This course is about introducing you to a new approach or paradigm for modelling and analysing social phenomena based upon complex systems. Complexity science represents an alternative approach to our traditional scientific framework. As such, it brings with it a coherent alternative paradigm, a new set of theoretical models based upon that paradigm and a new set of computational methods. So in this module, we'll be taking a very high level view to this whole approach to the social sciences and try to give some outline as to how it differs from our more traditional approach. We'll talk firstly about this more traditional approach to make it explicit before going on to discuss social complexity. We can loosely define social science as the study of human beings and the relations between those individuals that give rise to macro-patterns of social organisation, what we call a society. Like all empirical sciences, it is engaged in the enterprise of trying to describe some subset of phenomena in our world. In this case, the phenomena of interest is human society and we do this by amassing empirical data and developing logically consistent theoretical models for effectively interpreting patterns within that data. But this scientific enterprise does not happen in a vacuum, it happens within a certain cultural context. It depends upon a certain set of philosophical assumptions about the way the world is. Physicists don't go into their lab every day and question whether there really is such a thing as an objective universe out there. This is a philosophical question, not a scientific question. So what really happens is that researchers go into their lab every day and operate based upon a set of assumptions about the way the world is, what are important questions to be asking, what are valid processes of reasoning etc. As long as the whole community of researchers shares these assumptions, then they have the supporting context within which to conduct their research enterprise. This set of assumptions that supports a scientific domain and constitutes the whole philosophical framework within which they work is called a paradigm. The Oxford Dictionary defines a paradigm as such, a worldview underlining the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject. The paradigm or set of assumptions within which the enterprise of modern science operates was born approximately 500 years ago with the massive cultural transformation of the Renaissance and scientific revolution that gave us the cultural foundations to our modern world. This new paradigm really came together and found its most coherent, full expression within the work of Sir Isaac Newton, whose work was extremely influential for centuries to come and laid down the foundations for the enterprise of modern science. And of course, built into these foundations was a set of assumptions about how the world works. This whole set of assumptions is called the Newtonian paradigm or the clockwork universe. In slightly more technical terms, it can also be called linear systems theory. Linear systems theory forms the backbone to all of modern science. It is used in every domain from physics to biology to economics to psychology. The Newtonian paradigm is materialistic and atomistic in nature. It sees the world as a set of isolated objects that interact in a linear cause and effect fashion. The Newtonian clockwork universe receives its name because within this paradigm the universe is seen to be comparable to a big mechanical clock. It continues ticking along like a perfect machine with the turning of its gears governed by the laws of physics, making every aspect of the machine perfectly orderly, knowable and predictable. Within this paradigm we can understand and know this whole machine of the universe by understanding all of the parts and the simple linear interactions between those parts. The whole clock is nothing more than the sum of its parts and thus to understand it we can use the process of inquiry called reductionism also called analysis whereby we break the whole thing down into these isolated individual parts, study the properties of these parts in isolation and how they interact with each other. If we can then create a set of equations that describe this then it's game over. We've completed this process of inquiry and now know everything there is to know about that system. This approach to the scientific inquiry called analysis was very successful within classical physics and came to define what modern science is considered to be and got applied to many different areas through the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Its application within the social sciences has given us what is called methodological individualism that is used in many different areas of the social sciences, most prominently within standard economics. Methodological individualism is the requirement that causal accounts of social phenomena explain how they result from the motives and actions of the individual agents. It considers that the only thing in the social world that is real are the things that we can touch and see which is individual human beings. This is the materialistic and atomistic nature to the Newtonian paradigm All phenomena have to be traced back to some discrete, tangible entity that can be defined in isolation and described in terms of a set of properties. Methodological individualism is the requirement that causal accounts of social phenomena explain how they result from the motives and actions of individual agents. Within this paradigm when all is said and done society can be nothing more than all of its constituent individuals. This paradigm of methodological individualism then gives us a whole approach to studying social phenomena one that is focused on the properties of the individuals and their linear interactions. So in using this approach we're going to want to amass data about the properties of the individuals like a national census where you fill in your age, gender, occupation etc. Once we have all of this data we are then going to look for linear interactions between the variables what is called correlation analysis, a statistical technique that can show whether and how strongly pairs of variables are related. For example we might ask if there is a linear correlation between an individual's level of education and their income. We would then collect data about individuals and do a scatter plot to see how closely the values of these properties move together. This approach can describe simple linear interactions, the interaction between two, three or four variables. It works well on the micro level and this was the primary focus of science before the 1800s where we were dealing with things like the relationship between temperature and pressure, population and time, production and trade etc. During the 1800s scientists developed methods for dealing with macro systems composed of many parts by using statistical methods and probability theory with most of this happening within the domain of statistical mechanics where they were trying to model such phenomena as a gas in a chamber with billions of atoms. Phenomena of this kind are sometimes called disorganized complexity. In such cases we're dealing with systems composed of many disorganized parts that is to say a large set of random variables. The variables have to be independent and identically distributed, what is called IID. If each random variable has the same probability distribution as the others and all are mutually independent then these statistical methods will work. These assumptions only really hold within linear systems but by imposing them we can say things about the macro system without actually getting our hands dirty and looking at what is really going on inside. We can say that the macro system will follow the law of large numbers, the central limit theorem. We can use mean field theory. We can make estimations, talk about the average normal person and so on. This is a very important and useful shortcut but it has its limitations. We aren't going to any more of the details to this approach but suffice to say linear system theory works well for linear systems that is to say systems that have a finite amount of independent homogeneous elements interacting in a well-defined fashion with a relatively low level of interconnectivity. This is often not what we see when dealing with social phenomena. Many social phenomena such as whole economies, social institutions, cultures and the human psychology to name just a few are fundamentally complex in nature. By complex we mean that they consist of a very many autonomous and diverse components that are highly interconnected and interdependent. In these complex systems the scientific underpinning of our traditional formal approach begins to break down. And this leaves the social sciences somewhat divided in their response to the question of whether we go on using these formal methods whose assumptions when applied to social systems are fundamentally flawed or do they abandon formal methods altogether. For example we can see this divide between economics and sociology where standard economics has fully embraced linear systems theory giving it quite powerful formal mathematical models but in order for it to do this it has to package up quite subtle and complex social phenomena into a relatively simple set of assumptions leaving it subject to continuous critique surrounding these foundational assumptions. While much of sociology and other social sciences feel this approach is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and they continue to pursue their inquiry without the support of any real coherent formal system which leaves certain doubts surrounding their status as a science as formal languages are an integral part of the whole enterprise of science. And this is giving us what is called economic imperialism where economics the only social science that has a formal basis is increasingly dominating the others. Complexity theory is fundamentally a set of formal models so we'll just make a quick side note about formal methods before moving on. Formal languages are what make a scientific domain coherent and robust without them the domain is essentially a descriptive science. As the scientist Ernest Rutherford once said all science is either physics or stamp collecting. This is clearly a very arrogant statement but there is some truth to it. Physics is by far the most robust and advanced domain of science largely because it is directly supported by the sophisticated formal language of standard mathematics. The higher mathematics used in fundamental physics is not about the X's and Y's that you learnt in high school algebra. It's about fundamental and powerful concepts that describe patterns of organization in terms of symmetries, transformations and invariance. It is these very abstract and powerful concepts that are captured within the language of higher mathematics that gives physicists the tools to tackle very difficult phenomena in a coherent fashion. The social sciences often lack these abstract formal methods that are powerful tools for solving difficult questions. A formal language is what gives a scientific domain the capacity to speak with one voice without the support of a formal language you end up with many different sub-domains speaking many different languages without the capacity to interrelate them and when someone comes asking for the answer to some question you end up giving them a hundred different models. Over the past few decades we've seen the beginnings of a formal language for modeling the complex systems that social scientists study without resorting to reductionist methods. Complexity theory is based upon very abstract formal mathematical models but probably not the kindly you're used to and we should be clear from the start that although a lot of complexity theory really originates in mathematics and physics it's not another excuse for trying to reduce social life to little particles of matter that get moved around on mass by forces. It starts with the recognition that these reductionist methods have their limitations. So complexity theory starts with an alternative paradigm to that of analysis this paradigm is really inherited from systems theory. Systems theory is based upon the process of reasoning called synthesis which is the opposite from analysis and reductionism. This paradigm is referred to as being what is called holistic meaning that it is characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole. Synthesis means the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole. It is a process of reasoning that describes an entity through the context of its relations and functioning within the whole system that it is a part of. Thus synthesis focuses on the relations between the elements that is to say the way those elements are put together or arranged into a functioning entity. Within this paradigm we're trying to identify the complex relations within which an entity is embedded. Its place and function within the whole and within systems thinking this context is considered the primary frame of reference for describing something. We are then not particularly interested in breaking things down and talking about the properties of the parts and their simple linear interactions. We are more interested in these interactions and what emerges out of them. Paradigms like this are always quite abstract so let's take a quick example to solidify it. Let's say we're trying to understand the origins of the First World War. Well from the analytical perspective we would talk about how the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and how this effect caused a reaction from Russia which caused another reaction from Germany which in turn caused England to react and so on. In this paradigm we would talk about the properties of the parts and the cause and effect interactions. Now from a systems perspective we would be looking at the whole context both in space and the process in time. The nexus of relations out of which this phenomena emerged. We might then talk about how through industrialization and nationalization the international political environment within pre-war Europe self-organized into a critical state and it was out of this whole context that we got the emergence of the First World War. The assassination did not cause the war, nothing directly caused the war. It was out of the non-linear interactions of many different factors that we got a critical state to the system and out of this critical state we got the emergence of this phenomena of the First World War. So this gives us some insight into this alternative paradigm but how does this actually translate into models that we can use? Complexity theory represents a combination of a number of different modeling frameworks that have developed in different areas in response to dealing with complexity all of which have in common a focus on the interactions between parts and how these interactions give rise to emergent phenomena on the macro level. Agent-based modeling is one good example of this. Agent-based models are a class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents in order to try and model their effect on the system as a whole. As an example we could think about trying to model the spreading of some virus within a population. We have a traditional equation-based model called SIR which would describe this process in a top-down fashion but we can also describe this with agent models where we ascribe simple rules to the agents and then run the program to see what aggregate phenomena emerge from the bottom up. Another major modeling framework within complexity theory is that of network theory that is focused on the connections between actors and how the structure of those connections affect the actors and the system as a whole. Network theory gives us a formal language to model such things as power and influence within social systems by looking at the structure of connections that surround an individual. Network theory gives us a language for talking about how things spread through a network. Non-linear systems theory is another major modeling framework that helps us in talking about the non-additive interactions between agents in space and over time. How, through these non-linear interactions of synergies and interference we get the emergence of macro-level non-equilibrium phenomena that make the whole more or less than the sum of its parts. This language of feedback loops and chaos helps us in talking about non-equilibrium processes of change where the whole system moves rapidly in one direction and this is just a quick sample of some of the topics we'll be covering during the course. Finally, we'll talk about the new set of practical methods and tools that complexity science uses. Complexity science is a science fundamentally based upon computation. The rise of computation within the social sciences is one of the quiet but major revolutions taking place within contemporary science and I'll quote the social network scientist Duncan Watts as he describes this phenomena as such, up until about 10 years ago it was impossible to observe these social interactions and it is very very hard to do science when you can't observe things. It is very hard to do science when you can't measure the things you're interested in and what has changed in the past 10 years or so and why it is so exciting for people like me to be at the intersection of social and computational science is that the internet has really unveiled, has really made the invisible visible has really given us the capacity to measure the interactions between hundreds of millions of people in real time and over extended periods of time. It feels like for many of us in the social sciences like we've stumbled upon are equivalent to the telescope, the device, the technology that made the invisible visible and historically that has led to dramatic improvements in science. To date the primary sources of data for social scientists were survey research, government statistics and one of in-depth studies of particular people. The statistical databases of governments and the World Bank are full of information about individual people and their properties. They tell us almost nothing about the connections between those individuals because up until very recently we didn't have the computational capacity to manage and utilize large complex databases of this kind. But with the rise of the internet and particularly online social networks this is all changing. We're going from a limited amount of randomly selected historical data on individuals to a mass of real data about the connections between people and this big data is said to revolutionize our insight into human interaction. The future of the social sciences is a lot to do with the new approaches that are arising from these new computational capabilities and data sources. With these new opportunities for the first time we have the capacity to not just model societies and their simple statistical interactions or aggregate behavior but instead in terms of the actual context. We have for the first time in a rigorous way the capacity to map and model context. The context of choice, the context of behavior the complex interplay of a lot of different free parameters all at once. This has always been very difficult because of the lack of data and computational intractability. These new tools of computation and data sources are very important but at the end of the day they are just tools. They will not in themselves help us solve difficult problems within social theory. Agile questions about the relationship between individual agency and social structure. Questions about the exercising of social power about the formation of the individual about the rise and fall of civilizations. But with these new computational methods and a new set of sophisticated theoretical tools from complexity theory we can apply them to see what fresh insight we can get on these perennial challenges within the social sciences. In this module we've been giving a quick overview to the application of complexity theory to the social sciences what we called social complexity. We started off with a very broad discussion surrounding the scientific enterprise as we talked about paradigms in general and the Newtonian paradigm in particular. How it forms the basis for modern science and how this approach of reductionism gets translated into methodological individualism within the social sciences an approach that is focused upon the properties of the components within the system and the linear cause and effect interactions between them with the whole being a simple summation of its parts allowing us to use statistical analysis and probability theory. We talked about how the basic assumptions underpinning our traditional formal approaches begin to fail when we start to deal with complex systems consisting of many autonomous diverse components that are highly interconnected and interdependent as often is the case within the social sciences. We briefly introduce complexity theory as an alternative approach to modeling these complex systems an approach that is based upon a paradigm inherited from systems theory that uses synthetic reasoning instead of analysis. We briefly touched upon some of the major modeling frameworks that operate within this paradigm including agent-based modeling, network theory and non-linear systems theory. Finally, we talked about how complexity science is based upon a new set of computational methods and how big data is said to have a transformative effect on the social sciences in the coming decades.


The compositional patabation autoencoder, CPA, is a new method for predicting the effects of drug or genetic combinations on individual cells. It combines the interpretability of linear models with the flexibility of deep learning algorithms to accurately predict the responses of single cells to different doses, cell types, time points, and species. The CPA was validated against newly generated single cell drug combination data, demonstrating its ability to accurately predict unseen drug combinations. Additionally, it was shown to be able to impute missing combinations from a genetic screen, providing a powerful tool for hypothesis generation. This article was authored by Mohammed Lotfolahi, Anna Klimovskaya-Susmilj, Carlo Dodono, and others.


Recently, a conceptual Miami home for soccer star Lionel Messi was revealed on Instagram by Belize Architecto, a mansion shaped in an iconic M, which is clearly visible from aerial views. The contemporary estate would also offer three levels of living in crazy amenities like three helipads, all contained on a private, ship-shaped island.  However, Messi being recruited by David Beckham's Inter-Miami CF team has gotten fans excited, as well as realtors located in South Florida. Considering Messi's deal is said to be worth an estimated $60 million and with the athlete spotted house hunting all over Miami, everyone is wondering where he will be buying up his next piece of real estate. No wonder.


This is stock number 10190A. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, your new and used car headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2015 Nissan Versa Note. This vehicle has the 1.6 liter four cylinder motor and pumps out 109 horsepower. From this HD video you will be able to tell that this car is extremely clean all the way around inside and out. Peacock metallic blue is the color. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is like you're right here looking at the car with me. And definitely your best way to check out the vehicle before seeing it in person. Firestone all season tires on this vehicle. These are 185 65R15s and they have probably about I'd say 70% of the tread left. So really good tread left on those tires. This is a front wheel drive. Headlight lenses are nice and clear. The front bumper is in excellent shape. I didn't see any dense dings or cracks on that. The hood is in excellent condition as well. No dents or dings on that. Passenger side fender absolutely perfect. And the passenger side rim no scuffs or scrapes on that. Really nice condition. Down this side of the car you can see just how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close behind just cannot make the trip down you can still see the car, hear the car and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. Down this side of the car pretty clean. One tiny little ding at the bottom of the door there to just want to point that out. That's why we do the videos. You know they're used cars. They're not going to be perfect but like to point out everything on them and to show you just how nice they are. Back tires have a little bit more tread than the front tires. I'd say close to 80 to 90 percent of the tread on the back tires. As we come around to the back of the vehicle you can see the rear bumper is absolutely perfect. No dents or dings or scuffs on that. And the rear gate is in really nice condition as well. The back storage area is very clean too. Those back seats do fold down for extra storage and there is jack tools back here. You can see that the rear shocks are holding up the rear gate nicely. It's a really cool blue kind of a maybe even like a cerulean blue. The passenger side quarter is in nice shape as well and for full disclosure this back rim is in nice condition too. Down the rest of the car is pretty clean. Maybe one little ding on the rear door there. Kind of almost the same spot as the other one.  There are no rips or tears on these seats. They are in really nice condition. We have factory floor mats throughout and we do have power mirrors in this car and stability control. As you hop inside the car you can see that this one has 59,780 miles. Instrument cluster is nice and clean. Steering wheel is in nice shape as well. No scuffs or scrapes or major wear on that. Bluetooth audio controls on the left side there. AM FM CD player and your climate controls are right there. This is a five speed manual transmission. Passenger side floor mat is in nice condition as well and the passenger side seat. No rips, no tears. Smells very clean in this car. I don't think it's ever been smoked in and the headliner is in nice shape as well and you do have your map lights up there. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we will check out under the hood. The back seats are just as clean as the front seats. They do have the latch child safety system in them for your child car seats and rear floor mats are very clean as well. No rips or tears back here and like I said these seats do fold down for extra storage. And we'll take a quick look under the hood. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today hopefully from this HD video. We will have gotten a really good idea of the overall condition of the car so you can make a smart buying decision. Under the hood we have the 1.6 liter four cylinder motor, 109 horsepower. Engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth. This car has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off and this car is 100% ready to go. To see more pictures of this car 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 summit auto. Remember to like, subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact in a second you'll see a link to subscribe to our youtube channel on your left and link to more used inventory 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 check us out and we really look forward to helping you with this super clean 2015 Nissan Versa Note. Thanks again.


Hi everyone, happy new release day. I'm Joe for jatsbeescasebrakes.com and that is 2020 2021 Panini impeccable basketball three box pick your team number two a Very big thanks to all of these people who bought their team straight up Thank you For spending a bit of your Wednesday with us. There's everybody else appreciate you getting in it was Ben with that last spot mojo raptors so thanks to him and And you notice those R&B's right there. We pulled out some teams and turned them into a serial number break So it works just like our number block breaks, but for that set of teams and only in pick your team, too We'll set that over here And here we go. Here's 2020 2021 impeccable basketball and in the background you got Hawks at Sixers in the background For start fourth quarter 737 left in game five here I think the Sixers are up by 20 at one point now the Hawks have battled back now. It's 95 82 The Hawks are trying to make this interesting here. All right. What do we have we have? We have kind of a Merlot colored box a wine colored box Maybe a Bordeaux who knows It's pretty nice. I like the foil the little Diamond patterns in the middle right here. I feel like that's that's new Good luck Is Jopey panicking over the CP3 news? No, he was he checked in a little bit earlier today He seemed to be Seem to be calm for now. Oh So that's the case hit right there. It's the thick card. We're gonna save that to the end It could be a piece of gold and we got a plate in the middle to I don't know if that might be on autograph plate To use this blank card to hide some of the hits. Let's see if that's a base card on the bottom To base cards on the bottom to base cards on the bottom We've got 43 out of 60 Brandon Ingram that will be Paul and the Pelicans 43 out of 75 Kobe white for the bulls the bulls are in a in that number block So bulls three Chicago three, so we go we go by that digit right there if you're not familiar with it So Chicago three is going to be for Chris Chris Maxwell Another Kobe white 20 out of 99 also for Chris starting your Kobe white Impeccable base card PC whether you intended to or not Like the watercolor look in the background here Pretty sharp Robert Woodard the second two-color jersey and autograph 24 out of 25 Sacramento is a number block team. So that goes to Sacramento for And that's for Matthew Sheeran a pretty thick card right here is Adrian Dantley. Oh because I grabbed two cards That Adrian Dantley one of one Pistons autograph Old-school Adrian Dantley pistons picked up straight up by Eric Kuziak Eric out of fives and under get the train whistle All aboard the big head Express Nice, yeah He was he was served as the top target Utah for years and shifted to the supporting role when he joined Isaiah Thomas and the Pistons in 86 87 pretty solid And then I grabbed a Jaden McDaniels 14 out of 25 rookie signatures for the T Wolves And that's a number block team Minnesota for Matthew Sheeran is that autographed the plate is autographed stainless stars on plate autograph Kira Lewis jr. For the pelicans Paul Norden with the pals 22 out of 25 and The Hawks have cut it down to single digits All right in the final hit. Oh Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 9 out of 10 illustrious autograph for Mark and the Lakers my Lakers go Lakers That's a great auto Next and I really do like that Like the thick brushstrokes in the background It's a sharp design Here is just a thin metal card right here. You a lot of years. They give you some blank cards down there But I guess not this year. Let's do this card first James Harden stainless stars 11 out of 49 Brooklyn Nets goes to Michael Redemption on the bottom any guests on the redemption and the Lamello ball on top 38 out of 60 Hornets picked up straight up by Matthew Sheeran. I'm sure these base cards carry a nice bit of value I'm sure the lower-numbered cards will carry even more value even if it's a base No, no, no relic. No auto And officially named rookie of the year Yeah, Kristoff for Zingis 47 out of 75 That's a Diego Dallas Buddy healed 18 out of 99 for the Kings Kings 8 Chris Maxwell And there's Al Harrington indelible ink 45 out of 99 Pacers Chris with Indiana. Oh, and a looks like we got a blockchain card here Carmelone Now that's got to be It's silver HOF logo. I mean they wouldn't put it. They wouldn't put Lakers Carmelone, right? Let me just double-check group rate checklist calm. It's got to be jazz Yeah, jazz This I'm just making sure sometimes Panini gets goofy and they just want to mix things up a little bit It's got a check Logan got to make sure We'll see Utah in action a little bit later tonight Actually after this game All right, so that goes to Diego and the jazz Next few here is it got mr. Wendell Canvas creations It's nice. I love that love that paint look in the background 10 out of 10 Wendell Carter, Jr For the bulls bulls are a number block team. So that goes to bull zero Chris Maxwell. This is Idris Elba. I think doing the Voice over here. I like how he says that's great That's great That's great 37 out of 49 Tim Hardaway Warriors usually with Golden State a couple more here or one more and then the nice SGA Eight out of 25 commemorating the okc Raptors victory on the 29th of December in 2019 No, I guess I guess he won But I wish they put some score details on here Maybe a little description about what he did in the game Supposedly we can look it up ourselves later That goes to the number block team. So that goes to okc eight and that's for Chris Maxwell We got stainless stars autographs. I think those are one of the metal cards card 18 and It's oh Oh, oh Obi-Wan Obi-Toppin there we go Justin Clement had guessed Obi-Toppin so There you go Justin Good guess you got bragging rights now So that's for New York and that's actually a number block team So that goes to zero that goes to Chris Maxwell. There you go Chris. Thanks for getting to that number block. All right third and final box We've got more in the store The next pick your team requires two of those number block randomizers that we had to do. Let's do that You're welcome Chris. Thank you for getting in the ah wish the nuggets if they had Jamal Murray 23 out of 99 could have been a completely different different outlook on that team Denver that's gonna be for Jeff Levitt They're looking pretty good. I'll be back next year. They'll be back in the mix our last box I thought this game was over folks, but now it's 104 98 with a few minutes left There's a lot of time left in the the Hawks can is a tray young bucket the Hawks have closed it down to four of four point Wow There's four out of 60 Westbrook Russell Westbrook for Jake Kirby and the Wizards. So the Wizards are gonna be looking for a new coach I don't think the coach necessarily got fired. They seem to suggest that that they were working on an extension They just couldn't agree on on years and terms and stuff like that. So This Carmelo Anthony 19 out of 75 Trailblazers that'll be for Brennan the Wizards coach was like I'd like five years We'll give you one. How about four years? We'll give you one All right, never mind. There's DeMar de Rosen 12 out of 99 there DeMar de Rosen Spurs 12 so spurs to Chris Maxwell We got Richard Jefferson 49 out of 99 indelible ink. This is Nets edition going to Michael P Doing a lot of a lot of TV Richard Jefferson There's Wodoka. I was a Buike 41 and feel free to use the entire canvas the next time. Oh duke We'll see the jazz after this game Tray young with the ball Men and a half left Does the old bump into the eyeball and get the foul You got to change that rule, right? Diego with the jazz I feel like they're gonna change that rule next year the guys just kind of falling into the person and then saying at the three-point line That's a foul There's Theo Maladon That's a nice bit of color pop into that window 83 out of 99 elegance patch auto for the thunder thunder a number of lock team So that'll go to thunder three Chris Maxwell and Nice Hall of Fame auto Ray Allen This is what it's all about. Yeah, it's a good mix of vets good mix of rookies And then you see guys like this six out of 18 Ray Allen Miami heat edition going to Joe Christian. That's pretty sharp and The last one is gonna be Anthony Edwards I was gonna say all we need is like a top-tier rookie And this will be a hell of a break to color patch on card autograph Anthony Edwards your number one overall pick 22 out of 25 Kind of a cool way does the does the a right there good penmanship for the rook as well So that's Minnesota to Chris Maxwell Congrats to you 22 out of 25 to color Jersey and autograph elegance Jersey and auto and Anthony Edwards But wait, there's more we still have this And the case hit it's a piece of silver. I See logo man silver Number to 20. I think It's BAM out of bio 10 out of 20 for Joe Christian and the heat BAM out of bio Some fine silver and the NBA logo man printed right there. That's pretty awesome What a great break ladies and gentlemen, we've got more of this impeccable in the store so go and check it out on jasperyscasebrakes.com's to small example of some of the Old-school guys that you can hit a new school guys that you can hit the case hits you can hit And a lot more. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us I'm Joe for jasperyscasebrakes.com and I'll see you next time for the next impeccable break. Bye. Bye


Welcome back to the BU News Services coverage here at the Zimmerman lab inside the College of Communications a full-scale production of midterm election coverage is underway with a close eye on social media and what Americans are saying on Twitter. We're trying to get a sense about whether if we measure how people are expressing their feelings in these tweets and draw from that whether they are for or against a particular candidate whether we might be able to learn from just social media from eavesdropping on social media which way the public is going to go in a particular election. Crimson Hexagon is a social media moderating software that tracks mentions engagements and impression keeping its hands on the pulse of America. It's kind of the first of its kind you know what I mean we're on Facebook live we're tracking with this software as Dean Schiedler explained we're tracking how voters are feeling about candidates and how voters are feeling about you know the big races and how much activity there is on social media. We could try and you know do some analysis and maybe tie it to the election results so this is all very experimental we're not really sure you know how it's going to work out but you know really excited to actually be able to try doing something like this. Here at BU News Service a group of about 20 faculty and students are using Patty Edge social media software to change this election and how future elections will be covered. I am Barry Reyes for BU News.


Once upon a time in the city of Cranbrook a grade five class based their biggest challenge yet they chose to band together and Let's find out more We're here at Gordon Terrace elementary school in Cranbrook, BC Celebrating the fact that we are into seven months of a very creative project that two Innovative hard-working dedicated teachers took on to support some struggling readers in grade five since September When we put our daily schedule up on the board the kids groaned when they saw reading Seven months ago. I didn't like reading. I thought it was boring There was no reading going on at all and it didn't It looked like behavior and it wasn't behavior We started looking around the room and we started seeing Fake reading they didn't understand, you know why they couldn't read and They felt alone, but in in this class we all Tackled this whole subject as a class and we were all in it together and these teachers got on board started doing a lot of research and Decided that there was something that they needed to do to help these kids so that they could become Successful and confident in their reading abilities. The first thing that we knew we had to do was to get a lot of books at their reading level Because they were boring books in the library that weren't really suitable for them We needed something now and we needed it to be based in research not a canned program and then we needed Money and time and a team. We couldn't do it alone. No, we needed Help so we did not buy into any program. We just used our own teaching abilities And we referred to the research The biggest thing was Realizing that we all have different strategies We changed our classroom library because we noticed right away That books that are lined up on a shelf are not appealing and really difficult to find And so we went to bins and categorized books We are always assessing the kids to see where they're at because we need to know that they're moving We need to know that what we're doing is either working or not working It's really really important that we stress the conferencing Can't just have kids sitting in a classroom reading without that conferencing piece. My teacher usually um Sits me at a table and we read she she asked me what strategies I use and She tells me if I've improved on my reading or I need to work on it some more One of the things we do in class is a book talk. It's good because you've ever Kitchener class can see what the books like and they can try it out for themselves Well, we decided that um for some of the struggling readers that it would be helpful if um We could have an authentic context for them to oral read because they're not comfortable to read out loud Children have to read lots and they need books that are interesting to them. They need to be able to choose I think part of the struggle was she wasn't finding the right books to read Now we're trying to figure out what it is. She's interested in and it seems to keep her involved Now seven months later We have a culture of readers in seven months. My child has gone from reading picture books to chapter books I love to read. I read like An hour and a half at home. I'm supposed to read like I'm not supposed to be But it's usually at least half an hour And then I usually read like two hours because I'm caught the book And I think one of the biggest things is there is a sense of safety In the classroom. It's okay to be reading all different novels at all different levels that at different times The other day we had a presentation And we missed our reading time when I was going to put it in the afternoon And they said well, we got enough time to read before recess. Can we read now? We prefer to read now. So they're making decisions As a result of this I would hope that we've been able to share this innovative practice with All our schools and hopefully that they could have a look at this and adapt Some of the things they're doing to the the needs of of their kids in their school We believe all kids can read they have the ability to learn to grow. We just have to figure out How to reach each individual child with their reading and what works for them Because with every child there's something different that's going to turn them on to reading That's going to be the way to get them to read and whether it's reading one on one and going through word strategies Or it's reading out loud to them to hook them into that perfect book But every child can learn to read


So welcome to the third podcast in our series, exploring locally led adaptation, taking locally led adaptation global. My name is Barak Sohns, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development. And I'm in the unenviable position of taking over from our previous host, Aditya Bahadur, who's taken me through the last two podcasts in this series. So wish me a bit of luck. So you're joining me for a more conversational podcast, exploring the role that global climate policy plays in supporting locally led adaptation. So we're connecting the global to local level action. A bit of background, at the January climate adaptation summit, more than 40 major international and local organizations publicly endorsed eight principles for locally led adaptation. These set out good practice for shifting the way climate finance is delivered. And adaptation action is supported, including increasing devolved decision making, better addressing structural inequalities, providing more patient and predictable funding to local actors, investing in local institutions and their capabilities, building a robust understanding of climate risk that draws on local knowledge, traditional and indigenous knowledge, enabling flexible programming and learning, ensuring transparency and collaborative action. Now the shift to locally led adaptation action is gaining momentum. Over 50 organizations have now endorsed these eight principles, and they have recently gained support from the UK COP26 presidency and the G7 finance ministers. There is real momentum growing behind this action up to COP26. So today's discussion places a firm eye on COP26 in Glasgow in November, exploring the role that global climate policy is and should play in shifting towards more locally led adaptation. Global climate policy obviously includes the UN Convention on Climate Change itself, the Paris Agreement, which are all incredibly important for setting global climate ambition and providing a framework for adequate finance, technical and capacity building assistance to the developing countries that need it most. Today, we're incredibly lucky to be joined by four amazingly diverse guests to discuss the role that climate policy has and should play in supporting more locally led adaptation on the ground. Our first guest is Ayesha Constable, who is in the National Adaptation Plan Coordinator within Antigua and Barbuda's Department of Environment within the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment. Ayesha, welcome. Thank you very much, Merrick, and thank you for the opportunity to share on the work that we're doing around adaptation in the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Environment in Antigua and Barbuda. And as much as it's a government entity, we are certainly advocates for locally led adaptation. Fantastic, Ayesha. And our second guest is Eileen Marionette Cunningham, who's a member of CADB, the Centre for Autonomy and Development of Indigenous Peoples in Nicaragua, and is the Developing Countries Active Observer for the Green Climate Fund. Eileen, welcome. Thank you, Merrick, for your invitation for this podcast. I think it's a great opportunity to share with all of you what Indigenous people have been doing around the globe about adaptation. Actually, I'm also a part of a local Indigenous WOMA organization in the border of Nicaragua and Honduras, that is one Kittagini organization, and we have a lot of experience in adaptation in our region. Thank you. Eileen Marionette, fantastic. Thank you very much. Our third guest is Joshua Ampinson, who is Executive Director for the Green Africa Youth Organization and a Youth Fellow at the Global Centre on Adaptation. Joshua, welcome. Thank you very much, Merrick. I'm happy to be here. Yes, I'm Joshua. And for the past couple of years, I've been focusing on youth engagement in climate adaptation at the local and international level, supporting private sector organizations, and also national policies in terms of how young people would be better engaged in climate adaptation. Welcome, Joshua. It's a pleasure to be joined by Mamadou Nadia, a former negotiator for Bikini Faso in the UNIFCCC, and a former advisor to the Prime Minister's office on the Green Climate Fund. Mamadou has been an expert in finance, adaptation, capacity building, national adaptation planning, and loss and damage. It's a pleasure, Mamadou, to be joined by you today. Thank you, sir. You rightly introduced myself. I would add that I'm actually operating as the LDC chair advisor, member of the LDS group, and I'm also an independent expert at the national and international level. Thank you, Mamadou. So, to our first question to the panel, Ayesha, why do you think local adaptation is so important? In my own experiences, I find that local communities are certainly on the front lines of climate change, not just as victims, I must add, but as power agents who are shaping the outcomes of climate change processes and are using indigenous knowledge and the resources available to them to enhance their own resilience. And so it's important that any process that seeks to address what happens at the local level engages local communities and local groups. Also, as we know, climate change, as much as it's a global phenomenon, has very unique impacts at the local level, which are shaped by local circumstances and not just physical circumstances, but also issues related to the economic situation, other social issues at the local levels. And so to take one-size-fits-all approach to adaptation planning is to exclude inadvertently some of these unique realities that are happening and shaping responses in our communities at the local level. And again, in that respect, wanting to ensure the principles of justice and equity and inclusiveness in all the work that we do around climate change means also giving space to these communities and groups that are otherwise excluded from this process. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Ayesha. And Eileen, you, as you mentioned, you work with indigenous organizations, including women's-led indigenous groups. From your context, why is local-led adaptation so important to achieve climate resilience societies? The reality is adaptation is really not a new concept for indigenous people. We have seen around the globe that indigenous people have been adapting to the environment for centuries. And I think that now the problem is that this is coming so rapidly. So local-led adaptation is so important for indigenous people. And Ayesha just says not only for indigenous, I think it's for a different ethnic around the world, because this current situation and our territories are the reflection of this climate impact that is not only affecting our resources or territories or lands, it's also affecting our way of life or livelihood. So what we have seen around is that this climate change is undermining our livelihood, but also the policies and action that are not including indigenous people or local community to address the climate change. We are left behind, are left aside of all this negotiation. And indigenous people think it's important to be part of the adaptation process of the adaptation action, because we have a lot of knowledge. Ayesha also already said about this. Indigenous people have a specific knowledge, a specific action that maybe the state can take into account that can be part of policies and scale up in global space. And we also think it's important in all this adaptation process that the effective participation of the actors should be in place. Most of the action that adaptation for climate change are taking place in our lands and territories. And how is indigenous people left aside if this is like that? So for us it's really important, because it's our lands, it's not only a space where we live, it has the basis of our culture, the basis of our survival as indigenous people. Thank you so much. Mamadi. Locally led adaptation is very important, because since the beginning of the negotiations, developing countries, including Burkina Faso, advocated that we are always impacted, affected by climate change. The first reaction we have to add is really to first adapt and secondly think how we can mitigate the emissions. So since the beginning of the negotiations, my country knew that adaptation is very crucial, very important for us. So locally led adaptation is very important because it will identify vulnerable people, vulnerable regions that are impacted by climate change. So talking about locally led adaptation means that we have to make distinctions between those living for us at the capital and those who are suffering at the grass root level, I mean the communities and villages. So to me actually, if we would like to address the issue of adaptation, let's go at the grass root level. Let's go to the communities where people are really working under a sort of, I would call it, or living with difficulties without any substantial means in order to survive. So actually, when we talk about food security, we think first to local communities. So to me, locally led adaptation is very crucial in that context. Thank you Mamadou. Joshua, you have represented but also mentored young people in increasing their representation in global and local climate processes. From the perspective of youth engagement and youth representation, why do you think locally led adaptation is so important? Thank you very much, Marek. When it comes to locally led climate adaptation, the essence of it, and I'm going to draw back to one of the principles of locally led action, which is understanding risk and uncertainty, because the climate issue is huge and their vulnerability differs from one place to the other and even from one individual to other. It becomes very essential that within local communities, young people particularly are more interested to see what are the future holds for them, what can they do to support in terms of adaptation and building resilience and facilitating how they can work together with different stakeholders to strengthen the resilience of their communities as well as be able to protect their own future and reduce their risk as well. So that becomes very essential. The international level could do policies and could set certain agendas, but it's going to come down to actions that are taken locally to protect livelihoods and from the perspective of young people to ensure that there is intergenerational equity, that young people have a future, that they deserve. Thank you so much, Joshua. And you've touched upon the role of global climate policy. You're being engaged and interacting with global climate policy in slightly different ways. Ayesha in the planning process for climate change that was enacted under the Cancun adaptation framework in national adaptation plans. And Eileen, you obviously are representative for civil society organizations in one of the main financial mechanisms of the Green Climate Fund to support developing countries in their climate action. Joshua, you have both represented and supported youth engagement in global climate forums, including a conference of the parties for the UNFCCC. Firstly, Ayesha, these global climate policy frameworks, why are they so important for influencing what happens on the ground in terms of adaptation? These frameworks, they set the tone for what happens at every level of climate governance. The Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC, they determine what the priorities are globally. They help to shape the priorities that funding entities eventually adopt. They also help to set the framework within which governments operate and within which entities such as the Green Climate Fund operate. So they play a significant role in setting the foundation for planning and climate governance globally. I suppose that in doing that, however, the gap there is in making the connection between what is happening at that highest level of decision making and what is happening in terms of climate impacts at the local levels. And so sometimes there's a disconnect. However, if frameworks such as these global frameworks set the right precedent, that connection becomes very important in terms of establishing whatever parameters in which climate change happens and climate change planning takes place. And in a big way as well, the global policies determine what national governments and regional governments do around climate change implementation and governance. So it is important that these frameworks be in place to ensure a very streamlined approach. But it is also important that we identify the entry points in all these frameworks for the integration of considerations that are unique to local communities and find ways to give local communities an opportunity to shape these processes so that they're not just on the receiving end of whatever is determined at the COP, but the decisions and the outcomes of those processes are tailored to meet their unique challenges. And I believe that Eileen said it very well in terms of it's not just a matter of how do local communities benefit from these decision making processes, but how does the broader framework of planning benefit from the knowledge and the experience that local communities have honed and harnessed over the years by virtue of having done this for centuries just for their survival. That's really interesting to hear about how climate policy in your opinion gets sets the tone for what I guess what support is provided, but also sets the tone for climate action on the ground. Eileen, from your perspective, how does global climate policy actually interact with the constituencies that you support for their adaptation on the ground? As Aisha already said, these global policies should be the guideline for action in our national level. And what we see is that one of the main challenges is that the lack of funding to implement the adaptation policy arrives in many cases. And without this stable financial flow, it will affect this implementation and national level. And about all, we have a clear guideline for implementation with the participation of local stakeholders as indigenous people, we will be having incipient action that will not achieve a resolution for the current climate problem. So for us it's important that these policies that are defined for the implementation of the adaptation process understand that these schemes are not only unidirectional. We have seen for decades that most of these actions came from top down to our communities, to our territories. And I think that that is a moment to change this idea. And as I say, there is a serious experience and process that we can show that also can be scaled up at national and international, at global level. And I think this process can be enriched with the action from the local level. For indigenous people, we talk about complementarity. And I think this can also can apply in this case, because if we don't change this top down scheme, the complementarity cannot be done. And with the inclusion of the bottom up vision, we will see that we can work together, we can work with a collective vision and not individually or with this idea of overlapping ideas. I think indigenous people in adaptation issues, we also are talking about the importance of work together, to work together with all their different stakeholders. We think in this process, it's important all the alliance to work and have a good outcome. We see in the UNFCCC, the local community and the indigenous people platform that is a supportive institution, especially because the link that we want to establish with the organizational base and the issues of adaptation to climate change. So I think we have a great opportunity to include other stakeholders in this process. And also I think activities, program and project action should be carried out with the local level, with the grassroots level organization. Because the impact of adaptation, you can only measure at local level. And adaptation should be planted and should be a result of a political decision in our countries. So it's important to have this consensus effort and planning to achieve certain objective and should result in some changes in institutional changes, in behavior changes and adjustment of technology in our countries. So for us, it's so important, the global policy, because this can bring changes at the local level also. But we really think it's important to have a dialogue. We say for indigenous people, it's a dialogue of knowledge. So that is something that we want to raise in this issue. Thank you, Eileen. Could you give us an example of how global climate policy specifically can support local-led adaptation, whether it be in its support of frameworks for finance, technical assistance or capacity building? So how global climate policy can actually affect the support for local-led adaptation on the ground? Global climate policy can bring many assets, many supports to locally-led adaptation. The examples I can provide from my experience is when we negotiated the national adaptation programs of actions, the global climate policy frameworks has been called upon to assist vulnerable countries, mainly seeds and LDCs, to cope with climate change. And the process helped us to formulate some guidelines on how we can address the nappas. So based on that, all least developed countries had the opportunity to design their national adaptation plan of actions. At this stage, 98 or 99 percent of LDCs have formulated their nappas, and among them, around 70 percent of them have been funded by Jeff because within the nappas we have been invited to make a list of priority actions that could help us to cope with climate change but at the grassroot level. So this is one example of how the global climate policy could promote locally-led adaptation. Thank you Mamadou. So Joshua, why do you think global climate policy is so important for influencing climate action on the ground, including the representation and engagement with young people? Thanks very much. When I think of global policies and at the international level when policies are adopted, how it filters down to local action and particularly engagement of young people, it's basically the ambition and the hopes of new policies. So when there's a lot of concern, a lot of anxiety around, particularly when it comes to climate change and the uncertainty of the future that is ahead of us and why adaptation is very important, when we have policies at the international level that sets very high ambitions, it's really get everyone up on their toes to act. And I think that is very, very important. When global policies are not ambitious enough, I think governments and of course decision makers and actors are relying on that to say, I've done my fair share of it, I've contributed an extra amount of money, I've put strategies in place as it is demanded by this global policy. And if those policies are very, very ambitious, then a lot of young people can write on that to also not just advocate for what they think they need, but also what globally has a consensus on to say that, okay, the Paris Agreement calls for XYZ and this is what I'm going to push my local government to do. And as an individual, I'm going to also use this policy to guide my actions because not everyone will be on top of the science, on top of the technical details. But when you get global policies adopted and they are being communicated in the most simple way for everyone to know that, okay, for the next five years, for the next 10 years, for the next 20 years, this is what we're going to collectively as a group try to do. It really helps others who are not really on the same page to be able to use those key words and key messages to take action. The other bit of that is just adaptation in general. I mean, adaptation, if you look at adaptation pathways, we need to look at all variety, variety of options we have in addressing floods and addressing droughts, addressing heat waves, cyclones, and when you have all these options, it becomes important that we are able to look at best practices over the years and see how to improve on those and also then facilitate knowledge exchange, which is a main pillar of adaptation. And that becomes essential in global policy because then global policy will rely on what different countries are doing, pull all of that together to be able to draw a path and say that, okay, after a year of experiencing these hazards and these impacts of climate change, it is essential that we prioritize these key efforts. So if you look at the specifically, if you look at the funding gap for adaptation and at the global level, this is a huge topic. This is allowing every young person to be able to say that we need equal amount of funding coming to adaptation. This amount goes mitigation and even in some contexts, we need more money for adaptation than mitigation because mitigation receive a lot more funds over the past years. The global consensus on this or the global policy direction could then put more sort of ambitions behind why adaptation needs to be prioritized. If I look at previous years, a lot of advocacy from young people have been on mitigation because it came easier because a lot of global conversations were on mitigation, compensation of carbon offset and carbon markets. So a lot of young people were also advocating along these lines, reducing our footprint. But now that there is sort of focus on adaptation and resilience towards a global event like COP, a lot of young people also sort of getting more information about it and advocating around that. And I see this to be very, very essential in terms of getting the global conversation to set a certain agenda and it's filtering down to local communities and every young person being able to leverage on that to advocate at the local level. Thank you, Joshua. Now you touched on the COP, the conference of the parties that this year will take place in Glasgow in the United Kingdom in November and it's I guess one of the key moments to reflect on the ambition that was set by the Paris Agreement. Now you've all mentioned some incredibly important topics of why global climate policy impacts on adaptation on the ground, whether that be providing the strategy to bring people together, setting the right ambition and tone providing adequate finance both to do what is needed but also to address historical injustices but also to provide accountability. Briefly, what could you touch upon what we would like to see happen? What could global climate policy be doing better to actually impact and support local adaptation on the ground? Ayesha, do you want to touch on that? I suppose that the current efforts, though commendable, are not foolproof and they certainly have not addressed all the challenges that exist and they have not supported in every single way all that needs to be done to ensure the integration of local level concerns and the concerns of marginalised and vulnerable groups fully. Eileen mentioned the Indigenous People's Platform of the UNFCCC and there are other mechanisms and clauses that make reference to these considerations in terms of vulnerable peoples and relevant issues concerning these communities but what we have seen is that even in those instances where these frameworks are put in place, there are loopholes and there are instances where they don't get due consideration at the national level. I'd like to thank thankfully that in the case of Antigone Barbuta and with the work that the GOE is doing, we subscribe wholeheartedly to these principles but also in wanting to ensure that we don't just do it in principle but in practice and so there are different opportunities created for local level input for engaging stakeholders at every level in every aspect of the decision making and in some instances we even go beyond the recommendations from these policy frameworks bearing in mind or understanding of the local context and the need to fully integrate those unique concerns. One of the challenges I find with the current framework espoused by the UNFCCC for instance and with the funding mechanism which is the GCF is that in many instances there is such a focus on playing by specific rules in streamlining the processes and operations through accredited entities in the case of the GCF which usually must have in place some very strict fiduciary mechanisms so that communities on the ground are unable to tap into these opportunities because they can't meet those checkboxes. The NAP for Antigone Barbuta the National Adaptation Plan which we are currently developing isn't in fact funded by the UNFCCC or rather the GCF. The NAP is funded by the GCF and what we have sought to do recognizing that it does not effectively allow for local communities and community groups and these unregistered unestablished entities to access this funding on their own is we are being that bridge we're making that link to these communities through or initiatives and so we've created through the different processes that support the implementation of the NAP opportunities for different communities to participate in this process to share their experiences to you know offer their guidance in terms of what the local level issues are and also to shape the outcomes of the process. So I suppose in in kind of summing that up that the main challenge that I would observe in my line of work and from where I sit in this space is the lack of mechanisms through these global policies to render direct benefits to local communities and so the challenge then becomes or the onus is then on entities that do have access to these opportunities and mechanisms to ensure that we create space and opportunities for these communities to be involved in this process that we recognize your issues report on their issues and create you know systems and processes that allow for free and fair participation in all the work that we're doing and and hopefully by doing that and over time it sends a message and establishes a principle that can at another point in time possibly be adopted by these global frameworks we don't want to act as gatekeepers really we want therefore there to be systems that allow for that you know shifting of power to these local communities so they can on their own effectively participate and and lead in in their own right. Thank you Aisha. So Aisha's mentioned I guess a real need to address the access challenges that currently exist that are provided by the convention in many cases the Green Climate Fund which is the world's largest climate fund. Eileen you represent civil society organizations as an active observer on the Green Climate Fund Board. What do you think the Green Climate Fund is the main financial mechanism of the convention and the Paris Agreement could be doing better to address challenges in supporting local adaptation? The Green Climate Fund can do so much of things differently and do better in so much issues. I think I echo what Aisha said the Green Climate Fund is really not a friendly structure doesn't have a friendly structure for local communities to have access to funds and the Green Climate Fund have a safeguarding place have the Indigenous people policy in place so that's supposed to be a really robust policies in place in the Green Climate Fund but what we see is that is still focused on financial and business as usual even if they talk about paradigm chief more participation in the guide in the principle guideline of the Green Climate Fund it say that should be a very transparent and with equal participation at national level of women, youth, Indigenous people and other stakeholders but the reality is that Green Climate Fund is still behind all these these processes and in this case I think it's important that the Green Climate Fund look the process at national level guide the national designate authority to work with other stakeholders because when you go to this international process your government representatives are always open to talk with you but when you came back to the countries you just find closed doors so it's important the Green Climate Fund the secretariat the board members work in this so that the these local communities these Indigenous people that is so difficult for Indigenous people and local community to follow up all this process can have a space at national level I think that is really important I think of course the Green Climate Fund have been doing some baby steps to better some situation but there's still a lot of situation that can be get better inside that's why we are working there that's why Indigenous people are follow up all these the CSOs organization are really active in the process of follow up this and we we think a better GCF can can be can be in play thanks Eileen I should you want to come back on that yeah I would Eileen has made some very good points and I think it's evident that there are some systemic limitations you know in terms of the the GCF as a funding mechanism but the reality is that there are there is room rather for governments to work with with local communities and it might not be outright stipulated in some instances and in others it is but it leaves room sometimes with national governments to do as they please really to whether or not they're feeling inclined to work with local communities or whether or not they believe that working with a local community might slow down the process and they're hurrying to make submissions to the GCF or another funding entity and checking off these boxes and and doing that due process would inadvertently add more time and and take more resources for them to engage but the reality is or the the recommendation rather is that we find ways to lobby our governments to make room for local communities and Indigenous communities in the case of Eileen to ensure that their voices are represented and not leave it to them to you know determine whether or not they want to or feel inclined to work with us in a particular occasion because the fact is that even with the limits in some of these global policies local governments national governments do have it within their remit to take the opportunity and include local communities thanks Ayesha Eileen I think it's important this part because the green cam iPhone have this readiness program and Indigenous people have always said that the readiness is not only just to prepare the country to receive funds from the green climate fund it's also to prepare local stakeholders Indigenous people so it's important that the government including this readiness process Indigenous people women youth and other stakeholders local communities and I think as I just say the lobby at national level is really important issue when we talk about green climate fund I know it's difficult in some cases but if you advocacy it's difficult always so it's a process and can be done in a time so it's important this and I think we have seen in different part of the of the globe that at national level if you advocate with your national designate authority you're going to have some changes you're going to have opportunities to to to participate in the process we have seen in Latin America this Nicaragua by example took part of their readiness to make this a dialogue with Indigenous people with accredited entities with private sector I think it was really a good example how the readiness and how things can change that in the green climate fund and this set really a ton for other dialogue at national level now Colombia have a participation of Indigenous people and one of the project that was approved in last November so I think it's important also that about the the national advocacy with the with your national with your national designated authority thank you thank you Eileen and over to Joshua you've been as I as we mentioned you've been supporting youth activism on climate change and engagement in both global and local climate processes including in Ghana what I guess is your experience of of the youth being and children being able to actually being recognized as an important stakeholder in climate finance processes obviously we we now have at the green climate fund the world's one of the world's largest NGO international NGOs save the children have been accredited to the to the green climate fund which may open up opportunities but what's your experiences from your perspective you know I've been listening to the conversation it's very interesting on both sides to start with the question my the first thing that comes to my head is accessibility to whom and facilitated by who there's always going to be a level of accessibility institutions are going to restructure to give room for to ensure that the upgrading but we should recognize that when it comes to adaptation there is structural inequalities and this need to be paid attention to and sort of supporting traditional structures to take care of the needs of groups that have not has that have not had the opportunity to tap into resources traditionally is not going to necessarily work so on a personal note from my side and from from the networks I represent and for majority of young people and here I talk about the it's a question of scale so the fact that there might be opportunity for one entity or two entities at a global level to be able to engage somewhere it doesn't cut it it doesn't really fix it yet we need institutions to to significantly transform one example is the adaptation fund I mean I've been engaging with the adaptation fund for for quite some time now after the the 2019 report on the the youth and climate adaptation the adapt for our future report we started conversation around climate finance for young people and innovative finance and scheme what could this look like so there was a fund which was then launched by adaptation fund together with with ctcn in Copenhagen and with UNDP to make it possible that you could apply to the fund without going through your your NDE a national designated entity because it's not always the case that young people and certain categories or certain group of people can reach the the NDE at a country level and then be able to discuss a project and have the NDE endorse it and go to take it forward to a GCF or or the adaptation fund so we really need to open up the space and to make it possible that groups that are facing the qualities in the accessibility to funding could have a direct link to how to assess these funds we're done necessarily having to go through a sort of different levels of governance or structures by these institutions it makes it limiting it makes it much more difficult and even most importantly there should be a quota there should be a quota within GCF within AF within all the multilateral funds and the and the banks to say that okay within a year this is how much of the funds that goes to you focus that goes to say indigenous focus that goes to this really acknowledging that there are specific groups that you need to highlight that they need direct access to this money and you putting in conscious effort to make sure that they get the money I mean even even putting the structural inequality as per the side globally currently I mean as we talk adaptation finance is not reaching the most vulnerable right if you look at the world disaster report the the 2020 report it states very clearly that top most vulnerable country 20 countries are not the ones receiving the highest per person funding when it comes to disasters so that is even a bigger question then if you want to zoom in into specific groups that are likely not to have influence in accessibility to these funds it's even become a bit more critical so I know that these institutions are really doing their best and putting in effort it's just that more could be done so I agree with Aisha more could be done from my side I think direct assesses needed supporting Aileen on the aspect of the GCF and sort of the structures I think these structures need to evolve much faster it needs to evolve way much faster because the issue at hand is critical it keeps the speed of the climate impact on societies it's way faster than the speed of how institutions are evolving so this is sort of the speed we need to go in terms of institutions transforming to enhance accessibility to funding by everybody thank you so much Joshua so I'm hearing very strong messages from all of you about what needs to change and what needs to happen for the global system to better support climate action on the ground and local adaptation that it's about one of the big issues is accessibility to finance about supporting more direct access to that finance but also importantly better democratization of climate finance so ensuring that youth indigenous peoples and non-state actors alongside public sector institutions can access this finance more directly to actually finance the solutions that they've as Aileen put it so clearly at the beginning they've been implementing for decades on the ground longer than decades so that's very very clear with a firm eye on COP26 in November that's coming up could I just to wrap up can I ask you all just to give me what's your one big thing you would like to see coming out of COP26 to really make progress on the issue these issues Aisha over to you first I think for us as a small island developing state I would be completely remiss to not say that it's raising the profile of adaptation we see that as a major priority and based on my work in that field I also recognize that a small percentage of what has been allocated to adaptation in terms of funding has come to sit and so we want to see that rectified and we want to see the resources allocated for adaptation planning to go to the countries that are most in need and also we want to see any opportunity to integrate local adaptation in that process exploited thanks fantastic thanks Aisha Aileen what's your one big thing for COP26 I think for indigenous people it's also important the issues of the really implementation of the platform of local communities and indigenous people that is the opportunity that we have to be interlocutors in this global negotiation but we think here is important to have a greater dynamics related to financial access and resource for the operational of this a platform of local communities indigenous people and in this issue it's also important the to promote platform a regional level we have we work in indigenous people issues with seven social cultural regions so we think it's important to have in every one of this region a platform that can bring all this knowledge traditional knowledge of indigenous people or or knowledge for adaptation to the natural environment to the UNFCCC fantastic what kind of outcomes would you be looking for I know that the UK government is trying to set up a task force a task force on access to climate finance I really would make a plea to the UK government that this initiative should not end with the term of office of UK's as co-president because adaptation access to climate finance are very very key in the UNFCCC processes so I would really invite the UK government to accept this challenge to champion adaptation and climate finance beyond its term of office and certainly through UK some additional developed countries will join and Joshua the floor is yours for the final big idea for COP26 really a tough one but your one big outcome you'd like to see thank you my my big one would be increased share of young people as part of the national delegation to COP26 building the capacity of young people making them negotiators bringing them to COP and allowing them to put their needs and their priorities forward at the international decision making table that's it fantastic Joshua so I'm hearing really big again let's see if these outcomes come but it's youth engagement in these international climate negotiations it's these regional dialogues that are feeding into the UNFCCC representing the voices of indigenous peoples and it's getting the allocation of climate adaptation finance much better aligned with the real vulnerabilities on the ground particularly for small and developing states and the least developed countries and ensuring local adaptation principles are integrated into these agendas that's fantastic thank you it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you on these issues


Good morning everyone. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Grand Rounds. I'm Chris Connerty, one of the new interns. And our first talk this morning will be back to the basics elimination techniques by visiting student Joshua Atkinson. He's an MS4 at UT Medical School, Houston. So give him your undivided attention. Thanks, bye. Good morning. I'm Josh Atkinson. Today we're going to be talking about something that everyone here is pretty familiar with, but we're going to have a little bit of fun at the same time. So I actually went to school in Austin, UT Texas, where we take our football very, very seriously. And if you follow football at all, this is two weeks ago, UT versus BYU, didn't go so well. So then I went to med school in Houston, where we have a plethora of new sports teams to follow. The Houston Astros, this is 2013 51 wins to 111 losses. If you are unfamiliar with baseball, that makes them the worst team in the league. Houston Texans, two wins, 14 losses. If you're unfamiliar with football, that makes them the worst team in the league. And the Rockets, they did pretty good. But the one thing that we're really proud of in Houston is the Texas Medical Center. It's the largest medical center in the world. It's over 1,300 acres. It has over 7,000 beds and has over 100,000 employees. If you've never been there, it's a great place to go visit. It's a lot of fun. But anyway, let's get back to the matter at hand. Today we're going to talk about some illumination techniques. And we're going to have a little bit of fun with it too. Okay, so the very first technique we're going to talk about is diffuse illumination. So I have my model of an eye, well, I guess about a third of an eye. And just for fun, let's get this eye a pretty nasty looking nuclear sclerotic cataract. And we're going to need our microscope. We're going to need our light source. And this light source is going to be very broad. And it's going to cover a very large area. So diffuse illumination is really great for getting a kind of overview of ocular surface. Like we have a nice view here of what looks like a pseudomonas keratitis from over wear of contacts. Here's a nice look at conch. Here's a nice look at some lids. It looks like those myobobean glands are pretty clogged. And also if we're going to use our blue filter and look at fluorescein uptake, we'll also use a diffuse illumination technique. And that's that. Very easy. We're going to move on to the one that is probably the most popular to use most, the direct focal illumination. So we have our eye. Okay, it looks like you've got that cataract taken care of. That's good. We have our microscope and our light source. And in order to get it nice and thin, we're going to add a few shutters onto it. So we can get a nice thin beam called a parallel piped, or we can go even thinner and get what's called an optical section. So these sort of techniques are going to help us be able to see kind of the cross section through the cornea. So here's a good example of a optical section going through what looks, it's a band keratopathy. You can kind of see how the staining or the light is being reflected off the superior part of this optical section. So that's a calcium deposits in Bowman's membrane. Okay, here's another good example. We can see kind of on the endothelial side, these pigmented pigments. So this is a case of uveitis. And here's a really good one. I wanted to include this one. First time I saw this, I had no idea what I was looking at. You can see the optical section here, and it kind of stops for a second and starts again. So this is a endothelial transplant graph that's actually come separated off of the cornea. And other things we can use our optical section for is we can tell, we can kind of judge the thickness of this cornea. So things like keratoconus, we'll see thinning. And in this example, we see thinning kind of near the limbis. So this would be Tyrion's marginal degeneration. And also if we make our beam nice and short, we can also use this to check for cell and flare. Okay, so let's move on to some of the fancier techniques.  Okay, for specular reflection, what we're going to do, take our microscope, put it at an angle, our light source at a different angle, and we're going to bounce light directly off this cornea. So the analogy here is if you're standing on the side of a lake and the sun is shining on this lake and you're looking at it, the lake is completely dark except for that one spot where the sun is reflected right to your eyes. And that's called the zone of... So what that means is when you're looking through a microscope you have your optical section here, and this is the reflection that we've lined up with our optical section that's bouncing right back at us. And what that does is any sort of imperfections you see on that surface of that lake, like a wave, ripple, it will not be bright. You won't see that sun shining back at you. So the same sort of principle we have here where these little divots or gutata from a fuchs distrophy don't reflect the light back towards us. So this is a great way to be able to examine an endothelial layer of the cornea. Okay, retro illumination. So our IOL is completely gone now. We're going to... There's two types we're going to talk about. Iris illumination first. This is where we're going to take light, bounce it off of the iris and back towards the cornea where we're examining. So this is really great for looking at vacuoles of edema in the cornea and as well as vessels growing in the cornea as you can see in this really fuzzy example. Here's another good example of retro illumination from the iris and you can see a tear in decimates membrane. So our other method is what we're going to do, retro illumination from the fundus. So we'll have light directly straight on, going straight back to the eye and it will be reflected from the retina. To get a little bit better look of having the light come towards us we're going to go ahead and dilate this patient and looks like retina is going to go back and try to find that lens that fell out. So this is a great way for grading our cataracts. So we can look to see if there's cortical cataracts, a PSC, a PCO. It's just a really great technique. And also you can look to see if there's any sort of retro illumination of the iris like in this case. This is a case of ocular cutaneous albinism which we'll be hearing about a little bit more next. The next technique is indirect lateral illumination. Okay, they found our IOL. We're going to take a light source and shine it just laterally to our lesion. And what that's going to do is light up the entire lesion for us. So you see that we have retro illumination here, direct illumination here, but this whole thing's lit up. So that's indirect lateral illumination. And this is another example of a Pseudomonas keratitis. Here's another good example of indirect lateral illumination. Ethylial ingrass underneath a weighted flap. Same thing as before, retro illumination right here. Indirect illumination and direct focal illumination. Okay, the last technique I'm going to talk about is sclerotic scatter. So what we're going to do is take our light source at a very strong angle, shine it directly into the limbis. And what's going to end up happening is we're going to have a total internal reflection, just like an optic fiber. So this cornea is going to light up very diffusely, the entire thing. And the only way you'll actually see any light come out of it is there's a lesion that kind of changes this angle so light can actually escape and come to us. So you can see here that we have the whole cornea lit up and you can see subtle corneal opacity that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to see. Here's a good example of a MAPDOP fingerprint dystrophy. And as Dr. Tabin always says, the only thing you really need to remember is the acronym, the LIVNUTE. Do you like a better number one or two? Alright, that's it. Here's some bonus pictures. Here's my two boys and my snow bebo that I made a couple years ago up in Park City. Alright, thank you very much.