PAC-MIR408 is a micro-ion-A gene which can be used to increase the efficiency of converting lignocellulosic feedstocks into fermentable sugars for biofuel production. This micro-ion-A gene was found to have a positive effect on both secarification and plant growth without requiring any pretreatments or chemicals. It also has the potential to reduce lignin content and delay lignification, thus increasing the amount of fermentable sugars produced from the feedstock. Additionally, it can be used to regulate the rate of secondary growth in trees, allowing them to grow faster and produce more biomass. This article was authored by Ya Yu Guo, Xu Fang Wang, Ke Zhi Yu, and others.


Hello and welcome to the Amherst Weekly Report. I'm Claire Healy and this week we'll be talking about Amherst schools, local businesses, and UMass Amherst deficit. First, the Amherst-Pellum Regional School District will go entirely online until at least October 1st, according to revised plan. Students are set to start remotely beginning on September 16th. This is a shift from a previous plan that had younger students pre-K through first grade in Amherst and pre-K to second grade in Pellum coming in person to school. It also allowed for beginner English language learners, students with limited or interrupted formal education, students in special education programs, and houseless students to attend in person. A group has formed called Amherst Responsible People for Safe Return to School or ARPS United who opposes the revised all online plan. They pointed to the low transmission rate in Amherst to argue that in-person learning is feasible and advocate that scientific data be used in making decisions. On a website created by the group, they said that, quote, distance learning harms the future of our students and continues systematic racism. We spoke with Superintendent Michael Morris about the revised plan and the process of deciding to implement it. We'll be all remote for all of our students. And then on October 1st, the current plan would be that our what we would call phase one students, which are generally the students who have less access to distance learning, our youngest students, our students with intensive special needs, our students who do not have permanent residence, and some of our students who are SLIFE. So the students with limited or interrupted schooling and they also beginner ELL students would return if they so choose. All students this year have the option of staying remote or coming into person when they're when we're able or we're ready for them. That is contingent on continued agreements with our bargaining units, our unions, and we continue to work at that multiple times a week to see if we can hammer out agreements for that to move forward. It gives us time to give some more assurances to staff members in the community about the safety of our spaces. And so we are actively working on that. We've done a lot of work on it all summer, but having independent people come in to test our spaces to give us information as well as recommendations is a critical component. So we want to work in concert with our bargaining units to move forward and support students and staff in all ways. He described feedback from the community where such a sensitive and personal issue leads to everyone having their own opinion and encouraged feedback. Everyone's personal situation in the era of COVID is really different. And I think that we're seeing that a lot. Whether it's families who live with someone who's autoimmune or autoimmune themselves in terms of students or families or the impact for students who medically can't wear a mask and how much that limits their their life right now. You know, there are some families with means who can find ways to, you know, get students together and hire a teacher and things like that. We haven't seen as much here as we is in Eastern Massachusetts or other states. But I think existing inequities and disparities in general have been expanded in the time of COVID. And so we're highly conscious of that. That it is very experiential and it's very personal. And so I think what what we've tried to do is try to work with people where they are, understand that everyone's situation is different and try to provide the best education we can for the kids. He also described various plans in the school district to help students, including Wi-Fi access and a project where younger students are provided with their own masks to decorate. I think if people have ideas about how to improve what we're doing, they should be sure to to share them with us. I'll give you two examples. So we did two in-person town halls. We did a bunch of virtual town halls for fives and like that. But we did two in-person ones and we did them in high-density housing areas. And in both of them, we heard really good ideas that we've taken on. So one of them was from a family who said in terms of distance learning, my children really need to have headphones because I have multiple children. My home is not very large. They're different grade levels. And if they're going to be hearing each other's teacher and students talking all the time, it's going to be really distracting. It was a great idea. So we bought, I think, 700 headphones. And you know, we're going to specifically look at families who have subsidized meals. So we're giving them to the folks who need them the most. And so I think when we have tangible ideas like that, we're really good at saying that's a great idea and implementing them. So I think for anyone watching this, if there are ideas that we can implement that's going to that will make a difference for children in our community, please send them our way. My email address is morsem. So m-r-r-i-s-m at a-r-p-s.org. If it's something that's more of a policy level, you can certainly share it at school committee to show school committee, which is school committee one word at rfs.org. If you're a parent and you think, oh, it's specific to a school, please be in touch with teacher or the principals. They can get the idea to me if it's something that, you know, they feel like will really help and is feasible. So really, any of the above either teachers, principals, myself, I'm always happy to get ideas if it's something at a larger level, certainly the school committee can be included and, you know, we'd love to hear the ideas and again, we're dedicated to improvement and that helps us improve. Teachers aren't the only educators adapting to new challenges. Professors of the surrounding colleges have been working to implement education plans that work for their students. Some professors have been doing a flipped learning style of prerecorded lectures and live discussions or reflections. Others have reduced the number of meetings to guard against Zoom fatigue. We spoke with the UMass professor, Alistair Roberts, about what this has been like for him so far. Here's what he said. More advanced planning when you're doing a course in this format because you sort of want to think about how the machinery is going to work throughout the entire semester. This is a large class too, it's got 162 students in it. So it's important to make sure that the design is sort of clean and simple and predictable so that everybody is staying on the same path throughout the whole course. So that basically meant that there was a lot of sort of upfront planning in terms of the course design and getting all the components, the lectures, the quizzes, the assignments sort of all structured beforehand. We've got 13 weeks, so I've got 13 prerecorded lectures. I'm doing a live version of the lecture as well, but I wanted to have a backup in case there were individuals who had difficulty getting to a synchronous session. There's a asynchronous, as we call it, component available. It's basically 90% of what the lecture would be. To some degree it's also about kind of being open, listening for feedback, and doing course corrections, and I'm expecting we'll do that as we go along. I mean one of the things we're learning, not just in this course but in other contexts, is that there's certain advantages to some of the things we're doing. The loss of face-to-face contact, the in-person contact, that's important. It's sort of, to some degree it's like an intangible, you know, you just want to be with other people. But on the other hand, it's also sometimes easier to connect with students this way, you know, that they don't have to find your office. We can connect pretty easily through Zoom. It's easier to bring speakers in, especially off-campus speakers, and we can connect folks who might otherwise be hard to connect. And sometimes too, for example, we had a speaker in yesterday. It's hard to explain this, but I think the conversation is a little flatter in the sense that it's less hierarchical, because, you know, the speaker's there, they're speaking from their own living room or their kitchen, they're not up on a stage, and there's questions coming through in the chat box. So the format is a little more egalitarian and conversational than it would be otherwise. One of the legacies of this is that we'll have more versatility in the way in which we teach. Sometimes we'll do it the classic way, sometimes we'll use features of this, just where it actually adds value. In first year, a big chunk of it is about finding your way around, right, sort of figuring out how everything works. And I don't know whether for the incoming class, working that out is a little more complicated, because you're not physically on site, and you're not connecting as much as you would with other students who are in the same predicament, you know, because if you were actually here, you'd be bumping into folks who are also trying to figure it out all the time. I mean, this is a tough moment. It's a challenging moment, but it's going to pass, you know, and there will be frustrations, but I think the key thing is that we just work together, figure out the essentials of what need to get done, and do the best we can. I think circumstances are going to improve substantially in 2021. We'll get through this, and just make sure we're in a great place to take advantage of all the opportunities that are going to come along when conditions improve next year. Next, COVID-19 has caused a lot of stores to reconsider their business models to adjust to the social distance safety requirements recommended by the CDC. Along with more rigorous cleaning and increased PPE for employees and customers, businesses that previously relied on close contact in-person customer service have to make changes such as rerouting foot traffic, eliminating tables, and reducing capacity to compensate for the danger that person to person contact brings. Some businesses have seen menu reductions, eliminating items that don't sell as well to reduce food and capital waste, while others have expanded their offerings as an essential part of the community. We spoke with Nick Seaman, owner of the Black Sheep Deli in Amherst, which has been in business since 1986 to ask what business was like when COVID-19 hit and how they've adjusted to the ever-changing health climate. Well, when COVID-19 first hit, it was a big hit for us because UMass, Amherst College, I guess Hampshire College, you know, decided to close down and send everybody home around spring break time. And we weren't sure at beginning listening to them if they really were going to bring people back after spring break, but then when it became clear they weren't, we had to go into a different mode. So we desperately tried to stay open for a few weeks after that. And then the kind of destroy the book that camels back for us was when UMass decided not to open for summer school. So when that wasn't going to happen, we just said we're closing. So at the end of March we closed and we were closed for four and a half months until August 5th. I made the decision on my own without any input from the town or the university that I didn't want to open my doors. So we just do takeout and delivery. So I felt like we needed to do something different. So we looked around town and decided that the town did not have a market. And I wanted to help keep any trips that could possibly make to route nine to the big box stores and wait in line to the big box stores. So we've added up downtown market. And right now it's only online, but we're getting ready to consider opening the doors and setting up the market inside for meats and fish and produce and dry goods and baked goods so that people can get what they want. In more COVID news, the town of Amherst and UMass Amherst held a virtual community forum to discuss joint UMass town efforts to mitigate spread of COVID. UMass Amherst and town of Amherst officials discussed current developments and answered questions about the effort to halt the spread of COVID-19 both on the UMass campus and in the greater Amherst community. The forum discussed topics covering testing, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine protocols, as well as public health messaging to the community, and the UMass Amherst agreement. Finally, UMass announced that it will furlough 850 employees. On August 27th, UMass Amherst Chancellor Subhaswamy announced in a letter that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a projected $168.6 million loss in the campus' operating budget. The numbers break out to a $67.4 million loss in housing and dining, $30.6 million decrease in tuition revenue, and a $20.9 million loss in other revenues including grant and contract overhead income, among other losses and expenditures attributed to COVID-19. To offset these losses, UMass Amherst initiated a hiring freeze and an early retirement program, which eliminated around 500 positions without furloughs, saving $120.8 million. However, this did not prevent the furlough of 850 staff, including dining hall workers and residence hall operations staff beginning September 13th. Subhaswamy says in his letter that permanent layoffs are expected in the coming weeks, and that they are continuing conversations with staff labor unions, prioritizing temporary reductions in hours and furloughs, which are expected to affect an additional 450 campus employees. These cuts to personnel leave UMass Amherst with a remaining deficit of $20.3 million. That's all for the news. This has been the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media. I'm Claire Healy, and we'll see you again at the same time next week.


All right everybody. Good morning. Welcome to chat ops for distributed teams fun and profit My name is Michael Sharon. I'm a technical architect for Acquia Been a Drupalus for about six years. I was raised in small Drupal shops So I'm familiar with a lot of the problems that small shops have in terms of communication when they're working with Folks that are distributed around the globe or you know different states across the country. However, you are distributed Hi guys, my name is Chris urban. I'm a delivery manager at Acquia Michael and I worked on some projects together my responsibility is more in Overseeing let's say risk mitigation for larger projects in terms of what is being delivered by our team My background is project management more much more technical. I come from a marketing agency background a lot of experience in Digital strategy pre-press things like that old-school So why chat ops I think I found this week in talking to folks about my session that this is a term that not a lot of Folks are familiar with so chat ops is using tools like Slack or hip chat or even IRC in order to integrate your teams and get them to use these tools in order to Accelerate their workflow to facilitate communication With that communication right, so one problem we see very often with Large teams and on large projects meaning multiple developer teams in multiple time zones Just getting everybody on the same page as a priority One of the one of the first obstacles that we encounter is Having everyone understanding exactly what's happening on a project at any given time with the more people that are involved The more information that needs to be conveyed and communicated getting that into as much of a clear concise format as possible is Paramount Next is having all of that information in one place that everyone has very easy access to so it's quick to research quick to find That answer, you know, I remember somebody was saying they were having an issue with this module with this Ticket where is that information being stored? Last thing is any kind of ceremonies that you have if you're using agile Scrum or Kanban actually quick show of hands who here is using agile or Kanban right now in their development process Awesome. So if you're let's say using a two-week sprint or a continuous delivery model You often have Ceremonies and meetings you have to have all those in all those notes in one place So these are some of the challenges we face the larger the teams get right if small shop or medium-sized shop with five to ten developers On a project. It's easy to keep that communication streamlined Three or four teams in multiple time zones a development team in India development team in South America Development team in Europe a development team in Canada development team in the US design in the Canada Qa in the US all of these teams need to know what's going on Chats is also really great for team culture right when you have your developers and your Qa and your product owners And they're distributed all over the globe sometimes. It's hard to get those disparate groups to coalesce as a team right and Having a place where they can come together and they can share funny images They can you know create gifts you can integrate chatbots with whatever tool you're using in order to give karma So kind of like a you know like a reddit concept Where people can upvote each other inside a slack chat room and say hey, you know Mario's a great guy and he really helped me out with that project So I'm going to give him karma points and these points are totally arbitrary I mean they don't actually mean anything in the real world other than hey Mario's a great guy And he really helped me out and so now he has more points right Yeah, I'm sharing funny things and it really does help to you know bring your teams closer together Even though they don't share a physical space Another really awesome Thing that you can do with chat tools like slack is integrating your continuous Integration system how many folks in here use something like Jenkins or Travis or some other CI tool? Okay, awesome So sometimes those tools tend to get ran in isolation right you have someone who's acting as a deployment manager And they are managing your builds when those builds either complete or fail or if they trigger automated tests It's very useful to have the results of that work being put out into a place where the entire team can see it right often your You know day-to-day You know frontline developers don't have access to your continuous integration tool for security reasons But it's useful for them to know what that tool is doing right especially if your CI process is Sophisticated enough to where maybe it knows if a specific commit has failed You know that developer would then realize hey This is you know potentially my commit that has a problem and now I can respond to it without having to be told Hey, your commit has a problem, right? So Jenkins integration with slack and this is just one example of integrating You know a CI tool with a chat tool. It really is super simple I mean if you've ever added plugins and Jenkins this should be a very familiar process You know you just go in and pause that that's going real fast Whoops So right so you just you know you have the plug-in. It's super easy and then there's just some real basic configuration you just need to add there is a key that you get from Slack and you add it into Jenkins Right here. You get this integration token from logging into the slack website for your team domain You just give it the team domain your API key and what project channel you want this build to post into And you'll see there's several options for notifications at slack consent It can say it'll notify your team when the build is started if it's aborted if there's a failure If there's success if it's unstable meaning, you know, yeah, the build exited successfully But maybe your tests failed right that's that's a nice thing to know and it can also include test summaries Right, so if you have be hat wired up into your CI tool, which I think a lot of us probably do It can actually output the results of your be hat tests into a slack channel so that your whole team can see what's happening So there's also a really great community module called slack and it allows you to sent to have Drupal post Information into a slack channel It basically just exposes a very very simple function called slack send message You can define a default Channel that slack will send messages into But you can also per instance override that and have it send to really any channel in your team domain that you want Right, and there's some you know some pretty awesome use cases that you can have for this like let's say for example You use workbench moderation, right? You have a group of editors who they will get content That's assigned to them after a new note has been created, but it's pending approval This can then post into the editor's channel in your slack team and let them know Hey, this new note is now available for you to review. Go ahead and pop in there and give it a look over You can also do things like Commerce checkout, you know if a cart has been completed go ahead and notify some people You could have like a DevOps channel and you know let your team know when crown runs have completed that kind of stuff Again, this is super simple to set up. You just you log into the slack admin panel for your team domain and Just grab that webhook URL And you can customize the name you can set a special icon, you know So it looks cool and so your slack, you know, you can give it a funny robot icon or something. Whatever you want to do, right? And Then you just slap that bad boy in a Drupal give it whatever default channel that you want Slack to usually post into but then like I mentioned with that slack send message function You can override that and send it to any arbitrary channel that you want to You can define if you want it to have an emoji for an avatar I mean, there's all kinds of fun stuff that you can do right just to make it clever and cool for everybody and I will show an example of sending a message from Drupal into Slack They have a little test Dashboard there so you can just say hey, hello, New Orleans, and it will then post that over to my slack channel Thumbs up. Yay. Hello, New Orleans. I mean, it's really simple. It doesn't take a lot of time There's that slack send message Function that I mentioned You can give it you know, you don't have to even send what channel you want it to go to it'll use the default You can just send any message string and it'll just post it to your default channel, which I think is nice. I Also created a community module that right now is a sandbox We're waiting to get it promoted to a full module and this allows the opposite, right? The current slack module allows you to send Information from Drupal to Slack, but there wasn't anything to go in the other direction, right? And I noticed in the just in the slack world. There's tons of really fun bots, right? But they're all running in Heroku apps or Ruby apps or you know some some other Interface right and so why wouldn't it be why wouldn't we build chat ops with our chat bots with Drupal, right? so I created a community module called slack receive and it basically exposes a Menu hook there excuse me a menu callback that allows you to post information from Slack into Drupal And then Drupal will do whatever you want with it You can build Drupal powered slack bots. You can run Drush commands Which you know I imagine the use case where you needed to clear cache really quickly and you're not near a computer You don't want to have to SSH into the server and run a drush command you could actually do it from your phone using the slack app, right? You could check module statuses you could check or set variables in Drupal 7 right now There's only a Drupal 7 release once I get it promoted. I'm going to do a Drupal 8 port and Go from there one caveat though is that you're basically exposed You're basically making slack as an interface for the Drupal shell, right? And so you you really want to make sure that you're escaping any input that you're taking from slack before You're running it on a command line, right? And I'll show some examples of that So here's the sandbox page for it right now Super exciting. You don't know what sandbox pages look like again. You just use an outgoing web hooks integration in Slack You get a handful of these for free So this is you know and you could do all the stuff that I'm describing You don't have to pay for for on slack Which is really great the only thing that you need to pay for slack for is to have history that's recorded indefinitely Yeah, again, so you just need to grab the key which they generate there You need to put in the the menu hook URL there the menu callback URL there and What word you want your bot to trigger on so when you type in the slack drush bot and You pass it in the command that I'll show you how to set up later Then Drupal will respond and send in whatever you want it to. There's the key Super exciting Could set you a little icon there. You can you know upload whatever you want give it a cool name So I create a an admin panel to set the API key inside Drupal here is Slack receive like I said just create a menu callback there is user access control on it I'm actually changing this right now so that it will The the version that I have up right now doesn't tell you what the status code is so if it's a success It's not it's it's always a 200 even if sites offline. It's always 200. I'm changing that so that it'll actually give you meaningful status codes, but Whoops Sorry guys right, so here is an example of basically I create a web create a custom hook that you can implement in your own module and Then I also create an example module that shows some very simple implementations of slack receive It just gives two examples where you can you can list what modules you have currently installed and you can pass in a string And it'll it'll then grab the the modules list command from Drush and then return those modules and you can also clear cache Note This is important. So when you get down into this get PM. So this is the Sample command where it will list out the current installed modules with drush so notice the use of Escape the shell command and escape shell args. Basically that is taking the input that's coming over from the slack String command and escaping it so that you couldn't do things like you know RM-RF and completely delete your directory and other security problems So when you're implementing slack receive, I highly recommend using those commands to make sure that you're sanitizing user input Same deal with clearing cache Just escape the input that you're getting back Hey So now I'll show an example of actually sending the command. So we're going to do a cache clear for views So drush bot says yep views cache is cleared Then we'll do a PM list for the Twitter module And it tells you what version of the Twitter modules installed whether it's enabled etc, right? So just I mean these are just you know examples that show what's possible with it Beer bot is an actual a bot that you can download now It's not powered by Drupal But this is a good example of the kind of thing that you could do right you could set up a bot and pass in a string for the name Of a beer or a movie or something right and it would then return in this case beers You know and what the alcohol rating is and and some some user rating data, right? So you could you could do some pretty cool stuff with this right like you could have You know like a giffy type implementation where you have a bunch of you know gifts that are stored in Drupal And if you send in a certain key it'll then fetch that gif and display in your slack channel, or I don't you could do all kinds of fun stuff Okay, so We mentioned before now. We've got the tools with slack to get information back and forth to Drupal What about everybody who's working on this project? How do we keep them all on track and on point? So one of the key things in any agile workflow are the ceremonies and the most probably most important One of those is the daily scrum call. So first question here who uses a daily scrum call and Who here has a daily scrum call that is more than 10 minutes?  So scrum calls are meant to be quick updates Primarily focused on the issues that need resolution questions that need answering blockers that need unblocking and If you have a lot of developer teams on that phone call It will take a long time before you find out that Important information you do want to know what everybody's working on you want to know what they're planning to work on But you really want to know What do you really really want you really want? Sorry Second time today, he's made that joke It's this lobster claw in front of me. I'm sorry It's important to to be able to get that important information out So in order to get that phone call down to a reasonable amount of time and still be able to convey all the information That needs to be conveyed We use a slack bot called howdy Howdy is online at howdy.io And it's a plug-in another integration that you can connect with slack It's really really simple the original premise of the bot believe it or not Same kind of fun. We were having earlier was to collect lunch orders. What does everybody want to eat for lunch? Right, so they wrote a little tool in slack It pulls everyone Asynchronously and they realized this would be a great use case for a scrum call So what you do is are and you basically gather all the information from all your developers You can set up whatever kind of custom questions you want you can do traditional What was I working on what am I working on today? Do I have any blockers? Do I have any questions that need answering? And you specify that the duration that they have to answer But all that information is collected and then posted in a channel in slack So then if you do this, right, let's say your scrum call is at 10 a.m Set this to run at 9 30 you give everybody half an hour to respond Before you actually go into the scrum call it'll post the results in the slack channel Everybody sees what everybody's working on. There's no issues of communication. Hey that you know Skype call dropped out I didn't hear what you said. It's text-based. It's nice and short and sweet and Doing this we've cut the time on the scrum calls to half or even a third of that original 20 minutes All right, so just to show how this works so from with within Slack once you've had the howdy bot Set up right the same way you go into did I pause it? Yeah, the same way you go into the integrations Panel in your slack if you go to howdy once you're logged in to slack it'll just say allow to be allow Howdy to connect to your slack team Once it connects you just go in and say hey, I want to train howdy to run my scrum You give it a name you give it the questions you want it to ask so what I put in here What did I work on yesterday? What am I working on today? It's going a little fast let me back this up So What did I work on yesterday? What am I working on today? Do you have any blockers and that's it and you can tell it how long to wait 15 minutes an hour eight hours actually used to be eight hours and they upped it to 72 because some people don't do Daily check-ins they may do it every two or three days I don't want to wait for three days, but you get the idea so you're allowed then What will happen is howdy will come back and say Would you like to test it you can say yes or no it'll basically test it on you I know this will work. So I don't need to do it, but what it does tell you then is How to fire it right you tell it to point that command to somebody specifically or to somebody in a channel And then you can schedule it Do I want it to run automatically you could put in here to say run it at 8 a.m. Or whatever time you want So now whoops I went too fast. I'm quick on the trigger See if I had those lobster claw mitts on I wouldn't have this problem All right, so As soon as Okay How I get that thing disappeared as it go away, okay So now once I want this to run I just say howdy runs from general and you'll see up at the top the notification kicks in and it's polling everybody in the channel Hey, do you have time to talk? Yeah, okay. What did you work on yesterday? I worked on my triple cone presentation. What am I working on today? How do I get that to go away? And do you have any blockers and of course I say, yeah, I'm running out of beer Um, and then it says okay done And then you'll see a notification back in the general channel in the meantime Michael's answered his questions And it posts it all in the main chat. It also logs it online So all those notes are recorded And archived so you can go back to the scrum call from three months ago and find out what everybody was working on So if you need to have documentation Of traceability of what everybody was working on on some date now you have it automatically cataloged all right now There are some catches, right? There's always a there's always a hook or claw. Sorry. All right, so You can use Look at me like that You can use the stock questions, which is basically what I typed in or you can make them very very specific So do you have an issue for the legal team to review? Do you have items that the design team needs to review? Whatever those are you can set those up You're able to specify the timing. So maybe you have developer teams Let's say in israel that are not working on friday you turn off friday and put on sunday If you want it to fire it at a certain time you can go online and set it there Or you can do it all from the command line and slack You can split it up. You can give one team one set of questions and another team another set of questions Have them both post into it the same channel You know, that's kind of nice if you have segmented teams The most important factor here is that of all the other bots that we looked at This one allows for asynchronous reporting the other ones that we've run and tested They're basically with a for loop and if one developer doesn't answer The rest of the loop doesn't run. So you're stuck because developer number three of 12 hasn't answered We never find out about developers four five and six and so on In in howdy at the end of the time slot, you'll get a list that says You know developer a b and c did not respond So that automatically gives you a list to say hey, I need to go talk to those devs and find out what they're working on Why are you not responding? Are you dead? What's going on? You know, all right So a couple of things if you are on a large scale project where you're using enterprise slack Remember Michael mentioned it's free But if you want to keep a history you're going to pay for the enterprise model In that model you have permission levels on the users assigned in order to view this information on the web They have to have full access. So a restricted user cannot see this So if you have a partner scrum master that's on with restricted permissions They need to be promoted to full access. So that might be an issue for some clients And this I have to update this they just changed this it used to be only an eight hour update They've updated it like I said to 72 hours. So if your scrum calls are every third day that will work And that's it there was this was an issue and they've resolved that Some developers would get stuck answering a question. There was some latency issue They seem to have fixed it. So not a blocker All right so So because you don't need to take pictures we're going to post all this all the links to everything that we talked about here Are right here. So anything you want to look into further It's all here. We'll post the pdf on the On the session page. It's already there So thank you very much We have time for questions if anybody wants to ask questions sending messaging No, um, they're Actually, I know there's a couple of slack plugins that I haven't touched And I would be really interested to see if that works I would just be concerned about security right just making sure that somehow You're going to be able to correlate the user that's requesting That's making the request in slack with a user that actually has access in jankers And I could I could see that being kind of tricky But um, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody solved it So on the project that I'm on right now We have uh, in addition to using slack we're also We have the github plugin for jankins running So when a developer makes a pull request against the current active developer development branch when that pull request is merged Jenkins will automatically deploy it out to our dev qa and testing environments in aquea cloud And then that process all gets notified inside slack, which is nice, right? Very rarely do we have integration problems, but if we did we would know about it because of what's going into slack So that's that's a nice thing I think we started testing it. Yeah, we started testing it in october november And I think we put it into full gear probably about the Around christmas so since january Oh, no, so that's the thing the idea is that once you get that summary posted into slack Uh, here we go once you have that summary list posted that we set it up to be timed so that this is posted Five ten fifteen minutes before the actual call So then what we end up focusing on on the call are the real issues the blockers and we Phrase those in the question So first thing to do is to look through What I would do is look through the blockers section first Identify those as my priorities that I need to get resolved Once we go through those or other if there isn't any then you can now go to the next tier Which is what are we working on? What are we planning on working on? Is there any potential blockers? So I think it depends on the freezing of the question But if you time it that way then you have this posted into the main chat And then on the phone call you focus on what those questions or issues are If the summary is sufficient enough to say yep, I'm working on ticket, you know, one two three I don't have any blockers You don't need to talk right you actually don't even need to be on the call The possibility is I mean we still don't want to have everybody on the call because there's a possibility There may be something else that depends on that person You know, it's important to have participation But they don't have to say anything we can skip right over them If you're if your scrum calls are anything like ours, they used to be you know 15 minutes of people saying well yesterday I worked on project x and nobody cares and today I'm working on thing why and nobody still cares So just eliminating that section alone where it's literally just the only thing that we're actually spending time talking about Is problems that require collaboration and that is a game changer. I think yeah One of the thing, you know, the standard model is you know, what was I working on yesterday? What am I working on today? What am I planning on working out tomorrow? Do I have any blockers another one you can add is And after this was one thing we heard from a small boss section So it's a specific request to have a couple of minutes with a product owner or another developer Right on the call because we know everybody is on the call So you could put in another question to say do you need do you need a minute after the call? And since you're everybody's already there, this is a quick way to say yeah, I just have a quick question You know Give me a minute at the end of the call. So this way everybody can see what's going on Free It's open. It's a public beta So I suspect the typical model would be they would Give you what you're getting right now, which is a lot. I think it's a it's plenty of Plenty there to begin with but the premise was to have another enterprise model where maybe What they're keeping or the logging that they're keeping? Track of is going to be limited unless you pay a licensing fee in most projects You know, I really don't need to go back to a scrum call from three weeks ago. It's done I need the last week. That's it I can imagine that they would add some more filtering or other functionality as some sort of premium model But as of right now, there isn't one it's free So Uh, I don't know yet. I can I'll find out that's a good question Yep, they're really really responsive. Actually, one of the guys from there was supposed to be at triple con. I Just realized I'll show that as them Right Yeah, you were today not ours. Yeah So, yeah, well, but that that was the idea you could you can just you could run the same chat But in segments of teams you can manually go in and assign, you know Developer a b and c get this scrum set of questions But they're going to get it at 9 a.m. And then the us team will get it at 12 p.m.  Um, I recommend making sure the time zone settings in your slack are correct because You can change it and sometimes if you're working on a client, let's say who's in New york, but you're based in la you're thinking a lay time zone, of course Some just double check We've had it where it runs at three in the morning. Nobody's getting like the scrum questions But, you know, the idea is that you could run it in in concurrently in the same channel So, you know, these devs get the question in their time zone Typically for india teams, we would try to do it at the end of the day So that it'll be the morning of when we're doing the scrum call in the us So it is kind of scrum of scrums ish But not really But it's it's a good way of doing it Yep, so actually the beer by here, this is my hu bot and it's I'm hosting it So it's not um, we just modified but it's a real basic, you know, api call and you can customize it to no end Right, but yeah same principle Thanks Okay, so um, I'd answer that maybe on two levels because one is the fact that we're On slack to begin with and I think that by itself Having everybody on the common team and the flexibility for setting up Custom rooms or channels specific to the issues that the developers are working on makes it very easy Prior to slack. We were on Skype and it's it's a bit clunkier basically So that's one. I think just having that as a very easy Means of communication across the team by itself is already Let's say an order of magnitude more efficient or easier to communicate But with that there's a catch And this was always a challenge And it's not really specific to how many let's say but it's just a matter of how the projects are set up in general One of the things I always advocate for is making sure there's clear concise communication One of the other Pillars that go alongside it is documentation You can have all the communication in the world But if nobody's like logging that or concisely editing and posting that information in a place that everybody can get to It doesn't do us any good It'll spend an hour searching through slack for the information you're looking for so as long as you're Following good documentation Strategies making sure you know everything in your workflow is outlined making sure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities Then that dovetails with using something like slack or howdy So why i'm saying this in howdy we have this scrum report that's being generated We would still be logging. Let's say in a google doc or a confluence page those daily meeting notes Just to have it because there are other people that are not in that slack channel But want to see what the progress is on their ticket The next thing I think would be to find a way to hook this back into jira Which we're using for ticket tracking which you can do and we haven't gone to yet So any kind of specific reporting or questioning on a ticket Is it automatically associated with the tickets comments in jira? This is the big question right because you'll have a scrum call. Hey, i'm stuck on ticket 123 Uh, do you have time to talk? Well, I can't talk on the phone right now, but can you just ping me in slack in an hour? I'll be free. Okay. Now you have a conversation in slack with the product owner about the ticket It may be in the general channel, but you know an hour later. It's back scroll You don't know that it's there No, you don't remember that it's there getting that morsel of information back into the jira ticket That's the key thing So that would be the caveat. That was a really long answer. I'm sorry That's is that does that help? Didn't we have a number like how much we reduced the amount of time like 60 percent or something? Yeah, yeah This is a running joke with us And it's not it's not just Uh, quantitative it's qualitative The fact that you're spending half an hour on a droning scrum call Is not the way to spend your morning, right?  You know, that's a mile. That's a huge milestone So that like emotional burden the fact that scrum shouldn't be a burden It should be a check-in and keeping it objective and not an emotional ceremony that that's something I don't think you can put a number on Okay, thanks everybody It's my menu hook


Well, everybody, welcome back to another Adobe Photoshop 2022 tutorial. In this one, I'm going to show you how to get rid of text that you don't want. Unwanted text just like this. What do I have here? I have a stock image, and I've got some text on it that says Dollar Store. Why would it say Dollar Store? Because this looks like Jason Momoa, but the Dollar Store version. All right, cool. So what I want to do is I want to get rid of all of this blue text, but I don't want to ruin the layer underneath it. I want it to look like it's still the same guy and it's not a cutout. And I can show you because I've done it. And here it is, the final product. And how did I do it? Well, let's go.  So here it is. It's a single layer. It's very important to note that this is not separate layers. This is just one layer. OK, I'm making sure you've got that selected. The first thing you want to do is you want to go up to Select, and you want to select Color Range. I am going to select the blue color just like that. And you're going to see here that it has correctly identified only the text in this image. So when you have a solid color like this, it's very useful. You can detect just the images. If you're using text that has a stroke or text that has like a gradient in it, it's a lot trickier. And I can show you how to do that, but that'll be a separate video. So here we go. Left-click on it and notice that I do not have localized colors selected. And I've got the fuzziness set to 200, just maximum. So it selects all of it. Left-click on that and you're going to see here that it's made a selection. And if we zoom in real close, it's very, very tight selection. This is actually not what we want. We want to go ahead and actually grow this or modify it. So what you want to do now is you want to head up to your top here and you'll see here, you'll see Modify. We're going to go to Select, Modify, Expand. And not only are we going to expand it, we're going to expand it by let's go with six, let's go with seven pixels. Okay, now I'm going to zoom in again. And what you're going to see here is that we've selected all of the text. We've also selected outside the boundaries a little bit. In fact, seven pixels worth. You guys can season that to your taste, but we're doing that because if you don't do that, it, when you do a, the next step, some of the blue continues to leak in. Okay, good. So we've gone ahead, we've selected it. We've expanded it. Now we're going to go ahead and do the actual chop, chop. So what you want to do now is you want to go to Edit. You want to go to Fill, but you want to go to Content Aware Fill. This is the important part here. Left click on Content Aware Fill. And now watch what happens. It's gone. There you go. If we zoom in, there is literally no text there. There's no residue of the blue there. It's gone. You guys can go ahead and paint. So if there's parts that you don't want to be included or you want to be included in the final selection, you can go ahead up here and just select this little brush tool and select the samples that you want to use. But for this one, it's worked perfectly. I'm going to hit Apply. I'm going to hit OK. And it's gone. Now I'm just going to go to Select, Deselect. And literally, there is no text left. Now, if you guys have extremely hawkish eyes, if you zoom way the heck in, you're going to see here that some of the Content Aware Fill has made a little bit of a mess of this part here. We would want to chop that out. And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole, you can go ahead and select the lasso tool and then just like come on in here, something like this, and then something like that. And then you want to do is you want to grab the crop, well, the patch tool. Actually, it's called the patch tool. Left click on that. And then I'm just going to click on it and I'm going to move it to the left a little. And you're going to see here that, boom, it's gone. And if I hit Deselect, we use the patch tool to make a few little changes there, although it hasn't done a perfect job. This doesn't look quite right. So I would just go in here and do that. Again, grab the patch tool and move it to the left a little bit, something like that. And presto, we would make those changes as well. But that's not necessary. It's just to get rid of the text. But to show you that you can do an amazing job with just those tools, that's how you get rid of unwanted text, unwanted font in Photoshop 2022. Thanks for watching. A ton more stuff coming up. Stay tuned.


Welcome to yet another episode of Baskins. My name is Ndanya and today clearly as you can see we are on set. Tkwa setia Mr. Sid Nambeeri. Already you know that's a hit before you listen to it clearly you know it's a hit. Now I've seen Sid somewhere here. Let's go when I come ready for my questions to amwish to. Sid. I'm a manager here. I'm a PA manager. Zote. You're looking nice. What's up Sid? Zote. What's your name? My name is Kiki. I'm Zote. Zote? Nice to meet you Kiki. Pleasure is all mine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So Sid. Yes. I'm going to ask you 11 questions. Quick fire. So you answer them quickly and randomly. So you're ready.  Worst job? Yes. Worst job. Worst worst.  I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. You're too smooth. Talking about being a dancer. What are you really good at apart from being a dancer? Cooking. I'm not good at cooking. I'm not good at cooking. I'm not good at cooking. I'm not good at cooking. I'm also good in the budge. See the metrombi is also good in the budge. Ah good to hear. What's the worst date you've been into? The worst? What should be happen? You're the worst. Mr. Iznashuka. I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I love the first work. I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I'm in my 20s. I'm in my 20s. I'm in my 20s. I'm a dancer.  The worst. The worst for me? I'm a dancer. I'm a dancer. I don't work alone. I work with my brother. kwa kwa na? na niha kwa kwa na kwa nikuwa nananda kwa na nikuwa nikuwa nikuwa nika nafeya? nikuwa na na kwa nikuwa saa sukufeya na niha na kwa mendi na nikiwa kwa kwa nikuwa niha Uka saawa? Imagine wazia kwaunu, wazisha wana rea mapezi na huwadi Nani waza ani kwaunu za? Aya, nani waza ani? Waza ani wama kwaunu na shama mbo ita wana Wawa ni nani, aya liku wazia Pwole If you want to own a club or hotel, what would you name it? The Golden Palace Wawa wana goldstu wibitu? Aya Consider this scenario You are in a room with a pregnant woman And then all of a sudden fire strikes Which one will you consider in emergency? Uta sotga ni kwaunu za mbo Kumbu kwaunu dima na nakuza Na moton doi, motu ina spread Na sita mbeba? Anaza ha seed Uta mbeba tu wibu inju inju wibu Wazia tu kaza ni Sa aja gani tu wibu huwote Uta mbeba tu wibu inju wibu Uta mbeba tu wibu inju wibu Apart from music, which is really doing good for you What other parts of your life segment gani alifia kwa pia ina thrive? Business Business gani? We do want to know Why do you want to business? Uta wibitu wami ani biesha raga Buona Buona But my business Happy for you Guys, that was our quick fire with Mr. Seed 11 zisha isha Ima kwa smu? Tisha? Ima 26 Fajinsima isha, ume enjoy lakini Ibu na kwa gama muna mwa kwa inja Mini muna mwa? No tell me people to share Shia this And this one Top Top Nisha apuru Nisha mwa apuru So guys, that was Mr. Seed You welcome anytime bro What do you mean brother man?


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Wel, ddodd i'r cyflogol yma, yn fwy cwylwch yn fwy cyflogol sydd y cyflogol yn bwysig. Dyna'r cyflogol o'r cyflogol yw'r cyflogol cwyddiadau yma o'r cwylwch. Mae wedi gweithio'r lleydd. Ond o'r hwn yn hynny, rydyn ni wedi gweithio'r twyl, dyna'r cyflogol yw'r cyflogol yn ynillai'n cyflogol yn fwy gwybod yw'n ymwysig, ond dyna yma'r cyflogol wedi'u cyflogol. So dyna yna'r cyflogol yw'n cyflogol. So gollwch gynllwch ei mwythgopeth oherwydd maedodraeth FM yn ymwneud, rhydwm ni'n gynghwylm. Mae PhD wedi gwnaeth i ddechrau yng Nghymru a dyslexia. A ddweud yn uch chi'n digwydd y ddechrau hyn o'r ddechrau defnyddio roedd ei ddechrau. mae gwnaeth gynghwylm ymogol fan i ddechrau. Bydd yn awn iddynt i'n olygu. A'n d nog, ryebwch, rydyn gwych a'r Rhaglenedd, rydyn a gwelio'r Rhaglenedd, a dwi'n gweld iawn yn anhygoel'i gaflion bwysig, wrth gweithio y tu. Caerdyri'n gweithio yma, ac ond wedi gwiesi felly gweithio'r rywbeth, beth mae'n ôl yn minec. Rhyw ni'n dechreu'r gwybwy, a dwi'n gallu'n gweithio rhai.  Mae'n gweinwch cyngor yn unig oherwydd a'n ddynnu cyntafol. Felly, ddylai yn cael ei gynorth, mae'n gweinwch er mwyn iawn. Mae'n ddïch yn gweinwch er mwyn iawn. Mae'n digwydd gan rhaeg, mae'n gweinwch er mwyn iawn. Mae'n ddag yn dd tu oed. Ond mae'n gweinwch ar-dweidwyr. Mae'n gweinwch ar-dweidwyr ar-dweidwyr. And then you looked to the other side of the baby and you see this magic whiteboard. There's no one stood at the whiteboard but there's this pen, flying around, drawing pictures, wiping them out, drawing diagrams, wiping them out again. Okey, so open your eyes. So that was little bit of a tale about short-term memory. Each of the things that I talked about there represented different areas of short-term memory. yn drwychol. Mae'n gofynwch ar y ddweud iawn. Mae'n ddweud ffocir bush yng Nghymru yng nghymru yng Nghymru ddewch'r llwyddoedd Cymru. Mae'n ddweud â huoedd o flaenau ac mae'n ddech chi'n ddweud uldio claf o'r algod yn drwychol, sy'n ddigwyddoedd yng nghymru yng Nghymru, a'r ddweud yn cyhoedgio cyfol o ddweud, sydd yn mientras ac elwyddo. Mae'n ddweud o dwarfisiw o'r ddweud yr enghyrch, o ble yn yr urwaith. Ar cyfnod er mwyn o'n aims about long-term memory so this is about how we hold information for long periods of time and we've got implicit memory which is about the memory that don't realise we have so things like walking talking we don't think we need to do this but we'll talk about today's explicit memory so this is the memories that we know we have we think we have and generally that's divided into two parts we have episodic which is like story so this is about our life so if we think about Paris and I'm thinking about an episodic memory I'll think about when I went on a trip to Paris and my husband proposed so that's an episodic memory so it's a story if I'm thinking about Paris for kind of semantic meeting I'll think about the capital of France I'll think about facts about Paris like it has the Eiffel Tower and so this is the long-term memory especially when you want to remember something that we need to think about so what we need to do when we want to remember something long-term memory so you need to think about that we remember things by stories we remember things by meaning and if you know that then you can help improve your memory so you use tactics that take advantage of either stories or meaning so we're going to do some memory tests in this talk so if you've got a phone or a pen and paper if you get it out because I'm going to give you some tasks and then I'm going to ask you to recall them so say phones out pen and paper out it's a very organised people here with laptops I love it okay so you can see people some people with pens papers phones so brilliant so first thing I'm going to get you to look at is quite a simple question for a Saturday morning I want you to look at these words and decide whether they have four letters in or not so just go through the list and say in your head ask the question do they have four letters in or not okay so hope you got to the end of that list so the next task is and again you don't need to write anything down is all these words can be scrambled into another word so I want you to have a go at going through the list seeing how many times you can scramble up the letters in these words to make another word okay so now I want you to recall so on that pen and paper or your phone write down as many words as possible from that list I showed you where I asked you to count how many letters were in the words so write down as many as you can remember I recognise the giggle of some people going I can't remember any now okay so I think most people have finished so I've got another task for you now on the next slide you're going to see a question and then you're going to see a load of sentences with a word missing what I want you to do is look at the end there's a word at the end and see if that word fits into the sentence so here we go so you want to see if the word fits in with that sentence okay so we're now going to the anagrams again so again look through these words try and scramble them up to make a new word okay so we're now we're backing to recall so those words that you were trying to fit in the sentence try and write down as many of those words that you were trying to fit into the sentence okay can you put your hand up if you've finished writing downwards so finished recalling okay there's still some people writing so just give them a little bit longer okay so here's the answers to the first two lists so they've got the first list the four letters one and the second list so just have a look through and mark yourself so give you a self one point for every word you got correct and so you should get a score for the first list and a score you get for the second list that is one of the um this little kind of demonstration so any scientist in the room this was not an experiment because for an experiment it would have to be run properly um so this little demonstration is about levels of processing so the idea is that the first list i only asked you to look at surface characteristics i wasn't asking to look at the meaning of the words so generally people perform poorer when they do the first list because say you don't think about the meaning and do you remember at the beginning of it i said our long term memory relies on either meaning or stories um with a second list i was think getting you to focus on the meaning of the word so you were thinking about it was kind of forcing you into thinking about the meaning of the word and this is kind of based on there's lots of studies that have been done and there are big studies and they're the i pick these studies because they're the easiest ones to find online and there's been many studies that show that the more we get people to think about the meaning the better people do on the memory tests so that's the way our long term memory works so one of the key things to remember is if you want to remember something long term don't try and repeat it so don't just go say you met me and you were like oh i need to remember a name don't go emma emma emma emma emma try and think of something that's meaningful so maybe you go oh she's got the same name as the daughter of Rachel and friends or something like that or i've met lots of emas they're all horrible something like that so think about the meaning thinking about linking it so one of the key things about when you're trying to remember something is this elaborate rehearsal so thinking about the meaning the analysis of it the more connections you can make the better if you can make connections to something to you personally even better again because then it starts bringing in that story aspect to it and this is one of the things that's really annoying because what people like to do especially when they're revising for exams they like to scan through a book highlight everything and they go right i've highlighted it therefore i've remembered it but actually if you really want to remember it you need to think about its meaning think about how it links to you if you think learning something for exams trying to link it into maybe something you've experienced or some problem that you've come across and i think that would solve the problem so always think about the meaning always try and link it to yourself that's the way to help you learn something and improve your memory okay i love memory tests so here's another one so you can get rid of those lists and this time you're straight up remembering this and then i'm going to get you to recall them so here's the first list so try and remember as many words as possible on this list okay now i want you to write down as many words as possible okay so hands up if you finished writing downwards so hands up if you finished writing downwards okay i think that's most people so now for another list so this is another list but one of the things i want you to notice when you're trying to memorise this list all the words come from four categories so they're flowers or transport mythical creatures or precious stones so hopefully that might help you a bit so here's the second list okay so recall now write down as many words as possible as you can remember from that list okay so again hands up if you finished writing downwards some people still going okay so there's list one and list two again mark yourself so you get a mark for each one you've got correct so you should get a score for list one and a score for list two one of the things you might notice now is list one also all had words coming from categories so they all this one also had words coming from four different categories so again what i think you might be finding is that you did better at this too so one of the things that we were learning if you were here in my first talk where i did the false memory experiment on you then what we do is we organise things by meaning so in our heads everything kind of organised by meanings and if you can make those connections between the meanings of the things that we were trying to remember then we get stronger memory traces so although both of those lists had words coming from four different categories because i pointed out the categories in the second list then it makes it much easier for kind of us to organise the information and when you were reading through the list you were like oh yes that's a flower that's a flower that's a flower and you were starting to make those connections and organise the information you're trying to remember out of interest can you put your hand up if you notice list one was made up of four categories okay so quite a lot of you spotted that that's good so again it was good because one of the things i've been talking to you about is thinking about the meaning of the words so if you were starting to notice that list one had four categories in it means that you were starting already to start applying what i've been talking about today which is thinking about the meaning of the words in the lists wrong way so this is one of the key things with memory is about organisation so we can organise the information that we're trying to remember then we'll do much better so again one of the things that if you were trying to revise something or you're trying to learn something don't try and copy down the information in the order it's given to you always think about the meanings always think about the structure try and organise the way that you are kind of making your own notes within a structure that helps you and helps you organise your memory there's also the other thing to think about is elaborate so again the stronger you can make the story so if you can think about how those words connect together think about how the kind of information that you're trying to remember connects to your own life they're kind of elaborating on the list and that's one of the techniques that a lot of memory champions have when they have long lists like this they'll often kind of visualise the list if they can and they'll have a story so for example if you visualize your say route to work every day if you're working at home maybe that's from your bedroom down to your living room um or if it's a longer commute they'll kind of remember a route they do every day and then they'll place items along the list that they need to remember so they create it into a bigger more colourful more a memory that they can feel and then it will help them recall things and there are things like the world memory championships which go on and people remember amazing amount of things one of the things that you'll notice if you hear the interviews is these people don't have amazing marriages they don't think they have photographic memories they're just using these techniques to become very good and nor they practice the better they get so again if you're thinking about studying making mind maps can be really useful because it's not so much about the colour but it's about the organisation the way you organise make organisations the way you make connections between different topic areas again it makes it more elaborate it makes you think about the meaning constantly which will really help you the other thing that i've started to talk about is visual imagery so one of the most basic studies again it was done a long time ago but many people have done different variations on it since found that we're much better at retrieving concrete words versus abstract words so the example you've got if i was asking to remember something that a list of words like piano and guitar you're able to imagine really easily you can visualise a piano i've picked an image from the internet trying to visualise hope i don't think unless the word was written hope on that stone you wouldn't know that that image was meant to represent hope it would be a stone in a hand so this is one of those things that we if we can visualise things and take the time to think about them and again even if it's abstract trying to think think about how it might fit into a story something meaningful to you or connect it visually with something else it will help you remember things this is something that i use in my teaching so i teach a lot of statistics and i talk about normal distributions and it's got a distribution that's very pointy it's called leptocatosis and then if you've got a very flat distribution it's platychotosis and students really struggle with these terms so i made this image of a leprechaun riding the platypus and i say leptocatosis think of leprechauns they're very jumpy they're very bouncy they would jump over a big pointy distribution platychotosis so you think of the platypus it's got a nice flat back with a gentle curve so again it's like a very flat distribution so it's a bizarre image you won't come across it every day and but again you're able to visualise it so i've taken something that's relatively abstract turned it into a very memorable image and it's something that i say 10 15 years later i had students go i still remember the leprechaun and the platypus sometimes they don't remember what they stood for but they remember the weird image and again this is something that's been looked at um scientifically again another ridiculously old study but many many other studies have followed up so they've looked in this study where they had listed words they had two nouns paired together and then at the recall stage they showed one of the nouns and then they had to recall the word that went with it and what they found was the imagery was the best so if you had saw the word platypus and leprechaun was paired with it then if you imagine interacting then that's going to be your best memory sentence generation so putting those two words into a sentence was next to again linking to meaning just reading a sentence wasn't so good and just wrote so repeating the words which again is always our first instinct when we get told to remember something we just try and repeat it that was the worst so again if you make these memories more richer more visual you kind of bring together a much stronger memory trace so this was an image i started off with now i asked you to close your eyes and i told you a story so everybody what was the first thing when i told you to close your eyes i asked you to visualise your mum and what was your mum doing excellent so after your mum what came next okay and what was the baby doing yep it was smashing the play dough and then i asked you to look off to one side what did you see okay so it was a big jar with words falling going round and the other side excellent so you've learned something about short-term memory in a long-term memory talk because at the start i was asking you to use the techniques i talked about during the talk so i so this is what i was talking about but you also learned something about short-term memory i want to thank you very much for listening today there's a brilliant group of psychologists called the learning scientists that have loads of hints and tips so anyone who has to study for something the learning scientists have got a great website or if you're a teacher there's loads and loads of resources on there which i really recommend for helping people learn and memorise the information and anyone who was struggling with the anagrams these were the anagrams i showed earlier but thank you very much for your attention


MTV News is coming to you from the North Pole today. Ugh, I did not dress appropriately for this. Santa, where are you? I need to nuzzle your beard. After 15 seasons of Jordi Shaw, obviously I have decided to leave. The original Raji has officially left Jordi Shaw. Gaz Vidal is off to live that daddy dream with pregnant girlfriend Emma McVeigh and we've been chatting to fellow Jordi original Sophie Kasai on how the show is going to feel without him. I never thought in a million years that he would end up being a dad this quick. I thought Gary would be on Jordi Shaw right of the end and I think it's going to be a lot more crazy maybe without him because sometimes you did tell us off if we were in the wrong but now who's going to tell us off? I think if anyone, Aaron's probably found it the hardest. What I'm going to miss most about being with Gaz is he's literally the right hand man. Wherever I went, he went and wherever he went, I went. All the best in being a father. I know you're going to be f***ing amazing at it and I can't wait to meet the new baby. Vicky Patterson's brand new MTV show X on the Beach Body SOS starts this January. So if you want that 2018, new year, new you, body, booty or just a new show to binge, I reckon you're going to love it. This is a brand new, brilliant show that has never been seen before, never been done before. We are taking people on a roller coaster ride, a body transformation but it ends up so much more than that. It's about getting these people to know more about health, fitness, body confidence, their image, everything. We just want to help people with everything you need and there's some profit lads in it. Selena Marie Gomez is creeping Justin Bieber's Instagram and she's left receipts. The Wolf's star still doesn't follow Justin, but we're on Jelena Watch and Salgo just liked the pic he posted with his mum. Oh, mon dieu. Staying on Instagram, Selena also just posted a pic with 13 reasons why star Catherine Langford to celebrate her Golden Globe nomination. What? But don't just get nominated for a Golden Globe, be a Golden Globe. Actress Zendaya just celebrated her three Golden Globe nominations for the greatest snowman by dressing like one. And by the way, Zendaya's co-star, Zach Efron, just started loads of dating rumors. Zach posted pics with co-star Rebecca Ferguson on his socials saying, I finally looked heart-eye emoji. Don't tell Zach's Baywatch bromance star, The Rock. Dwayne just posted an adorable picture of his daughter, Jasmine Lea, announcing baby number two. Lauren and I are boundlessly grateful for this blessing. Big Daddy is completely surrounded by beautiful East Virgin and loving, powerful female mania. Did I say that right? Speaking of ladies, Beyonce just smashed her first number one since Single Ladies. Yep, three critically acclaimed chart-topping albums later. The Beyonce drought is over and it's all thanks to Ed Sheeran. Perfect Duet is number one in both the UK and US right now and Ed says working with the star was really f***ing cool. And speaking of my fellow ginger people, Prince Harry and William star as stormtroopers in the new Star Wars movie. The princes share the screen with Daisy Ridley and John Bayega and apparently slap Beniko Del Toro's bum during the cameo.  That was a lot of news. Mic drop. Today's MTV News was so extra. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe. I'll see you next week. Thanks for watching.


This is dock number 9267, we are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, your truck headquarters. We have a 2016 Ford F450, crew cab, long box, dual rear wheel, power stroke diesel. This might be one of the cleanest F450s we've ever had on our lot. This truck has a 6.7 liter power stroke diesel. On this HD video, you'll be able to tell just how clean this truck is. We shoot everything in 1080p, so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device, turn them on now, so you can see just how clean this truck is. Has the 19.5 inch polished aluminum rims, continental HSR 22570R 19.5 tires. These tires look like they have roughly about 60% of the tread left. Even underbody on this truck is extremely clean. White platinum tricote metallic is the color. I did not see any dents or dings on the front bumper or front valance. Very very clean, the hood is very clean as well. You can see that metal flake in the paint right there. Very good looking color. Passenger side rim is absolutely perfect. And as we go down this side of the truck, you can see just how clean the body is, how reflective and glass like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by, you can still see the truck, hear the truck, and have confidence in the vehicle you're looking at before you even get here. Everybody's got busy lives, so we try to make it easy to buy a vehicle, whether you're close or far away. You didn't see one single dent or ding down this side of the truck. The back rims are in excellent shape, very very clean, great condition, and the back tires have just as much tread as the front tires. This one has Firestone airbag suspension, frame and underbody is very clean. It does have the camper package with the anti-sway bars. This one has all the remaining factory exhaust. You can see the frame and underbody is very very clean on this truck, as are the lower lips and rockers. Dualy tub is in really nice condition, has the chrome trimmed, chrome tipped exhaust I should say, but it does have the chrome package so you get the chrome trim on the mirrors as well. Full towing package of course on the 450, get a receiver hitch, 4 pin and 7 pin wiring. The tailgate is absolutely perfect, no dents or dings on that. This one does have the tailgate step assist, also has a very nice spray and bed liner, and a B&W turn over gooseneck hitch, has a 7 pin wiring in the bed, and bed is very very clean on this truck. This one also has the tailgate step assist, so put that up like that, this goes down like that, and then it's really easy to get into the bed of the truck. It shuts nice and solidly, there's a locking tailgate, it does have the backup camera and the reverse sensors, not one dent or ding on the rear bumper, no dents or dings on the tailgate there. And as you go down this side of the truck, you can really see that metal flake in the paint if you got it in HD right now. But down this side of the truck, absolutely perfect, no scuffs, no scrapes, very very clean. Like I said, one of the nicest F450s we've ever had, has the driver side door code entry, which we do have, so don't worry about that.  This has the Lariat Ultimate package, which gives you the black leather interior, there are no rips or tears on these seats. This truck has never been smoked in. You get memory driver seat, factory floor mats throughout, carpeting is like new underneath those floor mats. And as you can see, this truck does have 30,641 miles. So considering the miles on this truck, it is just about as new as you can get. You got your driver's information controls, you got your Bluetooth and audio controls on that side, cruise controls over here as well. You have the My Ford Touch radio, this one has the factory navigation, also has your climate, you got your heated and cooled seat buttons right there. This is also where your backup camera shows up. Traction control turned out four wheel drive, your factory exhaust brake. Down here is the Firestone for the rear airbags. Has the factory brake controller or tow command as Ford calls it.  What makes this truck the Lariat Ultimate is the fact that it has the navigation system and the power sunroof. This one also has the home link system, power sliding rear window, passenger seat is absolutely perfect, no rips or tears, very, very clean, passenger side floor and carpeting is like new as well. Take a quick look at the back seats and then we will check out under the hood. Back seats are very clean as well, no rips or tears back here, very, very clean. Carpeting is like new back here as well and there is a 110-150 watt plug-in back here. This one has the power sliding rear window with the built-in rear defrost, we have the factory subwoofer back here and the latch tether anchors are back here as well. They don't have the anchors in the seats but they do have them on the back so you can still put car seats back here. And then we have a storage container that is lockable and then that looks like an extra hose for the rear airbag suspension would be my guess, but it's just an air hose extra back there that comes with the truck. Very clean back here and we will take a quick look, oh, also these back seats, they are heated, there are your heated seat buttons. Take a quick look under the hood, 6.7 liter power stroke diesel, this is the second generation of that motor, engine bay is very clean, runs very smooth, can't get over how quiet these diesels are. This truck has been fully safety inspected by our service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off. This truck has been gone through mechanically 100% and is 100% ready to go. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 400 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, half tons, we quarter tons, one tons, 450s, 550s, you name it, we got it, go to our website, www.SummitAuto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle on our lot, videos of every single used vehicle that we have all at SummitAuto.com. Thanks for checking out my video. If you want to make this super clean 2016 Ford F450 years today, give us a call right now<PHONE_NUMBER>, ask for one of our sales associates to make this truck yours today. Once again, that number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Thanks for checking out my video. If you like it, want to go check out more videos, go to youtube.com slash summit auto. Remember to like, subscribe and share on those videos. In fact, in a second, you'll see a link to subscribe to our channel on the left. A link to more heavy-duty truck videos like this one on your right, and if you haven't been to our website on the bottom, a link to this truck on our website, click those, check it out, check us out, see what we're all about, and we look forward to helping you with this super clean 2016 Ford F450 crew cab long box, Larry Dultman. Thanks again.


Governor Samuel R. Thomas Benree State has stated that Nigeria is fast becoming a failed state because of the bad policies of the all-progressive Congress APC-led federal government. He lamented that the ruling party has dragged the country 20 years backwards, thereby eroding all the gains earlier recorded by the People's Democratic Party-led federal government. He added that there is every need for the PDP to re-strategize and give alternatives to Nigerians who are eager and calling on the party to reposition itself. Well, joining us to discuss this are political analysts Ladipo Johnson and John Wesley. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for loving. Great. I'm going to start with you, Mr. Johnson. This sounds more like one of those calls that we have heard from or statements that we've heard from many people. I mean, the list is endless. Some weeks ago, it was Pastor Paula Deferasen of House on the Rock Church. A few days ago was a former running mate of Mr. President Pasatunde Bakare. We've had many people. The PDP, we have had statesmen, all kinds of people talking about the APC-led government. Let's analyze it from his perspective. What do you think he's coming from? Is it because of the hits that his state has been taking in terms of insecurity? Or is he just speaking as a man in the opposition party? Well, I think that a lot of Nigerians are harsh-losing patients with where we are at. And what government has been doing or has been unable to do. Governor Autumn, as you know, has been on the forefront of the insurgency, banditry, burning of villages, and what have you. So I think that, yes, he's slightly more passionate about the entire situation. And there are some indices. When you talk about moving towards a failed state, there are some indices that you look at. And part of those, I think, have showed up in Benway. And so he is pained and has a right, I believe, to speak as he has spoken. But we have not reached the status of being a failed state yet. But there are warning signals that this government must act on and make sure they turn things around. Mr. Wesley, I'd like to call Governor Autumn directly. He said that Benway's state used to be fruitful. That's what he said, that his state used to be very fruitful. And he talked about the fact that it is no longer the way it used to be. He talks about the fact that a lot of insecurity has eroded all of the benefits. I mean, we look at the states like Benway and some other states as the food basket of the nation. But as it is now, it seems to be the food basket of a lot of insecurity and a lot of killings and kidnappings, which we have heard the governor speaking, you know, condemn over and over again. I'm sure that, of course, you live in Nigeria, the cost of living has been really high. And our purchasing power has not increased in any way. Do you think that maybe this is part of the reason why the governor is making these statements? Is it that the insecurity that we're facing in these parts of the country has affected, you know, the agricultural output and, of course, the economy in its entirety? All right, thank you very much. I will speak in affirmation. What the governor has said is just, I think he spoke a little bit down in this situation. As we speak, if I want to speak in clear terms, so many people go to bed hungry. So many people go out on a daily basis with no assurance of getting back to their homes. Many people leave from end to mouth. Now, tell me in a country where the government cannot provide food for its people. Tell me if such is not a failed state. Tell me in a country where people go out and they do not have an assurance of getting back to their homes. Tell me that such a country is not in shambles.  So it looks normal. It just looked like, okay, yes, okay, die. Well, I mean, people died 10. Okay, it's okay. But in other clients, just one life, one life, you know, will look like 100 people died.  Can you, can you even count the number of condolences, marriages that we have received from this government in the last how many years? It's such a failed state. You see, the truth of the matter is this. A country where the government cannot provide food for its people. These farmers cannot go to the farm. The security operatives, the operators in place, yes, they might be doing so much. Well, it looks like they pour water into the basket. And as a matter of fact, nothing seems to be working. The fact that we live in Lagos to live in some other part where it appears to see everything is fine, you know, may make us feel that yes, we have not approached being a failed state. But for those who live up not, and in other parts, I mean, you will realize as we speak, even in Lagos, in other places, just about few months ago, I narrowly escaped being kidnapped. About a few months ago, brought daylight in Lagos, around motorways, brought daylight. This wasn't in the night, brought daylight. And you tell me it's not a failed state. I mean, it's a failed state already, except there's a resurrection to the failed state. Mr. Johnson, are we not being a bit too harsh and a bit too, you know, putting out too much gloom and doom there when we talk about the fact that Nigeria is a failed state? Now, let's critically look at this. The APC and the PDP. I was talking to, you know, some representatives of the party yesterday, and I truly asked what the difference was between the APC and the PDP. And I'm not in any way trying to condone whatever the government of Buhari has done or hasn't done. But we have seen these politicians crisscross, back and forth, and they're all one and the same. The people who are in the APC today were once in the PDP. Can we really say that this government has failed? Or can we just generally say that our politicians have failed? The people who are against the APC today used to be PDP members. How have they also worked or helped in their own capacity to better the loss of Nigerians? Well, the bottom line is that you're right, politicians have moved back and forth. However, government under the PDP got the country to a certain stage. Government under the APC is still in power, they're still administering, and we can look at the various indices, inflation, insecurity, the devaluation of the Naira, and what have you. So, at the end of the day, the box stops at Mr. President's table, because these past years, he's had four years and I think we're now approaching the second or third year of his second term. So, they have to take the blame for the way things are at the moment. And that is the thing about governance. You don't keep passing the buck, keep passing the blame. And you will remember that this government did that for many years. He was slow in changing his service chiefs. He has been slow in so many things. They are the ones who decided to close the borders, not thinking about Nigerian traders, talking about importation of rice. We've not heard anything about Medicare or health care for the people, yet Mr. President is able to travel to the UK for his own health care. So, there are many, many things that are going wrong and the last thing they should be doing now is passing the buck. And the most important thing here is that when we're talking about all the politicians, none of the senators or the members of the ruling party have come out, I stand to be corrected, have come out to say, oh, I think Mr. President, on this issue, I think we're going in the wrong direction. So, we are to take it that everything is perfect. They should not come out when it comes to elections and say, oh, that was them. This is now. Because no one has stood up and spoken out about the problems the masses are facing. All right, finally, Mr. Wesley, because we're out of time. Just to go to some of the things that Governor Autumn made mention of, he talked about the fact that the PDP in itself has to restrategize. He said also that the president seems to not know the things that are happening. He says, I will continue to say that the president should be aware of the things that are happening. And of course, I think every average Nigerian is asking, does the president not know what we're facing in this country? Is he acting like he doesn't understand what's happening in the country? And he says that the president says that he does not take kickback. And he said, I also want to believe he doesn't take kickbacks. But maybe he's not aware that the people around him are taking bribes and are killing the economy. I'd like to take your thoughts quickly before we wrap up this conversation. All right, I will quickly say this. Most of the things that Governor Autumn mentioned are valid. Now, it is clear that the president at his age, even those of us who have aged ones at home, you see them manifest some characters and then we attribute it to the old age. Is the president older than the Queen of England, who's very active and, you know, up and doing? I mean, they're very competitive right now. Can we really play that eight card here? Really, can we? No, I'm going to spell it out. I'm going to spell it out. Now, you want to compare a system where things work, where everything works around details to an environment where people operate at the highest level of mediocrity. See, there are things that we must mention. There are things that we must state very clearly. The president is of age and actually remembers most of the things that he even reads. I do not want to agree with you, but it's okay. It's your opinion. The truth of the matter is this. When the president sometimes, when he speaks, you should listen to the president when he speaks. There was an interview the president granted the last time he visited Lagos. It was in Lagos. You need to hear what the president was saying. Too many inconsistencies in the things that the president was saying. It's clear that even when the president reads reports about things that are happening, there are some of these things that flips away from the memory of the president. You cannot throw that into the ... Are you insiduating that our president is not fit to rule? I mean, I don't believe that. I'm so sorry. I think that we have a connection problem, but we're almost out of time. I want to thank my guests. Unfortunately, Mr. Wesley is frozen. Thank you very much. Ladiko Johnson and John Wesley for being part of this conversation. Unfortunately, the internet is not very friendly. Thank you for being here. Thank you everybody for being part of this conversation. At this point, you have to say our goodbyes will be back tomorrow talking about more news and political issues on Plus Politics. I am Marianna. Come see you.