Good morning everybody. Good day. We are so delighted you joined us for another episode of the nonprofit show today. We have one of our superstars joining us again Dana Skirlock and Dana normally comes to us from New York, but today she works super excited because she's coming to us from Denver. And so we're going to call you a Western girl now. Okay, I'll take it. I'll take a new title. That's great. For this one day instead of director of recruitment for staffing fatigue, we're going to call you a Western girl. We're super excited. We have a very interesting conversation with Dana today that Dana, I don't think we've ever had. And that's specifically about staffing as it relates to the holidays and how you can work with, you know, this concept of bringing in extra help, temporary help. And so this is going to be a really interesting conversation for us to all have and to navigate. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd will be back with us tomorrow. Again, if you've missed any of our more than 700 episodes, hard to believe that I'm saying 700. Yeah, you can join back up with us in our archives on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. And you can also download the most recent episodes on podcasts. So wherever you like to queue up your content, find us there. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who allow us to have these amazing conversations like we're going to have with Dana Skirlock, Blum, Blum Rang American nonprofit Academy, your part time controller, be generous. Fundraising Academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit nerd. Okay, Dana Skirlock in the in the green room chatter. I confess to you two things. One, as much as I feel like I know you, you and I have never done a show together, which is super weird. That's just a confluence. Yeah. And then the second thing is that Kevin Pace, our executive producer has said that you rank as like his top guest. Oh, he's always like, oh, that's that woman on. Oh, that is too kind. Listen, I'll take an invite to come back any way I can. So thank you very much. Well, we love having you here. We love your commentary. Even though you and I have not worked together, I always watch the episodes that you're on and by the things you say. And so as director of recruitment for staffing boutique. You see a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of industry wide, I think is the difference, you know, that people are working in individual organizations, but we get a sort of a window view into a lot of different organizations of different budget sizes of different missions. And so you get like a varied slice of kind of what's going on industry wide so that I think is the value of speaking with recruiters and and just kind of learning about what they're seeing. It's remarkable. I also feel like you're on the edge of things coming forward. You kind of start to see things sooner rather than than the rest of the population or the market. And so it's always fascinating to me. And today we really want to talk about labor being temporary temp labor during the holidays in the nonprofit sector. I think of this as like a retail issue.  So I think, you know, it is going to be something that's going to vary organization to organization is the holiday season a busy time for you if it's not let's say if you're, if you're perhaps like a college or university they technically fall under the nonprofit purview, they technically are nonprofit organizations, but they actually sometimes slow down around the holidays versus, you know, our busier. So that may not be a type of organization that is looking for holiday staff. But I know many like performing arts organizations particularly, you know, where the holiday season, they become more busy with gala's special performances, you know that are for the holiday season or like holiday themed. So there are a lot of organizations that actually do get busier during that time. So that's the first thing is if you're an organization assess when your busy time is so we're discussing the holiday time on this podcast but that could be, you know, a different it could be spring for some organizations and what have you. So, the issue is once you've identified now, we're in need of extra help, not forever but just to get over the hump of a particular, particularly difficult period. I think then you can approach an agency and find out how they could be able to assist you with additional staff. I think as it relates to your specific question about like what type of work, you can hand off to a temporary employee. Ultimately, the answer is any kind. You can. I mean we've done everything from interim executives like if you have a department that lacks leadership because of a departure of staff member what have you emergencies happen. People are unable to continue with their position. You know, we've done everything from that high level interim work through like, we just had a job last week helping somebody with a mailing, you know, sending somebody to go in for a day. And ultimately, the lead up and the prep work to get somebody to do something lower level like a mailing is the turnaround is going to be quicker than doing something like at an interim executive level. But, you know, for your listeners. Yes, it is possible at all of these different levels. I think we've just insinuated the planning time is what you have to think about like the higher level the temporary work you need the person to do, probably the more lead up planning and, and, and organization you'll need to, to add to it. Because I would say the biggest thing about hiring temporary employees is that the more you have a plan. You know, we're not managing the agency and on site with the client whether they're working remotely or on site but like, once the temp starts working with the organization. Our clients have to manage them you know we're not managing their day to day so they have to really have thought about how to ingratiate the temporary employee into what projects they need and so the more planning they've done and the more organization they've done on the more successful the temporary placement is and the probably to me the more bang you'll get for your buck you know the more work you'll get and, and strategic projects done that really help the overall staff get through the hump that's busy. You know, I love what you just said because I think a lot of times, you know we look around at a project and we get all fritzed out and we're like, we need help we need help we need help but then we're not stepping back and saying, okay, what does that help need to do. Yeah, yeah. Because I love how you reminded us hey, hello, they show up, they need to be managed so how are you going to articulate what the task management is. It's really, it's a wise thing to start off with. Sometimes we talk to clients and honestly they just are calling us in a panic, because they have this extra work. They don't know how they're going to get it done. And they want us to send them a temp that will just, you know, wave a magic wand and magically make the entire problem disappear. And that's sort of like the mythology that we have to kind of break through is that that's not really going to be possible like you may be at a stage that because you're so deep into projects. What we can do is help you find a temp, but that temp is going to need to do some of the like, lower level work that doesn't require a ton of training or attention and oversight, because you know you need them so close to the day that you're calling us with the need.  And can they start on Monday. Those tend to be placements that aren't as successful not because anybody intended for them not to be, but simply because the infrastructure was not there to set the temp up for success with doing something that large. So, but I, you know, lead up time is very helpful. And by lead up time, I simply mean the organization has thought about how they're going to utilize the temp and make sure that they're trained to manage. I understand that that's not always possible. Some of these people are just calling us in a, in a genuine emergency, like, you know, and so they do need help quickly. And that's something that we also, that's part of our services that we're able to do things that are difficult very quickly. That as a full time staff member elsewhere, you probably don't have time to focus on finding a temporary employee, you've got your own job, you know, you don't need to spend time on hiring. That is part of why we even exist. But I do think that it's important, like on the organization's end to think about how to add the temporary employee into the, the day to day. And thinking about it in terms of like, you can't kind of just give them huge projects from day one and not any provide any training or oversight, which sometimes clients are looking for us to do is just, they want somebody to come in they don't have to bother them and they they're able to handle this entire huge project for them. You know, I love that you brought that up because I think realistically when I search my heart, I think I might be one of those people that, you know, I would get like, I'd be the one that calls you in the tizzy saying, Oh my God, we need to help, we need to help. And then when they, when they come in, you haven't really set the expectation about what it is you can do.  It's just not really. Yeah. Yes. I couldn't say I say that any better you're 100% right. Okay, so now let's talk about the, you know, the deets. And this is where we're all freaked out we need the help we're like, okay, yeah, get somebody in here. And what is the reality of the costs. I mean, I would say off the top of my head just from what you just said, one cost is internal management, and we probably aren't even thinking about that. Right. I mean, there's a cost to bear for that. But what are some of these actual cost considerations. Well, I would say the costs are going to increase exponentially with how experienced the temporary employee is and how high level. The project is that you're having them overtake. So for example, if you're going to hire somebody to just work on a mailing and do more of the like, just the manual actual work of it. It's going to be far less of a cost than if let's say you want to hire somebody to plan your entire gala, the more specialized the work, and also just to be able to entice someone to work for, let's say, three months versus a week. Sometimes, you know, I'll have to kind of talk to clients about like, you know, yes, this person wants a little bit higher hourly rate but that's also because you want them to stay for three months and they're thinking about, they have to make rent for the next three months. It's not just like a day long assignment that, yes, for extra money I'd be willing to work for that rate and kind of come in and do something to help out. And it doesn't pay that much but I'd be willing to do that for a short term is very different than I'm going to be relying on this essentially full in terms of hours full time position, I'm not going to work elsewhere for these three months. It needs to be a livable wage. So that's something I think about. And then again, like I said, it's going to depend on the complexity of the project. So, going through an agency is going to be more expensive than going, you know, then you hiring the person yourself. And that's always sort of the mantra that when we get on the phone with somebody, you know, if they're, they have a little sticker shock, you know, at the hourly rate, you know, you have to think about the fact that we're paying the candidate, and more than half of what the bill rate is to the client, you know, going to the candidate. But then of course there is, you know, we handle unemployment, and then of course there's our fees taxes payroll taxes and all that that we're covering for you. So, you do save some money because you're not putting the person on your own payroll. But you know it is, it may, you know be more expensive than let's say if you hired them on your own but the cost is that your is at the expense of your own labor. You simply do not have the time to let's say complete your gala, and the gala brings in a million dollars every fiscal year. The cost of not getting the gala done properly is the bigger cost than hiring the town. Right. And it's also I want to back up because I think this is a really interesting aspect. I'd love for you to maybe chat a little bit more about this. You just said some magical things. One is your company that staffing company is is paying the employee, they're they're dealing with all the paperwork filing all the taxes, all that stuff. And then I got to ask this, ultimately, if it doesn't work out or hiring or firing, that's on you as well right. You're absolutely right we basically are able to take away all of the sort of the unfun stuff about hiring so you're you're absolutely right so like the sourcing of candidates, we pre screen them for you. You know when you want to hire someone, we, you know, are going to put them on our payroll so we handle getting all of their paperwork references on file. So, just sort of like the direct deposit forms you know those kind of like boring things that you have to coordinate with your finance department. You don't even have to worry about it you've hired them they're starting on Monday we handle the rest. And so, you know, there's a convenience factor to that. So we make sure that the candidates happy in terms of compensation and that, you know, they're getting their paycheck, you know, sometimes quicker than an organization does because they may be on a two week or a month cycle. So, you know, sometimes that's also helpful and keeping candidates engaged because it's a short term thing, and we're getting them paid right away. So that's, that's also what you are, are paying for with our services the convenience and freeze your time up to continue with what I'm assuming is you're already swamp schedule, which is why you even need a temporary employee in the first place, because people do the part jobs unexpectedly, there are emergencies that come up people go into labor early you know there's all these reasons why you know people would need a temporary staffing and it's not all negative. You know, it is something that is, that is supposed to enhance your department or your organization, it's not supposed to be a detriment or become more cumbersome we're trying to make it convenient for you. Right. Now, in the world of the nonprofit sector and I, it's just not the nonprofit sector but you know we have a lot of security issues, and we have things like background checks you touched on that briefly fingerprinting, you know, stuff like that. So something that is realistic to think that a temp agency is going to manage that on top of everything else depends on how complex sort of the background check process is for my like hospitals, schools, you know, some of the bigger institutions, it is a little bit more difficult. Now, that was also true pre COVID. Now that it's post COVID there's even more requirements, even for organizations that are in regular offices and not attached to a hospital or something. You know, now we're screening for things like hey are you vaccinated you can't get into the office building without, because it may not even be the organization's requirements it may be because we're working in New York. Some of these high rise buildings have these, you know, they're following like CDC recommendations in terms of like vaccination status, as well as like you may, you know, have to bring in a negative test for the first time. Who knows what the requirements are that particular building so that's something that we're kind of rolling with the punches with as well because it's also changing as time goes on of us dealing with COVID. So, the less complex the background processes obviously the quicker the agency is able to onboard a candidate, but I have clients that have a very difficult, you know background check process or I shouldn't say difficult but just more more tedious more involved. Yeah. And, and we work with them on it so you know, as much as we can, we collect, you know the necessary paperwork well we have access to background checks so if we have a client that says, it's okay if you do the background check we just need it done. We can totally manage that for them, but we do have some clients that the compliance is their organization has to do these checks period there's no like they can't get it from a third party and so. But I find that organizations like that they're there, they're a well oiled machine they're used to that. You know, so it's totally fine to, you know, once they've hired somebody they're able to move that final bit of the process for it very quickly. Their compliance department is, you know, you know, used to it and they can bring the person and do the medical check to the background check and have them, you know cleared and ready to go within 24 to 48 hours. So, you know, it also is sometimes on the organization's end to be efficient with that as well. And we can move as quickly as an organization could move so if we get an email saying hey we want to hire this person that you had us interview. You know, can you do a background check of three references. We're on it immediately and and you know that takes priority and we get the person cleared and ready to go. But thinking about how you can streamline those processes before you move forward with hiring attempt is key. Yeah, it's really an interesting thing because it goes back to the very first question and conversation we had is, you know, meeting expectations but you know, drilling down away from the drama and the fear of not having the labor but actually figuring out what the management aspect is. I would have never thought about just the COVID aspect and the testing and where you can, I mean, that's fascinating that that's absolutely riveting. It's a big deal. It's a new it's a new frontier and we've got some organizations for whom there are no vaccination requirements you know and nothing's changed. So many that it's now part of the landscape of of of the hiring process for them. And so we're all on a learning curve with it candidates recruiters clients. Yeah, you know, so we're all trying to be patient with each other on that because it is brand new thing. And not only brand new but it's evolving. Yes, it's constantly changing. You know, I yeah the numbers of COVID reporting COVID's going up dramatically in the West and I just read, I think in the New York Times in the last two days that many places in Los Angeles even are thinking about re asserting internal requirements. You know, it's it is something you need to stay on top of. Yeah, before I let you go. And I got to ask this question and I don't mean to demean your entire set. Tell me the truth, sister, how efficient is temporary labor I mean do we do we put too much on them, or do we not put enough. How does this actual ecosystem work. I think that there is an ecosystem under which template labor can be extremely efficient, effective, and make the difference between an organization meeting their goals over a certain amount of time. So the ecosystem is going to include screening the candidate for the most crucial portions of the job that you need them to do, and focusing on that in terms of their background so for example if you give me a job, and there's maybe eight bullet points that you need to know, but we focus on the top four that you need the most help with. And that's what I match the candidates backgrounds to that I'm going to present to you. I think we're setting it up for more success once they get in there. And the things that you need the most help with is what the person has experienced with and I think that creates a great synergy.


The disappearance of Emily Bailey is now considered a homicide investigation after the 23-year-old mother went missing on New Year's Day of 2022. Emily was looking for a ride to a friend's party and had reportedly last been speaking with someone driving a truck, but neither the truck nor the driver have ever been seen since. Emily had been homeless and living in a tent in the months leading up to her disappearance, and she was very secretive about her personal life, not wanting people to know just how dire her situation truly was. She announced that she was pregnant just weeks before she vanished, but police have no ideas about where she might have gone or who could have possibly kidnapped her. Follow for more, and be sure to check out my main channel for full-length true crime stories.


We're glad that you're still there. It's still the breakfast and we sincerely apologize for the fact that the program is being a bit draggy this morning. It's because of some unforeseen circumstances that we are facing here in the house. But we do hope that you'll be patient enough with us until the end of this program. Right now we're taking our hot topic, which is on the rise of the dollar as against the Naira by day and by night. And how much pressure it is putting on the parents who have students abroad. And just as a small background, the Naira traded at 915 Naira against the United States dollar at the parallel market on Saturday while the pound sterling was sold for 1180 Naira. Now, as the investors and exporters forex window, the Naira commenced trading at 773 Naira 29 Cobble per dollar on Friday and hit a high of 799 Naira 9 Cobble per dollar before closing at 778.42 Naira per dollar. The currency lost by 0.87% compared to the 771.69 Naira. It exchanged for the dollar on Thursday. So this gives you a background of what the dollar has become or what the Naira has become. It is falling like there's a free fall of the Naira and that also is affecting the people who have students or children or wards abroad studying. But let's just try to make sense of what is happening here. We have a guest in the house. Mohammed Abdulahi is a public affairs analyst. Good morning and welcome to the program, Mohammed. Hello, Mohammed Abdulahi. Hello. Is either Mohammed is not hearing me or I am not hearing Mohammed. We do hope that we'll put that back in order and come back to you. Mohammed, as soon as you're able to join us, we'll go right ahead. But right now, we were told, we always start like that. We were told that if the I and E window is the only window and there is no disparity between the official rate and what we term a bookie rate, the Naira will be strengthened and all that. Now we are not seeing much of a difference. The official window is at 700 and something, almost 800. And then the bookie window, which, if you ask me, is the real official window because that's where people get the money. So it's going higher and higher and we don't have a timeline that it will stabilize which means we're just at the messy of is it market forces or whatever forces make the Naira to fall the way it is falling. Alright. I understand we have him back. Hello. Good morning. Mohammed Abdulahi, can you hear us now? Good morning. Hello. Okay. I can hear you now. Okay. We couldn't hear you. Well, I was just talking with Maureen here that we were told that if every other window is collapsed into the I and E window, the Naira will be strengthened. Instead, we are seeing a weaker and weaker Naira by every passing day. Is it that the supposed good policy was a hoax or something? What are your thoughts about this policy that the floating of the Naira that we've had and the effect on our economy generally, not just education that we are zeroing in on today? Thank you. Good morning, Nigerians. It's pretty simple. I am not an economist, but I'm sure I did the Economics 101 as an alternative course in the university. And I was told and I learned that the forces of demand and supply is germane and important to the price of a commodity or product. And in this case, you know, the exchange of Naira is simply the demand and supply of it. We have a demand for so much USD, you know, that is very high compared to what is supplied. I mean what we get as a nation from the sale of crude. In fact, even the sale of crude, we have to import CMS, you know, a very major component of crude. And that requires a whole lot of USD to be paid in exchange for us to get this CMS. So the very remnants that we have is unable to service our over-bloated economy that is so much dependent upon importation and foreign goods. This is a general problem from government to the ordinary citizens. I tell you, you go to the house of an ordinary qiaman of a local government, let's start from there. Almost everything you find in that house is foreign, from furniture to whatsoever. Everybody is foreign. So you don't want to even talk about governor, the presidency and so on and so forth. So this puts a whole lot of pressure on the Naira. And then you rightly talk about the issue of perhaps our educational system is really falling and everyone that can afford it feels his or her worth should be out there, probably in the UK, in the US, Canada and what have you. And this also requires a whole lot of USD. So, you know, like I mentioned earlier, it's a general problem. What we have to service all these things is actually not enough. So we are getting very little from COOL Oil Sales, which is our main export. And then we have a lot to pay for all other services that we want to enjoy, foreign goods and so on and so on, education. In fact, remember, even the airlines in Nigeria are complaining. They have almost $900 million talked in Nigeria that cannot be repatriated and it's all because of the shortfall of the USD. So it's a major problem. We have to reset our economy to be largely dependent on homemade goods. I tell you all other policies that the CBN or whatsoever, the CBN is going to make that will not deer us towards homemade goods. It's just going to be a cosmetic policy. It's just going to be a cosmetic thing that in the short and medium and long run will continue to have the same problem. Alright, Mohammed.  Schools are not in the best of forms. Most of our public universities, you see them, you go there. You can't even call them glorified secondary schools because they're not even qualified to be secondary schools in the first place. And so these are situations that force parents to send their children abroad for better quality education. Now, what would you say to parents who are in such dilemma? You know, they have children abroad who are schooling abroad. They cannot access dollars. It was in the news a week ago, some Nigerian students in the UK whose school fees were delayed by just a few hours and they were told to leave the school. What would you say to parents who are going through this situation right now who cannot access dollars to pay? I think it's very simple. Now, that is why I always advocate for the fact that, you know, leaving the country or thinking of dumping the country is actually not the best option. The very best option is actually finding a way to contribute in our own little way to make the country work because the problems are just so enormous. There are so many. Okay, you have the means to pay, for instance. And then because of the exchange rate and so on and so forth, it's becoming challenging. So the simple thing is to bring your work back home and perhaps find a way to make sure you're representative from the House of Assembly, to the local government chairman, to your governors and so on, to make, probably, you know, join a pressure group that will pressurize these government entities and government institutions to do the right thing. That is just a simple way. But again, I would agree with you when you make a blind-catch generalization of our educational system to say most of our universities are global private-circuit schools. I understand they're probably public schools but we have some fantastic private universities as well at home. Yeah, I did say public schools. Which are far more affordable. Yeah, I did say public schools. I said public schools. Okay, yeah. So we have some fantastic private schools, universities as well. We are making headways in Africa and even globally and they are more affordable. I don't have any reports or any news where they charge ULT. So they still charge it in Niagara. So those are some of the things we also look at. We have to look inwards. And it beholds on every one of us, every one of the citizens, the government, the citizens to do that. Looking inwards in this extent is also bringing back your words and then at most having them in private schools if you don't want them to go to government funded universities. So this is also the parent's contribution in making sure that we have less pressure on the Niagara. So I think that is just the major thing that we can do as Nigerians. And like I said, we can continue to pressurize government. For instance, a little diversion but I think it's important. I was reading over the news two, three days ago that majority of the Nigerian governor's forum were in Tigali, Rwanda for 83. And I was laughing. What do you need to go to Tigali for 83? All of them. This is also another pressure on the USA. Because this guy will go with extra costs. They will have to pay for hotels. They will have to pay for transportation. A whole lot of oil and sundries and so on. So things that are not necessary. Why do you have to do it? So it is important that we contribute our quotas. And it's like I said, it behoves on everyone of us to make sure that homemade products and services are what we promote at this moment. Okay, well, just a point you raised. A lot of people have argued that even the private institutions that we have except for very, very few of them every other one is just having the advantage of not going on strike. Otherwise, they may not necessarily be turning out or turning out better graduates than we have in the public institutions. The curriculum is basically the same. It doesn't really train you to face the world like you find in other climes. A lot of parents still resort to going overseas to put their words because it's more practical. There are very many things that they are exposed to and all that. And if you put a public school graduate in Nigeria alongside a private school graduate in Nigeria, I'm not sure you'll see that marked difference. I don't know what your thoughts are on what the private institutions even are doing apart from the fact that they don't go on strike. They have everything that they need to make their students that they graduate from those schools to measure up to students, let's say from Yale, let's say from other institutions in America and the UK and all that. Do you think so? Because when we are doing a revamp of educational institutions it's not just the public schools. Yes, I think so. You know, even less than the public schools we have so many Nigerians who've graduated from public schools and go on to excel in the same Oxford, Yale, Harvard and so on and so forth. So I don't think it's a problem of perhaps even the curriculum as much it's not the problem of really adapting to modern world technologies in teaching. And yes, perhaps a bit of curriculum as well because seriously, even from our public schools we've had students go out there and compete. I remember even last year we have students from Amadoubello University who went on to mention brand name now for the popular brand name in China to win innovation awards and so on. So we are not really doing too badly.  But what we are not doing right is the fact that we are not empowering these universities whether public or universities to do more.  So if I come back to your question specifically there are a few of the private universities that I really do well. I mean we have private universities in Nigeria who are ranked in the first 50 in Africa who have in the past 10 years been able to be very innovative. There are students all over Nigeria doing so well and perhaps even globally contributing to innovations, technology and so on and so forth. Yes, our founders for instance founders of multi-billion dollars what's it called? Ventures across the world. I don't want to keep mentioning brand like I said but these guys gravitated on Nigeria and they are doing so well. So I think it's just a little bit of push from everyone, from government particularly and from citizenry and so on and we will do far better than what we are doing at the moment and that is why I keep saying the contribution is beholding on everyone of us. We can't just leave it alone to government. Because if you look at the amount Nigeria is contributing to the economy of the UK alone US, Canada in the areas of education is alarming. If we plow those monies back into our economy and education system I tell you we will be right up there with any nation globally. So we need to do more. We need to satisfy more and we need to like I said make sure that home-made products and services including our universities whether public or private are negated more. Well, I'm afraid that's the much we can take for this morning. Thank you so much Mohammed for coming on the show. Thank you very much. Okay that was Mohammed Abdulahi a public affairs analyst talking to us about the pressure that the crisis the Forex crisis has put on the parents now and he said something very instructive make sure that the home-made products whether education or anything else are enticing enough for people to patronize them and we should do more to fund our education and our educational system educational institutions and everything and bring it up to standard bring them up to standard that's the thing unless of strikes because like I said if you put a private a person from a private university and a public university you may not see the difference and sometimes you even see the public university graduate doing better but you know they spend five years for a three-year course seven years for a three-year course Let's leave you with our quote of the day you can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it the intelligence to make a realistic plan and the will to see that plan through to the end that's from Sidney Freitman I am Maureen Menonwes you've been thanking me for being a part of the show join us tomorrow I am Nyam Gul Agad you have a wonderful first day of the working week bye on behalf of the team see you tomorrow


Hi, I'm Ilana Zaidi. I'm an associate professor of law at the University of Nebraska. Here are three pitfalls of emerging artificial intelligence used in higher education. One is automated composition applications. You've all probably seen the automated grammar and composition tools I'm talking about. There are applications such as Grammarly, Hemingway, ProWritingAid, and these tools are also being incorporated into a lot of word processors right now. And these, they're like souped up spell checkers, right? So they don't just do the spelling, but some grammar, but also some composition now. So they try to detect passive phrasing or repeated words. And in some cases, these are fantastic. Students can, they can be powerful learning tools if students pay attention to the suggestions and try to incorporate that learning into their own work. But they can also become a crutch. And in some cases, do more than merely copy at it. For example, there are systems that kind of remix learning materials and write student essays. And you also see students over relying on these and just pretty much accepting everything, even though that sometimes makes their work nonsensical. It's a matter of being attentive to the line between providing help and reducing students' motivations to improve their own skills. The next artificial intelligence tool is increasing use of AI for grading and evaluation. The problem here is the famous human-in-the-loop problem. You get teachers over relying on automated suggestions without having a sufficient understanding or taking the time to evaluate AI generated evaluations. Part of this is because there's a human tendency towards automation bias to believe the accuracy of results that are computer generated. But educators are also not always in the best position to review automated outcomes and assessments because the results are often complicated. They're based on data that is unknown. And it's difficult to go behind the output into the analytics because of the black box of AI. So it's hard for the human evaluator teachers to know when something might have gone wrong. And often there's not a really good visible signal of something that has gone wrong. Generally, the reason people put these tools into place in the first place is because they save time. And so if you have an educator having to go through everything again, it does. It reduces much of the point of putting an AI tool in the first place. The last AI tool to worry about is something I guess that all of you know about already, which is automated online proctoring tools. I'm specifically concerned about the artificial intelligence part that is used in the automated monitoring systems that detect when students cheat. Companies refer to this as monitoring students and test takers, but it's more accurately described as surveillance, often involving audio, visual input, some digital input, and then subsequent AI analysis that is supposed to detect cheating. Although actually explicitly the vendors are very clear to say they are not trying to detect cheating, that is the teacher's job, but rather they detect suspicious behaviors. However, these tools don't have sufficient evidence supporting, again, their accuracy or their efficacy. And they're based on a questionable assumption that there is some normal profile of student behavior, that artificial intelligence can identify that normal profile, and that deviations from that baseline indicate that something suspicious is happening, rather than just foreseeable diversity of student physiology and environments. During the pandemic, this has led to unacceptably high rates of false flags for innocent behavior. And in many cases, schools implemented these tools without giving teachers enough training or oversight or providing ways for students to understand what's going on, if there is a system in place that acts as a safety net in case they're being flagged falsely for innocent behavior, and how they might be able to challenge problems they run into with the technology. And the main problem with these are overreliance on the automation, minimal transparency, and explainability, and in some cases insufficient evidence supporting their accuracy and efficacy, both overall and across marginalized populations. These tools really do have great promise. It's partly just a matter of being aware of their limitations and not ignoring those in the ambition to try something new and really the hopefulness of implementing some really exciting and exciting sounding tools.


I find that a lot of times you want to modify an image, resize it, cut off the edges, make it transparent or something else like that. You want to do some basic manipulation to an image or maybe many, many images and it's sort of a pain to open all those up in an image editor. Now the tool that you use to solve this is of course image magic. I've talked about image magic before on my channel. Image magic is a command line utility for manipulating images and changing them without you having to open up another program. It's fantastic if you have a folder full of 100 images or even if you just have one, oftentimes running an image magic command to do what you need to do on an image is much faster than using some kind of graphical program. Now let me give you a little use case here. I have a couple, one thing I actually have on my computer, I should show you, I have a little folder here where I have a bunch of logos and the reason I have this is just because sometimes I use them in thumbnails or something like that. So that's one, I keep this little folder of logos and they're all to a specific specifications, specific specifications, specific specification. Now I have some other logos here but they're not up to the specification. What I mean by that is if you look at this Firefox logo, okay it looks good but I don't really like all these edges being on it. I think that's sort of annoying. I don't like when I'm putting this logo in an image, I don't want to have to deal with all the white space on the side or transparent space. Same thing, I have this Windows logo where first off it's not even transparent.  So I'd like to be able to get rid of that stuff automatically and additionally have a little word logo here as well and this is just the same, it is transparent but it's the same as the Firefox logo and there's a whole lot of space on the side. So let's talk about how to very quickly, automatically get rid of all of this, either make an image transparent or get rid of the extra craft on the side. And we might also talk about some other things. So let's get this party started. I'll start with the Firefox logo because again what we want to do here is trim all the stuff off the side. So the command, the typical command in image magic is convert. So I'm going to run convert and what specifically we want to do is run it with the trim option. Now what trim does, if you give it some kind of file, it's sort of like if you open up GIMP and then say crop to selection or crop to content. And it's probably the same in Photoshop or whatever else. Trim is just the exact same thing. So we can take this icon as an argument and then just give it an output file name and I'll just call that Firefox.png. So again, let's look at our original again. It has all this space on the side. But once we run trim on it, we have this new file and you'll see that the edges are only as far as they need to be to fit all of the actual content. So there's none of that messy white space or transparent space, however you want to think about it. Now again, we can do the same thing with the word icon, which again has the same issue here. So we can run trim on the word or why is it called word trim? It's not already trimmed. I guess I meant for it to be trimmed later. But we can trim that just to run that command. And if I open this up, you will see that there now is no junky white space at all. It only goes as far as the image itself. OK, so that's very nice. That's very convenient. I actually use trim all the time. But another thing you might want to be interested in doing, again, I showed you this Windows logo. And the Windows logo has, it is not even transparent. So how can you make an image transparent just on the command line? Well, it's relatively easy with image magic. So I can say convert and you can give it the transparent option. And after that, you give it some kind of color that you want to be transparent. So I'm going to say white because all of that stuff is white. So I can say white, then Windows Original, and then I'll say Windows.png. And we'll run that and we'll see what that looks like. And you'll see that, well, I guess it's sort of doing what we want it to do. It's made white transparent.  It's off-white or something. So that's not exactly what we want. But you don't have to go and open up GEMP. You don't have to resort to something so terrible as opening a graphical user interface program. Because what we can do is we can also say something like, we can give image magic the fuzz option. And I can say something like fuzz and then I'll say 10%. And what that means in effect is a match 10% of the colors that are similar to it, if that makes sense. I mean, if you think of colors on a scale or something, 10% of them, if it's so close to white, just treat it as white, make it transparent. So I'm gonna run that again. And if we open it now, you'll see that it is much better. There is still a little bit of white on the edges here, but in general, this is pretty much a good transparent image at a distance might not even be that obvious. And then of course you can tweak around with the number of fuzz you give it. You can give it say 50 fuzz or something like that. And that's gonna, there is still a little bit more there, but it's basically good. Now if you give it 100 fuzz, you might be able to guess what that's gonna do. But just if you run it, there's nothing, not gonna be anything there because you now told it to match 100% of the colors on a scale that might match white where that is basically everything. But anyway, that's how you basically do it. Now additionally, now as I said before, let me run the 50% command again. And we still have the windows thing here, but we didn't actually trim the edges. Just bear in mind that you can run multiple of these commands together. So you can say something like convert and give it the trim option and give it the transparent option and run that. And you'll see that now this is transparent and it's also trimmed. So that's pretty much exactly what we want. Anyway, so that's about it, but I will probably do another video on image magic in just a little bit in a couple of days on how to create images made out of text and stuff like that. But hopefully this is pretty useful to some of you guys. Again, you can't easily do everything in image magic, but there are a lot of basic operations like again, trimming, transparency and stuff that you can get a whole lot of just using a couple of these commands. So I recommend putting them to different aliases or making scripts with them because I use this kind of stuff all the time. Anyway, well, I'll see you guys.


Hello, I am Dr. Trithika Agarwal, I am a Pediatric Consultant in an Adolescent Specialist Manipal Hospital, Sarjapur branch. So today we are going to talk about the neurodevelopmental changes that happen during Adolescent which are responsible for the different attitudes and behaviours that we see in Adolescent. Previously it was considered that the brain matures by the age of 18 but now most study shows that the brain keeps on maturing till the age of 25. So what typically happens is there is lot of reorganization which is happening in the brain. The synapses get pruned, synapses which are used more and often are hardwired into the brain and the synapses which are not used are lost. That is why the principle use it or lose it. There is rapid myelination of the brain which starts from the posterior part of the brain and goes to the front part of the brain. So the executive functions like planning, decision making and all this all happens later and the emotional and the reward center of the brain which is the limbic system it develops earlier. That is why there is an imbalance between the emotional center and the inhibitory center of the brain and this predisposes the adolescent to take lot of risk and novelty sensations seeking is there. Taking adolescence if they are taking drugs they get more addicted to it there are more chances of getting drug addictions. The reward circuitry in the brain gets hijacked if they take drugs. Drugs cause increased dopamine levels in the brain which causes a feeling of high or thrill or pleasure in the brain. Typically in boys we see that they can consume more amount of alcohol and they are more predisposed for taking risk while driving and hence get into accidents. For girls more behaviors towards nutrition are there. They do dieting and eating disorders happen. So here as parents we should just understand why they are behaving in this way. We have to understand the decision making and the planning is not that developed and the emotional center and the reward center is very much developed. That is why correct decision making sometimes will not happen. So we have to give them a nurturing environment give them a environment where they can grow and overlook what their activities are and look at their peers because they are very much influenced by their peers and do what the peers say. Thank you.


Depression is a common mental illness worldwide, with potentially serious consequences if left untreated. Early identification and treatment are difficult due to the lack of reliable diagnostic markers. Furthermore, depression is often associated with thoughts of suicide, making it even more important to identify and treat it quickly. To address these issues, we propose a new approach based on a combination of particle swarm optimization and cuckoo search algorithms. This approach was tested against several existing machine learning techniques, including KNN, SVR, and decision trees, as well as ResNet, VGG, and Lennet. Our results showed that the proposed method outperforms all other models, achieving an accuracy of 99.5%. This article was authored by Curram Jawad, Rajulmato, Ariandas, and others.


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Good morning, everybody. It's another new day. We're in St. Cloud, Minnesota We had to wait a little while to get our reload. We didn't get one last night and we didn't get one really this morning It's about noon now, and we have our direction Put my pillow up there so that it's safe Diesel heists his own pillows. I like to have my own pillow. I need a new pillow again though Pillow keeps getting flat no matter what pillow I buy I buy those pillows that aren't supposed to go flat they go flat anyway Got pillow problems, and I've got to put this Sheet over my bedding and this sheet is for diesel so that if he does come in the truck He's got a little bit of dirt or some Sand on his paws sometimes I can just vacuum it off the floor and then doesn't go on my bed Because there's nothing worse than sand on the bed Not good, so we put this sheet on here at the end of the day I can just take it off and not worry about you know Sleeping on a beach or something and there you go fit for the Lord of all weasels Good boy and his pillows Yes, he gets two I only get one. That's the way it goes There you go, buddy What do you say we go outside? Wish I could let him run off late here, but his car is right there And this is the only little Big grass area I could find And I don't want him to get all excited and then accidentally you know run out into the road and get run over and Completely crushed my entire world, so We've got an eight meter lease for him here He's got quite a bit of and it's it's not on a very hard spring either like He can't even feel it so he's got eight meters, which is how many feet? I don't know what that is in America speak. It's a long way diesel stay there. Watch us stay there. Can you sit? You sit show them how long your leashes. Can you stay? Let's just pull it around there So I'll pull it like out to here stay there still going still going Still going there Yes, he ain't man. He's far as yummy out you go It's time to go truckin man. Oops You still come on old man. You can do it time to go trucking It's time to go trucking Go in the truck You want me to hold it? Okay. I got it go in the truck. Go on Come on up up Freaks him out a little bit if I don't hold it because I wobbles a little bit Good boy so brave Yo, man You're not that old that sweet sweet liquid that we call liquid life now we can start the day Okay You guys ready for this? Diesel are you ready for this? You look ready. Let's go All aboard pre-trip stuff All the bolts are tight.  Okay now. We just got to wait for traffic, of course Trucker Josh wants to get moving quick everybody get in his way One more one more. It's gonna kick into driving over there. That is official The day has begun And Karen's yelling at me already Turn left on 41st Street South and then turn left to 200 Like I was saying this is St. Cloud Minnesota a really nice town They have the sidewalk that goes along the street here behind pilot If you go West it's a lot more interesting than if you go east east just runs to a dead end We found that out yesterday in a commercial zone So according to Karen we have just under 400 kilometers to go. That's four hours approximately of driving That would be 240 miles Somewhere in there bring it to the yard. We'll be there tonight. I hope that they got something for me to leave with right away again I mean I have a I need to get going. There's no traffic lights here That's the only thing about coming out at this intersection if you go at that intersection over there there's traffic lights, but here at the corner 41st and 75 No traffic lights. You can still get on there. Look at us go. Let us go A little bit of a scenic road today should be fun We're just well up this one here hook on to another one just a few downs from here And pull it home. I'll go into the yard to get my paperwork But now the yard is all locked up and our trailers are left out here for us Guess you got a hold on tighter next time So I'm going to fill this new trailer with air To make sure there's no leaks Now the suspension is filling in the back which is making this suspension adjust here So that's what that noise is there. You don't have to worry about that. That's not an air leak It's just adjusting itself Signal and marker light are working. It's good Whatever this is under here is secure. They're in the tires Air in the tires. They're not flat. It's always a bonus marker light on and working ABS light off If that stays on You got a problem usually a wiring problem. That's usually all it is But it comes on when you first turn on the key usually just to let you know it's working and then it'll turn back off Back here. Check this out signal on this side is working wait for the brake light wait for the brake light There's the brake light you got All the markers and everything marker lights working up there Trailer is closed at the top You always got a double check because sometimes guys close the doors and they don't check that latch at the top and Doesn't properly latch closed and it's flapping open rain can get in there. It's a big mess air Air. Oh, what do we got here? What do we got here? See you can't have any of this kind of stuff You can't have any straps that can touch the ground Technically, we're still okay, but if it were to go on that side of the rail, I bet you anything. Oh That is close That is close D.o.t. Doesn't want you to have anything any straps or anything like this touching the ground So here's a little trick see if I can show you this Loose it up just a bit.  Okay, so what you do with these see if I can show you here With one hand you see how this extra Stuff is here. You want to get rid of that? You want to almost tighten the strap almost tighten it and then Flip this around and then tuck it in under there like that and then tighten it I'm not sure if you guys can actually see this here Actually tighten this a little bit more You want to be just Slip it right in there So that it grabs it Tugs See how it goes up in there then that way you don't have that Dragon on the ground Some people just tie them up in like a messy little knot like this It's very annoying when you get to a customer. You got to use these ramps and You got this all tied up in a knot here I'll fix this here so that it's a little bit neater. It looks better and it's Not that this is a big pain in the butt, but you know It's unnecessary as much easier and better way of doing this and not many people seem to know this trick because I Learned this trick like nine years ago when I started doing this and I guess they haven't been Passing down the knowledge for some reason but These are super rusty straps very hard to work with Yeah, I need to I like to replace these two as often as I can So we don't have that problem Slide that through there. This is neat as possible. Okay. You ready? Like this and slide this up in behind there between there hold it there And suck it in with us It's much neater this way in my opinion And all you got to do instead of like unraveling it all sometimes they hide in very annoying like military knots or something for some reason So all you got to do is loosen this and pull on it and it all just falls out Super simple super easy time saver And to me it looks a lot better You can do whatever you want. That's what I do. I got all this paperwork organized and In an envelope So I get any messages at all Nothing either way, it's okay It's not the biggest deal in the world because like I was telling you yesterday I'm not really comfortable until I know what the plan is. I hate not having a plan Nervous and then anxiety starts to attack me That's enough about that We can do without a plan. We have the capabilities We have the power So we're in FIFA refalls right now We're gonna leave here and head back to our yard in Manitoba and sleep there for night and we'll figure it out in the morning Sounds good to me, right? Made myself a ham sandwich RCMP Mounties are here once the police and the fire department are all there. Well The end of the day is here. We made it back I guess I'll just wait for the morning to find out what the plan is because we don't know what the plan is now So at least we're ready for anything. We're here We'll be rested in the morning and whatever they got for us I'm on it. I'm on it. Oh, I got a vacuum. I always vacuumed diesel's sheet before I take it off If you're wondering what works great with pet hair the shark cordless vacuum. I've got it from Walmart Amazing Now that I've got it all vacuumed when I take it off Dust and stuff hair and what not else won't go all over the place Just fold it in like this keep it wrapped in when you travel with a dog you really got to pay attention to Vacuuming my wife might not believe me, but I actually vacuum my truck multiple times a day I know when I go home she'll tell you I never touch the vacuum That's because I do all my vacuuming when I'm on the road. I Make up for it Believe me I And my vacuums are one I have two vacuums two identical shark vacuums One second. Just gonna get my book out of here. I keep my book in my pillowcase to keep it safe Doesn't always work We're back in Manitoba and you can tell that the farmers have emptied their barns and spread the manure on their fields And I'm thankful for the food they grow and for the nutrition that that manure provides the food that I'm going to eat But wow does it stink here? Man, I'm like spraying my truck and you're trying to get the smell out of here I can't got to keep all the windows closed because that's just gonna seep right in here Whoo, that is some serious manure smell But anyway, it is time For me to go to bed. So thanks for joining me today, everybody You know the drill hit that like button if you liked the video It helps me a lot with the algorithms if you hated the video hit the dislike button because that also helps me and If you want to leave a comment down below as long as you engage with the video in one way or another whether it be positive or negative YouTube sees that people are engaging with it and it says hey Now you guys should share this with other people see if they hate it too or see if they like it too So if you give me a thumbs down thumbs up, I prefer the thumbs up But that is totally up to you You want to help me out? That's the best way to do it. Just leave me a comment or a thumbs up and YouTube will do the rest Thanks for tagging along today everybody. I don't know what's up and what's on the agenda for tomorrow yet, but We'll find out in the morning