Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming. Director-General Francis Gurry will present the World Intellectual Property Indicator for 2014. And we have also with us today our Chief Economist, Karsten Fink. Thank you, Samar. Ladies and gentlemen, a very good afternoon to you all. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. Karsten is here, as Samar has already said, and also Mosaid Khan, who works under Karsten and is the head of our statistics area, and they are responsible for this report. So a few messages, if I may, about the report, which, if I may say, I think is a very good survey of what happened in the world in 2013 in intellectual property filing terms. And so the first message, I think, is the continuation of consistent growth of the IP system. Now that's something that's not new that we've been speaking about for many years, but I think it's worth repeating that message because it is one of the indicators of the knowledge economy, if you like. It's one of the indicators that there is an increasingly important component of knowledge in production and distribution of goods and services. And that comes through very sharply with the growth rates that we see in 2013, which very briefly were in the patent area in terms of filings an increase of 9%. You know, add to 2.57 million applications. In the trademark area, an increase of 6.4%. These figures are available to you in the press release. In the design area, an increase by 2.5%. So I suppose that's number one message. Number two message I would say is that a huge amount of this growth is driven by China. So again, not a new message consistent with what we've been saying for a number of years now, but it becomes more and more pronounced, let's say, the position and prominence of China in seeking intellectual property titles. We see, for example, that it has the largest number of patent filings, trademark filings and design filings in the world. In each area, the Chinese office receives more applications than any other office in the world. So this is quite a significant thing. You can also say, because that's all the applications that China receives, whether from Chinese residents, Chinese enterprises or nationals, or from foreigners, it's the largest. But it's also the largest in terms of resident filings. You know, what is being filed by Chinese as opposed to what is being filed by American enterprises or residents or European, various European, different European countries or Japan. So this is extremely important. We also see largely as a consequence of China that Asia is occupying a terribly prominent position now. 58.4% of world patent filings, 48.2% of world trademark filings, and nearly 70%, 69.4% of design filings worldwide. So Asia more generally than China, but China in particular. For the particular country performances, I'm not sure that I need to go into those because the details are given to you in the press release. So it would be pretty boring for you if I were to take you through it individually. Apart from the Chinese phenomenon, which I think is extremely important, but to some extent, as we say in the report, what we see in the intellectual property filing field is a mirror of what we're seeing in the world economy. Okay, so you see that in the patent area, for example, you have growth from China, significant growth, you know, 26%. You have growth from the United States of America, but you have a fall from Japan, 4% less, and a fall 0.4% less from the European countries, members of the European patent organization. What else can I tell you that is more or less high level here? I suppose we can make a comment about the fields of technology, which have been most prominent, and the most prominent is computer technology, 7.6% of all patent applications. For Switzerland, the most filings are pharmaceuticals. For France and Germany, transport-related technology. For Korea, UK and the US, Republic of Korea, UK and the US, computer-related technologies were the principal fields, the main, the most important field, let's say. In the trademark area, moving away from patents and very briefly, again, you know, you have the phenomenon of China with the fastest growth rate of the major offices, 13.8%. An extraordinary number. In the trademark area, we make our counts on the basis of an application per class of goods or services. So one application might contain four classes. So the numbers are slightly inflated, but we can get comparability across countries because there are different systems. So for China, it's 1.88 million. You know, extraordinary numbers. And if you compare that to the US, it's 486,000. Or the European trademark office, 324,000. The main sector, or at least the most important sector, let's say, the main, agriculture for trademarks, 16.5%, interesting, followed by clothing and research and technology. And then just a word on industrial designs. I'd say, of course, again, we do see a slowdown in China, but it's mainly because they have had so many in recent years, I would say, of such high growth rates. But we see a slightly different patent, pattern, whereas in the case of patents, you get this, let me say, domination of filings by industrialised countries and China. In the case of trademarks, it's a bit more mixed. In the case of designs, we see China as the predominant filer, of course, but also important filings from a number of developing countries, such as Turkey or Morocco or Iran. We have also reported on plant varieties, if I may just say one final word, on plant varieties. We may not have spoken too much about that in the past, but it's a very important area which covers innovation in traditional breeding techniques in plant varieties. And it's a very interesting area also, and more attention is being paid to this area. We can see clearly the numbers are entirely different. So worldwide, 15,000 applications, 15,200, but a growth rate of about 6.3%. And the largest user of the system is the Netherlands, which of course is the centre of flower distribution for Europe and also a very important breeding centre for ornamentals, but also vegetables in particular. Karsten, some additional words? I don't think so. I think you've summarised the main trends. As you said, we could say a lot more about the performance of individual countries or officers, but I think this is all well documented in the press release and in the tables in the report. Okay, any questions? As regards China's figures, how credible are they because what one has just really made an honest about the so-called design patterns and liquidity patterns filed by China, and also the Chinese Communist Party's directives to file patent applications without regard to whether they actually amount to any rate to innovation? So where do you place these figures, given what one has just said, in the economist's latest issue? Then the second question is where do you exactly know what is happening in India? Well, let me take China, and then maybe, Karsten, you can respond to the India part. I wouldn't want to contradict an authority like the economist, but I would say that all the signs we see of China's engagement in this area are extremely positive, extremely strong. So strategically, of course, the country since the Third Plenum is on a journey from Made in China to Created in China, away from manufacturing towards the more knowledge-intensive industries, and that is a policy that is spread across the country, of course. So that's very significant, and intellectual property has an important role in that transition. Secondly, I think when you look at other indicators like investment in research and development, China is the second-largest investor in absolute terms in research and development around the world, after the U.S., and before Japan. By 2019, trends, current trends, would indicate that it will catch the U.S. into absolute terms in the R&D expenditure and will pass Europe as a whole in R&D terms. Enormous investment in education as well, and I don't think that these are insignificant indicators. I think they are indicators of, you know, the importance that China is attaching to this area and the strength of their engagement in the area. You could also add other indicators like numbers of science and technology articles published, and that's, again, a very strong performance and an increasingly strong performance. Then we come to our specific area of intellectual property. Well, the numbers, I think, say something, but they're quantitative measures and not qualitative measures. Well, we don't have agreed-upon metrics for judging quality across applications. One indicator that is used is the number of times a patent application is cited by other patent applications, and that's pretty positive for China. China is equal to Europe, European. But I haven't read any co-op on this article, but, you know... Most of the patents filed in China are all basically Chinese sort of given. When it goes to other markets and other countries... Well, have a look at a report done by Thompson Reuters within the last week, and which is available, and which will give you some further information. Okay. It starts with the Thompson Reuters report, like you. Yeah, that's right. And then questions the validity of this document. Yeah. Well, for the reasons that I gave, I would be an optimist about the performance of China. India? India. India. Unless you want to read to China. Yes, please. Well, maybe just one word on China.  They often point to individual, you know, patents or design patents, invention patents or design patents, and, you know, use that as an example of something that's of relatively low quality, which, by the way, is something you can probably do for most jurisdictions, you know. People regularly do this for patents that have been filed at the USPTO. But I think that doesn't tell you anything systemically. Now, I also have not read the economist's story. I'm sure there is learning going on on the part of the IP users in China, on the part of, you know, the professionals, you know, who are behind the system, you know, on the part of the Chinese Patent Office. But I think there are clearly, you know, sort of encouraging signs, not only in terms of, you know, the underlying R&D investments, but also in terms of, you know, the way that intellectual property is used, you know, for commercial purposes in the Chinese economies. It is correct in our report documents that Chinese patent filings overseas are still far below what you would observe for the United States and Japan. In the case of China, they stand at around 30,000 compared to more than 200,000 filings abroad for the United States and Japan.  Certainly filings abroad have been growing very rapidly in the case of China, but one also shouldn't forget that A, China is a very large market, so the necessity, you know, of Chinese companies to file abroad is certainly smaller than it is, you know, let's say in the case of a, you know, an applicant. I think that's important to keep in mind. So, you know, I would share the Director General's optimistic outlook on China, but I think it'll be interesting to how we look at this 20 years from now when, you know, I think, you know, history will be written. On India, I can give you the 2013 number India saw a filing decline in the area of patents of 2.1%, relatively minor decline. You know, this comes after many years of growth in India. Just to give you some numbers, in 2004 there were more than, slightly more than 17,000 patent filings in India. In 2012, that figure rose to 44,000, which is, you know, the highest on record. So you've seen a small decline in 2013, which maybe I'm speculating here related to the economic slowdown.  That may be one factor, but we ultimately don't know. But most of the patents have come from the non-resident Indians. Yes, I could look up the number, but it's still the case that the majority of patents in India... So I don't quite speak about any sustained activity on growth, or something to talk about. Well, it depends on what you would like to measure, I would say. But certainly, I mean, we can give you the numbers on resident filings if that is what you're interested in. Yeah. And the growth on 2012? Yeah. But it's not inconsequential that foreign filings are going up. I mean, there is a reason for that, and that is related to investment, and what is happening in the Indian economy also. You don't file there unless you also have an interest in the economy. Thank you. I think there was a question here. Yes, it is. Sorry, I'm just from AFP. I just wanted to speak a bit more about the relationship between patent filings and the health of an economy. Is there a chicken and egg thing? We need to talk about as the economy goes down, or a cure. But is there a reverse relationship there? And in terms of following on from what the gentleman was saying about does that change when we're talking about a high percentage of resident or non-resident? I noticed that Australia has a large proportion of non-resident allocations. Does that speak to a certain change in the health of the economy as well? Well, as I mentioned, we know that there is a correlation between the business cycle and patent filings. We saw this quite clearly in the course of the great financial crisis in 2009, after which in most jurisdictions there was a significant drop in patent filings. And indeed you would find the numbers in this report as well as the previous reports that we published in 2006. We also know that correlation isn't one for one. There are many factors that influence patent filings from one year to the next. You would also often find that research and development spending, even though it may be affected by the business cycle, is less affected than consumptions and other elements of, let's say, economic output. And often what you would observe is that patent filings wrecked more slowly and in a more muted way than the business cycle. But a lot depends really on the country and there are lots of confounding influences. Then we, for example, the declining share of European patent filings. Is that a reflection of Europe's decline, the economic situation? Or is that the sign of basically declining behind in terms of innovation in terms of other countries regions of Asia? I would answer that with a qualified yes. In a sense that Europe's declining share has partly to do with the fact that China is growing a lot. So if China is growing much faster than the rest of the world it's only natural that the global shares of the other regions decline. But it's also the case and you would find that in our numbers that in Europe patent filings have been more or less stagnant. And while you probably can't make a direct causal statement that this is entirely due to the financial crisis and the ensuing weak economic performance, I think you can say that there is a mirror in what you see. The reason I would say qualified yes is that if you look at individual European countries the performance is quite mixed. So you look at Spain for example, in Spain you saw healthy growth of both research and development investments as well as patent filings really up to 2009 and you look at the data and you see that since 2009 there has been stagnation if not declines in both variables. And I think there the relationship to the crisis is entirely obvious. I think in some of the larger European economies such as France and Germany the picture is more nuanced in the sense that in France and also in Germany there has been reasonably healthy growth in research and development but the patent filing performance has been more mixed and again there are other factors at play there are public investments in research and development that were undertaken in the aftermath of the crisis so there isn't any one-to-one correspondence but I would say that economic conditions leave their imprint on how the economy performs in the area of innovation. Let me just add one comment if I may because you raised the resident, non-resident question also to say that to some extent this can be a misleading sort of figure because what you are measuring to a certain extent is one individual country's performance against the rest of the world so most countries have a larger share of non-resident applications naturally than resident applications of course there's a scale and it varies. I think the US hovers around about the 50-50 mark for example China is definitely more resident than non-resident for a whole host of reasons Japan is probably more resident than non-resident also but most other countries you'll find Sweden I think might be the same even though they have more non-resident so that's a measure to be treated with some care I'd say Jamil then Boris first still in China some are multinationals and other companies claimed for the last 10 years that they went to China the products are copied and now they're patented these products as Ravi said is this a lesson also for Western companies because many of them say that they went to joint ventures with Chinese companies and other business deals and now they're seeing their own products being patented with some kind of is this a lesson as well and secondly on Brazil despite the increase over on the world to see the numbers of Brazil they are very very small and even if you see the patent office in Brazil with 30,000 files 26,000 from abroad basically the innovation aspect of this seems to be not even very good health well on the first what we're measuring here is filings rather than the extent of imitation that might exist in any particular economy so we have very little in the report that can address your question I think if I may say that your question has a certain amount of anecdotal value this is what people are saying I think what I could say is that China takes intellectual property very seriously and if you look at both strategically and in terms of providing an administrative and legislative infrastructure so one of the things that has just been introduced in China for example is specialized IP courts and that will come online in on January 1 next year and there are relatively few countries in the world that devote governmental infrastructure to the specialization of enforcement of intellectual property or intellectual property disputes I think we see many signs that they're taking this extremely seriously in China Do you know how many people work in the Chinese pattern office? Look so they have a separate office for patents and designs on the one hand and trademarks on the other hand in the patent area my guests do you know Karsten where around about 15,000 you know it's a lot it's the biggest in the world yeah it's huge now on Brazil well that's a difficult question I think Karsten do you want to make a comment on this? Yeah well I can't say too much about it I think again I think the 2013 performance you have to see in light of how the Brazilian economy fared in 2013 which I think was the beginning of the downturn in Brazil and you're right in saying that most of the filings are by non-residents in Brazil but that does affect resident as well as non-resident filings so I think that's important to keep in mind now the fact that the minority share of filings in Brazil are from from residents is that a big problem per se I don't think it is I think there are pockets of excellence in Brazil if you think of the aircraft industry if you think of Embraer if you also think about oil exploration technology there's quite a bit happening but maybe I'm the one who's now too much anecdotal evidence certainly agriculture, Brazil is doing quite well in plant varieties so it's not that there is no innovation occurring in Brazil I think it's the question of whether the glass is half empty or half full Boris and then John Yes, first I don't know what the local classes are but more broadly without taking you too much time patenting and technical creativity is one of the topics least easy to put in numbers and still today in the publication of the indicator reports so you have to focus on numbers but still there are very few tables which can help those who are not interested in the country country wise breakdown but the let's say technical category breakdown what are these patents about is it a new painting for tomatoes or is it new underpaint or is it solar cell I don't know and there are some details but I have bad hearing I don't think you have addressed that so a couple of comments one we have available on our website a data center where you can go and profile your country very easily I am not interested in my country at all I am interested in technological innovation well first you can do that I thought you were interested in your country and secondly and patent scope here well in the case of patents I think the breakdown you would be interested in is the breakdown by fields of technology and that is available that isn't the reports yes I am happy to point you to them the director general in his opening remarks referred to computer technology having seen the fastest growth in 2013 also if you for example in this leaflet here actually not here it's sorry on pages on page 6 you would find the fields of technology that have a content for the fastest growth in patenting and surprisingly medical technology are much more sluggish and more ancient fields of computer technology so all this would be interesting to examine to analyze more in that you are right and there is but there is a we have this difficulty that in the patent system for the way in which they classify patent applications because they have to do it to examine against pre-existing technology is by fields of technology and in economics more generally people often use for example standard industry classification so we have a difference of classification techniques now you know this computer technology is it used where is it used in computer goods or is it used in supporting innovations in different industrial applications and fields and the same for biotechnology it can be used in agriculture it can be used in pharmaceuticals it can be used in chemicals it can be used across the whole range so there is a slight difficulty if you like in trying to classify the whole field of patent applications I know it's not very helpful but just to explain one of the methodological difficulties in this area you did mention the Locano system of classifying different industrial designs I have John and then Gunilla Yes Mr. Curry in your research do you have an assessment how many of the patent applications come from dual use areas in other words where there is a military and civilian input for instance we've seen recently in the Ebola vaccines a lot have come from the Department of Defense Research for the National Institute how much of this research whether it's in engineering in electronics and can you capture this in a statistic at least while it's patented into the US Patent Office or the Chinese Patent Office We can't Why? Well for a start because a number of countries such as the United States the Kingdom have a system of secret inventions For example for security reasons the United States law requires an United States resident or enterprise to file first in the United States of America and not overseas and incoming applications are screened and with potentially significant military applications do not necessarily find themselves in their way into the open patent system and that United States is not the only country to practice that system I believe that the United Kingdom and France also practice it but I would need to put my research up to date so that's one reason why we can't have an accurate measure of this What we do know is of course that there are many commercial applications of what started as military technology such as GPS Canela I wanted to ask you about the Nordic countries and as you can see there have been climbing applications in the EU but it hasn't touched as much as I understand right in Nordic countries and how do you explain that the economic recession Well I'll start and Carson can finish or compliment or correct but well the Nordic countries are all knowledge intensive economies and they're all knowledge intensive economies they're with the exception of Norway of course not resource primary resource economies so what they have is human resources and technology so this has been a consistent train for many years so we see extremely strong performances for Sweden, Denmark Finland in these areas and also in research and development if I'm not mistaken Sweden has the highest GDP percentage of GDP committed to research and development in the world if it's not the highest it's one of the top it's one of the highest and what else could I say about the Nordic countries Carson Well I'm just looking at the number numbers and I'm obviously not prepared I would say though that if I look at Finland you have a decline of about 5% in filings in the case of Sweden it's an increase of about 2.4% which is similar to what you see in other European or I would say is within the range of other European countries you see a notable increase in Norway and I can't tell you immediately what is behind there but certainly on the face of the number I would characterize that as a more mixed performance but I think that's quite a lot Is that Nokia? I'm asking you because I know Nokia has been going through difficulties and that may be reflected in patent filing but I'm speculating here so and remember also our global innovation index we have very strong performances from the Nordic countries I think Sweden is number 3 taken and on the global GA2 but also strong performances from Denmark Sweden number 3 used to be 2 number 3 this year Finland number 4 Denmark number 8 so strong performances there There's more time I was kind of late with the report so I didn't want to be there I can follow up earlier With reference to the patent filing you've also got a statistic in the report of trademarks in force What's the difference between the two I mean which other countries where people just file and forget about and make sure it's relevant and the countries where they're active doing better Well on the first one there's a fundamental difference between the patent system and the trademark system Patents in most jurisdictions are limited to 20 years whereas trademarks in principle can last forever provided applicants renew them when they come due and you see that I mean what is interesting if you look at the age profile of trademarks in force you would see the majority of them of relatively recent vintage but there's a significant number of trademarks that have been enforced literally for decades that speaks to the fact that certain brand names have long lasting values If you look at the aggregate values of patents and trademarks in force they're increasing simply because applications have been increasing and you would expect that to result in an increase in the stock of existing trademarks For which other countries where you've got them in force and which other countries where people just file they say I've invented something or I've invented something and just pay the fee and don't activate it I don't think that there are many people that file unless they have a corresponding economic interest or activity so I don't think they file and just leave it there because it costs money and there are maintenance fees so if you file in a country it's because you're interested in having an economic activity there Please A question about China's IP plate Among the huge numbers in patents and trademarks and designs respectively which kind of technology is the most at the end of the year to break down the numbers? Computers and telecommunications from memory was the predominant field but we will just consult it I think we would need to get back to you on this I think the numbers are easy to dig out you have them here so the three top fields in the case of China is computer technology digital communication and electrical machinery apparatus energy fields that you would associate with information and communication related technologies having said this these are the top three fields if you look at the spectrum of patent filings you would see China filing patents in pretty much all of the technology fields so certainly the fields of specialization differ from country to country but I would say China's patent patent filings are reasonably well diversified page 32 and chart A23 yes sorry I stick to my type of question not to embarrass you but because after all we are all here to try to understand what technical progress is about beyond the figures helpful thing for instance page 33 I very well understand the part about medical technology but if we look at the ones on basic material chemistry we feel very embarrassed because we see that Brazil is the most innovative in terms of basic material chemistry and that Korea is the last but one so we could conclude ok Brazil is basic and not Korea but if we look closer at the least we are surprised that Brazil tops Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland etc and Korea is on the other side so it poses all the question what really is basic and what is sophisticated another question is page 122 so I know that Trocter and Gamble is not no longer addressing the washing powder and Pampas business but still lot of patents in Pampas Pampas is their most heavily patented product but here in page 122 we are in the design so it's still surprising for me that Trocter and Gamble find more application for design by far than Hermes for instance just behind Swatch and Philip so all this for me poses very interesting question of interpretation I hope you will stay long enough we'll be here soon suddenly it's very fine to us all this fascinating well on the second one you know I think I'm guessing an answer on the second one I think that you would find that Trocter and Gamble have vastly numerically more products than Hermes I mean they are all over the consumer durables but what does this kind mean for this kind of product should you be here understand what you think so I would say that's the second one and on the basic chemicals well what is important to keep in mind for the figure 824 these are relative specialization indices with the emphasis on relative so you compare the strength of countries across the spectrum and figure out where is it that they have strength and weaknesses but that does not necessarily allow direct comparison between countries so it may very well be that overall Germany files far more many patents in basic materials chemicals than Brazil but as far as their relative performance is concerned so that's important to keep in mind it shows that Brazil it was page 33 that Brazil together with Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland is rather prone to innovation in basic material chemistry it's a strange group if you compare with all the figures on this page so that was just a question I know that you cannot supply but I think the answer could be interesting in a sense that most likely it's interesting in a sense that this is all based on sort of data on patent filings in fields of technologies okay I think we'll take one last question France is coming back to this issue that we mentioned that the Chinese are getting serious about IPN enforcement but I think some recent studies have shown that the threshold where an infringement is a violation is much lower in terms of value the higher more products need to you know it's a high level before a citizen you might counterfeit an X amount of products before it's a criminal offence is that changing the new law? Will there is an annual study done by the British law firm RAF R-O-U-S-E on IP litigation and it comes to some interesting conclusions one of which is that foreigners win more frequently in Chinese litigation than residents in the field and they substantiate that and you can look at their study online but well there's many possible explanations for that one may be that there are more foreigners that have interesting strong titles in force there because you tend to file overseas with your strong titles but nevertheless it's on its face a very interesting statistic so I'm not sure about I think we have to be very careful about the story My question is are they lowering the threshold for instance a few years ago someone could infringe 300-400 products before it was considered a criminal offence the exacting of the law is the law making an infringement so easy and out then in the past? Well I can't give you a direct answer because I'm not qualified to without looking at the data I would say that they take it very seriously and indications of this study by a very credible annual study done by the British law firm are that foreigners are not necessarily suffering in the Chinese litigation system at all Thank you very much and happy holidays to everybody and hope to see you in the new year The red carpet will always be


funny red curls. Ryan just curls up and starts sucking his thumb. I don't know what happened. Conditioned punisher, which is potentially a neutral stimulus that has been paired with a punishing stimulus to the point that it now enacts that punishment is about to happen or is happening. An example would be... Now that little thing will probably forever be a punisher. So, if I'm in the middle of recording a video and I get an example wrong...  I'm in the middle of recording another definition and I get, let's say, reinforcement is circular reasoning. OH GOD! Conditioned punisher. Just an attempt to reduce behavior. Yeah, that's fine. It's totally good. We weren't worried about ethics amongst each other. Let's face it, we're not in a clinic. Forever be scared of little fuzzy mice that are made out of... Cat toys. I am afraid of cats. For other reasons, Brad, for other reasons.


Russian forces have launched a major military assault on Ukraine with reports of explosions near major cities across the country. In a pre-dawn TV statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia did not plan to occupy Ukraine but said Moscow's response will be in stand if anyone tried to stop this. Shortly afterwards, attacks were reported on Ukrainian military targets. Ukraine said that Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in a video statement this morning, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said Mashalov was now being imposed across all of Ukraine.


What's happening guys? It's Shane here and today I have a very exciting video for you. We are going to be going over the top 9 health degrees. The thing about health degrees is they have more demand than any other type of degree out there. So going into health is likely going to lead to a very stable career. They're also great for people who aren't very good at math. That's one question I get all the time on this channel. And there's just a lot of other positives here. So for instance with health degrees you've got great options at pretty much every level whether you want to do school for like you know a few years four years like a bachelor's degree six years like a master's degree or eight plus years like a doctoral degree. There are great options for you at pretty much every other level and that's not necessarily the case with other types of degrees. But with that being said it also makes it very difficult to compare health degrees to themselves for one and also to other types of degrees. Comparing like a master's degree to an associate degree is almost like comparing apples to oranges. So really it kind of just comes down to your own personal preference. For me my own personal preference I would rather not go into a degree like medical doctor for instance where you know you're going to have to go to school for eight years then you're going to do a residency that's three to seven years. And so chances are by the time you get to a net worth of zero you've paid off of all of your student loans you're probably going to be in your late 30s. After that you're going to be absolutely making bank and killing it but me personally that's not the type of lifestyle I want to live. I'd rather be able to get a job you know right off the bat in my early 20s and then be able to enjoy my youth. But again that's just personal preference is going to be different for everyone. But with that being said we are going to jump into it right after you gently tap the like button hit the subscribe button and ring the notification bell to number nine on the list which is going to be dentist. All right so dentists obviously make fantastic money this is a doctoral level degree it's going to take about eight years of schooling and then a lot of the time you will start off working for someone else as a dentist and then eventually the go-to move here is probably to open your own practice. Unfortunately it is going to cost a lot of money for you to open your own practice you're going to have to go even deeper into debt and that's why along with the student loan debt of course dentists don't even hit a net worth of zero a lot of the time until they're in their late 30s. But once you get past that point you are going to be absolutely raking it in so this one is very viable especially if you're someone who is very you know long term thinking and you're willing to you know put in all of those years of being in a negative net worth to finally be able to pay all of it off. Next on the list number seven is going to be medical doctor and this is either MD or DO and the great thing about health careers and health degrees is you know if you get a degree in nursing for instance you're going to become a nurse it's very cut and dry straightforward whereas there's a lot of degrees out there where you get a degree in this and then you end up doing something completely different so it's definitely not as cut and dry and you really have to plan ahead. Now with medical doctor everybody knows that they make fantastic money however there is a huge upfront cost. First of all it's very difficult to get into medical school you have to be an absolute killer in undergrad the pre-med track is extremely competitive you're going to have to do lots of extracurriculars get really good grades you have to basically just be a fantastic student in order to even get into medical school. I have personally seen very smart people fail to get into medical school four years in a row yes that means they graduated with their bachelor degree they failed that year the next year the next year after that and then another time and these were very smart very capable people so do not underestimate how difficult it is to get into medical school. It's hard. Then when you finally get in medical school itself is incredibly difficult you are probably going to be studying like 60 hours a week at least and then on top of that you're likely going to be getting work experience as well. Then when you get out of medical school which is going to be one of the hardest things you've ever done you go into residency where they routinely work 80 hour weeks. Now residency is going to last somewhere between three to seven years usually after you're done with residency a lot of the time you're going to have an option to do a fellowship and the fellowships are also very difficult you're going to be working long hours when you finally graduate and become a doctor you're probably going to be working around 60 hour weeks now of course this is going to be different depending on the specialty you go in and your own personal choices but it's not going to be easy either way this is why I always say that there is a certain type of person that is a good fit to become a medical doctor this is a type of person who has a you know type A personality and you are just a go-getter because even when you do become a medical doctor you're working like 60 hours a week it's pretty much an obligation for you to stay up to date on the newest medical updates and that way you can give your patients the best possible care so you are going to be a lifelong learner studying outside of medical school and residency but if you are the type of person who fits this mold if you are a type A personality you don't mind working at least 60 hours a week all the time basically for the rest of your career then medical doctor can be a fantastic career for you but if you're more like me and you want to have a good work-life balance maybe you should consider some of the other ones on this list next on the list is going to be physical therapy and this is where you're basically going to help people recover from injuries so that they can live a more normal life now again guys in this video I'm not really going to go over the statistics because I've gone over that in a ton of detail in other videos so you can check out my other videos if you want to see those things but one thing that really stands out about physical therapy is how high the job satisfaction is so this has one of the highest job satisfaction scores out of any career in the entire world and I think one of the main reasons for that is because you know and a lot of different types of medical careers you do help people it's just you don't get to see the fruits of your labors right so you might give someone a recommendation but you don't get to see the outcome of that recommendation you kind of just have to speculate on what ended up happening with physical therapy you see the person right after they got injured and you work with them all the way through to the point where they pretty much can live a normal life so it's extremely rewarding that's my theory for why physical therapy has such high job satisfaction in terms of pay it's pretty good as well a lot of the time you're going to be getting a master's level degree some people say it's moving more towards being a doctoral level degree but the pay is pretty good here not amazing but there's a ridiculous amount of demand of course physical therapy is not going away it's probably going to get even bigger in the future so this is a fantastic one for you to consider next on the list is going to be diagnostic medical sonographer now sonography is an amazing technology it basically uses sound to produce a 2d or a 3d image so that you can basically see through things using sound now there's tons of different uses for this one of the most common ones of course is to be able to see babies while they are still inside of the womb now one thing that's amazing about getting into sonography is you can actually just get into it with a few years of study and this changes from state to state different states are going to have different requirements but usually it's just a few years so it's less than a bachelor level degree and you can get into a career where you're making pretty good money it's also very rewarding has pretty high job satisfaction and on top of that there is a ton of demand one downside to this one is it is going to kind of pigeonhole you into that career a little bit there's not too much room for kind of moving up or even laterally to different types of careers it's not like nurse for instance where there's just so many different options out there if you don't happen to like the current job that you're in now the next one on the list is actually very similar it only takes a few years to get into and that is number six dental hygienist you can make really really good money as a dental hygienist and it only takes a few years to get into we're talking six figures now I will say kind of as an asterisk here as a dental hygienist you really need to be kind of like an extroverted outgoing type of person many people hate going to the dentist and they hate even more having other people you know put their hands in your mouth and stuff and so you really need to be talented and making people feel comfortable that's just my opinion on this one though next one on the list is also very similar only takes a few years for you to get into and that is radiation therapist out of all of the ones that only take a few years to get into radiation therapist actually pays the most this is where you're going to be helping administer radiation therapy to patients who have cancer for instance it can be used for other things as well so yeah pretty tough one to get into you have to have thick skin but it's extremely rewarding being able to help people out that are in kind of a bad situation tons of demand for this one I think it has kind of the same weakness as the other two which is there's not much room for flexibility so for whatever reason you don't like the career it's going to be tough for you to transition but the next one on the list is fantastic when it comes to flexibility just because of the fact that there is literally millions of nurses in the United States and so for that reason there is pretty much unlimited different types of jobs and careers that you can go into literally hundreds of different types of nurses out there right and that's what it is it is nursing at number three now not only is there a bunch of different types of nurses but there's nursing degrees at just about every level so you've got basically like a two-year nursing degree and again there's some programs out there where you can get it done in like one year or less then you've got kind of the four-year nursing degree like a six-years master level nursing degree and then an eight-year DNP doctoral level nursing degree as well so yeah nursing is fantastic you can move horizontally you can move vertically the time that I've spent in healthcare I have seen nurses that are like directors of hospitals and up you know on high levels up in hospitals so you know I mean nobody knows hospitals better than nurses except maybe doctors but that's arguable and so it makes total sense that nurses a lot of the time end up in these director roles so yeah nursing is fantastic super flexible you can get like the two-year degree work for a few years and then decide hey I think I'm ready to go back to school get the four-year degree work for a few more years I'm ready to go back to school get your master's work for a few more years I'm ready to go back to school get that DNP and then just go on from there really really great option pretty much scores well in every single category the next one on the list is going to be what was formerly known as physician assistant now known as physician associate and this is basically a master's level degree where you are able to prescribe and diagnose under the supervision of a doctor now the term supervision is kind of used lightly here because a lot of the time the doctor is not actually going to be watching you they just allow you to diagnose in certain cases they might take on some of the more complicated cases but depending on how much they trust you they're going to let you subscribe and diagnose in a lot of other situations but with that being said this one is just fantastic in my opinion really high pay tons of opportunity it's one of the fastest going careers out there also very easy for you to switch specialties so for instance maybe you wanted to be a physician associate that works in surgery you get tired of that and you decide you know what I really like dermatology so you switch over to dermatology very easy to do that that's something that would not be an option for you if you were a medical doctor or at least it would be pretty much impossible for you to do very difficult but quite easy to do if you are a physician associate really good one here guys I do hear a lot of people talking about how they think it's going to become saturated because so many people are opening schools and that is a possibility it kind of depends on how smart they are about it if they just let people open schools willy-nilly and not realize that obviously school is a business that's something I talk about on this channel the end of the day these universities are businesses and if you just let them open schools left and right they are going to do that and then it's going to become saturated so as long as they're smart about how they do it and they keep standards up at a really high level this is going to be a fantastic career for a very very long time next on the list is going to be nurse practitioner and these two are pretty much tied I give the slight edge to nurse practitioner but honestly next week I could change my mind nurse practitioner is basically a master's level nursing degree like I talked about before just like physician associate or physician assistant you can prescribe and diagnose but you don't have to be under the supervision of a doctor you make fantastic money with this one the job growth is absolutely ridiculous job satisfaction tends to be really good as well like many of the careers on this list it's extremely meaningful you're really going to be helping people out on a day-to-day basis really good one guys hard to go wrong with this one so much flexibility relatively easy for you to switch specialties if you compare to like medical doctor for instance just a really solid option all around all the statistics are great but yeah guys if you want more information on the best college degrees to get check out my college degree 101 course down in the description below it is changing lives this is the course I wish I had when I first started college even if you're in high school this is going to help you out tremendously check it out down in the description below and also check out my other videos right here I made them just for you go ahead hit that like button hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts comments criticisms etc that you have on the video


Hey there friends. Thanks for checking in. I've been thinking a lot about bug out guns It used to be a topic that many people spoke about but now you hardly hear anybody talk about bug out guns But today in Michigan, it is a cold and blistery winter day winds at 60 miles an hour all the schools are closed many people are Bugging in but sometimes you have to bug out and you have to be careful as to which firearms you choose because of weight and the caliber choices you have to make sure you have enough ammo of course and You have to keep the weight as light as it could be as well as the size of the firearms because you're going to have a lot of Stuff to carry.  It's includes water and ammo and granola bars and whatever else Ounces add up the pounds. We have to be careful. It's certainly worth considering the handgun that I'm going to choose Many choices that take Glock mags, but I'm going with the Glock 19 if I had a Glock 17 I would choose that but I don't so I have the Glock 19 and the main reason why is because I have many of these and Considering that capacity matters. You want to be as well armed as possible Those mags with the Glock 19 would certainly help or the Glock 17 Perhaps I should have had that but I don't I've got the Glock 19 and I need reliability No time in a bug out situation to have a firearm malfunction or Even cheap ammo, you know, you need to have good ammo now Compatibility with the Glock mags and the 9 millimeter round is key. I was going to bring out my Ruger PC charger I love that firearm. It's great But I did a little weight comparison before I made this video and I wanted to make sure and so in this case Instead of the Ruger PC charger I'm going with the XR EP 9 and you ask, why would you choose a firearm that is a little bit larger? doesn't have a folder and It is Not as let's just say Reputable and this is very reputable. Don't get me wrong, but compared to Ruger. It's just not as popular I put them each on the scale side by side. This is over three pounds lighter. It's got a polymer The lower receiver is polymer all throughout. It is very light under four pounds Of course you add loaded bags. That's gonna increase that but it's under four pounds with the XR EP 9 And it shoots great. I really like this firearm I think they did a great job with the gen 2 models and I've got a Very nice vortex red dot on there. I feel Totally fine with this in a bug out situation very lightweight, which is key Now you have to have or you should have Some rifle Okay, in case you do have to hunt or you do have to stretch out a little bit You want something stronger than a 9 millimeter because both those are 9 millimeter and they both take Glock mags, which is So important in a bug out scenario, but if I had to choose a rifle aka AR a heavier 308 model All great choices, but I'm going with the 556 and my choice is The smallest version that I have and that's a Springfield helion bullpup Bullpups are pretty cool a lot of times the trigger is very stiff because it has this long bar that reaches the actual trigger Not in this case. This one is Pretty nice Now what a bullpup is they take the the grip and the trigger component Or the trigger itself move it forward take the action in the magazine move it backwards and creates a very Short firearm Still the 16 inch barrel, but this has performed great since day one. I'm going with this to be as compact Perhaps lightweight We's about the same as the rifle all the components are in there that are similar to a rifle. It's just a different Setup as I mentioned, but it's very compact and When you're when you're totem things around it's important to have magazine compatibility ammo compatibility with the first two and lightweight and shorter firearms because you could be on the run and you don't need To be bogged down by weight and size. So those are my three firearms I would choose in a bug out situation I think they're solid choices But I know a lot of people have other ideas other things that perhaps I didn't consider So that's what I want to know.  Which three firearms are you taking? Do you like mine or do you have better ideas if you like videos like this? Please subscribe and share. I always appreciate thumbs up button. Thanks for watching and you guys be safe


Especially in backlinks. There's one ankle on METS, right? If I have a lot of backlinks, I'll probably, you know, rank higher. So there's a METS. Yes, it's one of the signals, but that's not the only signal. You have hundreds and hundreds of signals and people actually spam. People actually spam the bad URLs. It's easy to game that one. If that would be the signal, it's so easy to game.  Hello and welcome back to SEO Mythbusting. This is the beginning of season two and we have listened to your comments and feedback last time. So in the first season, we were basically taking questions from developers and busting myths that are coming from developers. This season is more on the SEO side and the first one is really exciting. It's Sandhya from Microsoft and you're on the team that makes the Bing Webmaster Tools. Absolutely. Thank you, Martin, for inviting me and it's amazing to be here and talking to you. It's two search engines. Yes, and we are not isolated from each other. We are working together to make search better for all the users on the web and for all the webmasters there. Absolutely. Whatever we speak today is going to be my personal opinion. I'm not a Microsoft spokesman person, so yeah. Pretty much the same on my side. So what we're doing here is exchanging our personal experience, working in this field, working in this community. What would you say is actually the most frequent booth or question that people are coming with to you? All right. Yeah, one of the top questions we ever hear in all forms of communication is, how can I rank on the top, right? That's like number one question everywhere. That's the number one question from everyone, literally. It's interesting that they're very passionate about it, but we can't help it because at the end of the day we're trying to meet the user's needs and what they really need. We try to match the need and what they have, so we try to educate them. And there's hundreds of factors, right? It's not that we can turn a knob or something or we go into a database and go like, change that number from five to two and boom. No, that never happens. I mean, there is a myth. There is a myth that we could because some people actually reach out to us and say, hey, can you help? Can you tell us exact steps what to do? And we try to help as much as possible in terms of giving them what are the fundamentals they have to do on the website and if they have the right intention. It's all in a public documentation. You don't get private support from the user. Yes, and they're all there in the webmaster guidelines, both in Google side as well as in Bing as well. So I think if they follow that, I'm sure for the right intent they will rank on top. Exactly, just put the user first and you'll be doing fine mostly, right? That's kind of the get the basics right and you'll be doing all right. And I find it interesting and like sometimes people get really creative. Like I got like a message on Instagram asking about ranking and I'm like, what's happening here? Yeah, I know. We get direct messages on Twitter sometimes especially if you're an actor out there and sometimes even on emails support. Support is understandable. Sometimes they're trying to figure out who knows you and then they reach out through that as well. Yeah, they do that. This is interesting because like we get all these these requests coming in and like people ask us questions pretty much all the time and all sorts of channels. And I know that we are not one person facing these questions in the public eye and you're not one person on the team either. So you have Fabrice Cannell and you have Frédéric Douard and it's you and it's others probably in the future as well. What we see happening is that sometimes we get asked the same question each of us individually to figure out like are we responding the same way? Do you get that? Yes, absolutely. We hear that a lot because we see the similar pattern coming through so we try to give the same responses at the end of the day. Otherwise they would get, you know, take it in different context a little bit. That's the thing, the context. Sometimes these questions depend on so much context and then someone asks you a question given this context and the answer is A. But then the same question given a different context, the answer is B. And then people like to ditch the context and then school like, but Martin said A. Yeah, and they would take it literally. Yeah, so we're very conscious about it. What we do is when we say it, we try to do a little longer bigger sentences so that it's not, you know, yes, that's do. That's probably we'll take it in a different context. We try to cover that fully. We try to share as much and be transparent as much if it's taken out of context. That's unfortunate. I mean, it's unfortunate. I mean, there would be some incidents like that. It's a challenge. Sometimes it's a challenge. I'm sure like Yandex and Baidu probably do that same thing as well. Do you also have the feeling that certain things are getting a lot better and we're getting a better understanding and also the tone is nicer and more constructive or what do you think the trend is in the community? I think people are much more aware. I think there is a lot of evangelism, you know, what happens behind the scenes. I think if you think about like people understand how search works earlier, there was a concept in terms of, hey, they're probably kind of doing some manual actions and things like that. But now people know it's not true, right? The other thing which we also see now, I don't know if you've seen from Google is, hey, I'm advertising out here. Will I get ranked higher? Oh, yeah, we hear that. We hear that. Yes. Do you have that as well? Yes, we do that. So I'm saying no ads is very different ranking and organics very different. They're very separate. You don't want to mix it. Absolutely. There's a very strong separation between it and I'm sure you're doing the same thing. So I think that I wonder and maybe that's just my personal lens to it because I am very technical and coming from a technical side of things. I think the community is picking up more and more technical SEO and getting more technical and looking at the technical details. Would you say the same or is it different for you? No, they are definitely getting technical and they're doing a lot of work, especially, you know, trying to give us, make sure that we understand that, you know, the content behind that, right?  What is the website? They do a lot of work, but one thing we also notice is that they forget the fundamentals in the grand scheme of things. That's why they're doing it and a classic example is the blockers and robots text and you're not able to crawl them. Hey, why are you not crawling me? Hey, you blocked me.  Yeah. So we actually developed a couple of tools for that and we have a verifier being bought. The reason we did that is because when we talk to all these people, hey, why are you blocking us? They said, hey, you're crawling me too much. And then say that we really, because we have logs and stuff like that. And we found that it's actually somebody masking as being bought and they were crawling. That happens a lot, doesn't it? Yes. And then we're basically telling them, hey, check out the IP range. And we said, you know, this is the IP range from which being bought will crawl you. If it's different, you know, you can just block it at your server level or let us know and then we'll figure it out. You're also having the indexing API that you can basically submit content? Yes, URL submission. We call it URL submission API. Websites can actually submit URLs, especially if it's new or updated. And we allow them instant, you know, very fast indexing, instant indexing of that. Yeah, it's a push mechanism rather than a pull mechanism as robots and crawling have been. We've also done something called crawl control.   And that's a good signal. That's a really, really cool tool. So after that, it's got better, but it's still, it's still out there. A lot of people still do that. We do get all sorts of support requests like, oh, I have this problem that every now and then, not every now and then, like every day, Googlebot crawls all these pages that I set to no index and forbid in robots.txt and we're like, are you sure that it's Googlebot or not? It's like someone masking at Googlebot. And then it usually turns out. Yeah, there are so many crawlers out there.  So the robots.txt is a fantastic example because it has been a basically de facto standard, but it is not really a standard. We're really happy to see that we're all working together and getting it into an actual standard and making that more explicit these days. That's right, that's right. That's really, really cool. Yeah, and I saw the articles, very nice. Right, Gary is working with Yal and it's so nice to just get everyone together. And we are, as you say, we're all trying to service the same intention and the same customer, exactly. And we're not plotting each other against each other. It's more like trying to figure out and learn from each other. I really, really like the crawl control tool and I wish we had that. Yeah, there are so many tools out there which you have. You're integrating with them, right? If I'm verified in Search Console, I am automatically verified in Webmaster Tools. Yes, we just released that. One of the things, hey, it's so tough. I mean, when we talked to Webmasters, they said, hey, so it's very time consuming to verify. And you'll notice that the same verification mechanisms are also there in Search Console. So we said, hey, if the same verification mechanisms, they will honor that. And, you know, you've done all the work, so we'll honor it. You can actually keep both of them in sync together, right?  So I have an interesting challenge that I wonder how you're dealing about this. Because it is very hard to get people the right guidance on this. And when I'm saying that, I mean JavaScript, right? So we both know JavaScript is probably the most expensive resource you have on your website. Because images are not that expensive. Even video, you can pass more or less as it comes in. But JavaScript, you can't. On one hand, people are building really cool things on JavaScript. On the other hand, I don't want them to entirely rely on JavaScript. That's true. It's a really narrow path to navigate. What are you doing on these things? So it's very similar, right? At the end of the day, the challenges are, it's very expensive. And the first thing we have to figure out is the intent. If the website of the page has the right intent. And if you're able to figure out the intent behind it, it's easier to prioritize. Sometimes you would just have, like, you know, just execute a couple of JavaScripts at a point and no title, no description, no metadata script. None of that. I'm like, we don't even know what it is. Do we really want to execute? So that time, you know, it's a challenge. Because at the end of the day, you have a certain set of resources. And you figure out... You have to use that reasonably, yeah. ...reasonably. It's a ROI question. And I think that's a judgment call, which, you know, we would encourage the websites to actually do that. Right. So would you say... It's a right balance. It is a balance that you have to strike. So would you say, I mean, a client-side rendered application in JavaScript is not a problem by itself. It's just more expensive and you have no hints up front. So you can't figure out the intention. You do not have the title. None of this exists until the JavaScript is executed. What would you say that server-side rendering and, like, hydration is a good way to fix that as in when you ship a bunch of initial content to the browser and then use JavaScript to enhance it for the user, kind of giving you a balance? Yeah, the right balance. Yes, you need to do both of them. And at the end of the day, you also want to make sure... It's a lively page, right? It is, yeah.  Richer results. So you need to balance that. So some server-side and some client-side. So that's a lovely to hear that. We are aligning on recommendations again. This is really cool. And do you also sometimes get these weird questions where people are leading with a random third-party tool? We have this tool and the score in this tool is 75. And I don't understand why we're not ranking high. And you're like... Yeah, that's the DA's. All of these lovely metrics. I'm like, hmm, fantastic. That's good. You know, they need some number and metric. And they try to ask those questions, but you don't have an answer because that's not the only signal. There are multiple things. I think a lot of people really don't understand that there's a query intent. You know, people really think about the serving side and what they have in the index. People forget there is a query intent. You know, there's a user intent behind it and we have to match. I think that education is not yet there with the audience. I think if we do a little more in that, people would understand, hey, there is a query intent and then there is, you know... That would be... Yeah. You know, the document intent. So we can kind of sum it up into, like, rather than just looking at a number that a random tool gives you, try to understand what your user needs and what the intention is and then serve that intention. Yeah. I mean, it's just an education. People need to know that. That is true. Yeah. But we keep saying this for years and years and... Yeah. It's not yet landed this way, I would feel. Yeah. It's unfortunate. But I think we have landed a success and I'm, like, getting an overview of what the community brings to our tables and to, like, share that we are not, like, different in that sense. We are basically seeing the same kind of, like, challenges and we're seeing, like, the kind of the same kind of recommendations. And if you do the same stuff, all the search engines would pick up exactly the same stuff. Yeah. The fundamentals are very, very similar. There could be some differences. Sure. But that's expected. Exactly. The secret source is a little different. Different, but the fundamentals are, you know, the same across all search engines. Yeah. So hopefully people will get to the point of serving their users and have very nicely clean intent pages. And yeah, we are seeing more interesting things coming in the future. Yes. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you so much. And I'm talking about all of this with me. Yeah, thank you so much, Martin, for inviting me. This is wonderful. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. In that case, thank you very much for joining us and enjoy. Hey there. I hope you liked the video. This is my next guest, Alexis Sanders, and in the next episode we will be talking about... Fraud budget. Fraud budget. So stay tuned and check out the next one to learn more about what we have to say on the topic. See you there, everyone. Ciao.


Nick Weiner, a man who's often referred to as the father of the Internet for Africa. Nick, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. Let's start out in terms of ICANN and the way it is viewed and what it should be around the world. What are your perceptions of ICANN as a global entity? OK, ICANN, when it started around 98, did not have many Africans participating. And so we took it upon ourselves to actually try to increase the African participation. And one would consider that as the beginning of more global inclusion in ICANN's activities. Nick, when did you first start to become involved with ICANN? Around 97, when the Internet ad hoc committees work was going on. So it's very early stage? Very early stage. When it was founded? Yes, very early stage. Have you seen a difference from those early days to now? Have you seen a difference with the organization as regards its outreach to the rest of the world? There's been a big difference. Of course, it was gradual. The difference is that there's much more participation from Africa. And there's also much more activity of ICANN in Africa than before. And the participation is not only from the technical community, which was the case in the beginning, but you can see a wide spectrum of disciplines participating from legal to civil society to governments and so on. So on the whole, there has been an increased participation from the region and increased presence of ICANN in the region. Why is it important that there be global participation in this organization? Well, we view the Internet as for all and as an essential resource for development. And for such a public interest resource, participation is crucial because there may be some side effects in the development or adoption of the Internet and to ensure that the side effects are not so negative in impact. Participation must be strong, not only in numbers, but in the diversity of the participation. And from that point of view, I think it's a good thing that ICANN is doing. In the early days of ICANN, was there a legitimate effort to outreach to the global body? Or was it pretty much a token effort where ICANN said, yes, we're a global body, but there weren't a lot of efforts. There wasn't a lot of concentration on a variety of languages and translations. What was your sense between then and now? OK, from my point of view, ICANN has always been interested in global participation. It may have been that certain regions were not as prepared because we had very smaller, much smaller networks. And it's true that the initial participation was from the technical community. But there was always an open door. And in fact, that is the reason why we were able to increase the African participation in ICANN. So I believe that ICANN has always made an effort to commensurate with the stage of development for Africa to be involved. In fact, there were times that we could not even find sufficient Africans from the technical perspective to participate. But as we went along, the numbers increased, we made more demands of ICANN, and ICANN responded, and we made even more demands. And that is why you have the multilingual environment, and you also have lowering of barriers and so on to participation in general. At what stage, and maybe there wasn't a specific stage, did you see that ICANN had upped its game in terms of including stakeholders from not only Africa, but other global regions? Right from the very beginning, I remember there was some committee of sorts chaired by a board member, Conradys, at the time. And the objective was, in fact, to determine what it would take for more multistakeholder participation from the regions which were not adequately represented. And that effort did define a number of things that if maybe emphasized would result in increased participation. So it has always been a conscious concern, right from the very beginning, that there should be sufficient participation, especially from the underserved regions. I'm willing to bet that in the early days, when you would talk to your colleagues on continental Africa, and you were talking about ICANN, they would go, what the hell is ICANN? How has that changed? OK, there's much more knowledge about the internet in general and also about some of the resources that ICANN, one would say, administers or managers. And so there has been a significant improvement in the awareness of the role of ICANN. Some thought ICANN was something in the US, but now it's different. Now we see non-mess registries issues. We see domain names issues. We see, in general, public policy related issues. And people view ICANN as a significant player in that regard. And the government engagement has also been very constructive. So the viewpoint has changed. Of course, there's a lot more work to be done. But I'd like to point out that the work is commensurate with the state of our internet development. The faster Africa develops, the improved engagement and participation in ICANN. It's often said that Africa is the next growth center for all forms of telecom, but specifically internet expansion. Is that true? Oh, very true. Very, very true. Because now you're beginning to see governments come out with policies regarding internet and internet development. You see them talking about ICT and ICT planning and so on at all levels. You see governments trying to roll out their own networks using the same TCPIP internet things. You see governments moving into open data. All these things ride on the internet. And so I would say countries are beginning to come in not only from the government side, but from all the other groupings. You see groups pushing for inclusion, expressions, freedoms of expressions. You see groups pushing for protection of minors. All different types of stakeholders. Now it's very wide open. And I think that's a good thing. Does anything specific have to happen to increase the involvement to an even greater level? OK, for me, the first thing is education, because some of the challenges are capacity oriented, both in terms of engineering capacity, but as well as policy related capacities and prioritizing internet-related issues in the minds of the biggest players in our environments being governments. And the educational system needs to undergo some reforms to adopt more of the computing science technologies that underpin the internet. And we need to venture into some new areas that depend on the internet as well. So yeah, there's work to be done. But I think we're in progress. In the right direction. In the right, very right direction. How does the work of the panel on public responsibility framework relate to ICANN's goals in terms of global expansion? OK, public responsibility is extremely important so that we value the resources that have been given to us and use them in a responsible manner. I think the work of the public responsibility in ICANN made significant progress in the eyes of governments who see themselves as, you might say, custodians of public interest. So in that area, we did get a good match of ICANN focused interests and the interests of government. It was concurrent. That was very good. At the same time, it helped assure non-government oriented organizations that ICANN is acting in a responsible way. And ICANN itself had a definition of public responsibility, which was very effective. And it's been discussed in important forums like IGF and so on. So all these things I thought were helping in a good way. The IANA stewardship transition has now occurred successfully. Did you notice a difference? Was there a lot of discussion, resentment, argument about the US unique role in ICANN before the stewardship was accomplished? And if so, how has that changed now that the stewardship has occurred? Proud to the transition, at least in the African context, I recall that around 2011, there was a meeting in Senegal. And ministers in Dakar issued a communique asking for more inclusion in general in a variety of different ways. That was an indication that something was not right in the sense that governments from Africa were asking for more involvement. I know that it was underpinned by the US being perceived as a sole oversight. And it also occurred in many other international forums that I had been working at. However, from the transition and the play that we saw of multi-stakeholder activity at work, many governments began to feel at ease that not only is US being generous to give, quote unquote, oversight to a multi-stakeholder body, but ICANN was also going through a process of increasing participation and people appreciation of the multi-stakeholder processes. So that attended a lot of work in advancing the interest in that regard. And I'm sure you probably may have noticed more African participation in GARC from the government point of view and also in the other sectors as well. So it did a lot of good. That brings me to a question I'm interviewing right now. We're in Johannesburg. We're at ICANN 59. As I look around, I see many more African attendees than I've seen at previous ICANN meetings. Are they here trying to figure out what is ICANN? What's this about to see whether or not they want to be involved?  Give me a sense of it. OK, it's a mixture. Well, when ICANN comes to a region, the region gets mobilized to participate. And so you see a good number of new comments, new entrants, or people who are interested but have never had a chance. Because it's closer. That makes it different. But at the same time, you see a lot of the senior people view it as a place that they must be part of. And so you see a lot of the old folks who have moved. It cannot be ignored. They don't want to be left out of that as well. And so it creates a good atmosphere for exchange among the experienced and the new as well. Some governments would normally not go to Buenos Aires from Africa to participate. But when it is in Africa, they feel obligated to be present. So all these factors actually contribute to the mix of participants that you see here. Does anything specific have to happen to make that even greater, to make African participation in ICANN even greater? OK, I think we are doing it, but we need to do more of it. Presence of ICANN in Africa makes a big difference. Because we are looking to own something, own a piece of ICANN quote unquote. And so the more there is presence, the better the participation will improve. By presence, do you mean opening up more ICANN offices? We have an office now in Nairobi. Or do you mean have more meetings here? What are you talking about specifically? OK, I'm talking about more meetings, more leaders here, but more activities, more participation with us. No, as if there is some meeting that is important happening in Africa, we like to see ICANN present more. If, for instance, there is something going on with research and education networks, which is a major pillar of our work, we would like to see more ICANN presence. ICANN should be visible within the different caucuses that we are developing, whether it is in the names area that we are directly related to ICANN interest, or, for example, in the research and education networks area, which is not directly in ICANN's interest, but it's an important forum that is also advancing the internet. We like to see more ICANN presence. Of course, more offices makes a difference. Africa is very huge. And so it's good to have one in Kenya, but if we can do more, because there should be more. It will make a difference, because we have five, six subregions. And if it appears that only one subregion, then participation will not be as much as if you had two or three of them covered. So what I'm hearing you say is, ICANN's going in the right direction. It just needs to go further. Correct. Yeah, because engagement can't stop at the first step. You have to continue and do some more. You have to communicate. ICANN has to communicate that it is genuinely reaching out, both to governments and to different geographies and to different communities. And I think that helps. Nate Cwayner, considered the father of the internet in Africa, thank you again for taking the time to talk to us. It's been a pleasure.


The paper reviews and classifies statistical transformations for post-processing regional climate model, RCM, output into three categories, distribution derived, parametric and non-parametric, each with different underlying assumptions. A real-world application using Norwegian precipitation station observations shows that non-parametric transformations have the highest skill in reducing biases in RCM precipitation. This article was authored by J. E. Haubin, T. Enginskogen, J. B. Brands and others.


After a company buys inventory, the next step is to sell the goods. The amount a business earned from selling merchandise inventory is called sales revenue, or sometimes just called sales. A sale also creates an expense, costs of goods sold, as the retailer gives up the asset inventory. Costs of goods sold is the cost of inventory that has been sold to the customers. When recording transactions involving the sale of goods, we have to make two journal entries. The first is to record the revenue from the sale because goods are sold at their price. The second is to record the cost from the sale because the goods we sold weren't free. Let's look at the same example we saw as a buyer of goods. Only this time we'll record the transactions as the seller RCA records. So RCA records sell $3,800 of vinyl records to championship vinyl. Let's assume the cost of those records were $2,400. So we would record a debit to a counts receivable and a credit to sales revenue for the $3,800, which was the price that the records sold for. We would also record a debit to costs of goods sold and a credit to inventory for $2,400, which was the cost of the records. The next thing we need to deal with was the return of the Taylor Swift records. Sales returns and allowances are just the opposite transaction of the purchase returns and allowances. And the reversal of the sales journal entry with one exception. Rather than debit sales revenue, and that's what we would do if we were reversing that journal entry entirely, we would debit an account called sales returns and allowance. This is a new account for us. It is a contra revenue account. If we were to debit sales revenue directly, it may distort the revenue numbers and make it difficult for managers to track returns. So when RCA records receives the Taylor Swift records back, it debits sales returns and allowance and credits accounts receivable for $500. Again, the price of the records. It also debits inventory and credits costs of goods sold for $200, which we're assuming is the cost of those when those records were returned to inventory stock. Had RCA records granted championship vinyl and allowance of $100 instead of the return, then only the revenue journal entry is impacted because no records were being returned to inventory stock. In this case, we would debit sales returns and allowance and credit accounts receivable for $100. There is no journal entry for costs of goods sold in inventory when there is a sales allowance. A sales discount is the opposite transaction of a purchase discount. Like sales returns and allowance, rather than debit sales revenue, we debit an account called sales discount, a contra revenue account, when a buyer takes a payment discount. If we were to debit sales revenue directly, it might distort the revenue numbers and make it difficult for managers to track discounts. So assume the championship vinyl pays the invoice on January 12th, which is within the 10-day discount period. How much are they going to pay RCA records? Well, let's answer that by figuring out how much RCA records is owed. When we look at the T-account for accounts receivable, we can see that RCA records is owed $3,300. Since championship vinyl is taking the discount, the amount received by RCA records will be less than $3,300. A 2% reduction is a $66 discount, meaning that RCA records will receive $3,234. Notice that accounts receivable needs to be credited for $3,300. If we were to credit it for the cash amount, then our records would show that we are still owed $66 when we are not. So this journal entry is out of balance. We need a debit of $66 to make it balance. Here you can see that that debit is to the sales discount account for $66, and now the journal entry balances.