So I want to make clear from what position I'm speaking. So this is not just Kapthatsi or Benewalensia, as we'd say in German, but I'm not a linguist. And also I want to say thank you. I feel really privileged or but definitely happy to be in such a circle because I usually don't get to hear this kind of discussion. I understand some part of it and I really profit from this very much. And so I want to speak more about writing practices. And then my second disclaimer is I could also admit that I am not a trained paleographer in the sense of ever having had a teacher in this area and so forth. But I got interested. So my idea is mainly in the formation and history of texts, of early Chinese texts. And I've done this for a long time just with transmitted texts where you can do this as well just by comparing and historical criticism and so forth. But then of course went into this new field of manuscripts. And so what I want to contribute today also, it's maybe a third disclaimer, isn't any new research. So some of you know all my points, probably almost all of them that I've made earlier somewhere. But I've made them in different contexts. And I just want to give some examples that seem to me to fit into this discussion of how we use a phonology, sorry, how we use a paleographic sources for phonology, for the reconstruction or whatever words you prefer of whole Chinese. And they're not completely random, but they're not all very neatly related. So this paper is not trying to be a systematic discussion of something that I've published in this way. So I just want to go through a few examples. And now maybe my last disclaimer, if that is one, I'm sorry I have something in writing here because I know what happens when I just go through my examples and then I start to ramble and go into too much detail. So I will, for the first part, be mostly following a written script here because otherwise it's a time problem. So let me start by saying that I consider it one of the strong points of the recent book, Baxa Sagar, to include very strongly paleographic sources as evidence. So what I want to present is just something where I make this non-training that I just described productive in the sense of being unencumbered by a lot of theories of how paleography should work or the linguistic side of it. And just try to apply what seems to me to be fairly sane reasoning. And consider certain possibilities that I want to suggest how writing could have taken place and maybe even how the reading of these materials could have taken place and what that means to us. So a point with which I agree very much is the point you make in your book that the manuscript characters, especially from pre-imperial times, reflect sound changes more flexibly than the more stable orthography of later periods, which makes these sound changes less visible or maybe entirely invisible. You could of course then say in the 20th century orthographic reform does something else but that's obviously not what we're discussing. So this flexibility of early orthography really makes early manuscripts a very important new source for the reconstruction of old Chinese. And I think that is what the book makes abundantly clear with multiple really excellent examples. I'm not going there. But what I want to discuss today was that the lower degree of orthographic stability also creates problems with regard to extracting phonological information from the characters. I want to talk about a few aspects of early Chinese writing practice that I believe should be considered as possibilities. They're not necessarily really firm assumptions that I have. And I think that will become clear when I get to the examples. So I don't know if my title limitations to the source value is particularly good but let's just present what I really want to talk about it and then see if it fits. So let's first come to what I think are excellent examples in your book of how sound change is reflected in different orthographies. And just to save time I won't say anything about it. They just convinced me the evidence I know. And I want to come to another point where I think that not all changes of, sorry, changing or varying phonophorics in characters are as clear cut. So, and you've already prepared a lot of ground here. And I want to go to the example of Warring States characters used to write the words sung, bereavement, mourning or sung to lose and show that changes in phonophoric character components may be unrelated to sound changes and occur for more complicated reasons. And getting phonetic information for manuscript characters involves just to be a bit more systematic. I think three major activities. First is to identify the character components. Second, to identify the functions of these components that I would roughly distinguish in either phonetic or semantic or distinctive that is usually disambiguating. So some components really plain or semantic or phonetic role. And third, if that function is phonetic, then to determine what this phonetic value is. So let me begin with this example that I just mentioned. So according to Hueshen, the character is a combination of the phonetic wang written under the significant ku to cry whale. Excavated manuscripts and inscriptions however do not confirm this. So I'm showing another character here because this will turn out to be the actual phonetic. So these excavated inscriptions and manuscripts do not confirm this. In fact, the word was written in Oracle bone inscriptions with the character sang for Malvary tree to which several distinctive ko were added to show it's not the Malvary tree that the character stands for. Then beginning in early Joe inscriptions the character simplified by reducing the complexity of the upper part of the tree graph to a form that now typically looks like the graph for elbows that we're back there, combined with a varying number of ko elements. This makes the resemblance to the character for Malvary tree less obvious and may have affected recognition of the phonetic value. To balance this, I believe new graphs were incorporated into the character. Bronze inscriptions show the graph wang merged with the upper part of the tree character or just the tree. I don't want to be too precise about what is the upper or lower part of the tree. And the presence of this phonetic is understood as evidence of a labial initial M in Baxter 92. And I think continued in your book if I understand that right. And that's really where I have my question if there's another way of looking at the paleographic evidence. Which is a bit complicated. Since the earliest characters for sang do not have the phonetic wang and many of the later forms also do not have this element either. So let me go to this. Some of the bronze forms vary the original distinctive ko and instead use a foot or a combination of foot and sky corresponding to modern character zoe which makes some sense as a semantic component but not phonetic. This already raises the question of whether the function of wang in the other character forms is purely phonetic or maybe semantic or both. According to my somewhat cursory survey even the majority of jungle forms here they come. Do not have the component wang but augment the abbreviated mulberry tree graph at the bottom but either the tree component or the character for the word si to die. So obviously it's least in the case of si here nothing phonetic and sometimes the right part of the si may be missing and I think that's what in your books reflected as it could be die. Just the left part of si. Mul interestingly of course it's not the phonetic value of mul that plays a role but I would still consider the addition of the mul component as phonetic in function because it reinforces the recognition of sang the original phonetic. And then some have wang and some have a combination. Okay, let me see where I was. So again, the oldest character forms for the word sang to lose. Wait a minute, I have another one by the way I should show this one because this is also mentioned because that is what paleographer sort of lists here at least some and I don't know where in the backstages of the information was from has actually mung with its outs at all but I don't believe that it's at the left edge of the bamboo slip and it's actually the same as this one only there wasn't space to turn the elbow. I believe that explains more successfully what the identity of these graphs are mainly it's again just the elbow with merged with a wang character. And yeah, and interestingly this is just the one manuscript that I worked on a bit more in depth in Jufumu and here you can see where and I've really given this some thought where I don't believe there's a change of scribal hand and you see sometimes you see a development of how a character is written there's a very nice example from Guardian when they say in manuscript three successive slips they have they use four co-elements and the next one sang uses three and then the next one only two. So and this is of course something we look at in writing practice you abbreviate because you know there's no point in writing all these forms apparently and here there's no such developments and I find this significant so you can see they write this form with the full tree here recognize helping us recognize the sound then they switch to the elbow maybe with the wang element in it I cannot be sure and then the si below but then they switch back to the tree and so forth that doesn't really seem to be a particular rationale behind this it's just what a scribe does and I think that's a significant point for me to emphasize that if we don't stay aware of this flexibility of that someone just does something to make it work somehow we might sometimes over interpret certain graphic forms that we look at. Okay to sum up all these character forms of sang to lose do not contain wang dango forms predominantly rely on the mulberry tree part of the character as phonophoric that is a syllable that has no labial initial this raises the question of whether the use of wang in some characters was maybe for its semantic value just like the graphs si and so in other forms if so then the very assumption that wang is phonophoric in the character for sang to lose maybe misunderstanding that occurred at a later time closer to that of Xu Shen when the mulberry tree component went entirely unrecognized when its abbreviated form was mistaken for ku to cry wang was then assumed to be the phonetic once this understanding of the graph had taken hold this would have been motivation enough to discontinue the use of the tree component and to favor the wang graph over si to die which did not have si I mean the advantage of a phonetic connection in such a circumstance it seems possible to me that the word sang sang never had a labial initial unless there is another type of evidence for that sound that I'm not aware of this is really where my competence just leaves me so purely from the paleographic evidence I'd say it's unsure I've used this example to demonstrate that the identification of the phonophoric can be difficult as first the writing system itself was not yet stabilized that is alternative character forms coexisted that allow different interpretations of the function of character components and make correct identification of the phonophoric problematic second even where the writing system clearly prescribed or at least favored a certain character for a certain word the way the graphs were written and practice created ambiguities which again make the identification of the phonophoric difficult and the third question is worth asking how consistently did the writers I'm avoiding scribe here and we tried script for a long time in English it's just not really practical so let me just say the writer and not in the sense of writer of another the writers and readers in early China how consistently did they associate certain phonetic values with certain graphs how important was this identification to their reading practice and what guided as scribes or copyist actual representation of a word so here I want to go to another case that I find interesting the sentence final particle in Qin and Han manuscripts and what I have to say about this is based on Unishi Katsuya's work who has shown that the two characters indeed stand for two different albeit as synonymous words Yi and Ye rather than both for the word Ye as earlier transcriptions suggest so most of you may know that you found this E character and then people give a year behind that in the 70s Mao and Dui transcriptions and so forth but of course they're not claiming anything they're just not being clear they're not saying we assume it stands for the word Ye but it certainly creates this impression maybe they just want to give us a semantic hint or so but anyway it's a fact for the users of these transcriptions so Unishi identifies the particle Yi as a feature of the language of Qin corresponding to the particle Ye that was used in the East and in truth his study of the distribution of the characters shows that after the establishment of the empire the Qin tried to enforce the use of the E particle especially in administrative documents and at the end of Qin and early Han begins to disappear again a manuscript that I have studied in some detail the so-called Laozi B manuscript from Mao and Dui starts out using the particle Yi uniformly for the first 13 times that such a sentence final particle is used and all these instances occur in the first 17 columns of a manuscript of altogether 252 columns until this point not a single year appears and in the same column 17 then after three instances of E the use of the particle year begins and continues without a single recurrence of E for the rest of the manuscripts altogether about 350 times so the function of both particles is clear enough they appear to be completely synonymous but phonetically completely unrelated going by the writing system we clearly have to read different final particles within the same passage of the same text in German where it changes written by the same scribe who commanded an excellent calligraphic skill the interesting question to me is to what extent this scribe considered the two characters as exchangeable did he grudgingly write the cumbersome E with many strokes because it was required to but would nevertheless have pronounced the sentences as ending in year in his region soon enough the scribe gave up and wrote the character which he was apparently used to namely year and which was also quicker to write likewise would a reader of this passage at the time of very similar sentences have read E first and then year or would most people have read such an obvious function with the way they were used to whatever the character was for example, a reader who believed that year sorry, E represented a higher level of style or political correctness could have pronounced the manuscript's year characters or the many of them as E or true patriot I'm making this up, it's just speculation here could have pronounced even the E characters as what to him was the proper final particle so he would have read year just like scholars who transcribed in the 20th century they usually always read year because that's what they believe it really is so and I think that has such speculations which they are have a bearing on maybe how we look at this evidence so a similar question arises when we look at characters and true manuscripts that undoubtedly stand for the numeral one when we read these manuscripts today there's little else we can do then pronounce each of them as E in modern Chinese as we're used to probably assuming that this is the word written in the manuscript text and then of course the dental final predecessor of today's E in manuscripts from different true tombs and in very different texts a character consisting of yu feathers over nun able is used for the numeral one it is very unlikely that this character phonetically represents the word E the character suggests rather a word compatible with the phonetic nun and indeed it could be a cognate of a Thai word for one that has a Vila nasal final and the tip for this article that I'm citing here I got from Wolfgang so thanks again and also another interesting one that tries to sort of brush this under the carpet and make it a Chinese word again but I haven't included this information because I found it a silly article so in Thai Yishan Shui this complex character is used in the same passage as the single stroke one which in this manuscript occurs only as part of the name Thai Yi so in the single stroke so it seems possible that the manuscript uses a local word for one that was a Thai cognate considering that the one stroke character does not have a phonetic value as such but could be understood just as a digit used in alphabetic writing system it is possible that readers of the manuscript would pronounce both characters for one the same way with a nasal final but it is also possible that they read the manuscript in a more diglossic way following a convention in which as part of the name Thai Yi the word one would be pronounced with a dental final and otherwise the word for one would be used just like we use different words today for a first lady and I put this here and on the one hand but in the school we call the principle and no one has a problem with this basically both means first somehow so there's another complicated case of variation between characters for a word a words meaning one here we go other manuscripts such as Hang Xian use both the one stroke character plus a combination of this stroke with the character for guh halberd despite its clear and consistent structure transcriptions of manuscript text identify the component of the character as e arrow although it has an additional stroke and it's not really this e if we look at the structure of this component most probably because the combination is listed in the shuwen as the guh-wen form for the one stroke character as neither the halberd nor the arrow are possible phonetics for the Chinese word for one the word written with this unfamiliar character for one may have been pronounced differently in different local languages this leaves me uncertain about the reasons why true manuscripts have different characters for one a phonetic difference is a possibility but a semantic differentiation is just as possible as is a combination of both or least likely neither if the different characters did not indicate any phonetic or semantic distinction they could also go back to locally different orthographic conventions the likelihood of such a scenario is usually reflected in a certain distribution of these variants they would coincide with different hands or occur where the same hand copied texts from different sources in the example from tai sheng shui or heng xian neither seems to be the case but I have one example where I think I can show different source texts as the reason the so-called ma wang doi lao zi e manuscript silk stroke containing several texts copied on the same silk manuscript actually everything after three is a bit uncertain because there are no designations of texts in the manuscript so it's just based on logic how we read it and the names are made up anyway they're not original and I forgot my own convention of putting an asterisk in front of them to indicate that but the other texts are I mean there are graphic distinctions but more than six so there are what we could call paragraph breaks today but in any case without going into too much detail what is completely unproblematic is the division of these first three and the first one is the canonical part of the guidelines part and then the explanation so these are clear differences and in these manuscripts there are several orthographies of words that change just when the texts change so I think this is it's reasonable to seek the reason in someone copying from sources that come from different places or follow different orthographies so the example of the word Song shows the precursor of the modern standard form as well as an obsolete character whose phonetic schwan is close enough I think to be a mere orthographic variant reflecting no phonetic difference or at most a slight dialect variant but in case where I see the possibility of a phonetic difference is the variation between the full form of the character for Ho and an alternative forms that were used consistently across large geographic areas and for a long span of time from the warring states into the early empire while the word is written in its full form whenever it is used contrastively as the opposite of Xian or of Qian in the frequent on the other hand then in the frequent collocations run Ho and are Ho it is written with an alternative character that required fewer strokes so typically this character is the one for go hook with or without an additional bamboo or grass component these collocations occur more frequently in texts than the word in its full contrastive sense does so we could assume maybe that's why they wrote it in a shorter form because it's just a curse to offer but still thank you they do this in a very systematic fashion so it could be a mere matter of economy of writing but it is still possible that an economy of speaking is involved as well I don't know if I should use such words among linguists here but as the word is also pronounced I think it could be the word is pronounced in an unstressed or contracted form but I don't know how this would play out in a linguistic sense I just want to mention the possibility because consistently this different form occurs in collocations of two particular syllables but I think it will take much more accumulated evidence for understanding early writing practices to answer this kind of question at this point I see from the paleographic angle we just need to do a lot of collecting and also sort of coming up with some speculations that seem possible and then just collecting these as well without making a theory of it and being very sure that is what answers the question so somewhat easier to understand phenomenon than the alternation of different characters is their abbreviation which brings us back full circle to the case of Sung in the characters for Sung the phonetic was only abbreviated and when it became unrecognizable it was augmented by semantic or phonetic components that helped recognition but there are cases of complete omission of the phonophore component or its simplification beyond recognition so Shen is a good example I think it was frequently written without the phonetic element and there are lots of examples for this in other cases omission or just abbreviation of a graphic component was indicated by an abbreviation mark two horizontal strokes that were integrated into the space of the character and were not placed after the character that's an important distinction because these strokes here can see these strokes that occur in the character space here it's not quite so clear and as opposed to in the position where the red dot is here now in this position you would find the ligature or repetition mark so these need to be distinguished but I think this is much too little still much too little discussed phenomenon and it was discovered sometime in the 80s I think by Lin Xuqing and I think her doctoral dissertation so it's the knowledge of it has been around a lot but it seems to me that people keep it a bit to themselves and don't bring it into the discussion prominently enough for those people who do not do the polygraphic work to recognize this possibility so the characters for Chiang are typically written as Gong Bo plus Ko plus two horizontal strokes and sometimes another Li component clearly semantic strength judging from the overwhelming manuscript evidence if we were to overlook the not yet widely recognized function of these abbreviation marks we could be misled into assuming that the left hand part of the character is the only possible phonetic in this the homorganic initial and identical final would support such a misconception Xuqing was apparently already looking at a form corresponding with the modern one and isolated the insect at the bottom right I'm sorry so this part here and then considered Gong as the phonetic the abbreviation mark indicates a difference between the character as it is written and an underlying standard in the writing system and that is important to me I think this is really a very big question that we always need to stay aware of that I'm not denying the existence of an idea of what components a character should have ideally I think there was an underlying system somehow just like we have our alphabet but then if we look at our actual handwriting it differs significantly in many places only it never creates not never it does create it doesn't necessarily create a very big problem for readers because there's so much context just like we often overestimate the extent to which we actually hear all the individual words of a partner conversation and that's why we understand what they're saying and we were not aware of how overwhelmingly big the role of context is in how this conversation takes place so this difference here is indicated by the abbreviation mark between the character as it is written and an underlying standard we either need to imagine an absent component or recognize a present component as a substitute of another more complex one in this case the co yeah is marked as an abbreviation stands for the actual phonetic young and there are a few characters at least to confirm this underlying identity of what is mostly represented only as co in the mouth but I think we're not always that fortunate to have these examples where the actual phonetic is still indicated to some extent and then we're really lost in how to interpret the characters and I have much more to show originally I wanted to make this talk mostly about the famous character for Ren I ran either Ren and but then Wolfgang threatened this really extensive and complex article about that that says it all so I don't need to repeat this to some extent maybe if I can use a few seconds more for this there are questions that go beyond just this one example and maybe here I have Wolfgang's article at least I wanted to show this information and so the only aspect I want to point out now is that graphic components in these characters are easy to confuse in some cases so a notorious one is are these three Ren and Schiller and Gung usually Gung is the easiest to differentiate because often there's an additional little horizontal stroke and the Gung should be the most curved of the three and then Schiller somewhere in the middle with just one noticeable curve and then Ren not much at all but in practice in most manuscripts these distinctions are very, very blurred so the one example for Chiang where it should be clearly a Gung that looks like a Danrenpang absolutely and then in the others you can see they do a slightly better job and then I just collected some examples I just copied out of my own book here is where we have this is for threatened this way so you have lucky it is the phonetic it seems this so that is then the real identity if you will of this form and then all the rest is missing I mean it's almost the entire character is missing but at least the phonetic is there and then in in this one same thing the whole bird is missing and then you have this Chi here this stands for Nian so it seems to have Ren as the real phonetic and here the general assumption was I don't know if it's just mine because I went by the modern graph that it has to be Gung so that's why it still is Gung but I learned from your book to that Chi is really phonetically compatible so I think, no, isn't it? Oh, no? No, sorry, with me I'm here in this, yeah so that and I just looked at the modern character possibly I don't know what I did at the time and thought, oh, this is a Gung so that's the identity now of the old graph but maybe I just didn't get this point so we should understand it and its old identity as Chi in this one anyway, so there's a whole world of possibility that this opens up and another thing that bothers me a lot that I think, and then I think I'll wrap it up is still very prominent in the discussion that is Xu Chen's practice if I'm familiar enough with it of always splitting the character in two so there's this Mantic part and then the whole other half is given as the phonetic and then you have to go there in the book and find again that this is a more complex one and only part of this is really the phonetic the underlying one and I think that blurs a lot of distinctions in how we read old graphs that we don't go right away to the real core phonetic element if you will and then this Ren Yide Ren written with Shen Yide Shen and Xin Zhe Pan is really a very good example because the Ren seems to be the phonetic and then when Xu Chen gives you Tian as a phonetic I think there is no way from the old characters how you can actually distinguish this I didn't do a very good job to find the best examples for reasons of time but here clearly we would let's say these ones see the full Shen Yide Shen on top but sometimes it's just written in such a contracted way that it looks like only a horizontal stroke and then it looks like Tian so we cannot go only by what we identify purely graphically there is this element of interpretation of this and thinking about a possible scribal practice and where they do a sloppy job I just won't be bothered and in any way it's neither Shen nor Tian that is the phonetic it's in any case Ren that is contained in these so I think there's a lot of noise if you will of data if we worry about Shen and Tian and well it's all the time just the Ren component I think this is these other examples were just meant to hear how similar abbreviations occur just purely graphically and this one is just another notorious case that I wanted to mention where the component that is like the modern Si without the Co and then modern Tai are really not easy to figure out and the newest transcriptions of manuscripts that want to be more precise sometimes then write both they give you the Si and the Tai just to be on the same side but I'm not sure they're both there it's just they resemble each other and they're just very gradually different forms of writing what is sort of the same thing but I guess I promised three times to shut up I think that's it okay thank you


Hello and welcome to the session. The question says in figure 1, angle BAC is 90 degrees. Also AD is perpendicular on BC. We have to prove that AB square plus CD square is equal to BD square plus AC square. Let's start with the solution. Here we are given first that angle BAC is equal to 90 degrees and also we are given that AD is perpendicular on BC. So this implies that angle BDA is equal to angle CDA is equal to 90 degrees. Now let us consider triangle ADC. So this implies this triangle we have AC square is equal to AD square plus DC square this is by Pythagoras theorem and also in triangle ADB we have AB square is equal to AD square plus BD square and this is again by Pythagoras theorem which says in a right triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the two sides. Let us denote this by equation number 1 and this by equation number 2. Now subtracting 1 from equation number 2 we have on the left hand side AB square minus AC square on right hand side we have AD square plus BD square minus AD square plus DC square or we further have AB square minus AC square is equal to BD square minus DC square or we have AB square plus DC square is equal to AC square plus BD square or it can also be written as AB square plus CD square is equal to BD square plus AC square and this is what we are required to prove. So this completes the session by intake cure.


Oh, hey, I didn't see you there. Well, technically you're not there, but you're looking at a base that counts. I got another haul for the month of April with some grails, so let's do it. You know, it's been a while since I've done one of these videos, so I do thank you for tuning in. Most of the time I'd like to film the actual book and show you the stuff inside and the art and all that while I talk about it. That's usually the modus operandi when it comes to a week in geek them. But for this one I wanted to switch things around back to the old school style, if you will. So today I got a couple books that I wanted to show you and sort of, I don't know, I guess, talk, muse a little bit about the stuff that's been happening on a more personal level, which I rarely do on this channel. So where the hell do I even begin? I mean, you've already read the title, so you know what I'm gonna talk about. So about two weeks ago, as of the recording of this video, I was starting to feel a little bit odd and weird. Now you have to understand I am the type of person. I do consider myself kind of a germaphobe in the way that I interact with people and the environment and mass crowds and all that stuff. So these past few years have been a roller coaster of emotions and two weeks ago I just started feeling odd. The best way that I can describe it is sort of like I chugged a huge amount of sand in the back of my throat and in my chest with a lot of congestion and stuff like that. And it was just a very odd, weird feeling. But aside from that, I was okay. And I've always been okay because I do obsess about that stuff with my immune system and all that. I take an obscene amount of vitamins on almost on a daily basis for the past two and a half years. So when I don't typically get sick or when I do, it's very mild symptoms. But the day was odd and by the afternoon when I got out of work, I was feeling a little bit worse and I was having difficulty swallowing maybe a little bit of breathing issues. It was just weird all over the place. I was still, you know, thinking it must be allergies because I do suffer from that and they sort of give me like bad sinus and dry cough and symptoms like that, which really annoy me, but it wasn't like that. It was very odd is the word that I'm using for this video. So it turns out it did get a little bit worse the next day.  You never imagine yourself taking part in that. You always think that's not gonna affect me because I'm taking the best safety precautions and you just see it happening to others and you sympathize and you empathize with what's happening. But it's really humbling when it happens to you and you think how small this world really is, something that's happening all around the world and now it's affecting me in my little corner, if you will. I don't know if you guys get what I'm trying to say here, but for the past few weeks I've been dealing with that, it got better as immediately. The worst of it was that first day and since I'm so hooked on vitamins and the C's and the D's and the Zinks and all that stuff, it really made a difference along with a healthy amount of good, delicious tea and vaccines and all that wonderful science and stuff. So it really did help. Two weeks later I did get a negative result. So I'm out of that, thankfully. So I gotta be even more careful now to not get a repeat. But nonetheless, grateful, thankful, humble, God is great and I've been able to leap over that obstacle and we can march on out and do other cool stuff. So for this video, I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that, which I did, and I wanted to show a really special haul. So let me grab those folks. So let's do a little edit here and grab them. Here is the first volume of Yakuza Reincarnation, volume one, it's an Isekai manga, a little bit of comedy, a lot of action, great art. I'm gonna do a separate video on this, so look up for that in a place over here so you can see the cover. This, I can't show you anything inside of it, but here is Introspecies Revealers, comic anthology, darkness number two.  A lot of people like to bash it, but I think it can be wholesome when it wants to and pretty hilarious and bonkers when it needs to be. This is Firmino Osano, a girl on the shore. Now I know the reputation that this has. I know a lot of people will quickly point out like this is really odd, slightly disturbing, considering the subject matter and all that stuff, but I wanted to beef up my collection, my creator-centric cubes on my shelves and I do have a cube that's not visible here, it's elsewhere, but I do have a cube of Ine Osano book, so I wanted to add this to it. I still need to get sold on in and a few other books, so I'm excited for that. I will eventually read it and make a review on it. I do know this is 18 and on for a very specific reason. I can't show you some of the stuff that's happening here, but yeah, I got it. And this is something that I've been wanting to get for ages. This is the first VisBig edition of Vagabond from Takahito Inoue. I'm a huge fan of Inoue and I've never owned any of his works physically. I've read some of his stuff, but I've always wanted to do that and Vagabond is my sort of jam because I love history and feudal Japan and samurai lore and all that stuff, so I've been dying to get this. I finally have the first one. I didn't know it was such a hefty, chunky book. This is the 15th printing of this series. That is insane to me, but I finally got it, that's what's important. Now the hunt begins for the rest of the volumes, but I'm looking forward to that journey as well. This is the holy grail portion of the hall here. I got to give a massive shout out to my buddy Travis for making it happen. He surprised me with this. I was not expecting it. Thank you so much. Wrote a really nice letter as well. I was over the moon ecstatic about getting this. This is something that's been on my radar for a couple of years now. So after reading one of my all-time favorite series, Spirit Circle, I was after another work from the same author and it still is out of print and really hard to come by. The volumes just kept increasing in price and I thought, I'm never gonna get it. I emailed the publisher and they replied back saying they were not gonna do any reprints anytime soon. I do suspect that's gonna change because this series is getting an anime adaptation a couple months from now. So you're probably wondering just what the heck did I get? Well, my buddy Travis hooked me up with the entirety of Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer from Satoshi Mizukami right here. I am so excited, the two in ones. I was so over the moon about it. Here's the other volume right here. Here's volume five and six, seven and eight. I hope I'm filming this because I cannot see what I'm filming. And the last one here, nine and 10. So it really does mean a whole lot. This is one of my grails. I do want to say that on a more personal level, getting this really lifted my spirits because I always question whatever I do online as a small time content creator, I guess. It's kind of weird to say that, but I guess I am. I always question if what I'm doing online matters to people. If I'm just wasting time and space and words to nobody. Maybe what I'm doing is not the best. Maybe people don't care. But getting something like this grail type book for me means a lot. And to have a friend, Travis, who watches whatever silly thing I do online as a fan and wrote such a nice letter to me really puts things in a different light, different perspective, I guess. And I do appreciate it. And I have friends that do help me out with stuff. So it's not like this is me. It's not like I'm begging for anything on this video. I'm just saying it really does boost the morale, I guess a little bit. I'm in shock, especially me for so many years collecting manga and anime. I don't really have a place to get them. I mean, I've talked about it online before. The only way I can get a manga, if it's like a Viz, Kodansha release or something like that, it would be freaking Walmart or Sam's Club of all places. Although I haven't seen them in a while, so I don't know. But all your other stuff, it's gotta be online.  I'd rather go to a store and find stuff. So the options are very limited. So something like this, I would never see this at a local store. But that's neither here nor there. I just wanted to show it off. Really cool, something that I got. One of my all-time manga that I wanted for my collection. There's an anime coming out. So I do promise my promise for this channel to you guys that before the anime drops, I will have read the entirety of the series and I will put out a series review on Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer. So I'm looking forward to that. It's gonna be an exciting couple of months. Hopefully I can make it happen in time for the premiere of the show. Oh, and I almost forgot. Oh my gosh, I did get the girl from the other side. Travis sent this as well. That's great. Thank you so much, Travis, for hooking me up with this amazing holy grail of a haul. Thank you everybody for tuning in. I really do appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for every like, every comment, every subscription. It really does mean a whole lot. This is something that I do as a main hobby. I'd like creating content. And if I can entertain you guys and I can provide some sort of information, whether it's through my reviews or my wacky shenanigans, whenever I do online stuff, I do appreciate it. So thank you. That's it. Gotta go. God bless. Stay safe out there. I will catch all of you on our next video.


After months of strategic planning, discussion and sensitization, the Government of St. Lucia launched Phase 1 of universal health coverage, Maternal and Child Health Services. The event was spearheaded by the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs on Thursday June 1st at Constitution Park in Castries. Delivering the welcome remarks was Director of Universal Health Coverage, Dr. Alicia Eugene Ford. Over the past years, they have been growing concerns over the increase in our infant mortality rate in St. Lucia. Infant mortality rate is also associated with the health status of the mother and is often an indicator of how well the health system in a country is performing. Though there have been marked improvements over the years, there is still room for improvement. Universal health coverage will allow this improvement. Women are currently able to access maternal and child health services at our primary healthcare centres with no out-of-cost spending. However, laboratory and ultrasound services, which are essential in monitoring the well-being of both mother and infant, will not often. These services have to be paid for by the pregnant mothers or their families. Today, this will no longer be a challenge for pregnant women. They will have access to improved antenatal and postnatal care alongside accessibility to laboratory and ultrasound services through the wellness centres. The services available to pregnant women vary from prenatal and postnatal care to pediatric specialist care. According to officials, complications are experienced within a small number of pregnancies, and while that may be the case, the services being rendered through UHC Phase 1 still play a major role. Head of Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at the OKEU Hospital, Dr. Lucila Charles, said a wide cross-section of women still cannot afford these necessary services. Because it takes so much money, some pregnant ladies do not do the test. Sometimes they don't even go for the free healthcare. There are reasons behind that. We know there are socially reasons. Not every pregnancy is welcomed. But then we are encouraging persons to go to the health centre and in addition to that, doing your test. And for those who are unable to afford, guess what? It's for free. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sharon Belmar-George noted some grim statistics in relation to birth rates on the island. Data dating back to 2014 should poor maternal and newborn outcomes. The Ministry of Health would move on to request an audit, which would result in the implementation of a number of recommendations and better results by the year 2020. One of the important recommendations, I spoke of the audit, but I wanted to highlight one of the very important recommendations that was made by that perinatal audit in 2014. On a national level was the need for pregnant women to have universal access to laboratory and ultrasound services, which is being provided now. I feel confident that this new intervention would definitely strengthen our maternal and child health programme, ensuring healthy newborns and mothers, but that we also ensure that we maintain the UN's sustainable development goals of maternal mortality of less than 70 per 100,000 life buffs and less than 12 per thousand life buffs per neonatal mortality. This will also support our goal towards the declaration of the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of both HIV and syphilis in St. Lucia. Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health Wellness and Elderly Affairs, Ms. Jenny Daniel said the launch serves as part of major reforms being made with the island's health sector. The Ministry of Health through the UHC project unit is currently engaged with our World Bank partners and the Ministry of Finance to develop appropriate systems of governance within our health, primary health care system that would enhance service provision. In this slide, we are examining unexplored territory, including the potential restructuring of the governance structure within the primary health care in order to increase the level of autonomy and that would enhance the efficiencies of service delivery, particularly as it pertains to the procurement of medical supplies and the monitoring of quality of service. Minister for Health Honourable Moses Jabatist considered the implementation of UHC a national priority and the dream come true for St. Lucia. What we are building is a team, a team which is dedicated to putting our people first and causing health care reform to advance and advance very quickly. This is not an end in it all. Every speaker has said so. This is a step. We are not saying today that we have universal health coverage everywhere. We are saying that we are taking definite steps. We are saying we are going to review draft legislation on universal health coverage which has been drafted for a while. We are saying that we are taking action, concrete action so that the people of St. Lucia can get the benefits of our promises. From the Communications Department of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, I am Jeet Brown.


Welcome back to the lecture series on bioelectricity. So, we were we are into the 26 lecture. In the 25th lecture we talked about I introduce you to the cardiac system. We talked about the anatomy of the heart and the different cell types of the heart their electrical properties the kind of action potential they shoot and we figured out that the conduction system has a different action potential pattern as compared to the contractile system and how from the conduction system action potential are transmitted to the contraction system and how this is all coordinated. So, this class is just like when we are studying about the brain people remember we talked about the activity of the individual neurons and then a small population and then at the end we talked about the electroencephalogram. The overall activity of the brain exactly the same way the heart has overall activity as of now we have talked about the individual activity of the individual circuits within of the heart the contract conduction system contractile system and there are two distinct electrical phenomena which are regulating all of them is regulating the other one is happening. But, if you put electrodes on top of the heart there you get a global phenomena of what is happening and that all falls under EKG cardiogram with the German or ECG electrocardiogram C or K which so you you kind of you know highlighted. So, the question what we are going to ask now is where we stop the last lecture is what is ECG or EKG and how it is linked to the conduction and contractile system of the heart coming back to the our slides. So, this is the question with which we are starting this class. So, now electrocardiogram or EKG by definition it represent a summation of action potential across the entire heart just remember what we did in ECG or sorry EEG electro encephalogram I told you that you put electrodes on top of your head like this you know and they do all the recordings where you get the electroencephalogram picture or electroencephalogram recordings. So, same way in EKG what you do ECG represent the summation it is the addition of algebraic addition of all the electrical phenomena and ECG reading includes interpretation of the following P waves. So, there are different waves what you see if you go to the doctor will see a P wave PR interval QRS complex QT interval and ST segment you do not get worried these words at this point will sounds to you as some Greek and Latin, but very soon it will be very clear it is a very straightforward and I am not going into the vectorial analysis of it I am just keeping it very simple for your understanding and I will give you the reference very simple reference where you can understand how this different waves are being generated it is a simple vector calculations it is not a big deal, but I am not just not touching at this stage, but I will give you the idea of it the physics behind this whole process. So, coming back to the slides. So, this is how the ECG is a graphic recording of the changes occurring in the electrical potential in millivolts between different sites on the skin the you are so these are your lids you are putting the lids on the surface as a result of cardiac activity this is how it is being measured. So, this is essentially how you are measuring you are keeping different lids the surface electrode these are all your all your surface electrodes which are on your body and which are actually picking up the global electrical signal of the heart. So, now moving on to what exactly. So, I told you that I am not going to deal with the vectorial analysis, but what essentially happens is this. So, the way the way the when the heart is beating I told you there is a pattern by which it beats first the upper chambers they sends the blood to the lower chamber from the lower chamber blood is either pumped to the rest of the body or to the to the lungs for verification through the either through the pulmonary artery or it will be sent through the aorta and pump. So, there is a pattern of event. So, if you look at this picture you will see from the SNO out here the pattern is moving like this. So, polarization depolarization polarization depolarization polarization depolarization as if there is a sea of dipole or or just like a dipole like you know as if there is a moving dipole I mean if you follow this. So, as if this wave is moving positive negative positive negative positive negative positive negative likewise. So, this is there is a wave of dipole. So, if you see the dipole causes the current flow in the surrounding body fluid between ends of the heart resulting in a fluctuating electrical field throughout the body and I have given you a reference you can people can go through it after conduction begins at the SA node cells in the atria begin to depolarize this creates an electrical wave front that moves down towards the ventricle this is essentially what is happening because initially your upper two chambers are getting filled followed by the blood moves to the lower two chambers from there it is either distributed to the rest of your body or sent for purification to the to the lungs. So, this is exactly what the slide is telling you followed by depolarized cells behind the separation of charges. So, this is very important to read the separation of charges results in a dipole across the heart the large black arrow shows its direction you see follow this black arrow. So, this is how the direction is moving. So, detection of this change in electric field using surface electrode is essentially what you do in the ECG recording and the vectorial component of these different dipoles using a simple mathematical transformation you get the ECG waves where we are talking about p waves and q t interval q r s complex and all those things what would be dealing now. So, now as you know the geometrically what is happening. So, at different stages of this excuse me at different stages we are getting a different vectorial summation and which will be coming next is what we essentially measure in ECG or EKG is using electrode on the surface of the skin we detect the voltage of the electric field remember this. This is what provided the electrocardiogram or ECG or EKG now moving on how this wave is generated now they are coming to those all those greek and latin words what scared you people. So, this is in millivolt because if you go back. So, what you are measuring you are measuring the voltage of the electric field and electric field is generated out here. So, if you follow this diagram there is an electric field which is a moving electric field as if the dipoles are moving polarization depolarization and following this arrow and. So, you will be measuring the voltage. So, here on your y axis you have the millivolt and these yolo are showing which part of the heart is excited and which part is not excited. So, the first when the upper chamber out here is excited when you see this is the trace in the blue you see the trace the electrical trace the overall electrical trace on the electrode followed by this one when both the upper chambers are partially activated. So, it forms a small hum out you see this hum this is the p wave when and this p wave becomes complete when both the upper chambers are completely excited. So, yolo is indicating the complete excitation followed by this excitation moves on to the lower chambers out here and this green showing it is no more excited it is it has already send of it is in the process of you know sending the liquid or the blood to the lower two chambers out here. So, it is a spreading in the lower two chambers and in the meantime you see this p and there is a q r s you see this overall electrical impulse is showing like this you could follow this. So, this is what is called q r s complex and this is all the recording those surface electrodes what is happening followed by the q r s complex this is again the repetition the q r s complex where the whole lower two chambers are completely excited or completely you know active followed by from the lower two chamber blood is now pumped to the in this in the process of getting pumped to the either to the aorta or to the pulmonary artery this is where your t is coming you see this t out here and if you follow this diagram you see this is the ECG trace. So, first of all this red area is showing which part of the heart is excited and the contrast you have the ash color.  So, see how this whole thing is building up this what you see this was kind of it when slightly more in advance.   So, this is what essentially is the change in the electric field what you see which is being measured. So, the definition wise now see the revisit the definition of it using electrodes on the surface of the skin we detect the voltage of the electrical field this is what we called as the electrocardiogram or the ECG and this is the whole process how what. So, whenever a doctor sees now what are the practical significance of this whole process say for example, you see two p waves. So, one p wave followed by another p wave and then the q r s complex is coming what does that mean think of it essentially that means you need more power to pump the heart pump to pump the blood from the two upper chamber to the lower chamber it means something very significant that it means in your pacemaker circuit or in your conduction circuit there are blockages or there are damages because then only you need more energy to pump this or say for example, you I was telling you that what are the things you look forward to here you are suppose you have two p waves or your p r interval is longer or your q r s complex have some you know some kind of anomaly. So, this is the situation which doctors look. So, whenever the doctors if you see the doctors whenever they took taken ECG trace they kind of look for all those things whether, but let me tell you there are certain things which ECG can tell and there are certain things ECG will never and we will come to that what the ECG pattern can tell and what it cannot tell. Now looking at the ECG pattern of sinus rhythm.  So, this is how the p waves q r s and t waves this is and when there is a normal heartbeat that is what what a doctor sees when there is a fast heartbeat. So, basically the you see the frequency has increased and then there is a slow heartbeat the frequency has decreased and when there is a irregularity this is what the doctor looks forward to. So, this one whole figure can give you a complete idea about the whole p q r s complex and what the what the doctor really looks into whenever they see your you know ECG trace this is what they are looking forward to a normal heartbeat a fast heartbeat a slow heartbeat or a irregular heartbeat and what they essentially look for there is a p wave there could be I told you there is there could be a situation where there could be two p waves or you could have a p r segment slightly more. So, there is at it means there is a delay in in sending the message to the q r s to the lower chambers or you have a s t segment which is slightly more it means recovery time is taking is more or you have a larger q t interval or the t wave has some issues. So, this is what in a sinus rhythm a doctor looks forward to now p wave what these individual waves stand for the p wave stand for the depolarization of the atria p r interval time from the onset of the atrial depolarization of or within bracket the p waves to the onset of ventricular depolarization because I told you that atria say this is the process of depolarization depolarization depolarization depolarization depolarization depolarization. So, the first part is the atrial depolarization the upper chambers they are getting depolarized where the p waves is getting generated if you correlate this with this picture see look this is the depolarization process which is going on. So, now coming back. So, this is where atrial depolarization to the onset of ventricular depolarization duration of the a v conduction is hundred twenty two two hundred millisecond. So, if anything changes here it means this is the range then there is a problem now comes the q r s complex duration of the depolarization ventricle of the ventricle of the lower chambers is less than hundred twenty milliseconds this is where q r s complex if you go back see this is the q r s complex out here ventricular depolarization taking place look at this very carefully coming back to the ventricular depolarization this is where the ventricular depolarization takes place then comes the q t interval here is the q t interval which is essentially is the depolarization repolarization of the ventricles. So, the wave has moved from the lower chambers all the way the blood has been now pumped either to the lungs or to the atria depending on from which side it is going through to the aorta sorry. So, the depolarization and repolarization of the ventricle which is less than four twenty milliseconds and then the p r interval. So, this is your p r interval duration of the ventricular cardiac cycle and indication of the ventricular rate. So, this is what this individual wave stands for coming back to the atrial fiber and ventricular action potentials. So, as of now we have talked about the these are the action potentials of the individual cells this is the global picture and you can in this you can put the you know the action potentials of the conduction system. So, here is the comparison between but let me tell you this is just the global picture and this is the individual cellular picture atrial and the ventricular action potentials. What ECG tells now this is very important to go through very carefully ECG can tell you about the anatomical orientation of the heart is the heart anatomically in the right hand is the wave moving from the atria to the ventricles relative size of the heart chambers it can tell because depending on the time if you look at the time window it can tell you relative size heart rate that you have already seen it could tell you the heart rate is it normal heart or a fast heartbeat or a slow heartbeat or irregular heartbeat. It can talk to you about the rhythm you have seen the rhythm it can talk about the origin of excitation this is exactly what I was trying to tell you that if you have two p waves what will happen it is a defect it is a there is a problem there is a pathological situation spread of impulse how the impulse is spreading because you can you have seen that it is all a time bound game. So, there is a time factor involved out here. So, based on the time factor you should be able to say that is the impulse moving in right time or not then the decay of the excitation and any disturbances of the above event not the cause it cannot tell the cause it can only tell that there is a disturbance it cannot tell you the reason for the disturbance. So, ECG gives no direct information about contraction and pumping efficiency of the heart please do remember this ECG has absolutely no clue from ECG that what are the mechanic or what are the mechanistic damage or problems with the pumping efficiency of the contraction coming to the heart pathology where all the pathology can take place there are different places where the pathology can take place the SA note there could be a blockage there could be lesions you could see all these red lines what is showing there could be lesions out there these lesions could or there could be a blockage out here. So, all the red lines. So, this circuit could have discontinuity at any point between P and AV note between sorry SA and AV note there could be a discontinuity SA note may not be you know beating at the right frequency there could be blockage there could be lesions there could be you know something very unusual in an expression of the ion channels. So, now coming to the temporal correlation between action potential duration at QT interval on the surface ECG. So, this is what you are seeing the ECG traces and if you look at the time this is just a comparison of the time window what is the time window we are talking about now and this is an action potential this is the ventricular action potential where you see the rise of the just this is the recap of what we have already done the moment of the sodium ions and but mind it there is no functional as such you cannot really see this and make any prediction about it or see this and make any prediction about this.  So, coming to the different part of it atrial excitation which is taking place which are the location excitation across the AV node and excitation of the ventricle begins just there are different ways I am giving you so that it helps you to you know kind of appreciate it far better now coming to the control of the cardiac functions. So, the cardiac function is controlled by mostly the sympathetic and the parasympathetic conditions. So, if you see that there is a sympathetic stimulation increases contractility frequency conduction velocity and irritability. So, this is the whole circuit.  So, mostly it is a sympathetic afferent noradrenaline which is essentially responsible for you know regulating and this is this picture is very important because this is the these are the only spots where the nervous system is controlling the heart and these are very hot pharmacological targets the which controls the frequency of this conduction note and this is all of these are mostly regulating the contractile the sorry the conduction circuit or the pacemaker circuit of this whole thing. So, coming back what are the problems if the heart is not functioning one of the option is that we have stem cells which will help you to you know there are two possible let us enumerate the problems first either there could be a problem in the pacemaker cells. If there is a challenge in the pacemaker cells your option lies you implant artificial pacemaker which will generate signals and will ensure that the conduction circuit functions properly this is one root. Say for example, there is a problem in the contractile element if this problem is in the contractile element then option is that you have to replace that patch of the heart or that part of the heart by a contractile cell. So, you have to grow the stem cells to form contractile element you have to incorporate them at that part of the heart like a you know kind of a patch and that patch will eventually will get integrated into the into the myocardium if you remember that myocardium picture what I showed you so if I go back now to that picture which will make more sense now in the light of this what we have now discussed let me go now think of it. So, any of these parts myocardium is not functional. So, that is where you have to put those stem cells now in the light of this this picture will also make more sense this cardiac progenitor cells these cardiac progenitor cells could be implanted at a specific sites which will eventually will you know incorporate or form the contractile element which will essentially will lead to you know the repair of that particular part of the tissue which is kind of getting damaged this is one root apart from it there is lot of work which has been done by a company called a bio cord they have worked on. So, these are the contractile element which are another hot seat of research for the stem cell biologist were trying to make these kind of tissues and use them as patch to put in that part of the heart where there is a damage. Now once again let me just scroll down other option is if one goes for the artificial heart you develop these kind of devices and the pretty much work like this is the bio cord the artificial heart systems they their pouches as you could see this is an exam the picture is showing one such device with different chambers in the valves and there they are regulatory valve there is a external battery pack outside your body this is under the extreme situation your heart is not functioning it has internal rechargeable batteries it has internal control unit and it has wireless energy transfer systems where you could see an artificial heart mechanism this is where this is functioning just like those four chambers are functioning you have exactly the same module out here in the artificial heart and I have given you a fairly good amount of you know informations which is available on the internet or in different books which will give you an idea how these kind of artificial heart could be incorporated into the system so as so that you know in case of extreme emergency where there is no room left you know you can put these kind of you know organs which will get incorporated into it and could help the person to survive I mean those success rate is very low as of now but you know that is part and parcel of the whole research itself it will take time before we are in a position to replace a damaged heart or develop something which is using regenerative medicine tools which is something very close to the machine which is functioning for you remember in the first lecture of this fragment I told you 100,000 times per day that is something that is a feat which is just unimaginable feat what our heart kind of you know undergoes every day so coming back so this is basically where I will be closing in so let us summarize what we have discussed so in these last two lectures we talked about the anatomy of the heart the four chambers we talked about the valves which are present there in the if you remember all the different valve tricuspid valve bicuspid valve material valves we talked about the circulation local circulation in terms of systemic sorry in terms of the pulmonary circulation as well as the systemic circulation pulmonary where it involves the circulation between the heart and the lungs then we talked about the circulation from the heart to the rest of the body then we talked about the different cellular component the pacemaker cells the contractile cells the endothelial cells and at the end we talked about all the sympathetic nervous or regulation of the heart then we talked about the individual electrical signature of these conduction system and the contraction system and we did a comparative action potential analysis of contractile system conduction system and within the contractile system we made a comparison between skeletal muscle and the cardiac muscle after this we talked about the global electrical activity of the heart in terms of the how the electrical field is changing just as if there is a moving dipole pooled polarization dipolarization polarization likewise and from there we talked about how the EKG traces are being generated electrocardiogram traces and then we talked about what all the EKG traces can tell you what the EKG traces cannot tell you what are the informations gathered by the physician after looking at the EKG traces and how the EKG traces frequencies changes depending on the physiological status of your body then we talked about the different pathological situations and we talked about the end we talked about what are the different strategies in terms of using a pacemaker to compensate for the compensate for the irregularity of the conduction system and in case of a damage in the contraction system putting cardiac patches using stem cell therapy or regenerative medicine therapy and in an extreme situation you may need to resort to artificial heart that bio core model of artificial heart so overall the take home message from these two fragment is end of the day it is those individual ion channels which dictates the electrical activity of these different cell types of the heart and I will be providing the specific ion channels which are responsible I will be providing you those specific ion channels which are responsible for the electrical activity of the conduction system in one of the nodes and another critical thing the spontaneity of the intrinsic ability is attained because of the inherent ability of the conduction system to stay at a resting membrane potential of between minus 40 to minus 50 millivolt. So, this is the overall summary what we kind of you know developed after going through this lecture session and we go through the nodes and so we will close on this before we move on to in one of the lectures we will be talking about the man machine interfacing where nervous system will be interfaced with the how it has been interfaced with with the computers and we will talk little bit more about the cyborgs and the robots and everything thanks a lot.


Okay, we're back. This is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org, and we're here live at IBM's IOD conference. This is the second day for us. We're going deep. We went eight hours yesterday. We're going well into the evening today. I know a lot of you hanging with us in the East Coast really appreciate that. We're here at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas at the IOD conference, which has historically been an information management, governance, how you get rid of data, what key information risk, and it's really become a big data conference. I like that move that IBM has made. Think big. That's really the theme of this conference. IBM is really putting forth its visions, its technology visions, its roadmaps, its best practices and interactions with a lot of customers. There's business being done at this event and this is a big data week for us. We'll be at Strata tomorrow. We're taking theCUBE to Strata. The team is down there setting up my colleague, John Furrier's there with the rest of our team and I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jeff Kelly from www.moohebond.org, big data analyst and we're joined by another great guest, Andrew Bombri, vice president of Big Data for IBM. Thanks so much for joining us. Another person from IBM with Big Data in their title. Yeah, so when did you actually get Big Data in your title? When did that come about? So this was two years ago. Two years ago, so you were early to the game. Almost, this has happened right at the time that we are here and I've been in data forever, right? So I've spent my whole career in relational databases and so Big Data seemed like a natural evolution but it's nice to have Big Data in your title because people go that, oh, I deal with Big Data and I said, I'm the VP of Big Data, how about that? We can partner. So you started your career in RDBMS so back in the day if I had a data problem, I would buy a box, buy a UNIX box from IBM or whomever and I might buy some licenses for an RDBMS and maybe some storage and I would put all my data into that box. That changed a few years ago, didn't it? Yes, yes. So we've seen a natural progression here, right? That you're absolutely right. That the days, if we step back, it was all about that application request being really serviced by an operational data store, right? So we saw CRM applications, CRP applications and there's a operational data store behind it and then people started really building that you do ETL out of these and start building warehouses, right? You want to do business intelligence on those warehouses. You want to and then that kind of, but that was still like this was a rare view look, right? That you were getting out of the business. Yeah, what happened last week, last year, last month? Yes, last month, you know, last quarter and then we started seeing people do descriptive analytics on the warehouse, right? So the mean, median, aggregate, those kinds of things and but still the sizes of the and they were pulling data from various operational or multiple operational data stores but you know, three, four, five terabytes of data were called warehouses and then of course the sizes of the warehouses started growing, right? So more and more structured data started going in the warehouses. So at that point, it became that, you know, once they reached about, say, they're getting to 50 terabytes, you had to do analytics inside the database. So you know, the model building and you know, doing analytics started getting pushed inside the database, right? So the in database analytics but as the data started continued to grow, right? Here we are still talking more and more structured data. Not all the data, it made sense to just put it in the warehouse. So that's when things like Hadoop started emerging. So people started copying or archiving data into a Hadoop-based system, for example. So they may have, you know, say three, four, five years of data which is in the warehouse but they may have 10, 15, 20 years of data which was copied or archived in a Hadoop-based system. And then the next step was that there's all the semi-structured, unstructured data and Hadoop became this, you know, that you feed it anything and it'll eat it, right? So it became the poly-structured data store. And so that's kind of how things have been evolving but now what we've seen in the last couple of years has been that when it started with that, you know, people were using, they were coming from the warehouse and using Hadoop as a way to copy or archive data but as unstructured data or semi-structured data also got added to it, then it was like, okay, now we need to do analytics on this data, right? So now we are really seeing this analytics sandbox which is getting, which is where a lot of the data first lands and then businesses figure out, right? What is useful, right? Let me explore this data, let me see what is this data telling me and maybe there's some data from that that needs to be moved into the warehouse, right? Because you're not going to just take some petabytes of data and say, without knowing what the value of this data is and put it in a warehouse. So you do ad hoc analytics on this sandbox, you figure out what's useful, you kind of gets compacted at that point, right? So even if you started with petabytes of data, once it's all filtered and analyzed and you realize that maybe there's some terabytes of data that you really care about and if you want that, you know, you're still your BI and analytics that's happening in the warehouse needs to continue, you could move this data inside the warehouse or you could have new kinds of analytic applications that are just running on your analytics sandbox but that means that you can't just stay with what the open source provides, right? The open source community has done, I think, a great job in terms of building the Hadoop MapReduce kind of capabilities from what IBM has done is that we are providing all kinds of connectors that you can ingest data quickly in a Hadoop-based file system. Then you want to run analytics on this data using MapReduce capabilities so that you filter out, figure out what's useful, then you want to index this and you want to be able to, you know, build facets on these indexes, right? So that as you're searching and accessing, it has to be done quickly and then there is the aspect that, you know, where are you going to build your predictive models, right? So now you have this huge amount of data and if you build your predictive models where it's now being built not on a sample data or not on a subset of data, but really on this every, all the pieces of data that are available to you. So now suddenly you have models that are tested against more observations, right? Or rows of data in the relational world and you can have more variables that you are using to build these models. So the quality of your model starts improving. And obviously, you know, as you are able to improve the quality of the models, that's really giving a competitive edge to the business, right? And you can, the other thing that is really unique is that you can run these models frequently, right? Because now you have a lot of, you know, commodity storage that is available to you. So the cost of that, you know, storing these models or the outcomes of these models is not something that you worry about. So you can have, you know, before people would run these models infrequently, right? But now if you have to run them on a more regular basis and because each one of these is going to improve the quality, right? And that is what is going to give you that competitive advantage. It's not just put a Hadoop cluster out there and you suddenly start getting more competitive advantage. There is all this work that needs to be done. There's a couple of things that you said that really caught my attention. So IBM is certainly fond of saying, I've heard a lot at this conference that Hadoop is not big data. At the same time, in a way, what MapReduce did was profound. I mean, being able to leave the data where it is and bring the five megabytes of code to petabytes of data, that really was enabling that. And that really did enable the elimination of sampling. So that's sort of one observation I would make based on what you said. The other is that IBM has, I think rightly said, well, great, we get that, but it's not big data. That's not the whole story. Your analytics story is very strong and you've sort of merged that together with the big data messaging in a very effective way. It's really, I think, changed the perception of IBM. Talk about that a little bit. I think that's the way in which you brought the analytics mojo to the big data messaging. Yeah, because, just ingesting all this data and say we can handle petabytes of data, what does it mean to handle that data, right? So yes, you can store this data. So with Hadoop MapReduce and being able to run MapReduce on commodity hardware, it makes it easier that you can now, without your cost going through the roof, right? You can ingest all kinds of data. But the real value in this data is when you extract the information out of this. When you are extracting information and you can stitch different pieces of information together to really get that what's the picture that is emerging. You know, I was talking to a CIO the other day and so I said, now when you think of analytics, he was asking me, so what is different now, right? And without getting into technically there are a lot of differences, but, so I said, see, before you had the pieces of the puzzle and you were saying, okay, let's put it together to see what picture emerges, right? So analytics was that here are the pieces of the puzzle and let's see what pictures emerge, right?  And by that what I mean is that you have this gamut of data. From this, you have to first extract what are the pieces that are emerging, right? You have to extract those pieces of information. Now those pieces of information then have to be put together and you will get the picture. So you, analytics has gone to the level that you will extract the pieces of the puzzle, then you put it together and see what is the picture. So to me that is like a big shift, right? Where you're not starting even with the pieces. You're starting with kind of just this data, right? And that, I think, is this is what makes it so interesting and where the creativity comes into, you know, where your creative juices should be flowing now, right? Which pieces are you going to extract from here and then what picture will you put together? And you can use the same pieces to put together different kinds of pictures, right? So this is where businesses really get that competitive advantage, right? That before, if what they knew about the customer was maybe here's the name, a gender of the customer, now when you look at analyze tweets, social media, Facebook blogs, you get different pieces of information, right? Maybe there is no direct information there which says, oh, this customer is a working mom, right? But when you pull different pieces of information together, then maybe you get the outcome, oh, this individual is a working mom, right? It's an inference. It's an inference, you have deciphered that, right? It's not a direct thing that you got somewhere, a word working mom and that's how you decipher it. Yeah, I'm a working mom, no, yes. That's built on models and they learn so that you get better and better the more data you can ask the more. Exactly. So that's interesting because I think certainly there's, you know, the experimentation you can do now. I think, you know, the idea in the past was you had to figure out the questions you wanted to ask your data before you started the modeling and putting together your warehouse and now it's, I don't even know what questions to ask sometimes. But you've got to balance that, of course, with that experimentation with let's attack real business problems. Absolutely. We've talked to a couple of guests today about that issue. How do you balance that? And how do you help customers understand? Well, you know, certainly you need to have a business problem to get started because you don't want to just kind of do a science experiment and have it kind of go nowhere. But at the same time, you've got to foster that level of experimentation. Yeah, so I think, so we've worked with with many industry verticals here, right? And I think I would say that, you know, like, if you were talking to a lot of the businesses, maybe like last year, it was still that, okay, let's do some science experiment here. But as people are seeing, right, and that there is a lot of information, there's a lot of understanding that you can get about your customers, it's really moving very quickly from that this is not a science experiment, right? And there, the easiest way to get started is that to get started, right? That that's the first step, right? I don't think that businesses can just sit back and say that I'm just going to wait for somebody else to do it. Because if they are going to wait for somebody else to do it, then they may not be around. There may not be an opportunity for them to do it because the businesses that are going to do it are going to leapfrog so ahead of the others that it may be, it will become very difficult to catch up with them. So, you know, depending on now, say, if you are in telco, right, and you've been understanding your customers and their satisfaction based on maybe the data that is there in your warehouse, you have to look at that now the volumes of data are increasing, right? So before, if there were, you know, maybe some call data records that you had now with the number of smart devices that people have, you may be dealing with six, seven, eight, nine billion call data records every day.  So you have to have a strategy to deal with this volume of data. You have to have a strategy to deal with the different types of, you know, that this data is not all structured. They may be semi-structured on structured data. And this data just keeps coming at you.  And because you don't know what your workload is going to be, it's hard to say that what is on a per second basis, what should you build, like for Telco, that how many call data records are you going to handle per second, right? But whatever happens, you have to be able to deal with it. Otherwise, you know, you lose out. So in terms of getting started, you know, build a big data platform. I mean, that's important. It doesn't have to be huge, but it could be a smaller sandbox. And then bring in the kinds of data sources that you know will give you some value. I have yet to see that any customer that when they brought in data that they were not looking at before, that they got insights, which they were not getting before, right? I have not seen that any customer, right? And I'm saying 100% that you are going to gain new insights. Hey, because if there's new data, how can you not get new insights? And there's, you know, I mean, there can be noise in that data, so that filtering has to be done, that not 100% of that is going to be useful, but it's not that 0% of that is going to be, right? It'll be nuggets in there. I'm sorry, Asher, we got in the hook, but I appreciate you coming on theCUBE. Great insights, and we'll definitely follow up on some other initiatives that we talked about. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks very much for the insights. Keep it right there. We'll be right back with our next guest from IOD in Vegas. This is theCUBE. Thank you.


The freocrafts alkylation is a chemical reaction that involves the addition of an alkyl group to an arine or heteroarine molecule. This process has been widely studied for decades due to its versatility and efficiency. Recently, researchers have developed more environmentally-friendly methods for performing these reactions by replacing toxic substances with less harmful ones such as benzyl halide derivatives. These new methods use catalytic amounts of a Lewis acid to produce a variety of products from benzyl-propagyl- and halyl alcohol derivatives, as well as styrene derivatives. Furthermore, these methods require lower catalyst loads than traditional freocrafts conditions, making them more economical and environmentally friendly. This article was authored by Magnus Ruping and Boris J. Naksheim.


Yes, welcome back to this channel. It's Meks wherever you are watching from. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for coming back to this channel. Another question that was asked is food allowance of 300 kata rial enough to live in the Gulf? Yes, it depends on what is your conception. Some of the people tend to consume in Anna what you call in a luxurious form so definitely it's not going to be enough for you. But it's also going to depends on what kind of needs that you have at the time. What you want to consume. Remember when you look at the cost of living here, it's not palatably the same. The standard and the cost of living is not palatably the same. We get to live in our home countries or wherever we are coming from. So what I think and what I will tell you to my own perspective is that you definitely need to adjust in some of the few things.  This one hard is not going to pick in that basket to pick old. It will definitely pick up a few. So as you're scaling down, we call it scaling down. If you have this and this is what you've been given and you're scaling up what you're supposed to consume. So probably to my own perspective is that you scale it and see that you can consume it can be enough for you at the end of the month. Or even scale it to a situation whereby that it will be able to take you through and make you to make sure that you can achieve. Or you can be able to achieve your dreams or to have that money that can be able to sustain you or even support whatever you have to do. To some people they can eat more than 300 if it is given because remember this food allowance is not given to you as a separate package. That is what you have to know. Let not an agent lies you that the food package is given to you as a separate package. No, the food allowance is discussed as the same package within salary. So if you are not serious at all, you may not even definitely know that you are encroaching or you are touching part of your salary to consume food, to buy food or to buy even the unwanted things in case you do not get to calculate it well and to know what is your target and what you want in life. Which is quite very important at one way or the other. Remember the exchange rate in this country may not be the same exchange rate in your country at one way or the other. But still something that I need to let you know that you know when you getting to work wherever you are in the Gulf countries, we look at the nature of the climate and nature of the land, you need to eat definitely. That's one thing because the body needs to have the energy, the body needs to have the vitamins, the body needs to have the proteins. So meaning that you need to give the body to eat. If you don't need the body to eat then probably what is going to happen is going to encroach by other diseases. For example we have intestinal issues, we have ulcers, intestinal ulcers definitely. And you definitely something that you need to understand here is the medical gets a little bit very harder. Or it gets very expensive especially if you do not have a health card with you at one or the other to go to what you call the government facilities to access those services.  So for the newcomers if you are coming, yes that package of 300 is not given a separate package that is for all and it together as salary. So it will be you to get divide whatever you being given to to make sure that you accommodate yourself, solve your problems, do your get to chase your goals and maybe to make sure that even your body has gotten enough or has got that energy that is going to enable you to go to work or to perform the tasks again. Thank you so much for coming back to this channel. Please don't forget to support and subscribe to this channel.