And Frank is going to introduce our next speaker giving testimony as we continue to put the US Cold War on trial. Frank. Alright, thanks Rachel. Thanks Alice. It's my privilege to introduce Norman Solomon. Norman is the National Director of Roots Action and the author of many books including War Made Easy, How the Presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death. And it was made into a really important anti-war film narrated by Sean Penn and also Norman narrates it to one of my favorite anti-war films. Norman was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. And Norman is the founder executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, and here's Norman Solomon. Hey, thanks to everybody who's been making this wonderful commission event possible. I'm speaking on this topic. Why so many progressives joined in with the Russiagate frenzy which I would date to the last five years basically and it ain't over as we've seen in the last several days. I just saw in the chat a few minutes ago somebody wrote, Putin is no hero but Biden has no standing to call him a killer. I don't know that Biden has a theological background to pronounce whether Putin has a soul but that's sort of a side note. If you think about the last five years, just guesstimate how many airtime minutes on MSNBC Rachel Maddow devoted to Russiagate and talking about the evils of Russia, compared to the number of airtime minutes talking about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. The study has been done but I would be sure that the ratio is thousands to one. And that tells us a lot about the US mass media coverage of issues between the United States and Russia, and really how badly extremely out of whack and dangerous. The coverage is the reality is I mean if we if we look at from 2016 to this moment. There is a vast number of people who call themselves progressives, including many who have described themselves as anti war peace oriented people who were to a very large extent on the Russiagate train. Villainizing the Russian government, villainizing Putin, blaming Russia for fundamental flaws in the 2016 election and in the lack of democracy in the United States. This has had profound and huge impacts that carry forward to this day and are very ominous and frankly could contribute to an eventual nuclear Holocaust. So I think it's very important to ask ourselves, how could so many progressives be on board with a line of propaganda that increases the chances of nuclear war. There's certainly a lot of factors there's not in my 10 minutes really enough time to really go go into them but certainly yes, there was sort of an enemy of my enemy is my friend counterpart where if Trump was doing X and war hawks like Adam shift why then because Trump was so awful, then people would start to identify with a war hawk, like Adam shift and not see the implications. And what are the implications I think that's a question that the admirers of Rachel Maddow and countless other great enthusiasts and media. These are implications that just are never or have rarely been explored to the endpoint. The endpoint is that what is the final foreseeable result of continuing to bang on the anti Russia drum and as the person who wrote in the chat said and I certainly agree you know Putin's no hero I'm not holding them up as some great peace advocate I think an examination the record shows the United States as Alice has pointed out in the last couple of decades United States has been much more at fault in escalating the nuclear arms race but you know put in no saint but that's not the point. The point is that Russian United States have more than 90% of the nuclear weapons on this planet. The point is that the endpoint the foreseeable endpoint of the Russia gate frenzy and all this anti Russia stuff that is over the top in the news media often, at least through silence aided and abetted by groups that say they're for peace and disarmament. I think that we move closer and closer to diplomatic rhetorical geopolitical and yes military conflict between United States and Russia. So it's like the equivalent of the CEO of a huge corporation that doesn't want to think past the next quarter or two. People who think well you know we didn't like Trump so we'll use this against Trump, and now it's well we've got to support Biden on all of this denunciation of Russia because well we support Biden makes no frigging sense at all. Moving into a mass media and political establishment gravy train that helps the military industrial complex to make the sale for more and more weapons keep the Pentagon military budget higher and higher. And that is the agenda, and we've got to make sure that not only do we not buy into it, but that in the days weeks and months ahead. Peace and disarmament and generally progressive groups, stop being part of that problem, either by somehow echoing the mass media now by the administration line, or by silence. I mean you can make a list of dozens and dozens into the hundreds of groups. National regional local that are peace oriented and sincerely we want to assume or trying to bring about disarmament and peace, and you can tell that list. And then assess how many of them challenged the Russia gate narrative that the Kremlin has been and continues to be this mortal threat to democracy implicitly more than the Koch brothers more than Wall Street more than the military contractors. I mean it's it's preposterous, and yet it's been ratified in effect, if not actively at least in silence by the vast majority of that list, you would have made of groups. So, you know, I'm very glad that me my colleagues at roots action.org we've been challenging that narrative from the beginning actively, as well as my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy I know there are other groups that have been doing that actively in the last five years. There's a tremendous amount of work to do to in solidarity challenge, many activists and groups that even today are either agreeing with implicitly, or being silent about what the Biden administration is doing. There are other announcements, the saber rattling towards Russia and China.  But we also have Anthony Blinken, who by the way was supported by some peace and disarmament groups quite avidly to be Secretary of State when he was nominated. He's going off and threatening China, going to Alaska and beyond to say that China is a huge threat. So as the same goes we, we've seen this movie before we know where it is headed, and word is headed. Unless we can avert it is further war further catastrophe, and unfortunately, a great possibility of thermonuclear war. And so I just want to close by saying that we have an opportunity to, as a saying goes, do a reset that maybe the last few days can be a useful shock to those who didn't want to talk about what was wrong with the Russia gate narrative didn't want to talk about the anti Russia frenzy, but we have to talk about it we have to challenge it, because that's what peacemaking is all about. Thank you so much, Norman, such important testimony and you know, leading to an action that tomorrow's Monday. Again, and if you weren't heard earlier. Let's contact Congress. I mean, you know this this Truth Commission is happening just at a time when heightened tensions awareness fear. So maybe you know it's time that we can say that we were at this webinar we can send the links to our representatives let them know that this isn't just. Now this is a pattern and we're now putting the Cold War on trial and showing the pattern of us aggression around the world. And if anyone is truly sincere about January six and fear as they are, you know in Congress that true, you know, fear. Then let's let them know that this is no accident. It's a pattern.


We had a lot of fields that weren't planted and we had fields that were planted and drowned out Really kind of messing with maybe some fertility programs. What are you guys looking at? Changing or adapting for this year as far as fertility. The soil sampling was a major issue night So I don't have mine done yet. That's a plan is to Get it done as I can so you're still gonna get that done this spring That's a goal if I got to go out there with a four-wheeler and hampro that's what I'll do. Yeah We're sitting in the same boat. We've got some sampling done not as much I like I might be depending on two-year or three-year-old samples But we're at this point facing the reality that we may not get our PNK on pre I mean like you said the trafability won't be there We'll end up spreading it over the top in row with a high leg spreader Which reduces our ability to do as much variable rate, but at least Hopefully we won't have it ruts made from doing that and we will use a pop-up Yeah, and you're not applying to areas. They don't you're not going to get. Yes. Yep exactly Yeah, I'm just going to try to get Do what I can and probably split-apply the nitrogen as much as possible and and I'm not you know I'll probably maybe have to forego even if I have some areas that are low on Phosphorus just because the traffic ability is not worth you leaving ruts all the way across the field I'll just wait and try to do it in the dry or fall Yeah, if you're gonna be out there and you have to broadcast, you know You want to make sure it's stabilized and protected if you don't have a for sure rain event coming We've gone to split-applied nitrogen with nitrogen inhibitors on both applications just for that fact Even though the last four or five years we've been getting the rains But there's going to be a time where that stuff lays there for a week ten days and we lose 20 30% of it But that's how we kind of overcome part of that is split-apply on nitrogen inhibitors And we do use a pop-up in furrow just for the phosphorus issue I think that could be critical the spring preventing some of the follow syndrome We had fields that we didn't get cover crops on till September We didn't have the growth that I like to see so there is that concern of follow syndrome yet


Thank you very much, and I thank you all for what you're doing and ever cease to be. I think it's interesting to note that just as Charlie Wick has done a terrific job of revitalizing the United States Information Agency, this group really has worked very hard and devoted a great deal of time, and I spent the evening with them last night with some discussions. They've devoted a lot of their personal time, a lot of their personal travel to go around the world to see what's going on in the United States Information Activities, and just as the agency has done new things, I think the Commission has assumed a new position of importance as far as its work is concerned. I see I've recovered, so do you, I don't get many of those now, maybe the geriatrics or something like that, but I think it's just Charlie Wick. Well, I do thank you all. We'll be presenting it, of course, to the relevant committees on the Hill, and again, stressing the very fine work that's being done by the professionals as well as your own appointees within the agencies, because we think that they have done much to put the USIA and the mainstream in policy. We appreciate that. Yes, and I mean, what you showed, they lead me to get into this serious study. Good. I can't look forward to any of these figures. That's fine. We're pressing our fingers. Good luck. Yeah, I think that's fine. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's see if I can get back from out there. We didn't get a good picture of each person with you. I want to thank you for all of you and your staff. Keep on blocking the status. If you could stand over here and take hands with each person and help me out. No, you have. I love the reading on the cards. I'll get out of the way, too. It's a great story. It happened a few years ago. Before there was a snowstorm. And all the notices in the air and people not coming to work. We had an enterprise in Germany called one of the busiest agencies in town to see what's going on. And the cheerful voice at the other end said, oh, we're meeting our workload perfectly normal with only half our employees. Do it. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Good luck. Thanks very much. Thank you. Hello, sir. How are you? Glad to see you. Glad to see you again. How are you? Glad to see you. How are you? Glad to see you. How are you? Glad to see you. How are you? How are you doing? Glad to see you. How are you? Glad to see you. Glad to see you. How are you? Ganglia? How are you? Second Sir. Another question. make this presentation of the letter from the head of state in Liberia and he said I should hand it to you personally. So I took a first-aid protocol and they very good. Providence St. Mal, we've more than hit our quota for the air, over 2 million. And we're going now for 6 million and then for 10 million. And in Liberia, you might be interested in knowing that it's a land of opportunity. It's a religious, by that I mean a Christian country except for 30% of the population. And it's a land of opportunity. It's the only country in Africa that's always had its freedom. They're going to keep their freedom and the present government has done everything to see that the communists don't take them. And how we're going to help them is to give business men behind you investing over there. Oh, one other thing, your daughter called this morning and I told her we'd go all the way with her. She said send her her love to you. Very good. So we have this too. I'm always supposed to stand in front of the whole party. Well, let's see, I supposed to stand in your right then in that case. And how do you have it? There's not a name. Very, very good. Well, it's a real honor for us to make this presentation because you like Pope. The practice is what he preaches. You know, a lot of people say the Lord's prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. But who really forgives? But when the Pope himself goes over to the man who just shot him and forgave him. And you're that kind of guy. And the campaigns, we're really going to do a job. There's no other demands you're going to make. I wanted to just do a presentation. Mr. President, as channeled aboard, they have or they all choose the direction of the religious heritage in America. It's a signal of honor for me to present this to you. Thank you very much. I am greatly honored and greatly humbled. I think my extremely fortunate that the great Christian statesmen on your dynamic phase and your possible messages and leadership have certainly been a great inspiration and many of the people in America will thank you. This is a college historic moment for the organization. Thank you. Mr. President, this is someone who's committed to go right now. We're happy to present. As I say, I am by this. You're worthy. And every time you see that, just think of, keep in there. I told someone once who was telling me about their prayers for me and they ever got a busy signal was because I was in there ahead of them. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. Thank you. It's a very historic moment. Nice to see you. Thank you very much. This is the present of the class. You ought to begin to press the spell with name correctly. But I think maybe if they win this game here, I'll change the spelling. Say that, I tell you that Super Bowl is getting to be something. I've got the magazine that they put out a book, a souvenir book, a book of history and everything of all the Super Bowls. Thank you, Mr. President. All for Irby. It's a pleasure to see you again. Yes, and this is my wife, Margaret Irby. Hello, this is Regan. And this is Dave Blackmore. I'm the President of the Service White and Blackmore. I'm the staff of the Washington International. Well, meaning the President of the Washington International is a tradition, I am happy to continue. Doug, you responded, well, you were all doing it anyway before. I issued a call for private enterprise to the private sector to engage in good deeds. But then when you added all that you've done, 300,000 members, the equivalent of $1,000 worth of effort for their services, that's $300 million contribution. Yes. And then you added $35 million of cash on top of it. Yes. In addition, we have our key club in Circle K, our youth organizations, which are also assisting very much in the drug abuse and the chemical people program. That's what I was going to say. Of a lady you know very well. Yes. And lucky with that. She said to give her regards, by the way, we spoke to her earlier. She says, hope to see you at dinner. She will. And also, may I say thank you very much, President Regan, because in 1964, when you made a speech at the Kiwanis International Convention in Los Angeles, I remember.  And I asked you if you'd be good enough to give me that program to use and you said that I could and I did. And I did again. And I did again. So I thank you very much. Now, of course, I'd like to say this is from me personally, but it is from Kiwanis International. And this is a token of our appreciation for what you've meant to us and what an inspiration you've been to us and the inspiration you've been to provide us to go out and do more volunteer service. And I'd like to present that to you at this time. And may I give you an idea how it works inside? Do you see an inscription there? See. And it's a custom made... I'm too long for that. Oh, that's... So this is custom made in Switzerland and it will do just about everything and it actually runs to begin with. It actually works. It keeps time. That's the first thing it does. And it has an alarm. And if you were a seafaring man, which I understand you spend more time on the ranch, it also could help you keep your directions and so forth. Well, that's just one. Thank you very much. You mean there's a compass there too? Yes. Now, of course, we don't need to tell you where to go because we think you're going the right direction. Well, thank you very much. Yes. I'd like to see you again. I thank all Kiwanis for what you're doing and the example that you set. Yes. I'm glad you had to come back to Tyler in the day also, by the way. Do you know a few people there? Yes. My first time in Tyler... Yes. ...was while I was doing the General Electric Theater. Yes. They sent me there and I have to make some appearances at the Tyler Texas Rose Festival. Yes. And it was... I remember they showed me to a suite in the hotel and then they told me that that same suite had the distinction that two gentlemen named Murchison and Richison had been the landlords of that suite just previous to my arrival. They had bought a quarter of a million dollar bull and insisted that it share that room. You have a good memory. I was there and I remembered. That's the way it happened. That's a dubious honor. That was the first time that you moved back on another case. Oh, yes. More political things in mind. Yes. And come back again with political things in mind because you get a lot of support there again. Well... We're looking forward to that. Thanks so much.


I mean this dude all he does is rage. I think here's the problem I have with this contest. We really have to define rage. Yeah, you got puffy nipples Would you throw us in the game and stop talking about puffy nipples? I Have built above on your building There's no way he's up on my building. Yeah, yeah on the roof Boom knock guy right outside. Put him out on the ground out Don't let him find me though. That's your job


Hi, my name is Ernesto Castañera. I'm an associate professor in the department of sociology at American University in Washington DC. And I also direct the immigration lab. Hi, professor, thanks for taking some time to speak with the conversation today. Can you explain to me why your research matters and why you continue to study it? Yes, I mean, immigration is not an issue per se. It's something that has been with us for a long, long time. It's something that is gonna keep happening. It's something that not one state can fully stop forever. But unfortunately, since as long as I can remember, it's something that has been politicized. There's a lot of misunderstandings by people in the public, sometimes legitimately so misconceptions from interactions everyday life. But politicians have for a long time in different places used this for their political advantage on this short term. So it's something that when I, in this country, I meet immigrants every day and the realities of their lives and what they are here are very different from what you hear from the mass of politicians and even in a lot of media. Despite immigration always being in the headlines and often discussed, what's something about immigration that might surprise some people? There's many things. Something that is important for people to know is that most people do not want to leave their home towns or the home places. Most people wanna stick around because that's where they have their love members, their friends where they know they have an attachment to place. It takes a lot like an invasion or hunger to want to leave or to be forced to leave. It's another thing that it's important to know it's that only around 3% of the world population lives in a different country that they were born in. So this is important for the immigrants. We're talking about big numbers, but in terms of the global population of the billions that we have, it's a very small number of people. And there are as many people moving within China than in the international, that international migrants. So we're talking about an exception. Unfortunately, politicians don't people make it sound like it's the main problem, one of the main problems that we face today. And Professor, could you talk about the immigration crisis that we're seeing in Europe because of the Russian invasion in Ukraine? It is more similar than different. One of the main reasons historically for people moving out of their homelands is because of war, civil war, or in this case, an invasion by a third party. So that's very common, big important population movements we're seeing around World War II because of war. Millions of Jews had to escape, but also many other people had to move around. The important thing with the Ukrainian situation is that moving, leaving cities that have been bombarded, for many people it means staying alive. So opening borders like Poland is doing is saving millions of lives. And we should say that and openly. And when we cross the borders to Syria and so any other people escape in violence, we are condemning people, some of them will die out of the violence. When they are civilians and they shouldn't.


Who is the captain of the Indian cricket team? I know your instinctive response here would be Rohit Sharma. But hold on a second. Did I ask who is the captain of the Venn Indian cricket team? So why not was your response, Harman Preet Kaur? This is no mistake of yours, because our vocabulary is full of gender bias words. And this is precisely why, in September 2021, the MCC, the Malban Cricket Club, go away with the word batsman and replace it with batter. And this was completely in sync with other words which have been used in cricket, like fielder. We don't use the word fieldsman, like baller. We don't use the word ballsman. So this move was to make the cricketing words gender neutral and all inclusive. We use the words which are basically gender biased. Like, we use the word mankind instead of humankind. We use the word chairman instead of chairperson. We use the word fullest man instead of police officer. We use the word postman instead of postal carrier. We use the word mothering instead of nurturing. We use the word fireman instead of firefighter. So there has been so many examples in and around us where our words are gender biased. So please avoid using them as far as possible in your writing and communication.


Hi everyone, thanks for joining this tutorial on the Robman app, which implements the Robman tool to evaluate the risk of bias due to missing evidence in network meta-analysis. This tutorial will mostly focus on the functionality of the app, but I will start by giving a brief overview of the Robman tool and framework. I will demonstrate how to use the app using a real example of network meta-analysis of antidepressants. And at the end I will also briefly mention how to integrate the Robman output in the Cinema web application. As I said, this tutorial mainly focuses on the app functionality, so I will not explain how to run the risk of bias assessment from a methodological point of view. These steps are described in more detail in the original Robman publication in BMC Medicine, which also include two illustrative examples, one that uses the demo dataset that can be downloaded from the app and the other with the network meta-analysis that is used in this tutorial. This flowchart illustrates the Robman tool at a glance. You can clearly see the two sections that make the tool. The first one, in purple, is about the evaluation of the risk of bias due to missing evidence in all pairwise comparison in the network, which is then recorded in the pairwise comparison table. This part includes a within-study assessment of bias, which is what we commonly call selective outcome reporting bias, and an across-study assessment of bias, which we commonly refer to as publication bias. Based on these two assessments, a level of no bias detected or suspected bias, with relevant direction, is assigned to each pairwise comparison. The second part, in blue, shows the assessment of risk of bias at the network level, which is the main output of interest of our tool, and it is recorded in the Robman table. Here, the overall bias level for the pairwise comparison from the previous part are integrated first using the contribution that our comparison judges at bias makes to each network estimate, then checking whether any of the unobserved comparison leads to bias, and finally we also look at the presence of any small study effects at the network level. These three elements are synthesized using some proposed rules to classify each network estimate as having low risk some concern or high risk of bias. The proposed rules to assign an overall bias level to each network estimate are shown in this table. This algorithm is automatically implemented in the app, but I will also show you later how to overall this in case the user decides to choose different rules, for example stricter rules. The Robman method is implemented as a multi-page web application with a workflow that intuitively guides users through the process of analyzing the data. The web application is implemented using R Shiny, JavaScript and Bootstrap. Once the user uploads their data, all analyses are performed server-side, so the only prerequisite is access to a modern web browser, but let's move on and actually use the app. Here is the on-page of the Robman app. You can find instruction for the data format and upload, and you can also download the demo data set referring to the first illustrative example reported in the main Robman publication. You can also find the links to the publication itself, other training materials and the github repository where the source code is available. Let's go on to the load tab, which is the tab where you can upload your data set. We will upload our data file as CSV, although the app also supports text files. You can then have a look at the data that you've just uploaded. You can see that we have column R instead of column mean and sd, because our output of interest response to antidepressant is a binary outcome. I must remind you that it is important to include in the data set also studies that are identified in the systematic review but do not report the outcome of interest, such as in our example the study with ID 38, as you can see it's blank cell for the column reporting the outcome of interest. This is because these studies can be informative for the selective outcome reporting bias, which we call within study bias in our framework. Once the data is uploaded, we can go on to the Analyze tab to select the parameter for analysis. Robman should not be used to run your network man analysis as in the main analysis. There are other specific packages, app and software for that. The reason why we are running analysis is because the tool needs the output of the analysis for some of the assessments. So we select OTS Ratio Summary Measure. We need to define if small outcome values mean something good or bad. So given that our outcome of interest is response to antidepressant, the more the better. So smaller outcome values are undesirable in our case. We then select the synthesis model and the reference treatment. The last three parameters refer to the network manner regression model, which is run in a Bayesian setting. As default the burning and deterioration are set at 1,000 and 10,000 respectively. You might need to increase this at a later stage if the model does not converge, but I will show you more about this later. And then you can also select the assumption for treatment specific interactions that are the coefficients of the network manner regression model. We will select the unrelated interaction because it's a less strict assumption, but again for reason of non-convergence you might want to select the other option. Once all of these parameters are selected then click start analysis and then the app asks you to confirm. And depending on the size of your network and the amount of data in your network the analysis can take a few minutes to run. Once complete the analysis outputs are shown in various tabs under the main analyze tab. It also shows you on the side the parameters that were selected for analysis. At this stage these can no longer be edited so if for any reason this has to be edited then the app needs to be reloaded, data uploaded again and then you can select different parameters and rerun the analysis. The first tab data summary shows you some descriptive characteristics of the network as well as a network graph and then the actual output from the Bayesian analysis, so the network manner analysis and network manner regression are displayed in the relevant tab. It's particularly important to look at the Bayesian network manner regression tab for convergence of the model. You can look at the convergence by looking at the Gelman Rubin diagnostic values here or also the trace plot that can be downloaded by pressing the button here. It does indication that the model is not converged then as I said before the app should be reloaded and then the parameters changed and the analysis should be rerun. The tab also shows you other outputs but I will not go into detail with this one and I will move on straight to the main output of the interest of the Robman which are the two tables where we record the risk of bias assessment. In the first table the pairwise comparison table, the app automatically groups all the possible pairwise comparison that can be made between the interventions in the network according to whether they had data for the outcome of interest as we can find here in group A. Data only for other outcomes but not the outcome of interest like this two comparison here in group B or they didn't report any outcome so the comparisons were unobserved here in group C. The app automatically reports also the total sample size and the total number of studies for the studies reporting the outcome of interest and for the total pool of studies identified in the systematic review. This information is important for the first assessment which is the within study assessment of bias. In this column but also in other columns in this table and also in the Robman table this button automatically sets all the comparisons to a specific level in this case no bias which might facilitate and make the completion of the table faster. For example we might want to press this button for the within study assessment of bias so that they are first all set to no bias detected and then we can change the levels for the comparison that are a suspected bias. I quickly remind you that this assessment is done first by looking at the presence of selective non-reporting of results in each study using study specific tool as reported in the RobMe tool or as described in the Cochrane handbook and then the likely impact of the missing results across our study can be assessed using the true signal in question that we propose and we report in the main publication. For example we will change for comparison 6 the level and select suspected bias favoring fluoxetine and for comparison 11 we will choose suspected bias favoring tracodon. Obviously this assessment can also be done for the comparison for which we only have data for other outcomes but not the outcome of interest but clearly cannot be done for the unobserved comparison which is why we don't even have the option of selecting the level but for this comparison we can definitely run an across study assessment of bias. Once again here to make it faster we can also set all to no bias detected first and then select manually those that need changing. For this assessment we looked primarily at qualitative considerations and as reported in the main publication we used a principle of novel drug bias so we consider that there could be publication bias favoring the newer drugs in the comparison unless we have received data from the authors or from the pharma running the study which means that in that case we are not suspecting publication bias favoring the newer drug. If there are comparison with at least in studies then we can also look at some quantitative techniques. The app automatically calculates it again for the comparison with at least in studies specifically it reports counter and then following plots and tests for small study effects but as I said we will look primarily at qualitative consideration. So for the same principle that I said we applied in this assessment we leave the comparison with agomeratin with the level of no bias detected because agomeratin is the newer drugs in this comparison but the authors of the review received the unpublished data from the manufacturers. While for other comparisons such as for example number six we change the level and we suspect bias for the newer drugs in the comparison. So in this case we will select suspected bias favoring fluoxidine in the next one suspected bias favoring fluoxamine and so on. Finally once both these assessment are completed we can apply the overall judgment to each comparison quickly by pressing the button calculate overall judgment. The road behind simply look at the previous to assessment and check whether there is suspected bias or not. This overall judgment are then automatically integrated in the main output of interest of dropment which is the robin table specifically the first element of the assessment for each network estimate. Like previously each network estimate has been automatically grouped in this table according to whether they are calculated using mixed or only direct evidence or if they are calculated only using indirect evidence. Going back to this first element of the contribution of evidence coming from direct comparison with suspected bias as you can see the app has automatically calculated how much of this contribution is favoring the first treatment of the second treatment in each contrast. To do this yes it has considered the level that we just in the previous table but it also uses the contribution matrix which you can download and view in the contribution matrix tab under the analyze tab which shows in percentage how much each direct comparison here in the column contributes to each network estimate here in the row. So what the user must do at this stage is actually evaluating this contribution from evidence with suspected bias. It can first set all to no substantial contribution and then it can change those that needs a different level according to the threshold that was decided. So in this example we used a threshold of 15 percent so if there is at least 15 percent or a different of 15 percent then we will change the level for example in this case we will change this substantial contribution from bias favoring the C-tallopram and so on for those that are over 15 percent and there's also a level like in comparison 59 where there is substantial contribution from bias evidence but as you can see the difference between the two seems somehow balanced in this case we will select substantial contribution from bias balanced. The next assessment does not require any input from the user because once again the app has automatically taken the last column from the pairwise comparison table so the overall judgment for each pairwise comparison and copied it into this column here and as you can see this bias assessment is only taken into account in the final stages for the unobserved comparison for the indirect estimates. That's why it's grayed out for the mixed or only direct estimates. The last assessment that has to be done in the argument table is to look for presence of small study effects. So what the app has done automatically is taking the network meta analysis and network meta regression results so essentially the unadjusted and adjusted estimates for the analysis and what the user has to do at this stage is compare these results not only by looking at the point estimate but also looking at the overlap of the credible intervals and decide whether there is evidence of small study effect and if there is which intervention is favored by this type of bias. Once again to make it faster we can set them all to no evidence. In our case there was no indication of small study effects so we will not change any level but it works as for the other columns the user simply changed the level where it's needed. Finally we can calculate the overall risk of bias for each network estimate by synthesizers in these three parts and we simply do so by clicking this button which automatically applies our proposed algorithm which I showed you at the beginning of this tutorial. As you can see the level of low risk some concern or high risk has been automatically applied. However as I mentioned before if the user does not agree with these rules and want to use stricter rules or more relaxed rules then this can be done like for example the user wants to change the level for comparison six from some concern to high risk. We allow to do so our framework and tool is flexible the app will simply show it in yellow to indicate that this is not the automated judgment from the app but it's been changed manually. Both tables but this is particularly important for the robin table can be downloaded by pressing the button here in the upper left corner also for the pairwise comparison. At this point we have completed the robin assessment and our time with the robin app is over but as I mentioned before I wanted to show you how this has been integrated into the cinema framework which evaluates the confidence in the findings from network meta-analysis. I will show you how it's been integrated not using the anti-depressant network example but using the demo dataset that you can download in the cinema web application. I will go straight into the reporting bias domain and you can see that here the user is prompted to use the robin tool there's also a link to the app but let's imagine that we have already done the robin assessment for this example and we have already downloaded the robin table which we can upload as a CSV file and you can see our automatically the cinema app import the robin judgments and shows them automatically in the relevant domain page. If as I said before the tool could not be used or the robin table for some reason is not available then this can also be set manually as in other parts in cinema. This is the end of our tutorial which I hope you found useful. I would like to thank Alex Holloway for his help with this latest version of the robin app and especially with the redesign. If you have any question or anything isn't clear please feel free to contact me either by email or on twitter. Thank you very much.


Hey there, Nico Carver here. I get a fair amount of questions about shopping for astronomy cameras and which specs are actually important. And so I thought that a tier list where I'd rank the specs is a fun way to discuss this, which to be honest is a fairly dry and technical topic, and I'll rank how important the different specs are to me, but keep in mind that I'm a deep glass photographer who mostly takes photos of Nebulae as the name of this channel suggests. So the considerations would be very different if we're talking about planetary or lunar or even high resolution astrophotography. Different things sort of change the calculus. Anyways, here we go. So a CMOS versus a CCD sensor, I'm going to rank this E. This is sort of like the Sony versus Canon war in regular cameras for me where people take sides just based on what they own and then they don't really listen or they just think they know what's best. And for most use cases, it really doesn't matter to the actual results, whether your camera has a CMOS sensor, a complementary metal oxide semiconductor sensor, or a CCD, which is a charge coupled device sensor. Now, with that said, the reason I'm giving this an E and not an F is there is one thing that does matter and that's binning pixels together. And what binning is is it's where you instruct the camera to treat an array of pixels like a two by two or four by four array as one super pixel. And we can software bin by just resampling an image, but hardware binning is something that's only possible with CCDs and not CMOS. So if binning is a deal breaker for you, and this is really an advanced thing, that's something just like someone new to extra cameras should worry about, then the CCD versus CMOS thing actually matters. Next one is sensor size. And I'm going to put this A tier. And while you can get great images with smaller sensors, it's it's limiting, right, because you can never get back that area of the sky that you're missing out on with bigger objects and things like that, unless you have a bigger sensor or you mosaic. But even with mosaics, I found that having the bigger sensor really makes a huge difference. Like I was using a micro four thirds ASI 1600, I recently moved to an APS-C QHY 268M. And this big mosaic project I was working on went from 66 panels to 35 panels with no drawback because the pixel size is the same between the two. So I'm covering more area of the sky in less time. And that's always a plus for me as someone who loves mosaics, big emission nebulae, but doesn't have a lot of dark sky time because of the weather and other factors. Okay, next one here is resolution. And I'm just going to actually delete this icon and not rank it because it's already covered by sensor size and pixel size, which we'll talk about in a minute. And so we don't need to cover that one. Okay, the analog digital converter bit depth. I'm going to rank this one D. No, well, I'll do C. It's really a weird spec to list because it's not the dynamic range of the sensor. It's the dynamic range of the sensor is determined by the full well depth and the read noise. So it's, it's usually not a limitation like it with my ASI 1600 has a 12 bit ADC, but the I'm always working with limited dynamic range anyways. So who cares that it doesn't have a 16 bit ADC. So very misunderstood spec, which is why I'm putting it C. Next one here is read noise. This is S tier for me. And the reason it is partly is because the consensus of many astrophotographers that are smarter than me and that I trust completely say this is a very important spec, but I've also read a lot about it. And I think it makes sense. You want read noise to be low, obviously, this gives the camera much more flexibility to take short exposures. Because if you have very high read noise, you ideally need to take much longer exposures so that you can effectively swamp the read noise. And for me, I like the shorter exposures. I love taking 5 to 10 minute narrow band and two minute broadband. I'm at f 5.4 by the way. Because then you when you're taking the shorter exposures, you don't have to feel so guilty about throwing out data that is subpar. Well, if I was taking 30 minute or 60 minute sub exposures, I'd feel much more possessive about each one about each sub exposure. So I'm all in on low read noise. I think it's a superior spec. It gives you a lot more flexibility in imaging. Okay, cooling performance. I'm also going to put this S tier. Not so much the performance, but just that it has a set point cooler, because you can often buy these astronomy cameras with or without a cooler. And I would always recommend if you're going to buy one for deep sky, get the one with a set point cooler, because it makes it so that you only have to take darks like once a year, or maybe every two years, you just build a dark library, don't have to take darks the night of. I have the darks for different setting camera settings like one for broadband, one for narrow band, and it's just so easy and reliable to have a set point cooler in the camera. Okay, this icon is their symbol for an image buffer. I'll rank this one C. I don't really know, or maybe I'll do a D. I don't I don't know. It might be important, but like my size 1600, I had an early model, it didn't have an image buffer, and I never had any problems with image transfer using sequence generator pro. But I'm sure there's probably a reason why they put image buffers, but it seems like they all have it nowadays anyways, so it's not like a huge plus. Full well capacity, I'm going to put this one at a B tier. It's combined with read noise, this is a measure, you can actually measure the sensor's actual dynamic range. And dynamic range and having a big full well is particularly important if you are going to image it gain zero with broadband filters and things like that. So it sort of depends on your imaging style, but I think full well capacity is an important metric. This is our first F. This is USB speed. For deep sky imaging doesn't matter. You could do USB two, three, it really doesn't matter. It's only a concern for lucky imaging, which is mostly planetary and lunar and solar stuff. Okay, pixel size, I'm going to put this one at B tier. It is an important spec. The pixel size and the focal length together, the focal length of your telescope, tell you your image scale, which means how finely you're sampling the stars in the night sky, which theoretically determines the smallest details that you can resolve. And so knowing about this spec is important, but I don't think it's as important as read noise or sensor size or having cooling. I'll do another video on image scale and pixel pitch because I think that people usually oversimplify it, which I don't want to do here, but there's a lot of considerations like seeing, DAW's limit, other practical limits to how much we can hope to actually resolve with smaller and smaller pixels or longer and longer focal length. So I don't have time to go into all that now, but some other five minute Friday, I promise I'll do it. Okay, quantum efficiency, this is, I'm going to put B tier, and this is how effectively your camera is turning photons into electrons, which is then what it counts to make an image. So it's a very important spec for astrophotography because we're dealing with not many photons, every photon counts, as Steve Richard says. So it is important, but be careful with the graphs to your own homework, because what we are really interested in is the absolute quantum efficiency of a camera. So we could compare it to different cameras at different wavelengths. But what you often get is just a relative quantum efficiency graph, which is that that's only measuring how well the camera does against itself at different wavelengths. And that's not very interesting, because almost all the CMOS cameras seem to peak on the green and so what. So we want the absolute QE. Okay, last one here, frames per second, I'm going to put this at F tier with USB speed, it's sort of related. You want a high frame rate and a fast USB speed, if you're doing planetary lunar solder, where you're shooting video or and doing lucky imaging technique for deep sky, unless you were doing lucky imaging deep sky, which I know is getting more popular, but it's not something I do. So I'm putting it F tier. Okay, that was a lot of information fast. So if there's anything here that you want me to go deeper on, let me know in the comments. But this was sort of fun, just to go through them quickly and rank them and fill out this tier list. So till next time, this has been Nico Carver, Nebula Photos.com. Clear skies.


The World Bank says the Naira has weakened by nearly 40% against the US dollar since the mid-June devaluation. Although these measures are intended to improve the fiscal and external accounts of the nation, their inflectionary effects in the near term can erode the purchasing power of households and weigh on economic activity. Of course, in June 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria directed deposit money banks to remove the rate cap on the Naira. The Naira are the official investors and exporters window of the foreign exchange market and allow the free float of the Naira against the dollar and other global currencies. Since then, the Naira had fallen from 473 Naira to around 800 Naira officially and 1000 Naira and above unofficially. As we celebrate Nigeria's 63rd Independence Anniversary, we shall be discussing how the Naira fell from grace to grass. Our currency, which was originally the British Pounds and was changed in 1973 to the Naira, was stronger than the US dollar but was at par with the British Pounds. Today, it's 800 Naira official rate and over 1000 Naira at the power market to the same US dollars. This is our first hot topic this morning on the breakfast. And teachers in Nigeria and World Over were yesterday described as destiny moders and life changers for their critical roles in the mental and behavioral development of their pupils and students. Among those who sang their praises yesterday being World's Teacher's Day was Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajidina Bath, who noted that teachers or lecturers not only educate but also serve as guardians and mentors to the wards in the schools at all levels. The speaker assured teachers of the readiness of the 10th House under his leadership to assist the President Bola Ahmed Chinibu's administration towards the development of the education sector in the country as well as better welfare for workers in the sector. We will be joined this morning by a teacher as we discuss the nation's education sector as our second hot topic. We'll also be taking a look at the front pages of some national dailies and the headlines that made it there with our analysis of the press. Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of the Breakfast on Plus TV Africa. I am Maureen Menon-Wazigwe. And straight to our top trending. The Senate is to summon service chiefs and demand military-military special military operations. And worried by the worsening insecurity in the country, the Senate on Thursday resolved to summon the service chiefs and demand special military intervention. The upper chamber took the decision on Thursday after deliberating a motion on the kidnap of five female students from the Federal University, Dundunma, in Karsina State on Wednesday. Those to be summoned include the chief of defense staff, General Christopher Musa, chief of Army staff, Lieutenant General Toirid Lagbaca, chief of naval staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogala, and chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hassan Abubakar. Also to be invited are the Inspector General of Police, Lukayode Abutoko, and the National Security Advisor, Nuhu Rubado. The lawmakers asked security agencies to be more proactive and ensure the rescue of the abducted female students, as well as the core members kidnapped by terrorists in Zamfara State. They urged the military to conduct special operations to dislodge bandits in the northwest and in other parts of the country, and called on the federal government to address the manpower deficit in the armed forces and the police. The senators also emphasized the need for the creation of state police as one of the solutions to the security challenges in the country. However, no date has been fixed yet for the planned meeting with the service chiefs. No fewer than five female students of the Federal University, Dundunma, in Karsina State were on Wednesday abducted by suspected terrorists, with police confirming their arrest of one suspect in connection with the incident. The victims were said to have been kidnapped in their residence located behind Mariamo Agiri Memorial International School along Saskia Road. The students were reportedly abducted in the early hours of Wednesday at about 2.30 am. One suspect had been arrested in connection with the incident, saying that investigation was still ongoing with the view to rescuing the abductees from the hands of the hoodlums. Why these people keep going for people's daughters, we don't know. They're looking for wives that should go cut some girls nicely. But again, being criminals as they are, they wouldn't know how to go about cutting a woman, so they just go to their schools and pick them up. They steal our daughters and get them pregnant and have babies with them. I hope that this will not end up being like the cheaper girls. I hope that these girls will be released with immediate alacrity, as we say in local powers, because we can't continue with this kind of madness. I'm glad that the Senate has summoned them. Let them come and talk because we need to see a change to this narrative. Enough of waking up and hearing that some hoodlums have gone to some schools and kidnapped our children. The schools should be safe. If they are not safe, education in the North will become history. It's already beginning to affect it greatly, so something needs to be done. We can continue with these kind of horrible stories. I really do appreciate this summoned by the Senate, and I hope something good comes out of it quickly. Alright, I'm almost tempted to add the name of the Lord to this prayer because this is that important and that serious. Alright, let's go to our second hot topic, our top trending. The Supreme Court has fixed 15th December to rule on Nnamdi Khanu's continued detention. And for judgment, after hearing two separate appeals filed by the detained leader of the indigenous people of Biafra, Mr. Nnamdi Khanu over his continued detention. Now, Joe's apex court had originally fixed yesterday that is the 5th of October 2023 for the definite hearing on two separate appeals filed by the detained IPOP leader through his lawyers against his continued detention. Meanwhile, after the hearing, the apex court fixed December 15th for judgment on the continued detention of Khanu. Khanu's legal team was led by the new lead counsel, Khanu Aghabi S.A.N., appearing with Mike Ozokima S.A.N., Nnamika Ijeofo, Ifani Ijeofo, and Mr. Alloy Ijeofo. Eji Amaka in a post shared on his ex-former Twitter handle shortly after the court session said, quote, today at the Supreme Court, the new lead counsel, Khanu Aghabi S.A.N., informed the court that he's appearing with Mike Ozokima S.A.N., Nnamika Ijeofo, Ifani Ijeofo, and himself. The hearing was conducted and the court adjourned to 15 December for judgment. The court of appeal in October 2022 discharged Khanu of the 15 counts against him. The appellate court subsequently barred any further arrests, detention, and trial of Khanu and existing charges before his forceful extraordinary rendition from Kenya to Nigeria by the agents of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the 27th of June 2021. The federal government later appealed against the judgment at the Supreme Court and subsequently got another panel of the court to appeal to say the judgment of the appellate court. Despite the judgment, Khanu has remained in the solitary confinement at the facility of the Department of State Services nearly one year after the judgment discharged him. All right, so there you have it. We'll move to our third top trending. No fewer than 3,000 people will receive, well, they receive free treatment in Emo State, especially from oil-producing areas of the state. They have received free eye surgeries and other related medical care services, courtesy of seplum energy in partnership with NNPC. The gesture was part of the Corporate Social Responsibility Healthcare Program of the oil-producing companies designed to provide quality eye care for people in their host communities. Speaking of the official unveiling of the 2023 edition of Initiative, termed I Can See in Oweri, 4th October 2023, the seplum energy management director East Onshore Ebi Adahutoy said Initiative, a multi-million project, was in line with Sustainable Development Goal 3 aimed at ensuring healthy lives and to promote general well-being of all people of all ages. According to her, other objectives of the I Can See initiative include to provide free optical treatment at all levels to members of the communities, reduce cases of permanent loss of vision, provide free reading glasses and treat other related eye problems. According to her, the program also aimed at educating patients on ways to care for their eyes in how to detect glaucoma, as well as educating patients on lifestyle changes required to reduce the rates of hypertension and diabetes. She further explained that the program which commenced 12 years ago had delivered 96,411 eye treatments dispensed for the 5,074 reading glasses and performed 4,218 surgeries. In the JV's Eastern Asset where the program was introduced in 2017, 16,467,46% have been screened 7,737 eye glasses dispensed and 577 surgeries performed. She further declared that the ongoing program is planned to screen 3,000 persons, perform 150 cataract surgeries and provide 2,000 reading glasses. Also the NNPC, through its representative, Wilson Halimat, said it was sensitive to the socioeconomic plight and health of the people and was happy to have partnered and have partners that are adding value to the lives of the people of the community and humanity at large. She also appreciated the host communities, the emo state government and other stakeholders for their support towards this project. All right, so those are three top trending this morning. It is good to give back to the society where you are making progress and that's exactly what CEPLAT and NNPC are doing. They've done that in emo state. Want to hear more of such across the country. You're watching the Breakfast and Plus TV Africa. We'll be back in a moment with off the press to stay with us.