Rwy'n meddwl i'r next item of business, which is a ministerial, a statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on education reform update. I will allow a moment or two for front benches to reorganise. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement, and so there should be no interventions or interruptions, I call on Shirley-Anne Somerville, cabinet secretary. I'm grateful for the opportunity to update Parliament on the Scottish Government's education reform and improvement agenda. I'll cover a number of areas today, including our forthcoming national discussion on the vision for Scottish education, the creation of three new national education bodies, the independent review of qualifications and assessment that Professor Louise Hayward has been asked to lead, and the development of a set of purpose and principles for the post-school education research and skills system. Like education systems across the world, the Scottish education system has been tested by the pandemic in many ways. It has shown itself to be resilient, creative and adaptive, but the pandemic has presented big challenges, and it is right therefore that we collectively take this opportunity to reflect and to reform. We start from strong foundations. Scotland is the only part of the UK to offer 1140 funded hours of early learning and childcare to eligible children. Our school pupils are benefiting from more teachers, with teacher numbers at their highest since 2008 and the highest per pupil of any UK country. Over 93 per cent of school leavers in education, employment or training are progressing on to positive destinations. On tackling the attainment gap, we are making good progress too, with our record 16.7 per cent of university engines coming from SIMD 20 backgrounds in 2021. Scotland has a highly educated population and has the highest proportion of adults with tertiary level education in the UK. At the heart of our reform programme is pride in the skills, the talent and commitment in our education system to date, with a recognition that we cannot stand still and change is needed, however, and that reform is necessary as we look to the future. That is a message in Professor Ken Muir's report and one that we hear from across the sector. I have made clear my determination to deliver change. This is something that Government cannot and should not deliver alone. Professor Muir highlights in his report that education policy and services are best developed when they are informed by the practice and the experience of those who use and deliver them at every level. We want to bring the widest possible range of voices and views into the room. As I am sure the chamber will agree, it is our children and young people who hold the biggest stake in our education system, and I am determined that they will be heard just as strongly across our reform programme, as they were in Professor Muir's report. We know the incredible work teachers, school staff and practitioners do to support learners, and we will continue to draw on that experience and expertise through our engagement with professional associations and more widely. We will be proactive in engaging with all those who have a stake in the continued success of our education system. Delivery partners, trade unions, equality and human rights organisations, Gallic, Comedium and Scots language sectors, practitioners working at every level, employers, the youth work sector, parents and carers, the representative organisations and indeed wider communities. It is also important that the agenda for education reform is far reaching covering the span of our lifelong learning journey. I have committed the Scottish Government to holding a national discussion to establish a compelling and consensual vision for the future of Scottish education. Those working in the sector and many in this chamber will recall the national debate on education, which was held in 2002. That debate led to the creation of curriculum for excellence, a curriculum in which last year's OECD independent report found offers an inspiring and widely supported philosophy of education. Two decades on from the last national debate on Scottish education, the time is right to discuss our vision for the system. This is a discussion for everyone and I have written today to education spokespeople from all parties in this chamber inviting them to take part. Professor Muir has challenged all of us to work together to establish a consensual vision for education which can genuinely put the learner at the centre. I sincerely hope that this is a challenge that we all rise to, including today. We might not agree on everything, but that should not stop us from finding common ground. The national discussion will be co-convened by the Scottish Government and our local government partner, COSLA, and will launch in the new term. Local government is the statutory provider of education and in any truly national discussion has to be a joint endeavour. I am grateful to COSLA for their support for the national discussion and look forward to working with them in the coming months. I am pleased to inform Parliament that Carol Campbell, Professor of Leadership and Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education at the University of Toronto, and Dr Alma Harris, Emeritus Professor Swansea University and Professor at Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy have agreed to co-facilitate the national discussion. Both professors have extensive experience of educational change, leadership and school improvement, as well as a strong understanding of the Scottish education system through their work as members of the international council of education advisers. They are committed to ensuring that the discussion engages widely and reflects the views of those who need to listen to most, our learners. It is by listening carefully to the learners of today that we will build a vision for the education system of the future. We are grateful to the Scottish youth Parliament for the work that they will be doing over the summer to start gathering the views of young people, and we look forward to working with many other organisations and learners as we seek to hold the discussion in which we prioritise listening to those whose voices are seldom heard. I want this to be the most inclusive ever discussion on education. I also look forward to meeting all the members of the international council of education advisers later this month who will be able to bring their diverse international perspectives to bear on the opportunities and the challenges for Scotland's education system in a post-pandemic world. Presiding Officer, it is crucial that our reform programme takes this opportunity to reflect, debate and develop what we need not just now but in the future for all parts of the learner journey. That is why I asked Professor Louise Hayward to undertake an independent review of qualifications and assessment. As with Professor Ken Muir's work, this process is fully independent, but I can confirm that Professor Hayward has now started the review and is committed to meaningful engagement with all interested parties, not least young people themselves. An independent review group has been established that includes young people and teachers who will now work with their peers to consider options for change. The review will also engage directly with schools and colleges and key partners in learner journey qualifications and assessment. Professor Hayward will report to me by the end of March 2023 and crucially will work closely with the national discussion so that key initial findings from the exercise can be considered ahead of final recommendations on the futures of examinations and assessment. Those strands of work will also connect into and inform the development of the purpose and principles for our post-school education research and skills ecosystem. The development of the purpose and principles is an opportunity to stimulate debate, challenge perceptions and further develop a shared evidence base on what the post-school ecosystem delivers for Scotland, allowing our efforts and decisions to deliver the outcomes that we want to see. I have spoken about our commitment to designing and delivering real change and of bringing wide and diverse voices into the conversation. That will also be reflected in how we create a new qualifications body, a new national agency for Scottish education and an independent inspectorate body. Those bodies will replace the Scottish qualifications authority in Education Scotland. Design and delivery of the new bodies will be informed by engagement with a broad spectrum of those with a stake in their success and underpinned by determination to bring in external views and innovative ideas that test, challenge and embed new approaches, cultures, governance and accountabilities and ways of working. I have ensured that Professor Ken Muir and Louise Hayward have key roles in those arrangements to provide on-going strategic and external support and critical challenge. I will also be ensuring that a number of external individuals sit at the very centre of that work that is now starting to design the new bodies. To provide that critical challenge, we know, will be needed to achieve real change and reform of the system. Building on the foundations laid by Professor Muir's extensive engagement, a stakeholder reference group will shortly be established, which I will chair, and we will also be looking to draw on the approach taken by Social Security Scotland through their experience panels so that a broader range of people with an interest in education can have a say in the design of processes and services for the new bodies. I emphasise to Parliament that overall accountability and responsibility for the reform programme will be with the Scottish Government and ultimately with me as Cabinet Secretary. I have been clear and unambiguous in setting out my desire for substantive change and meaningful reform, with children and young people, families, teachers and practitioners playing a key part in that decision making. Staff in Education Scotland and the SQA deserve our thanks for continuing to deliver for Scotland's learners, including successful delivery of exams over the past two months, and we will ensure that the knowledge, expertise and experience contributes to that reform process. I spoke earlier about the importance of early learning in childcare, and we are committed to ensuring that inspection of early learning in childcare supports delivery of high-quality services and ensures appropriate scrutiny, but we need to remove unnecessary burdens and duplications. We welcome Professor Muir's recommendations that there should be a shared inspection framework for early learning in childcare settings, developed by the Care Inspectorate and the new education inspectorate. We will come forward with specific proposals to consult the sector shortly, followed by a programme of engagement over the summer and autumn. I am working with Her Majesty's chief inspector of education and the chief executive of the Care Inspectorate to identify what they can do in partnership from the start of the next academic year to streamline and improve the inspection process for providers. Each of the areas that I have updated on today will be developed through joint working in the weeks and months to come. It will be a discussion and a journey for everyone, with a stake in the continued success of Scottish education, and I look forward to continuing to work constructively with members and others on our reform ambitions. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues that have been raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to the next item of business. I would be grateful if members who wish to ask a question were to press their request-to-speak buttons now. I call Oliver Mundell. This is not education reform. It is more of the same with a different name. While standards continue to slip and our young people are let down, this Government does not very much at all. Professor Walter Humes sums it up, doesn't he? Boards populated by the usual suspects, including senior staff from the bodies that are to be replaced. He says that it sounds like insider dealing with those who are part of the problem being tasked with producing the solutions. He is right, isn't he? Cabinet secretary, you and the First Minister are part of the problem, aren't you? Those remarks that have been referred to were made before I made the statement and before we have made any announcements about the governance of the process. However, to anyone who still has a doubt about my ambitions for change in that area, I came in very early into that post and set out very early my determination for that reform process. I came to education from another position within the Scottish Government that has moved a system that was unpopular and people had concerns over, and we have developed from that a social security system that has delivered real change that is now respected across Scotland. The Government has, and I have, a history of delivering real change. That is exactly what I am determined to do, so I appreciate that people will be concerned that this is not a complete process of reform. I think that I have made very clearly why that is not the case. The programme will be overseen by ministers. Yes, it will be delivered of course by Scottish Government officials. I have spoken in my statement about the importance of the critical friends and the critical contacts that we will have in that process. Nothing will prevent change from happening. Michael Marra, I hope that the cabinet secretary would appreciate the frustration of the chamber at the internable delays. He talks about real change but nothing has actually changed. We have more and more groups talking about change. If the cabinet secretary wanted to send an invitation to join a group, she could have picked up the phone, she did not have to have a statement to Parliament to do it, because there is really precious little else in this statement that we did not already know. It confirms once again only the glacial case of reform. We are eight months on from Professor Hayward being appointed. Could we not expect today, at the very least, maybe an interim report? When on earth will the actual report be published? This is not delay without cost or consequence. A generation of young Scots, Presiding Officer, are failed by this Government and debilitated by the pandemic and they are being left without solution or redress, and that is entirely unacceptable. It is good to have today confirmed that Education Scotland is going to go. Has the cabinet secretary written a letter to the leaders of that organisation today as well? Only days ago, the Education Committee was told that the body was not being scrapped and that for years to come it was going to be, and I quote, business as usual. Business as usual, Presiding Officer, is of course the problem. Savage yearly cuts in schools, colleges and universities or the post school ecosystem as civil service would have it calls. Does the cabinet secretary agree that any discussion of reform must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of those cuts and a commitment to resource our education system properly? I look forward to Scottish Labour bringing through cost of proposals at the next budget. I may have a long wait, Presiding Officer, because they do not do that. They simply make statements in Parliament and then do not back that up about how actually anything will be resourced. That is the difference between being in opposition with no hope of being in government and actually being in government itself. Business as usual is important because until the new organisations are established, of course they will continue to deliver support for teachers and deliver exams. Business as usual is not to be mocked and is not to be sidelined. It is actually to be encouraged and to be supported to ensure that our children and young people are still supported through this process. We talk about the need for speeds in this issue and yes, there is a need for improvement in this. That is exactly why the Scottish Government has delivered already 2,000 additional teachers from pre-pandemic levels and I have committed to a billion pounds worth of expenditure. We will look at a longer-term reform progress. It is important that we do that, not just as a Government but that we do that in a wide way that encourages a great conversation and a discussion about what needs to happen. That is exactly why we have and will set up facilitation work with the Scottish Youth Parliament, facilitation work with our teachers and the stakeholder groups to ensure that they are hearing from each other. That is getting directly to me. Professor Louise Hayward is independent of Government. She has been working exceptionally well with those in the education system to develop quite an innovative approach to how she is going to be delivering her reports. She has come to work with the national discussion because it is important that she responds after that, because I do not want to get into a position where what is decided for qualifications actually tilts what we do in the rest of the education progress. That is exactly why the reform process is something that has been worked on closely right across the education system. I hope that, despite the questions today, Michael Marra will take part in that. I welcome the cabinet secretary's update and the next crucial stage of reform set out today, especially the commitment to put the voices of our young people at the heart. The cabinet secretary will agree with me, however, that we must provide assurances to learners that this process will deliver real change and meaningful change. What assurances can the cabinet secretary provide of her personal commitment to deliver just that? I have made very clear, both in my initial statement until Oliver Mundell, that I am absolutely determined to deliver real change in the education system. How we will do that as a Government is to work, yes, right across Government, but to engage with practitioners and learners, those who deliver and use education, and those who have different views indeed from the Scottish Government to ensure that those views are being heard right at the centre of the reform progress. I think that what we have set up both for the national discussion and for the reform and replacement of the organisations and qualifications is an example of that. Learning from what has worked well in other parts of Government, for example, around social security, about ensuring that we are using a wide range of partners, not just perhaps the usual suspects that you would see around the table in a discussion around education, but reaching out as extensively as we possibly can. I gave the example of the user panels as one of that. I think that there is a real opportunity for real change, and that is exactly where I am determined to deliver. This is another education statement that has a lot of words but no direct action. We have commitments from the cabinet secretary today that will create more levels of bureaucracy and we have yet to see any meaningful change. Call me cynical, but why has this statement been brought forward to today? Is this just a ploy to deflect attention from the Scottish Government's desperate attempt to kickstart a new independence referendum campaign? I think that Megan Gallacher will know that it is not the job of the Government, and particularly not me, to set the Parliament timetable. Therefore, this has been important that we get a statement on Scottish education now. I am normally criticised for not doing debates on Scottish education and not doing statements, but somehow we are being criticised to actually bring them today. Megan Gallacher tells Democracy that I call consultation. I think that that is what people are looking to see. I think that what came very strongly through in Ken Muir's report is about consultation and about listening to young people. I am afraid that Michael Marr is not even listening to my response of the amount of children, young people and teachers. However, there is a consultation that is required. It came very strongly through in Professor Muir's work. It was his first recommendation that he gave to Government. I am determined to take that on. I do not see any response from the Opposition parties that would suggest their rise into the challenge so far. I think that any reasonable person would welcome the cabinet secretary's invitation to opposition parties to play a, hopefully, constructive role in the reform programme process, but I wonder if she might provide a little further detail on the robust and credible nature of the external challenge regime that she is envisaging here. I think that this is one of the most important aspects of the reform programme. It is inviting that critical challenge right at the heart of the reform process. I have spoken about the stakeholder reference group, which I will chair, which will ensure that a wide range of stakeholders have a direct ability to have discussions with me about areas of hope, areas of concern and ensure that that is a core and central part of the reform process. I hope that there is reassurance given to those in the sector about the role that we have offered to Professor Ken Muir and Professor Louise Hayward within the programme to provide that critical challenge as well. I think that, particularly Professor Ken Muir's work that is already reported, has been widely acknowledged to have landed well and has presented yes the education sector with challenges, but there is a lot of hope for the future. There is a great deal that we can also do in the national discussion. I have mentioned the co-facilitators that we have had in an attempt to take the politics out of the discussion, as has been suggested, for example by the speech from the outgoing secretary of the EIS, Larry Flanagan, who asked us to attempt to take the politics out of a debate on the education system. I hope that the national discussion co-facilitated by COSLA, co-chair by COSLA, but facilitated by two external experts. There will be another way to ensure that we do just that. With a rising attainment gap, lower levels of attainment funding and an organisation leading our assessments that the cabinet secretary has deemed not fit for purpose, although apparently we shouldn't criticise business as usual, isn't she disappointed and frustrated at her own lack of pace to implement those reforms? Reforms, of course, which will now seek to undo the damage of the SNP's previous reforms since 2007, of which there are too many to list. We have seen an increased funding into attainment, with £1 billion in this parliamentary term, compared with £750 million in the last parliamentary term. We were seeing improvements within the attainment gap pre-pandemic, although clearly the pandemic will have presented Scotland as education systems right across the world with certain challenges, but that is exactly why. We have provided that additional funding for the attainment challenge funding and we are providing more teachers the commitment to have 3,500 teachers by the end of the parliamentary term and, as I mentioned earlier, 2,000 extra teachers more than pre-pandemic levels. Ruth Maguire to be followed by Willie Rennie. It's learners the reformed system of education outlined by the cabinet secretary needs to serve. Children and young people must be centred in this process. How will the Scottish Government ensure that that happens? I will be meeting directly with a group of children and young people in the first of a series of engagement sessions very soon to hear directly from them about their priorities for education. That is the first in a series of moves that we are making within education to shift that power balance to enable learners to be fully centred to the development of the reform progress. I mentioned within my statement the important work that we will be carrying out facilitated by the Scottish Youth Parliament to undertake—they will be undertaking an open discussion of the forthcoming summer sitting to ask young people about how this national discussion should be shaped. Of course, Professor Hayworth also has two MSYPs working on her independent review group. I hope that that gives Ruth Maguire just some examples of how we are putting young people at the heart of this process. Willie Rennie to be followed by Siobhan Brown. Within the last few days, the education secretary's speech to the EIS was described as pathetically weak by her new general secretary. The education secretary was humiliated by the First Minister on the date for closing the poverty-related attainment gap. The education secretary has broken her promise to have a qualified nursery teacher in every deprived community. With that record, what confidence can we have for the chances of real change on reform? I welcomed my discussions with the new general secretary for the EIS. As I enjoyed my discussions with the previous general secretary, I am sure that those will continue on many issues, some we will agree on and some we will not. However, we have a shared endeavour, and I think it is wider than just the Scottish Government and the EIS, to be able to have a discussion about reform for education and the replacement of our organisations. Of course, there has been no change, and there will be no change with the policy on the removal of the attainment gap. Mr Rennie and others in me wish to misinterpret it, to misconstru an attempt to have a division between myself and the First Minister. There is none, there will be none, and we are determined to fulfil our pledges that we had in the programme for government. Siobhan Brown to be followed by Ross Greer. We need to make sure that we hear from the people who know our pupils and our education system best teachers. Can I ask what opportunities teachers will have to shape Scotland's reformed education system through the process outlined by the cabinet secretary today? We will very much be at the heart of the system of reform along with young people. I will again mention the stakeholder reference group, which will play an important part in. I mentioned earlier as well that we are looking and giving further thought to those who we can involve directly on the delivery boards themselves, and I am sure that teachers will play a role in that. That will also go alongside the work that I continue to do when I meet, for example, the teachers panel, who ensure that I have a direct voice with front-line teachers, which I find exceptionally useful. Again, the important example that we have seen in the past in Social Security Scotland about their experience panels is something that I would like to see how we can use within the education reform progress, and of course that will involve teachers. The success of the process will depend on a change in culture as well as a change in structures. One entirely fair point of criticism in recent years has been the hostility by the education agencies, particularly the SQA, to any feedback and constructive criticism. The role of the stakeholder reference group will be key to providing the kind of unvarnished constructive challenge needed to establish that new culture. Can I ask the cabinet secretary how that group will engage directly with the officials designing those new bodies? An important aspect around the stakeholder reference group is that it will be chaired by me directly, and I will hear often and frequently from them during the reform process to ensure that they have that direct link not just to officials but to ministers directly. Ross Greer's point about culture is exceptionally important. We have to ensure that we not only get the structures correct, but the cultures and values that we want within our education system are absolutely embedded from day one in our new agencies, whether that is the replacement to the SQA or the replacement to Education Scotland or indeed the new inspectorate. The way we can do that is to ensure that not just the working group but also the entirety of the reform programme board process has, within its very initial discussions and working, that discussion around culture and the fact that we cannot move on in any of that, unless we ensure that the culture is appropriate within all the replacement organisations. We all want Scotland's education system to compete with the best in the world. How will the Scottish Government ensure that we use this opportunity of reform to learn from the best globally? One of the important ways that we can do that is through the facilitators that I have announced today for the national discussion on education and why we continue to ensure that we have the International Council of Education Advisers, whom I can seek their views on. I look forward to meeting them in a few weeks' time where we can discuss the reform progress. I would also point out that we have invited the OECD on a number of occasions to provide us with a critical challenge through the reviews of curriculum for excellence and further reviews that they have carried out. Importantly, we act on their recommendations, which is reform process, which is a good example of that. On 18 May, in the Education, Children and Young People's Committee, I asked the Cabinet Secretary when the attainment gap would be closed. She said, I will not set an arbitrary date for when the attainment gap will be closed. Those are the very words of the Cabinet Secretary in response to my very open question. When will the gap be closed, I will not set a date. Now that the First Minister says that it is 2026, I think that this Parliament deserves to hear the Cabinet Secretary say here and now that the attainment gap will be closed by 2026 within the lifetime of this Parliament. Will she produce a set of milestones by which we can judge how she is progressing towards the achievement of that objective? Two very simple questions. The discussion that we had within the education committee and the discussion that has been had around the First Minister's reflections on the programme for government show that we are all right across government determined to close the attainment gap. Yes, it will have been impacted by the pandemic, but as the programme for government set out in 2016, we are absolutely determined to see that progress. That is laid out in the programme for government. That has been laid out in the programme for government of 2026. There hasn't been nothing that has changed from what has been in the programme for government and what has been said by the First Minister on this issue or indeed any of the discussions that I have had within the education committee. We are all right across government determined to close the attainment gap and we will be able to see that. One of the ways that we are determined to see the approach taken by local government because they are directly involved and delivering education is around the stretch aims that we have asked for them to proceed with. That is a new addition to our education system. The local authorities will be developing those stretch aims and I said at the education committee that we will be publishing those if I am not happy or concerned about the pace of change within that. Of course I will let the education committee know and it is unfortunate through that entire answer that Mr Kerr has refused to listen to it, so I perhaps think that we will be around this road again because he is refusing to answer, to listen to what the Scottish Government is doing and to listen to the work that we are doing with local government to ensure that we are delivering on it. That concludes the ministerial statement on education reform updates. There will be a very short pause before we move to the next item of business.


Molecular oxygen is a vital biological electron acceptor that forms reactive oxygen species such as superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radical, which can harm or kill aerobic cells. To minimize these damaging effects, aerobic organisms evolved antioxidant defenses including enzymes like catalysis, peroxidases, superoxide dismutases, and glutathione S-transferases. These antioxidant mechanisms are regulated by transcription factors such as nuclear factor KB and activator protein H1 in mammals, and the antioxidant responsive element in plants. ROS have been implicated in environmental stress conditions that activate plant defense genes like catalysis and superoxide dismutases. This article was authored by JG Scandalios.


Hi, this is Brandon Rohr, and this is a minimalist guide to slicing and indexing Panda's data frames. There are a lot of ways to pull the elements, rows, and columns from a data frame. If you're feeling brave sometime, check out the seven-part series on Panda's indexing linked to below. Some indexing methods appear very similar but behave very differently. The goal of this post is to identify a single strategy for pulling data from a data frame that's straightforward to interpret and produces reliable results. And just a heads up, these are my own thoughts only. There's no guarantee that it's authoritative or even right. Now in case you wanted to skip to the end, here's the bottom line. One, use .loke for labels, two, use .iloke for positions, and three explicitly designate both rows and columns, even if it's with a colon. We'll step through some examples to illustrate these. Below is a link to the Python script if you'd like to run them yourself. To start with, we'll create a small data frame using data from Wikipedia on the highest mountains in the world. For each mountain, we have its name, height and meters, year when it was first summited, and the range to which it belongs. If this is your first exposure to a Panda's data frame, each mountain and its associated information is a row, and each piece of information, for instance name or height, is a column. Each column has a name associated with it, within Panda's, also known as a label. The labels for our columns are name, height and meters, summited, and mountain range. In Panda's data frames, each row also has a name. Now by default, this label is just the row number, counting starting at zero. However, you can set one of your columns to be the index of your data frame, which means that its values will be used as the row labels. We'll set our column name as our index. It's a common operation to pick out one of the data frames columns to work on. To select a column by its label, we use the dot-loc function. One thing that we can do that makes our commands easy to interpret is to always include both the row index and the column index that we're interested in. In this case, we're interested in all of the rows, so to show this, we use a colon. Then to indicate the column that we're interested in, we add its label. The command mountains.loc colon comma summited gets us just the summited column. It's worth noting that this command returns a series, the Panda's data structure that's used to represent a column. If instead of a series, we just wanted an array of the numbers that are in the summited column, we can add dot values to the end of this command. That would return a NumPy array containing 1953, 1954, 1955, and 1956. If we would only like to get a single row, then we can use the dot-loc function again, this time specifying a row label and putting a colon in the column position. If we only want a single value, for instance the year that K2 was summited, then we can specify the labels for both the row and the column. The row always comes first. While it's true that you can get away with using only one argument in the loc function, it's most straightforward to interpret if you always specify both the row and column, even if it's with a colon. We don't have to limit ourselves to a single row or a single column using this method. Here in the row position, we pass a list of labels. This returns a set of rows rather than just one. We can also get a subset of the columns by specifying the start and end column and putting a colon in between. In this case, height colon summited will give us all of the columns between and including the start point, height, and the end point, summited. Note that this is different than numerical indexing in NumPy, where the end point is omitted by default. Also because we've already specified the name column as the index, our result will also be returned, the name will also be returned in the data frame that we get back. In addition, we can select rows or columns where a value meets a certain condition. In this case, we want to find the rows where the values of the summited column are greater than 1954. In the rows position, we can put any boolean expression that has the same number of values as we have rows. We can do this for the columns as well if we wished. As an alternative to selecting rows and columns by their labels, we can alternatively select them by their row and or column number. The ordering of the columns and thus their positions depends on how the data frame is initialized. The index column, our name column, doesn't get counted in this case. To select data by its position, we use the iLoc function. Again, the first argument is for the rows and the second argument is for the columns. To select all the columns in the zeroth row, for instance, we write iLoc 0 comma colon. Similarly, we can select a column by position by putting the column number we want in the column argument of the iLoc function. We can pull out a single value by specifying both the position of the row and the column. We can pass a list of positions if we want to cherry pick certain rows and or certain columns. We can also use the colon range operator to get a contiguous set of rows or columns by position. Note that unlike the loc function using labels, the iLoc function using positions does not include the endpoint. In this case, it returns only columns 0 and 1 and does not return column 2. All of this can be summed up as follows. 1. Use loc for label-based indexing. 2. Use iLoc for position-based indexing. And 3. Explicitly designate both the rows and the columns, even if it's with a colon. This set of guidelines will give you a consistent and straightforwardly interpretable way to pull data that you need from a pandas data frame. Good luck with your data munching.


Hello everyone and thank you for taking time out of your day for joining us on this webinar on the National Ecological Observatory Network's mobile deployment platform. We'll begin. I want to say that NEON welcomes contributions from everyone who shares our values of unity, creativity, collaboration, excellence, and appreciation. This is outlined in our Code of Conduct and these guidelines apply to NEON staff as well as anyone participating in a NEON program. Our Code of Conduct can be found on our website and we'll also provide a link to that in chat. I want to also mention that we are recording this webinar and we'll post the recording on the NEON website. We'll also provide a PDF of the presentation and we'll post this on the NEON website as well. We have disabled chat for the participants but we will use the chat for displaying any web links. If you have any questions or comments please use the Q&A. There are two of us on the panel today myself and Mike's and Clements and we'll each do a quick introduction. My name is Ramelza Loeta and I've been on the NEON program for 10 years. I joined in 2013 during the construction phase and was part of the terrestrial instrumented systems team which focus on sensors and sensor subsystems that are not part of every NEON site. Special aspect of my position at that time was interfacing with the construction team and ensuring that all sites were built with minimal impact to the science. I've had the privilege to work on all aspects of NEON and in the fall of 2018 I took the lead in the NEON Assignable Assets program to have been leading the program ever since. I'd like to do an introduction for Mike so Mike would you like to introduce yourself? Sure hello everyone I'm Mike Sanclements. I've been with the NEON program since 2012 so for 11 years now prior to that I was a postdoc at the University of Colorado Boulder here. Since 2012 I led the terrestrial instrument science team which Ramelza was part of through the construction phase commissioning and transition to operations and the initial operations of that team and I am now the director or lead of research initiatives for the NEON program and I will turn it back over to Ramel and looking forward to filling you in on the MDP. Thank you Mike and with introductions out of the way let's go ahead and begin. For this personal presentation I'd like to provide a quick summary of the NEON Assignable Assets program for those not familiar with it by the quick overview of the MDP over the mobile deployment platform who over a few use case scenarios for MDP deployments show three actual MDP deployments that we did how to request an MDP in the process summarize everything with a short MDP video and finally have some time for questions and discussion. Starting with an overview of the NEON Assignable Assets program there's a link to the website and the program FAQ in the chat the NEON Assignable Assets program makes available certain components of NEON's infrastructure scientists engineers and field ecologists and technicians to members of the community to support their own research or other activities. The signable assets program has several guiding principles it's designed to leverage NEON infrastructure for community engagement projects in the program are evaluated to avoid conflicts with NEON's mission and scope as well as avoiding interference with current NEON measurements or sampling. Project support is on a cost-recoverable basis I want to note that this is the funding model from the NSF for NEON other NSF research infrastructure have different funding models we have a process for evaluating requests that includes a feasibility and technical review if there are cost analyses and pricing of the project and if funded or a project is ready to be implemented establishing a contract or work agreement. The signable assets program is categorized as eight services that we provide and support starting on the left side we have the observational sampling infrastructure the sensor infrastructure our airborne observation platform and our mobile deployment platform on the right side we have access samples request field site coordination subject matter expertise and letter of support or collaboration. I'm not going to go over each of these now I today will be focusing on the mobile deployment platform or the MDP however for those that are interested to know more about the NEON Assignable Assets Program and what it has to offer we do have another webinar next month on September 13th where we'll go over the program in more detail a link to the webinar registration and zoom link should also be posted in the chat it'll also be linked on the NEON upcoming events website in the next few slides I'll provide a quick overview of the MDP infrastructure there's a link in the MDP specific website in the chat as well we like to view the MDP as a way for the science community to bring NEON to their research or research sites a tool for the community to innovate and impart creativity into NEON or bring NEON to a community members creative research MDPs are essentially mobile NEON tower sites with a subset of terrestrial and aquatic sensors that can be deployed from remote locations to collect NEON like data and NEON has five MDPs that are ready to deploy the standard MDP consists of a trailer mounted instrument hut that is identical to the instrument hut at the NEON terrestrial sites a roan 25g tower requestable up to 100 feet it has the ability to tie into utility power or be powered by a remote generator system has the ability for remote communications via cellular satellite or point-to-point internet connection it has a configurable array of atmospheric terrestrial and aquatic sensors and has the ability to incorporate additional research instrumentation this is important as a user is not limited to what sensors can be co-deployed along with NEON standard sensor set the MDP measurements and sensors are a subset of the full neon terrestrial and aquatic sensors and subsystems the list on the right is also on our website and the link will be provided in chat the terrestrial measurements include adico variants turbulent storage exchange co2 and water isotopes bare metric pressure precipitation profile measurements of temperature humidity wind and radiation as well as soil temperature moisture key flux and soil c2 fluxes aquatic measurements include nitrate temperature connectivity pH dissolve oxygen fdom chlorophyll PAR as well as the ability for periodic graph samples using an isco sampler a follow-up the overview with a few hypothetical MDP use case scenarios in a blog post who posted in 2021 we presented five use cases for MDPs you can read these in more detail on the neon website and linked in the chat these five use cases are one bring neon measurements to experimental sites to monitor response to disturbances and rapidly changing ecosystems three link networks by bringing neon measurements to other network sites or validate and test new instrument technologies and five capture spatial gaps or site heterogeneity through the blog post listed five use case scenarios we've since had more scenarios that researchers have approached us with including using an MDP as an educational resource where one could be deployed to a community user site or brought to the university to learn about sensors measurements or even sensor maintenance and repair another scenario was using MDP as a rapid response base station where the MDP could be deployed to provide standardized measurements while also providing rapid access to communications and power infrastructure for other systems and sensors there are many more scenarios for MDPs and we are excited to see what the community can dream up for them we would be delighted to hear how an MDP could enhance your research in the next few slides I'd like to present three actual MDP deployments that occurred in 2021 and 2022 the very first MDP MDP deployment was in collaboration with Ohio State University and was deployed at the LSU airport the second deployment was a request from Colorado State University for deployment at Colorado State University's Ardex site Colorado the third was an MDP deployment at the Consaprey biological station in Manhattan Kansas a briefly go over each one of these next the first deployment was in 2021 in collaboration with Ohio State University's Translational Data Analytics Institute they were interested in deploying the MDP at OSU airport to study environmental impact of aircraft combustion engines they proposed to use artificial intelligence and data science methods to extract the connection between aircraft activity and their sensor readings during this deployment OSU researchers added several sensors to the MDP tower and instrument hut to supplement the MDP sensors and measurements the second deployment was also in 2021 at Colorado State University's Agricultural Research Development and Education Center this project was was a subject of an NSF rapid award where researchers wanted to augment and integrate edge computing hardware into the neon MDP so an MDP would be ready to study wildfires there's a link in the to the NSF rapid award abstract in the chat this project had two phases phase one was testing and integrating the researchers equipment and sensors into an MDP and to ensure that it's fully functional and well integrated once tested and integrated the MDP would be ready for phase two there's actually a short YouTube video on the phase one of this project linked in chat the second phase of the project was to deploy this MDP to a contained Colorado wildfire though there were many wildfires that year we were actually unable to get the appropriate access and permissions to deploy the MDP during a contained wildfire but this did not deter the researchers and we provide and we pivoted and work with other research colleagues to get the MDP deployed to a controlled burn this brings us to the third MDP deployment that happened in the spring of 2022 this was in collaboration with the cons of prairie biological station where they were conducting prescribed burns because this was a controlled burn we were able to deploy the MDP before they burned together preburn data we operated the researchers equipment during the actual fire since their research question did involve fire detection and then we kept the MDP there for a short while after to collect the post burn data it was a very rare opportunity to be able to have to have equipment present and not be destroyed or ruined during a fire during the burn the researchers actually streamed the live video and data from the MDP tower we do have a short YouTube video on this deployment and it should be linked in the chat now I'd like to change gears a little and show you how one would go about requesting an MDP and the process involved requesting the MDP is very straightforward as with any assignable asset request we have specific request forms tailored to the type of request in this case the form would be the MDP request form and this can be found on the neon research support and assignable assets webpage as well as the MDP webpage a link a link to download the request form will also be linked in the chat once this form is filled out it could be emailed to the assignable assets program and a link to that email is in chat as well the request form itself has only a few basic questions to capture some initial information on the proposed project this includes a principal investigator and contact information a project overview so we could understand the project scope location dates funding status or sources as well as some additional information that will help us understand the proposed project essentially questions on who what when why and where request form is not thorough by any means and it's just the initiation of the request process in the beginning of the conversation we'll typically follow up with subsequent questions and set up a remote meeting to discuss the project further I'd like to change gears briefly to go over the actual request process itself here I'm showing a simplified process that MDP request would go through actually this process is the same for any neon assignable asset request this process here is for a research project that is seeking funding from a funding agency like the NSF step one the researcher submits the appropriate request form step two we then review it and conduct the feasibility review and cost analysis step three following the review and analysis we send results and budget back to the researcher for their review during this step we'll iterate with the researcher on the scope of work and the cost step four once the scope of the work in the budget is agreed upon the researcher would then submit the proposal to the funding agency in step five the researcher receives the results of their proposal and if they are funded we then move to step six step six this is where neon and the researcher work to finalize the scope the details of deployment finalize the budget and importantly set the contract for the work once we have a contract in place we could then move to implement the project and deploy the MDP in the field if the researcher already has funding in place the process is still the same minus the proposal submission to the funding agency the timeline for requesting and getting an MDP deploy could be quite lengthy so we suggest that MDP requests be submitted as soon as possible and as far out as possible this is because it takes time to iterate with the researcher on the scope of work and requirements the details of the deployment like power access insulation limitations etc we're meeting can take a lot of time sometimes months depending on the site since permitting is the responsibility of the requester people should be aware of permitting timelines this is often in an overlooked aspect so I want people to be aware of this potential delay contracting could take a month or more this usually depends on how fast Patel and the research institution can agree to the terms of a contract and then there is the scheduling of the field installation and civil construction teams our installation teams are usually busy doing work throughout the 81 sites of the observatory so we would need some time to make sure schedules can be coordinated and aligned finally once the contract is in place we can usually get MDP deployed to a site within 30 days of the contract being finalized so one way to think of this is that we are essentially trying to set up a complete neon site from scratch with each MDP deployment so each deployment is has has completely unique circumstances and has its own very unique site specific challenges so it does take a lot of time to get one of these deployed and set up properly we do recognize that research opportunities sometimes just happen without notice for example rapid changes in an ecosystem or a large disturbance in this case we will work with the researcher to work as rapidly as possible to get one of these deployed if they have the if you have the desire and the funding so we really do encourage people to reach out as early as possible if they want if they are interested in MDP we are near the end and just we're near the end and to summarize everything I'd like to show a video that quickly summarize what I presented here today this video could be viewed on the neon science youtube channel and we'll link that video in the chat here's a here's a short video neon's mobile deployment platforms or MDPs are flexible tools with which the community can adapt neon to their needs MDPs bring standardized scalable neon measurement systems to planned or ongoing research projects experiments or other existing network sites MDPs are self-contained research units built on a trailer platform that can be transported to road accessible remote locations these MDP systems are designed to gather ecological data about the atmosphere fresh water and soil they allow researchers to leverage the neon network and use the same standardized and validated instrument systems from across the observatory for their own research MDPs are a neon assignable asset that are requestable by individual researchers academic institutions government agencies research organizations and the private sector standard configurations include a trailer mounted instrument hut a ron 25g tower up to 100 feet tall and a suite of standardized neon terrestrial and aquatic instrumentation the MDP systems also have the expandable capability to accommodate additional researcher provided instrumentation sensors on the MDP can collect eddy covariance and trace gas measurements solar radiation and standard environmental measurements such as air temperature wind speed and direction precipitation atmospheric pressure and relative humidity these data can be combined with the MDP soil modules for measurements of soil CO2 flux moisture and temperature and soil heat flux a freshwater aquatics module is also available for researchers sands can be strategically placed in streams and rivers to capture data including conductivity pH dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll nitrate levels par water grab samples and water levels can also be collected using this MDP aquatic module the core of the MDP platform is housed in a secure instrument hut that connects to utility power but can also be powered for short periods with a trailer mounted propane generator system that keeps the data collection going well off grid system communications and data uploads are possible via direct wired or wireless network connections the data are stored locally within the instrument hut on neon's data acquisition system and also pushed to neon's data center for storage and processing using neon standard processing pipeline and qa qc algorithms the MDP can be monitored in real time for sensor data quality and validity to ensure the smooth collection of information neon technicians can also be alerted about any maintenance or repair issues researchers can easily download MDP data or use neon's processing algorithms so that the data collected at the MDP site is comparable with neon terrestrial and aquatic field sites across the U.S. through neon's assignable assets program researchers can easily request an MDP in support of their own research programs these requests undergo a feasibility evaluation by neon personnel and are operated on a cost recoverable basis requesters are responsible for obtaining permissions permits and funding for deployment which is often secured through grants administered by the national science foundation and other funding agencies visit neon science.org to learn more that was a short little video you could watch if you uh desire or for it at all so before we move to the q and a i do want to give mike the opportunity for any comments or anything that i missed mike no um i really think you covered that great i would just add that if specific instances of use you're considering or specific scenarios you might be interested in deploying an MDP to MDP to weren't mentioned here that doesn't mean they're not possible and that we as part of the assignable assets program will work with closely with researchers to try to accommodate their needs and get the project done thank you mike so now now we'd like to open this time for a q and a discussion um so we just want to see if anyone has any burning questions you could please put your questions inside the q and a and i guess if it's a long question i think you could raise our hand and i think we could invite them to speak is that right mike yep that is true and i can while people are thinking i can start with a couple of common questions we've had in the past from other groups um while people here are thinking and that would be rebelle how long can someone request an mdp for um right now that really kind of depends on the researchers project needs um they could be as short as as a month um and as long as a couple years um so the projects that you've seen that i presented earlier were usually from one to two months or one to three months um and we actually have a request in right now for a project deployment um up to about a year so really kind of depends on the um the research project the research question great and um another question is can you request just an aquatics module or just a tower or do you need to get the whole package you can actually just request aspects of it um if you request for the full suite you'll get the tower the aquatics module and whatnot but you can't ask for just the aquatics module for example if you're not interested in uh surface exchange or any covariance turbulence and just want the water module you could just request just that great and um if you're not familiar or the researchers not familiar with the instrumentation themselves does neon help with calibrating those instruments and maintaining them um neon maintains the entire system that includes the maintenance of the entire system and that includes also all the calibrations of it so the researcher ends up getting a full calibrated suite for the entire duration of the deployment you know and the maintenance is of course done by our trained neon um field technicians great great and what um what happened with the data does neon hosted or do they provide it to the researcher or is it published on the researcher's behalf by neon how does that work no neon's not designed to host any um external researchers data however neon will link the data to where the researchers have it posted so or they could actually post their data if they don't have their own database or their own website they could actually host it on um some other locations like uh edi which is the um a data repository that nsf also funds okay so the neon would provide the data to the researcher and then they would have access to work on it as they wish and then they could host that somewhere else um in collaboration with another repository or at their university or something okay that's correct and could you get more than one mdp is that possible to request more than one or is it limited to one so we have five total um and yes a researcher can request more than one particularly if they have multiple sites that they want to to do we we will know i will know because there are five we are limited to the number that we could actually deploy um and i will note that because these mdps are limited there might be conflicts right now we're not fully subscribed meaning that they're all not deployed right now so people can request up to five um but if there starts becoming some constraints and that's where we then have to to manage timing and how long and how many people could request great and what are some of the other advantages to using an mdp over trying to say set something up myself if i'm a researcher i'd imagine there's assistance with qaqc or processing of some sort and data that neon provides that might be beneficial yeah actually i mean any researcher could always set up their own nato covariant system collect really great data however what you get with a neon mdp is you get a full neon like system so you get all the standardization of the neon sensors the neon data processing the qaqc and you also get a fully calibrated system and you really get a turnkey system that the researcher doesn't have to kind of worry about great that's fantastic and a final question that we've received which i think is a popular question in the past is how much does deployment of an mdp cost is it a fixed cost or does it vary depending on things it varies greatly depending on the duration of the project where it's located the height of the tower the quality of the the quality of the the amount of maintenance that's that's requested and so it's there is no real fixed cost because each site is completely unique like i had mentioned before we're really setting up a neon like site every time we deploy an mdp so it can be costly you know costs can range from several tens of thousands up to several hundred thousand dollars for a full long-term deployment so then when when the researcher provides their their form with what they're looking to do that would be the the forum and the information we would use to generate or neon would use to generate the cost depending on the scope of their project is that correct exactly exactly and we work with the researcher to to try and optimize those costs as much as we can and so that so that they could so that we could meet their scientific goals great and there's another question in the q and a here which is with the priority for mdps given a university or similar affiliated ps if there is a high demand for the mdps how does neon balance interest in these of mdps by non-university ps will contracts link change or be limited if there's a high demand for mdps and i think is it correct that it's more not necessarily based on the university but it's it's msf funding is given priority is that correct exactly because it's because the observatory is an nsf observatory it's an sf facility nsf funded projects do get priority if there's a conflict like i said we have five of them right now right now none of them are deployed but if it does become a conflict we start looking at first nsf funding and then we start looking at other agencies from there right now if one is deployed there's a possibility it could be recalled but like i said we have five of them and not all of them are deployed right now and the demand isn't very high however when they are deployed you know they could be out for a long time so we'll work with the researcher and all the other researchers that have these in order to try and balance or meet the goals great um and i think that's all the questions from q and a and so i think um if no one has any others we could call that the end of the question if there's anything else great all i want to say thank you for to everybody who participated today um we will have this recording available on the website if there's anyone that missed it and then we can want to share it but otherwise thank you very much thank you all take care goodbye right now


Greetings, my name is Satyanarayana Mysore, I am a interventional pulmonologist, special interest in sleep medicine and also lung transplant physician. At Manipal Respiratory we offer comprehensive solutions to complex respiratory problems, sleep issues. Our range of intervention includes rigid bronchoscopy to self-expanding airway metal stents, treatment of complex sleep disorders, insomnia, REM behavior disorder and lung transplant as you all know is a very budding science evolving in India and we have had a rich experience in heart lung transplants. So that also we do offer comprehensive care. The range that are unique in service offerings from Manipal include end-to-end management of both inpatient and outpatient care. We also deal with pulmonary hypertension and offer newer solutions to pulmonary hypertension including lung transplant when the stage is right for the same. We offer outpatient endobronchial ultrasound linear and peripheral lung masses biopsy using complex interventions. We also believe in affordable healthcare and these range of complex interventions are offered at a substantially fair price that our patient population can afford. The sleep we have unique offerings across a range of sleep disorders. Thank you. I am Dr. Padma Sundaram, consultal pulmonologist since the last 15 years. The Department of Respiratory Medicine has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years. We offer to all sorts of patients of all categories and ranging from simple respiratory infections to complex pulmonary interventions. The usual patients that we see in the OPDI consist of patients with airway diseases either caused by allergies in the form of asthma for which extensive range of tests and treatments are available including the most up to date treatments. Diseases caused by smoking and air pollution which is on the rise thanks to the increasing levels of smoking in the general public. We deal with respiratory infections in the form of bacterial infections, tuberculosis, drug resistant tuberculosis, multi drug resistant tuberculosis including the management of surgical procedures in these group of patients. We deal also with infections in patients who are immunocompromised who have associated diabetes or post transplant patients. We deal with a lot of patients with breathlessness who come to the emergency who are managed with oxygen and ventilatory support. We provide this support in hospital as well as in the intensive care unit and follow this up with respiratory care treatment at home. We also provide pulmonary rehabilitation services at home. We deal with lot of patients who come with unexplained breathlessness in the form of interstitial lung disease where we have a good facility for radiological investigation, lung biopsies and multidisciplinary meetings so that a proper diagnosis and treatment can be done. We also manage patients with lung cancers and various forms of surgeries which are required and complex pulmonary interventions. Thank you. My name is Dr. Guru Prasad but I am the consultant pulmonology and respiratory medicine at Manipal Hospital. I would like to tell a few words about the scope of the service in pulmonology. We treat a wide range of pulmonology diseases starting with the airway diseases, asthma, COPD, infections such as bacterial infections, tuberculosis, interstitial lung disease, hypertension, thromboembolic diseases, respiratory failure due to any of these long standing diseases and lung cancer also. We have a full range of outpatient and inpatient services to deal with all the complications of these diseases. There is a very good amount of interventions also which can be done. According to the specific diseases I would like to stress a few points from the patient's point of view. Diseases such as asthma can be controlled very well with regular inhaler intake as advised by the doctor and a lot of these diseases can be kept under very good control as advised by the pulmonologist. The other set of diseases where the awareness is increasing is sleep diseases where if you have got diseases such as snoring along with the daytime sleepiness or daytime tiredness this can be treated very well with all the diagnostics and treatment facilities available in pulmonology. Hello everyone, I am Dr. Aileen Kinemi and I am the pediatric pulmonologist here at Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road. I have been running this center for the last six years and we are really proud to claim that we have a fantastic pediatric pulmonology and pediatric sleep center here. Apart from managing the common childhood illnesses as asthma, wheezing, childhood allergies we are a team that has certainly come a long way in managing various congenital lung anomalies, cystic fibrosis and we also take pride in saying that we have a very good state of the art pediatric sleep services and through this center we are able to help a lot of patients that come referred from different hospitals and different centers all over Karnataka and in the south and we are able to manage not only the sleep studies but as well as guide them through their entire disease management protocols. We are also the only center currently doing sweat chloride in Bangalore. The test that is absolutely necessary for diagnosing cystic fibrosis we are also have been treating managing cystic fibrosis patients over the last five to six years and I think we have come a long way. We thank you for all your support, thank you.


We have everything on this is Amit Dan of amitdan.com. Today I'll have another episode of review video and I'll be reviewing the Barbary polo shirt which I have it right here. If this is your first time or if you visit thank you for your support. On this channel I'm always trying new and different ideas. If you're into thinking outside the box this is the channel to subscribe. If you're looking for more review videos there'll be links in the description box below. So Barbary is a luxurious brand and you can tell their product by a distinctive check pattern which is right here. So this is kind of their vintage you know logo or vintage check and also they have the famous Barbary logo which is right here. So I wanted to try this expensive polo shirt and wanted to see if there's really a difference or you know this just the name. So the polo shirt the one I bought is this is a PK polo and this is $470 what I remember. This is not brand new I used it a few times and that's why you know I wanted to give you my opinion because I have a good idea now how it feels and after a few washing. So when I checked their website I found out that they don't have $470 polo shirt anymore so right now they have $570 and $680 so it seems that they're you know lowest price polo shirt now is about $500 so they don't have anything below $500 but this one what I have here is $470 and they don't offer or they don't have this pricing anymore. So now the first thing let's you know unfold the whole polo shirt but before that let's take a look here. So this is a Barbary large and you can see the vintage check which is right here. So I think all of their clothes have this you know vintage check if not they you would have this you know Barbary logo which is right here and let's look at the fabric. This is a PK polo and when I touch the fabric you know there's quality in there this is very you know smooth and it's durable. So what happened when I'm washing this polo shirt there's no color run out. This is different than you know other polo I have because you know whenever I'm washing any other brands of polo I see that there's like you know slight color run out or you know the water gets like you know the color from the polo shirt but when I wash this polo shirt the color doesn't run out so that's you know really tells that this is a quality product but I feel the price $470 is not something you know you want to spend just on a polo and actually this is not even for $770 anymore it's above $500 so their polo right now is $580 and some of them $650 I think I saw a couple for $530 or $510. So and here's the you know the classic Barbary logo and if you take a look here they also have the classic check right here and this one right here and this is the collar so when you wear it actually it feels very comfortable and you know you can tell right away that this is an inexpensive luxury product and here is the fabric when you touch the fabric it feels very smooth it doesn't feel rough like other pk polo so and if you kind of stretch it you can see that you cannot even see through so very nice you know knitting and it's quality fabric but definitely I wouldn't buy you know a $470 or above $500 polo on a daily basis so this is just like you know something I wanted to try and I'm happy with the product but you know this is way too expensive for polo shirt unless like you know you're kind of diehard Barbary fan or you're that kind of reach that $500 is nothing but definitely you know this is not something you'd buy and wear on a daily basis so overall I'm happy with the product and except the price I have nothing to complain about so that was what I wanted to show you thank you for watching this video there will be more videos coming up so I'll see you shortly thank you


We are going to start with the Akash Lab project. The first group is EDX Analytics. The mentors are Mr. Praveen Pal, Ms. Mitali Nayak, and Mr. Pushpak Burange. The main purpose of this project is to analyze the EDX student data to gain meaningful insights. Data analytics also involves a thorough study of database containing all demographic and activity information of a user. For this data, one can infer as to which category of students are most likely interested in learning the course, the drop-out rate, et cetera. The team is here to present. Good afternoon, everyone present over here. The EDX Analytics of Akash Lab are here to give a presentation of what we have done for this whole month of two months. I'm very thankful to Parak, Mr. Pushpak, Ms. Mitali Nayak, and Mr. Praveen for guiding us through it. And let me introduce my team members. I am Pallavi. She's Akansha, Raunak, Shubham, Sachin, and Oshin. Now, let's start the production. Now, what is EDX? As Aayushi had already introduced in the morning, it is a MOOC platform that is a massive open online course site where students from all over the world can register free courses and learn many new things. Now, coming to the second part, that is data analytics. It is a discovery of meaningful patterns in data. And the main aim of a project is to find out such features or relevant information through which we can figure out that a student is gaming the system or not.   For example, let me say, suppose, hint abuse button. If someone has visited the Khan Academy website, there is a question and a hint option. If the student is not interested in giving the answer, then he will click on that hint option and directly come to the answer and he will give that answer. And it is recorded that, yes, the student has completed, so he'll get the certificate in the end. So what we want to do is that we want to filter the students out so that in future, we can introduce some interventions for slowing their gaming process so that these kind of students also learn equally good as the regular students. Parallel we have also worked on data visualization in which we are plotting statistics like demographic data, gender, based on education level, et cetera, in high charts, pie charts, line graphs, et cetera, through which it can be a good feedback to all the people who are designed and also the tutors to see how popular their course is or how well their course is running so that they can get their feedback and based on that, if they want some improvements, they can do that further. So this is the flow diagram of the log parsing. So first, on the edX course site, whenever a student clicks on a button or does any activity like logged in or whatever he does, an event is generated, which has been recorded in the tracking.log file on the edX server. And our job is mainly to parse this tracking.log file, extract those events and we have classified them into certain tables which we are storing in our own database. And then we are writing some queries for extracting features to depict that this student is gaming, looking at such instances. And we are storing it in a CSV file. And as we are using VECA, which is a machine learning tool, which is going to classify whether a student is gaming or not, we have to convert it into a .IRFF file, which is an input for VECA. And this will train the data set and give us the output whether that student is gaming or not. Now I would like to call Sachin to continue with log parsing. Thank you for loving. Now I would like to continue to parse log files. Log, basically log files are the files in which we record the series of events which are occurred in the system or in the software. When an event is generated, server creates a log entry and that log entries are added into the log files. When that log file reaches to the certain maximum limit of the size, then those log files are archived and that archived file is stored and new log file is created. edx.itus also uses log files for recording history and keeping the track, track of whatever the activities student has done. For example, if student clicks on play video button, log entry with the event type play video is generated and that is stored into the tracking.log file in JSON format. This is the simple schema to store log data from tracking.log file into the hive database. The first one is log database, a log table that will store the general attributes which are present in each and every log entry. For example, IP address of the host page, those attributes are present in each and every log entry. Those will be stored in that log table and for particular event type such as load video, there are some special attributes which are associated with it. For example, in speed change, there are attributes like old speed and new speed. Those attributes will be stored in those particular table. We need to keep our database synchronized with tracking.log file. So, for that purpose, we are using status table. Status table contains different entries like lines read and size. Lines read represent the number of lines which we have already passed from the current tracking.log file and size represents the size of the file which we have passed. When our program runs, there are three possible cases. First case is when current size is greater than old size. This means that in the tracking.log file, new log entries are added. So, our program will read the number of lines which have already been passed from status table and in the current tracking.log file, it will skip those entries and parse only the newly added entries. When current size is equal to the old size, that means the file is not modified. So, program will do nothing. And when the current size is less than old size, that means the file has been archived. So, Ocean will continue. Thank you, Sajjan. So, as we know that we are working on large amount of data. So, to handle such a large amount of data, we will be using big data tools. So, I will give you a brief introduction of all the tools which we are using. The first one is Hadoop. Hadoop is a framework or a platform which is used to store large amount of data in a distributed computing system, computing environment. In our project, we have developed, we have set up a cluster of 5, 6 nodes and stored the data generated in it. The second one is Hive. Hive is a data warehousing infrastructure which is developed on top of Hadoop. It works in a similar manner as that of SQL queries. And the last one is Scoop. Scoop is basically used to transfer data from normal database to Hive. And next part will be explained by Akshay. Thank you, Ocean. Now I will be continuing with the connection of Hive with Java. So, since we are using Java program, in order to write our Hive queries, the first task of us is to connect our Java program through the Hive server. For that thing, Hive provides a specific service which is called the Hive server. We need to run Hive server on a particular port and need to mention that port number in our Java program so that our JDBC driver is able to connect to the Hive server and it is able to run our Hive queries over that server and return the output query to our Java program. So, this is the sequence that from our Java program, JDBC driver. What is stored in Hadoop? What data is stored in Hadoop? Yes, sir. Different types of queries with different types of data. Yes, sir. Those tables are sitting in Hadoop. Yes, those tables are sitting in Hadoop. So, we have actually extracted all the useful information in our log table and all other tables which was explained previously by Sachin. So, now our next work is to extract some really very useful information from that so that it is of some use to either the course creator or to the student or in our machine learning feature. So, we will be using this. So, we have basically derived four types of features. First feature is how much active a user is on a per day basis. Before that, I always insist on requirements. Yes, sir. You started with the project objective. I want to catch what was even a gaming. It's a gaming. So, before you proceed further. Yes, sir. So, two things I understood. Your objective is to catch gaming. Second thing I understood is, you are going to catch gaming based on eight events. Yes, sir. You have got exactly eight events. Yes, sir. Where is the requirement document which says gaming is equal to? Where is this? So, we are using machine learning to classify whether a student is gaming or not. You can use anything. Yes, sir. Now that machine learning tool will have an interface to define gaming. What is gaming according to you? That should come here. So, basically, first we have... What is gaming based on the eight events? So, we have derived all the features. Based on that feature, we have mapped it into the machine. All right, features. Let's see what you mean by feature. So, first feature is how much active a user is. So, it is basically based upon two types of activities. First is the videos played by a particular user on each day of the course. And second is the number of questions attempted by that user on each day. Joining both these tables, we can get an approximate overview of how much active a user is on each day of the course. So, a combination of these two will give how much active a user is. Second, coming to the difficulty level of a question. Since we cannot judge a student only on the basis of how many questions he has solved and he has taken how many attempts in solving that question, we need a difficulty level to associate with each and every question. So, for that, we have actually associated a difficulty level for each and every question. And this is based on the mapping of this formula. We are actually recording that for a particular question, how many users have answered that question and he has answered that question in how many number of attempts. So, it will be, we can actually... I always get very confused when somebody gives mathematics. Actually... Okay, now, I don't understand. First, where are you getting the difficulty level of a question? None of the events added. No, sir, none of the events. So, he has generated data? No, sir. We are having a track of that how many students have solved this question from log table. We are getting that, yeah, this user has solved this question and in these number of attempts, we are getting from the log files. I understand the same difficulty everybody has. Anyway, I am not sure about your formula, okay? I don't know why you are generating it. So, let us go next, all right? Don't give me mathematical formulas without justification. They all junk according to me if they are not tested, okay? Next. This is the fourth one where we are calculating the seek time of the video. First time, suppose the duration of the video is 100 seconds and you have seek from 20 to 50. Then, in the seek video table which we had passed out from the log entries, we have two columns known as new time and old time. So, if we take the difference of that and calculate the total sum. Now, machine learning he will tell the activity level from the features we have just derived. These are, with the help of this, we are drawing the values from which we can derive. Now, the seek time. Now, I will explain you this one. So, if I divide duration of the video, divide duration plus seek. Sir, now, if you say it is not seek 0, it is, entry will be 0. So, D by D will give you one. Now, I am trying to keep this value from 1 to 10. So, if I get, when a user has not at all seek the video, this entry for seek will be either 0 or just 1, 2 or 3 seconds in minimum. So, I get a higher fraction towards 0.9 and 1. When I multiply it with 10, I will get a value say 9 to 10 something. Then, this 10 value will show that he is a regular student. Okay, next goal. Let me see your Vekka, Vekka, Vekka. Next, next. So, this is an input for not ARF file for each user for feature 1, 2, 3. This is the input value which we have calculated from all the three features. Depending on the dependency of all those, we already are training, first we have to train the machine. So, we have given on that, whether he is gaming or not, 0 or 1. This will be taken as the input into Vekka. So, this is with logistic regression from Vekka itself. For that, our dot RF file, we have got this correctly classified instances as send with 71.4 percent and incorrectly as 28 percent. So, this is what we did just yesterday. So, we couldn't get time to even more go for that. And we didn't have any idea about that. The purpose of the internship is for you to learn. And you have done a very useful work where you have classified the events. But good Vekka, I think end-to-end is what is most important. Whether you have missed the way or not, you know to start from somewhere and end somewhere. That is quite good.


Yes, thank you, John. Difficult task because only 3% of you do use BVSTMAB. So I think you are all wrong. And I'm going to try to show you why you should use more BVSTMAB in your practice. And I always say, if I had a kidney cancer with metastatic disease, I would probably start my treatment with BVSTMAB. And I think that's what I would do. So when you look at NCCN guidelines, I think we have three recommendations which are in the same level. And the question for me is why not to use BVSTMAB? And the question is, I think, mainly because you don't know the drug. So what do we know? I mean, we know that VGF inhibition is key in RCC. And BVSTMAB is certainly the most specific VGF inhibitor with safety and toxicity only related to VGF inhibition with this drug. And Manuel, I give an excellent talk at Esmo recently showing that we don't know anything about the activity of the other targets and VGF. So probably, I mean, what we want to do is to target VGF. And what we do with TKI, we use dirty drug. So of course, VGF inhibition with this drug is the main driver for efficacy. But all the other targets we use produce toxicity. And we know all this toxicity. We know about hand food syndrome. We know about change in hair color, which is sometimes not trivial. And for me, it's very important because with this drug, you are not able to appreciate good wines. That's finished for you. So why should we use this drug? And the question is, why do we miss a good target? And we know that it's very dangerous when you use a target to miss the good target. And that's something that a lot of people know about that. So we have to use VGF as a good target. So one of the reasons why probably you don't use Bersimab is because interferon adds toxicity. And there is no question.  The good thing, and if you look at literature, is that when toxicity occurs, it's very manageable with those reduction. And in the other trial, we did those reduce. And what we showed is that with those reduction, we have very rapid improvement of the toxicity. No question here. And in addition to that, those patients where we add to those reduce are the better overall survival at the end of the patient where we don't have to those reduce. So toxicity with interferon is probably related to some more efficacy. And I don't think we have to be afraid by this toxicity with interferon here. So probably another argument is that Bersimab is expensive. And that's probably true. Bersimab is expensive. That's probably one reason why many countries have not to prove the drug. But if you look at the other end trial, I mean, most of the patients have stopped Bersimab at one year. And we still have an overall survival in the PFS, which is very significant. So if you put all these together, at the end, I mean, the cost of the drug is not so expensive, considering the benefits that you will get with this drug here. So why should I use Bersimab? I think Bersimab, first of all, is active. So this is the pivotal trial which led to registration in Europe, so called the avalanche trial that we did in Europe. It's now, I mean, seven years ago, that we published the paper in the Lancet. And when you look at the data, I mean, Bersimab with interferon produced a 10.2-month PFS. So remember what was in the compass trial. I mean, it's less than 10.2 months.  Why are you so sure that it works? It's not sure that we have less evidence with TKI. So Camilo showed a lot of patients treated with Sunitinib. I think we have a lot of evidence that Bersimab with interferon is active. So first of all, we have two large phase-free. And both myself and Brian, who is in the audience, I mean, conducted two large phase-free, showing that Bersimab is active in combination with interferon, much better than interferon alone. We also had a very recent phase-free. We've gained a large number of patients that Brian published recently called the Interact Trial where the control arm of Bersimab with interferon showing still a large activity of the drug. And this is what we showed in this study. 9.3 months PFS for interferon plus Bersimab in nowadays atmosphere. So still a very active regimen here. And then you would tell me, I mean, how could I think that it's better than Sunitinib? I don't know if it's better than Sunitinib, but at least in the only randomized study where we did compare the two drugs. I mean, Bersimab has been better than Sunitinib. So this was, of course, not the goal of this study. It's, of course, a randomized phase two. But still, I mean, in the studies that we did in France, called the Toravatrium, where the goal was to look at the time-serial in this Bersimab combination, we had two control arms, Sunitinib and Bersimab and Bersimab plus interferon. And when we look at the data here, that's what came out. So Bersimab plus interferon in this study was 16.8 months while Sunitinib was 8.2 months. So it certainly doesn't mean that Bersimab is much better than Sunitinib, but at least there are some patients where it's better. And in this study, it was better for patients who received Bersimab plus interferon here. So do you think it's only in one study that we have this kind of results? The answer is no. I mean, I like this study, which was recently published by Melisha, 147 patients in a large phase two. Bersimab plus lodos interferon, 15.6 months PFS.   Why should not you use this combination for you? Overall survival exceeding 30 months. Of course, it's not one of my study and that certainly is a pity of the study, but it's a very convincing evidence that this combination is very active in kidney cancer. So let's look at what we have for Bersimab plus interferon. So these are all the trials we have with these drugs, Bersimab plus interferon, nine million three times a week plus Bersimab 10 milligram every two weeks. And you can see that the number of patients is quite high, 1,300 patients treated in these different phase three. Almost 10 months PFS on a consistent manner in this way with this drug here. And then if we add lodos interferon, maybe even Bersimab alone, as you have seen in the best trials that David McDermott reported at ASCOGU, I mean, it's still a very consistent and active drug in this setting here. So which is the ideal patient to receive Bersimab plus interferon? I think probably almost every patient could be a good candidate. So certainly patients with more indolent disease are excellent candidate. And every patient where you think that interferon could be a good treatment, I think adding Bersimab will have some efficacy and might be very beneficial for your patients. But I think if you look at intermediaries group patients, it's still very beneficial to give Bersimab plus interferon. So that was in Viavorant trials, the intermediaries group patient. And you can see that the hazard ratio is very high in comparison with Bersimab, 10.2 months compared with 4.5 months just in the intermediaries group patients here. So no question I think, I mean, this regimen is also active in intermediaries group, not only in good risk group, as people think it might be here. So that are the subgroup analysis for overall survival in Viavorant trial. And you can see that almost every subgroup that we have looked at in this forest plot benefit from combination with interferon plus Bersimab. So the only one which is very underrepresented in this study is the poorest group patients I would never recommend to use Bersimab as interferon in poorest group patients. And but in the first patients that John presented, I certainly would have selected Bersimab as the best treatment to give. So second point I think we are concerned about is patient with liver meds. And in this analysis here that you can see on the bottom of the slide here, those patients who have liver meds, at least in an exploratory analysis we did in Viavorant trial, seem not to benefit so well from Bersimab as interferon. So I would certainly be a little cautious by using the drug in patients with bulky disease and liver meds. And when you look at the median overall survival in patient without liver meds, it's very significant with liver meds it's much less significant here. So I would be very cautious about using the drug as first choice in liver meds patient here. So if I had to conclude my talk, I think Bersimab targets specifically VGF pathway. And I think that what we want to do in kidney cancer. So I think there is no reason not to use this drug because that probably is the best drug to inhibit VGF here. Bersimab is interferon has demonstrated consistently in many studies efficacy, at least as good as TKI, no question here. Bersimab is interferon is easily manageable. Of course I mean you have to deal with IV injection and with three times a week injection sub-Q. It's very easy to teach patients to do their own administration of interferon. We do much difficult thing in cancer actually here. I think Bersimab could be offered almost to every patient. And I think it's certainly a good choice if you can do that. And finally I think Bersimab is very convenient for your patients. And question here is when you use TKI, I mean you will have a lot of phone calls and we all know how difficult it is to deal with TKI and many of us are trying to set up, I mean phone conversation with other patients. And just with Bersimab is completely different and I know that Tom Hudson will be happy because then when you use Bersimab they meet your nurses and that my nurse is in Gustavo C and then I think it's very convincing that you should use Bersimab. Thank you very much.