So, Jyoti Dayal is a program director in the Division of Genomic Medicine and she's going to present the concept title, Developmental Genotype Tissue Expression, or DGTEX, is probably what you're going to hear for the rest of the afternoon. Jyoti. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Council and staff, for this opportunity to present to you the Developmental Genotype Tissue Expression Project. Before beginning, I'd like to thank members of the DGTEX working group, staff from both NACRI and NICHD, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, both for their support and guidance. We've been working with NICHD on several initiatives and would like to continue our collaborations with them. For today's presentation, I would like to start off by highlighting the accomplishments of the Adult Genotype Tissue Expression Project, lay the groundwork for DGTEX, the preparatory work that's been done thus far, and present the consortium model and budget we would like to propose. We're building off the accomplishments of GTEX as it established a rapid autopsy program recruiting 965 donors from 2010 to 2016. Every gene expression in 53 tissues, including 11 subregions of the brain, provided a new approach to map gene expression, and decoded regulatory regions of the genome. And as a result, published over 2,000 consortium and non-consortium papers, and second only to the cancer genome atlas and data access requests. NHGRI and NICHD co-hosted the Genomic Medicine for Reproductive, Pre-Natal, and Neunatal Health Workshop. One of the recommendations was the creation of a genotype tissue expression project for neonates and children. The workshop summary can be found on genome.gov. So we're hearing a similar theme and support for this idea at other scientific meetings, several strategic planning meetings, and even the World Congress psychiatric genetics meeting. And the question everyone is asking is what about expression in the developing human? The life stages of human development are very different. A child is not a small adult. There are differences that occur during development such as metabolism, regulation of hormones, immunity, drug response, and exposure to environmental toxins to name a few. And so DGTEX would provide that critical information by establishing a resource database to study gene expression patterns across developmental stages. This would help fill key gaps in understanding gene expression, provide insight on functional networks and pathways, and understand how gene expression affects clinical factors such as drug response in early and later childhood. The proposal I'd like to present, similar to GTEX, which cataloged and analyzed transcriptional profiles across multiple tissues in adults. DGTEX would also analyze transcriptional profiles in multiple tissues, but across developmental stages. And this would provide a comprehensive data set from neonatal through adult life stages. The objectives for DGTEX is first to create an atlas of tissue gene expression on both tissues and single cell populations, and would like to emphasize that DGTEX would benefit from the rise of single cell technology to understand how distinct cell types influence each other during the development of organs and tissues. Then to analyze regular square variation of genomic sequencing and its effect on gene expression. And then finally to create and make available a bivank of tissues and data for further characterization. This last point is particularly important to prep samples in such a way to do additional analyses. This is the current study design. We will be recruiting 40 donors for each of these age groups, early postnatal, pre-pubertyl, for a total of 120 donors. We selected these age groups as it represents significant changes in development. Blood samples we've collected for whole genome sequencing on all donors and RNA sequencing will be done on a subset of tissues and single cells. The selection of tissues for RNA sequencing will be defined by what is accessible to collect and the quality of the tissue. While collecting a suite of tissues, this will allow us the ability to do additional analyses such as chromatin accessibility, histone modification, and DNA methylation on those bulk and single cells. We realized that special considerations need to be made, especially for children, one of them being the ethical issues of posthumistinomic research in neonatal and pediatric settings. We requested a biothics consult service from the NIH clinical center to help anticipate and analyze ethical issues that might arise in the prospective research activity. Those recommendations included engaging families and health care staff on how to approach greeting parents about tissue donation and also being mindful of cultural and religious differences in diverse communities. To consider eligibility criteria for participation, to ask questions that are absolutely necessary during consent, and to follow up with the family members maintaining communication and providing general research study results. The other consideration is tissue procurement feasibility in pediatric populations. With the help of our NICHD colleagues, we attended two NICHD funded steering committee meetings and asked experts how feasible it is to obtain multiple post-mortem tissues for research. The two take-home messages are that families are amenable towards organ donation research and that we should be working with existing infrastructures, organ procurement organizations and medical examiners. This is the basic consortium models, and I just want to remind you that the goal of DGTEX is to create a resource database to study gene expression across developmental stages. NICHD will be managing the tissue procurement centers, which will be responsible for recruitment of donors, and we would be building off the inclusion and exclusion criteria that DGTEX developed, pathology of the tissue samples that would be acceptable for collection, and again we would leverage the tissue procurement protocols developed by adult DTEX, collecting clinical data and LC research to assess the attitudes and perspectives of tissue donation from various stakeholders. Tissue alquots will then be sent to the LDAC, the laboratory data analysis and morning center, and NICHD or I will be managing the LDAC and the statistical analysis and data integration, and for today I'll be focusing on the LDAC. Here's a sample of the major activities for each of the LDAC components. The laboratory will purify nucleic acids, perform whole genome and RNA sequencing, and maintain the biobanking facility. The data analysis group will perform basic genotyping and expression analyses, single cell analyses, and prepare the deposition of data sets and repositories, such as the ANFO, ensuring that the data is hosted on the DGTEX portal and integrate data into the UCSC genome browser. The Corning Center will work with the tissue procurement centers and monitor study progress and laboratory performance and prepare statistical and other reports. This is a distribution of funds for each of the solicitations. We're asking council to vote on the DGTEX concept and specifically the LDAC. NICHD council approved the Tissue Procurement Center's solicitation, and the data analysis and integration of DGTEX data have not been developed yet, but will be brought to you at a later council. The total budget will be split between NHGRI and NICHD. Other ICs are being approached for additional funding. At a minimum with two ICs, we plan to recruit 120 donors, as this is a minimum, not a maximum. We would like to emphasize this is not a standalone project, and as a pilot project, it has the potential to do more as additional ICs sign on. For $10 million per year total cost, we can recruit 200 donors, increasing our statistical power, thereby creating a valuable, deeper and comprehensive resource of gene expression protocols. There are some economies of scale here, while sampling costs are fixed, we expect other costs such as sequencing to decrease and add more donors as a result. I'd like to end with how DGTEX addresses key strategic needs. This is an opportunity to build upon functional genomics by establishing roles of genes and regulatory elements in developmental pathways and networks. And it also fills a gap in genomic data resources that lack data from early developmental stages. We do also have the potential to do work with model organisms for comparison and basis for downstream experimental studies. Thank you for your time and attention, and we will start the council discussion with Dr. Chung, Dr. Gravely, and Dr. Pritchard. Go ahead and start. So I think it's really important in terms of having kids involved in this. I know it's not something that necessarily NIH can address right now, but even more development is going on before birth. And at some point, that's a gap to be filled, whether it's with other model organisms or groups or whatever. But just realize that that's an important gap. Within this, I know you're addressing it just to emphasize it's a tough situation in terms of being able to collect these samples. Thankfully, healthy children don't die often. And so being able to get those situations is tough. I think you're taking the right strategies in terms of this. I guess within that, though, one of the things I'd emphasize in is if these are meant to be healthy, normal children, to make sure they really are healthy, normal children. Some of the individuals that die, we only find afterwards if we do a molecular autopsy that they weren't so normal. So depending on what age you're getting, but especially the newborns, at least my recommendation would be actually do a genome sequence first to make sure that they really are the healthy, normal individuals you think they are. And then the one other thing that I'll add is that the age groups that I think I saw pass by, you were putting them in pre-pubertyl or post-pubertyl by a particular age group. Number one, it doesn't, like biology, doesn't actually follow those ages so particularly. So just make sure you're classified by biological development rather than a strict age definition in terms of that. And in particular, the reason I'd bring up this distinction is that many of us think that, for instance, adult diseases may be very much dependent on what happens during development in puberty. And that pubertal status might be really important in terms of understanding adult determinants of health and how they are developed in childhood. And so just as a specific use case, breast cancer, for instance, may have a lot to do with what happens with the ductal cells during breast developments and mutations that are acquired during that period and other things. And so just getting that developmental stage is important. That's great. Thank you for that feedback. And just to reiterate, we will have apothologists review the tissue slides before incorporating them into the DG textbook. OK, Jonathan, on the phone, you want to go next? Sure. Yeah, I think that this is an important project. That's great. I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about bio-banking for tissues and how you imagine that the community is going to get access to that and what sort of quantities of tissues there will be, that sort of thing. So the quantity of tissue, as I remember from G-TEX, they collected a dime-size tissue sample. And as far as access for the tissue samples, it will be available for the network. I don't think we've really figured out the details for investigators outside the network. But I might ask my G-TEX colleague if there were requests for samples outside of the G-TEX network. Yes, there were requests. And we established a policy that was implemented to have outside people from the consortium to access the samples. And we received, I would say, not many, but probably between 20 to 30 requests over the years to access the samples, to do any type of work from methylation work, all that kind of things. So I think that it will be down to establish a policy, most likely similar to that of G-TEX. Cell lines were produced for G-TEX as well. Anything else, Jonathan? No, that's fine. Thank you. I think it's an important project. I think it's great. OK. Dr. Gravely, anything from you? Sure. Again, I want to express my support for this. I think this would be a great compliment to the G-TEX project itself. And I think the issues of getting the samples is obviously the trickiest one for this particular project. I just was curious about how you're going to decide how much of the project should be done as chunks of tissue versus single cell analysis. Can you rephrase your question again? I guess there's some. Single cell analysis versus your findings. Oh, OK. Well, there was just some discussion of using some single cell sequencing technologies. So how much of that would be done versus bulk tissue? Or would that be more up to the applicants to propose? So as a network, I would think we would decide which single cells analysis that we'd want to do. I think the important thing is to make sure that we can capture or we can collect the specimens for that and then decide later which one would undergo single cell analysis. Sure? Well, I guess I'll say it before Jeff does. I mean, this, I think, there's definitely going to be multiple LC components to this, particularly with regard to making all the data public and trying to explain this to parents because it's very different than the normal discussion around autopsies, which is often about trying to better understand why their child had the disease they did or what led to their death and things like that. So it's a very different discussion. And I would think incorporating some very clear LC components into this would be important. Thank you. There's no mention of gender or ethnicity or BMI or diversity of any type. Can you speak to that? Yeah, so obviously we can't tell ahead of time how many males, females, and ethnicity, but we would write it into the FOA to make sure that we do have a diverse donor participation. I was thankful that you said that the 120 is a basement, not a ceiling, because certainly the power and the number of the genes that are detected by GTex is in upon sample size. The one thing that I was wondering about, you also say 20 to 30 tissues. And in some ways, 20 to 30 tissues in this age range would be great to have the same tissues as in the adult GTex. But the adult GTex also omitted a lot of tissues that would be of interest. One obvious is by which has a big change in overdevelopmental time. So what's the plan for deciding what tissues and the number of tissues? Is that again a basement or a ceiling? And can you give us some insight on that? Sure. Yeah, so the selection of tissue will be dependent on what's accessible. Again, we want to be mindful of religious and cultural differences. So again, we would need to see what tissues we can collect at the time. And also, we would also look at the RIN number, so the RNA integrity index. And I believe for GTex, it was over five that they collected or they accepted the tissue sample. So we would try to use the same model. So just to clarify then, are you planning on restricting it to the same subset of tissues that were originally collected in GTex? Or are you also going to consider tissues that were not collected in GTex? We can consider tissues that were not collected in GTex. I don't know what the autopsy rate is for kids. But I'm wondering whether you thought about accessing primarily kids who are already undergoing autopsy. That would obviously give you a full anatomic report, and plus would give you access to tissues that I'm going to guess are going to be otherwise difficult, perhaps, to get permission for, like brain or heart or some of the ones that parents may be more sensitive about. Any thought about whether kids undergoing autopsy would be a good source of samples for this? That's a good question. I think we would have to work. Again, we're going to work with the Oregon Precurement organizations and the medical examiners to see what would be feasible. So, Mona, during GTex, I thought the finding was that conventional autopsies weren't quite good enough. You really had to have a much more rapid. We had what we called rapid autopsy. Right. Rapid autopsy.  But the autopsy had to be done very quickly. So, Jeff, your question is you have the small fraction of cases where there's going to be an odd habit. You can't just sort of take a subset of those and get into that because it's going to have to be in a more rapid decision-making process, which can probably be a small subset of a small subset. But doable. Yeah. I mean, if they were available, we would certainly take them. Yeah. And we anticipate this is going to be challenging to recruit. But we see it as a worthwhile goal. We had the same concerns about the adult GTex. Again, I'll just emphasize because the number of cases that qualify, it's usually someone who's on a ventilator and you're withdrawing support to get the autopsy you need to, is the brain banks have been working on this. To my knowledge, though, they're not using the rest of the body. And so it's just if they've already agreed to donate the bank, it's very likely those same families will donate other body parts. So. Great. Thank you. Other questions? I've got a countdown assistant over here. Can I get a motion to approve the concept? Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you very much. Thank you to Jyoti.


All right everybody, good morning. Welcome to the Tactical Combatters class level two We're gonna begin today with a special quote I do not fear the man who practices 1,000 kicks one kick at a time, but I fear the man who practices one kick 1,000 times We will push ourselves immensely and physically we will challenge one another beyond any measure We will practice and refine our hand-to-hand combat skills We will train to build the confidence to analyze the threat close the distance and finish the fight We were trained to instill the warrior ethos by giving soldiers a taste of physical and emotional demands of closed-quarters combat in a controlled environment All right the greatest tool we have is our training partner Remember steel sharpens steel All right sharpen your spirit by challenging one another and together we'll create an undefeatable mentality All right, let's get ready to train


What I'd like to talk about today is a little bit of pain, a little bit of suffering, a little bit of challenge, and a little bit of optimism. So with that said, I would love to kind of give, for those of you that haven't met me, I am definitely somebody that finds great value in floating. My whole journey started with a float at Space Time Tanks in 2015. And that was in April of 2015. Since then, I've opened four centers, and it has been one hell of a ride, as we know. So this slide here, hopefully you can all see it, kind of describes the journey. And you know, I've told the story a million times, if you listen to the art of the float, I've talked about my zero to nine month journey. Enough to have a baby, but also enough to have a float center. So my first float, April 2015, my first float center, Float 60 River North opened in February of 2016, just nine months. That center opened in March of 2018. And that was my Northwest Indiana location, which is very close to where I live. The third location is my most challenging location. And that is the South Loop location, December of 2018. You would think that by the time you open your third one, it gets easier. That was definitely not the case for me. And for those of you that have listened to me on the podcast, you've heard a lot of stories and you're going to hear a few of those today. With great impeccable timing, I acquired a fourth center, Epic Float, and that was in March of 2020. And we all know what happened in March of 2020. So with that, we'll kind of go into a little bit about what the centers are made up as. So the first center, five tanks, we have meditation at one point, or I'm sorry, we are at one point. We have retail, we still do. The Indiana location, the second location I introduced Cryo, which has been a great, amazing service to have. The third location, again, was the South Loop. We have four float tanks, including an Orion and a Phileon and wave rooms. We have an infrared sauna, and we were supposed to have Cryo, but that didn't happen due to some things you'll see here at the end of this presentation. And then, again, the fourth location was Float 60 Lake Zurich, which was acquired. I acquired Epic Float up in Lake Zurich from Jennifer Whiten. And so, obviously, that was, again, kind of weird timing. So how do I do this, right? For those of you that may know, I work full-time in technology, and I always have. There's only a short period of time where I didn't, which I regret kind of leaving it, because it was a difficult time. But these are some of the people, and there's 27 people on my team that was the highest employee count we had. But these people here on this screen really have been with me for the longest duration. And they are really the reason why we are able to do what we do. And I'm able to do what I do. And that's Lisa. Some of you met her at the Float Conference a couple years ago. She facilitated a contest with various Float Task activities. Rochelle is at the Float Conference as well. She handles my community awareness partnerships. And it's just very pivotal in kind of bringing awareness to Float 60 in the city of Chicago. And then Gibson, you might recognize Gibson and Lisa kind of look like mother and son. Gibson was with me for a while left and worked at a different Float Center in Rad Rapids. And then he came back to Float 60 now as currently running my fourth location. So just to give you a landscape of where we are, if you look up here in the right corner, you see the whole United States, Chicago, and all of those little icons represent what you see blown out here. So when I opened Float 60 River North, none of these other Float Centers existed. There was a couple that did, but most of them did not exist. So obviously, as most of the country has exploded, we represent that in Chicago, several Float Centers. And then this represents the proximity of the two locations I have. Float 60 River North, Float 60 South Looper, very close to each other, right in downtown Chicago. Float 60 Lake Zurich is way up in the northern suburbs of Chicago. And then Float 60 Northwest Indiana is just south of Chicago across the state line. And that's in Sherville, Indiana. So that's a little bit of the lay of the land. So everything's going great. Things are moving in a great direction.  Wouldn't be the Float Conference if somebody didn't drop some kind of profanity. And gosh, does this warrant it? So these images here show you some of the challenges that I had with my South Loop location. And again, that was my third location. The first two, pretty easy, pretty easy to open. This one, let me just kind of walk you through what some of these photos are. So this is my old Ryan tank sitting on State Street in Chicago.  That's kind of a story in and of itself. So that's what that picture is. This is sewage coming through the floor at my construction site. And it kind of carried over to post opening as well. This picture represents a mistake with our flooring that I had to rip out and kind of start over with. So these are kind of like the construction challenges. And this is my little guy. This is my 10-year-old son on top of a mountain.  It's actually the earth we ungrounded there. But this kind of represents the challenges we had in the construction process. And they're not unusual, right? But there was just a significant amount of things to overcome. And they continued after we opened. And with that, I'm going to kind of show you a video. There's no sound, but I'm going to show you this video. Just kind of be quiet for a second. I'm going to let you take this all in. Yep, ceiling tile falling from the ceiling along with my security camera.  The track light falling down. So that was two months after we were open. And for those of you that lived through the polar vortex in the Midwest, it was caused by a burst coil and just various other problems. So that was kind of the start of the operational problems once we opened that location. This picture represents something that's very recent. And for those of you that follow the news, Chicago, not unlike other cities, have been impacted by the civil unrest. And in this case, this is a picture of somebody coming through my space with a baseball bat. And so this location really has had its trials and tribulations. And we're not really sure what's going to happen. So not to be a Debbie Downer all that, but I promised I would talk about the not so fun side of our business. What did we learn in all that? Well, you know, scaling is hard. It is not easy. The notion that opening one gives you all the information you need to be successful in the other is just absolutely false. Every location has its own dynamics. Every location has its own challenges with whether it's the real estate, whether it's the construction, whether it's the things that are going around in the city. So again, no two locations are ever the same. They're not even close. And two locations are, yes, twice as hard as one, but four is 10 times harder than one. So it definitely is a different dynamic that I've learned, thought that it would be a little bit easier to scale. I definitely learned that having strong financials, and when I say strong, I don't mean you're bringing a lot of money to the bottom line. That's definitely part of what's helpful. But I'm speaking more about the need for ongoing organization of financials to kind of wear through all of these different challenges that you have. Fortunately, we were ready for applying for all of the assistance we could apply for because our financials were strong and organized and clear. And we really got on the train very quickly. And then be ready to pivot. I'm sitting here wondering what is going to happen with the fate of at least one of our locations, possibly two. And so I'm constantly thinking in my mind, how are we going to pivot from this? How do we modify? How do we make adjustments? And so that's definitely a lesson learned that's not new, but something that I'm actively thinking about day in and day out every single day. So what's next? Like I said, the fate of the South Loop is unknown at this point. But to reiterate what Stephen said, I believe in my heart, people need us more than ever before. And that gives me optimism for the entire industry. I think it's going to be a challenge to get people educated again to believe that that's the case, but I know in my heart that it is. I'm definitely going to be piloting new ways of doing business. This was not planned, but Maximum Floats is one of our sponsors. And I recently started to pilot with them. I'll probably continue doing it with our other locations. So I'm trying to find ways to pivot and do things differently. I think the industry needs it. And that's just one of the examples of what we're doing. And then the last one is just investing in key people. I've been doing that since the beginning. I could not do what I do without the team that I have and the support of the industry. The Art of the Float podcast is so important to me, not just for the information, but for the support I get from my co-hosts and shout out to all of them. It is very important to invest in your own education. So I would definitely continue to do that. And I will continue to do that and just continue to learn from everybody that I can. So those are kind of the lessons learned. There's much more to the story, but this is a preview event. And the goal of doing this event is to give you a feel for how the format will work. And hopefully, just in a small amount of time, you get some insight that if you're going through pain, you're not alone, it happens to the best of us, right? So I'd like to just before we go to questions and answers, I'd like to thank everybody from the Float conference as well. Everybody has put in such a crazy amount of work to pivot and get to this new way of interacting and it's terrific. So I'm excited about the think takes that are coming up and hopefully you guys will participate and we will see you in September. Are you ready? Let's go.


A big question mark. We have seen that also in the countries of this area there were some dramatic developments like in Kyrgyzstan where there were two uprising in five years and two presidents were changed through popular uprising. So it's also very dramatic development. So the issue of security and stability is extremely important for this area. And I think this is being watched very closely from all the world's capitals and also international organizations like the Shanghai Organization, the NATO and the United Nations. So I think it's an area which is to be really discussed and pay more attention to. With this I will end my short introduction and I have the pleasure to give the floor to the president of Kyrgyzstan, Mrs. Rosa Atunbaiba. It's on, right? It's on. Dear friends, participants of this round table on Central Asia. I was inspired by the last statement of Austrian foreign minister that Central Asians get more and more attention. And especially right after this spring, the current incumbent chairman of the OEC, the Lithuanian foreign minister, he has announced that the attention of the OEC moved shifted from the Balkans to Central Asia. And we do realize that it is because of resources of Central Asia, not just the mineral but human resources also.  We have finished the Soviet period with about 98-99% of literacy. The higher education didn't worsen too much. We have a lot of new universities. We got freedom to travel and in spite of all the close new spaces after the collapse of the USSR, our people go to many countries around the world. They travel, they work, they learn about the world. And certainly I must point out that mineral resources are the most attractive what the world has found in our part of the world. Even such a small example like electricity power, which for example Uzbekistan fits with Afghanistan, Kabul, they send hydro power to Kabul. Kabul purchased this for 9 cents per kilowatt hour. If all built our transmission lines from Kyrgyzstan via Tajikistan and it will go to Afghanistan, all our neighboring countries, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, each of them, they badly need today and quite a big amounts hydro power. And that's the richness which we have two countries, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in this part of the world. We collect all the water in our highest mountains which are about more than 7000 meters above level of sea.  So the region is full of mineral resources. Even my country which is incomparable for example with Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, we have quite a serious deposits of gold and with the high prices on gold these days in Kyrgyzstan there is under progress the gold mining with the Canadian company, American Canadian in fact company. This is the 700 tons of gold around Isekul. We have other very attractive deposits of gold and we do believe that with this high price on gold we became one day self-sufficient country. We have deposits of other very important minerals will be self-sufficient regarding coal and again hydro power energy, this is the most important. Two wings of our economy, hydro energy and mining, those are very important for my country. But when you in Europe are talking only about the mineral resources please do not forget in Central Asia there are nations, very ancient people are living for centuries and centuries on this great silk road. My nation yes has revolted over the last 10 years to presence run away from my country. The last uprising was April 7th of 2010. By Kiev that was the President's name he has shot 92 people from the windows of the White House. Nobody noticed what's happened in Kyrgyzstan. In half a year time it took place in Northern Africa and Middle East. Slowly European countries started to recognize that it is unacceptable, it is outrageous that those dictators they shoot their nation. Nobody said right absolutely politically defined stuff about Kyrgyz events even today. In Deville we have witnessed that Russian President joined to the G8, communicate that Gaddafi is not right. It's happened in my country April 7th 2010. My country since that time is on the track of democratic developments. We couldn't afford those two corrupt regimes. In Kyrgyzstan straight after the 7th of April we took the power. Provisional government has promised to introduce a new constitution in 3 months, in 6 months introduce to conduct the parliament elections. We have done this. It is not a deseret cause which we witness now in other parts of the world. In 3 months we have introduced new constitution with the parliamentary governance. In half a year the European community via OEC, via European Union's observers they have stated that was fair, open elections in Kyrgyzstan ever done. And as a result we have the parliament, we have the governments. We are exercising today the parliamentary governance in my country. It's very difficult, it's not an easy thirdly power that you should listen all the opposition people. The former Minister of Finance today is the leader of the opposition committee on budget and finance. She knows what is my salary, how much government views to fit the president, the prime minister and so on. But everything is open today. We have open press, we have strong civil society and this is again total opposite to those places where all of us watch with quite concern. Our 5,000 NGOs, they are very such a very strong people on our political map. Mass media works bravely to bring to the light all the such a dark business dealings of either they are MPs or they are the government members. So this is what we are doing and the most important was to fight corruption. Corruption is a serious disease for everyone, developing countries and especially for us, for fragile new countries. We celebrate 20 years of our independence this year. 20 years for Kyrgyzstan it was quite a serious transition. We stuck somewhere in transition. We didn't achieve such a progress like in Kazakhstan, in Russia, but we don't have a right to live like today. We live among those dynamically developing countries like China, Russia and Kazakhstan and we do hope that one day we will achieve certainly good success. Today we are fighting against corruption. My country is member of AITI program. Only Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan we are the compliant countries. Mining companies in my country report to the public how much they pay to the budget and 46 companies they are learning about this serious auditing. For the first time in 20 years six big energy companies are under audit, international audit. USAID helps us to pay for the work of those companies. And we do hope that in those energy companies where the losses count up to 45% would you imagine? Half of the energy produced by those energy companies been stolen in the past. Today they are coming down and a lot of measures and actions has been done. The losses today just about 29, 30% and we do hope that those losses will decrease over the years. We want to put this AITI mechanism, this is transparency in mining mechanism, to put this in energy sector. And we are learning, we are doing many things with this regard. Manas transit centre as you know, we have American base in Kyrgyzstan. And we want also to put mechanism of transparency there because we get 60 million dollars for rent. We want to get more money to supply the fuel to this transit centre. And again very serious mechanism of transparency will be put over there. We have done some innovation. We have small budget of my country. We are really not very successful economically successful developing country. But still this is great importance to follow how efficiently ministries use this budget. We have set up the public oversight boards in every ministry. They look at what is the efficiency of the work at every ministry. In other words I want to tell you that regardless of those very dramatic political events in my country. We look forward. We want to escape from this ashamed 164th place in transparency list internationalist. We want to go up. We want to be among the civilized developed countries. Thank you. Thank you. This is Otun Baeva for your very passionate and interesting talk. We in Russia we have been following with a lot of compassion and interest what was going on in Kyrgyzstan the last year. And we are really very happy that now the situation has calmed down. And there is strong hope also in Moscow that under your presidency and in those new conditions Kyrgyzstan will finally get the kind of government it deserves. For as you may know we in Russia feel in a quite special way towards the former Soviet republics. We used to be one country and this approach I think is still very much there. We don't feel worlds apart. We rather feel that we are part of the same world of the same area and of the same history. So we wish you a lot of success. We have here on the panel two high representatives of the governments of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. I would like to present you Mr. Yerebol Orun Baev who is the deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan and I would like to give him the floor. Kazakhstan is the country which shows the highest rate of development in this area and some would say in the whole of Eurasia it has very successful economic reforms. Now in Russia we have started to study Kazakhstan economic reforms and to take kind of as an example for us. So please you have the floor. The only thing I would like all the speakers to stick to maximum seven minutes so that we have the opportunity later to take some questions from the floor. Please Mr. Orun Baev. Thank you very much. I would like to be short. Going back to the topic you raised what are Central Asian strategies in today's new reality. I think to answer this very interesting question first we should identify on what stage and where Central Asia is now. What challenges this region is facing and what issues are prevailing in this region. And I would like to approach this topic through economic perspective. First of all Central Asian region is far and away from the major economic centers of the world. We know that there are three big centers North America Europe and Southeast Asia. And now and compared to the centers this region is in remote area. It's quite unstable and very volatile region given proximity of Afghanistan which is the world issue not only this region and this region is very neighbor to Afghanistan. There are all issues coming from this country especially terrorism and drug trafficking. It's different level of the development of the countries in the region. If we take five Central Asian countries it's a great variety in terms of the development. So GDP per capita in Kyrgyzstan in Uzbekistan is about one thousand. I'm telling roughly in Turkmenistan and in Kazakhstan it's more bigger. In Kazakhstan it's about nine thousand. In Turkmenistan it's about six thousand. So this is a big gap in the development. There is a big problem of the poverty which is during the collapse after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after this twenty years transition period somehow prevailed and not all countries of the region manage successfully to address the social issue of poverty and even distribution of the wealth. Very low value edit economic activities which end up in very not very diversified expert of these countries. Mainly it's commodity type as the president of Kyrgyzstan mentioned it's some kind of the row extracting commodity or very low edit value such as cotton or wheat or other type of the commodities. Not very developed I would say developed human capital but some in some way obsolete. A lot of them modernization is needed to bring it to the world standards. Based on these issues and I raised just some of them which I think is very important but I am pretty sure that there are many others of them especially in the context of each country in the region. I think it's possible to answer the question what will be the best strategy for the Central Asia. I would say that the major goal of all Central Asian republics countries should be goal of the integration to the global economy and it should be two dimensional. First it should be integration in the region which is very important because size of the economy matters in this respect for the investors and for the attracting foreign direct investments and promotion investments and integration to the world economy especially given that such a big market of the Russian Federation and the China is a neighbor of this region and potentially they are very fast growing economies. In this regard infrastructure development especially transport and different types of the connectivity is very important and crucial for the integration. In Kazakhstan together with our neighboring countries we are implementing a very big project. It's highway from the West China to the West Europe and the length of this highway is about 8,000 kilometers and Kazakhstan covers about 4,000 kilometers of this highway. World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other multinationals financing is one of the biggest project now currently implemented in the world. It led to bring goods from the east part of the China to the west part of the Europe in 10 days compared to the 40 days by sea. So it's very efficient at least in terms of the time and we will try to do everything to make it efficient in terms of the cost of the delivery. Human development is also very important issue and Mr. Madaret raised this issue and especially in terms of the vocational and training and technical education, modernization of the tertiary education and preschool education is also very important. And finally I think what is important for all countries of the region is very well developed and clear strategy of the promotion of the investments. I think this is very very important because investments spur development of the economy and then government, it's role of the government to make sure that this is development evenly distributed in the society. Thank you Mr. Oranbaev. I think it enlarges our image of the strategies you are discussing in order to be successful in your country, in your area. Now I have the pleasure to give the floor to Mr. Japarev, who is deputy prime minister of the government of Turkmenistan. Thank you very much. Chair, Excellencies, fellow participants, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to greet you on behalf of Turkmenistan and thank you for the opportunity to speak to such a high level international forum. I also thank the organizers for the excellent job they have done in putting this event together and may also wish you fellow participants all the best during the event. We are sure that given the representative nature of this Vienna forum, judging by those in attendance, there should be considerable prospects and opportunities for business like exchange of views. Ladies and gentlemen, Turkmenistan is an independent, neutral and dynamically developing country which has a tremendous amount of natural wealth and a fairly developed production, productive center as well as infrastructure and human potential. Given the far-sighted reform policies that have been instituted by the president of Turkmenistan, we have managed to considerably step up the part that we play in international affairs. We have extended the balance of cooperation with other countries in the world. The dynamic development in our country and the economy in particular has been determined in large part by the fact that there has been a balance strong between market mechanisms and very strong government regulations as well as targeted programming. We pursue large scale performance programs of some of the main programs that we are pursuing are for social and economic development that would range from 2011 to 2013. Besides that, there are other programs in the works as well, for example the World Development Programme. There is another one for industrial production and then there are programs that are targeting more specific regional development as well as sectoral programs. All of this has enabled us to mobilize the construction sector, which now ranks second in terms of its importance overall. In the industry, we have seen its contribution to GDP increasing. Turkmenistan, of course, though we look at all of the sectors, is a resort rich country. We cover all our own needs in oil and gas and electric power. In fact, we export considerable surplus and we are certainly prepared to explore opportunities to do that on an even larger scale. At present, we are exporting power to Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkey and we are additionally expanding capabilities for electric power generation and power distribution to Afghanistan. Of course, for such a project we have been set up. We have had some support. We are providing favorable prices, preferential prices to Afghanistan. In addition, when the economic crisis was hitting its peak, we ourselves tried to activate all beings available for us to step up exports of natural gas. As a result, we have brought new facilities into operation. We are also looking into pipelines that would be Turkmenistan or the way food to China. Another line would travel via Iran and we are also actively involved in preparing the way for a Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan project that will terminate in India. We see that as a means of affording considerable assistance to our neighboring countries and we believe that this will all contribute towards economic development in Afghanistan and perhaps make its mark towards reestablishing peace in the region. Turning to the economic situation per se, even during the height of the crisis in 2010, we nevertheless maintained positive growth rates of 6.1 in particular in 2010. We actually had a 9.2% figure at the best point. This year we anticipate that we might even hit a 14% growth figure for the GDP. Even the IMF mission has been impressed. The budget of a recent year has been proficient as opposed to deficitary and this is to be tried that can be tried from the balance payments. The budget, thereby covering the profit enables us to build our international currency. We serve as well as building on the stabilization fund which we set up when the crisis struck. In terms of public expenditure, I would say that 75% of the line share of course goes into social programs, public spending. That also covers capital investment in the social sphere. Our neutral status and the political stability of Turkmenistan to most attractive for investors and enable us to conclude beneficial economic arrangement. I feel that there are good prospects for cooperation between Turkmenistan and the countries of the European Union. The stand-up region as well could be collaborating with us and we could see our way towards further developing such sectors as energy, the chemical sector, light and food industry. We act for business, machine, engineering, instruments, manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, transport, tourism and sports and we think that there is quite a lot of scope for further development in the educational and health spheres. We are open to cooperation and may I just say that I would wish all of the participants here at the World Economic Forum every success in what they have said. Thank you. I think it was very good to hear that your country is doing so well, 14% of rise of GNP per year. It's a very, very high figure. I think only Singapore is doing better. This year it will be 15.5% in Singapore. Well, now I think we have heard the speakers from the Central Asian countries now. I would like to give the floor to speakers who are also part of the picture because they work in this area. But they have an experience of also people who work with Central Asia from the outside world and I would like to give first the floor to Pierre Morel, a special representative of the EU for Central Asia. I only have one wish. For the last three speakers, I would like to leave it to you to five minutes so that your remarks and I hope that we'll have a bit of time at the very end of the session. Please Pierre. Thank you Alexi for giving me this opportunity to attend this excellent meeting. I will focus my comments on three aspects and we have to get right down to the main part. First, the emerging risks. We have to stress something that's already mentioned and not just the problem with Afghanistan as a neighbour and all the uncertainties in Afghanistan. We don't necessarily have to be pessimistic but it does mean that we have to be very cautious. Central Asia is stable but fragile and I think that's a big part of the security problem because we also have to ask ourselves about the emerging risks and the main review is trafficking in drugs. We talk about it but we don't yet really know how big the risks and consequences of that are here in the United Nations. You have an excellent organisation where the organisation against drugs and crime and I think it's some figures on the more than part about 95 tons of heroin every year. Ten are used on site. The rest are Russia mainly and the Russians, which you see, notes that the number of dead due to drug consumption amongst about 30,000 a year. So we have a real regional surge and super regional as well because it's also reaching Europe. So the resource is still not enough. Give me another figure. In 2000, there were 1614 AIDS cases in Central Asia and now we have about 35,000. These are the figures of the UN office. Unfortunately, we have to mention this, not to say that it's a disaster but so that we can find the right response. One of the answers that the EU is working on is border control. We call the integral border management. That means we have to take the young countries whose governmental experience is still young and we have to allow them to consolidate and integrate the various dimensions of border management with respect to the international threats. There is one thing that's really important and here we have to work together. That was the first factor that I wanted to mention. The second aspect is the political transition, the political transitions going on in those Chinese with what President Otumbaya mentioned, what's going on in the Middle East and North Africa. We saw that corruption meant to lend to corruption. So the public debate is one way of using the rule of law is one way of reducing tolerance for corruption. I'm not trying to say that it's only in that region to look at international enterprises. They now have a chain of think officers that didn't exist 10 years ago. So it concerns everyone. But it's in the young states that it's a major threat. So we have to work on a rule of law but that doesn't mean that we have to go there and say this is our model, follow our model. No, in order to achieve stability in those countries with their background and their history, it's obvious that we have to consolidate the rule of law in those countries. And with the experience of Kyrgyzstan and that President Otumbaya mentioned as well, we have the lesson to learn. There's no model that fits all Kyrgyzstan is facing all kinds of troubles and it's being very courageous here and I'd like to be a tribute to the work done by President Otumbaya and his team because the conditions are tragic, disastrous, but there's no model that can be imported. We have to be close to them, support them regularly, not once for all and not going there once in a while but we have to back them up continuously. That's the lesson we can learn from that. My second point concerns regional cooperation. The five states of Central Asia once again find their identity again and their building in the right direction. Their identity again and their building up again after a long history and complex transitions and options. Each one of them wants to have their own logic. They're just talking about the Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyzstan and the same is true for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and this is quite normal. Everyone wants to have their own way, but at the same time the challenges of regional cooperation can only be solved through regional cooperation. The progress in the energy field has been mentioned. The gas pipeline China and Uzbekistan, on the other hand the regional cooperation has been done in the near future. Trans-Caspian pipeline and that's another form of regional cooperation that's not easy in the hydro power because the issue of water is one of the most difficult ones but from there once again in the field of power we can walk step by step and see and experience all countries of Central Asia to work better together and I think apart from the security that I've mentioned in the energy field and the energy sheet in the example of the transport already mentioned here will be the transport through by a modern rail rather than by sea is an excellent example. But now we have this point of my view that's an excellent example. Now education, there's still a lot to be done there, Central Asia. It is going to be its model step by step. It will be its model not ours imposed on them, but we can and must contribute. Thank you. Thank you, Pierre. It was a pleasure. And now I give the floor to Mr. Victor Chu who is the Chairman of the Eastern Investment Group from Hong Kong and who will share with us his experience in working in Central Asia and making investments in Central Asia. Thank you very much Chairman. I should say that First Eastern is a big investor in China. We have invested over the last 25 years in 150 investments including 10 financial institutions. Many of my investing companies are keenly interested in Central Asia regions, some of which are already doing business and lending into the region. So of course as a region, this is something of enormous interest to us. But I thought I should pick up from the last distinguished speakers appeal for regional cooperation and indeed regional partnership. Because I think these are the two keys which will allow the Central Asian economies to accelerate the pace of the reform and development. If the BRICS countries were the darling of the investment world in the last 20 years, I have no doubt that despite the risks and the security concern that there's every chance of Central Asia of becoming the darling of the investment world in the next 20 years. Because the fundamentals, the potentials out there and they can also learn from the experience how China, Russia and indeed other emerging economies in the last 20 years have set about their particular reform program. As an investor, I would like to see the clarity in regulations, particularly for foreign investments. I would like to see that short of a full development of rule of law as we understand them in Europe, that government takes the lead in helping a foreign investor in setting up, in rolling out and also in terms of when we run into trouble and we always run into trouble, that government plays a part in helping us to find a satisfactory solution. I think in terms of transparency and development of the rule of law, this is a long-term process. We can't expect a newly emerging economy to achieve Rome in one day. But so long as there's a positive and ongoing commitment from the host government to do that, I think investors will find it very attractive. I also like to give a plug to the Hong Kong and the Vienna capital market for purposes of the Central Asia economies. I think the Hong Kong market sits in the middle of the emerging Chinese market. We have been very successful in bringing Chinese companies onto the Hong Kong exchange. I was instrumental in developing this scheme called 8 shares in 1991. And since 1993, we have listed more than 100 Chinese companies, fundamentally different from the Western companies that we know in those days, and we have raised over 200 billion in that process. And more recently, we have started listing Russian companies on the Hong Kong market from other emerging and frontier markets as well. So certainly, Hong Kong market welcomes and embraces the Central Asian investors coming here. And Vienna, of course, being the centre in this part of the world, will also have a very useful role to play. So maybe Hong Kong and Vienna really should think about how to synergise this particular potential, forming investment funds listed in both Vienna and Hong Kong to tap new capital. The last point I want to mention is the offshore R&B market that has been developed in Hong Kong with huge liquidity in that market. But their very little product is a very cheap way of financing for companies from Central Asia region who are already doing business in China. The interest rate is extremely low and that, if you are already setting trade investment in China in R&B, that would be a very useful market to take a look. So I will check myself in five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chu. I think you just confirmed the impression we also get in Moscow that China is more and more interested in this area. I find a lot of Chinese businessmen, a lot of Chinese investors in the capitals of those republics, but Russia is also present. And I would like to give the floor to Mr. Finneganov, who is the chairman of the Eurasian Development Bank. Mr. Finneganov, please. Thank you very much. Just to comment briefly about the sort of integration that is occurring in this Central Asian region, we are a development institute that was set up to foster cooperation and integration. In this area, of course, we are closely following the economic policies that were emerging. It is clear to us, as it may be to other participants, that we are talking about a significant area and a large scale. And this should prove attractive to investors more so than other closed markets in as much as the objective economic realities are that there are new markets opening new prospects for cooperation. In Central Asia, the first project that we set up in the CIS was designed to preserve some of these integration ties that had historically a region in the region. And I'm not talking just about the Soviet area, but I'm talking all the way back in the time of the Great Silk Road. Something was put off, something emerged from this. And we have seen that there are – there is a basis that we can build on, that this has been able to accommodate a tremendous traffic in goods. We've also seen electoral generation schemes that feed into the market. And that, too, is a contributing factor, although I have to admit that there is a lot to do by way of limiting losses. And so other integration projects for the same region are similarly being pursued. President Nassar Baidov has alluded to this. He will be heading the Central Asian Economic Union Initiative and will be pursuing consultations with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where they are also talking about how to ensure interactions with the region, all of this, to assist in having cooperation and integration emerges as a result of policy. I don't see the region developing without this. What has proved successful so far has been, of course, first of all the Customs Union, which involves our country, the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan and Belarus. I hear that Kyrgyzstan is also interested possibly in joining. And that does indicate that this Customs Union might even extend further in the region. I'd like to say that, of course, there are serious challenges to economic development in the region. There has to be regional integration and innovation to further develop cooperation and integration. The main thing is to maintain and further develop the regional infrastructure. That's not only with regard to power grids or power transport or regulations. The ability to set up industrial clusters in agro-business, in the mining and energy sectors, which could lend a further boost to developing each and every country in the region, not to mention the region as a whole. So that is why we as a development bank are working in this area and we're hoping that investors will back us. Indeed, it's on their behalf that we will set up in order to facilitate business in the region. I can only suggest that we make further headway along these lines that we continue to focus on cooperation. We have three minutes left actually, so we can take either two questions from the floor, if the answers will be by one minute, or one question from the floor, please. Who would like to? Or any considerations maybe? Yes, please, welcome. Present yourself, please. We need a microphone, please. Please, use the microphone, please. Azerbaijan, which was a challenge in itself because of the logistics and the licensing and the whole process. But I must say, we are now having a very successful business there and we're being well supported by the government. Being in Azerbaijan, we are now looking at the likes of Turkmenistan, where we have relationships with some of the charitable organizations in Dubai. And we're certainly looking at places like Kyrgyzstan and we're also looking at now opening an office in Russia. I think my question is at the moment, we have seen the Arab Spring and it's been quite serious, one of the reasons why we started to look into Central Asia. However, we've already seen some problems developing in Azerbaijan with the youth there and some disenfranchising of the local population, starting to feel a little bit envious that there are foreign companies coming in and perhaps they feel as if we're taking the wealth away and taking it back to our countries. Can I sort of ask, certainly maybe the Turkmenistan and maybe Madam President, do you feel that there is the potential for an Arab Spring within your own countries? That could be something that is a concern for me as a potential investor moving forward from our entry into Azerbaijan, which at the moment has been quite successful. But we still see that the Armenian problem is there and people are a little bit nervous about making further and further larger investments. Thank you. Who would like to answer this? Not the easiest question, actually, you're asking. You probably would like to some easier questions. It's very complicated what you're talking about. So, anyone? No, I would... Please. There's something there. We badly need investment and we want to get more investment, solid investment, fair investment, social responsible investment. This is very important when people there, they feel that they will benefit also from such investment. So, I think what is the most important, what we are doing, people who participate in the government, they are not just outsiders watching what government is doing. They are judging also. They have their representatives in the parliament. If something wrong, immediately you get feedback from the parliament's tribune. So, I think what we are doing, we are on the right track. We are open democracy and the most serious debates now going within the parliament, not on the streets. We are open to all those challenges. And I'm sure that this is only a way to govern people. So, we are not afraid of big and small size of uprisings. Now, parliamentary governments, we do consider this is quite an optimal bearing in mind that that was the historical root in my country also. Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. I think we'll call it a day with the feeling that there are some achievements and a good hope for the region of Central Asia. Thank you very much.


Good morning everybody, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak at this great meeting and thank you all for coming out so early this morning. The title of my talk, Purpose Driven Life, a psychiatrist evolutionary perspective on human motivation. The objective of this presentation is to challenge the assumption that a purpose driven life requires a purpose driven universe. Many psychiatrists have a natural affinity to skepticism. A major part of the work of a psychiatrist is to persuade people to be skeptical about their own beliefs and perceptions, not to believe everything their brain thinks is true. Psychiatrists attempt to understand why people believe the things they do, from overt psychotic delusions to depression, anxiety and common distorted beliefs. We're all prone to cognitive distortions as we try to make sense of our world. Inferences about purpose, intention and meaning are very much prone to mistaken assumptions. People naturally tend to seek and find purpose and meaning in their lives. It is an intuitive human tendency to assume that life and the universe are inherently purposeful and designed, intentional, that things are meant to be. To most people throughout history, it has seemed self-evident that our world is purposefully designed and controlled by intentional high powers. It would have seemed quite foolish to suggest that it had arisen on its own. Versions of the theistic view actually seemed intellectually credible, even appropriately skeptical. Not the idea that the universe cares about us personally, as Tennyson put it, nature read in tooth and claw, so careless of the single life. In terms of credibility, we are not taking seriously here beliefs in a personal communicative God or parochial biblical beliefs with its God as an author of books. We are considering abstract notions of God. Theism even made a comeback in recent decades. Experts argued that science had revealed that life and the universe are even more intelligently intricate and complex than had previously been appreciated. Furthermore, the laws and constants of physics appeared fine-tuned for matter and life to be able to evolve. It seemed reasonable to ask, how could the universe be explained as an entirely unguided, spontaneous, self-caused phenomenon? Another long-standing enigma has been human consciousness. In all its mystifying complexity and in the way that it seems entirely distinct from all the physical stuff in the universe. And where do values come from? Meaning and morality. Science for most of its history had little to say about these, whereas mainstream religion which for two and a half millennia did attract a great many deep thinkers, offers many profound philosophical and psychological insights, mixed in with its more problematic aspects. In recent years, the age-old human assumptions about a purposeful, designed universe have been compellingly challenged and refuted by breakthroughs in science. The net result is that far more coherent, rational explanations have been crystallizing as to how our complex world could have emerged and evolved entirely naturalistically, that is, non-supernaturally and unguided. There are now plausible hypotheses to explain even the apparent fine-tuning and first cause enigmas. We've learned enough not to jump to supernatural conclusions to fill gaps in our knowledge. Science neither purports to nor needs to be able to explain everything about the universe, but the mere fact that it is possible to generate fully plausible naturalistic hypotheses should give us pause regarding our supernatural assumptions. Even the immensely complex, seemingly non-physical human mind is increasingly yielding its secrets to fully naturalistic explanations. Now if you have any doubt still at all that the mind is the product of the brain and nothing but the brain, come and work in psychiatry for a while and see if any aspect of the mind that you can think of is not radically altered by the disruption, disassembly or for that matter enhancement of physical brain circuitry. The new scientific insights lead to skepticism about design and purpose. Current naturalistic explanations of the universe, life and consciousness are complex, subtle, and still inaccessible to most people, but highly elegant when fully grasped. There are now extremely cogent reasons to be skeptical of assumptions about a purposeful universe. As we now have far better natural than supernatural explanations, and by better, we mean the best fit for the data. Moreover, we understand that much more clearly than ever before that assumptions about inherent purpose are human projections. Nevertheless, most people will probably continue to find the simple message that the universe has a special purpose intended for them to be far more intuitive, appealing, and much easier for them to understand. I personally doubt that we can expect the average person to move beyond that. An understanding of the evolutionary psychology of belief suggests that humans are strongly predisposed to see meaning, purpose, and intention in events. By the way, the top picture is a romanticized depiction of Indians in Jamaica awed by a lunar eclipse predicted in 1504 by Columbus to impress and intimidate them. As Michael Sherma and others have articulated, these traits most likely evolved to detect predators and prey and to cooperate as social animals by readily identifying patterns and by inferring other beings' intentions in those patterns. Revealingly, psychiatric disorders amplify beliefs in special purpose. These normal human tendencies are magnified in psychiatric disorders such as psychosis and mania. Delusions of reference are the most common type of delusions. These delusions involve the false belief that unrelated, coincidental, or innocuous events, objects, or actions have a particular personal significance. My patients regularly tell me that everything is happening for a reason. It's all about me. They detect hidden messages, signs. They tell me that it couldn't possibly just be coincidence. They have all kinds of proof. These types of delusions are a central characteristic of paranoia and grandiosity. Supernatural belief is also reinforced by other factors. It provides solace, enables death denial, abolishes uncertainty. Supernatural myths provide purposeful stories to explain the world to ourselves. These rituals render beliefs experiential, ordered, and communal. They give us feelings of control and predictability. They also often address instinctive contamination anxiety, tapping into purity fixations. Religion facilitates powerful social binding, fostering group cohesion, authority, and control. The need for order and control through ritual and magical thinking, when amplified to our psychiatric proportions, is obsessive compulsive disorder. In order to understand the natural evolution of purpose and caring, dispensing with supernaturalism, we must now consider an apparent paradox. How have we evolved to care about our lives, being purpose driven, goal directed, motivated, and to care about other people's lives, being moral, compassionate, in an unplanned and mechanistic, indifferent universe lacking any purpose or caring? Fundamentally, purpose driven human behaviors are merely elaborations of the evolved drive to survive, attract mates, and appropriate as vehicles for self propagating genes. All biological organisms, even the simplest, are by definition goal directed, with or without any form of conscious intentionality as an outgrowth of this basic drive. Human bacterium, or a plant, is goal directed. Complex purpose driven human behaviors can be understood at a basic level as extravagantly wondrously embellished means towards basic reproductive ends. This is in a sense analogous to the evolution of peacock feathers. Complex goal directed human behaviors have produced the magnificent spectacle of human civilization. So why do we bother to do anything? Because we are simply wired to be goal directed, driven by our brains in highly evolved motivation and reward circuits, pursuing and achieving goals is neurochemically reinforced and imbued with feelings of reward, in addition to being driven, of course, by hunger, libido, and survival. This is obvious and basic in the case of food and sex. For more complex, creative goal directed behaviors, we experience feelings of reward in complex ways. As feelings of accomplishment, self-actualization, these are complexly evolved elaborations of the same basic behavioral reinforcement system. Motivation is the normal, natural state of animals, varying in intensity as a trade across individuals, partially modifiable by behavioral conditioning involving experiences of rewards and consequences. Apathy and diminished capacity to experience feelings of reward is the abnormal, exceptional state. Many specific psychiatric disorders and brain disorders cause loss of appetite for life or deficits in goal directedness. Psychological and social factors can do this too, triggering depression due to feeling devalued or rejected by others. Depression once it sets in has neural correlates. Will these insights lead some to an existential crisis, despairing that there is no grand purpose to the universe, feeling a sense of absurdity? Our natural purposefulness and appetite for life gives us a powerful inclination to make meaning for ourselves in our lives. Our ability to do so is not dependent on the universe itself having a predefined purpose. The belief that everything happens for a reason and that things are meant to be is a double edged sword. It can be reassuring and comforting, that belief in a higher power, but it can also lead to bitter, anguish, feelings of abandonment and even more profoundly disorienting kinds of existential crisis when suffering cruel adversity. Why me? Existential questions for most people are intellectually interesting to ponder and debate but are highly unlikely in and of themselves to make someone feel suicidal. Okay, so we care about our own lives, but what about caring about the lives of others if the universe really is indifferent and amoral? Group dynamics in social animals are the basis of competition and cooperation. Humans have competitive and cooperative instincts, aggressive and empathic tendencies. Motivation to cooperate includes reciprocal altruism. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. As social primates, group dynamics make social status an additional crucial motivator serving the more basic drives of survival and reproduction. Status in primates is dependent on social reputation. Reputation in primates is established by aggressive dominance and intimidation, as well as by being helpful, a team player, and demonstrating useful skills. In humans, as in other primates, status is acquired not only by dominance, but importantly by achieving admirable skills and making useful contributions to the group. This leads to feelings of self-worth and accomplishment and is typically a primary motivator for purposeful living. We are also prone to feelings of failure. Disappointment with oneself for failing to accomplish all one's goals and not being the ideal person we would like to be is a quintessentially human experience. Humorously epitomized in this quote, my goal in life is to be the person my dog thinks I am. Fortunately, feelings of failure have the potential to increase our empathy towards other fallible human beings. As social animals, we are highly attuned to the feelings of fellow group members and adept at inferring their mental states. We also have highly developed mammalian bonding instincts, derived in part from mammals' need to nurture their young. People generally care empathically about each other, are moved by their distress and seek to console another industry. This is not unique to humans. It may be related to the evolved response to mammalian infant cries. It is more developed in humans. Of course, people don't always care. Sometimes we're callously indifferent or just oblivious to the suffering of others. A variety of factors can override caring and lead to aggression or cruelty. This topic could be a whole separate talk. However, there is a fair chance that people will care. Most people are capable of caring once they are able to comprehend and relate to the other person's predicament and perspective and they are even more likely to do so in reasonably conducive social circumstances. Now, getting people to achieve such comprehension and compassion and creating those socially conducive circumstances is the challenge. Yet there is a fair chance of success if dealing with people with intact empathy circuits. The human capacity for sophisticated reasoning plays a very important augmenting role too. Contributing to the development of social contracts and of increasingly rational systems of law. As Stephen Pinker and others have pointed out, the tendency over the course of human history has generally been towards greater caring. This has been a far from smooth trend but an unmistakable trend nonetheless, taking the long view of history. Working towards establishing reasonably peaceful, cooperative care in critically minded skeptical societies is a realistic potentially achievable goal. Indeed, this goal has already been partially achieved in developed democratic countries which not coincidentally are the most secular too. Those countries are also cooperatively interdependent with each other, reflecting an ever widening definition of within group. In summary, humans are innately purpose driven. We care about our lives and are strongly motivated to work towards purposeful, meaningful goals. The realization that meaning is something that we make rather than made for us is both anxiety provoking and empowering liberating. There is a fairly good chance of getting people to cooperate and to care about the lives of others. Developing more caring societies is a realistic, non-naive, collective human project but expecting the universe to care. Oh, best of luck to those who do. I don't know about you but I'm more concerned with knowing that people care about me than that the universe does. So we always try to let at least one or two questions during these sessions. We can't go much further than that but does anybody have a question for Dr. Lewis? If you could move to the aisle, I'm a little bit lacking mobility in a certain little bit. Something I've observed that I seem to have a hard time convincing other people. It appears that human beings are more interested in the plight of an individual than some large group. I mean we're more interested in Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman than the, say, 100,000 people who've died in Syria and even bigger Holocausts than that. Yes, I agree. That more than likely has to do with the environment that we evolved in in small hunter-gatherer groups and later tribal groups. Maximum size speculated about 150 people in the group later on. However, the good news is that we also have our very evolved reasoning abilities and there is cultural evolution that has by far overtaken genetic biological evolution. So we can teach ourselves how to care about large groups. One more question. Hi, you mentioned patternicity and empathy. I just wondered whether there's any correlate between the two. Are people who are more inclined to find patterns, more inclined to be able to intuit what other people are feeling in that kind of empathetic way? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know for sure the answer to that question. But in general there are different factors contributing to both. So, you know, patternicity as Michael calls it would be more of a cortical function. Empathy is more emotional, more limbic if you like, in general. But there are different levels of empathy as well. There are various psychologists and philosophers who have written about this. Empathy can be parsed to the basic biological limbic level all the way up to the cortical level. There are cortical elements in empathy. And perhaps these things are linked. Thank you Dr. Lewis.


So someone wants to write a nomination for a property. Where do they go? What do they do? You would want to contact your state historic preservation offices first. State historic preservation offices are mandated through the National Historic Preservation Act to identify historic properties within their state and to participate in the nomination of those historic properties. So as a customer of the State Historic Preservation Office you can be assured that you're going to find that that office has information that can be valuable to you if you're going to nominate a property. Every state has a process for helping people identify whether their property meets the National Register criteria and states often provide technical assistance through workshops or webinars and R's or other means of educating the non-professional preparer. States are mandated to survey areas and identify historic properties. In doing these surveys they have to take into account the historic contexts that help evaluate historic properties. They may already have surveyed not only your property itself but the greater area. So by contacting your State Historic Preservation Office a lot of your work may be done for you. This is public information and this is information that you can use in your nomination. We like to say that a National Register nomination is not like going to school. If you want to use someone else's work use their work just cite it in your bibliography. What we want is a good reasoned argument for why your property is important and if someone else has done that footwork for you use it. So the State Historic Preservation Office is going to be your friend in this process.


What's up everybody, it's James here for jasmuscasebreak.com. 2020, penning your legacy football, six box, half case break, random team number nine just sold out, and we're giving 20% off. Guys, what a great deal. 32 total spots. They're the biggest random team in the NFL. No better in common ship. All donated, great price for this break compared to what boxes they're selling for. So there you go. Roll the dice. Yeah, are you in Virginia, Ryan? I think they're based out of Sterling, Virginia. Five and a two, seven times. One, two, three, four, five, six, and it was a seven, right? Nope, seven times. Roll, down a colon. All right, seven times here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. 49ers, done with the Tennessee Titans. I thought it was seven, right? Yeah.  Zachary with the Dolphins, John, Las Palmangia Vikings, Ian with the Panthers, Connor with the Falcons, Jacob with the Bills, Dan with the Cowboys, Angel with the Colts, Adam with the Lions, and Cole with the Tennessee Titans. So again, if any trades happen, this is the time to do it, trade window is open, I'm gonna close it in about a minute if nobody is trading or proposing trades. And in the meantime though, I'm gonna open up the case, see which case we're gonna use here for this break. This thing you guys can see right here, right? The case really quick guys, wanna make sure that, this is a full like 24 box master case, so six boxes we're gonna use. All right, so two winners, this is the left side, this is the right side, we're gonna use a die, one, two, three for the left, four, five, six for the right, let's see really quick, five. So one, two, three, four, five, six, right side. And yeah, I don't think anybody wants to trade, right? Zachary I think it, Zachary really, if anybody wants to trade, doesn't look like no one replied, so let's just do it. Juan, what's going on? I know you got the bangles in this break man, good luck. So now that we chose what inner, or which inner we're gonna use in this break, now let's open up the master. Or sorry, let's open up, now that we chose which, inner out of the master, now let's see which, six boxes we're gonna use for this break. All right again, same thing, one, two, three for the left side, four, five, six for the right. And it rolled a five again, it was meant to be. One, two, three, four, five, six. Nick has already posted up number 10. These boxes here on the left side would be four, number 10. Carb last one, what's going on man? Oh, what's going on Roger? What's going on man? It's been a minute, office on tonight guys. It is on. Good luck guys. You got Derek Henry, Dan Handler, little Chrome, or Optic Fuel I guess. And the Michael Hasty, for the Baylor Bears. All right let me pull up the checklist guys, we're gonna go about group break checklist. 49, got a little Russell Wilson number card, 25. Then we got a little crack dice of Ken B. McCoy, number seven out of 10. This is actually a none on group break checklist, so everyone's gonna have a shot at this and if there's any other ones, we'll put it all in one lot. So this person is not affiliated with any team, so we'll put that over here. We got a little Minnie Herbert, 47 out of 75, very nice. There you go, of course, that's gonna be going to the Chargers, Daniel for the Tennessee Titans. And we got Tua Togvalo, and it's four out of five, look at that. I think we put a lot of good Tua's in the last two days. Very nice. Nice little patch in there, four out of five. And that's gonna be going to the Dolphins, going to Zachary. We got Van Jefferson. J-Dog, what's going on, buddy? Sorry, J-Dog, I just seen that. Antonio Gandy-Gold, going to my Eagles. Tua Togvalo. And A.J. Dillon to 299. A.J. Dillon, going to the Packers. Packers, Packers, Packers. And K.J. Hill, out of the Ohio State. Chargers, out of MVP, Lamar Jackson. Nine out of 25, Barry Sanders for the Lions. Roy, that's Adam Cuperman. Smokey, what's going on? Little John Riggins for the Washington Redskins. What's our New Yorkin' name gonna be, guys?  C.D. Lam, number to 100. Gonna go to the Cowboys. Gonna be halfway through, guys, after this. 75, Mark Ginger. And then Jacob Eason, 25 out of 25. Nice, under the lights. This should be Indianapolis Colts, right? Jacob Eason, yes. President Williams. Ooh, is this one of those? Jared Ater to 50? Yes, it is. For the Cowboys. Dak Prescott. So, all right, Dan, you can tear this. It's only Dak Prescott. I'm gonna worry about it. There you go, for the Cowboys. Dan, tear that ish up. Lynn Bowden, Jr. to 100. Rainace Lynn Bowden, Jr. All righty, guys, halfway through. Next box. All right, guys, after this, we just have the helmets to break. And then after that, we'll go through orders. See what we got going next after that. Sure, it's gonna be a couple pack breaks, probably, I'd assume. Devin Singletary to 199. Little mini here. Like Chris Carson to 50. Devin Bush, autograph to 50. Steelers, it's gonna drew. Back to that color on the yellows. Gonna come barking on the Giants. James Winston, 28 to 75. Eddie Jackson. Jacob Eason, 99. Steven Montes. Another super crazy brand-in. Got a nice Shaq Auto Magic Edition. We got a Lonzo Ball rookie autograph. No Tatum, no Kobe. So, another case of on the website. It'll be fun to do another one of those. For sure, the one on the website, maybe one more. I think at least two of them. I'm assuming. Think for the last one, we did three, so it could be two or three. But let's sell out the spot straight up and then we'll figure out the fillers so that can always put spots back in. That is the case. 299.99, guys.  Van Jefferson, rounds with that one. DJ Chark, Nate Stanley. Is it really Zachary? Daniel Jones to 75. Giants, go on to Phillip. Oh, but you know what? You know why it's probably behind Zachary, just because usually the feed is live between me and you, but I think YouTube delays it about maybe 10 seconds. Maybe five seconds. So, that's probably why it's a little behind. But it shouldn't be too behind. And Jake Luton to 249. Jacksonville Jaguars. Little Joe Burrowmini. Doesn't matter if I looked at Van Jefferson, did I? Rams, yeah. All right, last box, guys. Two at a tug below. Little Nate Stanley to 75. Donovan Peoples Jones. Jacoby Bressetto to 100. We got Joe Reed to 50, that's George Kittle. And we got Jonathan Taylor, should be our last hit, last autograph, there you go. Very nice. And that's gonna be for the Colts. That's great for the Colts, Angel. Joe Green, and there you go, guys. Very, very nice. So again, all the hits went up to the right teams right there. We did have one hit that doesn't belong to anybody, so it'll be randomized to one customer in the break. So there you go. All these going out. We got a really, really nice tour in the beginning of the break. Pretty much was the biggest hit right here. Four out of five, two at a tug below. But again, a lot of stuff being numbered, a lot of stuff being top-loaded as well right here. That's what the team will do. And again, this card right here will be randomized to one customer in the break. Number one gets it. So let's grab the teams. And team on number one gets that little extra hit right there. 16 and three, nine times. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Los Angeles Rams at number one. They go Allie Rams, Robert gets that. Appreciate it, guys. Another half of legacy on the website already. Jaspy'scasebreaks.com.


Nationwide and here in Colorado, minorities are twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as the rest of the population. Roy Willis was pre-diabetic when he sought help from the Center for African American Health. Last year in June, I weighed like 300 pounds and now I weigh 159 pounds. The diabetes class helped me by changing my eating habits but also changed me about how to take care of myself. Better health, more energy, more environment, more on the get-go. I like fruits and vegetables because they're good for you. They're better for you. You don't need all that greasy food. You don't need bacon. You don't need all that fatty stuff or all that stuff with sugar and sodium in it. You need things more healthier for you. This picture means a lot to me. It's my family. This is my dad whose name is Lee Roy Willis. He passed away having in his sleep but he also was a diabetic. He was taking insulin shots when he got in his 60s which he died at the age of 66. The Center brought so much for me and it provided me with tools and education and an encouragement and the awareness that our community needs to understand how serious diabetes is. I don't know what I'd have done if I never went to that program. I don't even know if I'd be here right now. I learned how to manage myself better which our generations, past generation, our parents, their parents didn't know about that. If they did, who knows, most of them might still be here. I facilitate multiple classes for the Center and it's participants like Roy that keep me coming back and that truly inspired me. He is also inspiring the rest of the group and myself included. We just appreciate programs like you all. You highlight our community. You help us look healthy and strong and we're just so proud that our neighbors and families are here to support one another and we have programs like you that help bridge that gap and keep us all together.