In the previous lecture we started discussing about how to modulate surface tension. So, we were discussing about that how to generate gradients of surface tension maybe by generating gradients of temperature for example, which is known as thermo capillary or marangoni convection. Now, to generalize let us say that there is a free surface for the time being let us assume that the free surface is flat. In our next chapter we will see that I mean how to modify this if the free surface is itself curved, but for the time being let us assume that there is a flat free surface for simplicity. So, let us take a small element dx.  Let us say that the width is 1, width equal to 1. So, this is sigma and let us say that here the surface tension coefficient is sigma plus d sigma. Why this is sigma plus d sigma? Because maybe there is a temperature variation along x because the temperature variation there is a surface tension variation. So, sigma has changed from sigma plus d sigma. Now, we can write so there is a imbalance of sigma and sigma plus d sigma. So, that may be balanced by a shear force which is tau into dx into 1 where 1 is the width. So, we can write from the force balance that is sigma plus tau dx is equal to sigma plus d sigma that means tau is equal to d sigma dx. So, we can write this as d sigma dt into dt dx. So, you can see that how a shear stress can be generated because of surface tension gradient and this stress can be the driving influence for the fluid flow to take place. So, this is one effect that we discussed in the previous lecture. This is just a continuation. Controlling surface tension by surfactants also is a possibility. So, surfactants are short forms of surface active agents are compounds that lower the surface tension between 2 liquids or between a liquid and a solid. Molecules are attracted by interfaces. So, you can create an assembly of molecules which are adhering or attach to the interfaces and there are several applications of surfactants like in emulsification, in detergents like in soaps, in missiles and so on. So, basically adding surfactants is a way of controlling surface tension by creating a concentration change by making a change in concentration by adding surface active agents. Controlling surface tension hydrophilization. Now, this is a very important point to discuss in many microfluidic devices. The substrates that we are using are originally hydrophobic like for example, PDMS. We will discuss about this like polydye, methyl, siloxane that it is inherently a hydrophobic substrate. Now, these hydrophobic substrates may need to be hydrophilized. So, how they can be hydrophilized? There are certain possibilities. So, the fundamental principle is attaching polar groups or non-polar surfaces. So, commonly what is done this process is routinely done in our labs that is we have oxygen plasma treatment or plasma activation. The surface reacts with reactive molecules. So, you have gases like oxygen or you can have water these can be ionized and so basically you can attach polar groups on surfaces and these polar groups can impart hydrophilicity to the substrate that is the fundamental principle.  So, in labs it is very convenient to use but one of the problems is that it is not long lasting. So, the hydrophilicity that has been imparted will go away if you leave it beyond a critical time. So, it depends on how long you are doing your experiments. If you are doing experiments over a period of time over which the hydrophilicity remains then that is fine but otherwise you have to go for a permanent treatment. So, permanent treatment is coating with the hydrophilic material for example, PTOX is a material. So, you can make a coating with the hydrophilic material it is long lasting it is not a short time solution like oxygen plasma treatment or plasma activation but it is costly. So, I mean this is of course quite obvious that any process which is not long lasting will not be that expensive but process which is long lasting is expected to be expensive. Controlling surface tension by electrical effects this is a very very important concept and we will discuss this in some details. So, if you recall that in one of our introductory lectures we discussed that how to make a droplet move with the help of electric field and today we will discuss the science that how that can be possible. So, let us say that you have a electrode just look at this schematic on the top of the electrode there is a insulator. So, typical insulator is a dielectric material and what is not shown at the top because it is a very thin layer is there is a thin hydrophobic layer on the top of the insulator. I mean that is important because you want to form a droplet on the top of that. So, if it is not hydrophobic you do not expect a droplet to form right. So, you you typically have electrode on the top of that an insulator and on the top of that a thin hydrophobic layer. Typically like I mean the insulator even in silicon technology SiO2 can also be an insulator and you require a hydrophobic material for that case very strictly because SiO2 is actually not hydrophobic it is hydrophilic. So, you require a hydrophobic layer on the top of that. So, very commonly like insulators I mean many common insulators or dielectric layers are like periline for example, I mean there are several different types of materials even you can use PDMS as a dielectric layer. So, you have a dielectric layer and on the top of that you may have a hydrophobic layer like say Teflon for example, Teflon is a very common hydrophobic layer. What are the typical thicknesses of this just to give you an idea just a rough idea. Say typical insulating layer thickness will be around say 8000 angstrom and typical insulating sorry typical hydrophobic layer will be around 1000-2000 angstrom like that. So, that will be the I mean these are not hard and fast numbers just to give you a feel of the dimension what we are talking about. Now you can see that like in this figure we apply a voltage across the electrode and the droplet. So, how that is possible sometimes you can sandwich the droplet between 2 surfaces and on the top surface you can have a coated ground electrode like ITO coated electrode for example. So, I mean of course we will discuss about the science but you know as engineers it is important also to know that what actually we do to implement it in practice. So, I am parallelly talking about what we actually do and like what is the science behind that. Now the contact angle theta when the voltage is applied changes and the contact angle changes by this corresponding formula cos theta prime is equal to cos theta plus half Cv square where C is the capacitance per unit area of the dielectric layer half Cv square by sigma Lv. Now we will discuss about this formula in details but like certain things which we can get from this formula immediately. What are the things that we get from this formula immediately? First of all cos theta prime is equal to cos theta plus what a positive term right because it is V square. So, does not matter whether it is positive bias or a negative bias ultimately you will get the same effect provided the magnitude is the same. That means that cos theta prime is always greater than cos theta that means theta prime is less than theta that means when there is a droplet it is becoming more weighting as the voltage is applied that is why this process is called electro weighting. So, why you want to form a droplet? Why do you require a hydrophobic layer? Because you want initially something which is non weighting or less weighting by a voltage you want to make it more and more weighting. So, that is what overall we can see now we will look into some more details. So, there are several configurations possible. One is the open configuration where there is no confining boundary at the top and the other is the sandwiched configuration where there is a confining boundary at the top and these two are the two extreme configurations sometimes it may be possible that a part of the system is unconfined and a part of the system is confined. So, the countertangle changes with the applied potential you can see that look into this experimental picture this is hydrophobic under no potential. So, you can see that a droplet is forming now if you apply electric potential this becomes more weighting. Question is we will look into this that does this process go on eternally that means if you apply more and more voltage it becomes it goes on becoming more and more weighting is it so we will answer this question but these are critical questions not only that is it reversible. So, these are the points that we will discuss. So, the mathematical expression that cos theta prime is equal to cos theta plus half cv square by sigma lv we will prove this but for the time being assume this is known as Young-Lipman equation. So, this Young-Lipman equation can be experimentally tested. So, you can see that there are two interesting observations this red colored line with black squares on the top of the red colored line is a representative of the advancing contact angle that means what you do is that you go on applying the voltage and the contact angle decreases. But you can see that beyond the critical voltage the contact line does not go on eternally the contact angle does not go on eternally decreasing it comes to a saturation this is what is observed in experiments. On the other hand if you reduce the decrease the voltage from the maximum one then the contact angle is getting increased. But you can see that the increase in contact angle is not following the same path as that of the decrease in contact angle with increase in voltage. So, there is some hysteresis these two are very important observations in the electrowetting phenomenon and these observations mind it or not there have not yet been I mean convincing theories to explain this phenomena I mean these are I mean people have come up come across with theories to explain this I will give you some sort of like some summary of what are the explanations given. But these are yet the problems which are yet to be resolved theoretically I mean experimentally these have been observed. But theoretically these are yet to be resolved contact angle saturation the Lipman young law or young Lipman law whatever way you say implies that the apparent contact angle continues to progressively decrease with increasing applied electric potential. However, experiments reveal that the apparent contact angle stops decreasing beyond the threshold value. This phenomenon is called contact angle saturation. What are the possible reasons for contact angle saturation I mean these are some of the possible reasons see all these are like hypothesis I mean it is I mean theoretical foundations have not been strong enough to convincingly pinpoint the entire phenomenon the details of the entire phenomenon. So, trapping of charges in the dielectric layer the vertical component of the resultant electrical force acting on the liquid air interface close to the contact line or I mean a limit which is prescribed by 0 surface energy limit. So, these are some of the possible explanations which have been given. But I mean there are still many open questions to be answered contact angle hysteresis as we increase the applied voltage the droplet spreads and the apparent or macroscopic contact angle decreases the equilibrium contact angle at every applied potential during this path is a static advancing contact angle if you assume that the droplet is spreading. So, slowly that each individual state in between is in local equilibrium then like it is a succession of static equilibrium configurations through which the droplet is going and the contact angle is decreasing like that. As the voltage is gradually decreased the droplet gradually regains its initial shape and the contact angles are the static receding contact angles hysteresis refers to the fact that the advancing and the receding contact angles are different as we discussed this is due to random pinning of the 3 phase contact line by microscopic surface defects this is a postulate remember. So, when I say that this is due to it would have been better if I said this might be due to okay this might be due to random pinning of the 3 phase contact line by some microscopic defects like surface roughness physical or chemical surface defects and so on. Another manifestation of hysteresis during electro waiting on dielectric I mean this phenomenon is also called as electro waiting on a dielectric that name is the reason of giving such a name is pretty clear that electro waiting is occurring over a dielectric layer is the existence of a minimum actuation voltage for the droplet motion this is another manifestation of hysteresis. At this voltage the electro capillary force is just sufficient to overcome the surface pinning effects in general for any surface hysteresis is quantified by the difference between the maximum static advancing contact angle and the minimum static receding contact angle without any electric effect this is how the hysteresis is defined the difference between these 2. So, like you know when there is a contact line the contact line tends to move so something which disrupts the movement of the contact line. So, an effect which tries to disrupt the movement of the contact line. So, like for example aspirates on the surface so if there are aspirates on the surface the aspirates on the surface will try to disrupt the movement the continuous movement of the contact line. So, it is a sort of a resistance you can say. So, based on this one can talk about a phenomenon which is like based on electro waiting on dielectrics or in general the electro waiting phenomenon you can have a phenomenon which is called as electro capillary phenomenon. So, electro capillary phenomenon refers to the modification of the surface tension by presence of electrical charge. So, it is a concept which is related to like how surface charge can alter the surface tension or equivalently the surface energy. Surface tension occurs to be a strong function of the electrical potential and is described by the Lipman equation. Now, we have also discussed the thermo capillary actuation right that is creating a surface tension gradient due to temperature gradient and here we are creating a surface tension gradient due to electrical voltage. Now, this is a good time when we can compare these two. So, advantage of electrical electro capillary actuation over thermal counterpart is the speed with which electrical potentials can be applied and regulated with possible characteristic time scales of even less than a few milliseconds. So, the thermo capillary system has a inertia. So, it is it takes a time for the system to get adjusted to the temperature gradient and that is how to generate the surface tension gradient. On the other hand, this electro capillary actuation is almost instantaneous. This also takes its own time, but the time taken is much shorter. Not only that, this is the characteristic time scale is in terms of science, in terms of technology also when you talk about the electro capillary system, it requires integrated electrodes on a microfluidic platform. So, that is very common in lab on a chip based devices. So, it is possible it is often quite straight forward to integrate electrodes on a with a microfluidic system or integrate electrodes on a on chip device. It may not be a microfluidic system, it is in general a chip. So, to integrate electrodes on a chip is much easier rather than to create a design temperature gradient on a chip. So, that makes it possible that makes it possible that you can apply an electrical field to modulate the surface tension and low electrical power may be sufficient in modulating surface tension. So, you energy wise the kind of energy that you need to spend for creating a thermal gradient, you can safely use very low energy as compared to that to create the surface tension modulation through electrical field. Now, I was talking about the Lipman equation. The Lipman equation relates interfacial tension to electrostatic potential. So, you can see here that you have a del sigma del E is equal to minus Q A, where sigma is the surface tension. E A is the potential of a cell in which the reference electrode is in interfacial equilibrium with one of the ionic components of A. Q A is the charge on an unit area on the interface. Mu is the chemical potential. We will discuss about chemical potential, electrochemical potential, all these things in details when we discuss about electrokinetics. This is just a definition that we are talking about. T is the temperature and P is the pressure. So, at constant temperature and pressure, basically the gradient in surface tension with electrical field or electrical potential to be specific is nothing but negative of the charge and per unit area of course. So, you can see that if you can create a charge on an interface, then that will create a gradient in surface tension or a surface energy with the aid of an electrical potential. Or equivalently, if you have a gradient of electrical potential, then the variation of surface tension with the electrical potential will implicate an equivalent amount of charge stored at the interface. So, charge at in the interfacial location if you can alter the charge, it is possible that you can also alter the interfacial energy or the surface energy. Now, we discussed about the Young-Lipman equation. There are various ways in which one can prove the Young-Lipman equation. Now, here we have put a very simple battery capacitor analogy to derive the corresponding equation. Let us look into that. So, if you look at the system, so you have a counter electrode on which there is an insulator. So, typically we often just draw the insulator, but not the hydrophobic layer. Now, if the insulator itself is a good hydrophobic layer, maybe additional hydrophobic layer is not necessary. But if it is, if there is no hydrophobic layer and the insulator itself is not sufficiently hydrophobic, then it will not form the droplet on the top of that, that we have to keep in mind. So, now you apply a voltage across the system. You can see that the voltage V is applied. So, upon connecting the initially uncharged droplet to the power source which is a battery, a charge delta Q flows from the battery to the droplet and then to the electrode. So, let us assume that there is a charge delta Q that flows from the battery to the droplet and to the electrode. The resultant work done on the droplet electrode capacitor is given by what? So, if there is an instantaneous charge Q, then the resultant work done is V, the potential that is established at that instant when the charge is Q times delta Q. Now, the potential across the capacitor when there is a charge Q stored is Q by C, right. So, you can write in place of this one V Q, you can write Q by C and you can integrate this to get the total work on the droplet is equal to half C into final battery voltage Q square and this you all know. This is how the energy stored in the capacitor is evaluated. So, this VB is the final potential. See finally, it is charged to the potential of the battery, right. So, the potential when you integrate it over the potential, the potential is from potential 0 to the final potential VB. So, that makes it half C VB square. Now, there is a work done on the battery. So, we have talked about the work done due to charging of the capacitor, but there is a there is also a work done on the battery. Work done on the battery is the voltage across the battery times delta Q for the battery. Now, what is delta Q for the battery? A charge delta Q has flown from the battery to the capacitor. So, for the battery delta Q battery is minus delta Q, right. If the capacitor is charged by the charge plus delta Q, then for the battery it is a loss of charge. So, the for the battery delta Q battery is minus delta Q. Now, since the battery voltage is constant, so you can take this VB outside the integral and then the total work for the battery is minus C VB square. So, what is the net work done on the battery electrode system? What is the net work done on the battery electrode system? The net work done on the battery electrode system is the total work done on the droplet and on the battery. So, that is equal to half C VB square minus C VB square first component for the capacitor and the second component for the battery. So, it is half minus 1 that is minus half C VB square. So, this work is done on the battery electrode system. So, this work is done how? This is where the fundamental science is there. This work is done at the expense of the surface energy. So, a part of the surface energy is utilized to do the work. So, which surface energy? It is the solid liquid surface energy sigma SL. So, that means, now sigma SL will be effectively reduced by sigma SL minus half C V square. That is the, this is the essential thing. So, now if you see, let us come to the board to see that what is the consequence because some of the steps are missing in the slide. So, cos theta this was without voltage, right. So, this is the so if you do not recollect how this was there just consider a droplet like this. So, this angle is theta, this is sigma LV, this is sigma SL, this is sigma SV. So, you have sigma SV is equal to sigma SL plus sigma LV cos theta for equilibrium that is what is written here. Now, because of the applied voltage the cos theta has changed. So, it has become cos theta prime. So, what is the cos theta prime? Sigma SV minus sigma SL dash by sigma LV. What is sigma SL dash? Sigma SL dash is sigma SL minus half C V square. This we have just derived by the battery capacitor analogy. So, the remember the insulator acts like a capacitor and you can find out the capacitance. How? Just it is like a parallel plate capacitor epsilon by d. So, if you know what is the permittivity then you can find out the equivalent capacitance as epsilon by d just like the parallel plate capacitor formula. So, sigma SL dash is equal to sigma SL minus half C V square where V is the voltage that is applied. So, this becomes sigma SV minus sigma SL by sigma LV plus half C V square by sigma LV. What is this? This is cos theta. Any problem here? Sigma SL dash? No, no, no. This has nothing to do with I mean sigma LV has come in the denominator because you have divided all the term by sigma LV not because here there is sigma LV. So, you can see this is the Young-Lipman equation basically. See, this is why I mean we always try to derive things from the fundamental if it is simply possible. The reason is that you see if you do not go through these roots it will give up illusion that the Young-Lipman formula is as a consequence of having a different sigma LV but actually sigma LV is not changed. It is sigma SL that has got changed. So, the contact angle is a manifestation. The contact angle is a manifestation but fundamentally it is the effective solid-liquid interfacial energy that has changed. Contact angle is a manifestation of that change. Electrowetting from an energetic point of view can be described by the following points also. Electrowetting decreases the effective contact angle which is driven by the energy gain upon redistributing the charge from the battery to the droplet. This reduction of apparent contact angle is fundamentally related to the fact that a minimization of the free energy requires a maximization of the capacitance. Now, question is then you can see in the formula what we have written. So, you have half C v square. So, you can well say that well I do not care about the voltage. See why we always in technology in electrowetting see anybody who has done experiments with electrowetting will devote a lot of attention on changing the voltage rather than changing the dielectric. But you may think that okay I also have half C v square in the formula. So, let me make some change by changing the C also. See there are two reasons why we do not or two or three reasons why we do not actually try to play a lot with C, but we play a lot with v. One thing is the square dependence with v.  A related point is that because it is v square it is not dependent on the direction of v also. The third point is that changing v is much convenient or increasing v is much convenient as compared to increasing C. Because increasing C how do you do? C is epsilon by D. So, you may say that I will reduce the D, the thickness of the insulating layer by whatever amount that I want. So, that I will have a tremendous rise in the capacitance that is possible in pen and paper, but in reality if you reduce the dielectric thickness beyond the critical thickness there will be breakdown of the dielectric layer.  So, this is this phenomenon is called as dielectric breakdown. So, it is therefore common possibility that actually you give a lot of importance to the voltage, but not so much of importance to the capacitance for working with this technology. Applying a potential between the droplet and the electrode would spread the droplet as much as possible in an effort to increase the capacitance. So, that is an implicit way that the in which the droplet tries to increase the capacitance, but we are not talking about the increase in capacitance by altering the thickness of the dielectric layer. So, this is the natural readjustment to the configuration. There are different types of electro wetting. So, simple electro wetting refers to the change in the wettability of an electrolyte droplet say something like this due to an applied electrical potential difference between the droplet and the electrode. Schematically it is shown in this figure. So, this is simply electro wetting and what we have discussed so far is electro wetting on dielectric. So, this is a phenomenon which is not requiring the dielectric layer to be present. Electro wetting on dielectric or EWOD which we normally use for technology refers to the electrostatic change in the wettability of a societal droplet resting on a dielectric film coated on the top of the electrode. The change in wettability stems from the electrostatic change in solid liquid interfacial energy that we have discussed. There is a process by which droplet attains its new equilibrium state on application of the external electrical potential and there is a dynamics associated with it. Say let us say you are applying let us say that the droplet is sitting on a substrate and then you are applying a potential. So, the droplet will go through some dynamical states before attaining a new equilibrium state and in the process it will spread. This phenomenon is called as electro spreading. That means it is actually spreading because its contact angle is reducing and there is a sequence of events that is taking place as the electro spreading of the droplet occurs. So, I will show you couple of movies I mean which concern some typical applications. So like where do we use this? Like we have understood the science of this but where do we use this? So droplets can be targeted to localized hotspots for electronic schooling. So, if you have a localized hotspot in a device in an electronic device then you can have droplet which may be targeted to move to a hotspot and you see like when you are talking about a droplet being targeted to a hotspot the droplet essentially should be designed to move by the shortest path. So that the process is the fastest. So, this process this type of designing or optimizing the path of a droplet given a source and given a sequence of electrodes this is typically done by using optimization algorithms in computer science. So, I mean in this particular application you have actually in interface with computer science and in general electrical sciences with the fluid dynamics. So, you can see here like in this here that you have several electrodes.  Now I will tell you that by electro spreading you cannot make a so by spreading of a droplet by a change in voltage that itself may not be good enough to make a droplet move why let us draw a schematic to understand. So, if you have a droplet and you apply a voltage then what will happen it will spread like this it will become like the red dotted line, but the contact angle will change equally on both sides. So, that will not give a net driving force. So, on this side if the contact angle is theta 1 and on this side if that is theta 2 and theta 1 and theta 2 are the same then there will be no net driving force because driving force is related to the contact angle. However, if you now subject one part of the electrode one part of the droplet to a voltage v 1 and another part of the droplet to the voltage v 2 where v 1 is different from v 2. So, there will be a differential of theta 1 and theta 2 and that can drive the droplet in a certain direction that is the basic principle by which you can move a droplet by using an electric field. So, that is what is done in the movie that is being displayed here. So, you can see that a droplet is jumping from one electrode to the other.  So, it is basically a pair of electrodes over which the droplet is moving successively and those pairs are switched on and off switched on and off like that with a particular voltage. Now droplets can act as I mean there is a typing mistake it should be bioreactors droplets act as bioreactors to achieve rapid biochemical reactions. So, you can so let us look into this movie which is there in the right. So, we have got the movie that there are two droplets these droplets are moving and these droplets are coalescing together. So, again look into the movie. So, you can see that there are two droplets I mean these are actually coloured with two different eyes. So, one droplet can carry a reactant A another droplet can carry a reactant B and droplets have large surface area by volume ratio. So, when these two droplets merge then A and B can quickly react to form C. So, this reaction can also be a biochemical reaction. So, therefore it is possible to make use of droplets as bioreactors. Now we will so we have discussed about how to modulate surface tension by electrical field. Now we will discuss that how to modulate surface tension by light by using optics. So, we have discussed about this. So, I will talk about like two basic mechanisms by which we do by which it is possible. So, one is by making a substrate by making an alteration in the substrate liquid interfacial phenomenon. So, there is a optical modulation of the surface potential through the use of a metal oxide semiconductor. We have discussed about this earlier in the context of the design of optofluidic valve and we will discuss about the detailed science of that. So, if you have say a metal oxide semiconductor a titanium dioxide or zinc oxide semiconductor coated on a surface then if you shine light you will light on the top of that then there will be immediate electron hole reaction starting to take place. Because the band gap of this titanium dioxide or zinc oxide typically 3.2 electron volts it corresponds to the energy that comes from the ultraviolet light. So, there will be a change in surface energy state because the surface charging state will change either there will be excess holes or excess electrons. So, that is one possibility by which you can have an alteration in the interfacial energy. There is another possibility that you can dynamically manipulate the liquid front through interfacial evaporation and condensation. I will show how that is possible facilitated by focus light induced excitation of suspended photothermal nanoparticles. I will show that how that is possible. I mean this has been reported in one paper earlier in nature materials. So, strategy one optically modulate contact angle through surface coating coat the surface with a direct semiconductor oxide upon irradiating the coated substrate with ultraviolet light electron hole pairs are formed. These pairs can reduce and oxidize the species that are adsorbed on the surface. Recombination of electron and hole is a competing reaction based on the relative rates of oxidation and reduction and excess or depletion of charge can be generated at the surface and that can change the effective surface energy and the contact angle. Now, out of many materials why do you use titanium dioxide or zinc oxide as a coating? These are stable in aqueous solution since the surface sites do not react with water. The band gap is 3.2 electron volt which corresponds to the wavelength of light in the UV regime. The PZP that is called as point of zero potential varies between 4 and 5 pH. So, the surface is positive for pH less than 4 and negative for pH greater than 5. The flow may be specially modulated through selective coating and UV exposure. This will allow a local control of flow velocities without any fringing effects. Not only that, so you can have a special control.  So, you can have a time dependent and position dependent control by patterning the surface and by switching the light on and off. What is the basic mechanism? The water molecules in vicinity of the TiO2 surface tend to adhere to the surface. Ultraviolet radiation creates surface oxygen vacancies at bridging sites resulting in the conversion of Ti4 plus sites to Ti3 plus sites. This is the basic chemistry that takes place. This new Ti3 plus sites are favorable for water adsorption. That makes this hydrophilic. Now you can make an electrical analog of the system by considering that what is the voltage that is being applied across an equivalent capacitor. The voltage is H nu by E where E is the charge of the electron. So, then that is the equivalent voltage. Capacitors, there are two capacitances. Two capacitors in series one is called as Helmholtz capacitance which is because of the electrical double layer formation that we will learn in the electro kinetics and there is a capacitance called as Mott-Skottky capacitance. So, based on these two the CH is typically much greater than CSC. So, the CSC dominates because these are in theory. So, based on that you can calculate that what is the capacitance, what is the potential. If you know what is the capacitance and what is the potential then you know what is the equivalent surface energy. So, it is ultimately the energetic that is dictating the phenomenon. So, now in terms of order of magnitude analysis that energy will give rise to a change in the surface tension. So, then you can say that like if you scale the viscous force with the surface tension force actually these are orders of magnitude. I mean this colon which is displayed wrongly in the slide it is actually order of magnitude. So, the viscous force scales with the surface tension force and from that you can get a scale of velocity. So, if you can create a surface tension change of 0.01 Newton per meter if you have a height of 1 micron of the micro channel if you have length of 10 micron and the dynamic viscosity 10 to the power minus 3 Newton second per meter square for water you will get typically the velocity of the order of 1 meter per second which is quite significant. So, that is one possibility. So, the model of the story is you create a change in surface energy and the change in surface energy establishes a velocity scale which can be established by a order of magnitude comparison between the viscous force and the surface tension force. Strategy 2. So, you can see in this strategy what you have you have nano particles photosensitive nano particles in the fluid. Now, you actually shine laser light. So, when you shine laser light the local temperature will increase because the nano particles what the nano particles will do these nano particles can be metallic nano particles silver nano particles or this can also be nano particles made of carbon nano tubes whatever I mean these are these can be nano shells or nano tubes instead of nano particles. So, these particles will absorb the energy from the laser and that energy will be transmitted to the liquid once that energy is transmitted to the liquid the liquid will get evaporated. Once it is evaporated it will flow in this direction see the cartoon this the liquid become vapor and this vapor when it comes to the interface this will condense. So, it will form droplets and that droplets will add to the previous liquid and that will change the contact angle. So, basically the vapor in the relatively cold air condenses into droplets in the form of liquid layer interface. The droplets coalesce with the original bulk liquid body and the liquid air interface advances because once the droplet coalesces with the bulk liquid then what happens is that the contact angle changes and the contact angle actually decreases. So, that gives a greater driving force and this starts moving. So, this is again a beautiful phenomenon.  So, you can combine the surface phenomenon with a bulk phenomenon. So, by using the optical technology here the optics is coming from laser. So, it could also be UV source or any other source. So, from that actually the nanoparticles are here the passive media which are accepting or absorbing the energy that is coming in the form of light and that is getting transmitted into heat almost instantaneously and that is giving rise to extrapolation and condensation. So, what are the major tunable parameters? The light illumination power, the laser power, the micro channel dimension, the photosensitive nanoparticle concentration these are the parameters which can be tuned to alter this phenomenon. So, it is possible that by using light one can create a change in surface energy, one can create a change in the bulk also that will eventually translate in the form of a change in contact angle and these two technologies either individually or combined together can give rise to an optical modulation of the interfacial phenomenon. So, it is possible to modulate the surface tension optically. So, we stop here today and we will start with a new chapter from our next lecture. Thank you very much.


Rotten Tomatoes. They'll just let any dumbass under that site, won't they? Somewhat, kidding aside, this is actually exciting news for me to share. I have been Rotten Tomatoes certified. That's right. I'm a bona fide critic, baby. In their eyes, and no one else's. They gave me an acceptance letter in everything. It's really happening, mom! You doubted me for so long. I actually told her and the first thing she said was, wow, great. So how much do you get for that? In which I replied, I don't know, mom, how much is cloud worth to you? What's the exchange rate on breaking points? Does notoriety do anything for you? Doesn't put food on the table, but you know what? But at least I can get out of bed now. Look myself in the mirror and say, you know what, Adam? You made it. Good for you. You started at the bottom of the stairs and you climbed all the way up two of them, out of a possible 300, and there you stand, waiting to potentially vault up two more stairs in the next ten years. In all seriousness, this is actually really cool to me, and it's almost entirely because of nostalgia. I used to love going to rodentomados.com to check out movies, and I agreed with them, like 99% of the time. If the big-name critic said it was a bad movie, I steered away, or I at least kept my expectations in check because I knew I was gonna align with them. In the last seven or eight years, however, the sites definitely changed. I never go there. I never look at what the critics have to say, but now I'm one of them. Now I affect the tomato meter. The last Jedi is going bye-bye. I mean, to be fair, I'm one guy. I'm a drop in the bucket. They probably have hundreds, if not thousands of critics on the site now. There's a kid that's probably certified on rodentomados that's nine years old and he has a blog. I don't know. I tweeted out my excitement on Twitter. So naturally, I was taken down a couple pegs. No, in all seriousness, no one cares about me on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter.  Now you're in the system.  I don't know what nonsense. Here's the deal. Nothing changes. Okay, I didn't sign some document saying you have to give all the MCU movies positive scores now, and all the Zack Snyder stuff has to get thrown in the trash because we're anti-Snyder for some reason, according to some weird cult on the Twitterverse.  Number two, I don't get exclusive access to anything. I don't get perks or bonuses. Unless you consider a rodentomados weekly newsletter as something to write home about, yeah, I'm not gonna be swayed. Lastly, to even be accepted in this upper echelon of movie critic status, I had to go through rigorous training. No, I had to go through a submission process where I wrote about myself, my style, the things I review, how often I review. They had to look at the analytics, see how many views I had, how many subs I had. Like, there was a whole Criterium. I don't know if Criterium's a word. I'm certified on rodentomados. It doesn't matter anymore. And I hit it. I hit it all. And even after all that though, they took other things into account and thankfully, you know, they've already accepted everyone else. So I was pretty much all that was left. Another middle-aged white guy reviewing movies on YouTube. How refreshing. How outside the box. Anyway, I just thought that was kind of cool. I'm a rodentomados critic now. Nothing changes in the slightest. I have a page on their website, a little bio. It will list off all the movies I've reviewed. So there's a place you can go to see some of that. I'm also on Letterbox. Have to stay updated with it. I'm definitely a few weeks behind, but you can see all the movies I've watched and reviewed there as well. If you're a high-class Patreon at patreon.com slash adam does movies and given 20 bucks or more a month. I follow you on Letterbox. That's a mandatory thing on my part. So if you're given 20 and I haven't followed you, make sure to hit me up there. Give me a private message with your handle. I'll make sure to adjust that accordingly. Last things last, I have been accepted into the rodentomados family. However, I can't actually post content there until I believe middle August. They'll let me know exactly when it's ready. Then I can have new reviews and the backlog there. So right now, it's just an empty desert. There's nothing to be seen except for maybe a tumbleweed once in a while, but I will get going on it once they officially give me the go-ahead. So there you have it. That's the excitement happening in my life. Are you happy for me or are you worried that I will fall victim to the grip that rodentomados and the studios have on all the other critics there? But here's the thing. This was a dream of mine. One that I never thought I would be able to accomplish to achieve when I was a youngling, a high schooler. I said to my buddies, you know, I want to be on that site someday. I want to be one of those critics. And lo and behold, it finally happened. So let this be some inspiration for you.  Just just get off the ground a little bit, and then you just keep inching upward and onward. Weird, weird way to end this. Thanks again for watching and supporting the channel, and I'll see you soon.  That's where all the cool kids hang out, I'm told. I have some videos there. Nothing's really unique. They're just kind of chopped up versions of what I have here. But honestly, sometimes that one-minute rapid-fire approach works pretty well. So why don't you check me out there on TikTok. It's Adam Does Movies. Subscribe or follow or whatever it's called. I'm not honestly sure, and we could bump those numbers up because right now it's pretty paltry. I'd appreciate it.


This 2021 Ram 2500 Crew Cab Short Box Laramie Level 2 is stock number 21T129. We are here at Summit Automotive in Von Lack, Wisconsin. You're new and used heavy-duty truck and Ram headquarters. This vehicle has the 6.7 liter Cummins diesel. It has the 6-speed automatic transmission with the optional tap shift. Diamond black is the color. It is brand new. It has the night edition on it. We're going to get up in close and personal to the truck here and show you everything that the night edition has to offer. The first thing you get the 20-inch painted alloy rims, and those come with the Firestone Transforce LT28560R20 tires.  This one has the tow technology group and the 360 cam. I'll show you all those cameras here. First camera is right up front underneath the A on the Ram logo. Your next camera is going to be right underneath the mirror coming around to the back. You'll see that it has a camera on the tailgate as well. If you look up top on those center mounted lights, there's a camera up there to look into the bed. The tow technology group wouldn't be very helpful if you didn't have the fifth wheel and gooseneck prep package. You also get seven pin wiring and four pin wiring right there. They started putting a 115 volt 400 watt max plug-in back here as well. Notice you also get the LED bed lighting. This one has a really nice towing feature on it as well. We're towing accessory. We'll check that out here. This one has the auto leveling rear suspension. You can see that big kind of heating duct looking thing there. That's actually a shock and air shock that pumps up and pumps down based on how much weight is in the back of the truck. So it'll auto level the truck out and that's a neat feature. It actually does it automatically as the weight gets increased on the truck. There is a sensor that's right here and it's on this thing right here. So as the truck goes down, this automatically goes up, activates the pump which will level out the truck to take a look at the headlights or the tow mirrors. So here we have the tow mirrors. You can see I got it out already. So they fold up like that. They also fold in. Now a couple cool features on these mirrors. Number one, they're heated. You also have blind spot monitoring on the mirrors and you have directional signals on the side here. You also have LED side lights which light up the side of the truck and really come in handy when you're backing up a trailer or just wanting to have light on the side of the truck at night. So these mirrors also power fold in. So you just press this button right here and see that both mirrors go in nicely. More helpful for the passenger side mirror. And then there's another feature that's new on these mirrors. Press that button and then you press which one you want to control. If you look at that bottom mirror there, it'll actually control that blind spot mirror. So that's a really neat feature. We'll check out the lights next. This thing lights up for like a Christmas tree. You get the LED headlamps, LED running lights and the LED fog lamps. You also get those LED side lights and then the LED lights in the box and on the cargo cam up there. So lights everywhere around onto this truck. Let's check out the interior. The Laramie Level 2 Group gives you the black leather. This is leather. You get these suede inserts on there. It's also suede around the top there. You get the Laramie stitched into the backrest. You get the titanium stitching all the way through and the gray piping around the edges of the seats. Both of these front seats are heated. Both of these front seats are cooled and you get a memory driver seat. You get the Berber floor mats, auto headlamps, power pedals, power windows, power locks, power mirrors like I showed you before. Those mirrors fold in. You get the suede inserts on the doors as well. Check out the back seats real quick. On the Laramie Level 2, the back seats are heated.  And these come with a load floor which is nice. You got muddy boots or tools. Put them on there. You got pets. Put both sides down. They got a nice flat place to lay or sleep. And you get in-floor storage on each side. You also get storage underneath the load floor there. And then there's a subwoofer underneath the other side. Let's check out the instrument cluster and the radio. First off, we have the 7-inch LCD display. Now you get a digital speedometer there. You also get, well, it turns into the big one right there. You get a compass display. You get a battery voltage display as well as oil temperature. Now you can change all those corners to read whatever you'd like. You also have a range to empty. And of course your odometer right there. Nicely laid out there. You get the heated leather wrap steering wheel. This one has forward collision warning and adaptive cruise control. That's your adaptive cruise, normal cruise controls. This is your gear selector for the optional tap shift. And then you have Bluetooth and information center controls on the left. You also get audio controls on the back of the steering wheel. Push button, four-wheel drive. Here is the UConnect 12-inch radio. This one has AM FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities. You can see you get the factory navigation system with that. You have your lane departure warning up here. Stability control. And this one does have the Harman Kardon sound system. Like I said, you get AM FM and Sirius. You can also control your heated and cooled seats here as well as your heated steering wheel. And then you can also check out your backup cam. So there's the backup cam. Now from here, you can go to your cargo cam. And you can zoom in on your cargo cam so you can see what's going on. Which would be really handy if you're hooking up a fifth wheel or a goose neck. Or just want to see what's going on in the back. Also on the back here, you have your backup camera. And then you can zoom in right over the hitch to get hooked up to your trailer, boat, or camper the first time every time. And then you also have the 360 camera, which is this guy right here. So that's a pretty neat system. You can see there's an actual video of what's going on around the truck. You can do a narrow view in back or a wide view in back or a wide view in front or a narrow view in front. You go back to that cargo cam and you can get to the trailer park mirrors. So this shows you right down the side. Those were those cameras that were on the mirrors. And what you can do is you can actually zoom to one side or the other. So when you're backing up a boat or camper, really handy to see what's going on over to that side and you can select that. So really a lot of cool stuff as far as towing is concerned with this truck. Definitely a nice system. So get back to the home screen. You just do that. You can do your climate controls on the radio or you can do them on the side of the radio here as well. And then you have your apps, including your projection manager where you can project your cell phone to the screen via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. We actually did a demo on Android Auto. If you want to check that out, it's in the upper right hand part of the screen. So click that and check that out. Factory Brake Controller. This one has the alternate height trailer brake or alternate height system. And that's part of that rear airbag suspension system. So you can actually set up a couple of different trailers. If you have a heavier trailer, it'll adjust for that. Factory Brake Controller to a hall, front and rear parking sensors. You get two USBs, two USB C's and an aux jack that has the RAM charger here where you can charge your cell phone. You get a 115 volt, 400 watt plug-in down here. You get the sliding center console, keyless entry, remote start, power drop-down tailgate. And that's a pretty nice chunky key chain or key fob. You get the dual glove boxes there. And this one does have the power sunroof. Home Link buttons. You get SOS and assist buttons in the mirror or in the center console up there. You have your controls for your power side mirror window and sunroof map lights. And then your auto dimming mirror. This one also has the rear camera mirror, which is that guy right there. So that's an actual camera, video camera of what's going on behind you. You can adjust that. You can make it brighter. Or you can move it. You can actually tilt it up and tilt it down. And that camera is located in your center high-mount lights. But if you don't like it, you can just turn it off like that. So that's a really cool system. Let's check out under the hood and then we'll start it up. Under the hood, we have the 6.7 liter Cummins diesel. This one pumps out 350 horsepower and 850 foot-pounds of torque. Obviously, two batteries in here. And we'll start it up and listen to it run. For a diesel, pretty quiet. You also get the clearance lights up top. I'll let you check out the original window sticker here for just a second. Feel free to pause this. If you want to get your summit price in the upper right-hand part of the screen, it's a link to our website. It's the Greenhouse gas ratings, smog ratings are both Bs, so that's pretty good. Five-star side crash and three-star rollover. And thanks for checking out the video. Tried a little bit different format today. Let us know how you liked it in the comments. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, half-tons, three-quarter-tons, one-tons. You name it, we got it. Go to that website right there, www.summitauto.com. Pull pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com-summitauto.com. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel in the upper left. A link to more Ram 2500 truck videos like this one in the upper right. A link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right. Click those, check us out, and we're really excited to be offering this brand-new 2021 Ram 2500 Crew Cab Short Box Laramie Level 2 Night Edition in Diamond Black Crystal Pearl. Thanks again for checking out the video.


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rocks. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Tuesday, September 12th, I hope we're just having a fantastic week. I have a little low energy today, not feeling too well, so it might lack a little bit on the excitement scale, but we'll be okay in spite of that. Alright, I've got a bunch of stories to talk about today. And of course, free feed is the super chat to ask questions, lots of issues out there, lots of stuff happening in the news, feel free to ask about that, or about anything else that you want to. News related or not. So yeah, there's a lot of talk, constantly a lot of talk about the dollars collapsing. We talked about this before, and then bricks, they're going to establish their own currency and they're going to replace the dollar, and countries are trading between each other with their own currencies, not with dollars, and that's the weave of the future. And once in a while, a deal is announced, China is going to pay Saudi Arabia and Yuan for some of the oil that they get, and everybody freaks out and everybody's convinced yes, the end of the dollar is nigh. And it's not that I think the dollar is that great, it's a fiat currency, it's controlled, manipulated, inflated by central planners. The challenge is of course, that every currency in the world is exactly the same, and most of them are controlled, manipulated, and inflated by people even less reliable than the people running the Federal Reserve in the United States. So it's a matter of the least worse currency, not a matter of a good currency. But anyway, there was an example of this in the news yesterday. It's a story that's been covered, being really hot over the last few months in the financial world. And that is that Russia is selling a lot of oil to India. India is basically taking advantage of the situation. It demands a discount from the Russians on the oil that Russia sells them. So they get an oil cheap on the cheap. And they're willing to buy all the oil that Russia is selling. Indeed, India used to import very little Russian oil. And now I think it's like 75% of all the oil imported into India comes from Russia. And it's basically because they're getting a big discount. And because of sanctions, nobody else will buy the oil from Russia. So Russia has to sell it at discount. And it sells a vast, you know, a huge quantity to India. Anyway, when the sell happens, they can't use dollars. Traditionally, the transaction would happen in your dollars and the money would be transferred from India to the United States in dollars over the different networks of money transfer that exists in the world. But given the sanctions that Russia is under, they cannot use dollars to transfer the money from India to Russia. So how do they get the money, right? So India pays Russia, let's say, with rupees. Russia would like to get rubles, but how is India going to get rubles? India doesn't print rubles. India doesn't have rubles. And the Russians don't buy anything from India, really. Not much, anyway. Small amounts. So India doesn't get an inflow of rubles. So they can't pay for the oil and rubles. Just don't have the rubles. So, and they don't want to hold rubles because, God, rubles are so volatile. While they're holding rubles, they could go into the market and buy a bunch of rubles and hold them because the rubles are super volatile. So basically, India is paying Russia for the oil in rupees. Rupees is the Indian currency. But then what? The Russia doesn't have a need for rupees. What's it going to do with the rupees? It can buy a few things in India, but generally, India doesn't export much to Russia. So the rubies are kind of stuck in the bank. Billions and billions and billions and billions of rubies. Rupees stuck in the bank because they can't be taken back to Russia in the form that's usable, which is the dollar. They can't be turned into rubles, which is the Russian currency. They're stuck in rubies and you can use the rubies to buy Indian government bonds.  What Russia needs is the currency so it can buy stuff. You know, now the next story we'll talk about is North Korea. So it can pay North Korea in dollars to give it weapons. And North Korea can use the dollars to buy stuff that it needs to, you know, maybe feed its people and maybe build weapon systems in black markets because North Korea is completely isolated or could buy them from the Chinese. Ultimately, it'll end up in China. But so the situation right now is that they're stuck. And yes, you know, Russia could theoretically use the rubies to buy gold and then ship the gold to Russia and then sell the gold to the Chinese and then take the yuan and use that to buy stuff. God, that is so cumbersome. And that's why the world uses the dollar as a global currency. It just makes everything so much smoother, so easier. Anybody will take a dollar. You can go anywhere in the world now and they'll exchange the local currency for dollar. Not true of a ruble, not true of a yuan, not true of an Israeli Shekel, maybe somewhat true of a euro, but that's about it. The euro, the dollar, that's it. So it's a great story just to illustrate just the extent to which the world economy is dependent on the dollar, the world economy, you know, all this trade that goes on is dependent on having a unit of account, one standard unit of account that people can use then as a means of exchange. And that today in the world we have today as a dollar now would be great if it was a dollar backed by gold. It would be great if it was some other private currency that was backed by something, but it's not, so we have an inferior system of money which is basically backed by the dollar. And that's not going to go away tomorrow. I mean, the problem of the rupee and the rubles and the imbalances of trade, not imbalances, just the lack of balance of trade all over the world is just a reality and it's never going to change. It's not like there will be a world in which Russia buys as much from India as India buys from Russia. You know, not very efficient if you force that to happen. So that Russia can then use all the rupees it gets to buy stuff from India. So, you know, there you have it. It's Russia now. I think the last time I saw it, last time I saw it was $38 billion. Russia, which desperately needs the money because its economy is struggling, $38 billion of oil that it has sold to is stuck. And this is part of supposedly $147 billion of, you know, Russian money stuck in foreign banks, in foreign currencies that they can't find a way to get back to Russia so that they can use for what they need, which reminds me. So I got this really funny, let me see if I can find it, really funny comment on one of the videos that I read this morning. And I thought this was really, let's see where I can find this. And it relates to this. It was basically somebody saying, look, you know, I've learned a lot from Iran. He inspired me to go read Iran. I've read all of Iran's books because of him. But there's one thing. I just, I mean, here it is. Iran book was a huge inspiration to me to read all of Iran's fiction and nonfiction in my youth. I still agree with most of the stuff he says and has opinions on.  Anyway, so I'm too optimistic. I'm too optimistic about the dollar. I'm too optimistic about the economy. I'm too optimistic about ability to survive. And I'm not recognizing how Biden is now a tyrant and how we clearly have an authoritarian state. And any minute now, the government is going to shut down my YouTube channel. I'm just too positive about the world. I'm not willing to be all doom and gloom and people upset about that. People upset about that. And I'm losing subscribers. I'm losing followers. So if you're an optimist like me, good. And if you like my optimism, then please support the show so that I can keep it going. And I don't have to worry about losing some of these pessimists over there. I just find it entertaining. I have context. I have perspective. I've been around for a while. I was pessimistic in the 80s. I was even pessimistic in the 90s. I've waited for the world to end over and over again. Although I was never really a pessimist. All right, let's see. So yes, we were commenting on my optimism when YouTube decided it was too much. Actually, when I think my internet provider in Puerto Rico decided it was too much and shut down my internet, it's the gods of pessimism out to get me. All right, North Korean summit. So the brutal dictator of North Korea is on a rare expedition outside of his country. He is taking the train to Russia, into Eastern Russia, where he will be meeting Vladimir Putin. The last time the brutal dictator of North Korea, whose name I try not to pronounce because he's not worthy of it, the last time he met a significant world leader, maybe he's met Xi since, but it was, of course, Donald Trump when Donald Trump was groveling before him and calling him his best friend and sending love letters across the Pacific. But he is now meeting Putin. I think he's met his match. I think he's met somebody he can actually deal with. Trump was too weak to actually deal with. And luckily, Trump was surrounded by people who actually understood the nature of the brutal dictator of North Korea and prevented anything too bad from happening. But Putin is there. And Putin has one specific reason that he wants to meet with the brutal dictator of North Korea, and that is weirdly, strangely, nobody ever would have predicted this would ever happen. But he needs his weapons. He needs his weapon factories. He needs shells. He needs rockets. He is running out of ammo. And his factories in Russia can only produce so much. And they're constrained. They're constrained by the fact that many of the components, the machinery, many of the things that they need in order to produce those weapons, they tend to import from the West. And that is not as easy as it used to be. So it's difficult for them to do the importation. So Putin is about to engage in light-scale purchases from North Korea of weapons. And a lot of it is going to be inventory that the North Koreans have. North Koreans have amassed massive quantities of shells for artillery, rockets for launching into South Korea. They have a massive army relative to the size of the country, lots and lots of old Soviet-like artillery guns. And that's exactly so the Russians are going to get shells for old guns. They're going to get shells for old tanks. Maybe they'll even get some old tanks. Maybe they'll get some T-55s, 54s, maybe 65s. If they're really lucky, they'll get a 65. And I don't think the North Koreans are going to accept rupees in exchange. They're going to want something they can then use to go shopping in China or go shopping somewhere else. So they're going to want real hard currencies. So to be interesting, the Russians have plenty of euros because the European Union still buys huge amounts of stuff from Russia, including uranium. Even the United States buys stuff from Russia, like uranium, refined uranium. So they have dollars, and they have some dollars, and they can use those to buy these North Korean weapons. But this is all old. Some of them won't work. But this is just a sign, an indication. Again, this is my optimism speaking of Putin's desperation. And it's also a sign, an indication that maybe the Chinese are not really helping the Russians nowhere near as much as the Russians would like because Russia could supply them with modern weapons systems. It could supply them with fresh shells. It could supply them with an industrial base that could actually compete with the Wests, not in terms of how advanced they are, but in terms of how quantities. No, Russia cannot rely on its ally, the Chinese, because the Chinese I don't think want to get to a position where they're enmeshed in the conflict in Ukraine.  This is really a sign of humiliation. Any world leader meeting with the brutal dictator of North Korea is humiliating themselves. Trump humiliated himself in America by going and meeting with him and by treating him the way he did. And Putin is humiliating himself. But what's he got to lose? He is completely desperate. So that's happening any day now. I'm sure the North Koreans will be happy to provide as much weapons as the Russians want. Last month, I think it was last month. Last month, maybe it was a month before that. Oops, what's going on here? All right, there we go. Last month, China dropped off from being the number one importer, country from which the United States imports. So the United States had traditionally, China comprised about 20% of all imports into the United States with Chinese companies. Over 20%, 22%, 23%. I mean, significant numbers, almost a quarter of all the goods and stuff that the United States imports, it imported from China. As of July, not August, July, China constituted 14.6%. So it's a massive decline with billions and billions of dollars. And this has started in 2018. And it's really accelerated since 2021. And we're down to 14.6%. And what has happened is that the number one nation whose businesses are exporting to the United States is now Mexico, which makes a lot of sense. Mexico is right here. It's close. So it's Mexico now, then China, and then Canada, all very close to one another in terms of the percentage that the United States imports from them. Mexico now is about 15%. China is about 14.6%. Canada, it looks like it's about 13%, something percent. So you've got a real shift happening in terms of trade, in terms of where the United States is importing the stuff that we consume. And what is happening is as buyers in the United States shift away from China, try to diversify supply chains, try to protect themselves from the potential for a war with Taiwan, a potential for, I don't know, some kind of economic crisis between the United States and China sanctions, things like that. More and more companies are not moving production to the United States. What they're doing is they're moving production to places like Mexico, to some extent Canada, but primarily to Mexico. You're seeing a massive increase in the building of industrial parks, warehouses, all over Mexico, particularly in the north, in Baja, but also in Nuevo Leon, which is borders with basically Texas. But also in Chujar, I can't pronounce these places. Anyway, in the north of Mexico, also in the central, around Mexico City and in the state of Mexico, as compared to the country, and in other parts of western and southern Mexico, basically across Mexico, there is a significant increase in economic activity, in building. Mexico generally is doing shockingly, I mean, really surprisingly, doing really, really well, in spite of having a corrupt socialist leader as president of Mexico. Mexico has seen a surge of exports, primarily to the United States. It also has really the strongest currency in the world this year, stronger than the dollar, which is very unusual. So it has performed better than the dollar. The dollar is weakened as compared to the Mexican currency. There is a huge amount of foreign direct investment. It's a 40% in 2023 versus last year, and that's a consequence, again, of people diversifying supply chains, moving supply chains closer to the United States, becoming less dependent on China. And Mexico is a massive beneficiary of this. One could only imagine how well Mexico would be doing economically right now if it didn't have a socialist president, if it had even semi-free market policies as part of its economic policies. Tesla is building a proposed $5 billion factory in Mexico. So not since NAFTA has the country attracted so many investors, so much investment into Mexico. And we'll see Mexico often blows these opportunities. This is a real opportunity for Mexico, whether it blows it because of horrible economic policies or whether the drug war goes out of control or something else, people resist making those investments. This could be unique. This is a unique opportunity for the Mexican economy. And the real challenge is, will they take advantage of it? Or will the corruption and the socialism of the authorities in Mexico undermine? Now, it appears that in the election, which I think is happening early next year, the two candidates, the candidate of the ruling party, the more socialist party, is I think the former, the mayor of Mexico City. And the opposition party is both women. So you're going to have a woman president for the first time in Mexican history next year. Clearly, the opposition candidate seems better than the ruling party candidate. But if this economic boom is a reality and continues, that might be an issue. The current president, Andrey Manuel Lopez Obrado, has repeatedly clashed with business interests, repeatedly clashed. And because he's a socialist after all, and constantly is trying to regulate and control and break up. And if Mexico is going to take advantage of this massive amount of investment flowing into the country, it's going to need better business practices. Hopefully, the opposition can win. And hopefully, that victory will lead to a better, more prosperous Mexico. A more prosperous Mexico is great for America. More trade with Mexico is great for America. More building, more creation in Mexico. Fantastic for America. Among many, many things, it reduces the pressure on the border. We haven't really had positive net Mexican migration into the United States since the great financial crisis in 2008. Mexicans left America and went back to Mexico during the financial crisis. And very few have come back. So I don't think that's particularly good for the US, but it's good for the, I don't know, for all the craziness at the border not to have illegal immigrants from Mexico. The reality is, for Mexico these days is that plenty of opportunities in Mexico, they don't have to travel north. But they might be, if Mexico can actually embrace policies that lead to an economic boom then Guatemalans and Venezuelans and others might decide to settle in Mexico because they're job opportunities there. Now, you've also got a law and order problem in Mexico that they're gonna have to deal with at some point. This administration in Mexico has no interest in dealing and they basically cut deals with the cartels. I don't know if a future administration can do will and can do any better. All right, Mexico is an investment opportunity. All right, let's see. Yeah, I mean, another shameful actions by the Biden administration. We talked about this a few weeks ago, but it's actually happening as we speak. The United States has kind of deal with the Iranian regime for the release of five American citizens who are held in prison in Iran. As you remember, a few weeks ago, those prisoners will release the house arrest as part of this deal. And it appears that they will be heading to the United States released from Iran any day now, or maybe any moment now, but any day now. The release of those prisoners will trigger the United States releasing five Iranians who are held prisoner in the United States. All of those Iranians were held in the United States for violating Iranian sanctions in one way or another, selling them materials, equipment, lab, stuff, that in other words, being Iranian spies, four of them of the five U.S. citizens, the dual citizens, the fifth is an Iranian citizen, and they will be sent back to Iran. But in addition, $6 billion of Iranian funds which had been frozen by sanctions and sitting in a South Korean bank have been already released as of this morning, have been released to a bank in Qatar, and the bank in Qatar will be releasing them to the Iranians once the prisoners are released. So Iran will get five prisoners, five of their own people, they'll get $6 billion. Granted, it's no money that's been frozen instead of that money going to victims of the Iranian regime, which is where it should go. It will go back to the regime to fund the variety of hostile programs. And in exchange, the United States will get five American citizens back. We know what incentives this creates, it creates an incentive to kidnap American citizens.  I wouldn't go back, but they do go back and any one of them could be a target for basically imprisonment in the future as to use as a bargaining chip to release more frozen funds, to release more arrested Iranians or whatever. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't compromise with evil. You don't cut deals with evil.  Other than that, leave it alone. But you don't cut deals. If Iranian Americans want to go to Iran, they're taking on a risk. They're taking on a risk. It's their risk. And there's not much that can be done, but to undermine American interests by giving the Iranian regime the money to potentially build a nuke, to potentially build more weapon systems to send to the Russians or build more weapon systems to attack American troops in Syria and Iraq. Nothing good can come of this, but this is exactly the kind of pragmatic deal-making that all American administrations have been guilty of for decades now and the Biden administration is just as bad if not worse than any of them. Just horrific and sad and also suggests that we're probably getting closer to a deal between Iran and the U.S. over its nuclear program, which is again a sham. It would be ridiculous. And it would do nothing, ultimately, other than enrich the people in power in Iran. It will be nothing to actually reduce the risk of Iranian nuclear proliferation. Okay, finally, I just found this an interesting story. It turns out that over the last, I don't know, six, seven years, there's been a significant increase, a steady and significant increase of attacks against the electric grid infrastructure. Many of these attacks are just people going out there to a substation and just shooting it up that happened in North Carolina a while ago and electricity was out for several tens of thousands of people for four days. You know, many of these are committed by, as far as we know, by white supremacist groups and by neo-Nazis.  But there's been a significant market attack up. Now, there's very little, the data's not super reliable. Whatever data we have is, you know, is partial at best. But last year, there were 200 attacks. This year in the first quarter, I think, just in the first quarter, three months, there were 62. Just to give you a sense, in 2018, there were eight in the first quarter and maybe 60 in the whole year. So in 2023, we've had in the one quarter more attacks than we had in all of 2018. And almost all experts believe that this is significantly under-reported. Some of the most sophisticated attacks or attempted attacks are done cyber attacks. Some of them are from outside the United States, but most of them are internally in the US. It's just weird that this is, in a sense, allowed to happen, that the authorities don't understand this phenomenon better and they're not out there doing more to stop it. This is more of a sign of cultural deterioration when we have internal groups trying to inflict significant damage on the infrastructure. What's the goal? What's the purpose?  Maybe the riots will lead to their, you know, their dreamed of race war. What is the purpose? Or is it just to terrorize, just to fear? Or is it just nihilism? Again, hard to tell, it could very well be that some of these attacks are from environmental groups, left-wing groups, but the ones where they've actually found the people, they've so far been from these far-right groups, and it's also true that the far-right groups are the ones that are recommending this to their members and giving guidance on how to do it. So I just found this bizarre and sad and another indication of the craziness that is inflicting our country. I don't know what, you know, and this is me being pessimistic, I guess, but I don't know what the path out of this is. I don't know. As I've said, often over the last few years, the far-right, the far-left, the crazy-right, the crazy-left are truly crazy. And how you bring the country together, given the gravitational pull of the far-left and the far-right, I just don't know. And it's a real challenge. It's a challenge our politicians are not up to. It's a challenge our politicians have not embraced, don't seem interested in embracing. There's nobody on the political map today who could pull it off. There's nobody on the political map today that could bring the country together. And I'm not talking about everybody thinking alike because one danger is we bring it together under the banner of authoritarianism, which is probably how it all ends. But how do we bring the country together around some shared vision of progress, a shared vision of individual rights, a shared vision of what it means to be an American, even with the disagreements one would expect in the world in which we live? It's hard to tell where we're heading, but as you see more and more of these data points, it does not look like we're heading in a positive direction. All right, and that's in spite of my optimism. People upset that I don't sit here day in, day out. Wiling against the Biden administration. That's what they want to hear. They want me to be just like Ben Shapiro and Biden economy, Biden's economy. Look how awful Biden's economy is. And look at this law and look at that law. They're fundamentally different. This is the most authoritarian regime in American history. It's just not true. It's incrementally worse as every administration is incrementally worse. And it's not, I believe, as bad as Trump. All right, Savanos says, hey, Iran, here's to catching life. Thank you. That's $50. Really, really appreciate that. Rand, also $50. Putin groveling before an animated jelly roll for weapons. I remain optimistic. I'm with you, Iran. Thank you, Rand. Yes, it's pretty pathetic. And it says a lot about the impotency of evil, how impotent they really are.   But of course, a lot of those people were chewing when Trump met with the jelly roll. So much of our politics and so much of political views today are just a consequence of unthinking. Consequence of which tribe you happen to belong to. Daniel, Daniel, this is his first super chat. Thank you, Daniel. And it's a $50 one. So thank you. Really, really appreciate the support. Daniel says, Canadian government slapped a 300% tariff on sofas produced in China a couple of years ago. That's a national security issue. Can't have those Chinese importing sofas into Canada. They might use them to, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Something bad for Canada. This was even applied on containers that were already en route to Canada. Cronies complained about supply dumping. Yes. So the sofas were too cheap. And Canadian sofa manufacturers or Canadian importers of sofas from Europe or something were economically challenged by the cheap sofas from Canada. So 300% tariff, 300% tariff, 4X of prices. It's just unbelievable, unbelievable. But that's what cronyism will get you. That's what this idea that protecting your local industries as a value is so horrific. I mean, there should just be a constitutional ban on tariffs. It's just tariffs are one of the, if not the worst of the ways in which governments try to manipulate. And one of the reasons they're so bad is because it's so easy to do and so open to cronyism, so open to manipulation. Doesn't surprise me that Canadian government is doing this. The American government does it all the time. And of course, the American government and the Canadian government collude which industries we protect in America, which industries we protect in Canada, where we have completely free trade. And there's a complete set of, in NAFTA, of what is Canadian, what is American, and what we can move around. That's why it's not a free trade agreement, even though it does reduce the barriers to trade. It's not a free trade agreement. Both countries would be so much richer if it was a free trade agreement. All right, Remo, thoughts on Austrian theory of business cycle? Wow, I mean, that's a big topic that would require a much lengthier discussion. But my short answer to that is I'm basically in agreement with it, with a caveat that it continues to need refinement. It continues to need a finance, an understanding of finance, which I don't think many of the Austrians felt that they needed. I think it's basically true, but needs constant refinement based on the new crazy ways in which money can be used, money can be created, what is even money, what constitutes money keeps changing. And how that money is filtered through the system changes as well. It becomes more and more sophisticated as we go on and new financial instruments, new financial ways. So I think that the basic insight is right and the Austrian theory of business cycle is true, but it's challenged by the complexity of the modern world to be able to have real predictive power. And there's a lot of work that I think is being done and needs to be done in order to constantly update it. Again, frame or correct details need updating. All right, we'll do some of these quickly, only $20 to reach our goal. Do you think the Republican base is too unintellectual to abolish, to absorb brand? Yes. Cultural change will come when the center left begins realizing she was right. I mean, the reality is that cultural change will happen when we have a dominant number of intellectuals and that people start listening to those intellectuals and start following those intellectuals because those intellectuals are making predictions that come true, they're insightful, they're entertaining, they're interesting, and some of the center left center right will be convinced, some people will just follow because they follow. But you need the intellectual firepower, you need both in terms of quality and also in terms of quantity to be producing and communicating on scale. Michael says, the more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilization bit by bit. Yeah, but that's because you're only studying the history of current intellectuals, but the reality is that it was intellectuals that built civilization bit by bit. So they were the original builders, you can't have Western civilization without the intellectuals of the Renaissance and the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, all built by intellectuals. So don't only credit them with the destruction, credit them with the building as well. Michael says, he who loves his neighbor as himself hates himself and thus his neighbor. Ultimately, yes, he who loves his neighbor as himself has no self-esteem. Roland says in support of your unbearable optimism. Thank you, Roland. Phil, inalienable constitution or arbitrary subjective and easily deleteable parliamentary acts, bills and why simplistically? What are we talking about? I don't know what we're talking about. I don't know what context this question was asked in, Phil, but what we want, I mean, if you're asking what is the ideal, the ideal isn't a needable constitution, but it has to be a good one. It has to be a good constitution. It has to be a constitution whose purpose is to define a system of government dedicated to the protection of individual rights. That is the framework. Other constitutions fall apart. Europe has a constitution. It's a disaster. It won't protect you from statism. It won't protect you from the subjectivist. It won't protect you from actual parliament because it's empty of content. So just calling something constitution doesn't make it so. What you need is a proper constitution and a proper constitution is one that embraces the notion that the world of government is the protection of individual rights and everything about the structure of the government, its procedures, and the specific ways in which it functions. And scope in which it functions is determined by this idea of the protection of rights. Tajikin, you should check out OSEBX, Norwegian stock market, looking really strong. I'm a technical trader myself, but the fundamentals are looking very good in Norway relative to most other countries. That's good to hear. I mean, Norway, in spite of what many Americans think, is not a socialist country, although it's a well-faced mixed economy. But it has smart people. It has, although again, I think I've mentioned in the past that it has dropping productivity, it has a lot of natural resources and it has a core group of entrepreneurs that are quite creative. So it is interesting. And it has a relatively right-of-center government that is not as quite as dedicated to destruction as the left is. And it has a high level of objectivist influence. There being a lot of Norwegian objectivists on a per capita basis, one of the highest in the world if not the highest, but very high. So there are a lot of objectivist-oriented people or influenced people in Norway, for one reason or another. Apollo Zeus, thank you. All right, let's see, Brie. The Putin fans are in love with decisiveness. Politicians who do something are always popular.  Yes, pragmatism has a strong bias towards action rather than ideas because ideas are meaningless, principles are meaningless. So it's all about action. James says, why do we negotiate with terrorists? What do you from an objectivist point of view when another country kidnaps your citizens who are not at war with? Well, it depends. I mean, first of all, maybe you should be at war with them if they're kidnapping your citizens. Maybe if you launch the rescue mission and acted decisively, no holds back, they wouldn't kidnap your citizens. But it is true also that there are some countries where you just have to tell your citizens not to go to because if they kidnap in that country, it's on them. But is somebody can kidnap a plane and fly it into that country? The US government's job then is to act decisively and unequivocally in defense of its own citizens, not only those who are hijacked, but those who will be hijacked in the future if they don't act decisively. So that is, you know, that's what should be done. Make them pay. Make them pay for the violence. And the only way to make them pay for the violence is to inflict greater violence on them. In a way that protects your own people and there are ways to do that. All right. All right, everybody. Thank you. I will see you tonight, I think, unless I feel worse and then I won't, but expect to show at 8 p.m. tonight. Maybe I'll do it a little earlier if I'm feeling up just waiting until 8 p.m. But tonight there will be a show, topic to be determined. I will let you know. Thanks to all the superchatters. We did make our target. So really, really appreciate that. And yeah, have a great rest of your day. And I'll see you tonight. There'll be another year on book show tomorrow. But tomorrow, the new show will be at 3 p.m. So it'll be relatively late. I have just a bunch of stuff in the morning. So 3 p.m. Bye.


Here at Estonia, we're supporting the infantry on their manoeuvres, shooting some live rounds for them. I'm a mechanic crew member. I'm also an AG. I basically bring the round up, check it with the chief, and then hand it off to the AG, or if I'm in the trails, I'll put it in the tube, and we'll fire that by Larry. So today is our first iteration of the live fire exercise, and we're going to be supporting the manoeuvre units in our brigade. And as they move through the lanes that they're working on, we'll be shooting in support of them so that they can get a better understanding of fires, and we can increase understanding between the different branches. We are going to be getting fire missions just like we would in a combat situation. They're going to be either over the radio or they're going to come down digitally over our fire control computer. And we're going to get those rounds. Hopefully the forward observers are watching our rounds, making sure they're all hitting where they need to be, and making sure everything's accurate. We receive a fire mission. I input the data. It would be a deflection in quadrants, and it puts the cannon in the right direction to shoot in the right place at the right time. There's often, like, feeling a shockwave go through your body when you send one of those rounds downrange. It's a very loud boom, and it's like something you've never experienced. That's a big thing that we work on is fire mission processing time. It's from the time that we get the mission from the observers and how long it actually takes for us to transmit that into data for the howitzer. And for digital fire missions, which we use our FATIDS for, which is essentially like a computer calculator to calculate the data, we have to get that in under 45 seconds. And if we're doing a manual mission, which means we're using charts and sticks with data on them, it's a minute and 30 seconds. But we try to do as fast as possible.


Hello everyone, this is financial author Amit Dan of amitdan.com On this channel you'll find financial travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now If you like what you see, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing Hello everyone, this is Amit Dan and today is my day 17 in Bangladesh and I'm taking you to Tamabil where the Bangladesh India border is located and This is also known as Bangladesh last house because here Where is the residential or the last residential place of Bangladesh located before the India Bangladesh border?  So if you like what you see, let's give it a thumbs up and subscribe You don't want to miss the next videos from Bangladesh and India. Thank you and I'll see you shortly


I'm Stephen Leonard, I'm the Senior Climate Policy Analyst with CIFL. Over the past 12 months there's been an increasing emphasis on the role of Indigenous peoples in the context of climate and forests. When it comes to the idea around reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and conservation of forests which is described as red plus. Indigenous peoples play an important role. In the policy context there is of course the participatory role. Indigenous peoples are mostly rights holders and so they have a stronger opportunity or this will be a stronger emphasis on the viewpoint and entitlements of Indigenous peoples when it comes to what we might want to call climate change related interventions whether they're mitigation or adaptation in forests. Indigenous peoples also have a long connected history with forests in many parts of the world in terms of stewardship and taking care of the forests then of themselves as well as very often a very deep cultural and spiritual connection that comes between Indigenous peoples and the lands and the forests in which they exist on. CIFL has undertaken some work in this space in a number of different ways. There's been work that's been undertaken here which is focused on the role of monitoring and MRV of communities. There has been other work that's been undertaken here very recently focusing on allegations of rights violations and there was a desktop scoping study that was done by some colleagues that has identified that there is the potential for red plus related interventions to violate rights in the circumstances where it's not undertaken in a rights based approach. That finding is based on the number of allegations that have been raised by Indigenous communities throughout the world which have been subjected to interventions under the name of red plus and so it's important that that information is brought into the public domain so that the discussion and the importance of rights based approaches can be focused on more. There will be an interesting session at the Global Landscapes Forum that will be held by the Indigenous peoples major group on sustainable development which will be focusing on the role of Indigenous peoples in the context of conservation. That is an important issue because historically there's been a lot of circumstances where communities have been moved off their land in order to enable for conservation initiatives to be undertaken which raises questions around rights and violations of human rights and rights of Indigenous peoples. A rights based approach to red plus will be important going forward and it will not only give rise to more sustainability of the red plus efforts in and of themselves but it will also go a long way in terms of improving livelihoods of Indigenous communities and also support the sustainability of the overall objective to reduce emissions from forests.


We have seen that the delay by physics speed of sound and the geometry of the microphones allow us only to measure plus minus 90 degrees. Well, what if this is not enough? What can we do? Well, increase the sampling speed sounds a good idea because in our geometry what we can change is only the speed of sound which we can't change as easily or distance between the microphones. Well, also not very easy to change right now. So the only thing we can change is the sampling frequency and we can do it physically so you just increase the frequency of the microphones or virtually by DSP means to interpolate the signal to higher frequencies. This is also possible. So what if we don't want to use physically because simply the MEMS microphone is not fast enough or you don't want to have such a high rate of codec communication? So for sure we will choose the second option to show the DSP capabilities. So how can we do it? The techniques is called interpolation. Okay, it's pretty easy. You take your two signals which are sampled at 16 kilohertz and you put artificially some number of zeros in between these samples. So it would look like this. In our case, let's put three zeros between every sample. So we actually get four times more samples in the signal. So it would look like this. We have a samples and three zeros and again and again. And as a next step we leave it to pass through the low-pass filter. So as a result out of this signal we get such nice signal which will be exactly the same like before. But virtually with four times higher sampling frequency. So if we use this output of the interpolation as the input of the correlation function, we are able to determine the delay in plus minus four in this case. So by these tricks you can virtually increase the sampling frequency and use it in the same algorithm as before to get much nicer resolution of the delay. So this is implemented in our example as well. You just need to first of all do the interpolation flag set to one and use one of the filters. Okay, I think better is the filter because it's much easier, but it would work with both of those. But I think you need to use only one at a time. So if you do this, just enabling the do interpolation together with one filter and the correlation as well. You should get the resolution of the delay plus minus four. So you need to have three flags enabled now. Filtering interpolation and correlation. So three DSP operation one after another. I've got this delay here live on the screen as well. So if I'm running from the left side I got minus four. On the right side I've got three, four. And then if I move around I got better resolution of the delay. Another example of some DSP operation. Quite easy to run and quite interesting results. You can get out of this. And you see the CPU load is still about 12.5%. So still the correlation takes it's 10%. So much more than we need actually. If you just look what happens in the code. With the interpolation what we do is that here by a simple loop we add some zeros in between the samples. And this is particularly all we need to do for interpolating because the filter we developed in the last part. We use the same filter and the correlation was done in the previous step. So just putting few zeros in between samples you get virtually higher sampling frequency for this application.


Hello, my name is Patrick Mannan. I am the lead muralist at Art So Wonderful. As you can see behind me I just created a mural of North Beach right here in downtown Burlington right across from City Hall to show and to represent the peace and beauty that is really all around us in in Burlington. Now Art So Wonderful is a nonprofit that pays and sponsors artists like me to beautify downtown Burlington. Art So Wonderful also has a gallery in downtown Burlington area right by U-Mall in which local artists can sell their artworks and prints. If you're interested in doing artwork or seeing artwork, please stop by our gallery at University Mall. Thank you.