All right, Cyber Traders, welcome on back here this Wednesday afternoon, February 2nd, 22, 22. Great to see all of us live inside Cyber Group. And if you're joining us once again back on social media, Facebook Live or YouTube, same to be said, welcome on back as well. We have a lot moving, folks. Let's hop right on into it. We have Michael, Patrick, Chuck, Kathleen, all of our members and traders like inside Cyber Group are joining us right now. Looks like we're good to go across the audio and video. So let's hop to it, folks. The HLBZ stock right now is popping. Hey, trying to push back up towards the highs here. Ended up making a pretty solid run upon the market opening up this morning. Ended up making a pretty good move from what? Like 330-ish, 340 perhaps, even when it broke higher. Ended up popping all the way up towards just about 4. Ended up beginning to pull back from that point. So I'll tell you on this, as I say, pretty much on all these small cap stocks where it's very difficult to anticipate a clean move for the afternoon, especially after it already popped and dropped as it did. To see a stock pop in the morning and hold strong through the day and then still be near the highs going into this time of the day right now, that's different. This popped from 330 all the way up to near four, pulled all the way back down to 340, now running all the way back up. This is a different scenario. So, hey, I'm going to put this on our list to begin. We can only hope to anticipate a clean pop and run higher into the market close. But if it ends up making a false break, especially off of the first test of resistance at four, don't be surprised. I would expect a false breakout the first time it ends up testing that major resistance up top at four. All right, folks, so we'll put this on our list to begin. But again, we had a pretty good morning. The market was a little choppy, but making gradual lower highs, lower lows up until 11 o'clock Eastern time. So, I know some nice shorts, at least from SoFi and the AMC trade, at least at first. So, we'll jump to those in a bit. We may as well start with number one on the gainer side here, the MDJH stock, because although the SoFi and AMC shorts were pretty nice to us at first, stock MDJH, give me a quick sec there. I miss clicked. I got my power points running behind this platform here. MDJH, wow, finally starting to make a decent, respectable push up for us right now. But this was one from pre-market where we were pretty skeptical about this at first, very active in the morning at least. But look at the daily chart. Look at the last time it made a big pop. Look at the amount of volume it trades on a day-to-day basis. Prior to today, the last 50 days it was trading, on average, it was trading 137,000 shares per day. That's next to nothing. So, to see a stock trade this much volume in pre-market, I think it was at like, what, like 4 or 5 million by the time the market was opening up? If it's not going to make that big pop you're looking for, then it's going to break support. When it breaks support, support turns into resistance. And from that point, this thing only continued to dump off through the day. Right now, I guess you could say, trying to inch back up. If it ends up making a decent run by the end of this meeting, I'll be more keen to put it on our list. We'll put this on the side for right now, the MDJH trade. All right. So, we keep it going here otherwise. GRW, or GWGH, my trader's dyslexia getting in the way there, ended up making a little bit of a run-up heading into the early afternoon. But again, same to be said, you're dumping back down. Stock probably traded like no volume on a day-to-day prior to this morning. All right. So, HLBZ already on our list, number four, the ETTX. I was hopeful for this stock in the morning, and I already saw the price at 179 on my percent gainers list there. So, I knew that this was moving up higher. I'm a little disappointed. I wasn't able to jump in on this trade. I wasn't looking when this started to run back up, but I was watching this in the pre-market off of 165 myself. And I ended up jumping in at first on a decent chunk of shares, but it didn't make the move I wanted it to make right here. So, I ended up taking a clean break even. I think it was like a penny loss, if anything. But nonetheless, it pulled back. It ended up running up here, but now further more heading into the afternoon, trying to break new highs. So, this ETTX stock, definitely more keen to follow for the meantime here, the ETTX trade. All right. Cool. Decent volume on the order book for right now as well on this one. So, more of like a level one, level two. So, that's like, you know, for anyone here to trade. All right. So, another stock from the morning, like the MDJH trade. This OLB had a nice pop to it at first, right? You know, a little move from like 223 up towards just about 260, but then pulled back. And from that point, I was anticipating a higher low, and then for a run back up, that's where I ended up getting chopped up on this trade. So, I was expecting a lot bigger of a move on this one. I kept taking these like 2, 3 cent losses, 4 cent losses. Really, I was trading it quite frequently in the morning, anticipating the move. You don't want to get chopped up on a trade like this. You got to learn to move on. And you as in me, I'm talking to. So, you got to tell yourself that every now and then. And thankfully, I told myself that much earlier in the day. I did move on, but it wasn't before it did chop me up a bit. So, this stock was a huge disappointment today. Unlike the MDJH, I was anticipating a better move on this from pre-market. Just simply didn't give it to us. So, again, we'll check back in on this stock if we need to later, but otherwise, more so probably tomorrow. All right, we keep it going, folks. We keep it moving. I am in on two trades. And for any one of us inside cybergroup like Chuck or Patrick or Leda, Kathleen Patrick Lawrence, I've only been calling out so few stocks in the chat board. So, you should know to a fair degree which ones I'm in right now, right? And we'll cover those in a bit. They're on the loser's side. Actually, I might be getting stopped out on one of them breakeven, but the other one I'm doing all right on and we'll follow that one likely. So, EPZM as we continue going, it topped off at 150, just going into two o'clock, pulled back down here. So, done so I think for right now, the EPZM. UNG. And as we're looking at UNG, I'm watching on my five minute chart here, folks. The S&P ETF, the spy. Man, this is not breaking lower, is it? It was making these lower highs, double top, perhaps you could say. It was pulling back under the initial high of the day off of 456.39. But just now, the last three to five minutes, really strong pop above that blue line there. So, I'll tell you. I mean, it wouldn't shock me if I get stopped out on one of these shorts I'm in on right now, but otherwise, we'll see where the market can lead us here too by the end of this meeting. All right. So, we'll keep it going otherwise. Pixie here. It's a little slow. It doesn't have too big of orders out there at each price level on the ask, at least. There's some out there up until 138, but if it could break above 38, I feel like there's a good shot for this to make a pretty clean move. And plus, we're pretty familiar with this stock too, dating back to the end of last year. And then obviously heading into January, you could see on the daily chart, it ended up making a really nice run for us then from a dollar up to two. So, for right now, I don't mind putting Pixie on our list here. It doesn't hurt us. All right. So, otherwise, MGI, I called this out earlier by like 145 Eastern, I think, or two o'clock just saying it was at the highs. I took my eyes off it after and still there. So, still gradually trying to make that push up. Just the more it does this, though, it's going to be trading less and less volume per minute. Look at the volume bars. Each volume spike that you see is smaller than the last spike. So, with that, is it going to gain more momentum as we continue to see that? No. So, that's from a little reluctant to put the MGI on our list here. Obviously, it's at the highs and kind of like the Pixie trade, it wouldn't hurt us to put this on our list here. And also, it is shortable. So, if it does pull back, that could be a pretty interesting trade. If you're hearing myself, kind of sell myself into putting this action on our list, I may just do that. Maybe we'll put this on our side list. We'll come back to it at the very end. We'll probably find some stocks that are moving with the market on the way up, although I am short on two major movers here that we typically call out. Let's see. The ISIC trade, I should turn away from this right away, actually. It's only trading 250 or so, 44,000 shares. So, former runner at least, but we'll pass on this. All right. Let's hop over to the loser's list here, folks. Let's see what we have on this side of the field.  I'll just jump to number four, the Redbox trade. Fausto had called this one out shortly after the market opened up. Unfortunately, though, it's not just that it's under five bucks. I know some brokers out there. I mean, not as much nowadays, but there's still a couple out there that just have a flat-out rule that say you can't short stocks under five. For trade station, you can, and there are some stocks that are easy to borrow. You don't even need to request for shares. I ended up requesting early this morning and got denied. When Fausto first called us out, I ended up using what's called the Intraday Short Locate app on this and instantly got denied.  Unfortunately, we were not able to short this one. I tried looking for the dead cap bounce on this, though, earlier. I tried jumping it off of 281. I got four cents out of it, I think, at the time. I was looking for a much better pop and just didn't get it. So, right now, this stock only seems to be pulling back even a bit further here. So, we'll pass on this. The warrants that you could see are really the top percent loser, the warrants for Redbox here. I just wanted to jump to the equity first. So, let's just move back up to number two, number three, then we'll keep going otherwise. ELMS, down big. I was anticipating maybe a dead cap bounce of sorts, but I don't think we'll be getting that here today. Logic Bio, I don't know. We just dropped off earlier today. Cheap people owe $1 now, at least. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. This stock's been getting crushed over the last few months even, but for right now, it's just not really likely to make a big pop here. All right. Let's see what else we got. EXC. This stock, it seems flat, but when you zoom in a bit, it's gradually beginning to pull back and the spreads are decent, and it is shortable. It's easy to borrow, right? So, that actually is more tempting to me compared to anything else. So, I wouldn't mind putting this on our watch list for right now. Of course, the PayPal trade, that was a big point of interest for us earlier this morning, coming off bad earnings. Right now, they're trying to push back up here. I'll tell you what, this thing is trading so much volume right now. It's actually locking up my entire platform, believe it or not. I got to move away from this trade pretty quick. I got a few platforms running right now at the same time too. So, SKLZ. How about this? Talking about stocks that are shortable that are under $5, SKLZ near $4 right now. And this stock is near what seems to be all-time lows. Yep. All-time low territory here for skills. SKLZ. Definitely going to put this on our main watch list here. The SKLZ, this one looks a lot better on the way down. It definitely has a lot of liquidity for it to break through in order for it to continue this drop down to $4. But for right now, at least, I'm more interested in a stock like this than crazy or whack year one or something more expensive. I still may put that EXC on our list, but let's see what else we got. Groupon. Ended up making... Actually, let me just jump back to my daily chart here. I was about to say it looks like it recently made a run back up, but yeah, it did make a run back up and we had called this out, if anything. This popped from like 20-ish, 21, up to 31. Day over day, we were following the stock at the time. It was trading over 10 million shares on that bigger candle. But hey, that's why we could say it's more of a familiar name. It's a stock that we're more used to at least. It's near the lows, looks a little slow, but recently broke under 24. It looks like there's some big selling interest already on the bid there. GRPM. I think I'll save my trades for last because I don't see them on the losers list actually here. I mean, they're down, but they're not in the top 38 or 50, however much this is. Definitely some familiar names otherwise. CLVS. This one's too slow. It is shortable. I guess Square Moving With PayPal. I know Norman had wrote that earlier as a comment. For the most part, he's right. I mean, similar companies. Real, R-E-A-L, 2.9 million shares. It's near the lows, $8 stock. I could put this on our list if I really want to. I just don't really feel a huge need to. I mean, it's not moving too fast. If it ends up pulling back a bit further, then we'll likely call it out as it will pop back up on our radar again later on today after 3 p.m. But for right now, at least, I don't know. I just want to kind of reserve the last couple of slots on my watch list here for anything that's moving either a little bit faster or trading more volume per minute. This is only trading about 4,000-5,000 shares per minute. All right, let me tell you the trade sign. Sofi, I am literally, right now, about to get stopped out, or what seems to be literally. One more penny that is at least, and I'll be stopped out a minute from 12.28 on the short. But otherwise, a trade that Chuck just covered right now inside our live trading room, Chuck C. just closed out with $0.27. He was in on AMC short from $0.1620. Chuck, I'm in from $0.1632. $0.31.5. Ended up making a nice move up there. I was calling that out going into the early afternoon, or rather, even the late morning, I think. I was anticipating a lower high off of $0.1630. So with that, hey, I mean, ended up taking the trade. I watched it at the time, make the pop up there. I actually made a pretty wacky spike up. Heading into that 1 p.m. time slot there, ended up popping from like $0.1600 up to $0.1640. And then when it pulled back down, I ended up jumping in from that point. So I'm going to hang on to this trade. I'm actually still in on Sofi, I believe or not. It didn't stop me out just yet. I'm not going to put Sofi on our list. That thing looks dead. AMC on the flip side, though. I'm becoming a sucker for AMC. I mean, hey, for any stock that could fall back within my price range that I typically scan for, you know, a former runner is like, you know, I mean, I don't think AMD, advanced micro device is going to pull back ever within my price range again. But, you know, if that ever were to be pretty interested in trading it, otherwise stocks like Peloton, you saw me recently trade again Lucid, you know, Neo, hey, if they fall within my price range again, why not? Especially if they're tradable both ways. Chuck says, spy breaking under 457 will increase or will pressure the AMC short, meaning that the pullback Chuck's anticipating here. You know, I was hoping for that pullback Chuck much earlier today. So at this point, it's like, I don't know how much I'm led to believe it's going to make a sharper pullback, the spy at least now at this point, you know, if it holds here and runs up a little bit higher, then at that point, I'll be getting out of my AMC short. But, you know, that's a very good observation, though, because, you know, hey, if it holds under 457, then we should expect a much bigger drop, right? All right. So I'll tell you, folks, I mentioned it from Monday, but, you know, we'll be doing more crypto videos on our YouTube channel coming up in the next week or so, you know, for all of us on YouTube, just go right or for all of us on social media, Facebook, at least just go right to our YouTube channel for that. That's youtube.com slash cyber trading you know, over the next week or so, I'll be making more, you know, crypto videos in particular, like the one I made about a week and a half, two weeks ago, right? So in reference to that, let me pull up the Bitcoin chart. We'll talk briefly about the Bitcoin chart right now and a couple of observations I want to reiterate, but then also an observation I want to show, something I actually realized myself today. So this all has to do with basic charting or otherwise just, you know, indicator or otherwise moving averages. So notice that we ended up seeing Bitcoin begin to make the pullback up above this dashed red line. This is just simply the midway point between major support off of 40, 41,000 and then the next major bottom that happened back from the summer of last year off of 29. That's just simply the midway point. I wasn't expecting it for it to be that clean of a slingshot instantaneously, but it made it. I was expecting an eventual retracement back up, but I was saying to be careful for a couple of reasons, you know, just simply just like we talk about with basic stock trading, you know, major support is likely to become a major resistance at some point. So, you know, simply put the darker red lines off of 40,000 and 47 or 40,750, you know, those lines I'm anticipating just to be cleaner resistance. And it has been holding underneath that generally speaking. It hasn't even popped up to 40 yet. But otherwise it's holding under the 500, the 500 EMA on my daily chart. That was the bigger talking point that I even had for you there, you know, with it breaking under that 500 EMA as cleanly as it did, I wouldn't have expected for that to be such an easy pop back above it. So, the combination between those two created a pretty big resistance.  Is that alone adds to, you know, the resistance that's been holding here.  But for anyone that uses EMAs in particular, let's say the two and 500 EMAs, you know, you happen to have what's called the golden crosses and death crosses where, you know, when they cross each other in either fashion, it could lead to a bullish or bearish reaction. So, I know I already have enough lines here folks. My apologies if this is very confusing with how many lines are on this chart. But if you happen to see, it might be a little difficult from the colors here, but the purple lines that I just drew actually represent this here. That's actually a golden cross where the 50 EMA broke above the 200 and then otherwise here is what's called the death cross. So, these actually create points of resistance and support over time for a trade, whether it be a stack or, you know, crypto here. So, we could talk more about that, you know, later on this year as we continue to build up our crypto curriculum that we're developing. But nonetheless, ended up holding right under the golden cross right here at 39-2 basically, 39-3. You know, perhaps it broke above it by maybe a couple hundred points, but otherwise look at the reaction after. That's what we care about. We care about the reaction. So, the reaction after, none too pretty. I mean granted, look at where the markets are today. Look at the spy. Spy was pushing up today, up, up and away it goes, right? Why isn't Bitcoin going with it? I think there's a slew of reasons, right, that, you know, there are reasons that I don't know about, fundamental reasons, you know, perhaps with, you know, just otherwise, who knows, the economy altogether, banning of Bitcoin, whatever it may be. But in terms of technicals and just straight charting, that alone tells me that, you know, Bitcoin's likely to make the pullback. And I was saying that a week ago, a week and a half ago. So, here we are now, you know, at this point, I'm waiting to buy more. I haven't bought in a little while. So, I'm just going to sit on my hands a little bit and just wait for things to pull back further or maybe some good news comes out over time. And then we could try and, as I say, improvise and react from that point, all right? Current time 251 and a half. So, if there's any other stocks, folks, lastly for me to look at, just type it in the chat board otherwise. I did get stopped out on SoFi. That was break-even trade. So, okay. Just going to look at MDJH quickly. That was the only stock I kind of had on our, you know, side list, so to say. And right now, this thing is just dragging back down. So, it's not too tempting now at this point.  It looks like the HLBZ stock is trying to push up a little bit more. Yeah, it tried to, well, it did break high the day. It hasn't tested for just yet, but it's still on its way. So, that one's already on our list. But, you know, hey, that's why we always say we don't need to add any other stocks on there, as I literally say that. MGI, I just got the ping from Benzinga's Signals page that this is breaking a new high as we speak. So, this was the other one I kind of had on the side. So, you know, hey, we'll at least put this one on. It's pushing up higher right now. It also is shortable. So, if it comes back down the complete other way, if this is like a false break here, then that could be pretty interesting, right? Or otherwise, if it keeps pushing up, then your next major resistance you would assume, at least to be off of 10, 10 bucks. So, if it ends up making a pop and drop from there, that could also be a pretty interesting, you know, setup to watch. All right, folks. Let's see from Tom, annual member, quick explanation. What are the parameters of a slingshot? So, Tom, so that's something I could take a little more time to talk about in our weekly workshop, Traders Talk. And I'm not just saying that to Tom. And I'm not going to push this question off. We'll answer that right now. But I want to mention that, though, to Tom and all of our new members that are joining us here or recently new members that are still getting to, you know, become familiar with what we do. So, you know, just keep in mind any specific trading questions that you have, always feel free to ask me in Traders Talk. You could always private chat me on the side during the market hours of the day. Now, in terms of a slingshot, that means a big break under a big support level, but immediately or very shortly after, it breaks right back above that same level. And it runs up really quickly from it. That's a slingshot. So, it breaks under and then right back above. But again, that's something that we could take a lot more time to talk about in our workshop and in the Cyber Group Room Traders Talk or otherwise throughout the Phase 2 curriculum mainly. Phase 2 and Phase 2. All right, folks, that just about wraps it up for me here, though, I think. So, folks, for all of us on Facebook Live, for all of us on YouTube, I appreciate you joining me each and every day, each and every afternoon. Like I mentioned to Tom and for all of us here otherwise, if you have any other questions, feel more than free to send over a quick email if you're on social media. You can't really private chat me like you can in the trading room, right? So, that's why I always type my email address here at the end of the stream, at least. If you wanted to send over a quick question, feel more than free to do so. Josh at ctutrading.com. If you wanted to join us live inside the Cyber Group Trading Room Monday through Friday, whether it be going into tomorrow or going into next week even, feel more than free to go right down to the link on the banner below the stream just to get yourself started. But for Patrick, for Tom, for Leda, for Lawrence, for Grant, for Michael, for all of us live right now, I'll be back on the mic as usual right at 3.30 Eastern time taking us into the market close. Talk to you then.


This is the Aksun Top Rig S60. It's a 60 centimeter video slider. It is motorized and it's very easy to use and I'm really excited to showcase how this works and how you can get really smooth footage with your camera. Some of the key specifications that are written on the side of the box as you can see here but we will talk through these in more detail in a second. Let's go ahead and set this up and showcase how this looks. So I now have it mounted on my tripod. This is a quick preview of how it works whilst it's being motorized on the slider. I'll go through how to use this but let me go ahead and hit the play button and you can see it's slowly starting to move and you can adjust the speed very easily as well. This is going to create some really smooth footage especially when I want to capture some b-roll footage as well. So whilst this is happening just want to take a moment and give a shout out to the sponsor of this video UPDF. UPDF is my favorite PDF app I've used. Not only does it have the nicest and cleanest UIs but just how quickly you can open, edit and organize your PDFs with so much ease. When you open any PDF you have options on the sidebar to edit the PDF, create an editable form PDF and even redact your documents so easily just like this and you can organize and reorder pages with a quick drag and drop crop pages. Now here's a quick sample of how quick and easy it is to edit a PDF much like a Word document but if you go with the premium UPDF AI version you can get fast and accurate generated transcripts and summaries of your documents and you can even chat with the AI bot to perform certain tasks within the document. You simply click the AI button on the bottom right, hit get started to get a full summary of the document, split into chapters like so and if you find it a bit long you can ask it to polish the summary for you to condense it into one paragraph. Take a look at the UPDF website with the link in the description if you want in my opinion the best PDF app available across all operating systems and devices. So now let's take a closer look at the actual design and I'll showcase how to set it up and how it works. Now this is a very good build quality it is metallic you do have the belt here as well and it does come with a spare belt and Allen key in the box as well in case you ever need to replace this. Now you have yourself a quarter 20 inch thread here which has a removable screw so you can just use the quarter inch one if you need to.  Now this doesn't come with a ball head so you can buy your own ball head to put on top of this and then attach your camera as well. It's got some lines here as well just to make sure you level it up when you don't want to use this and you also have a bubble level meter just there on the left hand side. This also requires you to buy an NPF battery to power this but you can also power it via ADC input as well in case you don't want to use a battery. Now if we take a look at the bottom you can see this four quarter inch threads there as well we also have a 3.8 thread right there in the middle in case you want to mount it in different various tripod plates. You also have adjustable legs as well which you can elevate higher but I will just leave them at the basic level there. Now let's take a look at the controls so once you have attached a battery you have yourself the battery level indicators with the LED lights here that go up to 100%. All you need to do is turn this on with the on-off button. You also have a speed adjustment knob so you can control how fast the plate actually moves along the slider. Then you have AB controls. This button allows you to switch between either the motorized slider going either once in a single line or it can loop so it will go backwards and forwards depending on your A and B points. Then you have the play and pause button at any time you want to start and stop the slider. So let's go ahead and turn this on. You can see everything lights up the A and B is flashing so you can now get ready to set your A and B points and then I will set this to loop so I can quickly showcase how that works and then I will hit play when I'm ready to start using it. Once it gets to the end or close to the end I will hit pause. There we go and I will set this as A so now the A has a solid blue light. Let's continue. I'll wait till it gets around here and then I will pause it again and then I will select the B button. Pause it there, hit B. Now B is lit up in blue as well. So that's very quick and easy. Now the first green light on the loop button is set to just one but if I want to loop it I press it again. The second green light this now is loop sliding. Now the A and B is set if I hit play. This will cycle between those two points that I've set and that is a very quick and easy setup and in fact there's nothing else you generally need to do to get this up and running in this fashion but this also comes with the top rig app as well so you can actually control this and set your points via the app but in this situation I feel like this will do everything that you need it to do and if you increase the speed this is the maximum speed and you can see actually how fast this goes. Now just a quick reference of some of the key specs. Maximum payload on horizontal view is four kilograms but you can actually tilt this vertically and the max payload if you do use this vertically is 2.5 kilograms. Now let me quickly show you how easy it is to use the top rig app. This is available on iOS and the Google Play Store. Now you can see I've connected it via bluetooth already it just showed up on my settings and it's very quick and easy to use so the slider is here so if I want to set the a point I just use the arrows you can see the slider is actually moving in real time which I think is brilliant so I will select a now if I move this let's say towards the middle and then hit b now my a and b points are set so I can even loop it and if I hit play everything is being done directly from here the one thing to be aware of is if you want to adjust the speed you will need to use the knob on the actual slider because there's no speed adjustment here on the app and if I just want to delete a and b points I can just hit the delete button there and reset to my points very easily so the app is a very quick and convenient way to get this set up if you want to use that but in fact like I mentioned earlier everything is so easy on the panel on the slider itself that you may not even need to use the app so one thing you may have noticed as well that this is very quiet it's pretty much noise free so you don't have to worry about any of the motor noises interfering with your audio whatsoever so now let's go ahead and showcase some sample shots that I've just taken with this slider at various different angles and positions so then we have it guys that is the top rig s60 you can even use the app to get some really cool time lapse footage using the slider as well so the possibilities are endless but if you really want stable smooth silent footage especially for b-roll I think this is absolutely great check out the link in the description if you are interested in a motorized slider I've not come across one that's very easy to use just like this you don't need to use the app but I actually like using the app more I can just hit the play button from my phone from a distance as well and just get the smoothest footage for my b-roll whenever I need it if you have any other comments about this as always drop a comment down below make sure to like the video subscribe to the channel I've got really cool tech reviews like this out every week and I will catch you all at the next one take care


So actually, I'm going to uncharacteristically raise questions and not have any opinions. So I sort of covered the three broad areas of the overview that Laura outlined, really just raising some of the things that I think have emerged during the first year of what is an incredibly successful and enlightening network. I think at its start, I would say that that's something that all of us feel. We've really learned a huge amount from coming together around Bill's leadership and anesthesiast leadership to really build something that I think we all feel could be the way forward, not just for undiagnosed diseases, but for all diseases. And I think if there's any theme that I would take from my involvement, it is that most of the diseases that we look after in clinical medicine are truly undiagnosed if you really look at them carefully enough. There are whole hosts of elements of the data collection that I think are quite interesting. I know actually Bill and Dr. Karshats both brought up the importance of pattern recognition in the initial assessment of the importance of clinical diagnosis. It's interesting that there's very limited structure in the clinical data at the moment. What you realize is most of what we do in medicine is essentially an 18th century aggregate of voodoo and some scattered objective data. And in fact, one of the most interesting things about beginning to implement phenotypes has been just how subjective, even some of the subjective components of phenotyping really are. The whole host of discrete data elements that we try and capture, the ontology, related phenotypes in family members, almost all was a function, the extent of the family history, and a sort of series of intermediate steps where you're relying on other people's ability to document what you think is part of the problem. In fact, one of the things that we found in our site is how important the expertise of the individual taking the family history is in defining whether that family history is relevant or not. Genomics, functional genomics, exposures, another element that was outlined. And one of the key things that I think, as a community, we all believe we're missing, most genes is very tough to imagine how you're ever going to be able to understand the relevance to a disorder if there's even one conditional exposure, which you're not measuring. Most of clinical medicine measures three, maybe four, exposures in a good day with a falling wind. And then at the end, the paucity of gene or pathway-specific biological assays that are actually in clinical utility. One of the first things I know that we did for Anastasia was to list all of the phenotypes that could potentially be built to the NIH. There are 10 to the four phenotypes, if you include absolutely everything, in common use across the US. When you look at 10 to the nine genotypes in the average genome, you realize just how much the information content mismatch is that exists between genomics and clinical medicine. Data interpretation, I think, and other slew of questions there. There are some very distinctive approaches that we use in different parts of medicine and, traditionally, Occam's razor refining to look for the thing that the single most likely explanation. Yet, in fact, when we're looking at many of these cases, we're grasping for a single feature that might give us an inference about which, among a range of candidate genes, might be important. I do think we need to learn from process and we need to begin to think about how to document more precisely each of the nodes in that decision-making process. I think two of the things, again, that have been raised this morning that are really important is how do you establish causality in an individual patient or family? How are we actually going to do that when you don't have the definitive segregation and you don't have a biological assay? And then, similarly, if you're going to do that, you need to be able to do it at a resolution that will actually change management in real time. And then, finally, the last, on this brief slide, the scope of the clinical impact. We're looking at it from the standpoint of the individual patient. All other patients with that specific condition, all other undiagnosed patients may be relevant. Then, ultimately, we should think about how we could extend this to all patients. Couple of very quick points on the organization of the evaluation. When do we do the data collection? How do we organize the clinical input? Do we undertake the assessment in series as a team or through virtual approaches? The timing of the expert clinical evaluation, we found, for example, that it might be very relevant to know which particular pathways you're going to study in the patient when they're admitted or seen as an outpatient so that you can collect the right tissue or tissues for a molecular analysis. And then, ultimately, something we've all struggled with, but I think is really one of the strengths of this consortium is orchestrating the scientific expertise, either the knowledge, medical knowledge around that particular pathway or gene, and then the modeling knowledge that would allow you to move forwards through either in-person evaluations, grand rounds, virtual grand rounds, or crowdsourcing. And then on the last side, some elements for expanding beyond individual sites, traditional exchange, a shared clinical baseline. If we had a barcode for the phenotypes, we could then use that as a screen for everybody on the planet to understand when exactly it would be feasible to or even worthwhile undertaking an exam like this, moving beyond NF1 to phenotype identified pathways, thinking about the phenotypes we bring to the table, thinking about the animal modeling, repurposing or identifying novel therapies, and finally, a semantic framework and potentially infrastructure for all of the above. Thank you, Callum. And our next speaker is Cindy Powell. Cindy is a professor of pediatrics and genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She's a board-certified clinical geneticist, pediatrician, and genetic counselor. And her interests include dysmorphology, genetic syndromes, and ethical issues of genetic testing and newborn screening. Cindy? Thank you.


Good afternoon, and welcome to this month's Boiler Engineers fireside chat. I'm Chuck Davidson, 1972 alumni of the School of Chemical Engineering and serving as host of this month's virtual event. Hopefully you've attended some of the prior fireside chats. The purpose of these chats is to highlight the work taking place within the College of Engineering and the importance that work is in moving us towards research driven and results oriented programming that are drivers of our universities and in colleges reputation. Prior events had covered such topics as the innovation ecosystem at Purdue, our pharmaceutical research and engineering's role in the Purdue's innovation campus. Today, we're going to discuss the College of Engineering's giant leaps to move engineering research into the marketplace. And as a shining example of that, we'll have his guests later in the program, Professor Linda Wang from the School of Chemical Engineering and Dan Hasler, president of Hasler Ventures, who will be speaking on their work. First, just a housekeeping on him, you can see it up in the chat box. We just want to make sure this is as interactive as possible to allow you to ask questions, just use the chat feature to post your questions. We have set aside throughout this event for Q&A. Next, I'll be turning the program over to Dean Meng Chang. To this audience, Dean Chang needs no introduction. He has produced executive vice president for strategic initiatives reporting directly to President Daniels and the Johnny Edwards and Dean of the College of Engineering. Since joining us as Dean in 2017, Meng's leadership over the College of Engineering has been truly driving us towards the pinnacle of excellence at scale. Some of you may have just seen where Purdue's engineering graduate program was recently ranked number four in the country, moving up three positions in just one year. So with that, let me turn it over to Dean Chang for his opening comments. Thank you so much, Chuck. Great to see you. And it's an honor to have you as the host of this month, virtual fireside with Boilermaker engineers, friends, families, alumni, and we're indeed very excited to have a conversation about this topic from research to marketplace. So I thank you for doing a bit of my typical advertisement with Boiler Pride on the pinnacle of excellence at scale. And I think that as a land-grant university, in addition to learning and research, we do also have a special responsibility and opportunity to take some of our fundamental research breakthroughs into the marketplace and benefit the industry, society and large. So I'm eager to have a dialogue with you first, the Chuck and answer maybe some of your questions and then answer some of the questions from our audience before we turn the mic over to the featured speakers today. Oh, great. And thank you so much for this opportunity. And what an opportunity it is to hear your thoughts about the progress that is happening there at Purdue and the College of Engineering and maybe maybe just to start, you know, maybe you can just provide a little bit more on your thoughts on the importance of companies and industry partners play within college's research efforts. Yep, certainly. I think that there are two sides to this issue. And one is, indeed, there are certain research breakthroughs that deserves to be given a chance to translate into either IP or products or maybe a whole new enterprise, a company or nonprofit. But then there's the other side of the coin that perhaps is just as important. And that is often the translation process sharpens the fundamental research and benefits the teaching of the material to students. And one example, in one of my own startups at a previous institution, I did was on the wireless communications along with the team, we had together, we had the first set of investor money, we had the first set of customers. And now it's blossomed into serving about 60 million users around the world, mostly in developing countries to help bridge the digital divide in 4G and 5G wireless networks. And it's tremendously satisfying to see how the equations got used by people. And it's also very beneficial for me and my team as researchers and as teachers. And the translation process forced us back to the Blackboard many times to revisit some of the assumptions we had to make in our work, fundamental research and publications and sharpen the model, the results, the algorithms, the protocols. It also made us better teachers. As we teach undergrad and graduate students in wireless communications, I will be able to borrow from the experiences I had in leading this company and understanding the marketplace and how that might impact the way that we can understand and appreciate the textbook material for the students future careers. And I believe a similar kind of synergy between research teaching on the one hand and the process of taking it to the market to also exist in many of the other companies that we are seeing here at Purdue. You know, I along with our audience, I'm very excited to hear the message from Professor Wang later in this program, as well as from Dan Hasler, that you know, regarding her work on such as turning plastics into fuels, and of course, the important topic of a rare earth metals separation. Maybe just stepping aside from that for a minute, could you talk about some of the other research areas within the college that you see as presenting opportunities that might yield, you know, similar results and similar collaborations and avenues for creating other partnerships? Well, indeed, Chuck, you know, there are many outstanding faculty here at Purdue Engineering. And not all of them need to participate in this translation process. Not all of them are interested, which is absolutely fine. I think excellence in research comes in many different shapes and colors, and we appreciate different formats of excellence. However, there is an increasing number of them who are interested in trying this out, either by licensing the technology, and working with bigger companies, or by creating their own enterprise, forming a team to execute the ideas directly to the end users, whether they are enterprise users or consumer users. So examples range from energetic material and hypersonics on the national security front, to AI and machine learning products, to digital agriculture products, to different types of imaging solutions. And today, we'll soon be hearing from one of the, say, crown droos of these translational efforts from Professor Wang and from Dan Hasler. But I think across the board, throughout all the departments and schools in Purdue Engineering, we can find faculty members from system professors to chair professors who are engaged in these translation. Just another topic that I think our audience would be interested in. And I mentioned that at the opening about the recent ranking of the graduate program at Purdue. And of course, there have been a number of other recognitions of the College of Engineering. And it really strikes me in a national ranking that you could move three positions in one year. That is astounding. And I think, as you've made the point before, to be at the number four position at the scale that Purdue Engineering is, is quite unique. I think, you know, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how this is happening. And, you know, what are the drivers behind it? And where do you see it? See it going? Well, Chuck, I think the ranking really follows reputation. And what we're seeing in any magazine's annual enumeration is a reflection of the outstanding work by all the faculty members, their students and our staff. And it's a reflection of their individual accomplishments and the institution gets to enjoy that reflection. The graduate and research ranking in particular puts a bit of emphasis on the research productivity and competitive, extramural research awards, as well as publication, citation, and the general concept of reputation by peers and proper partners. And we have been always in a very strong position, especially considering that we are not on the coast, not in the city, not with a medical school, we are the only one in the top 10, top 12, over the past many years, that's of that type. But in particular recent years, our faculty are garnering so many awards, and the research productivity continues to climb. And there's been so many national research centers that we competed for. And one, that it's only, I think, a natural and accurate reflection of that in the latest ranking. And you mentioned, there are also some other rankings out there, one of which is quite fitting to today's topic is the ranking of the number of startup companies that license a university's IP. And I know that Dan Hasler as the former president of Purdue Research Foundation, and one of the key movers along with President Mitch Daniels over the years, feel a great sense of satisfaction to see that according to that metric, last year Purdue University as a whole was ranked, I think, number six in the world, and maybe number three in the United States. And the College of Engineering faculty, I think, are proud to contribute to about 75% of those startup companies. And another ranking that just came out is the Wall Street Journal ranking on the number of patents received from the US Patent and Trademark Office by any university around the world. And in that ranking, Purdue University as a whole was ranked this year number six in the world. And that includes, however, UC and UT as two university systems with multiple research intensive campuses and hospitals. And then that also includes Stanford and Johns Hopkins, both of which have outstanding healthcare systems. So looking at those that are really one main research campus without a medical school, Purdue ranked right below MIT and above everybody else. And the College of Engineering faculty contributed to 64% of those patents. So I think there are many ways we can look at this. Quantification, no matter how crude and approximate they might be, they do reflect the strength of our talent and the results of their success. You've been experiencing some exciting growth in the College of Engineering here very recently. And I understand that the fall enrollment is quite large. How are you adjusting to that? I mean, it's an amazing growth. And it has a lot of implications. But how are you taking that on? And what maybe are some of the reasons why Purdue is being so successful in recruiting these outstanding new students? Yes. Well, Chuck, indeed, if we were to host you here in person, you would see right now at this moment outside my office in Armstrong Hall of Engineering, a lot of young men and women who are running between classes. And we have classes started for about two weeks now. And people are wearing masks indoors and making sure we keep everybody safe. It is exciting to see the largest ever incoming class to the university and also to the College of Engineering. The number is over 3,000 first year engineers that we have welcomed warmly to our campus to make our undergrad population collectively to be 10,700 and that's not counting the agricultural biological engineering majors. And we also have 4,000 master PhD students on campus and another 2,500 or so online. So that makes us actually the largest enrollment ever to be ranked in the top five of the country in any discipline in history. While we are very proud to welcome all the students from around the country and around the world. We also do want to make sure that there's adequate resource support and sufficient individualization to make their learning experience of the highest caliber to now I think the frozen tuition and the safe reopening of campus last year both contributed a lot and the ranking and the reputation out there also helps. It's not easy to find another institution with outstanding engineering program at this tuition and fee rate with this much focus on their learning programs and with a ranking as high as we have here at Purdue engineering. Frankly, I cannot think of another institution with a better collection of these metrics. So we now have the responsibility to make sure that we have sufficient numbers of instructors, professors, advisors, TAs and lab spaces. The gateway complex opening next year will be helpful. And Chuck, I have to say that we are also agilely reforming our curricula. We are putting together the experiential learning outside of classrooms through the GRIT program, GRIT for global research industry co-op and team based the project's learning experience. Because after all, it's not just about how much we cover, but how much we uncover with the students together is a passage of self exploration and personal growth. Well, immensely proud of all the bottom maker students want to serve them well, want to give them a rigorous education and also making sure that they will be able to personally grow. We have this underestimate of the yield rate, which is in part what led to a surprisingly large number of students. And we have estimated yield to be historic level. It turns out to be breaking a brand new record, meaning that there are more students and parents voting with their feet coming to Purdue Engineering than we thought there would be. We're going to have to adjust that, by the way, to make sure that the growth will be also well controlled and fully supported. Great. I see we've got a question at the chat. So maybe I'll switch to that. And the question is, does Purdue have current statistics on the success rate, either in terms of mergers, acquisitions or IPOs of startups, either from licensing of Purdue intellectual property or as spin-offs through Purdue's own incubation platforms for the past, and the question goes five, 10 years. Through these data, any insights on potential missing links or areas to be improved so that Purdue ecosystem outside could be of great help? In other words, a broader question about just what's our sense of the success of these companies we're partnering with? Well, Chuck, you know this better than many of us as a leader in the energy sector, innovation and investment that sometimes it takes a bit of time and patience to see the return on the investment in certain types of startups. And Dan Hasler, in a few minutes, will have the mic and tell us more about the history of how he and Mitch Daniels thought about ways to improve entrepreneurship here at Purdue, starting just about a few years ago, I would say. So I think the druid and the verdict still out, we need to perhaps wait a couple more years to see the full statistics on the exit, merger, acquisition, IPO and so on. But I do know that at least anecdotally that we have a lot of companies that are getting additional investment. Now, it is important to recognize that we cannot walk alone in this endeavor. It is slightly unnatural in fact, for a university like Purdue to be so successful in entrepreneurship. And we need to take it to the next level by partnering with many out there, including investors, but also those who can help complete the teams. And the number one lesson that I learned as an entrepreneur myself is the who before the what. And often is the team is the people that investors are betting on. Everybody can come up with powerful PowerPoints and beautiful ideas. It is the team that can execute a pivot, listen to the market and fail fast enough that can eventually deliver the returns. So I think we absolutely need both here in West Lafayette Indiana in general, as well as in other hubs where our alumni live. So on the highlight, for example, the John Martinson Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship, thanks to John Martinson, another wonderful bottom maker who gave us a gift to support students. I know that Purdue Research Foundation has certain activities here on campus. And recently, we opened a new incubator in the Silicon Valley. The location, the address is 635 Bryant Street in Palo Alto. So Bryant Street is a little bit just off of from the Main Street in downtown Palo Alto. And this is a co-working space that Purdue put together and a welcome. Not only our current student faculty, but also the alumni companies to use the space. And what we really need is that densification of connectedness across talents, capital and the management teams. So there's a lot more that we can do and must do, still miles away, I think, from achieving the full potential of the bottom maker's potential impact to the marketplace. Well, Dean Cheng, we really appreciate your your insights today. That's a that's a great overview of of not only the College of Engineering and some of the exciting things that are being done, but also particularly on this topic of how we partnership with entrepreneurs outside the University to leverage the intellectual property that we're developing and and help, as you say, hone it and and get it ready for market. So I think at this stage of the program, maybe I will turn it back to you so that we could hear from our guests. Thank you, Chuck. Well, now it's my distinct honor to introduce fantastic colleague and faculty from the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering. Chuck was too modest to mention that the full name of our Chemical Engineering School is the Davidson School. Thanks to an outstanding gift from Chuck and his family. And Linda Wang is a chair professor in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering and incredibly gifted, talented researcher, teacher and entrepreneur, especially in the space of separation technology. And I had had to learn a lot in order to fully understand the professor Wang's inventions and research articles in separation. And there are many applications, one of which is rare earth metals and elements. And then there's also conversion of plastics from waste to useful products and the implications to environmental protection to national security to industries ranging from a semiconductor to aerospace is tremendous when it comes to the rare earth. And the other co guest speaker today, well, we're lucky today to have two guest speakers tagging team is Linda's team mate, Mr. Dan Hasler alluded to that Dan was the president of Purdue Research Foundation and really the driver of the overall entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem at Purdue. And recently, he stepped down from that position, trying to retire, the Brian Adam and took over. Some of you met Brian, one of the fireside chats before. But I guess retirement doesn't fit Dan's personality. And now Dan is working with Professor Wang in commercializing the exciting technologies for rare earth separation. So I'm going to turn the mic and the slide you to Dan and Linda, please. So can I share the screen? Can you see the screen? Yes, we can Linda. Thank you. Great. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this chat. So somehow I was talking to talk about two important grand challenges, the plastic waste problem and producing high purity rare earth in the US. And I'm happy to be here to report to you what our contributions are. And hopefully we have some promising results in the future in solving these grand challenges. So so the slide. Okay, so first, I'd like to talk about plastic fuels. And I want to tell you about the plastic pollution problem. And I want to raise three key questions. Number one, will the planet be inhabitable by 2050? Number two, can we afford to clean up the oceans and landfills? Number three, can we save the planet in time? I don't have definitive answers to these questions. But I just want to bring to your attention these three important problems. And then I'm going to talk to you about the Purdue Technology on hydrothermal processing for converting plastics to fuels, and some potential impact and the very short conclusion.  But unfortunately, this is a small tip of the iceberg of the total plastic waste. So the first deepest dive into the Mariana trench 36,000 feet deep, the scientists didn't find any exotic organisms. They found a plastic bag. And actually plastics and plastic waste and micro plastics are everywhere, from the Arctic Ocean floor to all the way to the micro plastic in the snow from the Alps. And actually, you can find micro plastics in land, freshwater and oceans. You can find them in beach sands, sea salts, fish, seabirds. And this plastic pollution kills about 100,000 marine mammals per year. And pretty soon you're going to find them on the food on your consumer plates. So this is a very concerning problem because we have produced 8 billion metric tons of plastic waste by 2015. And 76% of the waste is landfill, 12% incinerated, and less than 9% was recycled, reused, and 3% went up in the oceans. And the question is, if we continue business as usual, we'll have more plastic waste than fish in the oceans. So this currently the current technologies like incineration or mechanical recycling have not been effective for reducing the waste accumulation. And the plastic waste degrades slowly over centuries. So that's why you see micro plastics everywhere. And from our preliminary estimate, this will take 10,000 times the global GDP to clean up the oceans, which we can definitely not afford. So it's very critical to convert the plastic waste to use for products. Hopefully this will create a driving force to reduce the plastic waste accumulation associated with pollution. So we have been studying this hydrothermal processing of plastic waste to fuels. We think this may be a good idea. So you put plastic waste at subcritical supercritical water in the reactor, with the temperature 250 to 500 degrees Celsius at the pressure of one to 30 megapascal. And 90% of this plastic waste can become oil and the rest 10% will become gas and solid additives who are recovered separately and the water can be recycled and reused. So for example, this one example, the polyethylene waste, this is type two type four, this is your plastic bags and milk jugs and containers. And the type five plastic waste is polypropylene waste. And these are the the caps of your drinks and the other yogurt containers. And if you put this mixture into this hydrothermal processing reactor, the 90% of these plastic will become oil and we can use a simple separation to separate to clean gasoline and clean diesel. If you have a polyethylene waste plastic bags, we can convert them into clean wax. So the oils from this hydrothermal processing, after separation to gasoline and diesel fractions, we have checked the carbon number distribution and the types of chemicals in this mixture. And you can see that our gasoline products are very similar to that of the commercial gasoline and our diesel product in terms of carbon distribution of types of chemicals are also very similar to the commercial diesel. So we also checked the properties of these products. And we find that the gasoline fraction can meet all the requirements for ultra low sulfur gasoline in this left diagram. So if the properties all these properties fell into the green region, that means the met requirements if the data points fell into the red regions, that means they're not qualified for the product. So you can see that both the gasoline products and diesel products have met all the requirements for gasoline or diesel fuels. And this is also very energy efficient. This energy required for conversion is much lower than producing the fuels from pyrolysis or from crude oil in a conventional way and the much more efficient than recycling this polymers to again mechanical recycling. And this is has a little bit more energy consumption than incineration. However, incineration generates a lot of CO2. So it's not desirable. If you look at the greenhouse gas emissions of this process, our process is also the lowest compared to fuels from pyrolysis or for producing fuels from crude oil in the conventional way. So the point is that this process energy efficient and environmentally friendly. And this process can also convert, as I said, from polyethylene waste into clean wax or the type one PET waste into monomers. And so the this has other processes that didn't have time to get into, but potentially this hydrothermal process can convert 60 to 80% of the property was into use for products. And this will recover $100 billion of gasoline diesel fuels from the polyethylene products and 14 billion monomers for from type one plastic waste. And in this process, we reduce the CO2 emission by one to six tons per ton of plastic waste converted. And we can reduce the crude oil consumption for producing the gasoline diesel fuels. And we can achieve circular use of materials. And we can reduce the risk of plastic pollution to the environment and potential of human health. So can we save the planet in time? I don't know the answer, but I think you can help by replace, reduce and recycle. And we must increase the current recycle rate from less than 10% to greater than 80% to make a difference in the plastic waste accumulation. I encourage you not to mix plastics with trash because retrieving the plastic from from landfills is a very costly. And the clean sorted plastic waste gives the highest profit in the processing. And we must have new public policies laws incentives for reducing plastic waste.  So in the future, we hope to change this current linear path from crude oil to refinery into chemicals and chemical plants into plastic products and after use into landfills or incinerators or the oceans will changes linear path into a more circular path. We can collect the waste and process in this process and separate by simple distillation into clean diesel clean gasoline fuels or in other cases we can produce pure clean wax. We can also produce oil and this will be sent back to the refineries and to re re made into monomers and then reuse those monomers to synthesize the the plastic products. So quickly jumps fish gear to about the purification of rare earth elements from waste magnets and mineral ores. So I want to tell you that why the rare earth elements are critical materials they're in shortage. And why China has the monopoly of the high purity rare earth elements at this time. And how the Purdue innovation based on chromatography, which is versatile scalable and for design optimization scale up can produce high purity rare earth from waste magnets and mineral concentrates. And I hope you come to the conclusion to be optimistic that this innovation is a solution to our massive future supply crunch. So rare earth elements are the 70 elements on the periodic table they make material stronger, lighter, better and tools smaller, more efficient and more powerful. I'll just give you a few examples. Your motors on the electric vehicles and the generators on the windmill and these are made from three rare earth elements and the your energy saving light bulbs are used several of the rare earth elements and your TV screens requires at least two of the rare earth elements that the european european gives the bright brilliant red and the turban gives you the bright green color and your catalytic converter requires at least two of the rare earth elements. So the rare earth elements are also important for defense applications for targeting for weapons for communication for guidance control electric motors, jet engines and as an example your fighter jet requires more than 900 pounds of rare earth elements, your destroyers requires more than 5 000 pounds and your submarine requires more than 9 000 pounds of rare earth elements. So about 30 percent by weight of the rare earth elements are used for making permanent magnets and these represents about 80 percent of the total market value around rare earth and these are in your hard drive and your electric motors, your NMR machines and your generators wind turbines and it's according to this projection there's a huge growing demand of the rare earth magnets you know shown here you can see that by 2035 a large fraction of the magnets are used in the electric vehicles or small cars or wind turbines or generators and the rest of the market is also following a similar trend. The current rare earth supply chain starts from mineral ores a lot after a lot of hard work of digging, processing, concentrating and producing these concentrates and then they're further going through very elaborate separation processes to become high- purity rare earth materials and this represents about eight billion dollars per year for rare earth pure rare earth elements and these but after they make into finished products the value is more than four trillion dollars per year. So the supply risk is the follows so the economy is already projected the dominance of China in terms of minerals or in terms of pure rare earth materials and the manufacturing components of high-tech products the most worrisome is this red projection by 2040 China can manufacture over 80-90% of the high-tech products so many economists consider this a major failure of the U.S defense industrial policy and China's monopoly of the rare earth supplies for the following reasons China has the largest rare earth reserves and Deng Xiaoping famously said in 1992 Middle East has oil but China has rare earth and since then they made a very large government investment in the infrastructures and the production of the rare earth elements and China has the lowest energy cost lowest labor cost and motivated workers and they have low environmental standards for these reasons China can produce the rare earth at the lowest global production cost about 50% lower than anywhere else for this reason there's there are no high-purity rare earth production in the U.S at present so the challenges of producing high-purity rare earth from ores are the following so most of the 17 rare earth elements existing together as a mixture in ores at very low concentrations a few parts per million and they have similar properties they have the same valence similar size and similar chemical and physical properties and the old the conventional technology is the use of an extraction which requires about a thousand mixture several units just to separate two rare earth elements like this and the worst problem is the discharge of the hazardous waste in the lake so in China in the Inner Mongolia which was considered one of the 10 most polluted sites in the world and producing innovation is to replace solvent extraction by chromatography separation and the chromatography has orders of magnitude higher interfacial area for mass transfer per unit area give you the example one equivalent stage in solvent extraction is about one meters in the dimensions whereas one equivalent stage in chromatography is only one meter in height which can have I mean 1,000 state equivalent stages so it's much more efficient system and chromatography separation over earth you know in the commercial cannot exchange sorbents unfortunately they don't have selectivity so the chelation sorbents which have selectivity but have are very expensive and with limited stability so we have developed the method based on low-cost sorbents and selective ligands in the mobile phase and which have broad selectivities for rare earth elements so to give you a very brief introduction what is a chromatography so you can imagine the the metal ions are students are dressed in pink say undergraduate students okay and and you have tango dancers which have very peculiar preference for dancing with different guests with different colors for example the edta has a great preference for people dressed in in blue let's say alums Purdue alums okay and second preference is the graduate students who are dressed in gold third preference is the students undergraduate student dressed in pink and the least preference least preferred partner is the under is the high school students let's say dressing green and now if you want to separate the graduate students undergraduate students high school students and we can design a system definition system okay just imagine if the davison school of chemical engineering building is a hundred floors in height and we can have an alumni party reception party full of foods and then we can uh let's say the building is fully occupied by the visiting alums they're dressed in blue okay then we bring in the group of students which are dressed the graduate student undergraduate student and the high school students they're dressed in different colors and these students were quickly displaced alarm to occupy the top floor okay near the entry point and then we can bring in this tango dancers into the building and imagine this tango dancers would most prefer to dance with the gold students and the pink students and the green students in that preference order and if this process continues you'll see that pretty soon because the gold students spend more time dancing with the dancers and they are escalators only going downward in one direction into the bottom of the floor and this peculiar elevator system will bring the gold students ahead of the pink students and the ahead of the green students and as the as soon as the tango dancer sees the blue dress the alarm dressed in blue uh he she will immediately drop off the gold students and start dancing with the the blue students the blue alums okay so you can imagine this process proceeds and pretty soon you'll see that the the davidson school or chemical junior building will be separated into four zones the alarm zone and the the graduate student zone undergraduate student zone and high school student zone at this process you're patient waiting at the exit of the bottom of the chemical engineering you can see the the exit of the exit of the the groups in terms of graduate students in terms of undergraduate students and high school students so i hope this this example helps you to understand what is a chromatography so the second technology is we have very versatile efficient and scale scalable design method and simulation tools so once we have the feed and system specs and we can measure intrinsic parameters which are independent of the size of the scale of this operation or the feed composition and we can use the design simulation tools to design the operating conditions in the system and we can use this checking between this experimental results with the simulation predictions and and if they're in agreement then we can scale up for pilot testing and further for commercial testing so we think this technology is has potential to change the current linear path of the magnet materials so right now as you know the mineral ores are you know gone through very extensive concentrating and separation processes produce high purity three elements and then they are made into magnets and other earth products at the end of the life 99 percent of this went to landfills and this is a terrible wasteful because you lost three billion dollars worth of rare earth materials to landfills and the associated embodied energy of 10 million barrels of crude oil equivalent per year so hopefully this technology will change the linear path to a more economical circular path of the rare earth so if we can collect the waste magnets and we can use our process to produce high purity rare earth elements which can be remade into useful products again and the life will be collected and processed and this means savings of 95 percent of the rare earth elements collected and we can save almost seven million barrels of oil crude oil for processing per year so this is the example of let's say hard disk drive magnets we dissolve them into by electrochemical and other methods and ph adjusted and then the solution will fit into the chromatography column and produce high purity rare earth elements so for example to separate the three rare earth elements in the waste magnets we only have two zones and a few four columns okay so what you do is in zone one you put in the feed mixture loading and removed impurities connecting this with purification column put in edta and this exit is the mainly the nd band and the two side bands dy nd and ndpr and then this makes the bands are further sent into another column to separate in the purity y nd and the ndpr band was separated nd and pr in this column so this is a very high purity high yield process another example is to produce the high purity rare earth from basina size from mountain pass california right now a mountain pass has about one and a half million tons of rare earth reserve and currently they're sending 38 000 tons of the concentrate to china for purification so basically the rock gone through extensive processes to get a concentrate and then sent to china for further purification and we took a sample of this and using the Purdue technology to produce the following four high purity samples these are the major components of this this concentrate latin and cerium prosodinium neodymium so the advantages of Purdue technologies are the following first is safer because we're only using aqueous solutions and dilute acid and base compared to solvent extraction with flammable sorvents solvents toxic tractants and harsh chemicals and the chemical causes are lower and we have higher purity and yield of products and the productivity is at least 10 times higher as a result of the footprint of the process one tenth of the solvent extraction the startup shutdown is also very quick it's in terms of days rather than weeks and the feedstocks and products we can do the separation so many different feedstocks and different products and it's much more flexible approach and the separators in the separating of four rare earth elements we only need five columns whereas in the conventional they will require almost two thousand mixer separate units and the initial investment they should be one-fifth of the solvent extraction and we only produce a little bit sodium chloride as the waste and this can be recycled back to acid and base using the conventional chloro alkaline process so it's much cleaner so in conclusion i would say the Purdue technologies are based on fundamental theories and simulation tools and for this reason they can be easily adaptable to different feedstocks different products and different production scales and we're shown here the results shown that we're able to produce rare earth from waste magnets and ores at lab scale so after this thing being scaled up i think this can be a safer cleaner more efficient more economical process and solvent extraction and the american resources is building their first commercial scale chromatography plant in fissure indiana if you have any questions you can talk to dan or mark jensen from this company and we hope that this is a potential for sustainable and circular rare earth economy as shown before so i hope in the next shed i'll have the opportunity to tell you that rare earth elements are no longer rare in the united states so of course these work are done by graduate students and supported by in part by the school of chemical engineering and department defense and the Purdue safety center and mr mrs bill smith gift fund and the critical research institute japan supporting the plastic waste project and special thanks to dan hasler which recruited american resources corporations and medallion resources in supporting this process and in the commercial scale pilot testing and scale up so thank you very much for your attention i'll be happy to answer any questions and then we'll help to answer any questions as well oh thank you so much linda that is an amazing lecture we learned a lot now we only got about five minutes here but maybe we can handle a couple of the questions uh between you and dan please so i see one question here what is the largest the separator this ever been named the you mean in terms of chromatography so yeah the largest was for the you know uo p largest is 10 meters in diameter yeah 10 meters in diameters and more than 10 meters in height in chromatography separation of para xiling from method xiling ortho xiling those are the largest chromatography columns mating for other separations thanks another question can chromatology be used for lithium extraction yes definitely that's what we are looking at right now so the lithium ion batteries we are in the process producing data to prove this lithium can be separated with nickel cobalt manganese used in the lithium ion batteries which is you know used in electric vehicles so to provide energy so yes this is the ongoing project sponsored by the american resources and the preliminary results are quite promising because the same chromatography principles equation simulation tools can be used for that important separation as well thanks uh have uh plated rare earth manganese being uh yes okay so this depending on the digestion methods uh in some clean digestion methods like in hydrothermal processing the the the coating will fail off and the the magnets will be pulverized into a very fine powder and very easily dissolved in the weak acid and then for the chromatography separation yes we are we are looking we are working on that the method as well in comparison with the electrolytic process great i'm gonna ask the last question for this uh virtual farce that to dan hasler uh and any other comments that may you may have the question is when will mass commercialization occur for both expected methods dan i you know i would expect you know we've got to prove this thing out at a commercial lab scale that will be the de-risking event that causes us to be able to bring the big dollars in to build the commercial plants um you know you'd like to think five to six years from now if not sooner we could be at a commercial scale and begin to alleviate this monopoly that we're suffering at from china you know i want to also point out that you know in my 40 year career i have never had more fun than representing Purdue technologies to the marketplace and the reason that i mentioned that is i know there are people on this call that could have just as much fun doing this the scarce ingredient to success to the question that was asked earlier the scarce ingredient for Purdue to get to the next level honestly are business people people who can learn about technology like linda's and translate it into a storyline that represents and describes its value and potential value and potential economics to non-technical people that's basically what i do for this technology and and you know you kiss a lot of frogs in the meantime but that's there's tons of opportunities for alums to do this at Purdue well we'll welcome your interest please email me for example i'll make sure your inquiry is forwarded to the upper faculty or prf colleagues and then best in 40 years congratulations to you and linda and then you must have started working for Purdue at age one i'm gonna give the mic of the last minute back to our wonderful host chuck devison chuck thank you again uh chuck you are still muted you're a magician uh chuck allowed me to can you hear me now yes i was i was locked out i i muted myself and the host decided that was a good idea so i stayed unmuted i stayed muted but again uh for our guests uh dean shang it's been a real pleasure to be a part of this fireside chat once again we're learning about so many exciting things that are being developed at Purdue engineering and the great accomplishments of the staff and our partners have on this program and also dean shang thanks again for your leadership we're just really excited on the path that the college has had it thank you again chuck and thank you all for joining us here thank you linda dan and see you next month coming up right around the corner of virtual fireside thank you so much bye bye


There was a spirit of gratitude in the air as neighbors and strangers gathered today to give thanks at the Brainerd Community Thanksgiving. The community meal took place at the Brainerd Legion and throughout the day volunteers fed over 600 people through delivery and dine-in orders. Along with serving an amazing meal the Thanksgiving dinner took away the loneliness that some may experience this time of year. You see that some people are alone and you kind of try to visit with them for a while or sometimes they'll get here alone or a couple and they'll find somebody else they know and I think that's so nice on Thanksgiving to have friends or someone around so you're not alone if your family can't be here. Now all the extra donations from the Brainerd Community Thanksgiving dinner will be donated to the Salvation Army Food Shelf. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


What does the creation of humanity represent? That is, what event, if any, did we perceive in a jump-starting of consciousness imagination in the process of beginning to understand the bigger picture of existence? Our struggle to understand our existence has awakened our hidden nature of curiosity and enlightenment. And to what effect exactly did the prehistoric Aurora event have on our ancestors' ability to conceive our presence here on the Earth? Prehistory is unknown to us because it no longer exists. The remnants of a past that is completely lost to us is only existing in stone and in the form of petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and other strange patterns left down for all time by a past presence of intelligence who documented the events they were actively witnessing in the sky as the etching of stone material took place by beings who were considered primitive. And we only consider this primitive people because of the passage of time and the recycling of their existence. The shocking revelation of petroglyph patterns not being of the abstract mind and in fact being literal representations of intense plasmatic events happening in space and raining down onto our planet through the protective atmospheric bubble could only have been realized now. That is, within the past 100 years, because we could simply not fathom these petroglyphs until we had the technological know-how to experiment in laboratory conditions. Replicating the squatter man as a zenith-pinch auroral phenomena and further exploring the different stages of such forces as laid out in no uncertain terms in the now vital clues of the petroglyph record echoed all across the Earth by dozens of separated cultures in a dramatic undertaking of documentation that is now the subject of constant study and understanding not only the past event but also what it might mean for our future existence. The profound events that shaped every culture in the world and their belief systems begins in space. Ancient Earth was once a strangely different place to what we recognize today and the ancient Earthlings have reached across time and space to leave us the clues as to what was going on. Only by understanding these clues can we truly begin to awaken. The birth of civilization happened after these events and catalyzed our understanding of God's and religion, dance and belief. Water and communication and these facts are not in dispute. Could the planets have been visible to Earth observers a very long time ago? That is as visible as the sun or the moon is today. In this sense, we would literally be living in the presence of the gods as David Talbot asserts in his book The Saturn Myth. The planetary powers have once ruled the celestial theater in the lost age of the gods. If the planets engaged with each other electrically when the orbits were set off differently than what they are today, then of course this would have inspired dramatic events to take place in the sky. This was documented by Earth observers over a very long time until that is, the planets seem to go to war with one another, creating shocking and sudden sways in the intense sky events here on the Earth. And this would have decremented the presence of any civilization, forcing survivors to shelter within Earth cave systems as the intensity unfolded. The petroglyphs and geoglyphs that have confounded our understanding are representations of these events, never to be forgotten and documented for all time, much to our discovery in recent times. Inspired by David Talbot as an event, as the most intense and chaotic time in human history, and the misrepresentation is that these observers somehow were inspired by events that could still occur today. This is the modern phenomena of ignorance, but the stable fact maintains that every single culture on this modern plane of existence are re-enacting in their belief one way or another, a critical juncture that is the intense aurora event of prehistory when the planets were the gods. These electrical events have evoked the entire symbolic contents of human existence today, from the serpent to the deluge and the stairway to heaven, the provoking of humanity by the apparent gods of old, the dramatic discharges in the sky being exchanged by the planets. Into a long-established school of thought, man's consciousness of a supreme being emerged slowly from a primitive fascination with petty spirits, and demons apparently inspired by the need for food and eventually into the global traditions of today. If we were to take this as fact without question, then we would believe that before the Hebrews, Greeks and Hindus developed their ideas of a supreme god, they must have possessed beliefs and customs similar to those of modern-day tribes of Africa, Australia or Polynesia for that matter. The same processes are considered evident for developed cultures and modern times, simply because it is considered that these tribes are somehow stuck in a stayed primitive state. But what if this was false? Based on these conclusions and only by slow development could a race rise above the ludicrous magic totems and fetishes of the savage brute. But a surprising awakening to this thought occurs when you consider the fact that the advocates of the various evolutionary theories in their fascination with present-day primitive culture almost never concerns themselves with the oldest religious texts and symbols which have come down to us from prehistoric practices. The sacred hymns and eulogies of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia reveal a tradition of a great god reaching back into prehistoric times, a comparison of early and later sources, rather than suggesting a development actually indicates the disintegration of a once unified idea into magic, astrology and other elements with which the evolutionists associated the first stages of religion. As attested by the Thunderbolt's project, there are grounds for speaking of an archaic monotheism, astreal in nature, existing long before the idea of God received its spiritual and philosophical elevation in Hebrew and Greek thought. To the ancients themselves, the entire question was simply a matter of concrete history. The present world is a fragmented copy of an earlier age in which the supreme light God stood alone in a primeval sea occupying the cosmic center. Ancient Egyptian texts repeatedly invoke a singular figure worship as the greatest and highest light of the primeval age. According to the pyramid texts, perhaps the world's oldest religious hymns, Atom, a god born in the abyss before the sky existed, before the earth existed. But the texts of all periods look back to the same primordial time when Atom shone forth alone. I came into being of myself in the midst of the primeval waters, states the god in the book of the dead. More than once the coffin texts recall the time when Atom was alone before he had repeated himself. He was alone in the primeval waters, they say. I was the spirit in the primeval waters. Me who had no companion when my name came into existence. Each locality in Egypt appears to have possessed its own special representative of the Father God. To some he was Horos, the God who came first into being when no other God had yet come into existence, when no name of anything had yet been proclaimed. Other traditions knew him as Ra, the God one who came into being in the beginning of time. O thou who didst give thyself birth, O one, mighty one of myriad forms and aspects, king of the world. The followers of Amon proclaimed their god, the ancient of heaven. Father of the gods, Pitta, was the splendid god who existed alone in the beginning. The different local names of the primeval deity, though adding complexity to Egyptian religion as a whole, did not cloud the underlying idea. He is the God one, the only one, the father of beginnings, the supreme lord, the singular god except whom at the beginning none other existed. Egyptian priests had a particular obsession with the past and their vivid portrait of the great god in his first appearance. Those who looked for an unseen creator in early Egyptian religion will be disappointed. He is a visible and concrete power, the lord of terror. The memory of this solitary light god and creator was old as the most ancient Egyptian ritual. His appearance and eventual departure shaped every aspect of the Egyptian world view. So also in Mesopotamia, about which Stefan Landon raises the question of archaic monotheism. For prolonged study of Semitic and Sumerian sources, Stefan Landon concluded that veneration of spirits and demons had nothing to do with the origins of Mesopotamian religion. Rather, both in Sumerian and Semitic religions, monotheism proceeded polytheism and belief in good and evil spirits. He further notes that on the pictographic tablets of the prehistoric period, the picture of a star repeatedly appears. The sign he claims is virtually the only religious symbol in the primitive period and in the early Sumerian language this star symbol is the ideogram for writing god, high, heaven and bright. It is also the ideogram of An, the oldest and loftiest of the Sumerian gods. Anu was the father of the gods and the central light at the universe summit, a god of terrifying splendor who governed heaven from his throne in the cosmic sea of Apsu. But the Sumerian Babylonian pantheon filled with competing figures of the primordial creator. Here as in Egypt, the god of archaic monotheism is not a transcendent spirit or invisible power, but a central light. A Sumerian epic proclaims, Anu is the midst of heaven gave him fearful splendor. According to the text, is like Anu and cast a shadow of glory over the land. Egyptian and Mesopotamian traditions of the solitary creator find many parallels in the later Hebrew, Greek, Persian, Hindu and Chinese mysticism and philosophy. But it is the earliest imagery which illuminates the later and however unorthodox the idea may seem. The oldest records treat the great god's birth in the deep and his acts of creation as events experienced by the ancestors. Hearts were pervaded with fear, hearts were pervaded with terror when I was born in the abyss. Proclaims the god in the pyramid text. The tradition has nothing to do with the origins of our planet or the universe and the subject of the original creation legend is the formation of the greatest god's visible dwelling above. The legend records that when the creator rose from the cosmic sea, a great band of revolving islands congealed around the god as his home. The band appeared as well-defined, organized and geometrically unified dwelling, a celestial abode fashioned by the great father. All space outside this enclosure belongs to unorganized chaos. The words which in the ancient language denotes this enclosure receives various translations as heaven, cosmos, world, land, earth, netherland. These are the terms which take on vastly different meanings and modern usage. In their original sense the words signified one and the same thing, a band of light which appears to set apart the sacred ground of the great god from the rest of space. What is most compelling about the portrait of Actum Raul is that numerous Egyptian divinities duplicate the image and the very traits of the great god are endlessly repeated in the figures of Osiris, Pitta and Horas of whom appears as the solitary god in the fiery sea, the god one who brought forth the company of gods as his own limbs. The god of the reverberating speech, the unmoving god producing the celestial revolutions and the final source of water and the impregnating seed of the cosmos. If we were to inquire of an Egyptian priest how he arrived at this notion of the supreme god, the priest would tell us that he did not arrive at the idea at all. The great god was a historical divinity who ruled heaven for a time, then departed amid great upheavals. The hymns and ritual texts simply record the incarnation of the god in the primordial era and recount the massive cataclysms which accompany the collapse of that era as documented in the forms of petroglyphs all over the world. But what do you guys think about this anyway? Comment below and as always, thank you for watching.