So welcome to all and welcome Jenny, and perhaps we could start Jenny by asking you to give us a few slides to explain more about the cream tea project. So thank you very much over to you. Thanks Steve, thanks for welcome, welcome, welcome us. And so I will just run through a few slides to tell you all about what the cream tea project has been doing. And then I'll be introducing the team at the end, and then we'll look forward to some Q&A session with you. So hopefully the slides have come through on your screen share now. So I better start off with saying well what does cream tea actually stand for? We haven't just named it after a scone and jam because we've been working in Devon and Cornwall. Cream tea was actually coastal resistance, alerts and monitoring technologies and that's because we're a team of people interested in coastal hazards. And this project is mainly focusing on wave over topping hazard, which we see a lot around our coastline in the UK. So what were the aims of our project? Well, we wanted to develop a set of hazard monitoring systems that could provide near time, near real time information for hazard responders, but provide this information alongside existing networks that are already based around the UK. So we wanted to demonstrate that our systems work. So we've installed equipment in Dawlish and Penzance over the winter period 2021-2022. So the photo with the train line is Dawlish. You can see all of our equipment installed there side by side. So we've got camera systems, we've got a wire wall system, which is measuring the individual waves going over the sea wall. And we've also got a B scan system, which is a laser based system, measuring the beach level in front of the sea wall. And all together, we're measuring the impact of conditions at the land sea interface. But also it's very important to engage the public. And so we've also had a team of digital artists working alongside us, and they've been developing a walking app to help promote our work with the public. And it also raises awareness of citizen science initiatives in the local areas that have been involved in coastal hazard monitoring. So again, the photo is just showing our app. And here I've got a little time lapse, which is showing some of the citizen science pictures that are part of that phone app. So we have co snap posts where people make their own photos submit them to the Plymouth Coastal Observatory to help with beach monitoring monitoring the beach levels in different locations. And we've incorporated that information into this app so people can actually see what's going on at the beach, even if it's a hot sunny day and they can have visuals of the wave conditions and the changing beach levels. So in terms of technology we've had installed, we have the B scan which has been installed by Plymouth University, and this has been measuring the beach level at every low tide on both of our sites. And they, that team have been working at transmitting this data into one of their numerical models which they use to forecast coastal hazard in the southwest region. So by collecting this information we can compare it to existing networks of information about waves and water levels to better understand beach response to offshore conditions. But we can also put the beach levels in near real time inter operational hazard warning systems to improve our forecasts. So this is just one of the graphs that come from this modeling system. So the model is called our operational waves and water levels, and the black thick line is just showing the forecast from the model using a static beach level. And then the purple shaded area is showing what the forecast could look like if you incorporate the variability in the beach level. So you can see there's a range in the over topping predictions, this is for Dallish this photo, depending on what beach level you incorporate within your forecasting model. So it's very important to have the real beach level at the time of the forecast to give the best possible predictions. Alongside that we've had the wire wall systems as a photo of the bottom corner being splashed with waves quite big waves at Dallish. And this has been now casting observational information about hazards on our sites. And the British Oceanographic data center have set up an online dashboard to allow people to visualize this data in near real time. So you go to the dashboard and you can see the wire wall data and color coded as a hazard category. And below it we've also used APIs to bring in the waves, water levels and wind conditions from existing networks from the environment agencies tide gauges, Plymouth coastal observatories wave boys and also met stations run by the Met Office. So this provides a one stop shop that introduces all of the different conditions in one location so hazard responders can see what's going on. This also allows you to look at the real time information on site and compare that with forecast information just to start to understand the validity of forecast services and identify any improvements are needed. So then the final bit is getting people involved sits and science and engagement. We've developed a walking app which combines two walks one at each site, the walks are about 40 minutes and they're accessible along walkways, and they use digital art so augmented reality to visualize what's been going on at our coast and they also have a poetic connection to discuss coastal change to get people involved with what's happening at the coast. Both walks go past the coast snap post where people can put their own smartphone in the cradle and take a photo to upload it to the Plymouth coastal and this contributes to the beach monitoring at these sites. Recently we've been running walking workshops and local workshops to engage the public so they actually get involved use the walks and promote them themselves so in October half term we've just had a walking event run by Newland Art Gallery and so we've had people using our phone app. So there's already been 144 downloads of the app since July, and it's going to be maintained for the next two years and it's available on both Apple and Google stores. I think that's kind of the summary of our project. So we're looking forward to taking your questions and the people from the cream tea project he'll be joining me today, we've got kitten Tim from the University of Plymouth. So kit is an expert in coastal hazard forecasting he does a lot of the numerical predictions. Tim has a lot of experience in coastal observations and installing equipment at the beach. And then from the National Lotionography Center, I've got Lou Derek joining me so she's one of our data managers in the British Oceanographic data center. So she's very interested in data streaming telemetry and the visualization of near real time information so other people can use it. So our team of artists I have Sarah joining us, and she'll be talking about the artistic communications and her key skill is and the poetic narration that's accompanied our walking app. Thanks for listening, and I will hand back to Steve to queue queue chair Q&A. Absolutely well thanks, thanks ever so much that's fantastic journey a great introduction to this fascinating project. Thank you, everyone online listening. What what what I there's a there's a number of themes and I think we'd like to discuss really about this and so first of all we'll, we'll think about the challenge the scope of the project and then we'll move on to some of the technology that we've just been hearing about and find, find out a bit more about that and then we'll move on to the some of the policy aspects of this important work before sort of summing up. And as we pass through each of these themes, please, as Cameron has said bang in your questions into the Q&A section and we'll try and pick up as many of those as we can, but I mean, as we as we start off them perhaps thinking about the, the challenge it I wonder if you could sort of outline the, you know what are the challenges that you've been facing in, in this project what are the environmental challenges and how does that affect lives and society in the Southwest. Yes, Stephen. The challenge I guess we're really trying to tackle is, is all based around coastal overtopping and coastal flooding. Our coastal overtopping, you know is usually a nuisance, it can disrupt transport links, it can cause a hazard to pedestrians at the coast. But when that coastal overtopping gets more extreme it can lead to coastal flooding and you know that can really affect livelihoods and can actually you know cause fatalities at the coast so really we're trying to bring in new ways of foreseeing when this is going to happen in the near future, but also being able to monitor the coast in real time to say when it is actually happening right here and now. And these are both really important things because you know coastal managers and decision makers who are in charge of keeping everyone safe and monitoring these things. They can't be everywhere all the time. They don't have enough eyes and feet on the ground to you know to monitor the whole coastline continuously so you need this sort of digital technology. In order to see when these things will happen and also to say you know we've got a problem right now, and we need to take action. So that's really the challenge we're facing. Just to put some more bigger picture numbers on that as well. Sea level rise is predicted to, sorry sea level is predicted to rise, as most of us know. You know in terms of the magnitude of that, it's been predicted that we'll get about 10 centimeters of sea level rise in the next 10 to 30 years. That's quite a huge amount, you know 10 centimeters is quite small, but actually what that means in terms of coastal flooding is that potentially extreme coastal flooding could double in frequency. So we're just 10 centimeters of sea level rise we could have twice as many extreme flooding events in the next 10 to 30 years. So you know this is an impending problem that could be quite significant. And just in terms of the sort of geographical scope is it is it's just looking at the dolish at the moment. And then perhaps you could use these approaches elsewhere in future I think that's the idea is it. So I mean we've got, I guess we've got a few different layers to this one is the the in situ observations which Jenny and Tim and others will talk a little bit more about those were just happening at dolish and pensance for this this project. And the forecasting of overtopping, you know that we're doing currently happens all around the southwest of the UK. But actually, you know, the intention is in future to be able to roll this out further appeal. That's interesting. Well, you know this whole, this whole sort of exercise that we're looking at through the construction digital environment uses this phrase digital environments and I know we've had some interesting discussions with people about what digital environments actually might mean, both on a scientific level and sort of artistic level and I just wonder, you know, maybe look into your team what maybe maybe Lou I could start with you what what does digital environment mean and what are your perspectives on what digital environment has to offer your, your science and art, but collectively. So for me I think this room environment is about taking advantage of the digital revolution. It's about using that to really enhance our understanding of the environmental science. And I think when I use the phrase digital revolution, I'm talking about advances in sense, sensing technologies, taking advantage of sensors on my phones. You can also take advantage of the technologies that are used as to analyze that data and host that data as well to make that analysis effective so you can take advantage of things like artificial intelligence, data analytics, data visualizations are actually there and hardware into this as well, because that actually helps to the effective analysis. And I think if we can actually a sort of group lots of different data streams up into into into sentiment networks, then we have really great potential sort of tackling these environmental challenges, not just on a global scale, but also on a global scale so we can, we can use them in innovative ways to benefit society. In terms of our project. What we've done is we've taken advantage of novel sensing technologies and technologies like the Internet of Things. We're able to sort of group data up into APIs, essentially into API so we can actually create our, our sensor networks, and then we're able to use data visualization to actually inform communities, and not only communities. And as Jenny showed this, there's a railway network in Daulish so we're able to actually inform trans transport operators as well about the immediate risks of coastal hazards. I suppose it's a way of democratizing data isn't it with API visualizations you're able to share your findings with wide community of people really. Yeah exactly so we're able to actually use that technology and enable it to sort of help people make decisions, essentially. I'm interested you have very interdisciplinary team and Sarah I think you're as a writer and a maker, and with your, your background what's your take on digital environment and what is it about digital that helps you with your work. I think, in regard to this project. I'd see the digital environment has augmented reality so it's using both the physical reality and the sort of site specific nature of being somewhere and augmenting that with. Well, in this particular project visualization of data through the citizen science that Jenny mentioned with the coast snap so the stop, sort of stop motion of the photos that people submitted. Also, over topping imagery we use within the app, and then also using the API is that Lou mentioned to embed some of the wind speeds, the actual wind speeds of the moment into the narrative so that people are both in the situation and being encouraged to look, really sort of deeply in into where they are, and see how it can be in other experience in other, in other, in other weathers so there is this sort of your straddling two time zones as it were so you're sort of straddling a present moment kind of like really feeling the wind, the ways, and also thinking about being asked to think about and see and visualize what the, what has happened and therefore this sort of sort of split sense of change I think is very impactful from a visual in the digital element of this project so that you can sort of bring these time zones together, which hopefully kind of evokes an emotive response. And I think as well because the, the walking out is on smartphones. The, the narrative is GPS triggered so people actually have an agency within the narrative so that they can determine how fast they walk how, or how slow, when they actually get to get to places along the walk so they, I think that agency has a sense of, a sense of, yeah, sort of deepening their ability to not necessarily steer a story but certainly guide the story and their involvement in it. Yeah, they're really part of it, that's the thing. Yeah, that's it and we're asking them to sort of really become immersed in it so it's, it's an audio visual story. So that's, yeah, so that's sort of a layer on top of the walk they're already taking rather than, yeah. Interesting bringing that alongside the engineering challenges that you're facing. And Tim, we had a brief chat at the beginning about the, the scope of this I'm just wondering, you know, how easy it would be to sort of transplant these approaches elsewhere and, you know, expand, expand even the research, research topics at all. What are your thoughts on, on expanding the scope? Yeah, I think the, the project has demonstrated very effectively in the, in the Southwest how we can access data in a sort of near real time manner. And that can then be used to inform decision making around the coastline so it can help sort of coastal managers coastal response to to sort of utilize their resources as best possible. And so we sort of talk a lot in society about smart technology and I think, you know, there's a stage we could get to with smart coastlines where we have the sort of technology that we have deployed during the cream tea project but sort of embedded into our coastline. So that could be part of structures, part of defenses, and they're providing the same sort of data back to coastal managers, so that they can sort of understand what's happening in a sort of real time manner. And as I say, that allows them to sort of make better decisions in terms of their resources. So it certainly can expand beyond the Southwest. It was really, we chose our locations because we wanted to, to ensure we were in areas where we knew that we were going to get over topping.  But the rest of the UK experiences similar, similar climate so it certainly sort of spread around the around the UK a lot more. Thank you. I mean, I see I see a few questions coming up in the chat and thank you very much for those and Paul, John canning you've just asked a question there about plans to set up instruments at any other hotspot locations around the UK Tim so I mean I guess what what you're saying is that's possible but are there are there any plans at the moment within. And as Jenny briefly mentioned the sort of the components of the instruments we had out one of them was the B scan which is which is something that Plymouth has been been working on and that measures the elevation of the beach in front of a structure. And as Jenny talked about that the elevation of the beach has an impact on the over topping forecast so if we have really good information about the beach profile, then our forecast will be more accurate more reliable and ultimately more useful. So if we had them at Dawlish and Penzance we've we've got one installed in Tor Cross in south Devon, which has just been out for about a month now. And we've also got one at Hailing Island, which is looking at the back of the beach actually measures the sort of the crest height there so again it's being used by the coastal managers to to give them real time information as to how that crest is. And what this ultimately does is that it means that you don't have to go down physically go down to the beach and measure these profiles. We're very fortunate in the UK to have an excellent coastal monitoring program. But even that only provides beach information sort of twice a year. So it's very good but at the same time it's it's limited. So if you're if you've got a forecast in sort of January time, the profile that you might be using for that may not have been collected and since October or something so it improves our accuracy. Thanks Tim. And I mean, Lou I see you've got your hand up. I'm just going to actually move on to ask you a question if I may and then you can answer both at the same time. I mean I think I think thanks thanks for the questions coming in and I think maybe that's given us an idea of the scope and just moving to the sort of technologies that you're using Lou I mean it's a pretty harsh environment. I don't know whether it's the what's the most harsh the sea or the public or whatever the challenges you are but what sort of technologies have you actually got out there and by the way do feel free to answer the point you were just putting your hand up. I was going to say actually one of the one of the things that we've done, particularly with the data system and an interfacing into that data system is enable us to be able to effectively plug and play those sensors. So, in that way you can transfer the sensors to sort of strategic hotspots, essentially. In terms of the actual instrumentation out on the out on the key side there. I have to admit I don't know that much about it. And it's resilience. I've actually been told earlier on today that the dogs are quite harsh on the instrumentation as well, but I might actually have this question over to Jenny probably has a better explanation. I can see Kit's got his hand up. Kit, would you mind if Jenny has a quick answer then we'll come to you, is that okay. Jenny, please. So, and while the instruments are out there, we've got the waves, throwing water at them but also any debris that's on the beach can be thrown up in the waves so there could be pebbles, all sorts of rubbish anything down there can be thrown on it. The instruments were protected from the public so the kind of the firewall system that looks a bit like a climbing frame did have a fencing around it to make sure people didn't climb on it or climb on it and jump off the sea wall. So public safety was included within our installations. We've also had Twitter feeds running to kind of promote our work with the public to get local buy in and by also having the walking workshops the local communities knew that we were there and what we were doing. The comment about the dogs is because some of our posts are up against the railway line wall or they're up against railing so yes people do walk their dogs and yes they do like to lift their leg occasionally. So we do have the odd stray data point and so we've had to add in QC to take out random odd little points that aren't over topping but dogs walking along. There's been no vandalism to any of the systems while they are out on site and of course Plymouth had a camera up there as well so we did kind of have a bit of a visual of what was going on. And we needed to do that with the train line being there because there was a lot of safety implications obviously our kit can pose a risk if it came unbolted during the storm it couldn't go over the railway line itself. Oh my goodness yes absolutely. So I would say probably the environment was the harshest thing on the kit that was out at the beach because it is a harsh environment. Always nervous about public vandalism but actually all the locals on site being great. Yeah, so I don't know if Kit wanted to add anything else to that. I was actually just going to try and answer some questions in the Q&A. Tim got back to Steve McFarland who asked about whether we were just monitoring a single profile or the whole sea wall. And as Tim says we were measuring a single profile and you know we did actually, we had more than one while now as Jenny had been able to say to sort of just see how much the over topping varied along the length of sea wall. But there's a kind of related question as well from David Mills about developing a digital twin solution. And I kind of see these as related because you know I think ultimately to have a digital twin you need to be representing the whole you know local environment in a sort of two dimensional or three dimensional or even more dimensional sense. And I think for this project it was really about you know can we start off simple and represent the coast as a single profile and replicate what's happening to a good degree. You know without jumping ahead and trying to make to represent everything in three dimensions and you know often that ends up meaning that you have very computationally heavy models, and you have to you know have a huge data stream of three dimensional data. So we were starting simple and this project to answer that question and start with profile. Thanks for that question I was going to ask the same the same one so that was very good. And so we have technology and we have people and we have the environment and Sarah. When we think about technology and people what where do you, where do you draw the boundary between how do you how do you find the interaction between the between people and technology. And you know what was this project taught us about the way that we involve public and stakeholders with with science. I think you're muted as well by the way Sarah just hope yourself off. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah I think the question around the boundaries between technology and people obviously very, very blurred I mean I think the for me what what became evident when we ran both the workshops and the trial runs with locals was how much people responded to the turning of what might be abstract data or sort of data distant data into a meaningful story that kind of generated empathetic empathetic responses so people were suddenly seeing what might have been a very familiar environment to them in a new way and and sort of having a space to consider their own responses to the inevitability of of change and specifically coastal change I mean you know people are resistant generally to change and end all is particularly the sea wall had a very mixed response from the locals so to sort of take a walk that is, you know, obviously not one that they've done before because it has this augmented reality element to it was just was both using a site that was potentially controversial and asking them to sort of reconsider their story within it and I think that on the whole people were very responsive to that opportunity to rethink and it's a sort of like a soft introduction really to the inevitability to change and not asking them to sort of like have to intellectually compute and process so it's much more of an embodied experience because of it being a walk and a storytelling narrative and sort of this space for reflection I suppose so I think that that that seemed to be a very positive outcome I mean I think one of the issues was the fact that it's an app so it's hidden so getting the word out was more problematic and again in Dawlish it was set on the sea wall the sea wall is still being built because of the extreme environment so you know it's been it was closed for a couple of months over that time but we've got two years for people to engage in it. It seems like people have taken to it very well it's a really great great example of the project. Thank you very much for all the questions coming in and there's a question which I'm going to put to the techies here which is from Thomas Mansfield thank you for that thanks for presenting this really interesting project. Indeed so the work to create a near real time dashboard looks really useful. Can you provide any more information about the architecture or the standards you've used in building that please. Who's going to answer that. I think I can answer that one. I mean are the, the now cast data is being transmitted from the sensors, basically into being dropped essentially into an API, a data breakering API and the API we've used actually is called that which was developed by Noah in the US. And then we were pulling in data streams from surrounding environmental sensors as well to help sort of complement that and create a more comprehensive dashboard of hazard information. You're enriching the data aren't you exactly. Yeah. So the dashboard was actually just just a really sort of quick demo in a way I actually built it in bootstrap dash so using my Python skills. We've actually deployed that on the cloud as well so we've deployed it on heroku cloud. Very interesting. I think we can have a whole whole webinar series on all of these different questions. Now, another questions coming from Steve McFarland and I think in a sense that's the impetus to turn from the technology to the next theme we were going to consider which is more about the policy and the policy relevance and how we, how we reach out to the stakeholders that we have. And maybe, maybe we should start with Steve thank you for your question. Maybe Jenny this is one for you in the first instance and Steve asked do you have any examples at Dallish for example where different decisions have actually been taken by managers because of the information you provided. So is that closing the line or not closing line. The decision or any idea of what financial or safety implications are of these more informed decisions. And I'm just, you know, wondering as Steve is what the does that that information help justify the cost with with budget holders. It's going to take us time to actually be able to use our data to perhaps influence the decision. So we've got all the data, and we are in discussion with Network Rail about how we can use this data and first job is actually to look at the processes offshore that have caused over topping. And we have to remember this was a research project which was only there for one winter season. So it's not something that will be maintained at that site to become a new way of informing operational decisions because it's not there continually. So let's look at our one year's worth of data. We can start understanding the conditions when over topping occurs and start to try and quantify how much over topping occurs. We did have a system in land of the railway line as well towards the end of the project. So we can start looking at what conditions actually cause you over topping to cross the tracks and what of course it's only cross the public walkway. So we will be working with Network Rail to see if we can help refine their operational hazards safety system. But because we don't remain on site we can't then test to see what the impacts are. So it is a demonstration project. We got the sensors out. We got the data gathered and now we're working with Network Rail to see how this information could be used by them to help them. It might also be worth saying Penzance. And also the Environment Agency there are looking at kind of adaptive management for the frontage. So again in Penzance we've had multiple systems. We've collected information about spatial variability on the over topping there. And they've shared that data with Atkins, a consultant that they're working with looking at options for that site. And they're using the information to identify present day events that perhaps do cause over topping that they can then use in their numerical predictions to explore future management scenarios. And so we're at the point where we've collected the data and we're sharing the data, but perhaps an actual change or an actual decision hasn't really been made using it but we're working towards that as a goal. You've set the scene for it, haven't you? I mean I'm interested, you're mixing together lots of data from your own sensors from other sources. And one of the sources is the Environment Agency and you've just mentioned them. They must be very fascinated to see how this project develops and may help to guide some of their thinking about the way they monitor the coast of the future. Yeah, so I can see Tim's got his hand up. So the Environment Agency have been very engaged with the project. They're very interested in the data and they're regularly kind of checking their own hazard forecasting services. So they're interested in using our data to see if they can use this in their own review and validation of their services and we're sharing the data. So I'll pass to Tim to see what he'd like to add. I just wanted to sort of build on that a little bit and I think that the difficulty with these sort of research-based projects that are a short period is obviously getting sort of longer term buy-in from people like the Environment Agency or Network Rail. They've obviously got their own systems in place which are more than likely commercial systems that they're sort of paying for. And when you're kind of providing something almost free to them, it sort of disrupts things a little bit to them just for a short period and there's a sort of difficulty in trying to sort of get that engagement just for that short period that we exist. The OWL model that we have provides over-topping forecasts for about 300 locations in the Southwest and that is freely available to anybody online, including the Environment Agency. And we know that they use that as part of their risk management. So when they're looking at forecasts, they use it alongside other forecasts. It's not sort of formally adopted if you like, but it's used by the team when they've got a sort of flood warning in place. But trying to sort of get the sort of detail of when that forecast has influenced a decision and either sort of meant they haven't gone out to a site or they have gone out to a site is very difficult because of the fact that they have these multiple sources of forecasts and sort of multiple angles that they're looking at. Trying to sort of really refine what impact it's having is difficult. I think it's something that is increasingly important and the project, the OWL project was very much focused on impact and trying to sort of identify that. But it's something that is hard when you're sort of providing something for free and the client isn't essentially paying for it. There's less impetus on them to really monitor the value of it.  There's an interesting question actually. Thank you, Catherine, on this topic. And Catherine asks, do you have any views on what types of digital monitoring might be the most cost effective in capturing changes in beach profiles, a wave overtopping in the future? So it's almost a cost-benefit analysis of some of these approaches you've looked at. Yeah, I think, I mean, if I just start back on the sort of the beach side of things and we can sort of build from there, the technology isn't hugely expensive. The scanners that we're using are increasingly sort of becoming cheaper. It's the same technology that's used in sort of for self-driving cars that sort of lied our technology. So it's not hugely expensive. The difficulty is getting it in place somewhere where it can see the beach and the structure that it's able to sort of mount somewhere where it's not going to be damaged during obviously large conditions. So the struggle is power. So we ran ours as self-contained solar powered systems and during the wintertime we'd be probably having to change batteries maybe every couple of months. Some sites are better than others. So that's an obvious sort of cost implication in terms of running it and maintaining it. You know, for a system like B-Scan, it may be only sort of £5,000 to build the hardware, but it's the ongoing costs that's then needed to sort of maintain it and manage it and sort of roll that out to many sites. I think maybe Kit might want to jump in on sort of the overtopping side of things, but it's, yes, there's sort of the infrastructure is relatively cheap, but it's all the back end, the sort of the modeling and managing that that I think you'll sort of add the costs. Yes, Kit, do you chip in? Yeah, I mean, I think modeling is another way that you can have a, you know, a digital perspective on the coastline. It's obviously not monitoring. So models always have some level of uncertainty about them and they're never 100% correct all the time. So modeling is, you know, in a way it's the most cost effective way of knowing what's happening in the coast, but it's not always 100% accurate. Another thing that sprung to mind is, you know, people will often these days think of remotely sent data, so satellite data and things like that, certainly for observing coastal change. But there, you know, and while that while that covers huge geographic areas and is becoming increasingly cheap to use, there's limitations in what you can do with it. You know, there's only a certain number of passes that the satellite's over your stretch of coastline. You can sometimes have days, weeks or even months in between data points for a given location from satellite data. So, so even something like that isn't necessarily the ideal solution. I mean, one of the, so you're trying lots of different tools and techniques and approaches and modeling.  And one of the questions that's just come in here from David Mills. Thank you, David is. To what degree you're able to demonstrate that the solutions that you're putting in place in this program are an improvement on on existing current capacity. And also, if you if you're thinking about is one thing better than something else, how do you define better, as it were, as a question for you. I'm going to go at that one and other people can chip in. And so I guess we're not, we're not looking for better, we're looking at what are the knowledge gaps in data and understanding and can we fill them with new technologies. And I guess the reason there are perhaps gaps in information is because monitoring networks, they're quite low density points that you've got tide gauges around the coastline you've got wave boys around the coastline. So managing a specific site, you need the information on that site. So we're looking at kind of relocatable instruments that you can install temporarily to collect that added information but link it back to the national monitoring system. So we're trying to collect the spatial variability on a site and get more details about the individual processes. So our interest is perhaps low cost sensors and the costs come in with the staff time to get them installed maintain them, but instruments that can be put on the sites and get that site specific information to complement other monitoring. I think that's what I would say I think it would like to say a bit more on that. I think that's a good answer. And looking at the clock I wonder if we may thank you for your hand up but thank you. Maybe we could actually looking in the last sort of 10 minutes or so at the time we have. Just think about a little bit more about a sort of retrospective you've had this project it's been running and I'm interested now in some of the learning points that have come from this and Sarah I wonder if I could come back to you and just explore a little bit more about the digital environment and the approaches that we've you know we've been hearing about and how, how these approaches can actually aid the conduct and advancement of environmental science. You know what are the strengths of the sort of approaches that the cream cheese taken. And regarding how it can aid public engagement with environmental science is that it offers the chance to fuse multiple perspectives so both, and different ways of both knowing reading and seeing the world so you know you sort of combining scientific experiential data, in it sort of space and time so fusing like I said before sort of fusing these things together so it offers both a different way of presenting the world and then also different ways of or it can appeal to different ways of processing and learning from it so it isn't. So it just has that sort of multi multiplicity of layers and levels and in engagement with the world that I think enables a wider understanding and hopefully a wider opportunity for people to think and to consider what they might be facing and how they feel about it. So engagement as well with with, of course, an issue that affects us already so that's very, very topical at the moment of course with what's going on in top 27. Yeah. Thank you very much. I mean just just thinking back about Lou, if I may just come to you, you know what constructing a digital environment, what are the strides we're making in this theme and you know what are the challenges as you see it that still have to be grappled with in the future. You're on mute as well. So I think we managed to sort of address a few of the issues within the digital environment team, we've been able to now cast hazard information from a sense of network to be able to feedback to communities in real time. We've shown that we can, we can raise community awareness to system science and mobile applications, and we've shown that we can actually validate predictions about and forecast in terms of this project one of one of the things we probably do better is take more advantage of some of the analyzing technologies to take more advantage of data analysis and machine learning for example and be able to develop short time forecast, so one hour forecast that would actually be more powerful for hazard responders and for communities to see what potentially is going to happen in the short term as opposed to what is happening now. I think also the center networks on their own, probably aren't going to be sufficient to be able to tackle some of the bigger environmental challenges that we have. So, being able to interface our sense of networks with higher order technologies like digital twins, I think would be incredibly powerful for tackling some of those bigger environmental issues like climate change. I mean one of the issues you mentioned there was citizen science and it seems to me that the way this project's developed you've really reached out to people to help you with the, the data that you're collecting and and you know Lou and perhaps Tim as well it really, what is the role for for citizen science and what are the sort of pitfalls perhaps of looking to citizen science for generating data and projects like this. I think citizen citizen science is incredibly powerful because you can collect more data in more varied places. And we were talking about filling in the gaps in our knowledge earlier. I think one of the pitfalls is the quality of the data that comes through and there may be some limitations on that, which may sort of affect your analysis and your interpretation of the data. Is that your experience Tim as well. Again, the the coast snap that Jenny talked about as part of this project so that's a it's a global citizen science project. So it's started off in the in Australia and it's yeah it's all about utilizing the smartphones we will have in our pockets to take photos and monitor our coast so video images have been used for for decades to monitor coastal change. And because we've all got these kind of cameras with us they can they can sort of build that database up and so it's a really nice example of a very accessible citizen science approach. It still requires back end processing and and sort of tools in order to get something useful out of it. But I think that even if the sort of the benefits are that person reading a sign and thinking for five minutes about the coast and what is going on that that probably merits the effort that sort of required sort of for the other side so it doesn't need too much sort of output if you like for the for the benefits just in communication with the public I think to make it work and be worth doing. Yeah, absolutely. So we've heard. It's coming to you we've heard a lot about the digital approaches and how they've helped with the science and how it's been a good thing I just just wondering the flip side of that other areas or their particular scientific challenges where the digital approach, perhaps hasn't worked as well as occurred and what are some learning points from that please. I think there's, I think wherever there's an environmental challenge, you can find some sort of digital tool that will help either modeling or observations that will help but I think I think it really comes down to having the right tools for the job. I'm always tempting with, for instance, modeling to try and perfectly recreate reality and have as close to the real thing as possible but actually, that's not always the best approach. You know, the sort of modeling mantras to have the simplest solution possible that does a decent job. You know, and the reason for that is if you've got this really heavy duty fancy model that reproduces every physical process. And it takes so long to actually run these simulations that it doesn't become useful anymore. And so it's really picking the right level of detail and the right level of granularity that gives you the answer you need, but not much more than that. And because then you can start to apply these more simple models on a much broader scale. And that's, you know, that's where I think that the digital environment comes really useful is when you can apply it. You can have a lot of temporal scales. Indeed. Thanks. Thanks for that. Interesting questions just popped up from David Mills about the actual carbon footprint of some of these digital solutions. And is that a downside and I know, for example, as a project undergoing consideration and at the moment looking at the digital footprint of some of these HPC services that NERC operates.  I haven't personally, I mean, I think about it in the background because I think about carbon footprint, you know, every day now for various things from, you know, supermarket shopping to driving and traveling and all that sort of stuff. You know, I think, I think with what we're doing here, the carbon footprint is without a doubt less than what the traditional approach would be. And that's because the traditional approach was, you know, the environment agency would have to mobilize teams of people to drive out to various locations around the coast. And even worse than that, the approach before that was to actually build very big concrete seawalls everywhere. And I think actually, yeah, there's definitely a carbon footprint to digital solutions, but often they are enabling us to move away from some of those hard engineering approaches, you know, and the traditional approaches which usually take more carbon. Balancing. Yeah, very good. Well, thank you very much. I see we're sort of coming up to time and Jenny, I mean, I wonder if we could sort of turn to you to as we as we draw to the end here. I'm just just interested looking back over this project. And all you've achieved and the team to date. Can you put your finger on particular best practices that you'd like to highlight, either actual ones or aspirational ones. I think getting in touch with people early is the key thing to successful projects. It was quite short timeline that we had to deliver all of this work. So getting local stakeholders involved to be able to quickly deploy instruments was very important. Getting our team of artists involved with the scientists early in the project was also important to make sure the art actually linked to what we were doing. We're very new for us. We haven't really worked in that field before. So yeah, early communications and just having a really good engaged team has been the success of the project. Yeah, very much. I've got to ask you this just for the final question of your, if you're looking back at yourself if you were advising yourself at the beginning of the project. What would your advice be now with everything that you know. My advice would be get a lot of sleep before the project starts because you're going to be worrying for an entire year that your kids going to go on the doorless railway line. Fortunately it hasn't. Well, I think that's that's a good point to sort of bring things to an end and we it was a good news we didn't we didn't block the railway with your senses and that's good. Really thank you so much, Jenny kit Lou Tim and Sarah thank you so much for your discussion that's been really fascinating. I think we'll bring things to an end and thank you very much to the audience as well for all the questions that have come in and it's great to actually have the all of the project team to answer, answer that and have a really good discussion around what is a very topical and very important subject. You know we've heard also about this area of constructing a digital environment and of course this is something we'll pick up in in future webinars in this in this series as we move through each of the seven. We'll go from two of the demonstrator projects will move through the other five projects and hear their perspectives on on how they are constructing a digital environment. As ever the video for this will be made available shortly when I've got a moment on the YouTube channel YouTube.com slash at no digital environment. I'm sure cameras pop the pop the address in the, in the chat. And we look forward very much to seeing you at the next webinar which will be Friday the second of December. When will we discussing the sense some projects with Dr. Georgie Bennett and her colleagues, and the sense and project is all about the sensing of landscapes undergoing hazardous hydrological movements. And that will be very fascinating and a contrast perhaps to to the cream to your project. So thank you again to all the panelists thank you to the audience, and we'll draw things to a close now. Thank you very much.


Border-associated macrophages are a specialized type of macrophage located at the border between neurons and glia in the brain. They have been implicated in the pathology of Parkinson's disease, but their exact role in the progression of the disease was not known. This study shows that these macrophages are critical in the initiation of the inflammatory response caused by alpha-cynecline, which is a hallmark of Parkinson's disease. The researchers also showed that these macrophages are responsible for activating T-cells, which are important in the body's immune response. By understanding how these macrophages contribute to the progression of Parkinson's disease, it may be possible to develop new treatments to slow or stop the disease from progressing. This article was authored by A. M. Schoenhoef, D. A. Fig, G. P. Williams, and others.


Let me officially call to order the 73rd meeting of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research. Welcome everybody, and we're going to have a very, as always, busy and productive open session. Let me turn this over to Rudy. Okay. We'll begin, as our usual practice, with doing introductions. First, let me mention that we have three council members that are viewing remotely. They were trapped by the weather, David Page, Val Sheffield, and Amy McGuire. So you may hear voices from the ceiling, and it's not angels visiting us, just those three genomic scientists. Our usual practice is to introduce the four new incoming council members. This is their first meeting and their four-year tenure. We'll start with Carol Bult. Carol is professor and deputy director of the Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center in Bar Harbor, Maine. Her research interests include bioinformatics, genome annotation and curation activities, mouse development, the mouse as a model system for the study of human cancer, and model organism databases. Carol is the principal investigator of the mouse tumor biology database and the mouse genome database. She is associate editor for the journal's Genomics and the Journal of Biological Databases and Curation, and she is a former member and chair of the NHGRI Standing Review Panel, Genome G. Welcome, Carol. It's good to be working with you again. Dan Rodin. Dan is the William Stokes Professor of Experimental Therapeutics and the director of the OATS Institute for Experimental Therapeutics at Vanderbilt University. Dan's research interests include studies on the molecular and genetic basis of arrhythmia susceptibility and the variability seen in the response to arrhythmia therapies. He has a longstanding interest in pharmacogenomics and in the implementation and use of electronic medical records, particularly in the context of genomic research projects. He's a consortium member in the Pharmacogenomics Research Network and the Emerge Research Network. Dan has a meritorious service of record to NIH peer review that spans more than 20 years and includes two stents on standing study section. One of them is chair of the cardiovascular A study section. Dan also serves on the editorial board of seven journals related to cardiovascular or pharmacology research. Welcome, Dan. Dr. Val Sheffield, as I mentioned, picked the wrong time to go visit someone in Boston, so he's had an extended stay up there. He is with us on the phone. Val is professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Iowa. He is the recipient of the Roy J. Carver Chair in Molecular Genetics. Since 2003, Val has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research interests include identifying genes involved in multiple monogenic and polygenic human diseases, including hereditary blindness and deafness, hypertension, obesity and congenital heart disease. Val has also made use of mouse knockout models to perform functional studies of the variant forms of the genes discovered in his lab's gene mapping studies. Val has an exceptional record of service to NIH, including standing membership on genome G study section and the CIDR Access Committee, four years on the advisory council for the National Eye Institute, and service on the board of scientific counselors for the Eye Institute. He's also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. And we welcome Val. And finally, Jen Chenduri. Jay is associate professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. Jay's research interests are centered on technology development, particularly in the realm of next-generation sequencing technologies. Jay and his collaborators led the development of hybridization capture methods that have enabled the development of whole exome sequencing approaches. Along with Debbie Nickerson and Mike Bamshad, Jay is the co-PI of the University of Washington's Center for Mendelian Genomics. Jay has also developed methods to enable the functional analysis of single nucleotide variants to be assessed in a massively parallel fashion, and is currently working on methods that will improve long-range contiguity and haplotype resolution and sequenced human genomes. And we'll welcome Jay about one o'clock today. He had some plane troubles and spent the night in Houston. We have new staff that we'd like to introduce to the council. When I call your name, please stand so the council can see your face and get to know you. Robert Wilden. Bob is the chief of the Genomic Healthcare Branch within the division of policy communications and education. He received his MD from UC San Francisco and completed his residency in pediatrics and a medical genetics fellowship both at the University of Washington. Bob has almost three decades of practice experience as a clinical geneticist and as a medical faculty member in teaching hospitals. Bob will lead the Genomics Healthcare Branch in its efforts to integrate genomic technologies into clinical and public health practice. Thank you, Bob. Jonathan Lottempio. Jonathan is a new program analyst and a recent graduate of the University of Rochester. His senior thesis work was on DNA repair protein MUT SB. He works on the Human Microbiome Project and also supports activities within the genome sequencing program. Thank you, Jonathan. Casey Martin. Casey is another new program analyst and he recently completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee where he worked as a research assistant conducting metagenomic studies. His main duties here at NHGRI will be to support two programs, the Genotype and Tissue Expression G-TEX program and the Undiagnosed Disease Network. Thank you, Casey. Michelle Tallman. Michelle is a new program assistant working in the division of extramural operations, more specifically in the grants management branch. Before joining NHGRI, Michelle worked in the office of extramural programs and was involved in developing the training programs that are designed for NIH staff. Thank you, Michelle. Tasha Stewart. Tasha is a new program assistant working in the division of genomes and society. Before joining the NHGRI extramural program, she worked in the NHGRI intramural program as a program support specialist. We also have two new employees working in the communications and public liaison branch. Ernesto de la Guila. He is a photography and graphics art background and Chiara Palmer is a new public affairs associate and I believe both of those people are on the other side of the wall supporting the webcast. We want to welcome our Council liaison members, Ellen Giarelli, from the International Society of Nurses and Genetics, Joe McInerney from the American Society of Human Genetics, and Rhonda Schaunberg from the National Society of Genetic Counselors. We also have Mike Watson from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Thank you for taking the time to be here in person. And one guest, Ellen Fagan, is here from the Genetics Society of America. Okay. Council Minutes from the September 2014 meeting. I have to ask if any member of Council has any comments or corrections they want to make to the Minutes. Can I get a motion to accept the minutes? Excuse me in a second. All in favor? Any opposed? Thank you. Let me draw your attention to the future meeting dates. They're on the open session agenda. If you'd please share these with your assistance. If you discover any conflicts with the schedule, please contact me and more importantly, let Comfort Brown know. And now I'm going to turn things over to Eric for the directors.


So hello there, I can see quite a few of you waiting and online. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for joining us today. What I will do is take you through a quick presentation of what the global corporations and policy degree is about. And some of your questions will hopefully be answered through the presentation. And for the rest, I will be very happy to take questions if they go along. You can just pop me your questions on the chat box, and I'll chat right back to you. OK, so here goes. Thank you for your interest in the MSc Global Corporations and Policy, first of all. Hopefully this will keep your interests enough to move forward to the next step. So here goes. You've obviously chosen the GCP program because you think, so has is an extremely interesting place. And so has is probably one of the most, this will probably be one of the most rewarding and fruitful decisions of your life. So has not only has discipline expertise, whether it's in the social sciences or languages and culture or humanities, but also very, very deep and driven regional expertise. We pride ourselves in the work that we do, the research that we do and the teaching that we do on developing countries and their interaction with the developed world. So has, in that sense, is a very unique place where you get the, if you want, the other side of the global perspective, which is what can sometimes be called the global south, who want a better world, of course. And the teaching quality, of course, is extremely high. We have extremely committed teachers who bring in a lot of their field experience and work experience from the Middle East, from Africa, from China, Asia, and actually use it in their research and their teaching. And that, the combination becomes a very enriching experience for students, potential students like you. So, and the Soyuz Library, I mean, I will really not be able to give you feel of the Soyuz Library, unless you're standing on one of the balconies and looking down into the five stories of just books and books and more amazing books from all corners of the world about all kinds of really interesting subjects, academic as well as a lot of current affairs, magazines that you can dip your fingers into. So the library is also another incredible resource that so as students have access to. And we have about 3,000 online and distance learning students, just about a little less than double than that on campus. But together, our online and our campus students make up a cohort of about 8,500 students. So we're not huge, but we like to think of ourselves and we are indeed, we are small, compact, tightly knit, and therefore highly specialized. And it's very easy for us to provide fairly bespoke attention to our students as and when they need them. And the student experience in Soyuz is also quite something, incredible. You have to be around as an online student or a campus student to know that, it can be a most rewarding experience. Our online students are, as you can see, fairly spread out across the world. A fair number of first students come from Europe. Another large proportion come from sub-Saharan Africa. We have a fair amount from across the Atlantic from the Middle Eastern, North Africa and Asia. So it's a good worldwide mix in a particular cohort you are likely to have colleagues from all across the world. The last class cohort that I remember I was taking had somebody from a small fishing village in Alaska. And it was quite a pleasure for her to be part of this world and for us to take our world back to her. And that's what, it's not just an online degree but an online degree, it so has opened you up to. Really, coming to the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy, it is quite a multidisciplinary center that we have having so as. It's not your usual center which focuses on a discipline. We draw faculty and researchers from a variety of disciplines. They could be from international relations. They could be from economics. I am from, I'm my disciplinary background is economics and political economy. They could be from diplomacy. And that also makes CISD an extremely rich source of teaching and research. And the masters that we have available, you can see them, global diplomacy and two other pathways to global diplomacy, at least in North Africa, South Asia, three other extremely popular programs. One is global energy and climate policy, global corporations policy, which I'm talking to you about right now. And masters on Muslim minorities in a global context. So that rounds up the CISD offerings that we have. And of course, we also have some MOOCs that you might be interested in and we've got them listed out there for you. They can be a good sort of starter for 10 before you move on to something that's much more in the mode of a masters over two years. How does studying online work? This is something that lots of students are curious about and very, very correctly so. Most of us have been through campus experiences and sometimes we can be a little unsure about what or what the online experiences and how it translates, how the learning experience translates online. I can certainly tell you from how the teaching experience translates online, it is as rewarding. We get, when we talk to our peers, when we talk to students in the virtual learning environment, when we're discussing feedback with them, it is as interactive, the energy is as high and as a student, you want the best, I think, combinations of online learning is that you get the same content, the same enriching content, but with the flexibility to do it at your time. And that to my mind is something that is extremely advantageous about the online degree and especially the way that it's been modeled, the online degrees are modeled in SOAS at CISD. You can do the learning at your own time, but you also have a forum where if you have a question, you want to flag up a discussion, you can actually type in something and you will get a response soon enough from either one of the faculty. Or this is something that as somebody who does campus as well as online teaching regularly, you actually pick up a lot of your learnings, far more of your learnings from your peers. And you'd be surprised as to how much a source of knowledge and learning appear to be a learning can be. So you get obviously what your convener and your tutor are telling you and from your readings, but you also get to learn a lot from what your peers are putting out there. So it's shared perspectives, it's shared information, you might get hold of a reading that you didn't know existed, but is extremely important to your research, or you might actually get interested in a research strand because somebody, one of your colleagues, put in a comment or a question that made you think about your question in a very different manner. You'll be surprised as to how rewarding peer-to-peer learning can be. So you, as I said, you get the best of this mix. You get teaching, you get the content, you get the flexibility, and you get this very rich theme of peer-to-peer learning. So you get, and you get access to the online libraries of both the University of London and SOAS University of London. And a lot of the most interesting journals are available online, and a lot of the most resourceful books are actually available as e-books nowadays that goes with the wonders of digitization. And the SOAS Library actually provides you online access to a vast universe of academic resources out there. So if you think it's all flexible and you can do your own thing, well, no, that's not it. There will also obviously try and put it on. Not try. We put in structure there for you to actually help you plan your study goals. It can be flexible to the extent of what your study goals are going to be because you have the structures. We give you a proper course guide before you start. So you do the online module over two years. You take four 16 week modules in those four years along with a small dissertation module that's tacked on to the end of every online module. And then apart from your four course or subject modules, the fifth module that you actually end up taking is your dissertation module which you submit right at the end. And I must say the process of writing the dissertation is one of the most fun and one of the most enriching for students across the board, across all our online programs because this is one piece of work where you synthesize all the learning that we provide you and that you pick in your four modules. But it's also the one bit of work that's truly yours. And you are able to put in your world view what you've picked up, how you make sense of the world, of course in an academic framework and then you present it to us. So that's pretty much how, and you do have two modules in our compulsory but you're also able to choose two modules of your choice as in when the module choices open up for you as the sessions go along. So you are also able to pick and choose at least for two modules of the four that you take and you're able to come up with a fairly interesting mix of subjects by the end of your master's program.  A lot of our resources are available online at the SOAS Library and the University of London Library. So you'll never be short of resources or help because you'll have an associate tutor, you will have a personal tutor, there is a dedicated administrator for online students at CISD and of course as a program director for every program. So you're covered, you're pretty much covered with any sort of issue that you might if at all face. And the sort of submissions that you have to make a part of the dissertation, we call them activities because these are activities that you do online and submit electronically. So we call them activities. You get bespoke feedback for each and every activity that you submit. You have six through a module over the 16 weeks and not all of them, if six sounds daunting, that's not exactly how it is at all. They're small, but therefore they're intended to make you think and it's your final activity which we call activity six, which you can compare to an essay in a regular campus module. So that's how we also make sure that along with your study sessions and the academic material that you're going through and the topics that you're going through every week are also actually graded on the basis of what you've learned and what you submit. So that's pretty much how the teaching and how the examination component of it goes. And as I said, there is help throughout, right through the 16 weeks where you're taking your session. So if you have a problem, you can flag it up to your associate tutor, you can talk to your personal tutor. If you put it out on the forum, somebody, one of your colleagues who's also a student on the same module can come in and take you through a solution. So there'll always be a response at the other end waiting for you, whatever your query might be. The MSc Global Corporations and Policy module in general has actually started becoming quite popular since we had the financial crisis and since we realized just how important these global behemoths are. And it's not just in the financial sector. If you look at technology companies, if you look at pharmaceutical companies, they straddle borders. They are huge owners of technology and therefore of profits and therefore affect lives in many ways than just affecting the lives of people who consume them. These are organizations who work with government. These are organizations that work with NGOs. These are organizations that work across the interest group spectrum in any society. And that's what makes them so interesting to study and makes them so relevant to study.  They are most definitely legal and economic creatures. And of course, their footprints are across the globe. So an American corporation might be headquartered in America but it might be doing most with R&D in Europe paying its taxes somewhere else and have its biggest market in perhaps India and wanting desperately to get into China. So for developing countries which are looking to become more economically capable, more stable, provide more employment and income to its citizens, something like a multinational corporation is or could be the answer or is it the answer? That's the kind of journey that we take you through on the global corporations and policy, of course. So it's not just about studying what a multinational corporation is. It's really a multinational corporation plugged into the way it affects social life, economic life, political life and policymaking. And that's why we have the word MSc, corporations and policy because multinational corporations are shaped by policy but something that has increasingly become a subject area of research, multinational corporations are increasingly making policy or at least influencing policy. And that makes them extremely important actors in domestic political economies and in global political economy. So once you take the program, you actually have the language to engage with this kind of policymaking and it does not mean, in fact, it certainly does not restrict you to working for one such corporation. It means you can actually straddle a lot of sectors and find careers in a lot of sectors and our students have actually gone ahead to do exactly that. They work in global corporations. They work in policy. They work in the third sector. They work in NGOs. They actually even work in a lot of organizations like the young dad or the WTO. And there is actually a wealth of career opportunities because this program gives you the information and the ability to go engage in policymaking in an area that's actually affecting all our lives in a very relevant and in a very real job. So that is the MSc Global Corporations and Policy. I am very happy to take questions if you have any more questions about that. As I said, the structure of it is that you take one core module. It's no longer two core modules. It used to be two core modules. So now you have the flexibility to take one core module and three elective modules. So your core module understands the multinational corporation in a globalizing world. There's a bit of theory of what a corporation or a firm is. And then we move on to understand how the multinational corporation actually interacts with the world around it, with government. What role it plays in policymaking and affecting policy. What are the factors that actually determine foreign direct investment. And an interesting question that sometimes that probably doesn't get asked around enough which is when a multinational corporation adopts a location and another country hosts it, what are the effects on that country? Yes, we know there are effects in terms of environment but does it affect the country politically? How exactly does it help? That particular country increase its, very simply speaking, increase its per capita income. Does it actually have an input into economic growth of developing countries? Is it possible for countries to use the technology and the employment provided by multinational corporations to increase their own income growth? And which brings me to the other very interesting question. Technology is at the heart of how countries grow of how economies grow. And multinational corporations increasingly have access to that technology. What does that mean for the developing world from here on? So those are the kind of questions that your core module will help you grapple with and answer.  You can see some of them on your slide, cultural diplomacy, diplomatic systems. If you have a slightly more diplomatic bent of mind maybe you won't work for work against the commercial attache in your country's consulate or your country's high commission somewhere. This would be a really good combination. Other kinds of combinations. So you can actually, you can choose from your combinations both in terms of your academic interest as well as your career interest. Something like global citizenship and advocacy could along with the multinational corporation degree give you into a career with an NGO. International economics, you might be able to actually work with teams in multinational corporations who are moving to other host locations in the world. So you can pick and choose and come up with subjects that are most relevant to you whether in terms of academic pursuits or whether in terms of career pursuits. And there is enough from that list possibly to satisfy most people's considerations really. And again, I'm very happy to talk to these once we're done. There's something else that this online program provides you that very online programs provide you which is the opportunity to go for the CISD study tour. This happens in June which is possibly the best time to visit the continent of Europe but apart from that you also visit some extremely relevant international organizations. So you have sessions at the United Nations in Geneva, you have sessions at the organization for economic cooperation and development which is the OACD and how these sessions essentially work is that one of the students. You normally go for these study tours in conjunction with the students who are also studying this program on campus so it's a very good mix. It's an opportunity to know your actual cohort who are also on campus as well as your cohort who study with you online and students chair sessions and then these organizations and representatives who will give you a background of where they're coming from the kind of work that the organization does. It's not quite a public relations exercise because they can be incredibly candid when it comes to the kind of work they do, the limitations that they have and the advantages of working for an organization like them and their relevance. The one thing about SOAs students and I've been for half a dozen of these study tours now my time is SOAs and the one thing that SOAs students are known for are asking the difficult questions so somehow SOAs students actually bring out the best in most of these speakers who represent their organization. So this is an incredible plus to everything else that you are getting at SOAs. You not only these very relevant people these organizations it's a very good opportunity to network, to learn more, to add a practical side to what you're learning. If you have any burning questions or doubts about some of the things you're being taught you can get them validated or disproved over here and it's also an excellent chance to meet your cohort. So all in all the study tour is something that's quite a unique experience for a particular program and it's tailored to students of GCP. And you can see some of the list of organizations our students have visited and they are extremely relevant in today's world. For instance a lot of our students who came in didn't know what the World Intellectual Property Organization was but once you know them and once you realize the kind of important work you're doing with them of real disagree it actually makes your knowledge base far more relevant to the world that you'll be going on to navigate at the end of the degree really. So yes, the UNTAD, WTO, WIPO Institute of Sustainable Development, the OECD. The OECD is an interesting topic because while they represent the interests of the large developed countries the OECD also has some fairly interesting research operations across Africa and Asia and that's actually the interface which we like to present to our students when they visit the OECD study tour. The application process. I'm sure some of you have been through this by now but how it works is that we notify you within 10 days of your application of a conditional offer and of course a conditional offer is it means that we need some proof or some other information that's required before we can move on to the offer being unconditional. Supporting documentation of course you need a passport or a national identity card proof of English language if it's required certainly your transcripts. In a few cases you might be asked for references that can often happen. Maybe you've left academia for quite a while and at that time program conveners can certainly ask for references and once that's provided the offer moves on to unconditional. And your entry requirements is a minimum first degree with good grades in any subject which is equivalent to a UK second class, upper second class of course. And for this particular program relevant professional qualifications or experience are always welcome. Some of our students might have finished with academia some time ago but maybe they're working in very interesting fields in Africa or are working for SoftBank in Tokyo with about a decade of career experience behind them. We actually welcome applications from students with these kind of profiles. So as you can see and of course you have to write a personal statement. We do like reading the personal statement with some interest. It gives us some window into what you are looking for as students on this program. So I'm going to stop here because I've also run out of slides and I would be very, very happy to speak to you chat with you if you have any questions.


Really did whizzes. Okay, so we still got our floppy setup going on here where we're capturing flux traces from a three and a half inch floppy drive but I've replaced The feather m4 sandy 51 with this pink feather and not just because pink is a cool color But because this feather has an RP 2040 on it Which is a low-cost chip from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and this chip can run really fast also has a cool PIO Perforal, so we're overclocking it to 200 megahertz. Why not? We're getting good flux captures over here and When we recompiled it and we're running a grease weasel. It's just working So this is cool because now I've got two different platforms that work with this Arduino library Which is the goal to make it hardware agnostic some more people can Wire up hardware and build hardware to work with floppy disk drives and then next up Maybe we'll try this little fellow the Raspberry Pi Pico four dollar microcontroller board