This is Think Tank Hawaii. Community matters here. Okay, we're back. We're live with Lucien Puliarisi of EPRNC. EPRNC is an energy policy research think tank organization in Washington, D.C. Except the fact is that every time I talk to Lucien, he's at another conference in some farthrows of the universe. I never know where he's going to be, but I've just surmised that this time, Lucien, you're actually in Washington. What do you think? I am in Washington and it's raining cats and dogs outside. Looks like a rainforest. If it's of any help, I just want to let you know that in Honolulu the weather is absolutely perfectly beautiful. I'm sure that's true. Anyway, so every couple of weeks, Lou and me, we get together, we talk about energy. We call this show Energy in America. I've been doing it for a while and it's really interesting to see his viewpoint and see sort of the national conversation on this. And we've covered a lot of things over the past year and I really appreciate his coming around to discuss what EPRNC is thinking and doing these days, either in Washington or anywhere else. And this time we're going to talk about a subject that is really in the news a lot these days and that's the CAFE standards. Because the President has decided to, what? I guess the Barack Obama was trying to lift them to something like 50, 60 miles a gallon and the President 30 miles a gallon. And the Trump administration says no, we're not so sure about that and put that increase on ICE. And then some number of states led by California have indicated they don't care what the President says, they are going to maintain an increase in the CAFE standards anyway. So here we are with a national debate, yeah? Right, so I think that we talked about CAFE, the corporate average fuel economy standards in the past and now there's a lot more new information out and I thought we would go through that and help the listeners see the difference between the kind of political fight and what are the real issues on this sort of very important public policy concern. So what I want to do today is for sort of take the listeners through some just basic information, set up the problem and then at the second part of the program we'll talk about what the data actually show us and maybe give us an insight about how we ought to really proceed. So let's put the first figure up which shows the sales of Zev, which means zero emission vehicle. Now zero emission vehicle, think of a Tesla. It's basically a battery electric vehicle, also called a BEV of Zev, right? And there's also something in this table called PHEVs, which are plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. This is like your hybrid, a lot of cars which have... Toyota was the leader in that, yeah. Toyota has one. And then we have FCBs which are fuel cell vehicles. So I just want to give everyone a source of the magnitude. So if you look at the total sales of ICDs, which is internal combustion vehicles, right? In the U.S. that's moved, and that's the right-hand side of the column. That's moved from about in 2011 from, say, oh, I don't know, 12 million vehicles a year up to 16 now in 2017. So that's the whole internal combustion cars and light trucks. In 2017 we're about 16 million units. And all the alternative vehicles, the Zevs, which are the green, the plug-in electric vehicles, which are the blue and the fuel cells, which are almost non-existent, they really don't get above 2017. They're about 200,000 units. So it's still a very small part, right? Interesting how the BEVs and the PHEVs have become, since 2013, about equal in the marketplace. And the FCVs, like those are hydrogen, I guess, they are really, really minimal. Exactly. We don't have a lot of fueling capacity for them. They're very exotic. And there aren't that many that are available. So I just want to give the audience a sense of what we're talking about. We're talking about a small set of folks. Now, if we go to figure two, this is data from the U.S. Department of Energy. And it shows kind of what will the fleet look like under existing policies, right? Under existing policies of conventional cars and light trucks. And in that would be some plug-in, you know, some hybrids and stuff. And zero emission vehicles. And it's very important here to also see that there's a lot of discussion about how the electric cars are going to take over. But if you look at the official data from the U.S. government, you understand that, you know, the U.S. fleet doesn't get that much bigger. It gets a little bit bigger, just from like 220 to 250 million cars. But the portion of that that is zero emission vehicles remains quite small. And as it's going to become apparent as we talk, the real issue is how fast the fleet of conventional cars and light trucks turns over. That turns out to be much more important for air quality and carbon than the rate at which you introduce new, exotic zero emission vehicles. Because the old cars have greater emissions, yeah. Exactly. And new internal combustion engines are very, very clean and getting better. You recall we had this story about the 1968 Mustang, which generated about one ton of pollutants, you know, not... I do remember that, yeah, yeah. And now the new one, over 100,000 miles, the new one's 10 pounds.  There are two big issues in CAFE that rarely get discussed by policymakers. One is what we call the rebound effect. If you get a car that's more efficient, you drive it more. And the other one is what we call kind of attribution substitution. If you buy an electric car, you find families that buy electric cars. They also buy a big SUV. So it's not... How interesting. That one is really interesting. It's a compensation they may have balanced. Exactly. Attribution substitution, we call it. Okay, so I think that these figure... These should... These are real phenomena that take place in the marketplace.  But it's a relevant issue that should be discussed. Because as I say, the fight is over where these, you know, these dinosaurs that want to get rid of CAFE and the environmentalists will wear white hats and really know what they're doing. Okay, so it's really never that simple. So what do you think motivated the administration to knock off the plan to go to... Was it 50 miles a gallon? Was it 50 or more? I think there's... Yeah, I mean, actually there's a difference between what the kind of institutional number is and what the on-road number is. And I don't want to... We don't want to get into that debate now. But almost... When we had the crisis, the financial crisis in 2008 and GM almost went broke or they went into bankruptcy. The auto signed up for everything. But all the heavy lifting in terms of CAFE was back loaded, right? It starts now. And it's a very steep, costly curve. Very steep, yeah. So they just, you know, they had a very high discount rate. The way I would deal with that in 2018. Well, 2018 is here. And I think the autos have been very careful. They have been saying, we want to preserve a national standard. We want you to negotiate with California. But we don't want to kind of give up on fuel efficiency. We want to continue to make progress. You know, let me ask you this question. I really hadn't thought about this before. Maybe you know the answer. So, okay, to get to a higher standard costs more money. Yes. What does an automobile manufacturer put that money into? What kind of technology is so expensive? Do we have the technology or do we have to invent the technology? Is it a special alloy? What is it? You can get the technology across the entire frame. The tires, brakes, the way you build the air conditioning, the materials. And by the way, we didn't get into, we didn't get into safety, which is a whole other program. But the evidence suggests that if you, if you, and what's going on, I'm going to give you a couple other things. If you buy a smaller, more fuel efficient car, you also face a higher risk of death. You need to understand that. Because it's lighter and it doesn't have so much protection. Yeah. Yeah. And because the way CAFE works, right, because the CAFE is not, it's fleet-wide, but it's based on the footprint of the models you make. That it's becoming one way the auto manufacturers will adjust to the CAFE standard. Even the existing CAFE standard is to make less low-margin sedans and more SUVs. Because in, for example, the state of California, whenever you sell an internal combustion vehicle into California, you face a compliance cost, a compliance penalty, which has to do with the ZED requirement. And if you don't make enough Zeds and sell enough of them in California, you have to buy the credits from, well, death line. That leads us to our next figure. So the next figure shows you how much the federal government, I'm not talking about the state of Hawaii or California, which also provide direct consumer subsidies, but how much the federal tax credits for Zeds were between 2011 and 2017. And you can see that on those six years, seven years, the federal government has spent $4.6 billion. So you have to ask yourself, that's a lot of money, even in Hawaii. And this shows you the distribution in figure three by manufacturer. And under the law, they lose these credits when they hit 200,000 units of total production. And right now they're lobbying to continue this subsidy. So one of the ways to kind of meet the more stringent standards is to continue the subsidies for the ZED program. And actually if you extended those ZED credits out to 2048, you could probably rebuild the U.S. Naval fleet three times over. It would be $100 billion. Oh boy. So that's interesting. So this is to support the industry, or I guess it's also to incentivize efficient vehicles? Yes, to incentivize electric vehicles. Even the internal combustion engine is efficient, but not as efficient, not as... Low emission. Not as efficient. Yeah, it's not as low emission, but it's close. But all these things occur at the margin. That's very important. And then I guess before we break it, let's look at figure four quickly. And one of the features that I think... I put this one here. This shows the Nissan LEAF range as a function of outside temperature. And I just thought this would be a useful graph to show our friends in Hawaii, because you know that the range is a function of outside temperature. And as you get to 70 and 80, even 90 degrees, the range of your automobile declines rather dramatically. This is actually not just for the Nissan LEAF. It's also true for the Tesla and all of them. So the battery is not as efficient. Whatever it is, the drive is not as efficient if it's warmer outside. Is there a way to... Is anybody considered using air conditioning or some device to reduce the temperature so that the car will be more efficient? You know, they've sort of used... You're using the air conditioner yourself. I'm just adding to the... I don't think they got... I mean, it's a basic thermodynamics problem. You can't really fix it. You might be able to get a bigger battery at some point, but you can't really fix that. You can fix it with materials and stuff over time, but it's very marginal. Okay. Very interesting. Yeah. So what I want to do next, then, is... and you let me know whether we should break now or keep going. Let's take a break now, Lou. That's Lou Paterisi. He's the CEO of E-prink. We're doing energy in America. Today, we're talking about the CAFE standards. That means corporate average fuel economy, and there's a national debate going on because the administration would like to leave them as they are rather than increase them as the Obama administration wanted to do. We'll be right back after this short break to find out more from Lou. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of Contemporary Asian Affairs. There's so much to discuss, and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Okay, we're back real live. Lou was telling me he's solution to all of this during the break, and you're going to have to wait a couple of minutes to hear it. Lou, you wanted to track through some other slides. Why don't you do that now? Yeah, so I think one of the issues is if you have a kind of carbon theory of value, in other words, if your policy is just to worry about carbon and nothing else, you can get yourself kind of wrapped around the axle. And one of the things I want to show you is some recent work by John Lesser at the Manhattan Institute. Actually, this report is available to all your listeners quite easily. But let's look at figure five. Five, yeah. So as you know, this is not really a problem in the Hawaiian Islands, but particulates. You see this very dark fog in China. We have eruptions now, so we ought to be all the more concerned about the air. Well, I don't think the volcano is subject to EPA, so that's a problem. And the particulates that we were about are the ones that are called 2.5, 2.5 microns. Those have health effects. So the first, if we look at figure five, this says, okay, as we go out to 2048 and we take the Energy Information Agency data and we say, okay, for every new internal combustion vehicle that's produced, we're going to substitute a zero-mission vehicle. We're just going to end the model substitute and see what happens to the environmental consequences. And we're going to do it across the whole system, refineries and power plants. So if you look at this chart here, figure five, it shows particulate matter using 2014 average emission rates. And the vertical scale here are the tons of particulate matter emitted into the atmosphere and what that happens over time. But if you see the red line, that shows you under this model in which instead of producing internal combustion vehicles, we keep substituting zebs across the whole period to 2050. And you can see that the particulate matter from zero emission vehicles is much higher by 2048 and the calculus across the thing is quite remarkable. And then if you look at the blue line, that particulate matter, if we didn't substitute, but we continue to produce internal combustion vehicles, including particulates generated by refineries. And you might ask, well, why is this happening? And the reason this is happening is because even to 2048, a substantial portion of our power is generated by both coal and natural gas. Natural gas doesn't produce that much in particulates, but coal does. So if you don't use a full system analysis, if you don't look at the full fuel cycle, you're going to get fooled by this. So let me say that I can understand. So if you have all these electric cars and they're being supplied with electricity from coal-burning plants, then you have... Well, just from whatever the average fuel mix is in the U.S. under the EIA forecast, which is pretty good. But if we had renewables supplying those cars, as is the whole of Hawaii, then there would be no emissions on either side of the equation. Let's give it strength. No one cares. The world climate does not care what Hawaii does. It has no effect. It's irrelevant. Actually, a totally crazy discussion.  We're talking about the whole U.S. here. Who cares what happens in Hawaii? That is irrelevant. That's just... We're just a bunch of environmentalists over here. You can run a coconut or I don't care.  Okay, that's fine. Okay, so I live in a national or even international. What you're saying is that even if you have electric cars and you're generating power from fuels that leave particulates in the air, you have a lot of particulates going forward. And even under aggressive renewable programs, which we have, by 2050 you're still going to have coal in the mix. I think we talked about this last time. You're not going to substantially... You're not going to increase the coal production or the coal combustion, and its percentages are going to decline, but it's still going to be there. Now, let's look at figure... Oh, it says figure. That was a mistake. The next figure five, okay? Which is comparison of carbon dioxide emissions in ZED and internal combustion vehicles. And this one here does show if, as we go out to 2048, for every time I produce an internal combustion vehicle, instead I substituted that for a zero-emission vehicle, I can in fact reduce CO2, right? If you look at this chart, you can see the green line, right? That the green line shows CO2 emissions go from... Zero is just the base here. So you have an increment of 100 million tons, right? In 2050. And if you include refineries with existing EPA standards, right? So if you use a kind of more higher standard, instead of the 2021 standard too, but a more rigorous standard, it's not quite as much, right? And if you go to the red line, you can see that... You could probably say that a ZEV-only strategy would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 100 million tons by 2050. And that leads me to the last table, which is called figure six, right? Which shows that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector, right? 1990 to 2016. And what I want you to understand about the charts you saw in the previous figure is that even if we did a full-scale ZEV program, replacing every internal combustion vehicle with a zero-emission vehicle, we would not reduce our carbon footprint by more than one half of 1%. So the bottom line of this story is this is a very expensive program with a very low yield. And you can go ahead and characterize Trump's program as some kind of Neanderthal crazy idea. But in fact, the data supports a more robust debate on this issue. And that debate should suggest that at the margin, if we think we want to control... First, anything we do should look at the full band of environmental consequences, sulfur, particulate, nitrogen oxides. We should look at lithium and cobalt, mining tails and all that. So we should have a more robust discussion on the total life cycle environmental consequences. Yeah, I certainly agree that you have to consider both the source of the electrical power and the car and have to net that out to see what you're really getting. But isn't the obvious answer to make the source of the power renewable between now and 2050? Yeah, but we know that that's not possible. It might be possible in Hawaii, but as I said, who cares? It's not possible for the U.S. It's just not going to happen. Yes, if pigs could fly, that would be fine. But that's not what's going to happen. We know from the EIA data that even under the best case scenario and we know from the work out at Stanford that we're not going to get there. We're not going to get to a fully renewable system in the U.S. by 2050. And by the way, that is absolutely the case for the rest of the world. Yes, I would assume. But so the big question is to go back to the break now and find out, this is the big cliffhanger question, Lou, we need to go back to what you were saying in the break and find out from you your idea for an alternative solution. I actually can hardly wait for this discussion. Can you tell us? The alternative solution is to stop throwing your money away and put it into programs that actually yield something useful, which is probably get on the gradient to reduce emissions from the power sector. That's the big... We can continue to do research and make progress on zero-emission vehicles. We ought to definitely do that. But we should quit taking money from the middle class and giving it to the upper class so they can drive Tesla. That is a really bad policy. And my view... You're just talking about instead of putting all this money into reducing emissions from the cars that people drive around the country, why don't we put some money into reducing emissions and particularly particulates from the power generating units in the country? Is that what you're saying? I don't think particulates aren't the problem. It's carbon, right? We can see here that we have fairly strict standards on particulates and on sulfur. But if you generate more power and you're going to need to generate a lot more power to run the Zebs, even with this dream about we'll only charge them at night when people are sleeping and we have battery power and the wind is blowing. Any realistic assessment suggests that it's a global problem that the problem ought to focus on the highest return of carbon emission reductions and that's probably not a Zeb program or a stringent cafe program for the US. Those funds would be better spent somewhere else. Probably in the power sector in China or Indonesia or other places in the Pacific. One last question for you actually is there are other things coming down the pipe between now and 2048, 2050. For example, automated cars and these cars where you rent a slice of time in the car, a rideshare and they're a multimodal thing. I can't say that they're happening all over the country but I imagine they're happening at least in some cities in the country. They're happening here or at least there's a lot of talk about it. So transportation is going to change. For Hawaii that is a big piece of fossil fuel right now and I wonder if it's the same elsewhere and whether these numbers, expectations, forecasts are building in the notion of changing models of transportation. So I do think that an autonomous vehicle whether you use an internal combustion vehicle or an electric car, autonomous vehicles do offer enormous tectonic shifts in a way but it's unclear yet whether they mean people will use the vehicles more or less. The conventional wisdom is people will use their cars less but a highly efficient autonomous vehicle system might actually take people out of mass transit and into vehicles which are going to be low cost and cheap. So once again, I think you always have to be careful that any kind of, this is like thinking fast, thinking slow. You have a conventional wisdom about something. You say let's do that but sometimes you have to slow down and look at the problem and say well maybe it's not really what we thought. Maybe we have to have an intelligent way to, you know a systematic way to deal with this problem. Well is this conversation taking place now? I mean California has led ten or more states in order to do the high standards anyway. I don't know if there are other states coming on board. I don't know if this is going to be in the courts. How is this conversation going to be taking place? Well it would go into the courts but basically this has become a political issue between California and Trump in my view. And what's going to happen in the midterm elections is, and you know one of the things that's happening in order to meet this standard, we don't have time to talk about this now but the auto companies are going to produce less sedan. It just doesn't make sense for them to produce sedan. They're lower margin and they have a high compliance requirement. So they're going to produce more SUVs that have a higher margin and a bigger footprint which gives them a little bit of a break. And I think this is going to be fought out politically. And so in the midterm elections in 2018 I expect to hear, I expect to see Trump tweeting, Nancy in all the districts, all the swing districts where people have lost the pickups, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer want to tell you what kind of car to drive and they're going to make it much more expensive. Not for me. I bet you're absolutely right. I think we can absolutely expect those tweets. Well, thank you. Great discussion. Important issue. I always enjoy these discussions with you. Okay, great. Okay, energy in America. Lupo Urizi of E-Bring in Washington. Thank you so much, Lou. All right, Jay, take care. Bye-bye.


droplet transmission. This refers to germs that can be transmitted throughout the air. It can be through a sneeze, a cough, or exhalation and transmitted to others.


I sometimes play support, but when I do, to prove that I should play DPS, I play Ana. This is...  And then I realize that, you know, that's a very thin tweet.  Like, completely.   I am not dying. I'm not gonna deny that. Oh my gosh, you wasted so many blades. I wasted all my blades. I could have taken off the shield. Freaking hell, I haven't played Winsons so long. Oh my god. When you thought you were just doing a podcast, but you're actually playing a game in the background, whoops. Yeah, it was bad man. You wasted every single blade. Oh my god. Don't worry dude, this is gonna do mass. Yeah, 229. Oh god. Yes please. Absolutely massive. Just as well I put extra blades in. She can give me a blade, I can probably hit. Yeah, that would be uncool to kill. Jesus Christ. Well, I'm just gonna want it with all of my blades that will be used up in there. Oh yeah. New plays, new plays with Finn. Dude, I haven't played Winsons for a long time. Leave blood. It's fine, we will forgive you. One like equals one forgive for Finn. 2016, wow, that's like the year after we started this walkthrough. And what is it now, 2019, and we're still in Celestial? Woo! The title of this video, Worlds Longest Review YouTube. Yeah, the one on the series continues. Yep, the return of the longest YouTube series ever. Oh god. This video was four years in the making. Jesus Christ. Oh, frick it out. Just give me blades, baby, I only need... Okay, I'll give you a helping hand as well because you were low on health last time. My helping hands are really, really nice and they can help you real good. You stroke me with your helping hand. Oh, that's what it does, you know. Okay, yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, I'm trained in helping hands. Yes, of course. I trained into that school. Wow, it's been a long time since that came up, hey. I bet you forgot that existed. Oh, had to dust it off really. Sorry, that's me just blowing off all the stuff the dust said. Blowing off the cobwebs there. Get the duster out real quick. Yeah. Alright, so here's a great story about the night that we had a fashion show whilst intoxicated. Oh, this sounds like a great story, I'm gonna love it already. So, here in my flat, we're a great bunch of team members full of life and friendship and so much of love and stuff like that. It sounds like I'm sarcastic, but this is the truth. There's a lot of love. Anyway, what night? No homo. A lot of homo, but not homo at the same time. Oh, you say no homo at the end, so it's fine. Yeah, I understand. But at the end of it. Carry on, sorry. Just thought I might want to add that in just in case. Just so people understood, you know. Yeah, yeah, half homo. It's actually half homo. Anyway, we're a little intoxicated. We've had a great time. And here I am. I walk out of my room. You know who I see? In nothing but denim and underwear. Who do you see in nothing but denim and underwear? Just one of my friends. Wow. My lovely flatmates wearing nothing but denim and underwear. And I'm not going to say any names, because I don't want to out them, but it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Those sound effects just really seal the deal, really. So I'm out of my room, bottled vodka in one hand, cranberry juice in the other. And I'm like, I could go for a fashion show. So in the most heterosexual way possible, the end of the night ends with all of us stripped down to just shirtlessness, denim, and our body here. Wow. So essentially, that's how I live my life. Thank you for tuning in. Wow, that's something. That's a, yeah, that's something. That's something, that's something. That's an interesting story there. There's another sweet thing in that one.


Hello, good morning. How many people are still at bars? I wonder. I'm gonna bring something from Silicon Valley. Has anyone heard of this product? The the Juicero, I don't know how to pronounce it. I tried. This was a pretty good indication of Silicon Valley's excess. It was a it's a juicer and it is perfect. It is in fact 4.5 billion years of perfect. They had some problems here. First off, it cost a lot of money. You had this idea that you could actually just take the bag of juice that they would ship to you and you could just squeeze all the juice out, which kind of defeats the purpose. They didn't it just didn't really go too well. They ended up refunding customers money.  Every single piece we have Injected molded parts, very specific pieces of plastic. This is unconstrained development. Very specific pieces. It had Wi-Fi. It had a QR code reader. To check to make sure that your juice might not be expired because that would just be very bad. And every single bit of it, it's machined parts. I can keep going. I have more. I have so many more things here. And ultimately, I think the problem here, there were a lot of problems. No one actually bothered, I think, to say wait, what are we doing? What problem are we trying to solve? By the way, the door was more than 25 parts, just the door, which you didn't need to open because it's a juicer. The problem is that they created an engineering problem where there wasn't any kind of engineering problem. They had this problem, perhaps, like people want juice, and instead they ended up building this monstrosity that cost a lot of money and wasn't all that useful. And I think, I hope, that at some point an engineer said, do we actually need to build exactly this thing that perfectly compresses the juice at once, when in reality you could just like take the bag and just like squeeze it out with your hands, which isn't that useful. How often in development do we sometimes have to ask a question like this? How often do sometimes we have to say, you know what? Now, I think, personally, that with this amazing thing here, that they just had fun with it, and they're like, whatever, we have money, we will build this awesome perfect machine that is just as good as my hands at squeezing juice out of a bag. But in this case, how often is it that we can perhaps just better understand one specific requirement, just one requirement, and realize, you know what, it suddenly simplifies everything else that we're building about 10 times over. This is the whole thing. I'm just going to keep, just going to leave that up there for a bit. My name is Andy Nason. I'm one of the lead developers of WordPress. For the last two years, five months, and about five and a half days, I've been on a leave of absence where I've worked at the US Digital Service in DC, not that I'm counting the days or anything like that. At least I'm counting up rather than down. And I want to talk a little bit today about how I think that you can make a bigger impact with people skills, rather than simply with code. And when we think about people skills, we think about, you know, soft, softly influencing people, showing empathy for our users, having a self-awareness, knowing good problem-solving techniques, things like that, and you know, being a good communicator, for example, very important. But I want to get to some of the other areas here as well. So I think what's really important is we need to be thinking for users, with users, not for them. We want to be able to just do the discovery and learn what we want to do, but at the same time, we need to be able to see the problem for ourselves, because too often we end up not really paying attention to what the actual problem is. So I want to tell a story. About my time in government. We had, this is a few stories here, we had this system, there were three different government agencies, and there were three different systems, one in every agency. If you've ever heard of Conway's law, it's a very classic problem here, where systems take the shape of the communication structure. So you have three agencies, of course, we're going to have three systems. In these three systems, they were about 14 years old, so about as old as WordPress, not exactly maintained. One of them, and I'll just give you some more color, the first one was written in Visual Basic. I don't mean like .NET, I mean like old-school Visual Basic. The second one was written in Java, so we'll let that one slide. And the third one was written in PL SQL, which is Oracle's procedural language written in SQL. It's about as bad as it sounds. And we had this problem where we had these three different systems that all had to communicate with each other. And we were trying to figure out how it worked, because we had a major problem, we had a major incident that we had to deal with. We had to move data from A to B to C. And we had no idea what happened with system B. We weren't actually sure if it was a system. If it was an entire room full of people just writing out spreadsheets, I wouldn't entirely have been surprised. And so we ended up looking through all of this, and we realized, okay, we have finally figured out that when an email gets sent to this group, they do something with it, and then something happens and it magically gets up into system C. So we eventually tracked down where these people worked. They were in a basement in Washington, D.C., of course. And we said, can you show us what you do? We have no idea. And they said, oh, yeah, sure. So we get these 50 emails every single day, and we download the attachment for every single one of them. And then we save them on to this server over here.  And this file was, we thought it was going to be the code. It wasn't. We had to find the binary and deal with that separately. We still didn't entirely know what it did, but it did generate. It took all of this XML, XML, yes, and then generated a fixed with text file, which is even better, which would then be individually uploaded into a system. But first, we had to get it to that system. So they would then download all these files one by one to a floppy disk, which he then said, oh, one second, and ran across the room, pulled it out of one computer, ran back, put it in another. I'm pretty sure there was only one floppy disk in this whole operation. They saved everything down onto this floppy disk. And then he walked back over to a third computer. He's still in the same room, by the way. There's a lot of computers, and I think he uses all of them, plugs it in, uploads every one of these files individually. And we looked at each other in silence, and we're like, what is this? What did we just find? And we realized that what we found was a system that was working exactly as designed. Because 13 years ago, there was a team over here writing visual basic exactly to requirements, and there was a team over here writing PL SQL executor requirements, and there's a team over here writing Java exactly to requirements. And they all built the system exactly how it was supposed to work, which also involved a human running around with a floppy disk in order to move data between them. So we were able to cut out system B entirely once we finally understood how it worked. But until we specifically physically tracked people down to learn how all of this was tied together, we really had no chance to find this. I don't think this is that controversial of a statement. I'm sure there are a number of designers here. Your job as a designer is not to make things look pretty. That's fair, yes? So why do we think that our job as a developer is to write code? Doesn't really make sense. Our job is not as a developer to write code. Our job is, it doesn't really matter. Are you going to write the best code possible? Has anyone figured out how to open these water bottles, by the way? They're kind of, there we go. You can write the absolute best code possible. This was the best visual basic code you will ever see, I think at least. But it didn't actually solve the problem. And the problem here is that developers, our job is not to write code. Our job is to solve the problem. I have another story. There is this system that was used by about half a million people every month to go in, you know, citizens of the United States, to go in and complete a specific task. I will protect the teams and not actually say what it was. And it was this old, crummy thing. Now, you can imagine in government, sometimes it's like the PDF that you have to submit and it only works in Internet Explorer 9. Like it doesn't work in 10 or 8, or for that matter, Chrome or Firefox. Didn't exist yet at the time, Firefox even, I'm pretty sure. And so we're like, OK, well, we have to rewrite this. It's not good. So we wrote, this entire thing got rewritten and pushed on to a new system. And no one used it. Half a million people, 500 people. We're like, OK, we'll wait. That I'll even out eventually. A few months later, half a million people, 550 people. Not exactly the ratio that we wanted. And I asked about this. I was like, well, why did we build this? And they said, oh, well, it was on our roadmap. OK, why aren't people using it? Oh, because they can't log into the new system. Why can't they? Oh, that isn't on our roadmap. What happened here is we didn't actually solve the problem. We wrote code because we wanted to write code. But we missed the fact where we need to be able to solve the underlying problem here. Another thing that I end up doing a lot day to day is explaining technology to non-technology people. It is not that unusual. I have a very odd job. And it is not that unusual for me to in the morning be in a meeting with developers and by lunchtime be in a meeting with the agency director explaining why this bug is going to require him to probably notify Congress of a problem. That is not good. That is what we normally call a bad bug. And this happens a lot when we're dealing with teams. We have to go to the pitch meeting. Now, some of you might work at very large firms. And there's only a few people that always go to the pitch meetings. There's always those few engineers that always get called to go to the pitch meeting. That's because they're really good at this. They're really good at explaining technology to non-technology people. At the same time, how good are you at explaining non-technology to the technology people? This great story. There was a system. I think it was in the Department of Defense, the military, and the legendary story at USDS. I guess I can tell it. And there was this funny thing where there was all of these laws and regulations specifically spelling out how it needed to work. But at the end of the day, when we looked through all of the code in the system, we found a single line that looked a little weird. And then we read the comment above it. And the comment said, well, the policy says this, but that doesn't actually make any sense. So we're just going to do that. So a developer randomly made a decision about, like, I don't know how the law is supposed to work or something like that. And just left it as a code comment, which is one of the best things you could possibly imagine. The problem, though, is that how often, for example, do we need to be able to talk to someone and say talk to your project manager or your client or whatever that might be and say, I need to spend this amount of time to build an internal API that you might not benefit from directly, but I promise you, it's really important. And then here's why. And along those same lines, how well can you negotiate the requirements?  You want to do exactly what's necessary. Another thing that we have had some fun with in government is trying to convince them to use the cloud. So imagine this scenario. You were in a meeting with a cabinet minister using the European terms here. Trying, I'm trying. You're in a meeting with a cabinet minister, and they say, tell me why I should go to the cloud. What is your answer going to be? Is it going to be like, well, let me tell you all the cool stuff you could do with EC2? No, probably not. Is it going to be because it's going to be cheaper and faster and also you won't have any major problems? Hopefully. What if they then say, well, will it still be secure? You're going to say, yes, they're like, OK. But I can't surround the building with my guards, with people with guns. How will I be able to keep it secure? This is an actual question that we've received. You have someone else saying, well, that's great. But if there's a hack, or if I have to do an investigation, how do I put the cloud into an evidence bag? If I need to go to my data center and pull a server out and put in an evidence bag, I can do that. Imagine trying to explain technology and things like of the cloud or of the cyber or whatever else you want to put in air quotes to someone who normally testifies in front of the House of Commons or something like that. How do you actually make that work? It's really important to be able to communicate without using jargon. At the beginning of this talk, I was asked by the translators to see my slides. I said, I promise you, there's no jargon in this whole talk. It's pretty simple, because I want to be able to communicate to everyone. I also think that your interactions with others end up mattering a lot more than the code that you write. When I'm looking at a new system for the first time, I normally don't care as much how good the system is. I'm also trying to understand how good the team is behind it. And we do this in WordPress as well. In WordPress, when we're considering which external libraries to add. Anyone get the joke? No, a little bit. When we're considering what libraries to add to WordPress, we end up considering not the technology, but also all of the other pieces. How well does that team communicate with us? About five years ago, a few of us met with the creator of Backbone.js. Specifically to talk about, we want to build a new media library, the media library that's been in WordPress for about five years now. And we want to pick what at the time was the Ascendant JavaScript framework for about a week, I guess. And we were trying to figure out, should we go with this? And so we sat down with him and specifically talked out our concerns and your philosophies. And how does all of that make sense? And does this make sense to adopt? We have very good relationships with the jQuery team. jQuery is now more than half as old as JavaScript. It goes back a number of years. And it's not the sexiest or best piece of software out there. But it is something that ends up being really great for just doing things on the internet. And so it's really important that our philosophies lined up with that project. Current conversations right now about using React or using view.js. And a lot of that isn't just which one is better software, but also how many people maintain it. Do we have conversations with them? How are our interactions with those teams? That matters a lot more than really anything else. What I would also argue is that not only do your interactions with others matter more than the code you write, but also the code you write can improve your interactions with others. And so let me give you an example. You are doing code review. And you are constantly commenting about coding style. You need an extra space here. This should really be broken up into two lines. I'm not entirely sure why you didn't put this if statement here instead. Little things like that. And over time, you are expending social capital and potentially creating negative interactions with someone when you don't necessarily need to. In Go, in the language Go, they have an entire specific defined this is how Go is formatted. They have eliminated all arguments about formatting Go. Probably not true. There's some mailing list somewhere. But they've just papered over all of that. If you could imagine in your continuous integration, you're running your unit tests, or you are making sure that it is styled correctly, you can now let a computer handle those interactions rather than you. An example that I had in government is that I was back to the floppy disk story a bit. I was trying to make sure that all these agencies were basically doing their homework. And I was the big bad mean person who would send them emails each day, letting them know how far along they were and the things that we needed them to do. But at the same time, I was also offering to help. And in some cases, sitting down with their engineers or talking about their problems. And I realized they didn't like me all that much, because I would also be the person that would hold them accountable by sending them emails and saying, hi, you didn't do all the things that we needed you to do. And so I sat down with them and I said, OK, let's make a deal. I will stop bothering you. If you can agree on what metrics we need to track, and we'll take those metrics, we'll put them in a dashboard, and then you can be mad at the dashboard and not at me. Since they're working out really well, they stopped being mad at me. They started responding to me nicely now, instead of me being the big evil mean person. And then they had a single source of truth for them to work off of. This ends up being really helpful rather than arguing about, well, what is causing the problem? Well, now we have a non-human telling us specifically what those problems are. And I guess I'll end with this idea of, as many times as possible, asking more questions. I was dealing with an authentication system at a specific agency. And an engineer said, well, we really want to have system A and system B talk to each other securely. Nathan, how should we do that? And I said, oh, well, just I don't know, like 2ATLS or something else like that. Just have them talk. And I'm like, oh, OK, that works. And I was like, wait, it's not that easy. What else are you trying to do? I said, oh, well, a user logs in here, and then the data gets stored over here. And so we're just going to share a secret key back and forth. I said, oh, you're describing, depending on the specifics, like a WAF or SAML, you should use one of those. And they're like, yeah, maybe. We might not.  This is not a good idea. What are you actually trying to do? And after asking enough questions, I realized that what they were trying to do is they didn't trust the developers on the team to actually write something to a WAF or SAML spec. Which point my question was, what makes you think they're going to write anything to our either? In the end, a lot of times this comes down to what kind of people skills can we really deploy. We have this hanging up at our office, asking more questions. It's actually a post-it note at the end with a question mark at the end of it. We find that it ends up being really important to ask why, to listen, and to be able to respond very deliberately. And I'll close with one final story. Floppy disks, fax machines, some kind of pattern here about old legacy government technology. In this particular case, we were asked that every day someone faxed a ton of a spreadsheet to about 40 people. And then those people would all retype all of the information. This is not very good. And we said, well, you could email it. And they said, well, it's protected information, and we can't email it unencrypted. I said, oh, you could do what every other government agency does, which is encrypt the email and send it, and then send a follow-up email with the password. And they said, no, our information security people are actually pretty smart. They require us to use a fax machine because it's secure. Not going to touch that one. And so at that point, we're like, OK, that's fine. What are you actually trying to do? They said, well, we're trying to eliminate the fax machine. I'm like, are you? You're trying to eliminate the idea of typing up all the information again, right? You're not trying to eliminate the fax. Are you recommending that we do optical character recognition? I said, no. Your purpose isn't to stop faxing. Your purpose is to stop typing. What if you send the encrypted email and then fax them the password? So this is exactly how the system still works two years later. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Nathan, for sharing your viral experiences with us. That was really, really interesting. Do you want to have a Q&A? Does anyone have any questions? I think we will find the time for that. Fortunately, you will all need to walk up to the mics, because everyone's up here. There are two standing microphones here in the front rows and also in the upper rows. So we would love you to ask some questions to our speaker. Oh, there's somebody coming. It's behind you. Great. Hey, Nathan, thank you very much for the talk. It was really interesting to see how you dealt with the bureaucracy, particularly layers upon layers that have existed for a long time before even the invention of the computer. How is it that you've managed to turn around middle management, budget, accountants and stuff who have got, they're not even beyond not understanding, they don't even use the majority of the applications that we end up developing for them. So how have you managed to get around talking to those guys? I think what's really interesting is a lot of these people have invented their own systems, especially if they're on the front lines. I worked in immigration policy and a lot of the processes there in the United States for about two years. And it was amazing to see how many Excel spreadsheets and access databases and everything else were used to tie all of this together outside of all the other systems that existed. What we realized is, as long as we could end up making something for them that's going to ultimately be better, we know how long something should take in isolation. But in reality, they're very good at it. They spend all day flipping through paper, for example, to the point where they use the little rubber thimbles to flip through paper really quickly. And they're better at that than we are. So then scrolling through a PDF takes an hour, but then flipping through the same amount of paper in minutes to read everything. And so trying to optimize those kinds of things ends up being really hard. In many ways, what we end up doing, at least to solve these problems in addition to trying to do as much research as possible so we can really come up with a good solution that actually does work and doesn't make their lives worse, but makes it easier, is really just trying to befriend them and work with them. USDS is really interesting because we don't have a huge culture to speak of by ourselves because we often end up grafting ourselves on to other agencies' cultures. So I did five years of remote work and then went into government where I literally would go find that middle manager and sit at their desk and talk with them and then go somewhere else and talk with them, currying favor. I think a lot of my time dealing with contributors online and comment threads on WP Tavern and everything else made me pretty good at talking to people and trying to understand their problems and then trying to work through that. But it's definitely a huge challenge for us every single day. Hello, Michael from France. You present your experience with the state agency. What is your feedback with WordPress? I'm sorry. I don't fully understand the question. You present your feedback from a state agency, but yet what is your return from WordPress development as lead? Well, there are a lot of people who work to lead WordPress right now, which is really great. A lot of them are here. Some of them are not. I honestly couldn't fully understand your question, unfortunately. I don't know if anyone else has. If you want, maybe you can ask in French or I can in French and I'll try to translate. Excuse me. You have shared your experience with the state agencies. What is your return, your experience within WordPress? Yeah. Anyone else want to help? Is there anybody else who can help? Can I read the translation? Does that help? Oh, OK. You can help, maybe. So I will give you my microphone. Yes, I think the question is, inside of the WordPress space, do you have similar experiences or other differences in your experience? How do you relate to the problem? I think what's most interesting about WordPress is that it is not a perfect piece of software and that that is OK and that that is a good thing.  Is it OK for you? Andrea? Hi. I agree with all of that. And I'm also curious, have you ever seen a juicera moment in the WordPress project or a juicera moment that we narrowly avoided? I have a lot of stories of us narrowly avoiding that moment. In WordPress 3.1, we were developing what is now called internal linking in WordPress, where when you inserted a link, it let you link to your existing content. And the original designs for this were the worst that you would ever see in open source. If you ever used Addium, especially back in the day, the old chat app, you know how the preference pane had preferences? And then it had an advanced tab inside of that. That's kind of what we ended up developing. It was this weird, it had all sorts of different stuff in it. And the way that we saved ourselves from that is that we did a lot of iteration and we did a lot of usability testing. And I remember working with Jen Milo a lot on that, in particular, and Daryl Kruber Smith, to try and really simplify as much of the UI as possible and smooth a lot of that out. I think that WordPress Core has mostly avoided a lot of those really painful moments. We've gone through them, but we've never actually, we've usually not chipped it. I think the WordPress community struggles a bit more with this, where you look at, for example, most of the security and caching plugins just like have so many things baked onto them that don't really make a lot of sense. And that ends up being kind of painful in many ways. I definitely like vividly remember, I have screenshots of this original interface that I really should show off in a blog post or something when I start writing blog posts again. I want you to know, I have like 100 drafts ready to go. The day I leave government, they're just gonna start going out, it's gonna be great. I have way more stories than just these, that's for sure, just I can't share these, so. We have one last question over here, please. Listen, hello, Luis from Spain. The big problem. How can you find out what the clients really need from what they say they think they need? If I knew how to answer that succinctly, I would have written a book a long time ago. A lot of it comes down, I mean, this is hard because a lot of clients that we deal with are people that are trying to just get the word out and it's more about marketing and it's less about they themselves have users. So that ends up being really difficult, but as much as possible, especially when we're building rich applications, trying to understand what their users really want is really helpful. What I like to do is rather than trying to go around the behind a client or government agency or something like that, instead build that into the original relationship, it's really helpful when someone comes to you and says, we wanna do this thing, but we don't really know what our users want either. And then you can hopefully begin that relationship with great, we're going to do some user research and we're going to try to come back with a proposal for what you might wanna do. And all too often a lot of contracts are based on just purely development and not based on any kind of product sense or any kind of experience in terms of what the user really needs. And that's usually where things go sideways very quickly. Thank you so much. I think that's it. And we were talking before Nathan came on stage. So he would like to go to the expert bar and so maybe if there are some more questions, you can find him over there and chat with him in person. So thank you so much for having been here on stage and please give a big applause again to Nathan. Thank you. Thank you.


Good morning. I want to give lessons or now courses on dosimetry, fundamentals and then also details for calibration with photons and electrons and later on we will do or perform an exercise. These lectures do not exactly fit to the time schedule which was given to me. So I take the freedom that we will stop at 10 minutes before one then we have lunch but I will not still finish my lecture. I will continue later on and I take the freedom to move freely with my time because I have a lot of time for electron dosimetry which is the smallest one of them. So let's start. So this is a content I want to just to say this once more. I will tell you especially for those who are working in the field of radiotherapy you are familiar with many of the things. Nevertheless I will repeat them and offer to you what I want to discuss is this term radiation dose. We are always saying the dose and we as physicists we should at least to be aware of the precise meaning of what is dose and what is the definition of dose. I want to give general methods for those measurements and there I want to discuss these principles of dosimetry with ionization chambers. In my eyes dosimetry with ionization chambers is still by far the most important one because why. What is what maybe is the reason why it is so important I think from a physical point of view. The reason is that we understand the details the physical details much better than any others. Do we really understand a diet? Who is a physicist who has learned solid state physics? It can be awful. It's cramped mechanics and it's not easy to understand the same with a diamond. I think we don't know exactly understand how a diamond works. I think dosimetry how it really works is that then the developing all this physical process are quite complex and it's easy to use but to really understand and then to describe them in mathematical formulas how the energy deposition goes up into our signal is not always so easy with ionization chamber is much more easy still we do not understand everything it's still I do not understand having having been studied ionization for 30 years. Principles, dose and air stopping power conversion into dose in water burglary condition spends the ethics formulation. So this is what I've used this is this famous book from the agency and this is also a very very good book I think it's it's in my eyes it's the best textbook available now for medical physicists handbook of radiotherapy and it was issued by mace naham and Rosenwald by the way I just maybe you know that but you can get the book directly from the agency website and you can also get slides which are based on that such the slides may be helpful if you are all do your own teaching and if just to say that because I was involved in this preparation of the sliding if someone really needs a source file it's I'm free to give it all the S as power point files in order that if you want to use it as a teacher you can change them in newer ways and you can improve them that's better to use this power the PDF files. So exact physical meaning of dose of radiation so as I already said dose may be a little bit sloppy and as the dose of radiation is currently known by the physical physical well-defined critical point of observed dose D and the definition of this is given in this report number 60 which is here but now we have a new one though this is the new ICU report number 85 and in this report and I can really strongly recommend you to get this ICU report which is summarized the mentals of what are the physical quantities required in radiology it's not so much but this is the most important source for that according to that the absorbed dose is defined by a ratio of the mean energy imparted to a matter of mass divided by a small element of mass the unit is of course you know joule per kilogram and the special name is grain so we can a little bit discuss it now because they are combined with this definition there are some characteristics and I have put here four characteristics number one is the term energy imparted can be considered to be rich and absorbed in a volume in such a way that the energy absorbed is that what the radiation is coming into the volume minus the energy going out of the volume radiology plus some other energies which may occur if there are processes which are releasing mass for instance if you are creating a new particle so then you have to put out the energy of the radiation in order to create the mass and vice versa so there may be some changes of energy of radiation and this has all be taken to count in this definition the term absorbed dose refers to an exactly defined volume that is so important so if you think in dose you always think in terms of a volume or a mass with a certain volume so not a point a point in the metamethic consensus has no volume despite the fact it is defined as a differential ratio you have to think in volumes for those who are working as in Monte Carlo they are they are quite familiar with that you you cannot calculate the dose in a point you have to calculate the dose in a volume you have to define the volume for that first next point is it refers to the material of the volume so absorbed those always refers so it may be the dose in air or it may be dose in water or whatever it may be dose in tissue and I think many of them are you are familiar with this discussion in treatment planning what is important do we calc should we offer to the doctors information on the dose in tissue or in water we have always done in water we have always used the term absorb dose to water but of course it is not water maybe it's it's bones whatever it's of tissue so maybe a better concept to to use it especially and that is again important treatment planning systems modern treatment planning systems which are already commercial available they are introducing Monte Carlo techniques and in Monte Carlo it's much more directly to to calculate the dose in the volume of the tissue of the patient or some approximation they they can calculate the dose in the tissue so to get they get now the dose of diffusion in tissue and bone so now they have to translate it into our old-fashioned water absorb dose so just to to see that that that dose absorb dose refers to a material next one that is very interesting the dose absorb dose is a quantity which is steadily in space and time that means it is a quantity you can differentiate so it is it is defined in a point it refers to a point and if you look to that that may be a contradiction to to I said it refers to a to a volume so what about this thing we have absorb dose referring to a point you can say this is expressed in this r vector and but at the same time it refers to a volume so in order to understand this a little bit more closer I want to discuss now a little bit more background on what's really going on in the especially if we have this definition this question is the same into the question what energy imparted is so you know the dose is defined by the energy imparted so the question is we need a definition now for energy imparted and here's a definition the energy imparted to matter in a given volume is a sum of all energy deposit in the volume quite nice we have one definition and we substitute it for with another definition with another quantity the energy deposit maybe that is again not really helping so we have again but let's see what what is meant with that I have made this picture so we have photons coming from the left side and there is a component effect so we have created secondary electrons here and this is again we have another one which is a photo effect another one photo effect though that happens if tissue or water is you already did it so in regard to our definition now we have to introduce a volume and what is energy imparted oh why it's not coming oh yes let's go back one this is important step the energy imparted is all the energy just to to remind you if an if an electron is traversing to material is it is giving energy continuously all the way the famous question is why electrons have a final range in contrast to photons photons are exponentially decreasing why photons by electrons have a final range very simple why yeah okay they allude the energy and then it's gone then I have to stop that's a very nice question to medical students because we also have to teach the medical physics the medical students and they need some understanding for that and such a simple question they all it's so simple and really it helps to understand why or what is the process with with charge pardon they continuously are losing energy so this is the illustration that the electrons are continuously lost in losing energy and only this part which is within the volume this is the energy imparted so this is not energy imparted here and that's all the energy imparted the volume so this is a clear illustration what is meant by energy imparted what we need for the definition of absorbed dose so and this the energy imparted is a sum of all elemental energy deposits by those basic interaction process which have been occurred in the volume during a time interval considered so this is the formula this are this is our energy imparted and these are the single energy deposits so we need a definition of what what is an energy deposit and again we use this formula but what is important now it refers to a single interaction process between the particle the photons or electrons and the medium so we have single interaction process and with each interaction process we are looking on this equation we have energy going into again we can imagine a very small volume some energy is going out and we have again change of energy now it gives three examples electron on interaction pair production postman annihilation so we have here an electron coming into in this very small uh volume and we have the primary electron and we have a secondary electron and this way it's a quite good question what is a primary electron and what is a secondary electron can we can we see what is a primary can we can we associate one is a primary one is secondary no but this is something which is again basic physics yeah yeah but which one how we can you see we have a knock on process and two electrons are coming out which one is primary which one is secondary it's a very simple it's a higher energy we call the primary very simple okay so there may be some process here fluorescence radiation may come out and even all electrons may come out and this now is the formula the energy the energy to possess is the energy the kinetic energy coming in with these electrons and these are now escaping so all these terms are going out so this is now a definition of an energy deposit of a single event another one is we have photon radiation creating two electrons and this is now another formula the energy deposit is the energy of the photon then these energies of the electrons are escaping but we also have to subtract the amount of energy to create this tool and this is another one absorbed those it is positron and annihilation process and again we have such a formula just to say now I think we have now a better understanding what an energy deposit is can be very different in size and type and so on again this is a formula energy of the incident you only say a particle excluding the rest energy the sum of energies leaving and the change of rest energies now we can this was theory but very simple what if you do a measurement we are simply adding together all this we our measurement signal is proportional to the imparted energy okay now a thing which is not so well aware but I think it is important especially if you are thinking in things now in what really happens in tissue or in a cell or in an enzyme what really happens there I have offered you the illustration of different energy deposits that's very clear that the energy deposit one single can be quite different in size so we never know which will come first because it's a stochastic process this again this is the principle of physics it there's some probability for a process but we don't you cannot say this single photon will have this type of interaction it will have some probability for anyone okay so if if we add up stochastic quantities the result will also be stochastic so our energy imparted is stochastic and what does it mean it means that with respect to repeated measurements of energy imparted that's what you really measure it means that it will never have the same value is that really true it's something strange if you do a dose measurement expect that if you do a careful measurement you want to have an accuracy or uncertainty say of 1% and it should be not change the answer is very simple if you have a huge number of of of a deposit then on average they will be almost not change but in certain cases you can you can see changes and when of course if the number of events is small and when is the number under what conditions the number of deposits is small it's a tectas small or if the dose rate is small dose rate is small in radiation protection so in radiation protection we have such problems the detector is small if we measure dose the data normally is not small so even if you go to one millimeter diameter or say one centimeter diameter but you can you can you can use a detector which has reduced pressure air pressure and there are some detectors are available you can they are called so-called Rossi counters that are filled with they with the equivalent and the pressure is only say 100 1 1 1 over 100 of normed pressure and if you do measure that you will see a huge variation and it's interesting so if you are interested in in study such variations you could use there's a method technique available which has been introduced 30 40 years ago it's called microtosimetry so microtosimetry is a specific special discipline which is dealing with this thing and the other thing of course is what is happening in a cell what is happening in the size of of of a dna of course so you if you you cannot really speak of absorb dose within us in a small cell it will be have some variation and the variation can be huge it can be say it can be if you if you apply one gray in a small size it could be 0.5 graze at the range small so in radiation in the radiation biology it may be important to take such things in account but not for normative symmetry as normal medical physicists we will never never came across with this thing but I think it's quite interesting to know that that this we have this variation and I show you this one picture it's showing the ratio of energy imparted by the mass and now the mass is here really a big mass and it's it's going on smaller and smaller and you see that that the energy imparted is really strongly variation it's a famous graph which is taken from textbook 30 40 years ago and I think it's I like this picture because it underlines the the the knowledge that that this is the case of energy imparted so and this is a reason why this is not the correct definition but it's a mean value by because I am telling you in just to explain it's defined the absorbed dose is defined by the mean value of the energy imparted and thus by this definition it's now a quantity which refers to a point and which is steadily in time and which can differentiate it so this mean value is quite important here so the energy imparted is a stochastic quantity and the absorbed dose is a non-stochastic quantity this is the the conclusion from that so in in in textbooks especially for for for a really assistant you always see this this definition it's so it's just to say this it's not quite correct and I as if you are in the role of a teacher I think you should really use the the exact definition according to the ice report now we have a precise idea what is meant is those really there there are all the other dosimetal quantities and one important oh okay one important example is karma and this is the definition which is again taken directly out of this ice report and I think we have to read it the karma is quotient by d e and this d e whose tr is the sum of the initial kinetic energy of all charged particles liberated by uncharged particles in a mass of material so again it has the same the same unit it is jowl per curicum and it's again gray so this is again our illustration of of absorbed dose so the absorbed dose is is here coming photons and we all here have the energy deposits by the electrons on everything which is within these volume is taken as for the definition of absorbed dose and again this part of energy is not taken and this is not taken so this is the energy absorbed in this example another one also no let's show that here we have we have an ah let's go to that one here is another one interaction which is outside of the volume and the secondary electron is going through within this part is also counting so this is now the karma and we have almost the same structure of secondary electrons created by the photons and now we are taking the kinetic energy the initial kinetic energy of each of these electrons and put this together and the karma is a sum of all these kinetic energies so and remember these is outside the volume and therefore it's not counting so all this energy is not counting for the karma what is important is the difference between absorbed dose the definition and karma absorb those we want to measure and i think we can measure it not always directly but we have our ionization chamber and finally we will get the information absorb dose or we can diet or whatever can we measure the karma we should differentiate between the energies in the detector which are created outside we cannot it's very difficult so the typical difference is that karma can be calculated and the absorb dose can be measured on the contrast absorb dose is not easy to really to calculate there are some exceptions with Monte Carlo where you can do but still it's some approximation there some tiny approximation but the definition of absorb dose is made to have a quantity to be measured the definition of karma is made to be calculated and here are the way how it can be calculated if we have our interaction coefficients there are a number of interaction coefficients available which describe what happens in total if a photon is interacting with material so we have the attenuation coefficient we have the energy transfer coefficient or we have the energy absorbed coefficient that this is the most important coefficient and the calculation follows always a very simple rule if we know the fluence differential in energy if we multiply the fluence with the energy itself then it's called the energy fluence and if we calculate with this interaction coefficient and this this has to be divided by the density factor row then it's called the mass energy transfer coefficient then this product and you have to integrate this over all energies then this is the karma this is the definition of karma and if we want to be more realistic to be what may be stay in the volume and not escape from the volume you should take you should take into account only which is given by the energy absorbed coefficient though the difference between the energy transfer coefficient on one side and energy absorption coefficient is just that the energy which is going into radiation and is escaping is not counted it's taking away so we have just to remind you we have other dosimeter quantities compared to observe those typically here karma and collision karma which are these are for photons and as I already told you absorb those is a quantity which is successful mainly by measurement and karma is a dosimeter quantity which cannot be measured but calculated only based on knowledge of photon fluence differential in energy so let's look now on on the absorb those which are coming from charged particles charged particles that means normally electrons for calculations of those which are created by charged particles we need to introduce a concept of stopping power and again this is our iso report which is saying what is the mass stopping power the mass stopping power of a material for charged particles so stopping power only refers to charged particles of a given type of energy it's a quotient by the by e and role dl del is where e is a mean energy lost by charged particles and traversing a distance in the material of density rule see again we have a definition of energy which is a mean energy lost again the this is refers to to the overall process it's again a non-stochastic character or a description of the energy process which goes from radiation into material the stopping mass can be expressed as a sum of independent components and we have three which are given here and this is the explanation this is called the mass electronic or collision stopping power due to interactions with atomic electrons resulting in interactions the second one is the mass radiation stopping power due to emission of bremsstrahlung in the electric field of atomic nuclear or atomic electrons and we have also a mass nuclear stopping power though we have also some interaction from the electrons with the nucleus which is a if the energy of the electrons is small it's not so important but we have three components and again this is the most important or the most interesting in why this component is small and this component if we think on our volume absorb those it's escaping from the volume we are interested in absorb those so this one is most interesting part so why stopping power is such important concept to see there are two under energy loss at the same time is energy absorbed wonderful and there's a fundamental relationship between absorb those from charge parting and the mass electron stopping power for this there there is another introduction of an often dosimeter quantity which is called chamber who knows that i'm afraid no one it's it it does not play an important role but the people who has written the isoo report there is someone they are insist we have to include the chamber the chamber is given here this explanation the chamber for ionization charge particle is a quotient again it's very similar to the karma definition but what is interesting in is that the that the chamber is can be calculated by again our the fluence of the electrons differential energy times the electronics stopping power so if we know the fluence of electrons by some way by calculation by Monte Carlo calculation for instance we multiply this with this stopping power we can calculate the chamber and the chamber to see is very similar to absorb those so what we can say is absorb those from electrons can be calculated with this way therefore this is important to have all this introduction so this is summary now a very summary which i that's good it fits with that time on on on the first part energy absorption and absorb those this is the definition of absorb those this is the definition of energy imparted being the sum of energy deposit and the energy deposits are referring to single interactions with this balance of energy energy coming in energy coming out and some changes of fresh energy and also which i think is interesting it's not necessary to know it's nice to know but to knows the energy absorber is a stochastic process so i think i will make a break now because now it's time for lunch and i will simply continue after the lunch with this course yeah well the time is because 12 50 lunch break 14 10 14 10 10 minutes after two i will continue


For a lot of people, falling in love and finding your soulmate is the ultimate goal in life. And while it would certainly be wonderful to meet the perfect person for you, it definitely doesn't mean that love is all there is to life. But when you make a conscious choice to remain single, oh boy, the battles you have to face then are of a totally different kind. That's because the not-so-single half of the population takes it upon itself to convince you otherwise. What matters is not what everyone else is doing or what other people think you should be doing, but what you want and what's right for you. So with that said, here are eight things only single people can relate to. 1. Feeling replaced by your friend's significant other Ever since your friends all started dating someone, do you feel like you hardly see them anymore? You're happy for them, of course, and you try to be as understanding as you can. But there are only so many times they can turn down your invitations or cancel on you at the last minute before you start to feel like you've been abandoned. Everything you used to do with them, they want to do with their significant other now. Like go to the movies or eat at new restaurants. And you can't help but feel the slightest bit of jealousy that this person is now who they want to spend all of their time with. 2. Having to be the third wheel all the time Are you always the third wheel when you hang out with your friends and their partners? Does your friend's significant other tag along on most of your get-togethers now because they want to get to know you better and befriend you too? Which is really nice of them, you have to admit. But it also makes you miss the days when it used to be just you and your friends, and no one felt left out. 3. Having to stomach a lot of PDA Whether it's from your friends or couples you see passing by, public displays of affection are honestly uncomfortable for other people to watch. And no, it's not because you're bitter about being single or anything, but after a certain point it starts to get exhausting. Listening to your friends telling you about all the different reasons why their partner is so dreamy. Having to awkwardly stand around while they kiss and call each other cute pet names. Seeing them act so happy and lovey-dovey all the time. Yeah, no thanks. It might be fun for them, but it's certainly not fun for you to watch and have to stomach it. 4. Always being asked why you're still single Do others badger you relentlessly about why you haven't found someone yet? Do they pressure you into dating again? No matter how many times you tell them, you don't want to. From your friends to your relatives, to people you barely even know. When you're single for a while, sometimes it feels like that's all anyone wants to talk to you about.  Oh well. 5. Being comforted because of your relationship status Sad to say, most people just can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that some of us are actually happy to stay single. A lot of people give us comforting pads on the back whenever the topic comes up and try to encourage us with platitudes like, don't worry it'll happen for you too or you'll find someone eventually just hang in there. As if being single is somehow synonymous with being miserable. 6. Being bombarded with personal questions What happened between you and your ex? Why are you having such a hard time finding someone? Don't you ever get lonely? Is there anyone you like? Once people learn you're still single, they'll start to bombard you with really inappropriate personal questions. They're convinced their questions will help you find your next date. Have you ever thought about dating so and so and of course, isn't it time you moved on already? Single people have to put up with hearing such insensitive questions when frankly, it's not anyone's business but yours why you choose to stay single. 7. Constantly being set up on blind dates Do people keep coming up to you to say, I know the perfect match for you, or you should really meet so and so, you'd make a great couple. If only you had a dollar for every time you heard those things. And while your friends and family members do have good intentions, you can't help but feel fed up over their constant attempts at playing matchmaker and setting you up with someone. 8. Feeling pressured to find someone already Has anyone ever teased you about being single or told you that you should just lower your standards? They make it seem like there's something wrong with being single. But the truth is, you're happy to stay single for now because you know that the journey is every bit as important as the destination. After all, there's a lot of freedom, independence, fun and excitement that comes from being romantically unattached to someone. In the end, being single allows you to focus on yourself and it can be a time of great self growth and self discovery. It's better to stay single and wait for the right person to come along than settle for anything less. Being in a relationship has rewarding experiences. When you're with a healthy partner, you learn to grow with someone, step out of your comfort zone, and your social life expands as you build connections with their family members and friends. But being single has its benefits too. We're tired of social media mainly highlighting relationship goals. Why not start a hashtag single goals movement too? Here are 8 reasons to be single. 1. You can save money Who else here is a broke millennial? Although there are ways to be creative and spend less on dates, a certain budget still has to be established when entering relationships. Transportation and gift giving, for instance, are harder aspects to avoid. But when you're single, your bank account won't thank you for it. Unless you're an impulsive spender in general. To gain insights on how to spend more wisely, check out the Financial Diets channel. They offer practical advice that's easy to use. Anyone can use it, whether you're still a student figuring out finances or someone who wants to travel more. 2. You can fortify your friendships and family relationships When people enter relationships, it's common for them to pull the Disappearing Act. They might not see their family and friends until they enter the comfortable stage of their relationship, which can take up to 6 months to a year for them to realize they actually miss having a social life outside of their partner. When you're single, however, you can make plans with your close loved ones without having to consider your partner's schedule too. Yay, freedom. 3. You can explore new hobbies This isn't to say you can't do the same when you enter a relationship with someone. In fact, they might actually encourage you to try new things you never would have considered in the first place. But there's something special about embarking on this journey alone. Whether that means taking up knitting, snowboarding, or cooking classes, you become one with your passion with less interruptions and distractions. 4. You can go after your dream job more easily The thing about being in relationships is that they require compromise on both partners to grow on the same page in order to sustain. But when you're single, you don't have to limit yourself to one location, which may affect your ideal job opportunities.  If your heart is tugging you to move into the big city to become a fashion designer, no problem. Or if you want solitude and quiet, residing in the middle of nowhere is also an option without having to worry about neglecting your partner. 5. You can be selfish without consequences My boyfriend and I take turns watching our shows on TV, and I'm not gonna lie. I often miss those days where I could just binge watch my drama series without having to worry about hogging the screen. But when you're single, you can be selfish without hurting someone else. If you want to go to that restaurant this weekend, you can. The less people you have to run a decision by, the better. Because when you experience these moments alone, the only person it affects is you. 6.  But when you're with the right person, the fights are well in which they strengthen your relationship instead of weakening it. Single life, however, works in your favor. Because the only drama you have to deal with is from family, friends, and work. You have one less life department to worry about. Therefore, you also have fewer emotions to sort through. 7. You master self-sufficiency If you're someone who needs validation frequently, being single can work to your advantage. I know you might be itching for a fulfilling relationship, but establishing a strong, healthy relationship with yourself is actually the most vital to your growth. Once you've established a strong sense of self, you're more likely to avoid codependent relationships in the future. How is that not fantastic? 8. You still experience the excitement of finding your soulmate. The possibilities will seem endless. You might meet the one on your summer trip, or maybe they'll happen to sit next to you in next semester's class. Work on yourself. Surround yourself with the things you love, and the right person will come along. You never know what's going to happen. So be patient, enjoy the present, and be thankful that you're alive in this very moment. If we may ask a personal question, how's your love life? Are you currently single, or perhaps you're looking for a long-term relationship? Although we hope you've found that special someone, we understand that generally, dating isn't easy. Do you think you might be hurting your chances at true love? Have you had a long list of failed relationships, but can't seem to figure out where it all went wrong? Well, here are 10 things that might be keeping you from finding relationships that work. 1. You have cynical views about love. What's that saying again? Once bitten, twice shy? It's common for people who have been stung by love before to stop believing in the magic of romance. You have every right to grieve, feel hurt, and learn from the experience.  2. You set unrealistic standards. Nowadays, we see so many pictures and posts online about couples who are hashtag relationship goals that it may start to cloud your judgment and give you unrealistically high standards. You might turn down great dating prospects, or throw away a special connection you had with someone just because it wasn't everything you hoped it would be. But the truth is, sometimes relationships are more about being the right person than finding the right person. 3. You've set too many dealbreakers. You have standards, you know what you want, and that's a good thing. But expecting too much of your potential partners too fast sets the scene for failure and disappointment. Are you so quick to call it quits and run away at the first sign of imperfection? Just as you deserve a fair chance, so do they. In the end, relationships take time and effort, and sometimes, those flaws make this person uniquely tailored for your relationship. It's in the complete acceptance of an imperfect person that we find the kind of love that's meant to last. 4. You have unresolved past trauma. Whether it's a messy breakup, a toxic relationship, or an unhappy childhood, your past can leave you with loads of painful memories and emotional scars that you often never really get over.  Resolution, acceptance, and being at peace with your past will not only negate most of the detrimental effects, but also help you be a better partner, giving the relationship its best chance to stand the test of time. 5. You have low self-esteem. I know you've heard the quote, you can't love someone else until you learn to love yourself first. When you suffer from low self-esteem, you tend to lose yourself and your partner. Instead of developing your own sense of self, your partner is used as a substitute. Since you feel like you're unworthy of their love, you constantly worry that they'll eventually realize that and leave. The insecurity makes this a self-fulfilling prophecy, through things like misinterpreting small actions, catastrophizing and constantly suspecting your partner of things. This can be exhausting for the other person, and for you. 6. You have a fear of happiness. Hey, don't laugh, we know how it sounds. Why would anyone fear being happy? We humans are strange creatures, and this indeed is something that happens, even though most of us aren't aware of it. Are you afraid of what would happen if you ever did find the one? So afraid that it leads you to sabotaging your own relationships?  You try not to get too attached and suppress your desire for connection, so much so that others may misunderstand and think you're inconsiderate and consistent and not at all interested. 7. You have trust issues. Do you feel jealous about your partner being close with other people? Does it make you uncomfortable to think of them going out without you? Do you need to read their messages and know where they are all the time just to feel secure? Sad to say, nothing dooms a relationship faster than a lack of mutual trust.  No one likes being constantly controlled and under suspicion. 8. You think you'll lose your independence by being in a relationship. The rom-com movies always say, you complete me, which isn't the healthiest of messages. Perhaps you subconsciously fear commitment because you think you'll lose your independence or freedom when you do find a relationship. The truth is the opposite. Remember this, in a healthy relationship you should never have to sacrifice your personality, your independence, or who you are for a romantic partner. The hallmark of every strong, enduring relationship is learning to maintain your independence while still being happily committed to someone. 9. You want someone you can't or shouldn't have. Most of us are guilty of liking somebody against our better judgments. Probably even more than once. Whether it's because they're already taken or emotionally unavailable, it's easy to fall in love with the wrong people. Obsessing over the forbidden fruit closes off your ability to consider the more compatible and better suited people for you. 10. You don't learn from your mistakes. We all make mistakes. We're only human. But what mistakes have you made in your past relationships? And what have you learned from them? What's changed about you and how you look at things because of your mistakes? If you don't know or believe you've never done anything wrong, this may be the most detrimental factor to your ability to find a lasting relationship. The mistakes allow us to learn, grow, and be better the next time around. If there's no learning, the same mistakes occur and the cycle is endless. A relationship takes more than one person.  How do you think you're doing? What went sideways in previous relationships? Do you relate to any of these signs in this video? Or perhaps you see your friend who has these signs? Knowing the answers to these goes a long way to helping you on your quest for love. Hollywood and marketing companies have a lot of people chasing after love like it's a prize or a status symbol. But what's the big deal with relationships? Do you need a New Year's Kiss or a Valentine? Are relationships overrated? Maybe not for everyone, but there definitely are some benefits to being single. Relationships can be wonderful, but being single can too. You don't have to be bitter and lonely. Let's take a look at a few of the benefits of being single. Strengthening bonds. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, something we all want is love and belonging. We want to be loved unconditionally. We want someone who we can talk to about anything. A lot of the time, especially as we get older, that gap seems to become more obvious, and we tend to think that the thing that's missing is romantic love. Because of that, we lose sight of the fact that we can receive love and affection from many sources, not just a romantic partner. A study conducted in 2016 revealed that receiving support from other sources like your friends and family can mitigate feelings of romantic loneliness. In other words, spending time with friends and family can keep that nagging feeling that something is missing away. Permission to be selfish. A 2013 article published in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics titled Can a Compromise Be Fair states that compromises need to occur in relationships, even at the cost of fairness. This means compromises aren't always fair, but they are necessary for a relationship to work. That's good news for single people. Of course, compromises will still come up as you balance work or school, friends and family, but the most stressful and time-consuming compromises come with being in a relationship. You don't need to discuss plans of a significant other. You can just decide on things yourself. You don't need to compromise. Feel like treating yourself to sushi in a movie on a lovely Sunday afternoon? You can. That includes not worrying about the option, needs, or wants that a significant other would have. No worrying that they're not in the mood for sushi or that they don't want to see the movie you picked. It's the one time, aside from your birthday, that you can be a little more selfish than usual. Look within. When you're single and don't have to compromise, you have more time to discover the things that make you you. Whether you like to spend entire days playing video games or watching niche films that make other people squeamish, you can do whatever tickles your fancy when you aren't in a relationship. This also extends to introspection. You have time to look inwards and learn about yourself. You can figure out everything that you need and want in life. You'll also have time to recognize and heal past trauma. When you're in a relationship, your goals need to fit into the relationship or a compromise needs to be met. You shouldn't have to compromise on your dreams and the things that you're most passionate about. In a thesis written in 2019 titled Seeking Solitude, The Positive Effect of Being Alone, PhD candidate Samantha Voss wrote, Being in uninterrupted silence gets you involved in your own emotions and thoughts. You get to really understand them, create an inward awareness that helps you improve your outward awareness. And that sums it up perfectly. Mental health. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre has a famous quote that says, If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company. Being in a relationship shouldn't negatively affect your mental health, but it can. This also goes for being single, but when you're single, you can choose that alone time for your mental health whenever you need it. A few studies have been done on the effects of a relationship on your mental health.  This suggests that if you have mental health issues now, getting into a relationship isn't a way to solve these issues. According to psychologist Adele Forth, there is a possibility that your relationship can lead to trauma if your partner is or becomes abusive. That shouldn't be something you have to worry about. While you're single, take time to appreciate your own company and make sure your mental space is healthy. Use this time to care for yourself. Do a face mask, work out, or watch some trash TV. Treat yourself well. You can always experience romance on your own through a solo date, unlike Lady Gaga. You don't want a bad romance. Relationships can be wonderful, but if you're waiting for the one not interested in relationships or you've just left a relationship, just know there's a lot to enjoy in the single life. Let us know how the single life is treating you in the comments. Leave a like and subscribe to Psych2Go for more videos like this, and if we can leave you with one thing, it's this. Being single doesn't mean you have to be lonely.