purely oral face-to-face engagement, so no written communication, whether it be email, letters or tweets. None of that is covered by the Lobbying Scotland Act. In terms of when regulated lobbying could take place, it could happen in more social settings. It would need not be informal meetings, but it would still need to comply with the definition in the act. How are you getting on in your role, etc. That would not constitute regulated lobbying, because it would not be someone seeking to inform or influence you in respect of either your parliamentary role or if you were a minister in a ministerial capacity. It is not to say that, on social occasions, regulated lobbying could not take place, but someone would be having to take the opportunity to talk to you about your working role as an MSP and seeking to inform or influence you in that respect. Is that supplementary on that issue, Mr Arthur? Just specifically on the distinction between oral and written communications, if I put forward the following scenario, an MSP is having a conversation socially with a trade member of trade union or a member of a policy officer of third sector body, and they are having a conversation about what does not constitute lobbying. Then the person from the trade union of third sector pulls out a bit of paper, writes something down, folds it and hands it over to the MSP. That is a written communication, it is not oral. Does that count as lobbying? The passing to you of a written note in those circumstances, I am clear, would not be caught by the definition of regulated lobbying, and the information that you were passing on that note would not need to be registered. If the person said something orally, that would constitute a piece of lobbying. If he wrote it down in a bit of paper and handed it to me, it would not count as lobbying. I think that technically you are correct, yes. Can I ask, since you mentioned the face-to-face part of it, obviously a telephone call in this situation would not count as lobbying, but if someone did a Skype video message conversation, would that be included? Yes, I should have been clear about that. The act includes the use of video conference facilities, and that would include Skype or another form of video conference on it, yes. Is this a supplementary on this issue? I think that having the guidelines is very useful, because our roles and our responsibilities mean that we are required to discuss and exchange views and opinions. That is very much part of the role that we have. Can I ask for some clarity when it comes to specific speeches that may well be performed and how that may constitute regulated lobbying? There will be occasions when that may fall into that category. Yes, absolutely. The guidance includes a section that explains how speeches might be caught under the definition of regulated lobbying. At an event where an organisation is speaking and MSPs, ministers or special advisers are present, the person giving the speech is seeking to inform or influence the people present in the audience through the means of that speech, then they would probably need to register that under the terms of the act as an instance of regulated lobbying. They would do so on the register by identifying those persons who were present and those who were directing their remarks towards. In that respect, it would be one information return under the act that would spell out what the purpose of the lobbying was through giving the speech and who had received that information. Good morning. Thanks for the work that has been done on this. There are obviously some complexities and grey areas to all of this, so having a clear document that helps people navigate that is obviously hugely important. I liked the provision of a flowchart that allows people to go through some nice simple questions that help them to decide for themselves whether the activity that they are doing would be counted as regulated lobbying. I am wondering, though, why slightly different forms of words have been used in between the flowchart and some of the other sections. For example, step 4 in the flowchart, I am paid by the organisation that I lobbied for or represent. Two pages earlier—this would be page 11—it said, step 4, you are a paid individual representing the views of your organisation. For somebody who works for a supermarket, and the regulations surrounding plastic bags, for example, were being debated, they might have a view that they want to express that they feel is as an individual. However, as far as I understand, if they are communicating about a policy issue to which the organisation that pays them, even if they are not paid to lobby, if they are paid by that organisation and it also has a view and they are communicating that view, even as an individual, it would still count as regulated lobbying. I wonder whether the slight difference in wording there might give some confusion. I note the difference in wording. I cannot immediately explain why we have a difference there. It may simply be to accommodate a shorter phrase in the flowchart, but I will go back and examine that. However, to answer your substantive question, I think that the example that you give would not oblige the individual concerned to at all engage on the lobbying register or have to register anything if they were not communicating on behalf of their employer, but rather simply offering a personal view. It is clear that the onus is on the organisation to register an account on the lobbying register and to take responsibility for communications made by staff or other office holders.  The fact that someone was a paid employee of a supermarket and happened to have views about something, a matter of public interest, obviously had a bearing on the work that their organisation or the business that their organisation was in. If they are not communicating on behalf of that organisation in that conversation, they probably are not engaged in regulated lobbying. I will happily look at the slight change in the difference in wording between flowchart and the other parts of the guidance there. We might make a minor adjustment, Mr Harvie, but I am pretty confident that in the circumstances that you describe, the individual concerned would not need to register. It also comes up in page 19, where it says, if you do so, in return for payment of any kind, you are required to register. That is the position, regardless of whether the payment itself relates to making lobbying communications. Again, it just gives rise to that slight ambiguity. The first part of that paragraph suggests that if the lobbying communication is paid for, then you are required to register. The second sentence says, that is the position, regardless of whether the payment relates to making the lobbying communication. Again, somebody who is paid by an organisation for other purposes, such as stacking shells, administering the payroll or whatever in that example, might find it difficult to interpret that. Again, I am happy to look at that specific example there. What I think is intended to try to capture is that some individuals will need to register on the lobbying register, because they might, in effect, be sole traders who are engaged in consultant lobbying. Essentially, they are operating on behalf of others. What the guidance is trying to interpret here and try to explain is the fact that there is an exemption in the act for anyone who engages in lobbying, but it is an unpaid capacity. That was particularly meant to ensure that people who perhaps are unpaid board members of small charities, etc., would not be caught by the definition of regulated lobbying. However, I see the point that you make in terms of that particular passage in the draft guidance. We can look to make sure that that is made a little bit more clear. I want to ask about the journalism exemption. Most of us would be fairly clear about the everyday use of the word journalism, but would that cover a trade magazine for an organisation that itself was lobbying? MSPs would often be approached for perhaps a bit of blurb for a conference that they are speaking at, where a trade magazine is promoting it. Would that be seen as communication on behalf of the organisation, or would it be seen as journalism? I think that that would very much depend on the facts and circumstances, and we will, obviously, as the lobbying register teams stand ready to offer advice on specific examples. However, I think that the exemption was clearly intended to exclude from registration the regular communication between politicians and others covered in the act from journalists acting very much in their professional capacity as a journalist. We understand that there are some organisations out there who have perhaps somewhat blurred the lines between journalism and other activities. I think that they will need to be very clear that, when they are communicating, whether they are doing so for the purposes of journalism—i.e. something that they are going to write a news story about, in which case the exemption will apply—or whether they are actually engaging with that politician or other person for another purpose. If it is not clear that it is for the purpose of journalism, they may well need to register that communication. So the general advice would be to err on the site of caution and to register if you are uncertain? Certainly, and we will be happy to explore with individuals or organisations any questions that they have about the distinction. Thank you very much. I should also declare an interest in that I am still director of a lobbying company that is in advance but has not been struck or formally yet, but it is about taking longer than we thought. Dougie, it is probably a very simple one, but if an MSP is in an event and an individual from either a lobbying organisation or on behalf of a lobbying organisation says, I wanted to catch you briefly, can we set up a meeting on behalf of my organisation or organisation A with a view to discussing this issue? They have very briefly, but there is obviously an oral communication, but it is to organise a formal sit-down meeting, which will be registered. Would that initial discussion have to be registered, too? As you have described it, that very brief request to meet at a later date would not, I think, meet the test that we have set out in the flowchart that you have seen, the five key steps that we have described them to try to help people to determine what is and is not regulated lobbying, on the basis that it is simply a communication that will lead to some further engagement and communication. In that instance, at that stage, they have not sought to inform or influence you in any way, but, as you say, there may be an expectation that when a more formal meeting takes place, that conversation might need to be registered. Might that change, depending on how much information they gave you to the case, so, if they said just to give you a brief back-up, it is regards to if they are having a problem with this organisation? Possibly. I think that you are right. There is some sort of spectrum of how much information is relayed in that initial communication, if they are asking you to do something, take some action in the interim or consider something as a result of that conversation, that might be regulated lobbying. If it is purely, while I have got you for a couple of seconds, can we get a date in the diary, that certainly would not constitute regulated lobbying. Can I possibly ask about the constituency exemption? That was stage 3 amendment to the bill at the time. Do you think that that will possibly lead to a situation where companies that are working across all constituencies in Scotland end up being exempt from having to register any of their communication with MSPs? Convener, it is one of the parts of the act that is certainly proving most challenging to produce guidance on or to provide advice to people about. You are absolutely right. It was a stage 3 Government amendment that introduced this particular exemption and to explain it would exempt from registration communications that are made to MSPs for constituency or region in which a person's business is ordinarily carried on, a person's activity is ordinarily carried on or the individual's residence. That could lead to businesses or other organisations that have a nationwide presence, potentially being exempt from registering communications to MSPs who represent those constituencies or regions, regardless of the topic. I should be clear that it does not need to be focused on a constituency-related business. It could be on any matter. There is an important exception to that and that is any such communication to a constituency or regional MSP who also happens to be a Scottish Government minister. Those communications do need to be registered. The exemption does not apply in that case. The other important part of that exemption is that if the person communicating is making the communication on behalf of a third party, so they are representing someone else, then that exemption does not apply. It is quite complicated, not entirely straightforward to explain, but we will have to wait and see. Experience will tell us what the consequences of the introduction of the amendment later in the day are likely to be. I know that Mr Harvey had an amendment to the amendment that was debated at that time. We are obviously standing ready to provide advice on it, and you will know that, in two years' time, there must be a statutory requirement to review the act. That will be one of the areas that need to be looked at carefully. My final question is about some of the press that was in the media a couple of weeks ago about the make-up of the working group. I wondered if you wanted to make any comment about how you feel the working group is progressing. It was a deliberate decision by my predecessor to form the working group in order to gather the views of a wide range of stakeholders, those who will have to engage with the act. It felt appropriate that we should look to have representatives from key sectors that would be able to offer a view on behalf of different organisations that will have to essentially work with us to register the details on their register. We have business organisations, third sector organisations that are represented, obviously PRPA consultancies there, because they have a strong interest, but also a pro-transparency campaigner. We have tried to strike a balance there to get the views from all those who have a clear interest in making the act work in practice. They have been very helpful in assisting us in preparing the documents that you have before you today. My question follows on from Patrick Harvie's line of questioning. I hear what you are saying in terms of the distinction between an employee having a conversation with an MSP by chance as compared to somebody who may be senior in an organisation. I think that I have two comments here. First of all, I think that the wording on page 19 and paragraph 5 of the communication is not made in return for payment. I think that I am not sure that the wording actually brings that out. If I refer to paragraph 5 in particular, it might lead someone to believe that any employee receiving remuneration from a company and having conversation is subject to that. I would suggest on that technical point that that could do with clarifying. The more general point that I would make is that there is an assumption in this section that it is very clear that you are either an employee or a director, that you are either a junior person or a senior person. I would argue that in a number of organisations, both big and small, that that is not always clear. We have talked about people working on the shop counters compared with the managing directors of supermarket pubs. Where does a store manager lie in that? A store manager has responsibility for making communications. That, for some organisations, could be very complicated. Even for smaller organisations, again, that middle tier of responsibility is a big grey area. What are your thoughts on that? I will take on board the concerns that you raised. We are trying to make it clear for all those organisations that need to be aware of the requirements of the act, just who might be caught by the definition and who will be exempt. We are following in large part the definition contained in the act, which references communications made in a role either as an employee. That would capture everyone from, as you have described, shop floor to senior management, but if you are an employee of an organisation. It mentions specifically director or shadow director in terms of companies or other office holder, partner or member. That is to try to capture the various roles that could be played by a person who might be engaged in regulated lobbying if they perhaps are operating not on behalf of a company but on behalf of a partnership or perhaps another association or charitable organisation. In many respects, we have to always refer back to the act itself. The guidance is an attempt to put that in easier to understand language. I think that this point on page 19 that you have identified could be clearer, but what is very clear is that individuals who are communicating on their own behalf, and that would include coming to your MSP surgeries, coming to see you in Parliament, they are exempt under the very first exemption in the Schedule to the Act, and then thereafter it becomes a little bit more complicated when you have got to consider some of the other exemptions that apply. However, on that particular point, a communication made by an individual on the individual's own behalf would be exempt and would not need to be registered. I understand that. I recognise that this is work in progress, but, similarly, following on to the next section on communications by small organisations, again, I worry that there is an assumption that it is clear when an organisation is small as compared to when it is large. For example, many partnerships are comprised of different legal entities with the partners of one entity and the employees being employed by a separate entity. I was just wondering what consideration had been given to that. I slightly worry—indeed, I think—that there is probably a note of worry in this section about whether or not there is a little bit of a loophole for the small organisations if they are funded by other organisations and not necessarily explicitly for lobbying purposes. Nonetheless, it could be used as a vehicle to do so. On the first point, is that something that you considered and how would that get caught? On the second point, is that a point that is going to be actively under review looking at what entities and structures those organisations might end up using? We are very much engaging in this familiarisation period with a lot of organisations who are coming to us to, for the first time, engage directly with the lobbying register and what they are going to have to submit when it goes live in March next year. We are finding that, as you would expect, there are some organisations that are more established in a more complex manner than others and we are sometimes having to think carefully about what advice to give us to who is obliged to register or who is obliged to register what. On the small organisations exemption, that was an attempt by the Government to exclude from the requirement to register organisations that have fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees, but at the same time making sure that that did not exempt those small organisations in terms of employees and staff who are representing a wider membership. I think that it was specifically quoted by some of the business organisations, etc., who may have a few core staff but have a wider membership. That can cause complexity. We have tried to be as clear as possible in terms of what is meant by representative, but it is also clear that, if they are lobbying on behalf of a third party, they cannot rely on that particular exemption. We will have to keep it under review. I think that it is another one of the parts of the act that will be examined carefully again in two years' time, based on experience. That is, hopefully, what we are going to gather in this familiarisation period. In addition to the parliamentary guidance that you have before you today, we will produce frequently asked questions and common scenarios as they emerge. We will keep those updated, hopefully, to build on the body of knowledge and experience that we have so that people will be able to interpret the act more easily. My final question comes back to remuneration. The Federation of Small Business should declare an interest that I am a member of that organisation. I think that it has a particular worry because it has regional office holders who receive small payment for carrying out their roles. It is not necessarily directly related to expenses, although, historically, that has been what it is for. The nature of their roles is certainly not explicitly about lobbying, but that will form part of their activities, albeit in a low informal level. Is there a general point there on what conversations and thinking have been going into that point? Yes. The exemption that relates to communications not being made in return for payment is, again, when you start to explore in detail some of those potential difficult situations arise. I am aware of the one that you mentioned there. The act defines in that exemption what payment means. It means payment of any kind, whether made directly or indirectly, for making the communication. In that sense, someone who may have faced value, appear to be an unpaid board member, trustee, for example, might appear that a communication that they make would not need to be registered, and may, in fact, have to register a communication because they have, for example, received some on-arrarium payment, may have received some other fee at some point. We have asked and will continue to ask organisations to look closely at the payments that they make to office holders within the organisation to check that. I should say that it would not include reimbursement for travel subsistence or other expenses incurred, but anything beyond that, any payment might then require them to register communication that they made. Any further questions? Thank you very much. Obviously, there were a couple of issues there that may result in a tweak of the guidance. Can you give us a timescale when you expect to be able to make a decision on that? Convener, with your agreement, I would be happy to write to you within the week to give you details of what adjustment we might make there. Thereafter, I think that we are hoping that you would then be the person who would write to offer, if you like, this draft to the Scottish ministers for their consultation. When we have their response, we will obviously reflect on any comments that they have, and that will then lead us towards a final version of the guidance. Thank you very much for your attendance in today's meeting. I invite the committee to agree that process. When we hear back from them, we will follow through and agree to issue parliamentary guidance to the Scottish ministers for formal consultation. Thank you for your attendance. I will suspend. We now move to agenda item 5. It is for the committee to consider whether to accord recognition to the proposed CPG on consumer protection from home energy efficiency and renewable energy. I will take any comments from the committee before. I would be content to support that CPG. Just before we move into the private session, I would like to thank Daniel Johnson for his contribution to the committee. Daniel has very diligently raised the issue of gender equality on the committee as we move forward and has submitted his resignation this week's last meeting. Thank you very much for your contribution and best wishes in your future committee responsibilities. We now move into private session.


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Hello, my name is Roger Watson and I'm the editor-in-chief of North Education and Practice, which is published by Elsevier. I want to talk to you today briefly about what editors are looking for when a manuscript is submitted. Make sure that the article adheres to ethical standards in two ways. First of all, that it adheres to ethical standards for research. It's absolutely essential if you're using human participants that you explain how ethical permission was obtained and how the human participants were consented. And that has to be explained in the article and that will be checked before your article goes into the submissions into the review system. And if your country has got slightly different ethical arrangements for different kinds of research from other countries, then you need to explain that as well. So not every country, for example, requires you to have ethical permission for survey research in the same way as you would for a clinical trial. But you need to explain that and explain it credibly and some journals will require you to provide proof of that. The other aspect of ethics is publication ethics and essentially your article should not be too similar to other sources. And all good leading publishers now use similarity detection software, for example, authenticate, but there are other platforms available to check your manuscript. This will be done by someone in the journal office at the journal desk. So these days you have to make quite clear that your article isn't similar to other sources that you won't be accused of duplication or plagiarism. However, these days publishers and most journals are strongly encouraging the pre-printing of articles on official pre-printing sites or public repositories. If you pre-print your article and then it goes to the journal, it will be picked up as being almost 100% similar to the pre-print. So the way to get round that, you can't get round it in terms of it being detected, is that you first of all should check that the journals accept pre-printed articles. Not absolutely all journals do, most are moving that way now under open science. But if they do, and this is picked up, then the way to do it of course is to cover yourself by giving a link to the pre-print. You can do that on the title page, make it clear to the editors and possibly even to the reviewers that it has been pre-printed. And there are various ways in which you are able to make that anonymous, of course, to the reviewers, but that will be specified in the guidance for the journal. So if you've pre-printed an article, do make sure you've declared that. You could possibly declare it in the covering letter or wherever, as long as you've declared it then you're covered. The Committee on Publication Ethics is also encouraging editors to be more lenient about the method section of papers, which are often similar to other similar method sections from other papers, perhaps ones you've published yourself or even to other papers by other people. There are only so many ways in which methods can be written up. Again, be prepared to defend that if you're challenged about the extent of similarity in your article. Always think about these things and think how you're going to explain it. And if you give a credible explanation then that is okay and you can't be accused subsequently once the article is published of having committed a breach of ethics, for example duplication or plagiarism. So those are all the points that I want to cover, but one final thing to do before you submit your article is to make sure that you've checked through it to make sure that all the components are there. And for example that the abstract is there, that the tables and the figures are there and that the references are included. And the submission systems for most leading publishers will guide you through the process of submission and you will not be able to finally submit the paper until you've completed everything that they request. For example, you will have to upload an abstract separately. You probably have to upload or write a covering letter to the editor separately. And if there are tables and figures, most leading journals but not all again check the guidance but most require the tables and the figures to be uploaded separately from the main manuscript and not included in the manuscript. And therefore you've got to make sure that in your manuscript you've referred to all of the tables and that you've referred to them in the correct order and that they are all uploaded at the journal site before you finally create the PDF of the paper for checking and then submitting. So in summary, the basic requirement for making sure that you get past the editor-in-chief and to address what the editor-in-chief is looking for at the submission stage is to read the guidance. Things like length, layout and organisation. If your second language is English, please have at some stage a native English speaker to check over the English to make sure it's being used correctly. Make sure that you've followed all the conventions for that journal. For example, Prisma charts and Consort charts, Equator guidance for specific kinds of papers. Make sure that you've addressed the issue of similarity if that's likely to exist. And finally, before you press the submit button, check that all the components of the article are there before it's submitted. So good luck with your next submission. I hope these points have been helpful and thank you very much for listening.


This is stock number 2-0-T216. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Ram and Light Duty Truck Headquarters. Today we are checking out this brand new 2020 Ram 1500 Crew Cab 5 foot 7 inch Short Box Laramy Level 2. This vehicle has the 5.7 liter V8 Hemi motor with the e-torque on it. Diamond black is the color. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the styling and looks of the vehicle before seeing it in person. This vehicle also has the Sport Appearance Group on it and if you'd like to check out all the photos on this truck in the upper right hand part of your screen there is a link right to our website. Click that and check us out there. This one comes with the Bridgestone Duler HL tires. These are 275 R20s and they come with the 20 inch painted and polished aluminum rims. Really good looking rims on there. They definitely have a highway tread pattern on there. Diamond black, really good looking color on the trucks. It's got just a little bit of metal flake to it. Has the LED headlamps, LED running lights and the LED fog lamps. Notice you got the front bumper parking sensors nicely hidden in the plastic there. Get the RAM stamped, front grille and the sport hood. We'll take a quick look at the original window sticker here and feel free to pause this at any second. I'm not going to go through everything but I'm going to go through some of the main points here such as the 5.7 liter with the e-torque. Diamond black is a $100 option. The sport appearance group is $25.95. The Laramie Level 2 group is $48.95. Anti-spin rear differential, the e-torque is a $16.95 add-on. And then this one does have the Uconnect 12 inch radio which is a $1395 option and also has the factory brake control. Your total MSRP is $60,350. You get 3 or 36 bumper to bumper, 5 or 60 powertrain and here your miles per gallon, 17 city, 22 highway for an average of 19. Very safe trucks, 5 and 4 stars up and down the board. Feel very safe taking your family anywhere in this truck and you can see it does have that 12 inch radio in here. We're going to finish the walk around on the outside first though and if you want to get your summit price in the upper right hand part of the screen is a link to our website where you can get that summit price and take advantage of our fast pass option, make the truck ears all from the comfort of your own home. This one does have the towing package with the receiver hitch 4 pin and 7 pin wearing the dual tipped exhaust. This one also has the power drop down tailgate so you press this button twice. That tailgate is going to come on down for you very nice and easily. It's got a shock so it's never going to slam and the tailgate is very light, the hose is nice and easily. Get the LED tail lamps as well. That sport sticker is just a sticker, you can take that off if you didn't like it. Comes with the fender flares as well and these new by styles I like has the capless fuel fill. Going down the rest of this side of the truck notice it does have the enter and go system. The heated power mirrors with the built in directional signals and these are blind spot monitoring. These are also blind spot mirrors. Inside the Laramie level 2 package gives you the black leather and suede interior.  Power windows, power locks, power mirrors. You do get the power folding mirrors as well, which is a nice feature. Then you kind of get the carbon fiber door trim as well as the suede inserts and memory driver seat. As we hop in the truck here you can see that this one has 57 miles on it. You get the 7 inch LCD display with the digital speedometer outside temp and compass and you can change all four of those corners to read pretty much whatever information you would like. It comes with the heated leather wrap steering wheel, cruise controls and gear selector on the right, Bluetooth and information center controls on the left and then audio controls on the back of the steering wheel. This one does have the Harman Kardon sound system and you get the 12 inch Uconnect 4C radio, AM, FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities on here. You can also do your heated and cooled seat buttons here as well as your heated steering wheel. It has the HD backup camera, which I love. It's super crisp, super clear. You can get right up to what you're backing up to. It has the dynamic grid lines, meaning that they're going to turn as you turn that steering wheel. And then when you get right over your hitch, press the plus button and they'll even zoom in on there so you can get right lined up. Don't have to jump in and outside of the truck. This one also has the Android Auto and Apple CarPlay capabilities on it. We have a demo of how that works. I got an 8.4 that we did a demo on on the upper right hand party screen. There's a link to that video so check that out. You got your push button, four-wheel drive, eight-speed automatic transmission, your start-stop capabilities. Just a bunch of stuff you can do with this radio and we could definitely there's that projection manager for that Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. And we could go through the whole radio and it would take probably an hour just to go through everything that this thing can do. But very cool stuff, including the factory navigation system. And yeah, so there's all that. You also have the factory brake controller, stability control, tow haul, your front to rear parking sensors. You can turn those off and on. You got two USBs, two USB-Cs, and an aux jack. You get the RAM charger, wireless cell phone charger, and then a 115-volt, 400-watt plug-in. And just kind of going through. You can see it does have the speakers in back there. You get SOS and assist in up here, as well as your map lights. And then you do get home link buttons for your garage doors, security systems, and lighting systems. We'll take a quick look at the back seats. And then we'll do one more final walk around on the truck.  You got the suede and leather inserts, latch child safety system back here. You get that power sliding rear window with the built-in rear defrost. And I actually have this seat reclined here. Takes two hands to recline them. So that's why I reclined it before the video started here. But to get it back into position, there's a little handle under here.  And then you can just push it back. So you can see that that was in your full upright position. Floor mats back here. You also get a RAM bin with removable container for easy cleaning. Got two of those, one on each side. You can put ice and drinks in there. It's like you've got too many coolers wherever you go. These back seats are heated. You get two more USBs, two more USB-C's. And then another 115-volt 400-watt plug-in. Doors are trimmed the same way on the back. And you do get child safety locks on those back doors. We'll take one more walk around here on the truck. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. And hopefully, from this HD video, you will have been able to get a good idea of the overall styling and looks of this particular RAM. Some of the options that it comes with, a little bit about the 12-inch UConnect radio. And hopefully you enjoyed the video. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, half-tons, three-quarter-tons, one-tons. You name it, we got it. Go to our website, www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations, all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, in a second, you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left. A link to more RAM 1500 truck videos like this one on your right. If you have not been to our website, on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website, click those checks out. And we look forward to helping with this brand new 2020 RAM 1500 crew cab, five-foot seven-inch short box, Laramie level two, and Diamond Black in the towel. Thanks again.


My name is Jacinta DeSanto. I am a core developer for Galaxy, working at a Penn State University. I've been on the team for a little over a year now. And today I'm going to be stepping you through the rule-based uploader tutorial. So the rule-based uploader allows you to upload data sets or collections depending on what you have and apply rules to them as you upload them rather than upload them just as data sets as they are and then apply the rules, you can kind of modify them as they're being imported.  It can be a little bit more efficient, especially if you're doing the same thing over and over again. Hopefully that gives you some background as to what it is we're doing or why. All right, so this is the actual tutorial. So it should look like. And we're just going to go through some of the basic things that you can do with the tutorial. One thing I want to draw your attention to is these data blocks with this little copy button. When you click this copy button, it will automatically copy this data. And then it's very easy then for you just to control V or paste the data in the upload box. That's a really nice feature. We'll be using that a bit. So you'll want to have the actual tutorial open in a tab that way you can quickly copy that data like that. All right, well, let's get started. So this is the first chunk of data we're going to be working with. I'm going to copy that now. And then we're going to head over to the Galaxy and we're going to upload it into the rule builder. First thing you might want to do is create a new history. I've already done that, but I'm just going to rename it rule-based uploader. And then it'll all be in one place. So from this main page here over on the tool panel is a button that says upload data. Looks like a little arrow pointing up. And if you click that, you'll see the uploader. It should start up for you like this. We don't want the regular uploader this time at least. We want the rule-based uploader. So you just can navigate to that tab. This first one, we're uploading the data as dataset and it's from a pasted table. So we're just going to paste what we had from that copy block that we've built. Now this is what the rule-based uploader looks like. You can see that it has broken our data into these different tabs. We have a column header here that we're going to be getting rid of. And we have a warning up here, which is what is halting us from clicking upload. When you see that this warning has disappeared, this button for upload should be blue and you should be able to click it. But right now it says that it's disabled because the data's not validated yet. It's not valid yet. So the first thing that we're going to do is get rid of this first row. We don't need it. It doesn't have any data that we actually need. If we tried to use it, it doesn't have a URL link. So it'll just break, it won't work. So we're going to, let me show that again.  And we want to filter the first row, just one of them. If you had a number of data, a number of headers at the top here that you wanted to get rid of, then you could get rid of more than one, but we just want to get rid of the first. And that's the only one that doesn't have real data. We'll click apply. So the next two things I believe that we're going to do to our data is add a column definition for the name and add a column definition for the URL. So our name is going to be column C and the URL definition is going to be column D, the one that looks like a URL. And that is actually what we need in order to move on is the URL. So we're going to go to the rules button here and click add or modify column definitions. From here, I said we're going to add a name and that name is column C. We can apply that. And then we can do it again. Add a definition, URL, and that's column D. And once we apply that, we see that that warning at the top has disappeared and we can click upload now. That's what we're going to do. They should create six data sets, name these different things, and it should get that data from that's a no-to link. And you just gotta wait a few minutes while it, well, it does the upload. It shouldn't take very long, but if a lot of people are uploading at the same time, it can take a bit. In the meanwhile, let's talk about why we should be using the rule-based uploader instead of manually editing our data. So manually editing your data is not reproducible, which means you can't keep doing it over and over again. It's not scalable. So if you have a thousand data sets and you're trying to put them all into the same collection and you have to change something for each one of them, that's going to take you a very long time. Using this will allow you to get at them like that. And it's also error prone. So when you're doing things all by yourself, you make mistakes. I went out of order, but that's what the section says. There's also a link here. Why not use Excel for this, which you guys can check out for more context there. I see up here where it says six jobs have completed and we can see now that they're all green and we can see that they have the data that was taken from Zanotto. And that's a basic use case of the uploader. That's just for data sets. So now we're going to work on a collection. It does say to create a new history here, but we just did that. Maybe we'll do it anyways. We'll call it simple data, simple list uploader. There we go. You can call it whatever you want. That doesn't matter. And the first thing we're going to do is upload the metadata from the first example. And this is important as a normal paste upload. We don't want to use the rule builder this time. We want to do upload data. We want to go to regular paste fetch data. Copy that again. So I lost it. And we want to paste it there. And I want to click start then. We wait for that to finish uploading. And we can take a look at it. It's just the same exact chart that we had already uploaded. All right. Now we're going to open up the rule-based uploader. But this time, we're going to upload the data as a collection. And we're going to load the data from that data set that we just uploaded. So we're going to go upload data, rule-based. And then you're going to change this to collection. And we're no longer putting a pasted table in here. We're using a history data set. And a history data set is the very same one that we just uploaded. And you can click build. We see, again, that there are some warnings up here. And we're going to need to resolve all three of these in order to move forward with the tutorial. But of course, I'm going to show you how to do that. So the first thing we're going to do, just like last time, is get rid of this first column. Again, it doesn't have any data that we need. So there's no sense in keeping it around. The second thing we're going to do is add or modify our column definitions. We're going to be using D as the URL, just like last time, because that is the column that looks like a URL and is, in fact, the URL. Except for the only difference this time is C is not going to be name. It is going to be a list identifier. We're going to go then add modify. We're going to add a list identifier, C. And we're going to add a URL, D. We're going to apply that. The type for this is a fastqsanger.gz. We can go over here to type. And we can start to type that. And whenever it matches up, you can find it and just click it and you're done there. And the last thing that we have to do is this time it's the collection. So a collection needs a name. And we're going to name it according to the tutorial. We're going to name it this. That's fine. You can name it whatever you'd like. You can name it my special list or whatever. And finally, you're going to upload that. And this time we should see that those six data sets are in one collection, one list. And we'll wait for it to finish up loading there. And again, this can take just a little bit of time. But it can also be very quick. It really depends on who else is using the same resources. And there we have it. We have our collection with our six data sets, all the information that we didn't want was stripped from them, and there they are. So that's how you create a simple list. Next we're going to be creating a list of data set pairs. This is a little bit more of a complex collection. We're going to copy this chunk of data here and we're going to be uploading it as a collection in the rule builder. The rule builder upload we're updating as a collection from a pasted table. So we're going to do this. I'm going to want to clear that out. We don't. We don't want that anymore. We want collection from a pasted table. We just want to get rid of all that. Make sure that I'm copying the right thing. And I'm going to click build. So we again have our warnings up at the top that tell us what we need to do to move forward. And let's get that data in order to move forward. So again, this line up here, if you ever have a header, that doesn't have any valid data in it, you want to get rid of that. So that's how we're going to start here. Start, get rid of the first row. And then we're going to go to our rules menu, select add or modify the column definition and set column C to the list identifier and add our type as well. Those are things that we just did. It shouldn't be, whoop, whoop, I clicked the wrong thing. List identifier, we don't have a paradigm indicator. Let's not get, you know, apply that. Turn that down here, we're going to do. So I want to look at column D here. Now if you look at column D, which we've been using as our URLs, you'll see that that looks like two URLs. And in fact it is, there are two URLs there and they're separated by a semicolon in the middle. So we need to break that up and that's what we're going to do next. From column, we're going to select user regular expression and we're going to create matching group expressions using this regular expression. I'm going to actually copy this regular expression to make it easy, although this is a pretty simple one. Column using a regular expression. And we're looking at column D because that is the one that we want to break up. We're going to paste our regular expression there and we're going to create columns matching regular expression groups. So the second radio button. And I believe our number of groups is two. Yes, that is correct. Two groups, so this is how this should look. From column D, matching expression groups, the regular expression, which is the parentheses, the dot star inside each one in the semicolon in between. And the number of groups is two. When you click apply, we're going to see that we have two new columns on the end here. We've got column E and column F and they are column D split into two different columns. There's information on the tutorial explaining how to use regular expressions briefly, but really dot star means any number of characters, anything inside of the parentheses, which is how it matches that up. So now we're going to get rid of column D. Column D is this one. It has the two URLs separated by a semicolon and we really don't need it because we just took out the data from it that we needed and separated it out. So we can do rules, remove columns, column D. And then when you click apply, D has disappeared and those E and F, they have jumped over. So this is what was on the left-hand of the URL column and this is what was on the right side. Moving on. Now we're going to split our columns. The odd row columns are going to be column D and the even row columns are column E. So again, from the rule menu, we go to split column, the odd row was D, the even was E and that's going to line these up very nicely. However, now it just looks like we have a list and what we really wanted was a list paired. So we need to keep going forward. We need to define, it says inform galaxy, which of these rows are our forward reads, reads and which ones are our reverse reads. And we're going to do this by adding a new column using a regular expression, the underscore one or underscore two in the name of the file. So we're going to go to use regular expression again, column D. And this time again, I suggest you just copy the regular expression. It's easier to just copy it if you're following a tutorial because if you mess up by just a little bit, you could be matching the number of rows if you mess up by just a little bit, you could be matching on the wrong thing. So using regular expression, column D and we're going to create one matching group. So column, use your regular expression. From column D, create groups. You can paste in our regular expression there. I'm looking for one group. I'm just going to make sure that that is all correct and it looks like it is. So you're going to click apply. And now we can see that there's a new column added to the NTR-E, which has taken the one or the two, underscore one or two from here in the file name and put it into this column. There's an optional step here to swap the columns. I'll show you guys how to do that because it could be useful. It says it's more useful to see what you're doing. We're going to swap column D and E and that's just going to make this column with the URLs, go to the end and this column with the paired indicators come forward that way we can see them more clearly. They're more at the forefront there. And now we're going to tell the rule-based uploader that those are our paired indicators who doesn't know that yet. So some rules menu, we're going to add or modify a column definition, our paired end indicator is going to be column D and our URL is column E. So rules, add and modify, we're going to add a paired end indicator and like I said, that is column D, that is the ending that we took off of the URL and then we're going to also add our URL and that is column E and we're going to click apply. And now we can see that most of our conflicts have been resolved, all that's left up here at least is to name the collection. And in fact, that is all that the tutorial also asks you to do. So we can name it whatever we want. We can call it our paired list, P, R, J, D, B, three, nine, two, zero. That is what is in column A and we can upload that. You can call it again, whatever you'd like. And when that's done, we should have a list of pairs that split up along that paired end indicator that was in the URL and matched along those. Again, this might take just a little bit of time. While it's waiting, hopefully you get through it successfully but I wanted to direct your attention to the feedback form which is at the bottom of this tutorial, providing us with feedback on how you thought this tutorial went is really helpful for us. And if you're interested in learning more about the rule builder, there is an advanced rule builder and that's down here too. You want to extend your knowledge using Galaxy and managing your data, rule-based upload or advance and you can click hands on and that'll take you to the advanced rule-based uploader. Hopefully that'll help you understand how to use this tool even better. Again, here's our completed paired list and I hope that was informative for you. Thank you for watching this and participating. I hope you guys have a great rest of the day and thank you for whatever else you have.