This paper presents a novel approach for estimating global evaporation using satellite data. It combines microwave-derived soil moisture, land surface temperature, and vegetation density with rainfall interception loss to develop a simplified version of the prechelite, Taylor, PT, evaporation model. The model was tested on one year of eddy covariance measurements from 43 sites across the globe and showed strong correlations between the estimated evaporation and the measured values, R equals 0.80. Additionally, the model performed well in different climates and vegetation types, with an average correlation coefficient of R equals 0.83. Finally, the authors produced the first global map of annual evaporation derived from satellite data. This article is authored by D. G. Morales, T. R. H. Holmes, R. A. M. Dejeu, and others.


Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. In this lesson, we are going to talk about the moon, our closest neighbor in space, and tides, and the tides that are caused by the moon. So we have two things that we're going to be looking at in this lesson, both very closely related to our moon. The phases, of course, are what we see when we look at the moon. The moon is not always fully illuminated. When we look at the sun, we always, unless there's an eclipse, see a full sun. In the case of the moon, we see various phases, and we can sometimes see the moon as a crescent or a full phase in various phases in between. So let's start out by looking at those. And what we see is that the moon has a set of phases that it goes through. And as we look here, the moon phases are caused by the illumination of the sun and its position around the earth. And there are two things that are important here. First of all, half the moon is always illuminated by the sun, and half the moon is always visible from the earth. So if we look at our diagram here, we can see that no matter what the phase of the moon is, half of the moon is illuminated. So in a full phase, we are seeing that illuminated phase, that half. And in a new phase, half of the moon is still illuminated, but that is now the half that is pointing away from the earth, so we do not see it. So the moon phases are caused by these two things. They are caused by the fact that half the moon is always illuminated, and half the moon is always visible from the earth. Now what is not drawn in here is what part of the moon is visible from the earth. So you can imagine drawing a line straight across the moon, and that would show this half is the part that is visible from the earth. So this is the part that we can see. So at a first quarter moon, half of the moon is illuminated, and we see half of that, so we see a quarter of the moon as being illuminated. And we also have pointing towards us a quarter of the moon that is not illuminated. Now if we looked at a full moon here, we draw the same line, just like this now, pointing straight towards, directly towards the earth, or perpendicular to the earth, I'm sorry. And then the illuminated phase is now the part that is pointing towards the earth, and we would have the full phase. In between, we could get a crescent phase. So if we did this up for this one, and drew a nice line through that, now we see that less than half of the moon is illuminated, at least that we see. Again, fully half of it is illuminated, we just only see a small fraction of it. That's what we would call a crescent phase. So when the moon goes through its cycle of phases is as it orbits around the earth. So as the moon goes around the earth, nothing changes. Still half of it is illuminated, and half of it is pointing towards the earth. But the percentage of the illuminated part that we see from the earth changes. So if we start at new moon here, and work our way through, let's look at the first set of phases. These are what we call the waxing phases. Waxing phases are what occur when the moon is getting more and more illuminated each day. So that's the first set of phases as we start with the new moon here. So as we go from new moon, and as the moon orbits around the earth, it will get progressively more and more illuminated. Here we saw nothing. That's what the new moon phase means. Here we see a small portion of it. Here we see a quarter of the moon. Here in the gibbous phase, we now see more than half of the moon illuminated. And up to the full phase where we see the entire set of the moon illuminated. So these are the waxing phases, and if you see the moon out in the evening, you can watch it go through these phases over the course of just a couple of weeks. It takes the moon about 14 days to go from new moon, not being visible, to full moon. So it only, you can see a significant changes over the course of just a few days. Now the other thing we see are what we call the waning phases. The waning phases here is when the moon becomes less and less illuminated each day. Again that we start at full moon here and work our way back around to new moon. This also takes about 14 days. And in this case the moon will get less and less illuminated. So starting with full moon where we see the fully illuminated portion. The waning gibbous we see more than half of it illuminated. Third quarter we see exactly half. And then the waning crescent we see only a small portion of the moon illuminated by the sun. So we see less and less in the terms of the waning phases. So going waxing is when the moon is getting more illuminated each day. Waning is when it is getting less and less illuminated each day. And the entire cycle of phases takes about one month. So that's where we get our month from the moon and from this phase cycle of the moon. Now let's look at this entire cycle here. Here is an example of a calendar from 2005 looking at the phases of the moon. And this gives the entire set of phases here that we can see from the moon. There are two different phase cycles that we look at. The cycle of phases is what we see and that is what we call the synodic month. The synodic month is 29 and a half days. That is what we use as our month. That is the time that it takes the moon to go through a cycle of phases. And in this case you go from new moon on the 8th here and go through to the next new moon on the 6th of the following month. That would be about 29 and a half days in May that has 31 days. So going from the 8th to the 6th of the next month would then take you through this cycle of phases. However there is another month that we use as well and that is the sidereal month. The sidereal month is 27.3 days and that is the actual revolution period of the moon. How long does it take the moon to go around the earth once? Now the phases that we see, I've mentioned them when I showed the previous slide, but the phases that the moon will go through starting off with the new phase when it's not visible at all, then becoming a thin and then a thicker crescent, a first quarter phase, a gibbous phase when it's more than half, so this just means more than half is illuminated. The full phase when we see the entire illuminated phase of the moon and then we go back through it again the opposite direction in the waning phases, going from the gibbous to the quarter to the crescent and back to the new phase and starting it all over again. So what phases are visible does depend on the time of day and the positioning of the moon. So let's look at when we'd be able to see these various phases and the phase will depend on that positioning. So a new moon, for example, is invisible because it's always in the same direction as the sun, meaning that it will rise with the sun and set with the sun. So it is up when the sun is up and it's also pointing the darker side of the moon towards the earth, so it's not illuminated and therefore it is not visible. A crescent phase will always be close to the sun in the sky. So if you look here, if you're looking at a crescent phase in this section, the sun is off where the arrows are showing. So the sun is way off there, but the crescent has to always be relatively close to the sun. You will always see a crescent phase in the morning hours. So you'll see this right before sunrise or right after sunset. It is always close to the sun in the sky. The quarter phase is halfway around the sky from the sun, so it's a little further away. The gibbous phase, you'll never see right after sunrise or after sunset. It's much further away. It's in the opposite portion of the sky. So it is more than halfway around, more than that quarter way around from the sky, from the sun. And the full phase that we see is always opposite to the sun in the sky, so completely opposite. So the quarter phase is halfway around from where the sun would be. You go halfway to the quarter phase and completely around would take you to the full phase. It rises and sets opposite to the sun, so when the new moon is setting, the full moon will just be rising. And that would mean that the full moon would be setting right at sunset. So the different phases depend, the timings that we see here depend on when they would be visible. So if you are looking for a phase, if you're looking for the phase that is for example overhead at 3 p.m., that would be a waxing crescent phase. The phase overhead or closest overhead at midnight would be a full phase. At 6 a.m., it would be a quarter phase. So that's one way that you can tell whether it's first quarter or third quarter. The first quarter moon would be visible at 6 p.m., high in the sky. So if you're seeing it in the evening, in the late afternoon, evening, around sunset time, then you're seeing the first quarter phase. If you are seeing the quarter moon early in the morning, then it would be the third quarter phase. And you can also note by from here that as you're looking from the earth, opposite sides will be illuminated. During the first quarter phase, as you're standing here on the earth looking outward, you would see the right-hand side of the moon illuminated. The third quarter phase, you would see the left-hand side of the moon illuminated. So let's look a little bit about the rotation and revolution of the moon. The moon rotates and revolves at exactly the same rate. So these two are precisely the same. And that is very important. We sometimes think that the moon does not or does not rotate, and it does. Half of the moon is never visible from the earth because it rotates and revolves with exactly the same period. And that means that one side of the moon is always facing the earth. That's the side we always see. The other side of the moon is never seen and in fact was not seen until 1959 when the Luna 3 spacecraft flew around the moon and took images and sent those back to give us the first view of the other side of the moon. So even though it's our closest neighbor, it is not something that we knew about until recently. Maybe a misconception here. Is there a dark side to the moon? Well, yes, half of the moon is always illuminated and half of it is not illuminated. But there is not a side of the moon that never gets sunlight. All of the moon gets sunlight over the course of the month and all of the moon gets darkness. So maybe a better terminology is the far side of the moon that is always on the other side from the earth. So the side that we do not see. But in reality all of the moon gets the same amount of sunlight over the month because of this synchronous rotation that occurs that keeps the moon always pointing its same side towards the earth. Now the other thing we wanted to talk about here are the tides. Now tides are caused by two different things. They are caused by the moon and the sun. So they are caused by what we call a differential gravitational force in the moon and the sun. So what happens here is if you look, first of all, let's just look at the lunar tides. The most of the tides that we get here on earth are caused by the moon. So when the moon is close to the earth, if you know the force of gravity is equal to a gravitational constant times the masses of the two objects divided by the distance squared. So if something is a little bit closer, the gravitational force is a little bit stronger. If it's a little further away, the gravitational force is a little bit less. So in our image here, this is the earth. So this is our earth. And imagine the moon off to the right. This edge of the earth is a little bit closer than this edge of the earth. So the gravitational force here is a little stronger, shown by the larger arrow. And the gravitational force here is a little bit weaker. In the, if we want to look at that as a net force, what is happening relative to the center of the earth, then we subtract out this arrow at the center of the earth. And that means that what this differential force does is it exerts a force towards the moon on this side and away from the moon on this side, giving us the different tides. So giving us a high tide here and a low tide here, a high tide over here, and a low tide here. So the forces are pulling that, pulling the water away. Now why is it the water that gets pulled? And that's only because the water actually flows. The water is able to flow relative to this force, whereas the solid rock is not going to move near as much. So the water being able to flow then gives us high and low tides. Essentially here we get a high tide every 12 hours or so. Now the sun is important in this too. So let's look at another image here that shows that. And we have what we call the spring and the neeptides. So there's two different sets of tides here because the sun also produces tidal force, but only at about half the strength of the lunar tides. So what happens here is that the moon is producing a tide. It's pulling on the earth. And during a spring tide the moon and the earth are pulling together so that they will, sorry the moon and the sun are pulling together so the tides will be added. So the lunar tides and the solar tides will then be added together and give you a much stronger tide. So at the new and full moon when the moon and the sun are lined up together in a straight line then they will give you a much stronger tide than we would otherwise see. Now if we turn this around a little bit and let this look towards the other set of tides at the neeptides then when it's in the quarter phase, so now when we see the moon and the sun at right angles to each other, so now the moon is this direction and the sun is this direction, their gravitational forces are working opposite each other and they are going to produce tides that are weaker than normal that we call the neeptides. So spring tides are just high tides that are stronger than normal. Neeptides would be high tides and low tides that would be weaker than normal. So finishing up here we want to look at what we've covered here. First of all the phases of the moon depend on really the positioning of the sun and the moon in the moon's orbit around the earth. Recall half of this moon is always illuminated and half of it is always pointing towards the earth. Those two together give us the phases. Specific phases are visible at specific times of day. In the late afternoon you cannot see a third quarter moon. It will never be up, it is only up in the early morning hours after midnight. A full moon can never be seen during the middle of the day because of its positioning around the sun and for example a crescent phase always has to be close to the sun in the sky. And then we talked about tides and how they're caused by the differential pull of the moon and the sun on the earth and it is the water that moves in response to the excess force. It is the water that can actually is able to move. Well that concludes our lecture here on the phases of the moon and tides. We'll be back again next time for another topic in astronomy. So until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.


Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32 Universal Synchronous Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter Interface. It covers the main features of this USART interface, which is widely used for serial communications in embedded systems. The USART is a very flexible serial interface that supports asynchronous UART communication, SPI or Serial Peripheral Interface Master Mode, and LIN or Local Interconnect Network Mode. It can also interface with ISO, IEC 7816 smart cards, and IRDA devices. It also provides certain features that are useful when implementing modbus communications. Applications making use of the USART benefit from the easy and inexpensive communication between devices, which only requires a few pins. The USART is a fully programmable serial interface featuring the following configurable parameters. Data length, parity, number of stop bits, data order, baud rate generator, and configurable oversampling mode by 8 or by 16. You also have the option to use basic RS232 flow control with CTS or clear to send and RTS or request to send signals. The RS485DE or Driver Enable Signal is also supported. The USART supports a dual clock domain allowing baud rate programming independent of the peripheral clock or PCLK. This also allows the peripheral clock to be throttled along with the core clock without disrupting communications. The USART features a multi-processor mode which allows the USART to remain idle when it is not addressed. In addition to full duplex communication, single wire half duplex mode is also supported. The USART also offers many other features including auto baud rate detection, receiver timeout, and supports several modes which will be described later in the presentation. This is the USART block diagram. The USART clock or FCK can be selected from several sources. System clock, peripheral clock or APB clock, the high-speed internal 16 MHz RC oscillator, or the low-speed external 32.768 kHz crystal oscillator. TX and RX pins are used for data transmission and reception. N-CTS and NRTS pins are used for RS-232 hardware flow control. The driver-enable or DE pin, which is available in the same IO as NRTS, is used in RS-485 mode. The clock output or SCLK pin is dual purpose. When the USART is used in synchronous master mode, the clock provided to the slave device is output on the SCLK pin. When the USART is used in smart card mode, the clock provided to the card is output on the SCLK pin. The USART has a flexible clocking scheme. Its clock source can be selected in the RCC, and can be either the PCLK or peripheral clock, which is the default clock source, or the HSI, LSE, or system clock. The registers are accessed through the APB bus. The kernel is clocked with FCK, which is independent from the APB clock. The USART receiver implements different user-configurable oversampling techniques for data recovery by discriminating between valid incoming data and noise. This allows a trade-off between the maximum communication speed and noise clock inaccuracy immunity. Select oversampling by 8 to achieve higher speed, up to FCK 8. Where FCK is the USART clock source frequency. In this case, the maximum receiver tolerance to clock deviation is reduced. Select oversampling by 16. Over 8 equals 0 to increase the tolerance of the receiver to clock deviations. In this case, the maximum speed is limited to FCK 16. The maximum BOD rate that can be reached is 27 Mb, when the clock source is at 216 MHz, and oversampling by 8 is configured. With other clock sources and or a higher oversampling ratio, the maximum speed is limited. The frame format used in asynchronous mode consists of a set of data bits in addition to bits for synchronization and optionally a parity bit for error checking. The USART supports 7, 8, or 9-bit data lengths. A frame starts with one bit, where the line is driven low for one bit period. This signals the start of a frame and is used for synchronization. The start bit is followed by 7, 8, or 9 data bits. If parity control is enabled, the parity bit is transmitted as the last data bit and is included in the data length count. Finally, a number of stop bits, 0, 1, 1.5, or 2, where the line is driven high, end the frame. The standard frame was described in the previous slide. This slide shows an example of 8-bit data frames configured with one stop bit. An idle character is interpreted as an entire frame of ones. The number of ones will include the number of stop bits. A break character is interpreted on receiving zeros for a frame period. At the end of the break frame, two stop bits are inserted. The USART supports full duplex communication, where TX and RX lines are respectively connected with the other interfaces, RX and TX lines. The USART can be configured to follow a single wire half-duplex protocol, where the TX and RX lines are internally connected. In this communication mode, only the TX pin is used for both transmission and reception. The TX pin is always released when no data is transmitted. Thus, it acts as a standard I-O in idle or reception modes. This means that the I-O must be configured so that the TX pin is configured as an alternate function open drain with an external pull-up. In RS-232 communication, it is possible to control the serial data flow between two devices by using the NCTS input and NRTS output. These two lines allow the receiver and transmitter to alert each other of their state. The following figure shows how to connect two devices in this mode. The idea is to prevent dropped bytes or conflicts in case of half-duplex communication. Both signals are active low. For serial half-duplex communication protocols like RS-485, the master needs to generate a direction signal to control the transceiver or physical layer. This signal informs the physical layer if it must act in send or TX or receive or RX mode. In RS-485 mode, a control line is used. The driver-enabled pin is used to activate the external transceiver control. DE shares the pin with NRTS. To simplify communication between multiple processors, the USART supports a multi-processor mode. In multi-processor communication, it is desirable that only the intended message recipient should actively receive the message. The devices not being addressed are put into mute mode. The USART can enter or exit from mute mode using one of two methods, idle line detection and address mark detection. The USART can also communicate synchronously. It can operate as an SPI in master mode with programmable clock polarity or CPOL and phase, CPHA. The clock is output on the SCLK pin. No clock pulses are provided during the start and stop bits. The USART can be used in smart card mode based on a half-duplex communication. The clock is output to the smart card on the SCLK pin. It supports the T equals zero protocol and provides many features allowing support for T equals one. Both direct and inverse conventions are supported directly by hardware. The USART supports IRDA specifications, which is a half-duplex communication protocol. The data from and to the USART is represented in an NRZ or non-return to zero format, where the signal value is at the same level through the entire bit period. For IRDA, the required format is RZI, return to zero inverted, where a one is signaled by holding the line low and a zero is signaled by a short high pulse. The SIR transmit encoder modulates the non-return to zero or NRZ transmit bit stream output from the USART. The SIR received encoder demodulates the return to zero bit stream from the infrared detector and outputs the received NRZ serial bit stream to the USART. The USART only supports bit rates up to 115.2 kilobits per second for the SIR end deck. In normal mode, the transmitted pulse width is specified as 3 sixteenths of a bit period. The USART receiver is able to detect and automatically configure the BOD rate based on the reception of any one of the following characters. The received character can be any character starting with a bit at one. In this case, the USART measures the duration of the start bit from falling edge to rising edge. Any character starting with a 10xx pattern. In this case, the USART measures the duration of the start and of the first data bit. The duration is measured from falling edge to falling edge, ensuring better accuracy in the case of slow signal slopes. 0x7f character frame. In this case, the BOD rate is updated first at the end of the start bit, then at the end of bit 6. Or a 0x55 character frame. In this case, the BOD rate is updated first at the end of the start bit, then at the end of bit 0, and finally at the end of bit 6. In parallel, another check is performed for each intermediate transition of the RX line. The USART supports a receiver timeout feature. When the USART doesn't receive new data for a programmed amount of time, a receiver timeout event is signaled and an interrupt is generated if enabled. The USART receiver timeout counter starts counting from the end of the first stop bit in case of 1 and 1.5 stop bit configuration. From the end of the second stop bit in the case of 2 stop bit configuration. And from the beginning of the stop bit in case of 0.5 stop bit configuration. Several events can provide an interrupt. The transmit data register empty flag is set when the transmit data register is empty and ready to be written. The transmit complete flag is set when the data transmission is complete and both data and shift registers are empty. The CTS flag is set when the end CTS input toggles. The receive data register not empty flag is set when the receive data register contains data ready to be read. The idle line flag is set when an idle line is detected. The character match flag is set when the receive data corresponds to the programmed address. The receiver timeout flag is set when there is no activity on the RX line for a programmed duration. The end of block flag is set when a complete block is received. The lin break flag is set when a lin break frame is detected. And the DMA request can be generated when receive buffer not empty or transmit buffer empty flags are set. Several errors can be generated. The overrun error flag is set when an overrun error occurs. The parity error flag is set when a parity error occurs. The framing error flag is set when a framing error occurs. The noise error flag is set when a noise is detected on the received frame. The auto-bod rate error flag is set when the bod rate measurement failed. The use art peripheral is active in run and sleep modes. The use art interrupts cause the device to exit sleep mode. In stop mode, the device is not able to perform any communication. In standby mode, the peripheral is powered down and it must be reinitialized after exiting standby mode. The STM32F7 devices embed eight use art instances. Use art 1, 2, 3, and 6 have a full set of features. Instances 4, 5, 7, and 8 do not support synchronous and smart card modes. This is a list of peripherals related to the use art. Please refer to these trainings for more information if needed. General purpose input outputs, reset and clock controller, power controller, interrupts controller, and direct memory access controller.


Welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 in the beautiful downtown studio offices of Think Tech Hawaii in Halalulu, Hawaii, Pioneer Plaza. We're a show that focuses on success stories in Hawaii, both the companies and the individuals. There are a lot of challenges in Hawaii. There's a lot of challenges all over the country. For some reason some people seem to make it work here and they do well. And so we try to highlight those individuals and their stories and hopefully pass some of those secrets along to the audience so that they don't have to make the same mistakes. Today we have a special show every quarter. We try to have a little bit of a commentary talking about some of the current news items and how it might have an impact on business in Hawaii, possibly across the country. And today we have two guests. I've got Deilin Yanagida, who is very active in the HR industry here with Vantagio. And then we have Ray Tsuchiyama, who has lived in Hawaii almost, I think maybe even longer than I have, and has had the opportunity to see how I grow and develop and pretty much transform itself over the years. So we've got some very good interesting perspectives this year, this show. And we're going to kick it off with a topic that's been in the news the last few days and ask our guests to have a little discussion about North Korea and what's going on with North Korea and all the saber-rattling that's going on. Is there going to be any impact to Hawaii with all of this noise? Ray, why don't you lead off? Well, the North Korean crisis is not only a national, international kind of case here, but also a local one, because it affects travel. And travel is where it's all about in Hawaii because of tourism. And I think the hotel industry has to be very careful kind of monitoring the situation and because people in the Midwest or throughout the U.S. and Japan worry about the threat to Guam, and they think Guam is close by Hawaii, that there may be some kind of retaliatory action, some kind of event that happens in Hawaii. So even within the hotel industry and business in general, I think there's also, this is a wake-up time to look at, really to review disaster management also, to look at records, how redundancy and record-keeping and even evacuation of key people to other parts. So there's a lot of things to go into, but yet I think the business in general in Hawaii would rather not this really increase in, I guess, severity because it will affect tourism. Yeah, there's certainly that possibility.  Do you see any impact from this North Korea situation? I think that as citizens of Hawaii, we're very tuned in to the activities of anything that occurs with regards to Asian and how it affects our Asia markets, especially with the impact on tourism. But I think that people are still sitting back to see what the reaction should be. Right, to kind of see how it plays out. I know we've gotten some information to us from various sources about, you know, some of the missile defense capabilities that we have in Guam, that we've got a number of ships in the area that Japan has some ships. And of course, South Korea has got a lot of missile defense capabilities there. So whatever North Korea can come up with, there's probably multiple layers that's going to stop anything making it this far. So I think you're right. I think there's been an awareness, but not overly concerned at this point. However, it can escalate. And I hope that people can have a calm head about themselves and stop some of this cyber rattling because I'm not sure that that helps very much. You know, I am also a little bit concerned about, you know, the concern so much, but maybe even the positive results of China and Russia actually not being very vocal about this. You know, they're already supporting some of the economic sanctions that we've imposed or the UN, I should say, imposed with the agreement of Russia and China. And now with this war of words going on, I'm kind of encouraged a little bit that China and Russia are staying out of it to some degree. Well, China and Russia both want to see stability on the Korean Peninsula. That's number one. Volodolstok, a major seaport of Russia, is barely 100 miles from the North Korean border. And of course, the Yellow River is the border with China. Now, North Korea, though, is a fiercely independent country and kind of sustained itself after the Korean War, which was a devastating one back in 1953. There is no peace treaty between North Korea and the rest of the U.S. and South Korea. But they want to really be seen as a player in the global landscape. So we have to see what happens. But again, again, you're right that China and Russia are very close to whatever happens in North Korea. That's right. Well, in Japan is too. And there's a lot of interest, very high levels of interest, watching this very closely. And so I think there's probably at this point, a lot of things going on behind the scenes that we're not really proving to, you know. So let's hope that this pass, that there are no bloodshed. But I think in some ways, from my perspective, former military guy, I think we're just kicking the can down the road. At some point, something's going to have to be done. So next topic, maybe a little less controversial. Last week, we had a very interesting topic. We were supposed to talk about taxes and some of the different things that we're going to be coming up and maybe the special legislation or maybe even nationally in tax reform. But Tom Yamachika and I got a little bit tied up on the taxes as it related to heart and the rail. And we talked a little bit about the issuance of the bonds that's going to be done, which causes some concern. But Ray, you had a perspective on that. Because of all the mechanisms, several mechanisms to raise more money. It's called taxes. And one dealing with the GT, other with the hotel tax. So I go and of course, the widely not seen option of the property tax that I want to go to that level. But again, if there's also the possibility of bonds and everybody thought that it's easy to do bonds and just go out and raise money to sell bonds. But as Tom Yamachika pointed out, it's not that easy just because you're in the bond arena working with SEC. They want to see a lot more transparency in compliance to rules, regulations, finances and so forth. So it is not as easy as people thought according to Tom. Well, and I've worked for public companies in the past and I have been an auditor and I've audited public companies. And I know a lot of the disclosures are pretty comprehensive. There's always going to be secrets, but the intent is to disclose anything that could have an impact on the financial statements. And I'm I'm afraid that we haven't been that open and transparent so far with what's going on over there. So I think there's a lot of surprises that people are going to learn. What do you think about the and I know you've lived in places that had very sophisticated public transportation you know, Japan and you visited other places. You know, what do you think about the mass transit in Hawaii is are we ever going to be able to have something comparable to say Japan or Singapore in Hawaii or is our demographic or geographic too much different? It's a very complex question because in Japan or many other parts of the world, you brought up mass transit to areas that really didn't have development. And then you have development and that kind of aligned with mass transit so that you bought a place because it was near a station. That was the key and got you to where you worked or shop and so forth and came back. And that was so the same company that built the railroads or subways owned and developed areas around it for shopping balls, condoms, the housing and so forth. It was a complete deal. And this is something quite separate happening here. And if you look back in time, it's not it's not a recent phenomenon. We had trolleys and trams all over Honolulu until the post-war era. And they went up Wailai Avenue. They went by the Elks Club. There were trolleys that went to the edge of Fort Shafter. So there was an extensive trolley system and also up in Manoa and Nuanu. But those are ways to sell lots in that time, during the 20s and 30s, to be part of the development of Honolulu. Again, you're coming to an area of really of a big question. Is it about real or is it about transit? You see, that is a larger question. And how do you plan a city with a transit system or options? And because sometimes in among transit experts, they say that if a city can't get bike lanes, right, how can they get a huge mass transit line? Well, but we're also trying to pass laws and regulations for pedestrians. Apparently, we still can't get that right either. So there's, you know, and I'm being sarcastic, but, you know, we seem to have an awful lot of rules and regulations and a lot of things are being forced down our throat, whether we want them or not. And I think because we've already got a lot of this development in place and it's already there, we're we're trying to connect some of these places. But is it the most economical and efficient way to do it? You know, we had one of the best bus systems in the entire country. Are you involved with the buses? I was on the board of the bus, you know, but I didn't have anything to do with winning those awards, but, you know, we did and I was aware of it. I watched and we had some very sophisticated management. We had good ridership. It was a well oiled machine and we won a lot of awards for that. We I wish we could have spent more time looking at what we were doing successfully and see if we could enhance that or compliment that. And whether that included a a ground rail or a raised rail or some combination of supplemental routes, you know, I just I'm not sure that we went through the proper exercise to do that. And so now we're going to be stuck with this thing. Now, you and I both live on the east side. When they build this, whether it goes to Middle Street or even if it goes to Alamona, how much benefit do you anticipate getting out of this when your commute is from east side into town? Zero, zero. But yet you're paying your fair share of that, you know, that there's always going to be questions about, OK, when when we see rail done, what will happen to the increase in taxes that we were given and are we going to use that to pay off the debt, the deficit in it? And what's really going to happen? Well, I think experience will kind of lead us to the answer. You know, once taxes go up, it's really hard to bring them back down again. And once the rail is up and running, but wherever that route terminates, there's going to be a deficit that's going to have to be funded. And there's going to be bonds that have to be repaid. That money's got to come from somewhere. When we come back from break, we need to take about 60 minutes. We're going to talk a little bit about another topic that may also lead to maybe some new opportunity in Hawaii. And so we're going to take that 60 minute break. Please stay tuned. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Let's fast. Hi. For the day of the big game, watching at home just doesn't feel the same. What on the list is who's going to drive? It's nice to know you're going to get home alive. Plan for fun and responsibility. Choose the DT. Captain of our team, it's the DT. For every game day, assign a designated driver. Aloha. My name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to Business in Hawaii. We're here with Reg Baker. We're here today talking with two individuals that have been on a show before, De Lin Yamagita and Ray Tsuchiyama. Both of them bring some very interesting and broad experience to the table, and we're talking about various commentary type items this week. Our next one is going to be medical tourism. Now, I know, Ray, you've been looking at this a little bit. I know I was involved with it when I was at HMAA. And De Lin would be interesting as a layperson, maybe, to get your perspective on this conversation. So, Ray, what is it that interests you about medical tourism? Well, to me, medical tourism and to be very simple to define it is that you can combine a medical procedure or treatment with a vacation for yourself and your family or friends and so forth. And usually, in real life, it means people from advanced countries going to another country to get a treatment for much cheaper in their home country. And those countries, maybe in Thailand, Singapore, even for people from some places like Europe to go to, even to the US or China and the Middle East. And my whole interest is that medical tourism for a resort-like place like Hawaii could actually increase the level of medical treatment for the community. And that's what I'm trying to kind of focus on. But in order to do that, you have to create an infrastructural ecosystem of combining services, just like a concierge at a major hotel, a resort, plus very good high quality treatment and procedures with equipment and medical doctors and nurses all in one place. And that could really increase flows of wealthy individuals from emerging countries like China and other places to come to Hawaii and pay into increasing and developing medical care for the entire community. And what's really fascinating about this is that a lot of these procedures are being paid for not through medical insurance where rates are negotiated, but through cash payments. And so for the facilities and the providers that are performing the services, they get full pop, which can be very attractive to some some businesses. You know, and before people discount this too quickly, I think it's interesting to note that in Thailand, they've got some of the most advanced medical facilities and some of the best trained physicians who as a general rule get their training in medical schools from either France or from the US. And the hospitals are all brand new. They've got the best equipment, the best facilities. They're they're operated by some of the best technicians right out of training. And they're built seamlessly with some of the resort type of facilities in the hotels that allow for a better recovery period. So it's it's popular. It's being done is being done by, you know, in various places in the world. And we might have an opportunity to explore here. What type of medical procedures are we talking about? Well, it's a full range. They can have micro surgery sometimes or plastic surgery. Some procedures that are elective like I said in the US that health insurance don't cover. And they would go about seeking those kinds of procedures or operations. Another area that's quite big, especially for Japanese, is called Ningen-Doku, which means a complete physical in many, many, you know, complete MRI, body scan, body scan, uncover any, you know, early evidence of tumors or any type of cancers or anything like that. And it's a two, three day program. And they have a lot of tests and measure all kinds of impact on your body from either from age or you take procedures. So I think that's that's an awesome area where it's preventive. It's not a procedure, but you go in and say, check me out. And then you have a vacation after that. Yeah, so there's various types. So are these are these services primarily from private physicians' offices or centers? Are we talking about our larger hospitals? They're larger hospitals and they're in like some Raffles Hospital in Singapore, which is quite famous, Bumurgaard in Bangkok. They're also in Seattle, Virginia Mason, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, world famous, that attracts a lot of people in Europe and the Middle East to that center in the middle of the US. So it is it is also again a full kind of intensive from intensive care to preventive to all kinds of areas. So again, it is it is a world where what Red said, when families come, they buy things. They go to hotels, cars, duty free restaurants. So they add to the economy. And that's where the tourism piece comes in. But in addition to just doing the basic procedure, you know, the recovery facilities are much nicer. They they're their suites like in very, you know, four or five star type hotels. They've got maids, they've got the skilled nursing professionals there to help you go through the recovery. And, you know, the cost of labor is much less in some of these places. And so you get a lot higher level of service for a lot less price, which makes the procedure and recovery be a better experience. So if there is a climate in Hawaii for medical tourism, how would that impact services to sage myself as a resident? If we if we shift to looking at a tourist experience, if you will, right? Because we're talking about packaging. How would that impact services to me as a citizen? Oh, I think it you will see better equipment. You will see better doctors who will see better nurses or doctors and facilities.  So that is a boon for the community. I feel that that hospitals get upgraded kind of and doctors and nurses also. So I don't think again, if you have one person who pays all in cash, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, again, that that's a good, you know, uptake to to a hospital finances. Well, and another, you know, remember that there's economies of scale and scaling going on with this so that if there are these medical tourism patients coming in, it may take these facilities 70 percent of their capabilities. You know, they may be operating at 70 percent of capacity. There's a 30 percent piece that they need to do something with. So there could be some very high end facilities with very skilled professionals that would be able to make some of these facilities and these procedures available to the local community. It may be a reduced rate to use up that unused capacity. Well, Red, you have a vast experience in in the health care industry from HMA. So what as as a consumer of medical services in Hawaii, should I be concerned that now my position is going to choose to move into that room because they have more opportunity to to make. I guess there's always going to be some possibility of that, but a lot of the procedures that are being done are elective procedures. And these are not normally going to be covered by insurance anyway. So it's going to have to be the the patients that are able to pay cash for these. You know, will some physicians possibly translate? They might, but they've got their own patient base already. They've already got the relationships. They've got their business right there. And this model is different from what's currently existing. So I think what you might see is new physicians coming into the market or coming out of the school, going over there and doing this, which doesn't address our physician shortage. But if there is an opportunity in Hawaii for physicians to make a lot more than they might be making on the mainland, I have a feeling we'll see people moving over here to be able to fill those positions. And overall, we're going to see a higher level of physicians in the marketplace. So we know that the tourists would definitely be attracted to Hawaii and what it offers as a vacation destination anyway. So if you were to layer on, you know, elective medical procedures, it could be, you know, something of interest for them. But what about the the physicians, the medical community in Hawaii? Are they open to that? Well, I think I think they're very open to it. It's just that I don't think they have experience what benefits medical tourism can bring to the hospitals. But you have a very interesting question. It's not a medical tourism has several parts to it in that hospitals just do not think of themselves as branding or marketing agents globally. So they have to tie up with companies with expertise in those markets, number one, to attract those people to come in. And they really have to do an audit of all the things necessary to keep that person in a comfortable, culturally aware language, aware, sensitive kind of experience. When they check in, is there a person who speaks their language? Nurses also, how about their entertainment on the TV? Is it in their language? How about food? You know, they allow food or special Chinese food for breakfast. You see all those questions. So there are opportunities for people in the community to become consultants, to become interpreters, to be part of the ecosystem, to provide condos, you know, and drivers and guides. There's all kinds of opportunity for a lot of different elements to come together to help support this new industry. Now, we've only got about 30 seconds left and we're going to have to wrap up. But I think this is certainly an industry worth exploring. It's got some potential. It's a clean industry. You know, it could help this, you know, our community, our Ohana all by itself. So there's a lot of reason to take a closer look at that. There's hurdles. There are things that we have to address. But, you know, let's let's take a look at it and see we can start on a small scale and grow big. All right, this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. Today was our quarterly commentary. We we covered some interesting topics all the way from North Korea to medical tourism. So we've, matter of fact, maybe the conflict in North Korea might trigger a need for some medical tourism. But we broadcast live every Thursday from two to two thirty. We highlight successful individuals and businesses. Hopefully you've learned something from today's show and we look forward to seeing you again next week. Allah.


Okay, so we'll make a start now. Thank you for coming along to the FOSS in Research Lightning Talks, which is hopefully going to be the first of two sessions of Lightning Talks we'll be doing today. Our first presenter, start when you're ready. Yeah, thanks everyone for coming. My name's Jeremy Murphy. This is my first ever Lightning Talk, so please be gentle. I've done a bit of research in the biomedical sciences and being a free software fanatic, that's always tried to use it. This is my supervisor for my computational neuroscience honours year. And he wrote his own neural network modeling software called Parplex, which if you're familiar with neural network modeling, I guess the main package is called Neuron, which I think comes out of Duke or Yale University or something. But yeah, he decided to write his own, I think, because he wanted to have some particular parallel processing or something. And it was open source, but I think I was a third ever user of it. So you can imagine that it still had a few bugs. And so even though it was open source and free software, because he hadn't actually put it on the web, like on SourceForge or something, no one else has ever used it. So it was a bit frustrating. I spent a lot of my year finding bugs, asking him to fix them. Yeah, that was a bit annoying. I sort of, looking back, I wish I'd used Neuron. I would have had more confidence that it was, I don't know, that the main features would have been more reliable. I'm glad I put my phone on silent to just ring. And so for the plotting of the data that I got from that neural network modeling, I used Matplotlib, which is a Python modeling library. That was pretty good. I didn't really know what else to use. I'm not sure whether it's a MATLAB style one or whether that's something else. Maybe you know. So that was that project. And I also did some QSAR work, which in pharmacology is quantitative structure activity relationship. So that's about, you know, you've got a set of molecules, a set of drugs. You do some analysis on their structure. A lot of them have, and you haven't, and they're known biological activity. And then you've got a new molecule with an unknown biological activity, and you can make a statistical inference about what its activity will be. Which is quite fun. Initially I used this, I think it's free, where I had like a demo version or something of this chem sketch software. So just for drawing molecules and saving them into a file format. If I was doing the same thing again, yes. I used Avogadro, which is free open source software. For some of the molecular dynamics, we used Hyperchem, which, well, as an aside, is now available in Linux. That's definitely commercial software. And I think Avogadro actually has a lot of the features of Hyperchem now. Probably not all of them. And I didn't have time to look up all the different free molecular modeling, I mean, molecular dynamics software. So again, this is a QSAR process. I sort of had to get all the drug structures as files, and then run them through, we wrote our own software just to actually do the algorithm that is, you know, the protected intellectual property. But I realized afterwards that a lot of it was published publicly in the literature. And so I made a plug-in for Open Babel, which is a program for converting between molecular file formats. And I have the feeling that no one will ever use it, but it was just something to do. And then we used Weka for the data mining at the end. Of course, I use OpenOffice for writing my actual papers and so forth. And Citation, I use Bebus, which is okay. I don't know. There are other things like something called Zotero for Firefox. I didn't have time to really look at it. I'm really interested to know what other people use for Citation in free and open source software. Because Bebus, it kind of did the job. Where is it added open here? You know, it's kind of biomedically focused, because you can do a search through PubMed for what you're looking for. But yeah, it wasn't as great as, what's the big commercial citation package in note, yeah. And that's my story of using FOS in research. Thanks. Okay, so who's next? Oh, if you want. Yep. With the open source bibliography management, I've used Bibsononomy. And then there's another program called Jabriff. So you can just highlight the Bibtech on the web. Okay. And then it'll just go straight on their server. And then you can sync it with your local client. Jabriff has a module that you can pull all the references down and you can just tag them. So if you're writing a particular paper or there for your thesis, you can download a particular tag. Okay, so we'll switch to our next presenter. Feel free to grab a lollipop or something like that from the front if you want. They've given us a whole bunch of food for speakers to take. So all right, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Conrad Sanderson. I work for our company called Nikta and that's its logo there. It's an Australian Research Institute. And what we do is research in machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision, life sciences, et cetera. One of the labs is based at UQ. And what we're doing in that particular lab is working on surveillance, or automating surveillance to be more precise. During our research, we were doing a lot of stuff under MATLAB. And then we try to use a bit of Octave. The problem with those two approaches is that when you write stuff in MATLAB, if you want to get any speed out of it, you eventually have to convert it into some other language. And usually the choice is C++. The problem with this is that you need to redo a lot of the matrix handling. You need to redo a lot of the matrix decomposition handling of your own memory allocations, delegations, et cetera. We were actually quite frustrated with that. And we decided to build our own matrix library, but not just your usual run of the mill one. We use a lot of template techniques in order to combine a lot of operations into one. And the end result is what you see on the screen. This is a project on Sourceforge. The address is rmr.sourceforge.net. This is licensed under the LGPL, which means if you want to use it in our commercials or commercial or proprietary programs, you're more than welcome to. This has had about roughly 17, 18,000 downloads. It has an active community of people contributing bug reports and patches. If you guys are familiar with LA pack, or the linear algebra package, that's the standard, use or de facto standard. We provided interface to that as well. And this also allows you to drop in high performance replacements for LA pack. And some of these includes the Intel math library or the AMD math library. So that's it. If you're interested, let me know. I think there's a switch on that. What about now? It's more a question of whether or not the people with headphones on can hear you. Can the people with the headphones on hear me? You ready?


Well, good morning Good morning Good morning. Welcome to USIP. My name is Michael Yaffe. I'm the vice president here at USIP for the Middle East and Africa programs and We are in delighted to be welcoming you all here For an event that we are co-sponsoring with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office of the United States and Nadia's initiative. I Want to extend a very special and warm welcome to Nobel Prize laureate and founder of Nadia initiative Miss Nadia Murad who is visiting us here at USIP for the first time. I Also want to welcome Representative Stanley Kow and thank you for your partnership in this initiative in this event today Welcome to all of you. Welcome to ambassador Kelly Curry to special advisor Knox Thames to special representative Max Primeroff Max I think you're Max and Everyone else who has joined us To those of you who have been to USIP before welcome back to the Institute and For those of you new and this is your first time to the Institute welcome And let me briefly introduce who we are The US Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 Has an act of Congress to establish an institution devoted to the prevention the mitigation and resolution of violent conflict We are we work throughout the world to basically take analysis of conflict And apply it in ways that we can help to resolve conflicts And we're working throughout the world in Africa in Asia in the Middle East and Latin America And it and during this time one of our most significant programs one of our longest programs deals with Iraq We have been in Iraq since 2003 continuously and We have been dealing with many of the key issues in Iraq Including the plight of Iraq's minorities As I said, we have been working in Iraq on various conflicts to resolve through negotiation and agreements Including those that have been dealing with the issues of the respect for Iraqi minorities We have been negotiated in areas of Tikrit in Hobaja in Talifah And we are working with directly with the communities With their leaders with the civic leaders with the representatives in Including engagements with the government of Iraq and with the Kurdish regional government This work as I said includes supporting religious minority communities as they recover from the devastation left behind by ISIS We are working currently in Ninova province and working in many of the towns in those areas And we have been expanding our dialogues in Iraq particularly through the alliance of Iraqi minorities We work with partners on the ground We work with all with the minorities to empower minority groups including Asedis We work with the Christians we with the Shabaks We work with all the all the minority groups in order to empower them So they have a say into their own future to help them and resolve internal communal disputes It has now been over a year and a half since Iraq defeated the military presence of ISIS And yet many people remain internally displaced many Asedis remain displaced and other minorities Are basically languishing in I internally displaced people camps with little prospect of returning home in the near future Today we are fortunate and very pleased to welcome a leading advocate of the Asedis people a victims of sexual and gender-based violence a noble prize laureate UN goodwill ambassador Miss Nadia Marat Miss Marat was a survivor of the 19 of sorry of the 2014 genocide against the Asedis people She will speak about her work with Nadia's initiative Which is dedicated to rebuilding communities in crisis and affecting and advocating globally for victims of violence Before we hear from miss Marat, we will also hear from our co-hosts the honorable Stanley cow Representative of Taiwan to the United States He would be followed by Ambassador Kelly Curie from the State Department office of global criminal justice and Then we will hear from Knox Thames special representative for religious minorities at the State Department Miss Marat will first speak directly to the audience and Then she will present a certificate of an appreciation to the government of Taiwan for their contribution to Nadia's initiative She would then sit down with our director of USIP's Middle East programs Sarhang Hamasai for a moderated discussion And now a little housekeeping You should have received cards when you came in for writing down questions Which we will collect for the moderated discussion If you are tweeting about our conversation today, please use hashtag Nadia Marat USIP in your tweets So now please join me in welcoming our event co-host Representative cow. Thank you Well, thank you very much. Mr. Yoff and Nadia and Ambassador Curie all distinguished guests colleagues and friends As a proud member of the global coalition my government welcomes the continued Significant progress made in liberating territories previously controlled by the ISIS however Victory in combat is only part of the story and the Taiwan is committed To working with all partners all partners the United States like minded countries and International NGOs and making every effort necessary towards civilization and humanitarian assistance And speaking of the global coalition General John Allen is currently visiting Taiwan with a policy dedication and Of course, he was the one help organize this global coalition some five years ago And he couldn't be more excited and proud With this momentous gathering here today at USIP and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo When elaborating a free and open Indo-Pacific strategy not long ago and He specifically described Taiwan's road as and I quote a democratic success story a Reliable partner and the force for good in the world and unquote and We appreciate and believe in its words because that's what Taiwan today's Taiwan is about No standing tall and strong and as an unmistakable and indispensable partner in the world both Bilaterally and multilaterally to address global and regional challenges freedom of religion Ebola pandemics Women's empowerment disaster relief and humanitarian assistance and as 2019 also marks the 40th anniversary of Taiwan Relations Act the rock solid In a cornerstone and a legal framework of relations between our two countries and Also an enduring partnership between United States and the Taiwan and our joint endeavor on this and all those fronts had become an even more significant So it is the major reason why we gather here today as we are deeply inspired and touched By miss Nadia Murrow's the courage and his advocacy and for her suffering people and Taiwan's half million US dollars contribution Maybe Small and small amount, but it shows a much bigger bigger heart on a part of our government and our citizens and Taiwan is among the first in a coalition to answer Secretly Pompeo's call for help so during the February ministerial and The quick note is that over the past few years Now Taiwan our government and NGOs have provided over 33 million US dollars in cash and in kind humanitarian assistance to a displaced refugees and the returnees in the region including hundreds of temporary housing units a Mobile hospital funds and equipment for demining operation So wish to have a work cut out And to accomplish our final goal But please rest assured that Taiwan is more than willing really Unavailable to help and thank you very much for having me and if I have the honor to have Ambassador Curry to speak Thank you very much Thank you Stanley for inviting me up and thank you to US IP and Tech row for asking me to join you today It's such an honor for me to be here to represent the State Department today at this important ceremony Recognizing Taiwan's contribution to Nadia's initiative that will allow it to continue its incredible work on behalf of the Yazidi people and It's incredible efforts to help work for a world. That's free of genocide and mass atrocities It this is a huge personal and professional honor to be participating in this ceremony and to be here with you all today When Taiwan first offered to make this contribution to Nadia's initiative It was at the defeat ISIS coalition for administers meeting in February of this year And we're so thrilled to see that this donation has come to fruition today This gift is a testament to the shared values Human rights and respect for the dignity of all people that underpin are important and enduring friendship with Taiwan It's really meaningful to be a part of this because when I first met Nadia It was while I was working with Ambassador Nikki Haley at the US mission to the UN where we were fighting to End ISIS reign of terror in Iraq and Syria and where we were fighting to get the UN to take action on behalf of the Yazidi people And it's incredible. It's been just amazing to watch How Nadia has taken the the personal trauma that she has suffered The the horrors that she and her community have lived through and turned them into this amazing amazing initiative and Into and use her story to tell the story of her people in a way that has touched so many of us It is she's she's not just a voice for her people now but a voice for all people who who are survivors of atrocities and She no one could have been more deserving of the Nobel Prize And it was it was thrilling with along with so many people who know Nadia and who've seen her grow into this incredible Role to see her receive that award. It couldn't be a more deserving one for a more deserving person we share a common commitment to The idea that when a conflict ends it's not really over until the healing of the people affected by that conflict begins and We share the common goal of holding the perpetrators accountable, and that's what my office at the State Department does I'm currently working in the office of global criminal justice what used to be called the war crimes office and The animating idea of our office is about accountability Accountability for the most serious grave gross human rights abuses perpetrated in the world genocide Crimes against humanity and war crimes and ethnic cleansing These are the issues that we work on day-to-day, and it's very rare that we have someone like Nadia to work with who understands so personally the trauma and the the challenges of dealing and coming to terms with these mass atrocities But also has the savvy and the skills to actually do the things that need to be done to get out there and advocate for her People in a way that she has done. It's just truly amazing, and we know how important Accountability is and we're not going to stop working for it And that is the pledge that I continue to make to you and that the department will continue to make We know why it's important We know that it shows the survivors and the victims that the international community not only takes what happened to them Seriously, but is taking action to make sure that there is justice for them And we know how important it is to help them rebuild their communities and move on to a brighter future So at the State Department, we have a really long history of working with the Yazidi community and other Religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East We've publicly acknowledged that ISIS is responsible for genocide against the Yazidis Christians and Shia Muslims in areas Controlled and crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing against those groups and in some cases against Sunni Muslims curves and other minorities This year we've provided two million dollars to the UN investigative team for accountability of Daesh unit had Created by the Security Council in 2017 to collect store and preserve evidence of ISIS atrocities that may amount to war crimes crimes against humanity and genocide Our contribution to unit had helped to help it to begin its exhumation of mass graves in Sinjar and That is that an event that was incredibly important for the Yazidi people And we're so pleased to have been able to support that and what it represents to your community Last year Congress also appropriated five million dollars to our office to support grants to be awarded in an open and competitive Process to promote accountability in Iraq and Syria and we're working really hard to get those Funds out to NGOs and other organizations that can help build the important evidentiary cases and help the healing to move forward in these communities The United States has also provided millions of dollars to vulnerable communities in Iraq for infrastructure repair The restoration of services and livelihoods and Psychosocial assistance to the victims of ISIS to help them begin this difficult work of rebuilding their lives Tech Rose contribution today hopes to continue this effort and we're so pleased to be able to join in them today in marking this important gift Now I'd like to introduce my colleague my very good colleague and our next speaker Knox Thames Who's this at the special advisor for religious minorities and the Office of International Religious Freedom? Thank you so much Well, it's a great honor to be here this morning. I'm gonna thank USIP and Tech Row for organizing this important event I also want to thank Ambassador Curry who's a great advocate and ally in the State Department as we work together to promote justice and accountability Around the world including in Iraq where the genocide that ISIS perpetrator has left deep scars and Will need a long time to heal as was mentioned. I serve as the special advisor for religious minorities in the State Department We believe that all people regardless of religion including religious minorities Should be able to practice their beliefs freely and peacefully without fear of violence or retribution No one no one should suffer violence because of his or her religious or ethnic identity Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened in 2014 When ISIS swept into northern Iraq and targeted Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minorities ISIS killed or captured thousands of Yazidis and displaced Hundreds of thousands more many of whom remain displaced today During my multiple visits to Iraq into the region I've seen the vibrancy of these religious minority communities that have existed there for millennia But I've also seen that they live a precarious and fragile existence The spring witnessed two very Encouraging events in northern Iraq the marking of the Yazidi New Year and Easter The Yazidis were able to celebrate and the Christians were able to gather and we saw heartwarming and encouraging stories about Communities becoming revitalized But while ISIS has been removed The crisis is not over The crisis is not over for Yazidis as long as thousands of Yazidi women and children remain missing Either enslaved or murdered I've met with the Baba Sheikh the Yazidi spiritual leader and with survivors like Nadia and Family members who are still looking for loved ones And we are committed to working with the Yazidi people to find these people and to see them return to their families The crisis is not over for minorities if ISIS members are not held accountable Justice means more than perpetrators being tried for terrorism against the Iraqi state It means where possible convicting ISIS members for their crimes against individual minorities the torture kidnapping rape enslavement or murder The crisis is not over if the human rights for religious minorities in Iraq is not respected in law and policy and by all members of society And the crisis will not be over if people cannot go home We've received encouraging reports about attendance at Easter masses exceeding pre ISIS numbers at major cathedrals I also have personally visited Yazidi temples when they've been reopened at just by the hands of the ZD community coming together to Rebuild and restructure their places of worship We've also launched two programs where we've sent the Smithsonian Institution to help train Yazidis Christians and other minorities about steps they can take to preserve the religious culture However for displaced civilians including many Yazidis Christians and others the simple act of returning home has yet to take place Because of the physical and economic insecurity in liberated areas Now we're very encouraged by the opening of key roads in northern Iraq But we want to see more and I want to highlight that the personal commitment of the vice president of this has been transformative and also highlight the great work of my colleague max primarac who's been sent out to northern Iraq to lead that effort and so Max is an example of the US government's Commitment to remain diplomatically and programmatically to help recreate conditions where religious minorities feel like they have a future in their ancestral homelands We cannot do this alone, which is why we're so grateful for partners like Taiwan And others for supporting the important work of groups like Nadia's initiative, which is making a tangible impact on the ground Here in Washington. We're also working multilaterally to advance religious freedom around the world Last year secretary Pompeo convene the first ever ministerial to advance religious freedom Bringing together more than 80 governments and hundreds of members of civil society and religious communities We will host a second ministerial in three weeks And we hope to continue making strides towards a world in which all people including religious minorities are free to follow the dictates of their conscience Nadia will again be a speaker At the ministerial, but I now it's my great pleasure to introduce her to you all so we can all Hear her share It's a great honor and privilege to always be around Nadia She is a great example of someone who turned unimaginable pain into hope and action Nadia is a world-renowned human rights activist and advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence Last year she became the first Iraqi ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize She has raised her voice around the world including at the United Nations Security Council and in 2016 became the first ever UN goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking Most importantly, and I think you'll see this when you hear from her. She is a woman of great and deep character With a passion for helping those in need Her courage is an inspiration to myself and will be for all of us So without further ado, please welcome Nadia Marad Thank you Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be here with everyone Appreciative of all the efforts of everyone here that has been supporting the easy-to-cause And I'm happy to talk about these issues today here I These are important issues of Existential for the minorities in Iraq and in that region that need to be discussed There is support for minorities, but further support is needed to make sure that minorities remain in that region Like nox mentioned just now no one should Be targeted because of their fate because of their religion or because they're a woman and that's what exactly what happened But this is ongoing because Minorities like easy these and Christians and others in that region are facing Many challenges and are slowly disappearing from that region and this is something that we need to work I Many families of the easy-to-community are still Facing what happened to them in 2014 included in my own family for example I have two nephews that are still missing in captivity somewhere my sister-in-law and nine of my brothers who Were killed by ISIS. We still don't know when we will recover their bodies and bury them But still despite all this we fight as a community our community is Resilient and we have been fighting to face these challenges and help our community recover from this genocide Again, I'm happy to be here. We will discuss some of these issues on the panel in a minute But I would like to thank the government of Taiwan for their support to the easy community Yes Yeah, we will talk about these issues, but at the moment I guess Nadia will Hand out a certificate to ambassador cow if you can please go on the stage. Good morning again My name is Sarang Hamas. I eat the middle the director of Middle East programs here at US IP I'm gonna be I have the honor of moderating this session Dear Nadia, it is really really an honor for me to be here on stage with you As you can probably tell I'm here with mixed feelings One side of me is here with the feeling of great pain that we are here to talk about Recovery from genocide heinous crimes that continue to happen. I Remember my Grandparents telling me about these kind of horrible crimes that happened. I remember them happening in 1988 perpetrated by the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the bath party only few years before you were even born and I Saw them continue continue mass murder at the camp spiker and then genocide against the SD's and the Christians in 2014 perpetrated by ISIS and Unfortunately the the mindset of and the conditions for genocide continue On a positive note, I have a lot of I have a great feeling of hope admiration and respect for you and survivors of genocide Because your story is A story of human resilience at its finest. So thank you for what you do Before I start my questions I wanted to probably a note you may have realized that I were used the word SD not Yazidi and Probably one takeaway for you is that actually Yazidi is not the correct name of this community and One takeaway is if we can start by trying to change and call them how they call themselves So you will not hear the word Yazidi from me if it slips. I apologize, but is the is how they call themselves so Nadia, I mean you've Alluded to through this, but can you tell us a little bit more in your own words? What Nadia's initiatives seek to accomplish and what challenges you face and the SD people face as they try to recover from the heinous crimes of ISIS Thank you First of all, the crimes that the EZD community and others faced in August, it will be five years. And these communities are still, most of them are displaced and facing challenges to return home. And one of the main challenges is the security situation. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish government to resolve some of these security issues so that people can feel safe to return home again. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Kurdish government to resolve some of these problems. We have worked tirelessly with the Iraqi government to resolve some of these problems. to go and join them and return to their homeland. So you sort of went to the second question that I was going to ask you. And you've mentioned, I think, in a prior publication that about 350,000 SDs remain displaced. And for those who do not know, that's the vast majority of the community. So that is an important thing to consider. So to get to voluntary, safe, and sustainable return where people can go home and stay there, you mentioned a number of barriers, securities, and the attention. Who do you think should address this? Where do you see some of this that is at the international community? Is it the government of Iraq? Is it the Kurdistan regional government? Who do you think should address those problems? I think it's about 350,000 SDs left in the country. I think it's important for the people to go home and stay there. At the beginning, I think it's important that we have the right to do what we have to do. We have the right to do what we have to do. But I think it's important Salawan and Sara, in no dissatisfaction with the Doree Shingal or Khalkamu Biminel Kampada, Tapeen Salam. When we started this work and advocated for the Yazidi community and other communities in Iraq, I knew that the legal side will take some time. It takes time to bring perpetrators to justice. Also on the reconstruction side, we knew that it will take some time. But I never thought that it will take more than five years for those Yazidis that are in IDP camps, whom are about two hours away from their home, will not be able to return home. The work that Nadiya's initiative does, our goal was to shift focus to Sinjar and these areas to the ancestral homeland of the Yazidis. So what we did is we worked with both governments, the Iraqi government, the Kurdish government, for example, for the past two years and some parts of the Yazidis, the homeland in Sinjar, have been liberated more than two years. But so far we have not been able to manage, for example, to establish a local government for Sinjar. And when we talk to many of the NGOs, they are facing challenges because there is no local government in Sinjar. And the issue of security and local government combined prevents real change in Sinjar and reconstruction of the Yazidi homeland. We talk about the security and the lack of services in Sinjar prevent people from returning home, but at the same time, in these camps, in these IDP camps, they are facing many challenges, including lack of access to proper education, health services, and then at the same time, about 95,000 Yazidis have already immigrated from Iraq since 2014. This community will slowly disappear from the region no matter what, and a whole generation will grow up without proper education, without proper services available to them. Thank you. There are a question that I'll get back to you later, but a couple of specific questions from the audience that came, one you already answered in your remarks, but two related questions. One is, says, what is the role of the United States, the Iraqi government and the KRG in returning the women who were taken by ISIS? What is the role of the Iraqi government and the KRG in returning the women who were taken by ISIS? We have worked with our partners, including the U.S., provided information, trying to send the beginning of this crisis to help rescue some of the women in captivity, but to be honest, there has not been any real initiative to rescue Yazidi women from captivity from any side. For example, recently, even after Mosul and Talfar in these areas were liberated, we know for sure that there are some Yazidi children, still with some of the families in Talfar and Mosul, we sent papers to the Iraqi government asking them officially to let us appoint some Yazidi volunteers to go and look for these children in coordination with the Iraqi government, not only in Iraq but on the Syrian side and at a whole camp. But so far, we have not gotten the permission from the government and these volunteers are not able, without permission, to go and look in the camp and these houses and look for these children. So this is one of the issues that have not been resolved. Thank you. Another question that I have from the audience says, what do you think is the best way to hold former ISIS fighters accountable for those who are from European countries? So we have been working with some of the European countries, specifically Germany, France and UK, about this specific issue of ISIS fighters that committed crimes against Yazidis and others and including some of the women that joined ISIS in Iraq, a specific case that we are currently working on with our lawyer Amal Clooney in Germany against ISIS's wife and her husband that killed the Yazidi child. But the hope of the Yazidi community is that they will see these ISIS fighters in court and they're ready to testify as some of them have already testified and they're ready to testify again against these ISIS fighters. Thank you. So if I take you to the broader question, I mean, even before ISIS, the SD community has been reporting grievances related to lack of services for the longest time. I remember one single issue that kept coming up again, that there is a need for a hospital in Sinjar. And there was other grievances about political representation, that some bigger parties and actors were hijacking their plight and their issues. So obviously recovery from ISIS is not enough because even before ISIS, there were challenges. So can you speak a little more about the aspiration of the SD community, not just as a recovery from ISIS, but in Iraq, in a country, to live with dignity? Can you speak about that a little bit?  I did not know much about politics. I didn't know that the representation in the government and these issues, but I knew for sure that after I learned about some of these issues, in terms of the hospital, there was only one hospital, small one in Sinjar, that covered the whole region for Yazidis and others that were there. The services were not available, those who needed special treatments, they had to travel to other regions and it was only one hospital that was later actually destroyed by ISIS at the moment. Education, lack of education, adequate education for Yazidis was also an issue, especially in the villages, these remote villages before 2003 and after that, after the fall of the regime of Saddam. The representation in the parliament, I know that Yazidis have not been politically marginalized actually in terms of representation in their own areas, even in Sinjar prior to 2014, we saw that more and more it was going to take away from Yazidis and others were coming to represent Yazidis. Well, to connect that with the issue of the mayor at the moment, Yazidis are not able to appoint their own mayor in Sinjar at the moment since 2014 and since the liberation from ISIS, they have not been able to resolve the issue of just the local mayor. So if I may actually follow up on that local level of issues, one of them can tie it to security. Security today, obviously the Iraqi society militarized in response to the conflict with ISIS, so many communities either expanded any armed groups they had or formed their own. So if you look at the SD community, there are different groups in Sinjar and other places that people have joined those groups. For security to improve from the perspective of the people of Sinjar and the SD community, how can security be provided where the SD people will feel safe on their homeland? There are security challenges all over Iraq, not just in Sinjar, but Sinjar in particular. The challenges are bigger because it has been neglected to buy the Iraqi and the Kurdish government to find out a solution between the two sides. And as a result, Yazidis have no choice but to join these armed groups. For example, guarding those mass graves has been done by Yazidi people who stayed there after ISIS attacked and fought ISIS for many years. We've officially asked the Iraqi government to recruit Yazidis, not just Yazidis, but Muslim Christians, whoever has returned to Sinjar, whoever was there and fought ISIS for years to recruit them into the official Iraqi security forces so that they can leave these militias and they can take up the security of their own areas, but that has not happened yet. Thank you. I have a question from the audience. Can you tell us about how the decision was made to allow women survivors of ISIS sexual slavery to bring home their children born of sexual violence? And a follow-up question is that how are these children being treated? Yes. Just to give you a little bit of context at the question, there was a time where the SD community had a problem about how to deal with those children who were born as a result of the heinous crimes that ISIS perpetrated. The community had a problem about how to deal with it. So can you tell us about that internal discussion of the community and how are these children being treated today? Yeah, so this is something new to the SD community. A small religious minority with traditions of thousands of years. This was a challenge, of course, but the SDs, the spiritual leaders of the SD community welcomed all the SD women that were enslaved by ISIS or the children and welcomed them back. There has been a discussion about children born of rape, of course, but this is not just a SD issue. It's also from the Iraqi government side where these children, even if the father is ISIS, has to be registered as a Muslim by the father, not the mother. And it's very difficult for Yazidi families to have these children be registered as Muslims in their households. This is something we have been working with the religious leaders in the community to figure out this issue. But at the same time, this is not only a responsibility on the Yazidi community. This is a responsibility of the Iraqi government and the international community. These children that have been born of rape from ISIS, Yazidis are not able to take care of their own children in these camps. So how can you expect this community to be able to take care of the children that are born of rape? I have another question from the audience that says, are you in favor of establishing a separate criminal court to deal with the crimes of ISIS? I believe that the work that they are doing, especially in the United States, and I think it's a huge step in which they will have a special court to deal with them. And other than that, the state should also be able to create a law that is able to eliminate the crimes of the Kurdish and Iraqis that they are trying to do this. We should also be able to apply a law Yes, so after the UN team was established, the UNITA team collected the evidence of these mass graves and the crimes against the Yazidi community and other communities in Iraq. Our hope is, and we have been working on this with them, to try and figure out if we can establish a special court for these ISIS members to be tried. We know there are thousands held by the Iraqi and the Kurdish government, some of whom committed crimes against Yazidi women and the Yazidi community. So we would like to see that happen and have them tried for these specific crimes against the Yazidi. Thank you. I think we're approaching the end of our time and I have two other questions that I wanted to ask. I mean, you've previously expressed that your greatest fear is that if the international community fails to act, that your community, the SD community, will cease to exist as a community. And from, I mean, we've talked about different threads of action, but from your meetings, you go and meet with the leaders of different countries, different important institutions. Do you feel that the international community is doing enough to help prevent that outcome of the Yazidi community, the SD community to cease to exist? And what more can they do to prevent that outcome? Yeah, so yes, this has been my fear that since the first day that we fear that our community will disappear from that region or from our ancestral homeland. And there has been some positive outcomes and some progress that we have made with our partners. For example, we have worked on demining Yazidi areas with the support of the US government and the French government and also support of the US government, the British and others to establish the UNITAD team to collect evidence of these mass graves in Iraq. And these are very important and positive steps, but at the same time, it has been five years already and if this takes longer and longer, the Yazidi community will disappear from that region. And this is not only the responsibility of the international community, it's also the responsibility of the Iraqi and the Kurdish government to work with the international community to make sure that religious minorities, Yazidis and Christians are able to return to their homes. So you sort of answered another question that I was going to ask, but to expand a little bit on this, with the ministerial coming up in mid-July and Nox mentioned that. What would you like to bring to their attention? Not only from the perspective of the Yazidi community and the religious minorities in Iraq more broadly, but also in your role as UN goodwill ambassador. So we spoke at the ministerial last year and there were some good discussions, but this year I hope to see some results that we take some urgent steps to protect these religious minorities in Iraq because these minorities are disappearing from that region and if we do not act quickly and swiftly this is going to be an issue and these minorities will not be able to return to their homes. My hope is that we can work on steps including helping these minorities to return to their homeland to provide protection and services for them so that they're able to live with dignity and safety. These minorities have suffered genocides and they've suffered hardship, but they're the ones that are still facing hardship after the liberation of these areas. After ISIS was defeated they're still suffering and this is something that we need to do. Well thank you. We've come up to the end of our time and we ran a little bit over and I know that there are other questions from the audience. Unfortunately we have to wrap it up here, but I'm pleased to report that Nadia has kindly agreed that she will come back to USIP and we'll go deeper on some of these issues so be on the lookout for that. And I want to conclude with saying that you are here, you're watching online now, you're watching the video of this event in the future because you care about issues of recovery from genocide and the heinous crimes that ISIS perpetrated. And as you've heard from our previous speakers from Nadia and I can also report from the work of USIP in Iraq that our work is not done. A lot more lies ahead and we really need to keep at these issues. If we want to address the immediate issues and we want to turn the never again into a reality we need to keep at these issues, especially now as the attention is shifting away to tensions with Iran and other geopolitical challenges. You have a part to play in your current role or in your future role. So please let's continue to help the survivors and their communities through the various ways that we identified through this conversation and we'll identify in other conversations. So thank you Nadia. Thank you Abd. I really appreciate your time and you're helping with the translation as well. Please join me. Go ahead. Yes. Yes. I'm happy to be here again. Thank you so much for being with us today. I just hope that we can all work together to make sure that ISIS's goal does not get accomplished and we make sure that religious minorities can exist in that region and can survive in that region. I'm very appreciative of the support from the Taiwanese government. One word about Nadia's initiative is that this support will go through our partners. We do not do these projects ourselves. It will be these projects will be implemented with our partners such as Relief International on WASH and livelihood projects. We are working with the French NGO Chandelier-Spois that will build a hospital in Sinjar and we hope that these projects will be something that all communities in Sinjar can use, Muslims, Yazidis, Christians and this will be a way to start conversation and interaction between these communities and build social cohesion between these different communities in Sinjar. Thank you again Nadia. Thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you.