Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming along to this CCH seminar. Our speaker today is Christina Bilbaum, who joined USQ in April this year. And she is a member of the new School of Agriculture and Environmental Science. May I say that this is kind of introductory seminar from you? You are talking about your career and your research. And this will be a nice introduction to CCH and also to people on Zoom. Hello, everyone on Zoom. We have certain participants who joined this meeting. The seminar will be recorded. And hopefully, it will be available on Open Land Pathology website. Christina, over to you. Thank you. So do I need to do anything else here? No, it just started. I don't know, but you can just start. OK, no worries. All right, thank you, Levy. And hello, people in the room and people on Zoom. Thanks for joining us on this cold Friday morning. Yes, so first of all, thank you for the introduction and invitation to come and talk today here. Yes, so my name is Christina. And I'm a lecturer at the school. And today, as Levy said, I will give a very brief overview of my past research and current research and so forth. So the title of my talk is, as you can see on the slides, Understanding Planned Micropsoil Interactions to Improve Planned Conservation and Restoration Outcomes. All right, hopefully, this will work. OK, so since some news, Levy said to USQ and CCH, I thought I'll provide a brief snapshot of my past. So you might have guessed my accent is not Australian or anything else. I'm actually from Estonia originally. Case people's geography is a bit for that part of the world. That's where Estonia is. And I actually moved to Sydney to do my PhD at Macquarie University with Michelle Leishman. So I did my PhD there, finished it in 2013. Then I went to Perth, Western Australia, where I did my first post-doc with Neil and Wright and Joe Fontaine. And after that, I went to Louisiana, where I did my post-doc with Emily Farr at Tulane University. Then I had a, I'm not going to call it a break, but I was on maternity leave for two years, roughly, before I joined Deakin and RMIT universities in Melbourne. And now I'm here, USQ, since April 4. And I guess I can just briefly also say, so my background is broadly plant ecology or plant invasion ecology. And then during my PhD, I really got into the below-ground microbial ecology, focusing predominantly on the mutualistic microbes. I'm also associated editor in plant ecology, a peer review journal. And in 2016 or 17, together with my colleague, Eleonora Gidi from Western Sydney, we co-founded this ecological site of Australia, Plant Soil Ecology Research Chapter, that basically the aim of this was to bring together people from various tracts of life and expertise, but who work in Australia and plant microbial interactions to basically support each other, network, create events at the conferences, the ESA annual conferences. And also we have a few online activities as well. So we're on Twitter a lot. And that's where we share information knowledge workshop. It obviously has an ecological angle, but we all tend to work on different things like ecology and agriculture and agro-ecosystems. So I think there's something for everyone. At USQ, I'm now, as I said, lecturer, but also major convener for ecology and conservation. So that's a snapshot of me very quickly. I always find when I start in a new place, it's good to add a fun fact about myself. This is not quite myself. This is a fungi, but I thought it's really cool. A couple of years ago, I discovered that there's a fungi, leuco-coprinus burnbalmia, that has the same species name than my last name. And it's just an interesting backstory. So it's apparently was named by a garden inspector in Prague, which is in Czech Republic, who had the same last name like I do. I'm not sure if we're related, but I probably should dig in and see. Obviously we both love fungi and microbes and that sort of stuff. So a few things about the fungi that I related that they don't like cold weather. I absolutely hate it. So handsome here, they like to be in tropics and subtropics. I haven't actually seen this fungi yet. So not that I'm in the right climatic zone or might go and forage for them to get a photo together with us for the next talk. So that's the fun part. Okay. So now to the science. So I saw this cover. This is the science magazine cover from May, from last month. And it was all about the systemic microbiome and how microbial communities affect humans. But it really talked to me because this sort of description of that, I guess, special issue or this special theme in science is about how humans are many distinct and interconnecting microbial populations that exert systemic effects throughout their body. And so understanding those ways, the ways these microbial communities interact provides a really good insight into how the collective microbiome shapes the health and the disease. And you wonder why am I talking about human microbiomes if we're actually talking about plant soil? But this is just really to kind of help you understand how I view the role of microbes in plant health because I really do the thing that there's a lot of overlaps and exactly the same mechanism working for humans because we all know that now gut microbiome affects our health, our weight, our likelihood of getting diseases and I feel that plants is the same thing. So that's why I put it up there. So just a brief outline on my talk today. So I'll start off with talking why soil microbes are important which is a little bit like preaching to the choir because I'm pretty sure everyone, we're all on the same page but nevertheless for people maybe on Zoom from various backgrounds. Then I'll talk a little bit about the utility of plants or feedbacks. Then the role of soil microbes in plant invasions with some examples from my work and our collective work. And then the role of soil microbes also in restoration ecology. And then I'll finish off by giving just a quick snapshot of my current research. Okay, so obviously I think we all can agree that on all these aspects of the benefits that soil microbes provide to the soil and the plants by obviously being the key players in decomposition, humus formation, nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation via specifically legumes and rhizobia by degradation, soil structure, the disease and pest control and growth promotion. So I would say these are probably the key functions that the soil microorganisms serve at least for me as a new plant ecologist that we are very keen to explore and understand. So I'll start off with the plants or feedback and why it's very, has been very useful in ecology since late nineties, early 2000s to really understand what's happening below ground. So just a quick question. How many people know plants or feedback sort of make, I guess the idea of it?  Who has heard of it before? Hands up. Three people in the room, okay. This is another lecture so I'm not gonna chat ask the Zoom people, but okay, raise hand. Okay, Catherine, okay, so four people out of 20. Okay, cool. Well, this slide then serves its purpose because it's quite detailed to explain why we're using plants or feedbacks. So obviously in late nineties, early 2000s as the technological advances really allowed us to start doing basic sequencing and kind of move past the culturing, we started to really be able to see what is actually happening below ground with plants. And so in ecology, this plant soil feedback approach has been very, very widely used and has really helped us understand some of the patterns positive and negative of the below ground soil communities on plants. And so what it essentially is, is that you have your two stages in that experiment. So you have what's called the conditioning phase and you have your testing phase.  And so what happens during the conditioning phase is that there is this species specific interactions with microbes that generally result in the divergence of soil microbial communities. And so in the figure at the bottom part of the testing the alpha and beta of the soil for the soil communities. And then in the testing phase, what you're doing is you're just growing them species A in again in its own soil. So for example, in the conditioning phase, you split that soil same half, half of that soil you use again to grow species A again. And the other half you use to grow the other species that you're interested in to grow in that soil. And then at the end of the testing phase, you then compare how did the species A perform in its own soil relative when it was grown in the other species soil. So you do that sort of kind of cross comparison. There's many other ways now that you can sort of do those plant soil feedback, but this was to sort of the start, how it started like different people do it a bit differently. But this is the sort of basic of it. And at the end we can then say, we can estimate the effect size and the biomass differences between when the plant is grown in its own soil as opposed to in the soil of other species. And then we end up with those two sort of groups of responses we can call positive plant soil feedback. And positive plant soil feedback basically means that species A grew much better in species A soil as opposed to in the soil of other plants. So this would be a positive plant soil feedback. And in a sort of plant ecology context, that really actually results in reduced plant community diversity because if all the species support their own growth in the soil and the growth of the propagals, there'll be a reduction in species diversity because one species can become really dominant. And that's what happens with invasive species a lot. As opposed to the positive feedback, there's the negative plant soil feedback. And this is where if species A is grown in its own soil, it's actually will perform worse than when it's grown in the soil of other plant species. And that's a negative feedback. And so in plant community context, this will result in increased plant community diversity because usually what happens there, the mechanism is that the plants accumulate pathogen, petrified pathogens in the soil that then limit their propagate of establishment and growth nearby that hosts them like mother plant. So this is a bit related to this Janssen-Connell hypothesis of species coexistence. So this is the sort of snapshot of plant soil feedbacks. And I've used this sort of framework a lot in my work and my PhD specifically. And so this field, I guess I can say, really boomed in early 2000s. And this paper was sort of considered like a landmark paper by John Cleronomas. I was fortunate enough during my PhD to actually go to his lab in Guelph and actually learn about the plant soil feedback process. So this was really valuable for me. But yeah, he published this landmark study where he compared five invasive species and five rare species in Canada. And then he did that exact plant soil feedback experiment where he grew the invasive species in their own soil and in the soil of other species and the same for rare species. And so what he found essentially, so on the y-axis you have the growth of plants, so relative growth of plants in their own soil compared to others. And if the bars are above zero, that's a positive plant soil feedback. And if they are below, that's a negative plant soil feedback. And so this really neatly showed exactly what I was just telling before is that the invasive species generally have a positive plant soil feedback. So they are doing really well in their own soil. And that's why you often see those monocultures of one invader, whereas the rare species, potentially why they are rare is this mechanism is that they in their soils sort of self-control their distribution, which is essentially detrimental to them, but it really kind of explained in a new way why some species are rare and why some species are abundant. And that was to do with those microbial communities below ground. So I was thinking since we have a mix of people who studied more natural ecosystems and who are more interested in agricultural ecosystem. There's this great paper by Marriott et al from 2018 published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution where he, being a mostly ethnic ecologist, he tried to merge and explain the utility of the plant soil feedback in agricultural systems as well that it could be used and what we can learn from each other, so to speak. And so this is just an overview of what sort of expectations would we have for plant soil feedbacks in natural systems. So usually in natural systems, we have high species diversity. The plant soil feedbacks are generally, they could be either or negative or positive. There's a high species and trade diversity. The nutrient cycle is generally closed. The soil biota is really diverse because you have those different species interacting and there's quite complex soil traffic interactions as well. And so just on this figure, the red lines indicate negative, plant soil feedback, the blue lines indicate positive, plant soil feedback and the circles are just mutualists and the triangles are the pathogens. So it's just illustrative. Whereas in agricultural systems, obviously we have mostly monoculture because that's the species of interest that we're growing. Often there's the external resource inputs in terms of like fertilizers. The soil biota tends to become less diverse over time as the soil is exhausted and the traffic interactions are quite simplified generally. However, again, this is a figure from his paper. I really liked how he showed that, in agricultural systems, we can learn to harness what we know from natural systems to make the agricultural output more efficient. And so there's just three different pathways that they were proposing is that, for example, number one, optimizing propping systems. So if we understand better in the natural ecosystems, for example, species, beneficial species interactions, we can harness that to then kind of apply it in the cropping systems as well, where we select for those microbial communities like rhizobia or specific rhizobia species too, enhance the crop species growth. Another thing is also, number two is the disease resistance and pest control. So this is just, for example, in terms of above ground, knowing what we know about different species below ground root traits and how different root traits are related to more efficient or less efficient nutrient and water acquisition strategies. If we can harness that and either genetically modify or breed species selectively that have those root traits that have been shown in the natural ecosystems to be really beneficial, then again, we could improve our cropping outcomes. The inoculation pathway there at the bottom is just again to select from microbial communities that would provide better resistance to pathogens and pests. And then the last one, number three here is increasing the resource use efficiency. So it's basically all about, in the cropping systems we have that one species, but if we can kind of figure out the interactions and pairing of different cropping and intercropping species that would contribute to bigger litter imports, more nutritious litter that then can be recycled by the crop species to contribute to nutrient retention and recycling and acquisition as well. So these are just very generic and they're very theoretical. I know you might ask how can we actually apply this? But this is I think would sort of pathways to think how we can learn from sort of each other. I like that they also provided the reverse picture how you can use the agricultural knowledge that we have already from cultural sciences to improve conservation and restoration. And I think that's really neat, I really like it because we're all interconnected, agriculture is in the environment obviously and the environment can support agriculture. So in this case, they were proposing, for example, what we can learn from cropping systems is that obviously, number one, the seafaring those complex plant-soil interactions. So obviously in cropping systems, we have that monoculture, lower below ground diversity where we can really see what plant above and below ground compartments work best together. And knowing that, which is essentially like in a glass house as well, we have that one species we can then engineer almost those perfect plant-soil interactions and also inoculating more mutualistic organisms to promote, for example, species that are rare and then suppress the species that are dominant already, for example, in conservation. The point number two here is understanding better restoration after disturbance. And it's really sort of again understanding those sort of single species interactions between plants and microbes to then, for example, inoculate some field sites where there's a lot of invasive species with pathogens to then control their distribution and again, support more rare species or foundational species, especially after disturbance where the soil is really basically devoid of any beneficial microbes and so on and so forth. So I think you're getting the idea and the last one is the multifunctionality. So I guess the point of me showing those three slides from this paper is just I like how they show this complementarity between the different systems. So I think this, for me, especially moving forward and trying to find, you know, research ways and continuing here at CCH as well. So this is a useful, I think, kind of framework. Okay, so now I'll get more towards my past research. So as I said, I sort of started doing plant invasion ecology. And so using that plant soil feedback mechanism understanding, so in invasion it has been widely used and basically this is again, like more of a conceptual diagram, but basically what it shows is that imagine a native range of forests, right? That's undisturbed. So you have your species diversity, you have some spruces, you have some other trees and generally in those sort of undisturbed Zika systems. So here you have those two species and you have those arrows showing the interactions between species. And generally what happens is that plants experience this negative plant soil feedback and that's what keeps them in check and the different species can coexist. However, if there's a successful invasion that for example, in our case here spruce, it then starts to dominate and it's getting that positive plant soil feedback as shown on the plus here under the spruce. So it has a positive plant soil feedback with itself but it's also benefits from the soil microbial communities of other species. So in that case, the native species are getting suppressed because they're still experiencing that negative feedback whereas the invasive species continue to spread. And obviously in the case of unsuccessful invasion these patterns would be reversed, right? So one of the key questions in ecology is like why some species become invasive and some don't. There's many different mechanisms there but yeah and we can dissect it later but if we look at the whole soil communities then a lot can be explained by looking at these sort of interactions. So this is the sort of framework for specifically invasion ecology. So taking that all in mind, so there's yes, one table from 2006, it's a bit old but it really summarized a lot of different invasive species experiments. And so basically this table just shows the some of the main species that have been looked at by invasion ecologist and then tested in the glass house those feedback effects. And you can see if it's a, there's either effect of the soil biota in the native range effect of soil biota in a non-native range and whether there is a biogeographical effect. And that basically means that there is a differential response to the soil microbes. And you can see that for most species there's variable effect, but often it's a positive plant soil feedback. So that's what this sort of shows. So for my PhD, I studied legumes, acacia species. And so because we knew all that information how plants or feedback explain species distribution we really wanted to apply that in Australia for acacias. So acacias are really, they're native to Australia but they have become big problematic invaders in most of the Mediterranean regions of the world. So California, Chile, Italy and Spain, South Africa and also New Zealand. But the funny thing about acacias is, is that because there's over 1000 species of them some of them are actually native to the Eastern States of Australia and some of them are actually unique to the Western Australia. But because Australia is a continent country people just think it's native here so it's fine but there's actually some problems with some of the species that are native in Eastern States in Western Australia and vice versa. So we wanted to understand how much then the soils contribute to these patterns that we see. So we had four acacias, acacias ligna, acacia longifolia, acacia cyclops and acacia longifolia. And one of the close relative of legumes, Paracirantes la Fanta. And so what we did is that I was very fortunate for my PhD. I got to travel all the Eastern States and the Western Australia to collect some plant and soil from several populations of each species and then bring it back to Sydney to do that plant soil feedback experiment with more than 1000 pots to test for these effects. And so let's have a look, what did I find? Well, so this is just results from our papers. So basically when we performed that plant soil feedback experiment like I showed you before. So we have our five species on the y-axis, you have the total biomass and on the x-axis you have the soil origin and M stands for native and I stands for invasive range. And so basically what we did is that for example for acacia cyclops, I grew it in its native soil and then in its non-native soil but the difference was I also collected seed material not just soil. And so the above letters would also, these are the seed origin of the species. It gets a little bit complicated, I'm sorry, but it's basically as we have the seed and soil and we test it for both. And surprisingly what we found is that there was no effect of the soil at all on this species. So they performed equally well in both but actually it was the seed origin. So the above ground plant traits that explained the variation in the biomass. So that was really interesting and it was exactly contrary to what we expected. And yeah, so that was the sort of the main message from this work. And there was a, yeah, the significant effect of seed origin specifically for two species, acacia cyclops and something now. And so we published that and then we also looked at the specifically the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. So since they're legumes, febacy, they do rely a lot on their rhizobia and other nitrogen-fixing bacteria to really establish and growth in those early stages. So we had a look at that and we did some tear-off LP analysis for more community. And then we did some sequencing as well, both for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria and the fungi. And so what we found generally that there was no difference in what microbial communities were in their soils. And that then explains why the plant soil feedback experiment didn't show that as well. So I thought it would be quite a challenge to publish like negative results because we didn't find the plant soil effect, but we managed. So I got four papers out of the PhD, so I was okay. So I was happy with that. But yeah, so it just provided basically a bit more context and to the plant soil feedback literature, basically showing that these responses are species-specific and they're also geographically different. So it's not all blanket sort of results. So then I continued working on invasive species in Louisiana where I focused on the grass species from Midas Australis. So here's just a picture showing the problem, the extent of the problem of the species. Forms those really dense monocultures in the coastal areas that suppresses the native species diversity and really changes the soil communities as well. And these are just on the map showing our sites, different sites that we have across the salinity gradient, which is just the abiotic filter for the species and could be for the below ground as well. So this is just sort of in summary, the project. And what we found there was that, so we established field sites where we had the monoculture of Fragmites Australis. Then we had the age sort of transect and then we had the native community transect that didn't have the Fragmites Australis. So this was the gradient. And then we sampled soil and roots from all of these three transects. And what these figures here below just basically shows that we found that the root fungal in the sphere composition strongly between Fragmites Australis and the native community. So, and you can see on those PCA figures at the bottom as well is that there was a strong difference by community type, the biotic context for the invasive species. So basically what it means is that Fragmites had really unique microbial communities in the soil compared to the native community. But more interestingly, we found published in this paper that the Fragmites also had a bigger pathogen, fungal pathogen accumulation in its roots compared to the native species. And so this could be, so this was both for roots and the soils. And that really could again explain why it's doing so well. So aside from the fact that it's just really big plant above ground providing all that shade, it has really different root system. And then it also accumulates those pathogens that again, they are not in a separate glass house we showed they are not detrimental to Fragmites itself but they are actually suppressing the native community. And that explains the mechanism why it's so widespread. And such a global problem really it's not just in the US, it's in Europe, it's in Australia as well. So that was really interesting. And that sort of supported the previous research. So that was my postdoc in Tulane. So now I'll move from the invasive species ecology to restoration ecology. So restoration ecology is obviously much more applied field that's sort of fundamental ecology. And it really tries to take that plant microbial knowledge and then apply it to the real world scenarios. So what generally happens during restoration is this is just a schematic figure showing that as the soils get more disturbed there will be more bacteria dominated usually and the fungal communities are reduced. And then restoration ecologists often when you have for example, imagine a mining of sands and mining scenarios. So for example, in Western Australia you have this really biodiverse communities of plants very unique that are cleared up to dig out the soil for the mining industry. And then if you wanna restore that, what do you do? So often restoration ecologists want to take the shortcuts as shown on the red lines. So you wanna kind of bypass the whole succession and get that to the end result to support the plant species you want to grow in restoration. So how do you do that? And so using that plant soil ecology sort of understanding and feedbacks is really one way to kind of get to those shortcuts. There's some work that has really shown so by Liddy Kodetal, 2019 that during ecological restoration when you have those bare disturbed sites what they found is that the soil microbial communities there was a large amount as shown on the red in the red in those pie charts of opportunistic taxa. So these are these taxa that are potentially pathogens. They're not really forming in your relationship with any plants, but they have detrimental effects. And then as you continue with ecological restoration and the species start to reestablish and you get this upper story and under story what they found is that there was an increase in the niche adapted taxa. So this is basically more, and I think it makes sense because as plants start form those relationships mutualistic and different symbiotic relationships with microbes, there's increasing those more specific niche adapted taxa. And so this really shows the utility of ecological restoration and then inform potentially like soil inoculations and those species interactions. And the last figure here is just showing they had Australia white samples. And so in the natural communities they found those as in global those more niche adapted beneficial microbial taxa. And so we, so during my post-doc in at Murdoch Unis so I had a project with in collaboration with industry partners, Tronax where we went to the cool Jalil mine site north of Paris and we collected the soils from there. So what they're doing is that they're doing exactly that sun mining processes where they basically remove the native vegetation they stockpile it somewhere away and then they perform the operations obviously of the mining and then they wanna restore those pits using that vegetation and the stockpile soil that they stripped years ago. But no one really knows that does this work? Will the vegetation actually work? They just assume that based on earlier literature that it might work and the species will regenerate. So we want to actually test that. So what we did is we went and collected those different stockpiles. So we had stockpiles that range from one years old what is it, two, three, five and 10 so 10 year old stockpiles of soils that were just laying there. And we brought them back to the glass house and we used Acacia seligna just as a bio assay species to grow in those soils and see how well the species would actually perform. And it made sense to use Acacia seligna because it's a legume, it's a quite fast growing legume and it's often used in restoration to start the revigitation process. And so what we found is this is from our paper showing the tall above ground and below ground biomass of Acacia seligna. And we also looked at the specific root length, SRL, L nodule biomass, so evidence of rhizobia forming associations with this Acacia seligna and also AMF colonization. And so what we found is that we had, sorry, we had also reference site as marked in gray. So reference site is just adjacent undisturbed soil. And so what we found is that the tall biomass of this Acacia seligna really decreased significantly in those 10 year old soils that's been laying there in those stockpiles. But surprisingly we found that actually the specific root length and AMF colonization in those 10 year old soils, when the plant was growing was really high. And so it seems that the above ground, the plant didn't do very well, but below ground, it was sort of exploring for nutrients and water and potential fungi and bacteria to support this growth. And another thing as well for the nodule biomass, I just want you to see. So the nodule biomass of this Acacia was also the lowest in the 10 year old soils. And we couldn't understand really why. Then we used those soils to do some sequencing. And so we described all the nitrogen fixing bacterial communities and also fungi in a separate paper. And so this is this paper was basically showing the fungal communities in the bottom triangle, pairwise comparisons and bacterial communities in the top triangle in pairwise comparisons. And basically what we found was that both fungal and bacterial richness declined as the stockpile age increased. However, fungi actually sort of gained the compositional structure similar to the reference sites better than bacteria. So this is basically everything that's in those squares, I should have said that everything that's black is significant effect size. And everything that's white is not. So in terms of those pairwise comparisons. And so what we also found is that in the 10 year old soils when we sequenced them, there was no Brady Rhizobium. So there was none of that mutualistic Rhizobium taxa that Seligna needs potentially often associates with to grow really well. And that really nicely complimented our glasshouse results where we found that lower nodule biomass in those 10 year old soils. So this is one way now that we can think that, what is happening in those stockpiles and how to best potentially either inoculate them with microbial taxa to improve those restoration outcomes. Okay. And then a couple of years ago with the Eleonora, we tried to combine some of the studies from Australia who looked at other sort of microbial community research applications to conservation and restoration. So we're putting together a special issue in plant ecology that's available online. If anyone wants to see other case studies and examples how this sort of research has been applied. Okay. So just now jumping to my current research, I'm going pretty long, hey. So some of my current research, there's a lot of things going on. So I won't have time to get through everything. I've added this cropping ecosystems for my future, hopefully research in CCH as well. So the cropping ecosystems, if you're from my web pages, if you actually click on it, it's all about dig up there, which is that project. But yeah, I'm still obviously continuing to work on plant invasions because this is why I got into science. I'm really fascinated about invasions. Plant microbe interactions just more generally. And also during my time at Melbourne, I really got into peatland microbiology and coastal wetland microbiology as well. So I'll just show briefly what I've been working before I came to USQ. So I really got into the peatland microbiology because peatlands are really important. They cover obviously only 3% of the world's land area, but they store a staggering amount of carbon. And added to that, they also play a really important role in global carbon cycling as they contain more organic carbon than actually any other terrestrial ecosystem. And we have a lot of research on microbial communities of peatlands in the Northern Hemisphere. But we're now surprisingly little, at least I know if anyone knows, let me know. But on the peatland microbiology in Australia and also Indonesia, which have, like especially Indonesia has a lot of peatlands. And so this is why what informs our research or motivates our research. And so for my previous position, so we collaborated with Jamie Lamid, who is in USA in Syracuse University. And so he started this global project of sampling microbial communities from peatlands around the world. And we had a site in the Australian Alps in Victoria where we also looked at some of the intact peatlands and some of the degraded peatlands. And I guess I forgot to mention that peatlands, why are they important is because they're facing from climate change and from anthropogenic disturbances, very rapid degradation, but because they store so much carbon, if they get degraded, more of that carbon will be released in the atmosphere. And so understanding the microbial processes there might also help in peatland restoration in the future. So we have one paper now that's in review, but it's available as a pre-print as well, where we basically found that peatland degradation reduced microbial richness and it altered the microbial functions in a way that we found that the disturbed peatland had higher composition of subterotrophic fungi and pathogenic fungi as well than the natural peatlands. So this was the outcome of that research. And then the last example with Blue Carbon Lab at Deakin University, they studied predominantly the Blue Carbon Ecosystems, which are really those mangrove salt martian seagrass ecosystems. You might have seen recently in ABC there was this article about the biggest plant in the world that was found off the coast of Western Australia, which is an actual seagrass, one big seagrass. Which is pretty cool. But this research is basically informed or the aim of this research is that, so we know that Blue Carbon Ecosystems store a lot of carbon and most of the research has been on the sort of trying to quantify how much carbon they store. But we don't really know about the quality and stability of that carbon. So also again, with climate change and the coastal degradation, how much of that carbon will be released and what really controls its release. So basically how much of sort of recalcitrant and label carbon is there. And so the future challenge is really to understand what controls that formation of that Blue Carbon. And this all builds up on the work of Peter McCready that I can take no credit at all for. But my role came in where I proposed to actually look at doing a global synthesis of who is, what microbes are in those coastal ecosystems. So we don't know any, like we sort of know, but we don't have like a clear picture or like a review understanding what dominates those coastal micro, what dominates those coastal ecosystems in terms of microbial communities. And so what I'm still working on now is conducting that systemic, systematic review, maybe meta-analysis and understanding who is where. So basically ID them first and then also then assign them functions and understand what are they actually performing in those coastal ecosystems. So this is some of the ongoing work we're doing. Okay, so we made a full circle. I'll come back to that first slide. And so again, I just want to sort of reiterate what I just said at the beginning in terms of how I and a lot of other, I think plants are the colleges view microbes. So if we just replace humans with plants, we'll get this exact things that apply to basically humans applied to plants. So microbes keep us healthy. They protect us from pests. So that's why we need to study them and we need more funding to study them because they do really drive all of these processes in ecosystems. So that's why I put it back there and just replaced humans with plants and added outside the body of plant body as well. Okay, I'm tired. So this was my talk and obviously there's a lot of people I need to thank who without all of this research would not have been possible. The funders and the universities and scholarships and so forth and so on. Thank you so much for your attention. I'm really sorry that it's been like 15 minutes talk. So I hope you don't hate me now. Cheers, that's all. Thank you so much. I think we stopped recording and there's no time limit. Okay, thanks very much. Very good introduction. I have many questions.


Welcome back folks. Dow, Dow and Dow industrials, where is she? There we go. Dow industrials right now are trading, sorry about this folks, up 13. That's like up 16 S&Ps, up 7.5. Let's go over to our MMS to Teddy Cakes that as we do each and every Wednesday at 4 p.m. past the hour. You can reach Teddy every trading day folks at 4x-trading-unlock.com. Teddy Cakes that, what's going on? Well we got some nice moves shaping up in the currencies to start the first trading and full trading week of the year off I think. That's for sure. How about last night? Holy cow. I mean. Right. Well the Middle Eastern thing is fueling it right? Yes. No, no, no doubt. So where do we want to start Teddy? I think you want to start with the Euro and the pound. We have the Brexit deadline that's coming up on January 31st and the pound I think is going to be a scary trade. I think it's going to be a range trader's delight and a swing trader's nightmare as we head into January 31st. I think it's going to be a very tight winding trade and it doesn't matter what's going on in the Middle East. But the Euro-US dollar hit some key support. We had a big sell signal in the Euro-US dollar last week and we just touched the top of our target range. There might be a little bit more to go. I think that because of the Brexit issue the Euro is going to start to get really tight and also with high oil prices it's going to be really hard to break the Euro as well. Yeah, interesting man. And then I mean the yen last night went ballistic, right? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean what happened folks is that all the, not all the indices, but gold, oil, yen it totally makes sense. The yen bottom line got down to 107, 107.65 and then just shook it off too. Yeah, now it's $2 higher. Yes. For a full dollar higher. No, it's pretty intense man. There's no doubt about it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well you know we've been talking about how you know what with the dollar index when it was under pressure the US dollar yen would still rally and now you have the dollar index finding some support so it kind of gives lift again to this market. It's hard to break it down. It is. I mean you know so when you look at this index folks so you know the number I'm keeping my eye on is 97.141 Euro. 97.147 so you're jumping back in the higher range again you know. And we'll see what they can hold. I mean I expect the broad market today as well as the currencies to have more volatility than normal. I mean because most times what I'm sure is that when you get a night like last night people think it's calm and cool and it is at this particular point but we're not going to stay calm and cool because it's right. This is a nervous market man you know. Right. Well you know what's interesting is that the US dollar is getting a big lift against the like the Japanese yen right now and also against the Canadian dollar and the Swiss is actually it's trying to I think it's pretty much unchanged on the day right now. Okay. So but those are the ones we are seeing the most movement and that's why I think that it's amazing how with this turmoil in the Middle East how the market can really shrug this off and pretty much absorb it because it seems like the pound and the EU and the Euro rather are more concerned about their Brexit deadline than they are about the Middle East. Yeah that's interesting that. And I guess you know you explained it to us last week I mean this has been quite a move in the Swiss franc right. I mean yes you know it's what word ninety seven oh two. That's like that's the that's the lower end of this range right. I mean absolutely and that kind of goes with member how we're looking for a little upside correction in the dollar. This is before this whole thing launched in the Middle East. We were looking for a dollar rally so they kind of fundamentally and technically line up and then we had all those signals that were triggered last week. Remember for corrective moves in the Euro and all these other things. So you had to see that the dollar index get up to that ninety seven half here even ninety eight even that's very likely I think over the next week or two. And it's a lot of moving parts in this marketplace man. I mean right there's there's no doubt. And then get ready for the next drop. Yeah I listen I think I think long term for sure. What we've found more than anything is that I'm looking for at least a test they've even last night when you get spikes like that the bottom line they love to go visit their friends man. Right. It's just when they do it you know I remember even you know they folks thought when that flash crash came in I don't know about ten years ago I thought I'd never get revisited it got revisited it's. When those things happen they just like to get revisited. Right. It is what it is. I don't know if it's a technical fundamental issue but they like hanging out no doubt. You know it's there is some interesting moves in the some of the more exotics like the pound euro trade in the Swiss euro the Swiss is actually a very strong currency right now. So I think even if the US dollar Swiss gets this nice little bounce which we're kind of talking about right now I think overall the US dollar is going to take a dive against the Swiss over the next like five six months. Yeah. Now it's this and it's you know we'll see where the shakes out I mean I might take is that we broke that longer term trend in the dollar and that's a 18 month trend. So that's quite a trend. And what does it mean folks every time that you try to test this higher area which the dollar is doing out here today if it makes it it makes it but it doesn't make it that's another indication you know you test you test you test we've already tested it twice it's failed twice we'll see you know what ends up happening here. And you know it just lines up the supply versus the demand right I'm right yeah so that's where the really basic fundamentals come in line there. Yes no doubt and I guess you know in our case I mean if we went back you know 10 years Teddy I mean everyone was worried about the deficit now and I don't think I can confine can find a conservative fiscal in our government right. Right I mean you know the bottom line folks is that you know on the Internet if you could rewind some of these things and you can folks OK I mean 10 years ago you know everyone's worried about yeah we have too much debt well the printing presses have never stopped and they've exploded higher and sometimes would even you know I hear even other analysts say that well this can't go on forever sometimes I think well why can't it. Well you know what you said something's really interesting there Tommy you've been you're the big equity guy and think about this remember like when there was a crash of twenty nine there was only the Dow right OK in 1987 there was the S&P 500 right now you have these multiple indexes multiple industries we have the aerospace industry alone that could dwarf everything in history as far as the stock market's concern so every other business could collapse we could have a total like depression going on and the stock market might elevate to levels we've never ever even thought of that's interesting yeah no I listen that you know no for sure there's no doubt and that's where you know if inflation is creeping in that's where you absolutely can have higher numbers even though folks you know bottom line out making what they made if I learned anything when that whole Zimbabwe deal happened I remember us watching that Zimbabwe stock market folks before their currency collapsed the stock market went to the moon and then of course when it collapsed they weren't even higher but that was a lesson I think for anyone right you know a number is basically arbitrary you know it's what that number could buy you right more than anything right otherwise you have you know the depression like you had in Germany in between World War One and World War Two yeah pretty intense man well listen folks you know a man that Teddy if you've missed Teddy Teddy did a couple of Dave shows last week they were fabulous shows Teddy we really appreciate it man thanks a lot those were fun OK man you have a great one safe one of course you look forward to speaking the next Wednesday thank you thank you man stay right there folks Tommy and I are coming right back we have the Dow right now let's see Dow's up six and has next flat S&P's up four and a half are coming right back


Okay, perfect. Yes, welcome everybody to a quick input on digital fair trade and how that can be a potential game changer in the area of digital work. I already had the chance today to pitch the organization that I'm coming from, Digital Alliance, and it was something where I could pitch three minutes and then get 15 minutes of feedback. I really enjoyed that, not talking too much but also getting feedback, so I hope it's okay if I if I don't use the 20 minutes slot only of blowing information on you but maybe take 10 minutes to give you some input and then we make this a conversation, questions and so on if that works for you. Yes, so digital fair trade, what is that about? Don't be surprised. What I'm showing you here is not a perfectly presented, a perfectly prepared presentation. This is actually a report which you can find also on our website digitallions.co which we wrote together with the World Fair Trade Organization. Yeah, sorry, awesome for the intro. My name is Jan Fedler. I am the co-founder of Digital Alliance based legally in Germany but our operations are mainly in Kenya. What we do is we train young people in graphic design, animation and web development to then market their digital services online on a fair trade basis so we create opportunities in the rural areas of Kenya under fair trade conditions. So yeah we wrote this report together with the World Fair Trade Organization and yeah I'm just using this report a little bit as a red rota faden how you say in German to guide us a bit through but don't be worried about the small text and stuff you're not meant to read all this. But if you want to go dig in later you know there's a report you can find the details over there. Maybe a quick question in the beginning who is familiar with the concept of fair trade? Who is not? Okay good and then that makes it a little bit easier. Yeah maybe to start in the beginning the concept of digital fair trade is really about bringing the digital bringing the fair trade principles to the digital realm. Why? Because there is there's a bunch of opportunities that come with the with the digitalization and digital work in terms of digital platforms, outsourcing platforms such as Freelancer, Fiverr.com Upwork some of you might know them so there's lots of opportunities that come with these digital work platform where you can sell graphic design where you can sell other digital services and work, transcription services, translation services, data entry, anything. But there's also lots of challenges that come with it. So the idea of bringing fair trade principles to this digital realm is really to ensure that we can take the good from these digital work platforms from generally the concept of digital work but forego the downsides the risks and the negative aspects. Maybe digital work in numbers you can see here the number of cloud cloud work platforms and has increased from 50 in 2008 to 283 now globally two years ago. So this this area of digital work and digital platforms is really rising massively. It's a global phenomenon of course and as some of you might have guessed a large part of this is taking place in Asia, in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines. These are the largest suppliers of online work. Yeah maybe not surprising many of you know Indian outsourcing companies you get many of you might get emails if you're in the working context emails from Indian outsourcing companies. Yeah so that's not too surprising. So let's jump straight to the benefits and opportunities of digital work. Yeah I'll be trying to be quick here so we can really have some time for exchange. So I'll really be very brief and we do the rest either face-to-face or you read the report later on. So this the main opportunities really of these platforms are work opportunities right a person in Kenya like the people we work with before these platforms arise or the opportunity to work even without an online platform but just like we do by by finding buyers from the global north matching them with people in Kenya to work on a website. There was no chance for for this type of work without the internet so and this this type of digital work so it's a huge income opportunity for for many people around the globe that's probably one of the greatest advantages. It is also an opportunity for social inclusion you can have people with disabilities you can have women or parents in general taking care of their children is a very flexible type of work if you design a website you can do it from home you don't need to come to a workplace necessarily. So it gives lots of opportunities like you know COVID has also shown this to us in in the global north as well. It even provides some opportunities for employee protection because of you know the transparency that is that comes with digital markets and platforms in general you can see maybe how many hours did somebody work how long did he lock in into systems and so on and maybe some of you already guessed that there are problems with this transparency and and data protection issues and so on but in theory there's also opportunity to protect employees by by digital means and you're tracking of working hours and so on and so forth. These were just some examples of the students we work with or graduates who are now web developers graphic designers. Yeah so coming to the downsides one of the main downsides is probably the unpredictability of of of your income and the insecure employment this this type of very flexible work some of you might know the term gig economy so you jump from one gig to the other you don't have fixed working contracts so that's that's a downside so flexibility always comes with these two sides. A big thing is that this digital work market on these platforms like Upwork Fiverr is pretty much unregulated or little regulated so we don't have good labor laws labor regulations in this field and it's only just emerging that players like the international labor organization are pushing for more protection in this area so because it transcends national national boundaries you have problems about taxation social security evasion and paying people not paying into their social security accounts and so on and so forth. You also have unfair conditions on these platforms these platforms are often optimizing for their consumers for the buyers so they are kind of discriminating the sellers there's usually more sellers than buyers so then there's a race to the bottom effects where too many sellers out compete themselves and prices go very much down you don't have nice cooperation mechanisms where the where the sellers could you know maybe come together and agree okay we don't go beyond a certain price which technically would be very easy on a platform but the platforms don't do that yeah so I think I have to jump about a lot of this but I told you you can read it up unfair payment is an issue yeah so I guess I really I leave it here showing you some of the pros and cons and can maybe maybe just say two more words on what we do at digital sorry digital lines so that you see how do we do it what is our approach so on the top left you see see our brand and our logo so yeah we do training of people in in northern Kenya young people around 18 to 20 years old and we train them in web development graphic design and animation and then either support them in building freelancer careers on such platforms such as Upwork Fiverr and so on or we take them into the agency which is fair trade verified so we have the world's first fair trade verified agency and what we did this together with the WFTO basically going new ground here and so that means we do pay people fairly above the local living wage which is not so difficult in the domain of websites and a design but we also provide fair conditions like prepayments so if we work on projects together even though the client has not yet paid us we pay our project people participants we provide good working conditions we our campus is completely solar powered we invest into education we invest into a woman empowerment so you can read it all up there's a list of 10 criteria that you have to fulfill if you are a fair trade player yeah and I didn't go as fast as fast as I want but I hope this gives you a glimpse of an idea of what fair trade in the digital domain can mean and yeah now I would really like to see if there's any questions thank you I think we have another mic I can also come round or you can also speak with other Mike maybe yes please Mike is coming thank you I'm Björn and I'm trying to formulate my question here but basically I'm thinking of fair trade in terms of like you bring jobs to Kenya right and and you educate them also to do this high-skilled job I guess you could consider it and maybe it's a hard question but how do you let's say more high-skilled job is still sort of linked to the global north or like Europe or or such like because of maybe a more inclusive university system or such but how do you limit us from taking their high-skilled jobs if there is any in Kenya I mean that can also be if you think reverse like we can work digitally with companies and and products and services in Kenya right and and to some extent you could see that like with Google and Apple and such like they they work with digital services globally and sort of can I guess out compete in the local markets also did you see my question or I mean it's a bit difficult I heard a little bit of the brain drain problem that you talked about that we use their talents yeah or rather that there is still there is still a gap between sort of the education levels between like industrialized countries and developing countries and yeah I mean you I guess you have to push a lot also to invest in education because it's a lot about the skill not about where they are or such like I mean a Kenyan could work for Google if they have the right skill right so yeah yeah I mean on the brain drain question it's exactly one of the goals we have to stop the brain drain we because we enable people to stay in their remote home region for example our campus we call it the world's most remote ICT campus it's in Turkana and it's not my Ruby downtown where Microsoft and Google and all of them are we are very much in the rural areas so and and yes the people work internationally but the brains stay and you know they can also work for the local market as at the same time and with their freelance and so on so there's no brain drain and on the education side yeah to some extent you said the education level is lower to some extent I don't think that's even the case but there's just less job opportunities there's lots of highly skilled people well educated but there's a high academic unemployment rate so our approach to education is more vocational training or you know start a bootcamp or a coding bootcamp like so it's a one-year very intense program but it doesn't give you a huge full five-year study but it rather shows you very hands-on how do I do a WordPress website how do I do a logo how do I you know do a 2d animations is very practical hands-on that's targeted towards income generation I don't know if that's answered your question anything you mentioned in the work is actually found on those big platforms like Fiverr so your agency is on there and what's what's your visibility the fact that you're doing all this fair trade stuff does it add value to to your workers and did you think that more could be done by other types of organizations to actually foster a need in the buyers for like getting their workforce from a fairer source so your question is like if we why we use Fiverr also or maybe you can refresh why would any of the people who buy stuff from Fiverr buy from you and how can we improve that oh yes sure yeah yeah Fiverr is actually not our main channel we tried a lot but as you say people who go there usually go by price a lot and we is hard for us to compete with India Bangladesh and so on on price so so we have to really differentiate us through our impact through our fair trade verification and that one is not so visible on Fiverr so what we dream of is actually a platform that we could call fair Fiverr or you know so we have a concept for that we worked a little bit with the ILO and other players GIZ if we could come up with such a platform but I mean you're probably tech people or some of you tech interested you can imagine it's quite a quite a thing ideally we would use some sort of open source platform model and so on but that's our dream to come up with such a platform and to to drive B2B consumers to this platform but as you said that we need to push also the consumers to or the buyers to think more about this awareness so I guess the concept is pretty new and also if you if you buy a website from a German provider you usually don't think that there's a problem to it right so you don't there's nothing bad with buying a website from a German service provider but the the main downsides more lie in this outsourcing without or without any protection through these platforms so yeah I think we need to raise awareness a little bit and our target groups are really NGOs social businesses or any business that has a strong CSR so businesses that care a lot about where does their services come from that they source so then there's a match so if you have an NGO that and we go you know go to the NGO and say look we can do your website we can do your logo they're happy because we create impact they create impact it's a good match it yeah I think I only partially answer to your question I think in theory formally we are the end of my time slot but I'm probably happy to take another one one question if anybody has okay still I hope this gave you a little bit of an opportunity to to check out something new check out digital fair trade in case anybody of you works for an NGO or whatever who needs something fair trade designed in Kenya you now know where to go to if anybody of you wants to develop a fair fiverr platform please approach me yeah and have fun on the conference thanks very much


Hi guys. So today we're going to be taking a look at how to trace an error when a JUnitTest case fails. So for our first example, we have this countOdd method. And what this does is it just takes an integer array and it should return the number of odd numbers in the array. It should also return 0 if the array is null or empty. So we have our method here and then we have our JUnitTest underneath. So let's just go ahead and run this and see what happens. So we can see here that when we run the program, we're encountering an error. And if we double click here, we can see the error is occurring in the first test. So we can now look down in the failure trace. And the failure trace is really helpful for telling you what kind of error is occurring or in what way your test is failing. So we can see here at the top that we're encountering a null pointer exception. And that's really useful information, but how then do we figure out where in the method the program is failing? What we can do is run the program through the debugger. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to add breakpoints throughout my method. And it's really useful, especially if you're really unsure about where your bugs are occurring, where your program is failing to be really liberal in adding breakpoints throughout your method. That way it's really easy to step through your program step by step in the debugger and figure out what's going on. So let's now go ahead and run the debugger and I'll just move to the debug perspective here. Alright, so in our variables, we can see we have our array data and its value is null because for the top test here, the test that we encountered the error on, we're just passing a null value into our count odd method. So let's now step through. So counter, we now have the variable counter that equals zero. And now in this for loop, we are expecting to iterate through our data array. So when we click next, you can see that the program terminates with that null pointer exception. So in this case, it's pretty easy to see what's going on. We've attempted to iterate through an array that doesn't exist because it's just null. So what we need to do is in our method, we need to incorporate some code to deal with null values. Now up here, we can see that we should be returning zero if an array is null or empty. So I'm going to include in my code also code for dealing with an empty array. So let's go ahead and write if data equals null or if data dot length equals zero. In other words, if the array data is empty, return zero. And now if I go ahead and run the program again, we can see that we're no longer getting an error, but we are getting a failure somewhere. So if we double click here, we can see the program is failing for this test right here. So again, to find out what's going on, we can first take a look in the failure trace. And we can see at the top here, we're getting an assertion failed error expected for but was zero. So what this means is that when we wrote this test, we expected the value four to be returned when we pass this array into our count odd function. But instead in our version of the function, the value zero is being returned. So clearly something's going wrong. So once again, we can run the program through the debugger to find out where exactly our failure or our bug is occurring. So first of all, what we need to do is we need to move the failing test to the top right here. And that way when we run the debugger, this failing test will be the first test that is tested. So let's again go ahead and run the debugger. So we see here we have in our variables, our data array, I'll just expand that. And that contains four values. So let's now go ahead and step through. So we have counter equals zero. We're now going to iterate through the array. And then in this if statement here, we're going to test to see if a value is odd. And if a value is odd, then we should increase the counter by one. So let's see what happens when we encounter our first odd value five. So then go here and then we can see the counter did not increase even though five is indeed an odd value. So obviously the problem with our program is occurring within this if statement here. So you can see we have if data i modulo two equals one, then the counter should be increased. But let's take data zero for example, negative five modulo two does not equal one. It actually equals negative one. So we can see here the problem is that our method is not accounting for negative values. So what we need to do is change that. So rather than this what we can do is say if data i modulo two does not equal zero, then we should increase our counter by one. And this will now account for both negative and positive odd values. So if we now go out of debug mode and run our program, we can see yay that the program is now passing all tests. All right. So moving on to our second example. Here we have a method all positive. And what this method does is it takes an integer array and it should return true if all items in the array are positive and false otherwise. So let's go ahead and run this. And when we do so, we see we encounter a failure at one of the tests. And if we double click here, we can see that this test is failing. Once again, we'll go ahead and take a look at the failure trace. And we can see that we have an assertion failed error expected false, but was true. So we expected the method to return false when pass these values, but instead it returned true. So like exactly what we did with the previous example, we're going to go ahead and run the program through the debugger. So just go ahead and add my break points liberally throughout. And then we'll go ahead and move the failed method to the top just like we did before. So you can see there really is a pattern to what we're doing. And then I'll go ahead and run the debugger to the debug method of debug perspective. All right, so we have in our variables, we have our array data. I'll expand this. Now it contains three values 10, 20 and zero. Zero is not positive, obviously. So we are expecting this method to return false. So let's go ahead and step through. So so far so good. Now we're going to with this for method iterate through our array data. So let's step through. So starting at I equals one. So data I equals 20. And we're now going to execute this if statement if data I in this case data one is greater than zero return true 20 is obviously greater than zero. So when we step through here, our program is going to return true and terminate. And this is obviously not what we wanted. So we can see the issue here is that rather than testing if a data is greater than zero, we should be testing if a value is less than or equal to zero. In other words, not positive. And if we find a value that's not positive, then we should immediately return false because obviously our array is not all positive. If we get to the end of our array and every item has been positive. So in other words, we haven't returned false. Only then should we return true. So if I go ahead and run the program now, then we should see. So we're still getting a failure, but it's no longer this test that's failing. It's this test down here. So following the exact same method we've been following. We'll take a look down in the failure trace. We see we get an assertion failed error expected false, but was true once again. So let's just go ahead and move the failed method to the top. Go ahead and make sure we've got all our break points in our program and then go ahead and run the debugger one more time. All right. So in this case, if we expand our data array, we can see that the first value in our array is negative five, which is clearly not positive. So our once again, our method should be returning false. But let's see what happens when we step through. So so far so good. Now when we get to our point where we're iterating through our array, we can see that I starts at one. So in I equals one. So the first point in our data array that we're going to be looking at is data one, which equals 10. So the program is completely ignoring the first index zero, which contains negative five. So now when we step through our program, the iterator is going to continue to increase. We're not going to encounter any negative values until finally the program terminates and returns true. Now this is obviously not what we want. So what we need to do is change our iterator so that I starts at zero. And now when we run the program, we should find that everything passes all tests. All right guys, so that's how we trace an error when a J unit test case fails. So I hope you guys found this helpful and thank you for listening.


Welcome back to this Friday. That means for new animators. And today we're going to talk about effort. Today was actually a day for another FNA, but then I saw a clip and I thought, that is really something I want to talk about as I'm changing my plans. And if you're new here, my name is JD. I have a channel that focuses on lectures like these. I do acting analysis clips. I do animation analysis clips, review reviews, product reviews, animation news, all kinds of things. So if that is something that is of interest to you, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell button. So you don't miss any of my uploads. Now, why did I change my plans? I saw this clip by Alexander Sofchenko. And if you watch this, it's super cute. It's just generally a really cute, well-known animation. But then you can switch over and it has a breakdown of the shapes, the arcs, the direction of the movements, the energy. I'm going to put the link in the description so you can watch the whole clip and you can watch the whole breakdown because it's absolutely fascinating. And when I was watching this, the thought that came to mind was, am I putting that much effort into my shots? And I know that the question, do you really put that much effort into your animation is a very accusatory question. And to answer for myself, yes, depends. So the reason why I want to make this clip is that it is really an FNA for new animators as you start your animation and you're going through tutorials, you're reading things, you might even watch some of my stuff on my channel. You have to think about your arcs and the pop and the silhouette and just all those details that come with crafting a piece of animation. There's a lot to think about. Sometimes it can be almost overwhelming of keeping track of so many things. And on top of that, you got to think about character motivations. Once you pass the body mechanics aspect, there's just a lot to do. And as anybody does animation, you quickly realize animation is really difficult to do. And on top of that, sometimes you just don't have time. So the reason why I answer with it depends. For me, I try to obviously put all that thought into every animation. But for anybody who has done animation on their specific schedule, you know, you just can't always get to it.  There's too much to put into a shot. So you have to focus on the things that are really selling the shop. There are many variables that will change how you have to approach a shot or how much you can put into a shot where the focus has to be. Big differences between doing something at home with unlimited time versus for someone with a schedule. And for me at work, it changes all the time. Sometimes I'm on shows where there's really not that much time. And this is because it's the end of a show and you just got to put whatever you can in there and do the best you can. And as everybody knows, when the deadline looms, sometimes you just run out of time. It doesn't mean that you're going to put no effort into it, but you have to make choices where you're going to put your time in and what is really important, what is less important, or you get to it if you have the time. But you do always put 100% of your effort into that. But there's a huge difference between doing something where there's a deadline versus, like, for instance, I did character tests for Space Jam 2. Obviously, I can't talk more about that project. But I was doing tests where the schedule was slightly more relaxed. Of course, you had a deadline, but it wasn't the same as here's your shot turnover. You got two or three days. Let's go. Let's finish this. Like I said, it was just a bit more relaxed where you could explore a character and do some character tests. Again, I can't say more. So when I was watching that clip by Alexander, it just reminded me of that time when I did those tests. And I just absolutely loved it because you do really think about each movement, each pose, the flow, the timing, the spacing, and why do you do this? Why is this anticipation there? Where is this line leading to? Where do you want the audience to look? There's a purpose to every frame that you're crafting, which brings me back to why this is in F&A. I'm just starting with Animation Mentor class. I have potentially new Academy classes in maybe two months. I mean, anywhere around the world, there's always a new semester starting. There's always a student that will start a new shot and will be overwhelmed with all the material, all the things they have to pay attention to and might potentially lose track of the objective and the drive to put all that into the shot. So this F&A is less about a tutorial or a step-by-step demo or anything. It's more a reminder. It's a reminder for myself. It's a reminder to anybody who is doing work right now or is about to get to work on their shot to really think about what is needed to make that shot really work. And again, there are many reasons why you can't do it. You don't have the knowledge yet to do all that, obviously. You don't have the time, you don't have the means, you don't have the rig to put in extra flourishes. I'm not saying that you are a lesser animated because you're not doing it for whatever reasons that you have that you can't do it. It's more kind of a post-it note that sometimes I do, I put that on my screen and it just has certain elements, silhouettes, appeal, pose, timing, sometimes just a reminder that when I work on something, don't lose focus of that. It could be a specific thing for your shot, character motivation, sometimes you just need that little post-it note as a reminder. And that's why this F&A is a bit different. It's not, like I said, the tutorial, it's more a question and a reminder for myself and maybe for you that when you are working on your shot and especially given what's going around in this world and we're pretty lucky as animators to do what we do, within the animation world, of course it's hard. It's hard to do things and the stress and the situation, the politics and contract negotiations and the mechanics and just the technical aspect of course it's hard, but an animation job compared to the rest of the jobs in the world is not hard, it's not, it's really have a very spoiled job. So to me, it's always a reminder as well that given what I can do, that this is a job I get paid for, you do want to put in 110% and really put in that extra effort, just because you want to make the shot look good, but also because you're aware of the type of job you have and how good you have to have that job. And it's also a reminder just for students as you do your work to look at your classmates and the other fellow students and you are looking potentially for the same job and it sounds really cutthroat but it is like somewhat competition. It's a weird word to use but you have to look at what are other people doing and what do you need to do to put your reel and your shot and everything on the same level or better than other people to get the job that you want. So the question, do you really put that much effort into your animation is for many reasons. You need to put that effort because you want to grow, you want to learn more, you want to push yourself to become a better animator. You need to put that effort in there so that your shot and your reel stands out amongst the competition. And also you can put that effort in there because you are aware of what kind of job you have that it's awesome and you want to do the best you can, you want to take advantage of that time because you know other people don't have it as well and you just want to make sure that you appreciate the time and the situation where you're in and at the job that you have to just do the best you can. But if you need help, of course I'm going to segue into this, if you need help for that to focus on, like what are the sections that need more effort? Where do I need to put the effort in? Like what do I need to focus on? I have workshops, of course, you can sign up at any time. I can help you with your shots and if you like that type of content and you don't want to miss anything, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell button. And if you have any questions about this, I know this was kind of a different FNA. Let me know in the comments, what do you struggle with? Where do you feel like you're lacking focus for that effort? Or what are your ways of really concentrating and putting that effort into what needs to be done? I'm just curious, it would be interesting to have kind of a discussion in the comment section. Was this a bit of a different FNA? So in the spirit, I'm going to take this and this goes right there on my monitor and I'm going to concentrate on putting in even more effort and that's it from me and I will see you in my next upload.


What's up everybody? It's Jason here for jaskyscasebase.com. We just sold out another MLB Playoffs Chromo Break. This double header here. 40 boxes total. 2023 Bowman Chrome Mega Box Dual Case Breakthrough Team number two guys. Remember all cart ship? And again, it is a PY team. So here are the customer names and Alan Murdov got the A's. So there you go. Rip open the first case here. Look at this. 40 boxes of megas. So it's gonna take a little bit of time, especially with just one person here. But I'll do my best to try to get this done in a timely fashion. Now the good thing is that I can kind of speed rip through a lot of the base cards because obviously they're literally just base cards in the base packs. Which kind of sucks, but I mean it is what it is, right? Um, then we just saved the mega packs for for the end. No Chad, I'm working man. That's why I said I'll see you later. No, I watched like, well I was able to watch the first half basically at home and then on the way home, on the way over here, thankfully, I did arrive like five minutes late, but on the way home, I'm on the way over here. It was halftime, so I think once I got off the freeway, I think I seen a little bit of the third before I got here, but it's okay. I've moved on already. I'm done. That's it. I just hope now USC loses.  Just so that way it gives us a fighting chance. But I just wish, honestly Chad, this is the one thing I was telling people earlier, is I just wish we both can represent the Pac-12 championship because I think we're the top two teams. USC's great, but all around their defense is horrible. Yes, Caleb is gonna make plays.  So I wish like the two teams in the north can represent, but it's not gonna happen. But we'll see. It could be a crazy season. Right at the end. All right, so we're separating the mega-packs. We'll leave those for last and then we're gonna rip open all the base packs. But uh, I mean that's how it was last year, Chad Reven. You guys got left out even though you guys won. I mean they gave it to Utah instead. But yeah, I think actually Caleb just threw an interception right now and Notre Dame I think, I think it was a pick six, was it? I mean, I think USC's gonna lose today. They've been in so many close games this year where they literally could have lost to Colorado. They should have lost to Arizona. And it looks like now, yeah, Notre Dame just scored. But uh, but now man, honestly, I was telling you that that game was so good, dude. I don't know if I ever gonna watch the game today. It was definitely one of the best games this year. I mean Good defensive play, you know throughout the game, but obviously offensive shine. I mean, I'll put it up there with that Ole Miss LSU game today. I mean the LSU Ole Miss game earlier this season when it was like a shootout was like 70 points each, was wild. Yeah, Panics man. I love that dude, honestly. I mean I always got to go out for the lefties, but obviously today I helped you suck, but I don't know it wasn't really gonna happen, but you will say Matt Oregon got to him fast. So there were times where he had to make quick, quicker decisions than he normally makes and it did disrupt the timing and props to that dude. That dude was getting killed And he still stood out there. But you know what's crazy? I didn't realize Panics was also transfer. Literally all of the best quarterbacks in college here on the here in in the packed overall transfers. I thought Panics was a home homegrown dude. Actually, everybody So this is ten boxes right here, right?  They didn't put no first base in here. It's literally all just base or rookie or rookies so We're only really gonna pull out like Corbin Adley and those guys But uh, you know, we kind of have to go through it of course. I wish I could just skip it, but some people would be like, hey, I was supposed to have 12 Corbins. I only have four and I stole them, but not that I would ever have it. Not stealing base cards, but Gotta have to go. Gotta kind of have to go through them anyway, so I'll rip all the packs and then Go through these Go through these base cards and get them out of the way guys. So again, I'm just gonna kind of really skim through them They're just base and some rookies not gonna really Take our time with most of them. Just pull out a couple of the top rookies and then move on Ripping those mega packs. I just kind of want to get rid of the base first Second time I'm gonna go through the base cards again in these next ten boxes stack up the mega packs here to the side and then we'll go through them after each case Put those over there. I'll put that stack there Those mega packs. Yeah, we're just gonna skim through it pretty fast Just kind of pull up the four or five rookies. We're gonna sleeve up So this is where all the big hits are at that you would want each one of these is five boxes. So You get two packs per box And obviously we'll go through limit family fashion, but not super fast like the face pack Stop for the hits the number of cards the bigger first We got Marco Luciano For the Giants, but it's him to one of the nine Jason Dominguez out of 150 and chase mid rough For the Red Sox Chris of that one Toronto Blue Jays that's going to Henry Colson Montgomery For the Red Sox gonna Chris and Victor Scott Nice four autographs in the first ten boxes are here so far Roger Garayas 299 and a purple Jackson Meryl for the Padres for John to 299 And Louisa turn of gold mega for the Yankees to 50 Mets is our sorry Yankees is messed up because Suscava first Felon in your hundred Vargas Gabriel Gonzales purple to 299 or a Castro Cops drugies and solace like to go rise And they ferment for the Guardians Oh Gardens is D. Y for Washington Nationals Eric also for aza case it for the Yankees all in ascensions Drew Gilbert for Houston To 150 Felon in Brooks Brennan for the Red Sox 75 Roger Garayas Ethan solace Alex Ramirez 299 All right, not the craziest autographs, but we did get a lot more than we usually do I usually only see four max Maybe five, but I think we got like six autos in this didn't we so obviously All this color So Like half the boxes have one color and then one two three four five six. Yeah six autos not bad Definitely looking for some more quality autos in the second case, but I guess more autos ain't bad either More hits out there Again, that is more on the retail side, but at the same time, you know It's fun to get some nice stuff and you could get some really nice stuff in this Mega box in the next case over and I separate the mega packs and put over here to my left And you can see from the top camera right there And we'll rip open the first ten base packs that won't go to the next ten base packs And then we'll rip the mega all together the base packs go through them and then we'll go to the next stack of base From the remaining time box. I want to get splattered or anything like that But that's the chap will be sad with me Eric, you know Just kind of trying to get through this break That's one of those like retail little sensors, you know Maybe steal something from like a store. It's okay I'll be fine I'll be fine. I actually went to a rugby match one time a little across the street from my parents house Sorry when I used to live with my parents at where I grew up I had a little cross-street with middle school in the middle school the monsters field Some of the weekends a lot of soccer clubs and organizations use it and One time a couple local colleges were using it to play the rugby matches there, so I went one time Just cool, but I'm not really interested much 10 boxes right there Okay, let's go with these 10 though. Nice. I actually haven't bought the show this year Is it on clearance already or on discount My goal is to play more video games starting next month or at least try to Especially when I'm at home has to be a discount now box. I did rip a couple of them earlier, so It will seem like a smaller stack, but it's gonna be all the base again. Our left is with a mega packs 20 more boxes of mega packs And like I said, we got six autos in the last 20 box case You can get some better quality autographs in this house And basically each stack of the belt like five boxes each Victor Scott the second autograph for the card also start us off. I with that one Victor's tourist for the Guardians purple D. Y Duno Jason Dominguez I don't do 99 for the Yankees Joe lamp for the Guardians Hello there for D. Y costo yo Henry wall caught and a Brett Beatty iconic in green Number to 99 For the Mads Richard Edwin Solano the Washington We got Tyler Locklear for the Seattle Mariners autograph Mariners, that's Jeff Walker Duno other Jason the Megan man chase the rainbow Max Smith for the Yankees to 1.99 And there we go, Ethan solace nice on card for the Padres They were one of the last few teams remaining definitely paid off now John Gaddy with the Padres and then in Breckman for Houston iconic blue to 150 through Pintar for Dimebacks Arizona Shane Special mall caught tomorrow's Purple there for the race to 299. I leave this off there Sorio For the Dodgers to 1.99 Orange Justin Crawford Wow pick pick six almost pick six. He's down to the one 25 that's Caleb second interception today Caleb's so good that he tries too hard He thinks his team needs him to be crazy good Almeida to 1.99 Corbin Carroll and Raffaella for the Red Sox when a Chris when Alan The Susca was a big prospect for them as well. I will Got a nice colors. It's about half the box as well a color and then autograph wise We had Burgala Raffaella Pintar Locklear Lamp Scott and a Ethan Salas. So that's one two three four five six seven So 13 boxes out of the 40 ended up having an autograph She doesn't seem like a lot of them, but this is a retail product. So No, it's not bad. It's officially come from seal cases. I eat them solid. Definitely was one of the bigger ones And I'm happy we hit one of those Yeah guys, thank you guys so much I'll do a quick recap of the first box again just in case you guys are just tuning in Yeah, basically these are all in there guardians mariners Down-and-backs Red Sox Phillies Yankees Ascension Red Sox Blue Jays Red Sox Cardinals Guardians Washington. There's potters there Be sure to guys Jaspys case breaks calm