There's a lot of hype about the health benefits of NMN in humans, but what does the latest science say? Stick around to find out. And be sure to watch to the end of this video to get my take on this study, suggestions for future human NMN studies, and my and Dr. Davidson Claire's personal NMN regimen. A recently published clinical trial of endurance runners found that the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide plus or NAD plus precursor nicotinamide mononucleotide or NMN increases several measures of aerobic capacity. 40 men and eight women endurance runners between the ages of 27 and 50 in China were recruited for the study. For six weeks, participants took either a placebo or 150 milligrams, 300 milligrams, or 600 milligrams of powdered NMN twice per day, once in the morning and once at lunch or in the afternoon prior to a training run. In general, at peak effort, most measures were unchanged with NMN supplementation such as VO2 max, which is the maximum rate of oxygen consumption measured during incremental exercise. That is exercise of increasing intensity, maximum heart rate and peak power. However, subjects showed a dose dependent improvement of fitness at more moderate effort of the first ventilatory threshold or VT1. For example, at VT1 subjects who took 600 milligrams of NMN twice per day had higher VO2 and lower heart rates compared to the lower doses in placebo. Although there was no NMN only group to compare to, it seems likely from previous studies that such a group would have been outperformed by the exercise groups. With this assumption, it can be concluded that the two interventions have a synergistic effect. The double blind placebo controlled study design as well as the dose dependent relationship provide a lot of confidence that NMN truly was responsible for the improvements seen in these subjects. While these results are encouraging, this was only a small study. Subjects were only followed for six weeks were exclusively Chinese, young or middle age, healthy and regular but amateur runners. NMN has shown sex dependent effects in previous studies, but there were not enough female participants to do a separate statistical analysis. So we need much longer term studies with many more people with a wider age and health range included to build on these results. Also, Dr. Davidson Clare has said many times, including in his book, Lifespan, that he takes 1000 milligrams of NMN every morning shaken into his homemade yogurt. This is also the dose that I take just about every morning and I believe it's benefiting my health but I obviously don't know for sure and I'm certainly not recommending that you take NMN. I've also heard sources I deem credible state that NMN is best taken sublingually or underneath the tongue to dissolve and absorb into the blood. Although I'm not sure if this is true so I'd love to see future studies investigate this. I also hope future NMN studies will use this 1000 milligram dose taken at once along with higher and lower doses to help us determine proper dosage. Finally, I hope future investigations will get at the molecular pathways behind the physiological changes observed here. If future studies consider all of these elements then we will certainly have a better understanding of how NMN impacts humans. If you want to learn more about this study then check out Lifespan.io's article by Greg Gillespie in the description and we'll see you in the next video.


So I love to travel, I love to meet new people and I'm going travel through Switzerland and also to Germany. I will not go anywhere, I'm just going to stay in Edinburgh and explore all the beautiful places in the city. I'm actually going back home to Nepal and finally meeting my family after a year. I will definitely go to a revision because I have an exam coming up and probably just hang out with friends. I'll be flying back to India to enjoy my break with my friends and family. I plan to travel around Europe, I plan to go to the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Of course, Disneyland will be so much fun for me. I'm going to be having a company trip with my course. In London, I'm going to be enjoying my time in Edinburgh with a cherry blossom.


Hi, everyone. Happy Saturday. I'm Joe for jashbyscasebrakes.com coming at you at 2021 Panini Contenders draft picks football. Two box random pack break number 15. Very big thanks to this group of people for getting into the action. Thank you. Now we're going to open up. I just grabbed two boxes from the back. Remember we marked those X's so we know they're from the same case. We're going to tag all of the packs and then we'll randomize names, randomize pack numbers and match you up and see what you end up with. Now as always, if you're re-watching this on YouTube, the replay, the video, you can always pass forward through this part. If you're watching live, you're stuck with me watching these sticker up packs. So there's the first six right here and here's the next six. Each pack should have an autograph in it. All right, and the 12th pack is stickered up. All the packs are identified and numbered. Let's flip back to this list right here. So we're going to randomize your names and pack numbers. We're going to randomize both of those lists. Lucky seven times. Six and a one. One, two, three, four, five, six, and a one, seventh and final time. Once more. We've got Gordon down to Gordon. Six and a one, seven times for the packs. One, two, three, four, five, six, and a one, seventh and final time. We have pack four down to pack five. All right, Gordon has pack four, Daniel with pack 11, Jake with pack 10, Richard with seven and 12, Anthony with eight and nine, Richard with one, Anthony with six, Daniel with three, Karen with two, and Gordon with five. How should I do these? I think I'll just do these. We've been just doing these in alphabetical order. That might be the easiest way to do it. So Anthony, we'll get your few packs going first, then Daniel with a couple packs, Gordon with a couple packs, Jake, Karen, and then Richard with a few packs right here. I'm also going to print labels for this. So fast forward or standby for just a little bit. We'll just keep the video running. Saturday, the 5th, June 5th. This says contenders, draft picks, FB football, RP, random pack, number 15. All right, so Anthony, you've got a few packs. Daniel, you're on deck. So, Anthony, I have eight, nine, six, eight, nine, and six. Good luck. All carship, of course, and we've got a CJ Marable. Marable? Not sure, but the running back. Going to Anthony. Actually, I do like kind of looking up, seeing where these guys were drafted since we have a little bit of time. Let's take a look. 2021 NFL draft. I don't think he was drafted. Did he get picked up by a team? That's Torrance Marable. What about CJ? No, I think he's with the Bears. So, undrafted free agent ended up with the Bears. All right, pack nine. And we've got a Jalen Phillips from the U. He looks pretty happy. He's a defensive end with the football in his hands. That's a good sign. Jalen Phillips is a first round pick. That's right. Dolphins, 18th overall. Dolphins are hoping he makes ends up with the football a lot of times just like that. And here we have a Devonta Smith. Wow, a dual autograph. Matt Jones and Devonta Smith. Collegiate collections, dual autograph, cracked eyes, seven out of 23. That's really nice. And another cracked eyes. There's Kenneth Gainwell. Six out of 23 school colors. Nice. Set that aside. We're going to take a few pictures of that, Anthony. Very nice. Thanks for getting in. Let's see. Could be a couple hot boxes here. Daniel with pack 11 and three. So, three is over here. And 11 should be down here. 11 and three. Good luck. Gordon, you're on deck. Hey, there's Anthony. You're welcome. Congrats. Very sweet. Now, we just got to hope that they go off this season. That's the next step. We got Teterall Slaton. He's a fifth round pick. Went to the Green Bay Packers, Daniel. And then we've got Alvin Camero right here, two to 99 and his Tennessee gear. And pack three for Daniel. And we got J. Vaughn McKinley out of Notre Dame. That's J. Vaughn, that's Javonte Williams. J. Vaughn McKinley does not look like he was drafted. He ended up with undrafted free agent. Went to the Lions. Let's hope he makes the team. All right. Thank you, Daniel. All right. Gordon's got a couple packs. Then Jake, you're on deck. Gordon with four and five. There's packs four and five. Good luck. And we've got Oregon's T. J. Ward, one out of 25. Not sure if T. J. Ward was drafted. He is with, you know, that's a different T. J. Ward. I'm looking at T. J. Ward was drafted in 2010. What about Oregon version of T. J. Ward? I don't think he was drafted, so I'm not sure where he ended up, but hopefully somewhere and does well. Right. Or is that the T. J. Ward? That's kind of weird. I guess that didn't really anticipate. No, that is old school T. J. Ward. He was out of Oregon. Yeah. So there you go. I didn't realize that there were going to be those old school, older school guys in there. All right. There's Chris Rumpf II. That is the T. J. Ward. I remember from his Broncos days. As for Rumpf, he's a fourth round pick. Went to the Chargers. All right. Thank you, Gordon. Just one pack for Jake. Pack 10. All it takes is one, Jake. Thank you. Karen, you're on deck. And we got, we got Dio, Ode Ingo. Ode Ingo was drafted by the Colts in the second round. All right, not bad. Second rounder for Jake. Just one quick pack for Karen. Pack two. Thanks, Karen. Good luck. And we have, we have William Bradley King, college ticket autograph. William Bradley King, seventh round pick by the Washington football team. All right. Thank you, Karen. All right. And Richard, you have the last three packs, seven, one, and 12. Seven, one, and 12. Good luck. And we've got Kyle Trask. He ended up with the, with the Buccaneers. Late second round picks. Last pick of the second round. An interesting pickup here. Maronates behind Tom Brady for a couple of years. Could learn a lot. If he's open to it, be foolish not to be open to it. If you're Kyle Trask. Get your undergrad at Florida. You get your master's degree with, with Tom Brady. All right. Behind Terrence Marshall Jr. is Jared Patterson. And it looks like Jared Patterson not drafted, but ended up with, with the Washington football team. The final pack for Richard Atlas. Let's finish strong. What else we got here? Maybe a low number. It could be nice too. It's, it's Ben Mason jar. Full back out of Michigan. Let's see if he was picked up somewhere. He was in the supplemental round, late fifth, in between the fifth and sixth round, picked up by the Ravens. Ravens left to run the ball. They could definitely use full backs and running backs and all sorts of backs. Part of the Lamar Jackson actually taking more snaps under center. So he's working on that too. So that should be pretty interesting. My people that evolve his game a little bit. Excellent work, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much. That was 2021 Panini Contenders draft picks football. Two box, random packed rate number 15. There's more in the store. So check it out on jazzpiececaserace.com and I'll see you next time for the next one.


The next item of business is a statement by Michael Matheson on human trafficking, first annual progress report. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement and so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Michael Matheson 10 minutes please, cabinet secretary.  It targets the most vulnerable both across the globe and here in Scotland and the impact on victims is devastating. In 2015, this Parliament unanimously passed the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Scotland Act and I laid the first trafficking and exploitation strategy before Parliament in May 2017. The strategy was the result of extensive joint working and consultation. It includes the cross-party group on human trafficking and reflects the views of victims themselves. During this first year of strategy implementation, we have continued to work in partnership with victims, with support organisations such as TARA, Migrant Help and the Scottish Guardian Service and with a range of other bodies, including COSLA, Police Scotland, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. Significant progress has been made, which is set out in the first annual report that is published today, and I am grateful to all partners who have contributed to the work. The strategy sets out a clear structure with actions falling under four broad headings—the identification of victims and supporting them to safety and recovery, identifying perpetrators and disrupting their activity, addressing the conditions that foster trafficking and exploitation, and supporting child trafficking victims. There is widespread interest in the issue of human trafficking, and guidance has been developed to offer accurate and consistent advice for both professional and public audiences. That covers what human trafficking is, its extent in Scotland, signs to look out for, the impact on victims, how to report concerns and how to access further information. Police Scotland and partners have created an e-learning training resource for public sector workers who may come into contact with victims. That has now been published on DVD and distributed through Scottish Government funding. In terms of public awareness, a standard presentation has been developed, drawing on material from migrant help, TARA, Police Scotland and the Scottish Government, and that will be available for use by community groups and anyone with an interest. Identifying potential victims is the first step, but it is vital that effective victim-central support is in place following that. I announced last year our intention to extend the minimum period of support from 45 days to 90 days. Following unanimous agreement in the Justice Committee, that came into force in April of this year. Alongside identical provisions for victims of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour, that 90-day period is double the minimum support period in the rest of the UK. We have backed that up with substantial increases in funding for migrant help and TARA, who support adult trafficking victims in Scotland, as well as more funding for psychological trauma support through the anchor service. Child victims of trafficking are supported through child protection services, and the strategy includes a section covering the needs of child victims. In January, section 12 of the act was implemented, ensuring that where doubts exist as to whether a victim is under 18, it must be assumed that they are a child until age is established. That will ensure that individuals receive immediate age-appropriate support. To support social workers and others undertaking age assessment of potential child victims of trafficking, we published guidance in March following a process of consultation and development with partners. Alongside the work to improve support to victims, Police Scotland has led on improvements to the identification and disruption of trafficking. In March, the first conviction under the 2015 act was secured, with two individuals sentenced to 10 and seven years imprisonment respectively for offences related to slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. The 2015 act provides for two new court orders—trafficking and exploitation prevention orders and trafficking and exploitation risk orders. Those orders came into force during 2017, and individuals convicted in that case were also made subject to prevention orders, reducing their ability to further exploit others. The national human trafficking unit within Police Scotland has co-ordinated intelligence-led operations throughout divisions over the past year, focusing on labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, child trafficking, domestic servitude, illegal border activity and Romanian and Vietnamese trafficking. Those operations uncovered a range of offences, including crime activity in respect of drugs, sexual exploitation and brothel keeping. Police Scotland and partners have undertaken joint days of action, executing wants, disrupting illegal activity and supporting victims to safety with the assistance of TARA. Police Scotland works closely with European law enforcement colleagues and has arrangements in place through Europol to share relevant information with law enforcement agencies right across Europe.  Police Scotland has also benefited from the secondment of Romanian police officers to support human trafficking operations. It is not enough to disrupt trafficking when it occurs or support victims after the fact. The vision behind the strategy is to eliminate trafficking and exploitation. To do that, we need to address the root causes and build a society where trafficking cannot flourish. Businesses and our wider communities have an important role in that. From August to October 2017, we ran a national awareness raising campaign, featuring a short film screened during advert breaks on TV alongside digital adverts through smartphones and social media. Over this time, the modern slavery helpline recorded a significant increase in contact from Scotland from two potential victims per week to 10 per week. To assess the impact of the media campaign, a public survey was undertaken in March of this year and found that awareness of trafficking had increased. Of those surveyed, 87 per cent said that they would report trafficking suspicions to Police Scotland, a marked increase from 80 per cent last year. We are working with businesses in Scotland and have established a corporate group, which is looking into provision of guidance and training, raising awareness and sharing best practice, and improving the quality of slavery and human trafficking statements. I am happy to report that significant progress made in implementation of the strategy one year on from publication. That has been achieved through joint work between the Scottish Government, Closla, Police Scotland, support organisations, businesses and a wide range of other bodies. We will have a positive impact on victims and efforts to combat trafficking, both in Scotland and further afield. That is good progress, but there is much more to do. The report sets out key priorities for the next year, including developing communication channels to raise awareness and trust among victims, and further work to engage and support businesses in tackling trafficking. We will make progress on the outstanding acts provisions. On duty to notify, our trial implementation is under way with City of Edinburgh Council. We are looking to establish a further trial with other relevant bodies, and we are working to ensure that the digital platform that is currently being developed for the UK national referral mechanism will work with duty to notify in Scotland. On independent child trafficking guardians, we plan to consult in the autumn on proposed roles and responsibilities, and the existing Scottish guardianship service will continue to work until the new statutory arrangements are in place. A further progress report will be published one year from now, in line with the commitment that is set out in the strategy. Thank you, cabinet secretary. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for those questions, and then we will move on to the next item of business. May I ask members who wish to ask a question to press a request to speak buttons now? First, I will call Liam Kerr. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. The cabinet secretary has started at the outset that human trafficking is a terrible crime and an appalling abuse of human rights. Those on those benches have no hesitation in agreeing to that and endorses choice of words. The problems that the legislation and the report seek to address are a scourge on society and therefore any attempt to forensically analyse and address human trafficking and rescue victims from it is hugely welcome. I welcome the progress that has been made but, as the cabinet secretary said, there is more to do. The cabinet secretary says that he will make progress on the outstanding provisions of the 2015 act, being the duty on public authorities to notify and the provision of independent child trafficking guardians. Those are crucial steps and they cannot afford any unwarranted delay. So, might I first of all push him to provide further detail on what his target date for commencement of these sections will be? Furthermore, the report makes several positive references to security and law enforcement co-operation across the UK, for example, the development of a joint digital platform for the national referral mechanism and duty to notify. Indeed, intelligence sharing is a key outcome of the strategy. Does the cabinet secretary agree that, in order to tackle the evil of human trafficking, it is vital that this cross-border co-operation continues seamlessly and that anything that could disrupt that collaboration must be avoided? Michael Matheson I am grateful for the members' comments. Let me try to address the issues that he has raised specifically. I mentioned in my statement the plans that we have for the duty to notify, where we have a pilot in place just now with the City of Edinburgh Council, which has been operating for several months. There are some issues around the amount of cases that have come from the existing pilot, and we are looking to extend a further pilot with another agency, potentially border force, in order to ensure that it operates effectively. The purpose for which we are taking this forward through pilots is to ensure that the system operates effectively and is being utilised properly. Alongside that, we want information that is gathered through the new digital platform that we are working with the Home Office on, which is associated with the national referral mechanism to ensure that we have one single dataset. The information that we gather through the duty to notify is also submitted into the system that gathers data from the national referral mechanisms. There has been some delays in the procurement of that particular digital platform, which has had an impact on taking some of that work forward. However, we are working close with the Home Office to ensure that that happens. Secondly, the issue of the independent guardians. I would like to have made further progress with that than we have at the present moment. We intend to have a consultation in autumn specifically to get clarity around roles and responsibilities, so that there are no areas of uncertainty between the role of local authority and the role of the independent guardian to ensure that we have clarity on that matter. Let me finish on the final point that the member raised. That is the issue of intelligence sharing. At the present moment, we have very effective intelligence sharing on those matters in tackling serious and organised crime and in tackling matters such as human trafficking. I agree with the member that we should ensure that no unnecessary barriers get in the way in the sharing of data and intelligence as and when that is appropriate. However, the member will be aware that one of the biggest risks that we face around intelligence sharing is Brexit. We are about to lose our full membership of Europol, which is one of the main hubs for the sharing of that information across all 28 states within the European Union at the present moment. Alongside that, we will potentially also lose access to the Schengen information to a system, which allows us to identify markers on individuals who may be moving around Europe who are individuals that the police would wish to apprehend. As I have set out in our report today on security and justice matters in Europe, there are real risks that we will lose access to that intelligence and its information. From the lack of engagement that we have had with the Home Office on that matter, it is simply unacceptable that we should potentially be creating such risks with such little progress that we have made on it. I agree with the member's comments on it and I will ask him to use his good officers within the Conservative Party to ensure that the Home Office and the UK Government engage with us properly on those issues to ensure that there are no gaps once we have left Europe. I thank the minister for prior sight of his statement, but most importantly I fully agree with him that human trafficking is an appalling abuse of human rights. Indeed, I welcome this report as an extremely useful update on progress that is being made on this vital issue. It also importantly sets out the work that still needs to be done. Strength of any strategy is the degree to which it can be measured against progress and identify areas for improvement. Can I ask the minister what he believes the most critical steps are in proving our capacity and capability for identification of those trafficked and those who seek to perpetrate those acts? I also note the sharp increase in those identified victims of human trafficking this year. Given the hidden nature of human trafficking, what does the minister believe that the overall scale of human trafficking is in Scotland and the sense of the proportion of those trafficked that are being identified currently? Michael Matheson I am grateful for the member's comments. I like him to think that the strategy and the annual report are an important element of making sure that we continue to look at the progress that we are making and also to identify the issues that we need to address moving forward. The benefits that I believe from the annual report and having a ministerial statement on it, which is through my choice, is to continue to challenge ourselves in that we are doing everything possible to tackle this appalling crime. A crime that many of us recognise is very often hidden and not fully appreciated and recognised. The member asked me to identify a couple of key areas where I think that there is a risk where we need to make further progress in identification of those who might be getting trafficked or maybe in slavery and servitude. One area where I think that more progress needs to be made is around the national referral mechanism. At the present moment, the timeline for cases being considered that the present time is too long, there are delays in the system and it needs to improve. That is a matter that I have already taken up with the Home Office in order to seek improvements to the system and will continue to press it to see what further progress can be made on that issue. However, it is an issue that I recognise is causing undue delay and undue anxiety and needs to be addressed. The other potential barrier here is a lack of awareness and a greater recognition of the risks of trafficking. I think that it is rather telling that the first two convictions under our new legislation in this area are to do with domestic servitude and individuals being held in slavery or forced labour. That demonstrates that it is taking place on our own doorstep and we need to recognise that. That is not something that is just about people coming into the country and being trafficked in, but it can also be taking place here at a domestic level. That greater public awareness and greater understanding across all agencies, public and private, is absolutely critical. As the member highlighted, we have saw an increase in reporting. A 38 per cent increase in the number of cases referred to the national ferromechanism in 2017. I suspect that that 38 per cent increase is still just the tip of the iceberg and there are still a significant amount of cases that are going unidentified, which is why we need to remain vigilant in this matter and we need to continue to challenge the approaches that we are taking to do everything that we can to identify individuals who may be getting trafficked and who may be in forced labour. The two opening questions were fairly detailed and the answers are fairly long. We have quite a few to get through, so may I ask those taking part to be succinct with both questions and answers. The trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation is increasingly now recognised as a global human rights crisis, but intelligence suggests that organised crime groups are involved in sexual exploitation to a greater degree than other forms of slavery. Can I ask the cabinet secretary if the progress report acknowledges that this is a problem and what more can the Government do to combat it? The member is correct in identifying that organised crime groups can often be involved in human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation and in the annual reporting several sections of it. That is very clear. If the member looks even at area 3 within the actual annual report, page 33, there is a specific reference to aspects around the increased focus on commercial sexual exploitation and the multi-agency work that has been taken forward in this field. Very often, OCGs will not only be involved in human trafficking, but they will be involved in other forms of illegal activity. The member can be assured that this is an area that Police Scotland gives considerable attention to. Very often, sexual exploitation is a part of the work of those organisations. It will continue to be a key focus on the enforcement work that we take forward and the prevention work that has been taken forward. Margaret Mitchell, followed by Christina McKelvie. The cabinet secretary has already stated that the 63 trafficked children identified in Scotland this year is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Building trust with those trafficked and sexually exploited young people is key in aiding disclosure. Will the cabinet secretary therefore meet the voluntary organisations and charities such as ADACTION, who have a proven record in Glasgow and South Lanarkshire of building that trust and identifying those young people whom statutory organisations have failed? Will the cabinet secretary confirm that? No, I think that that is enough, Ms Mitchell. Michael Matheson. As the member will be aware, the provision for the support of children who have been identified has been trafficked through child protection arrangements and through the Scottish guardianship provision. If the member wants to send me further information about particular organisations, I have no doubt that we will be more than happy to engage with them. However, the primary role for taking forward any services for young people who have been identified as being trafficked is through our child protection provisions, which is delivered by local authorities. Christina McKelvie, followed by Rhoda Grant. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The award-winning Scottish Guardianship Service provides support to refugee children who are alone or separated from their families. The cabinet secretary will know that the hostile environment from the Home Office makes it difficult for children without an independent advocate to navigate the complex system. Will the cabinet secretary give us an update on the eligibility criteria for trafficked children in Scotland and how they can access an independent advocate through the guardianship service? Michael Matheson. As I mentioned, the Scottish Guardianship Service will continue to be in place until the independent guardianship arrangements have been implemented part of the purpose of the consultation, which we are undertaking in the course of. The autumn will be allowed to be very clear about the role and the responsibilities of the independent guardian to address some of the issues that my colleague has just raised during the course of that. I have no doubt that the consultation next to that size, I have no doubt that the views of members from the cross-party group will be very interesting in feeding into that process, which I know that the member is a long-standing member of and has a long-standing interest in. We will want to feed into that process to ensure that the independent guardians address the very concerns and issues that the member has just highlighted. Rhoda Grant, followed by Emma Harper. Further to the question asked by Christine McKelvie, can I ask when the provision in the act to give unaccompanied children access to an independent guardian will actually be implemented because it has been two and a half years and we are still waiting for that section of the bill to be implemented. Michael Matheson. As I mentioned earlier on, I would like us to have made further progress on it. However, we have the Scottish guardianship programme, which is in place at the present moment, and that will continue. Once the consultation process has been completed this autumn, we will then be in a position when we can then have the roll-out of the independent guardian. I want that to happen sooner rather than later, but I want to make sure that we get the system right in working in partnership with local authorities before we start rolling it out. Although I cannot give you a specific date on the matter, I can assure the member that I want to see it rolled out sooner rather than later. Emma Harper, followed by Patrick Harvie. I welcome this important update from the cabinet secretary. Does he have concerns, or would he agree with me, that in order that the Scottish Government can successfully implement policies to significantly reduce human trafficking and give justice to the victims, this Parliament must have full control over immigration policy, which will allow victims a choice to remain here in Scotland and not face deportation as a result of the UK Government being fixated on a hard Brexit? Michael Matheson That is an issue that has been raised with me by some organisations that are working with individuals who have been identified as being trafficked and some of the challenges that they can face due to the overlap with the immigration system. That remains an issue of concern for me about how all the home officers deal with some of those cases around human trafficking matters. In my view, there continues to be a mismatch in how both those systems are operating. As it is known, I am in favour of immigration matters being the responsibility of this Parliament, but what we will do is continue to press the UK Government in the home office in particular to ensure that the way in which the immigration system operates is more sympathetic and understanding of those victims who have been trafficked and some of the challenges that I face. Patrick Harvie Followed by Liam McArthur Thank you. The cabinet secretary may be aware of the case of a constituent of mine, looking again, who was a victim of human trafficking and modern slavery and forced to work on a cannabis farm. As a result of that, he was arrested. He was imprisoned. He is the one, despite being a victim of this crime, who was faced with the threat of imminent deportation just this week. He was off the plane as a result of the pressure of thousands of his supporters, and we hope that he will be returned to Glasgow. What redress can the Scottish Government give to those who are criminalised in our justice system, as a result of their experience of being victim of human trafficking and forced labour, and will the Scottish Government lend its support in the case of look? Michael Matheson I am aware of the particular case and the issues that have been raised by the member on this issue. It comes to the issues of individuals who have been enforced into labour or servitude, or who have been trafficked. There is scope for compensation to be provided through the criminal injuries compensation authority. Alongside that, there is also the possibility of the courts to set down that compensation should be paid or provided to an individual as well. The member will recognise, though, that our scope to redress some aspects around asylum and immigration matters is very limited, given the responsibilities of those matters in life elsewhere. I assure the member that the approach that we take through the organisations that we support—for example, TARA and migrant help—are often engaged with individuals who will have been exploited or subject to trafficking. The range of scope that we allow them to provide to individuals is wider than the specific purpose for which we provide them funding for. We recognise that, very often, they need to go beyond the specific support that we give them funding for, and that is something that we support in a system with as and when we can in recognising some of the wider issues that need to be addressed when individuals experience the very types of difficulties that the member has just made reference to. I have four questions left if we are aware of the short time that we may get them all in. Liam McArthur, to be followed by Kate Forbes. I thank the cabinet secretary for early sight of his statement, welcome the report and also associate myself with his comments, but a collective importance to human trafficking. Cabinet secretary, we are aware that the Liberal Democrats fought for the introduction of independent child trafficking guardians and stronger identification and referral processes. Can he advise what the policy developments are that are stalling the implementation of the provision and which organisations he believes should be able to make a referral to appoint a guardian for a child? Michael Matheson. The principle piece of work that we need to take forward in relation to the implementation, as I mentioned to Rhoda Grant, is the consultation on the specific role and responsibilities that the independent guardian will have. A key part of that work is to agree that we are in partnership with COSLA, given the clear responsibility on child protection matters. Once we have completed that piece of work in the autumn, I am determined to make sure that we do everything that we can to have independent guardianship arrangements in place. I recognise the member's frustrations and other member's frustrations in the progress that has been made in this matter to date, but once we have completed that work and we can get assurance around how it will operate with local authorities and be in a position to have it finalised, that will include looking at who can make referrals to it and on what terms it can make those referrals. Kate Forbes, followed by Maurice Corry. Thank you. What is the Scottish Government's position on victims of trafficking being granted compensation? The minister will know that my constituency has seen one of the worst cases of labour exploitation. Michael Matheson The provisions in the Scottish criminal justice system for compensation on criminal matters are in relation to the criminal engineering compensation authority, which we provide funding for Scottish cases. That is a matter that someone can make an application to. The application must be on the basis of a person having been convicted or acquitted of an offence that relates to the legislation for which the strategy is underpinned by. Over and above that, there is scope for sentences or sheriffs and judges to direct compensation to be paid to victims. That would be a matter that is at the discretion of a judge or sheriff at the time of sentencing. Maurice Corry Deputy Presiding Officer, the work that has already been undertaken to raise awareness is welcome. Can the cabinet secretary tell the chamber what further types of action will be taken to improve awareness of the problem of human trafficking? Michael Matheson As I set out my statement, we are aware that we have already had a public information campaign. We have also provided a suite of materials in order to help to ensure that people and individuals have access to information around trafficking. That work will continue, and we will consider what further media campaigns are appropriate in public information campaigns. We would assist in hiding public awareness of those issues. The work that we are doing through the corporate group that we have established is to ensure that the private sector is playing their part, particularly around issues relating to forced labour. We are keen to expand that yet further, and that is one of the key measures that has been set out in the annual report as a work that we will take forward in the coming year. Thank you to Mr Corry. We have time for Ruth Maguire. Victims of human trafficking are particularly vulnerable to being sexually exploited. Can the cabinet secretary describe the action that the Scottish Government is taking to tackle commercial sexual exploitation? Michael Matheson The Scottish Government is opposed to all forms of violence against women in a key part of our equally safe strategy that is being taken forward by my colleague Angela Constance is to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to reduce the harm that is caused by sexual exploitation. A key part of the work that has been now been progressed in order to address those issues through a multi-agency working group to identify what further measures can be taken in order to reduce the risk and harm that is associated with sexual exploitation, and that work will begin to take forward in the coming months. That concludes questions on human trafficking first annual progress report. We will move on to the next item of business. I will give you a few moments to change seats appropriately.


Operation Home Front recently held the sixth annual Military Child of the Year Awards Gala in Arlington, Virginia. The award recognizes outstanding military children who demonstrate resiliency, leadership, and achievement. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey and singer-songwriter Brett Michaels, were the keynote speakers, and they even performed a duet. The kids we're going to meet tonight, great young men and women of military families. They won't be bystanders and they will not accept mediocrity and they will make a difference. Five children were honored, one for each branch of service. This year's Navy Award recipient is Brian Patrick Curtin. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert praised Patrick for his accomplishments and presented him with the award. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Tyrell Morris.


So, before I get started, I thought I would share a little bit more about myself. I am, like was mentioned, I'm from Hawaii, Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe is a country in the southern part of Africa. It's just above South Africa, and I've lived there for most of my life, very interesting country to live in, but actually through here from Zimbabwe. Another thing about me is I'm a developer advocate. I work for Voltron Data, and I just started Developer Advocacy about a few months ago. I started last year in November before Developer Advocacy. I was working as a software engineer at NVIDIA, and I was working on a GPU-based data frame library called QDF, so very focused on performance and speed with Python, but I really enjoyed engineering work, but really was also interested in Dev Advocacy and decided to kind of switch, and so far it's been good. This is actually my first talk as a developer advocate, so hopefully it goes well. And then a third and final thing about me is that I am the outgoing vice chair, or the outgoing vice chair at the Python Software Foundation and outgoing director. And if you've never heard of the PSF, the PSF is the non-profit organization behind Python, and it does a lot of stewarding of the language and of the community and making sure the community is inclusive and really, like, good and safe for people in different parts of the world. And throughout this talk, if you're enjoying the talk or want to ask me a question or something, feel free to tweet at me. My handle is Marlene underscore ZW. I'm pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to DM me or something if you have a question. And if you want to visit my website, it's just marlenemangami.com. So when I was thinking about, like I mentioned before, that I'm a developer advocate and something that I enjoy doing even before I started Dev Advocacy is traveling and speaking at different conferences in different parts of the world, and usually because I come from Zimbabwe, it's quite a long flight. So I tried to add some days either before or after the conference to explore around the city. And when I was thinking about coming to Dublin, I thought a cool thing to do could be to explore the public art that's around the city. And when I was thinking about this, because this is a Python conference and this is a talk about databases, I decided to go online and Google open data sets about art in Dublin. And there was a very cool website called Dublin that I found. And the website kind of shares different data sets, open data sets about information about the city of Dublin. So I found this really cool project on the website called Dublin Canvas. And what it does is it's actually an initiative by the city that invites artists from around Dublin to, I guess it's actually more than just Dublin, it seems, but they invite artists to create art or apply to create sort of different canvases where they paint old traffic control boxes that were gray and they paint them with different colors. So that's like an example of one on the screen. It's not super clear. And it's been kind of, has anyone noticed these across like this one like really like outside? So it's kind of been cool to see those as I've actually been here, but decided to work with this data set. They have CSV files and a GeoJSON file as well. So I thought this could be kind of cool to explore with IBIS for my talk as well and learn about art in Dublin. So when I was doing this, I decided to create a MySQL database and try and create like relational database. And I faced like several issues when I was trying to do this. And for me, some of these issues are one of the first things that I came across is that I wasn't as familiar using MySQL because I had come back, come from like a software engineering background. So I had done a lot of work mainly on the back end of things. So I was very used to like bug fixes and, you know, feature requests and things like that. But then now trying to write SQL code, I felt super unproductive because I was like writing SQL strings and Googling all the time. It just wasn't feeling like this is not Python. So it wasn't feeling good. And then another thing is that I had to like consistently be in my terminal. So when I was taking a look at the art, I wanted to like visualize the data I was seeing. And for that, I'm used to using like a Jupyter notebook and it's easier to share the information as well. But when I was using MySQL, it felt very restrictive in terms of using the terminal only. And something else is that there was geographical data that I wanted to work with. And one of the issues with using some of these databases is that data types are not really preserved or you can't really do certain things with databases with MySQL. Data types, like geographical data types. And so that was an issue. And then finally, I also thought as someone who's used to using Python, I didn't think that it was like SQL strings were very maintainable in terms of writing tests and things like that. So I don't really have an issue with SQL, but I felt like this was not very Pythonic in my perspective. So I kept thinking to myself, there's got to be a more Pythonic way to work with databases. And so I was introduced to Ibis. So what exactly is an Ibis? In real life, not in Python land, an Ibis is a bird. And like I mentioned before, I live in Zimbabwe and maybe once or twice a year, I will go outside of my city and I will go to places where there are animals. And one of my favorite animals is an elephant. And elephants are these really big creatures. And sometimes I see these tiny birds sitting on top of an elephant. And sometimes those birds are ibises. And so this really striking image of this really big elephant with a tiny sort of elegant bird sitting on it is a good metaphor for us to think about when we are trying to understand what Ibis is in the Pythonic sense. So in Python, Ibis is a Python package that provides us with a more Pythonic way to work with databases. And the purpose of Ibis, it was created mainly for analytical SQL. So if you're someone who wants to do computations on larger datasets or things like that and you want to do this with Python rather than using SQL strings, this is a really good option for you to choose as well. And another thing as well is if you're using, particularly if you're using large datasets that are able to, maybe your data is able to fit on Drive but is not able to fit in RAM. Oftentimes a library like Pandas is not actually able to let you load in your data and edit things or run computations on your data. Pandas will just crash. And so Ibis also solves this issue. And I'll kind of talk about how a bit later. And it was also inspired by deeplier. So if you've used R and you've worked with data in R, you've probably used deeplier before. So Ibis is very heavily influenced by deeplier. So how does this relate to the metaphor I talked about earlier on? Well, we can think about it like we can imagine maybe the Lion King or something like that and there's a tiny bird on top of this big elephant and the bird is telling the elephant where to go and what to do. So it's like maybe saying, go left or go right and take me to the watering hole and the elephant is just listening to the bird and like doing all the work, maybe moving stuff out of the way and things like that. And we can kind of think of Ibis in this way doing that. So the idea behind Ibis is that we want lightweight Python code to be able to tell a larger backend or a database engine what to do and to do the heavy lifting for us. So instead of pulling all, so usually what in pandas if you're using a data frame library like pandas, and it's not just pandas actually, there's lots of other great data frame libraries in Python as well, that usually you would pull all your data into memory for example, and then pandas would be the one that would do the heavy lifting if you're doing things on your data like filtering or transforming that data. And so what we want to do instead is we want to allow users with Ibis to write Python code and that Python code is then translated into an SQL string or SQL alchemy expressions and that those expressions in those strings are then what then tells the database engine what to do. So the data actually isn't then loaded into memory, the database engine then just carries out the operations. So this is a lot more efficient than loading in your data into memory like with another data frame library. It takes a lot less longer and oftentimes can be done like with a lot less effort and things like that and can maintain data types as well. So that's also a really positive thing. So let's actually look at some Ibis code and see what this looks like in practice. Here on the screen, I hope you can see it. I actually feel like it's kind of small now, but sorry. But this, I will try and have a library or something available, a notebook available after this talk so you could always take a look at the code. But basically what we have is an IPython terminal that's up there and this code is very like pandas like. So the idea with Ibis is to make it as familiar as possible so that you are very used to being able to use the syntax. So the first thing we're doing is we're importing Ibis like you would with any other library. Then after that you're sitting interactive to true and all that does is that it makes sure that when you run an expression you're getting the results printed to your console, whatever you're using. So we're doing that and then after that we're connecting to the crunch base database and we're using, as you can see it says like, hopefully you can see it says Ibis.sql light and so you can choose another database engine. You don't have to use SQL light, but you could use like MySQL or something like that, whichever database back end you want to choose, you can do that. And we're saving that database connection to a variable called con. And then after this Ibis then allows us to be able to take a look. You can do things like list out the tables that are available in your database. You can also then choose a table and do different operations on your data set. So here in the example, we're taking the name column and we are finding the number of unique values in that column. And the next thing we're also finding the number of unique values in the region column and you can do things like group buys and things like that as well. And so you can do like usually a lot of the intuitive things that you can do with a pandas data frame you're able to do with Ibis as well. But in a way, so it's really cool in terms of you are kind of treating an SQL table in a similar way that you would use a pandas data frame, but it's not loading that data into memory. So it's not taking as much energy and you're also not having to write SQL strings, which I don't know, depending on who you're talking to is like a plus and some people find SQL strings fine. So it just depends who you're talking to, I guess. So let's actually talk about what this looks like under the hood. So when we start out, like I mentioned before, you're creating your Ibis expression. And so your user is writing that pandas like syntax and then what is happening from there is that Ibis then, whoops, Ibis then takes that expression and it types check, it type checks the data and then it also optimizes it and it converts that into either an SQL alchemy expression or it converts it into SQL strings. And then that string or that expression is gin passed to a database engine. Whichever database engine you want to use, there's lots of options with Ibis as the backend that you can use. And so then that's executed and then the database is the one that does whatever the operation is that you would like to do. So yeah, one of the things that we can keep in mind as well. So for example, if you're looking at this current example that's there on the screen, you can see the dot head method is being called. And so usually if you were using something like a pandas data frame, what would happen is that pandas calling dot head would kind of load all of your data into memory and then it would carry out the operations on all of the rows in your data set. And then it would return just that subset of data from the head. But if you're using Ibis, what happens instead is that because a lot of database engines are optimized to be able to like perform as efficiently as possible. Instead, what Ibis does is there's a dot head command. It actually creates an SQL expression from your first expression in Ibis there. And it adds on a limit clause. So instead, so on the back end, what happens is that limit clause is passed to your database engine. And the database engine only retrieves the rows that the user has asked for in that limit clause. And then it carries out the operations on that small subset of rows and then returns whatever the result is. So as you can see again, it's just emphasizing that it's using the most efficient path instead of like having to consistently like load huge amounts of data into your memory. So going back to our example of elephants. I'm actually, you know, that's, well this is me in Zimbabwe and this is me by an elephant. And just so you know elephants are really big. And they're really awesome creatures actually if you ever meet an elephant in person. But that's me besides an elephant for scale to show you just like how big they are. And in a similar way that elephants are really big, your data can be really big as well. And so sometimes when you have very large data sets, you don't want to use the same database engine. So you might start off using SQL Lite, but you want to switch and use something bigger. Maybe you want to move your data into the cloud and use something like BigQuery or something like that. And so because you want to be able to switch your data, sometimes you also don't want to like change your code a whole lot and maybe do the same operations on the data. But you want to go from a smaller data set to a larger data set or something like that. And one of the cool things that IBIS allows you to do is to scale up or down based off of your data with very few syntax changes. So this is kind of what it looks like in practice. So the first cell there that you can hopefully see on the screen is if someone is using an SQL Lite database. And so there you're just connecting to that SQL Lite database. And you're running the same code there. You're trying to like using a group by and you're mutating your data as well. And if you then decide, I want to try and use something like Postgres, all you have to do is change the connection. You don't actually have to change the code that's following, but you just have to change the database engine that you're selecting or the database specifically that you're using. And you can do that again, scaling that even higher to something like BigQuery. And so all of these options, something that is a cool use case for this is if you're using maybe a sample of small data, and then you carry out your operations on that sample to kind of test out and see, do I like what it's returning? Does this look good? And things like that in a quick way. And then after that, you can then decide to take maybe that same exact code and then run it on your full dataset on using a larger engine. So really helpful, I think, for people who often need to scale between different sets of data, of different sizes. Okay, so going back to the beginning of our talk and we talked about art around the city of Dublin. So we want to go ahead, I think this is a great example to look at a practical way that we can use IBIS by exploring the art around Dublin. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to install IBIS. I did, when I was doing this, was I installed IBIS. And in order to install IBIS, you use a PIP install IBIS framework. This is not really intuitive, honestly. Like it should be PIP install IBIS, but it's not because the name IBIS was already taken by another project, apparently. And so I've done this by mistake and installed IBIS, just the framework itself and it won't work because it's like a templating engine. So you're going to have some issues. So just as a reminder to keep in mind, just install PIP install IBIS dash framework. And once you've installed that, you want to import IBIS just as IBIS in the same way that you can see on the screen there. And then what I did to get started was I hit interactive to true. And what I had done is I had gone onto that double-linked website and I downloaded the CSV data and I stored it into an SQLite database and I named that database DublinArt. And so from there, I'm saving that database to a DB, to the DB variable there. And then after that, we can kind of look through a table. So the table that I saved all of this in was called DublinArtTable. And if you can look at the data that's available to us from that CSV file, we can look at the councils that the art is contained in. We get information about the artist themselves, their name. We get some information about what the artwork is titled. And we also get like the location, the specific location of where the art is and things like something really cool as well is a preview image of what the art looks like in the city as well. So as you can see again, this is very, if you're used to using pandas, this is very intuitive when you're writing the code. And so an example of querying the data, one thing, a couple of things that I decided to do was I used a distinct method just to find out and count methods just to find out how many artists were involved in this project. And there were 420 unique artists in this project, which is amazing because I'm like, that's a lot of artists like in one city. I feel like that's awesome. And then after that, they were also five councils. So it wasn't just Dublin City Council that was involved in this project, but several other councils were involved in like getting art out there. And there are several methods that are available for you to use in IBIS. And if you want to just take a look at those methods, one of the ways that you can do it is if you have your table already, you can hit the period and then the tab button. And just in the same way that you would, in a normal Jupyter notebook, the methods would like pop up on the screen for you. But another thing you can do is you can also take a look at the docs. They're over at ibis-project.org. Ideally, it would be ibis.org. But I don't know who's naming all of these things because I don't know, this is not intuitive, but it's fine as well. But you can visit ibis-project.org and get the docs there. So what I ended up doing, the method that I used here was I used the filter method to be able to select the locations of all of the arts specifically in Dublin City. So all of the art available. And these were the locations that I found that were available. And I wanted to specifically just have a preview of the art that was available at New Street South Dublin 8. Was the one that I just decided to start with. And this was really pretty straightforward to be able to display the art there in a Jupyter notebook. So all I did was I then chose the location column and looked for that specific street or that specific location. I executed the command to tell the DB to get that data for me. And then I specifically used the ILOC function to be able to get the first art that was located in that location or in that column. And so here on the screen, I was able to pull up the profile image that was based off of the location where I found that art. And you can see it on the screen. It's like in between. I'm also not sure why they didn't paint the other boxes but like they painted the middle one. And so it's, I'm not sure what it says but that was like the first art that I saw. And then after that, I decided as well that I wanted to specifically try and find the art that was surrounding us here at the Dublin Convention Center. And I think it could be kind of cool. I don't know if, well, I'll try and make the notebook available but even if the notebook, even if you don't use the either thing itself and if you see one of the pictures around and wanna take a picture of it and tweet it or something like that, that could be kind of cool if you see an art canvas or something around. So I wanted to find the specific locations closest to the convention center that had the art. So I could kind of like spot it once I was here. And so to do this, I decided to use to change to Postgrace SQL. And Postgrace actually has an extension called PostGIS I guess is how you pronounce it. And that allows you to use sort of geographical or geospatial geometry data so that you can visualize like geometry data or use a GeoJSON file and get data from that file a lot more easier than you would with other databases for example. So switching over to Postgrace was fairly easy like I also demonstrated earlier. All I had to do was change the backend to instead of ibis.sql light, I was now typing out ibis.postgrace and then connecting to that Postgrace database. And I had previously before created the Postgrace database and I'd load it in the GeoJSON file that I got from the website. And all I was doing there or I'm doing on the screen there is I'm saving the specific table that I created which I named Dublin canvas to a valuable called canvas locations. And then I'm listing out the columns that are available in that table. And the main thing column that we are interested in that WKB geometry column and that just contains WKB data which is like a form of a way to store like longitude and latitudes as well. So in terms of working with the actual geographical data I decided to use GeoPandas to help work with this data. And so I got I was able to using ibis I was able to get the WKB geometries from my Postgrace database. And then I was also able to get the titles like the respective titles based off of their geometries as well in those first two lines of code. And then from there I'm using the GeoPandas library to then convert that WK data into latitude and longitude and save that into a series called Geo Series. And then I created a data frame GeoPandas data frame that contained the titles of the artwork with the geometries as well. So I'm not I'm sure there could have been an easier way to do this, but this is like I was just experimenting and this was like the easiest way that I could find to do this. So then after that I was able to also find the geographical location of the convention center itself the longitude and latitudes of the convention center and I added those into that data frame as well. So I could like kind of see where the art was in respect to the convention center. So then finally in a Jupyter notebook which is one of the reasons that I appreciate using ibis is that you can do almost everything within one Jupyter notebook. So I then took all of this data and I was able to visualize it using folium and GeoPandas as well. And using the explode method from GeoPandas I was able to show the geographic locations of the art that was closest to the convention center. And actually if I was hovering over this is just a screenshot, but if I was to hover over the other icons, the names or titles of the art pieces would then show up. And so this was really cool that I could actually see which art pieces were closest. And there were two specific ones that were very close. The one on the left and the right of the Dublin Convention Center. There were two that was the closest. The first one is one called Rabbits. Has anyone seen this one around? No, now look for it. Now you have like a good excuse to look for it. I've actually seen it. But it was like, there's a little bit of graffiti on it and now I'm like, great thanks to the people in the city. But like it has a little bit of red graffiti on it at the moment, but it's called Rabbits. So if you spot it, hopefully you can spot it. Another one as well, the one on the other side closest to the convention center was an art piece called Bicket. And apparently Bicket is an Irish writer and also director of Pays or something like that. So I haven't actually seen this one. I haven't spotted it yet. But if you do, feel free to take a picture of it. So all of this I did using IBIS. I did this all in one Jupiter notebook. I was able to do this in the most efficient way as possible because Python, I was writing Python code, but that Python code was then being converted directly into SQL strings that then told the database what to do. And so this was like one of the most efficient ways to be able to work with databases in my opinions with IBIS. So that's actually all the time I have for my talk today or that's the end of my talk. If you would like to contact me, you can feel free to email me. My email is marlene at VoltronData.com. You can also tweet at me, it's marlene underscore ZW. And I will release a bulk post and a notebook that contains all of the code that I shared in this session. So if you'd like to take a look at the blog post, just feel free to find. I haven't released it yet, but when I do, it'll be at marlenemangami.com. So yeah, thanks everyone for listening. Okay, thanks Marlene for the very interesting talk. Cool package. We have plenty of time for questions, almost 50 minutes. So we also have a remote session. So we'll start with one in the room and then switch to remote if there's a question. So if you wanna ask a question, please come to the mic at front. Hello. You showed us, so thanks for the talk, Crystal.  It doesn't seem to be as good in terms of insertion and creation of data from Python to your database than it is in analytics. Have you tried that a little bit? Do you have any feedback? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I do think that's an issue that I came across in terms of creation of data or if I have a CSV file and want to actually create a database using that CSV file in Python using IBIS. And it actually hasn't been like, I actually asked the people who are working on it actively what the plan for that was and they said that they're working on it. At the moment, I think if you use, there is a DuckDB backend for it and if you use DuckDB, I think there's an option to be able to, like as the backend, there's an option to be able to load in a CSV file that way and create a database that way. But I do feel like it would be very useful to be able to just like load in your CSV data into like and create like a MySQL database right there with IBIS. So I agree with you. I think that's a pain point, but I don't know when you're gonna fix it. So that's a good question, yeah. Yeah, thank you for a great talk and introduction to IBIS. I think it was on slide 10 that you mentioned that the, when you have an IBIS expression, you can either compile that to SQL query, SQL string, or compile that to SQL alchemy expression. And I didn't quite get in which case you would want one or the other. I mean, I guess compiling to the SQL string is the performance and obvious choice. So when would you want the SQL alchemy option instead? Right, that's a great question as well. I think from what I've seen, like it just depends on the backend that you're using. So if you're using SQL Lite, I think for sure it compiles to SQL strings. But if you're using something like, I think actually like for example, the DuckDB backend, I'm pretty sure that compiles to SQL alchemy. And I'm not really sure what the rationale is for each one. I think they try to find which one is the most optimized to be able to get you the fastest result. And so I think in terms of that, that's probably how they do that based off of the backend and maybe also based off of like the type of query that you're doing as well. So I think that's probably how they decide which one, but it kind of varies. And I will say as well, it also doesn't always like execute to or compile to SQL strings or SQL expressions. It's sometimes you can use like pandas as a backend or like PySpark as a backend or DOSC. And so if you want to like write Python code in Ibis that you're used to and want to like have that be actually translated into DOSC or PySpark, you can do that as well with Ibis. So thanks for the question. Maybe quickly check. Do we have a remote question? Maybe not. Please go ahead. Hi, Marlen. Thanks for that great talk. I also really enjoyed your recent YouTube talk on the introduction to Arrow that I'd recommend for anyone interested in that. Thank you. Looking at the connection. So Voltron is obviously the kind of company associated with Apache Arrow. Are there any plans to kind of integrate, sorry, integrate Arrow further into this and move away from kind of like a NumPy basis and have it more into that Arrow ecosystem? Into Ibis? Yes. Yes, I have definitely, thank you for watching that talk by the way. And yes, I definitely know that there are plans to actually have Arrow as an option for the backend. So to have like an Arrow backend that you can use with Ibis. So that's something that they were actively like developing right now, but it isn't something that is currently available. But it is something that I know that they're developing. I know as well, like there's some ideas to do this in collaboration with the DuckDB backend. So I'm not sure if it's just that you're just gonna be using DuckDB and that will convert it to Arrow. But it is, yes, that's a good question. And it is something the developers are working on right now. Okay, great, looking forward to it. Thanks. Okay, if there are no more questions, our next session will begin at 11.35. So we have about 10 minutes until the next talk. Please join me in thanking Marlene again for her great talk. Sure, thank you.


Can you not My little presentation for the 400 hurdles for under 17 girls. There is Nastasia Fletcher of Jamaica 400 champion last night and the 400 hurdles champion today Fletcher with gold. Dominic Dean repeats a silver medalist the Bohemian and Trinidad and Tobago's Jenna Marie Thomas gets bronze Beautiful sound in the background the games anthem Performed by a young lady named Sonaika beautiful it on From Sonaika and these three young ladies I will get their moment Now the presentation for the under 20 girls 400 hurdles final Fans in the bleachers don't have to worry about the heat at this time There is a bit of drizzle around though The Jamaican alia Monnings Coming through with the bronze medal breaking one minute 59.80 seconds For a split second Kelly and car Maybe thought she could create one of the biggest upsets of the Carifter games that's beat Michelle Smith at 400 hurdles The US Virgin Islander though pulled away in the closing stages But not before she had pulled car to a lifetime best the Jamaican with the word the silver medal And the gold medalist For a third straight year in this event first at the under 17 level in record style in 2022 then as a first year on the 20th the last year and now as a second year U20 She defends her title The premier 400 hurdle at the Carifter games in the last three years Delivers once again outside the championship record of 56-22 which he was chasing Mothered 56-28th. It is still a superb performance Committed to University of Georgia as are several other Carifter athletes including a leisure home and the Frederick sisters from Trinidad and Tobago They'll be heading Across the Georgia to form what should be a formidable team Gerand has improved his jumping ability and he's conned up with Joshua Williams You're so nice Ricardo. Thank you very much Joshua


In 1726, Mary Toft convinced the press that she was giving birth to rabbits. I'm Maddie Smith and I'm a curator at the British Library in the Printed Heritage Collections Department and I'm here to talk to you today about the strange story of Mary Toft. She was an ordinary working-class woman. She made the headlines in a way that was unprecedented at the time. Printed in the early days of newspapers, the story spread nationally and caused a bit of a sensation. She went into labour at her home in Surrey. She apparently gave birth to rabbits. People caught wind of it. Her friends and family believed her. The local doctors got involved and before you knew it she was being shipped off to London and being examined by some of the leading surgeons and physicians of the day. And bizarrely they all believed her. They were completely hoodwinked by it. And so I think today we have to ask the question of why people believed her. There was a theory called maternal impression at the time and the idea behind that was that what a woman did and saw prior to going into labour affected the outcome of that pregnancy. Mary Toft claimed that she saw lots of rabbits running across a field just before she went into labour and so people actually thought that this was a credible story. But Mary Toft couldn't maintain her hoax forever and she was called smuggling parts of rabbits into her rooms in London in order to carry on the hoax. When she was caught she was forced to confess and out it all came. The whole thing was a fake. Surprise, surprise. She was humiliated. She was sent to Bridewell prison in London and after that when she was eventually released she went back to Surrey and faded into obscurity. But she was known for decades afterwards as the rabbit woman. And we still don't really know today why she ever claimed that she could give birth to rabbits in the first place. So what has all of this got to do with us today? Well, I think it says a lot about the idea of fake news. And so fake news itself is as old as news and it has been around for centuries and this story is a really good historic example of it. And so I think in this instance it's the desire to believe weird and wonderful stories and this was very much the case in the 18th century and I still think that it's the case today. How many stories do you click on that really you don't really believe or you're a little bit skeptical about but you'll read it anyway just in case. And then the last big parallel that I think that we can draw from it and take home today is the idea of a story going viral and particularly a sensational story going viral. It spread across the regional press of the day which was quite new at the time. It was unprecedented for a story like this to be covered so swiftly and so comprehensively across the UK. It generated great headlines. It generated a lot of amazing visual content which are really key to sensationalism as a whole. Even though the way in which we receive the news has changed. We now have social media. We have the digital world. Everything is online. There are certain things about the news that have always stayed the same and probably always will and we can see how they existed in the 18th century and we can still see how they exist today. Next time you're tempted by that clickbait story, think about Mary Toft and maybe think twice about whether or not you believe it.


What you said before, which one is possibly going to be bad in the next year or very strictly controlled? In some places. Yes. Unlikely. But yes. That's a great question. Do I think mining will be controlled in China? Or do I think that Bitcoin might be banned in China? I think it's extremely unlikely that Bitcoin would be banned in China. Just because every time there's a little blip in the yuan, we see like half a billion to a billion dollars flow into Bitcoin, doesn't mean that that's a large amount of money. For China, that is nothing. So it's like you're facing the imminent collapse of a giant hydroelectric dam. You're not going to worry about that tiny little trickle of water in the side there that's Bitcoin. You're worrying about the gushing outflows of the things they are worried about. Right now, they're passing a new law to restrict mergers and acquisitions. I heard this fantastic story of how Chinese companies are exiting money from the economy, even though there are currency controls. And it came about from a conversation with a lawyer. And this lawyer had been asked by a Chinese company to participate in an arbitration hearing. And they said, we want to do this arbitration hearing. And would you be interested in participating and representing us? And they said, yes, OK, who's the other party? Well, the other party doesn't exist yet. We would like you to create the other party. We would like you to represent both us and the other party. And then we would like to lose an arbitration award of about $5 million to the other party, which you will set up in another country. When the need is great, it becomes the mother of innovation. Legal innovation, corruption innovation, et cetera, et cetera. So they have much bigger problems. Now, you will see bans in some countries. In the countries where they can arbitrarily affect a ban, they can't actually affect that ban in practice on the ground. Because where the rule of law is weak enough that a single individual without any recourse due process or opposition can simply ban a form of money, then their ability to actually enforce that is probably pretty weak, too, because everybody below them is going to be taking bribes. So just imagine, for example, the ruling comes down and it says, you can do mining in China. And that goes down to the districts and from the districts to the smaller districts to the cities to the towns. And eventually some official sends a fax to the local village where they're running a mining farm off the hydro that represents 40 to 50 percent of the municipal income of the entire area. And they say, you must close your mine. What does the local official say? We have no mines here. Or, guys, close it down for 24 hours. We have eradicated money in China. Long live China and our great leader. Turn it back on. So the ability to actually affect change on the ground is mediated by layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy, which are more and more corrupt. And the bigger the crisis, the easier they are to corrupt. You've got to realize that these mines are quite decentralized within China, and in many cases they provide a stream of corrupt money throughout every official in the area. The police works for them, the mayor works for them, the electricity company works for them. Now the electricity companies are the ones who are mining. Good luck shutting that down. So, again, it's not as easy to do. And the higher the need, the more corruption and invention you're going to have. What happened in the future when Bitcoin becomes mainstream and governments realize there's some intra-governmental organization like the UN or the IMF or the US or the EU decides to implement their own cryptocurrencies, let's say US coin or IMF coin. And they make it, they sort of make it, they make it a rule. So everyone has to use that coin and they make it illegal to use any others. They set up their own nodes and put a lot of budget in that. Could they sort of drive all other cryptocurrencies in that way? No, they're going to turn a lot of people into criminals. Because a lot of people will then ignore that rule and break that rule. And you have to worry. If your government is setting up a system, they're not willing to use that system to compete on an equal basis on its merits, but instead have to pass the law that forces you to use that system and makes it illegal to use the competing system of open market economics.  Like at that point you're beginning to wonder what kind of government is this? Let's go through the words. Democracy, no, public democracy, constitutional democracy, police states, fascism, totalitarianism. That sounds like totalitarianism. I never signed up for that. Great. So if your government starts doing crazy things, the question is can governments do crazy things that violate the rights of billions of people? Sure, they do it every day. And we have to resist and make choices. Make choices not only about which governments we elect, but also at some time make choices about using other systems. And people in Venezuela are making that choice today by breaking the law. Because the choices between feeding their family and not feeding their family at that point whether you've broken the law is a small issue. So again, I don't expect to see that. And the reason I don't expect to see that is because most governments in the world, when they see the idea of people being able to use a free electronic commerce system that is efficient, that creates growth and opportunities and jobs and innovation, that gives them access to the world of commerce across borders. What's not to like? That's something you should encourage. And if your government does not encourage that and does not believe in those ideals that people should be free to associate and free to express and free to make choices, then your government is not free. Which is a much bigger problem than Bitcoin at that point. I would be less worried about their power with cryptocurrencies than by the fact that they have all the guns.


Buying Weird Switch Accessories Episode 10! I don't know if it is actually Episode 10. You just guessed it. No, I don't number these. It feels like it's about 10. We've done so many of them. You've done it for, like, what, the last four years? I know, a long time. I've lived in a while. I'm, like, double petting pets right now. It's a lot of people's favorite episode show that I do here, which is cool, but also, there's not many things left. We've done them all. We've bought them all. We've looked at them all. Or so I thought. Oh, oh no. Because I looked again and I found more. Oh, you found some more? Yeah, there's, like, a ton more, actually. Weird people keep being weird. Good. And making weird things. Good. High-five for weird people. Whatever they are. Definitely. I'm sitting in the room. Good. It's been a hot minute since I bought these, so I honestly, as always, don't remember what I got. Oh! This is not, this is a gift. Oh! I think more of a Siamese than anyone. Oh, a Siamese. Woo! Look what I got. Uh-oh. Oh! And these, Kimberly. Uh-huh. Which, oh. I'm over here. Oh, you were over there? Yeah. Oh, okay. These didn't come in time for the video, but I was so excited for these. So Kim's on the couch behind. So I love the GameCube. You guys know it's my favorite old-school console, actually 360 and GameCube. When the Switch was first coming out and we knew that it was getting these removable joy-cons, I thought, oh cool! So we're going to get, like, GameCube add-ons and a bunch of other wacky kind of add-on controllers. And there was even concept art for it online. But no, we just got regular joy-cons. Nothing wacky ever happened with it. But anyway, Nintendo never did it. So along comes NYXI, or Nixie probably, and they've made these. They are GameCube controllers. Essentially it's a GameCube controller that you can slap onto the side of your Switch. I've taken a look at a lot of these third-party kind of joy-con accessories. And one of my biggest gripes for a lot of them is just them not connecting, them not working well with the Switch. But for this, you just plug them in and, yeah, they're working just like regular joy-con. And it feels like I'm holding a GameCube controller. And it adds these really nice big handles onto the back. You even have a couple extra buttons back here. The best part is they're sponsoring the video. Oh, I didn't know I was getting this. They're two new colors, silver and black. Well, I guess platinum and like jet black.  I was playing Zelda last night and I did actually have to kind of remap my brain because X is now on the right and Y is because it's the GameCube format. It is a GameCube controller. It feels like a GameCube controller. And the best part of all of it, Kim, is you know how the joy-cons get... They drift. Drift. Drift, please. Right? Well, not only do these have whole sensor sticks, so there's no sensors contacting, so they can't possibly get drift. If you're doubting that, you know what you can do? You can just take them off. Switch them out with what? Well, new ones. Oh, okay. If for any reason you... I don't know, nothing is ever going to happen. But for whatever reason, you can just switch them out. You can buy new ones, so you don't have to buy a whole new thing, which honestly, Nintendo should invest in that idea. So they work on the light as well, if you just want to use them as a GameCube controller or plug it into your Switch and get nostalgic. There'll be a link down below. That's right, a link down below if you want to grab a pair of these. And thank you so much, Nixie, for sponsoring the video and giving us this weird but very cool accessory to look at. All right, let's keep going. This is what I thought was a Pokemon wrap, but I'm not realizing it's a Pokemon wrap. I'm guessing for legal reasons. But I thought it looked really cool. Look at the little guy. Yeah, can you work on getting that on there to see what it looks like? And then this Nintendo Switch, it does have VR, but only for Nintendo Labo. And I think that's weird because who even has that? But a company has made a headset that you can use with the Switch. And I'm really curious because I don't think I really played any of the VR Nintendo Switch games and I really wasn't interested in finding my Labo. I think most of it got washed away in our flood. Yeah, a lot of it broke. So I thought this would be a cool way of actually experiencing Nintendo VR. It's like an actual headset that you strap the Switch into. Whoa, what's wrong with him? That's not what he looks like. No, that's what he looks like. No. That's what Gengar looks like. I don't know why they would change the way Gashly looks.  I thought it would look cooler. Maybe it just doesn't work with the blue. You want to play VR? You want to see what that's like? Go on. I better find Zelda. Do you want to open this one? Zelda! I guess Siamy's just joining us for this whole video. Stand up. What about that? Oh. Maybe this is made for children. That like really hurt my ear. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.  All right, this is making me massively motion sick. The Switch is not capable of this technology. The game is so blurry. It's a weird thing because you're not Link. You're looking at Link, but you can kind of look around. Well, now I'm just reviewing the VR. This thing is actually, oh wow, bats. Oh, they're coming for me. I love that there's a little hole here. Ow. Your nose will fit. Ow. Are you loaded in? I don't know. Oh god. No. I can usually sit in VR and play games for hours on like the PlayStation VR too, but this, this not good. However, it is fun that I finally get to experience it without holding a cardboard VR in my face. I will say the headset is comfortable. The actual headset is very good. It serves its purpose perfectly. It's just a very crummy VR that's probably not even worth buying the headset for. But if you really want to, it's pretty good. You gotta rate them. Rate, okay. Well, this is socks. This is socks. This is socks. This is a pretty good thing. Oh, ooh. Oh. What do you mean, ooh? You ordered it.  Not ooh. Someone made this. Now what sort is this? That's why I said ooh. Oh. Because I don't know. You don't know. So all around this thing, there's places to slot games. What I like about it is they all shoot out at different angles. And it makes this weird effect. It is cool. I like it. I like it. You just gotta be careful with it. Yeah. Oh, God. They don't really sit in very well. All right, I'm gonna put that in the middle. Why are you laughing already? Oh, it's McDonald's. You know, it's so funny. We were talking about getting McDonald's the other day and Scoot said that he was gonna get a McFish.  It's a filet. Even a filet of fish. Yeah, but he called it a McFish. A Big Mac isn't a McBee. It should be. This is another one where you put your Switch games, but no one knows your Switch games are in here because to the untrained eye, it's just a box of fries. It's like a hide-a-key. It's a hide-a-key for your video games. They'll never find them. Unless they're kind of hungry and they want some fries.  Arguably more expensive than fries, but not satisfying my starchy needs. I think it's tied. I think these two are tied. I love the creativity of finding new places to put your Switch games. So this one, I had to open the box because I used the box to ship something.  Oh, it's the dock. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it's cool. So your Switch dock goes here, but on the back here, you have slots to put some games. Yeah, what do you think? I like it. You rate this number one. Oh yeah. Okay. And hey, if you like weird things on Etsy, don't forget that Kim has her own Etsy store where she sells the weird things that she makes. You can find links down below. I'm starting to think these aren't for the video. It's a water pump. For what? Oh, for pump and water. Why? That's all I know. It's a water pump giveaway here on the Feed em' Ups channel. Like, comment, and subscribe if you wanna win a fish tank water pump. I must have ordered something for the video when they accidentally sent three. Water pumps. Water pumps. I would rate the water pump slightly above the weird sword in the stone, but not above the French price. Because you're hungry. I feel like a lot of stuff is missing. I'm gonna look on my Etsy real quick. I don't know which one was swapped out for three pumps, but yeah, I don't have any of it. I do have this. This is actually really cool, and I've been excited for this. This was pretty much a gift to myself, but it does count for the video. Watch your hands. So fancy. Look at the little wax paper. I made it so fancy. Look at that guy. Oh, that's very cool. And it broke. Oh no.  This video is an absolute train wreck, man. Well, it is cool. It's a deconstruction of the Switch. I've wanted one of these for a long time. Sadly, it looks like glue came loose on a couple pieces, so they're kind of floating around, which kind of makes a fun game to play in a way. You can see if you can guide the pieces around. I also forgot I bought this thing. It's like a game card reader that changes games quickly. That sounds interesting if it works. So you... Oh! This is pretty weird, actually.  You have to try it. That's pretty cool. This feels wrong.  They click in just like they're going into a Switch. Okay, all right. So right now, we have BB and Tina. I have the weirdest selection of games, but if I press this button, that's actually pretty cool. So you can have four games plugged in at any given time, and then you can just rotate between them, and it's like you're taking it out and putting a new one in. That is so convenient. That's really interesting. It switches it so quick as well. Well, this one I like. Yeah, this one you like, when you read this against the front. Oh, this is the best thing. Oh, yeah. This is actually the best thing. It's a little ugly. I don't think it's ugly. It's as not ugly as it could be. Yeah. But it is ugly. Okay, ready? Three, two, one, go. I was so much quicker than you. Hi, we're back. Guess what? You found the stuff. You see that couch behind Kim? Like that brown couch? Yeah, all the stuff was in a blue bag right next to the couch. So the whole time I was sat here stressing and yelling at Etsy, it was literally almost within arms breach. And we could have just... Some of the coolest stuff was in that bag, and I want to quickly take a look. I ordered two of these. One for me, one for Bob. The one for me never turned up. The one for Bob showed up, but missing half of it. Good. So you remember that really cool glass case? Yeah. This is the base for it. So this base lights up, and then you put the switch on it, you put the glass case over it, and it lights up everything. They just sent this. And it's also not even from Etsy. It's from China. Yeah, it's like a dropship thing. So it's a dropship thing they were selling on Etsy, which is a real shame. This actually is disappointing. Let's get that out of the way. This could also be a disaster. This still is not the best situation, because I ordered three of these. Oh, wait, they're tiny. There's a cassette. What size did you think it was going to be? I thought it was the size of a switch case. I thought they were going to be bigger, but honestly, I kind of liked that they're cute and little. So it's just a nice alternative way of displaying your switch games, and also just a throwback to old school cassettes. It's so cute. It kind of makes me miss cassettes, even though I wasn't really ever big on them. I kind of went straight to CDs. Some of our first dates were going and looking at old records and cassettes. Now the store hasn't done too many of these, but I thought it would be cute just to get all the Pokemon games. Yeah, you take a look at that. So what I actually wanted was this one here on the back, this really cool tall tower, but they said they didn't have that anymore, and all they had was the pyramid. I do actually kind of like it now that I'm looking at it. I do actually kind of like it. I like these two. Magnetic. Ooh, that's super satisfying too. Hey, you need to try clicking on one of those. I'm on board with this. How satisfying is that? It's very minimalistic. Really satisfying. Yeah, I like it. It'll look nice on your desk. I kind of want to just keep doing that.  And then finally, this is one of these things that popped up online and everyone started sharing it with me. You've got to get this. You've got to get this for one of the Etsy videos. And this guy was the reason why I went and bought more stuff. No, he's so cute. It was like an Apple product. It's all shrink wrapped as well. Oh, it actually, yeah, it feels really quality. Ironically, I'll put overcooked in here. And out of my selection here, resin and evil maybe, because you can cook the zombies with fire. That's just cute. And then it's just that little stinkin' cute toaster. This feels like the original reason we started doing these, just quirky and goofy things. This is definitely just one of them things. The thing that started these videos was the drink holder on the Joy-Cons.  Also, I can tell if I hit this really hard, it would fall between this and this. My goblin brain is very happy. Do it. You got to slam it. There you go. All of this is really sick. I don't know, this one felt kind of cursed, but I guess I might have just been overthinking it from a content standpoint. I probably should just relax and know that it's going to be fine no matter what shows up. That's kind of the fun, I guess. If it shows up damaged, then we can laugh at it. I think we did good. Except for the fish pumps, I think. I don't know, I still don't get the fish pumps. It's been days and I still don't get the fish pumps. I appreciate you guys. We appreciate you guys watching. Now we might go and get some ramen. Yeah, I think so. Because it's raining out and it's ramen weather. Like, comment and subscribe. Bye.


Russia. Poland-Ukraine to form joint military unit. Poland is planning to form a joint Polish-Ukrainian military unit ostensibly for security, but with the ulterior motive of occupying Western Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister, Army General Sergei Shoigu said he drew attention to the dangers associated with Poland's militarization. There are plans to create a permanent so-called Polish-Ukrainian formation ostensibly to ensure the security of Western Ukraine, but in fact for the subsequent occupation of this territory, he said. Shoigu added that Poland has become the main tool of America's anti-Russian policy. The existing risks are connected with the militarization of Poland, which has become the main instrument of the anti-Russian policy of the United States. Warsaw has announced its intention to build, as the Poles claim, the most powerful army on the continent. In this connection, large-scale purchases of weapons from the US, the UK and South Korea have commenced, including tanks, artillery systems, air defense and anti-aircraft systems and combat aircraft, the top defense official pointed out. On August the 1st, the Polish Defense Ministry announced a decision to send more troops and attack helicopters to the border with Belarus after Belarusian helicopters violated the country's air borders. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the idea that Poland has claims to Western Ukraine was permeating Polish society. On July the 21st, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin said at a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and the permanent members of the Security Council that Poland could seize control of the Western territories of Ukraine by deploying its troops there.