If you've been waiting for the new Samsung Galaxy S22 device, then the team at Appalachian Wireless has some good news for you. Appalachian Wireless is launching all Samsung S22 models on sale. We are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. The annual Appalachian heirloom seed swap will be held this Saturday, April 2. The seed swap is a buy-sell trade event and will feature several other vendors in addition to seed vendors. We have over 30 vendors from six states coming and we have them from Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, New York is the one we got further. We've been doing this for nine years. We've had a two-year absence with all that's gone on within our country, but we're really excited to be back. The idea is to buy, sell, or trade heirloom seeds, seeds that can be saved from year to year. With produce being sold in grocery stores coming from hybrid seeds, seeds that cannot reproduce, heirloom seed swaps are important to keep local produce available. Neil Hunt, myself, and Suzanne Stumbo, the Pike County Extension Agent, the year that we had the floods here in Pike County, we almost lost what they call the Farmer Brown Cushaw, which is a very important part of our agriculture history here in Pike County. And we thought, well, we'll organize a seed swap and kind of share these seeds amongst the haulers so that it doesn't get lost. And it went the first year from we expecting 50 and we had about 150 and it just has kept growing. Our largest crowd has been 1,200 people. The seed swap will also feature classes taught by agriculture experts focused on seed saving and sustainable gardening. We also have the cutting of the Cushaw, exactly at 9 o'clock sharp, which is a great pump in circumstance. It's a Sarah Vody that's kind of silly that gets things kicked off. The event is free to the public and will be held at Pike Central High School from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Concessions will be available from Farmer's Market Chef. For Mountaintop News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


I'm going to tell you a story all about a trickster, somebody called Anansi. In the British Library we have many stories featuring Anansi the spider. If I say crick you need to say crack. Shall we do that? Crick, crack, crick, crack. Well done. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Anansi was very hungry. There's a great hunger in the land, a great famine and nobody had anything to eat. Anansi was sad. One day his cousin visited and Anansi looked at him and thought he looks so good. How come he looks so good and we all look so bad? What's going on? So when his cousin finished his visit and left Anansi followed him. His cousin didn't take the usual path home, instead he went down to the river and then Anansi who was sorry from a safe distance stopped and saw that he had stopped by a tree and he had looked left and right and right again and then his cousin pulled out a pot, placed the pot on the ground and to the pot he said these words. Boil, pot, boil. Can you repeat those words for me please? Boil, pot, boil. And the strangest thing happened. There was no filing, there was nothing put into the pot and Anansi could see that the pot was beginning to bubble and boil, boil and bubble and out of the pot was coming the most delicious smells and what was going on and then he saw his cousin do the strangest thing yet.  His cousin had a magic cooking pot but Anansi had to have that pot. He had to have it. So when his cousin had finished he placed the pot back in its secret hiding place and went away. But then Anansi went to the pot, took it out from the secret hiding place and said the words. Can you remember what the words were? Let's say it together. Boil, pot, boil. And once again the pot began to boil and bubble, bubble and boil and Anansi, all the smell, oh it was so lovely, it was so delicious.  Then he decided I'm taking this pot home with me and so he put it on his back and he was bouncing down the road thinking of all the delicious food he was going to have. When he got home his children came running. Daddy, daddy, what's that on your back? Help me, help me get it off. But they tried. They pulled and tunked, tunked and pulled by the pot when it moved.  You're back. We can't move it. What do you have here? You see the pot was indeed getting heavier and heavier. His wife Cookie came out and she said, what's that on your back? What's going on? Please get it off me, please get it off me. And that debate where he didn't know what to do and she and the children tucked and pulled pulled and tunked the pot when it moved still. What's going on? The cousin, one of the children ran as quick as they could, as fast as they could and they went to get the cousin. When the cousin came, oh you got the pot. Yes, get it off me. I can't believe you can't. It doesn't really belong to me. It's a thing we belong to. The wise old woman. The wise old woman, did you ask for it? Not exactly to the cousin. I borrowed it. The wise old woman was called and when she came she was not pleased. Now this is what she does now. You all follow me? She folds her arms like so. She looked at him with one BDI like so. And another BDI like so. And she waxes her finger like so. And she said, so Nancy, you have my pot. I didn't know it was yours. Your pot. Please, please, please forgive me. He begged and begged and begged. I'm not sure I can. Oh please forgive me, please, please. But he begged so hard and so long said, all right. If you can answer my riddle, I will remove the pot. But if you can't, you have to come and work for me for a very long time. Now Nancy had no choice. He had to try to answer the riddle. And so he said, all right, what is your riddle? And this is the riddle, she said. Ready? Ready me D, ready me that. What is sweet water that stands firm? I have no idea. What is sweet water that stands firm? Do any of you know what is sweet water that stands firm? I'll give you a few seconds to have a think. Four, five. Anybody know? Why, I think I'm hearing it. I think some of you do. The answer to the riddle is sugarcane. Well, unfortunately, the Nazi didn't know the answer. But the wind did. And the wind whispered, sugarcane into his ear.  He was so happy. The old woman said, ha, you're lucky. And she picked up a pot and she was on her way. But the Nazi always the cheeky one said, excuse me. Before you go, could I have a bit more food? No, she said learn to cook food. And that is why to this day, we all have to cook food.  I have been looking for it for the longest while. If you ever find it, we'll let you know. But not only does it do all the cooking, it does the washing up as well. If I say why a Ben, you say story end. Why a Ben, story end. Why a Ben, story end. If you've enjoyed that story, check out Discovering Children's book. And you'll find many other Nazi stories by the wonderful James Berry, illustrated by Joseph Volova. Please check them out. And can you write a story about somebody who is very crafty? Somebody's a bit of a trickster. Maybe you can add a riddle or two to your story. Please. What adventures can you take up on with them? Check out Discovering Children's book and let us see your wonderful stories at the British Library. My name is Sandra. Thank you for sharing my story. Goodbye. Goodbye.


Hello everybody. Welcome to the New Mexico EPSCORE Smart Grid Center webinar series. We'll get started precisely at noon. Thank you for spending your lunch hour with us. My name is Ann Jekyll. I'm the Associate Director of New Mexico EPSCORE and on behalf of myself and Bill Mitchner who is the State Director and Principal Investigator of the New Mexico Smart Grid Center. I'd like to welcome you to this series. This is the first webinar that we will continue throughout the academic year. The webinars will be the fourth Friday of every month at noon. So please mark your calendars. And the purpose is to present research and promote collaboration across our project. But we will also provide a venue for outside presenters working on subjects related to microgrids and other topics of interest to the New Mexico Smart Grid Center to present. If you are interested in presenting or you have a suggestion of someone who should present, please contact me. You can find my contact on the website pretty easily. An item of housekeeping. If you would like to provide any comments or questions, there's a question and answer box in the Zoom webinar interface. And that's the best way to interact. So if you have questions throughout the presentations, please enter them there and we will address them as time permits. Our next webinar is lined out. It is October 25th at noon. Gary Oppendahl from Ameri Technologies will be presenting on networked DC microgrids. Ameri Technologies has a couple of microgrid demonstration projects ongoing in New Mexico. And this will be an excellent opportunity to hear about them and find out opportunities for collaboration and what some of our industry partners are doing.  I won't go through all of these, but I did want to let you know that the first two here, the Jack Davis and Sandia National Labs grid resilience forum, you can attend remotely. So no matter where you are in the state, you can attend these events. And also we encourage all of our undergraduate and graduate students to submit an abstract to present either an oral or a poster presentation at the New Mexico Academy of Science Research Symposium. Those abstracts are due October 6th. More information about everything is on our website, which is nmepscore.org. You'll see here the news events and webinar links. So without further ado, I will kick off year two of our project and this first webinar with an overview of our center. We have many new students who are joining the project right now and others are just starting their scope of work for year two. So we wanted to reorient you and contextualize the project. The New Mexico Smart Grid Center is a five-year project funded through the National Science Foundation EPSCORE program that establishes an interdisciplinary research center to address the design operational data and security challenges of next generation electric power management. And specifically our project is looking at how we can transform existing electricity distribution feeders and turn them into a set of interconnected distribution feeder microgrids. Some of you are familiar with the power sector and some of you aren't, so I'll take a minute to define the distribution feeder. That's the final stage of the electricity distribution system. So in a traditional utility grid, we've had large centralized power plants. They generate power. It goes through high-voltage transmission lines. It's stepped down at distribution stations and then delivered to customers via the distribution feeder. A microgrid is an interconnected set of load and distributed energy resources that can operate independently of the grid. So at the microgrid controller, you can island it from the grid. And this is a discrete entity also. So we can take the idea of the microgrid and turn the distribution feeder into a microgrid. Why would we want to do this? Well, the answer to that is contained in our project's acronym, Sustainable, Modular, Adaptive, Resilient, and Transactive. I'll take a minute just to dwell on the resilient and the sustainability aspects. Resiliency because the microgrid can operate regardless of if there are issues with the greater transmission grid. You think about Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, the areas where there were microgrids were up and running much more quickly than the greater power grid. Some people were without power for over a year. So that resiliency aspect can be very important, whether the grid issues are human-caused or a natural cause. And the other is the sustainability component. As we move toward a lower carbon future, microgrids can allow for more renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies to be integrated into the grid. And check out how happy these people are. I think that if we were on distribution feeder microgrids, we would all be that happy. We have four core research areas that are part of our project. And I won't dwell on them here because you'll hear about them in more detail from all of our presenters. But very quickly, the architecture group or research group one is looking to optimize distribution feeder microgrid design incorporating human preferences. The networking group is creating networking and communication systems that are scalable, secure, and protect user privacy. The decision support crew is integrating machine learning, data mining, and knowledge-based techniques to make computer-aided and data-driven decisions in the smart grid. And deployment is where we tie this all together and take models, simulations, and deploy them in diverse testbeds across New Mexico that you'll hear about today. This project is bounded by cyber infrastructure and human infrastructure. We've started referring to this in the office as the EPSCORE hug. But we have a high-performance computing resources at New Mexico State University that all of you can access and also some data archiving and sharing resources run through UNM. And the human infrastructure refers to training students, hiring new faculty, and all of the training programs that we have as part of our project. We are focusing on research here today, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention our education outreach and workforce development programs, of which there are many you can learn about all of them on the website. Everything from training two- and four-year college students and research experiences to science communication fellowships. There are many opportunities for you to engage. Make sure to read our newsletter each month and you'll find out how you can sign up. And for those of you students that are just starting at your own institution, I wanted to make sure that you understand the scope of this project. New Mexico EPSCORE and the New Mexico Smart Grid Center bring together all three research universities. The two national laboratories, community colleges, Explora is our primary outreach partner. And there are opportunities if you want internships at different places. If you're an undergraduate student and you're looking to get a graduate degree faculty that we can help connect you with. So keep that in mind. With that, I will turn it over to our first presenter. Olga Lavrova is an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering at New Mexico State University. And I'll also just remind you if you have questions, as Olga is talking, to enter them into the question and answer box. Olga, take it away. Okay, thank you and for the introduction and for the overview. So I will present some of the research work going on as part of research goal number one, which develops architecture. And this work is a work of many team members. We primarily consist of faculty and students at NMSU as well as faculty and students at UNM. Some of the students have graduated. Some of the newer students are joining this semester and this year. So I will not go through the whole list. But these are all good opportunities for any new students to start getting involved. We do have industrial partners that are listed at the bottom. We see them as very important partners in this whole project and you will start seeing more and more of their participation as we progress. So next slide please. So just as Anne introduced in the introduction, our goal is to start looking at distribution feeders as a new component for our electric grid infrastructure. And there is a strong motivation for us to start thinking about this as a completely different component. And the motivation being that we are progressing into very significantly different mix of energy generation resources, whether renewables being at the forefront of this generation mix. Additionally, we are all adopting electric vehicles and other electrification of other industrial sectors. The picture that Anne showed at the beginning showed an electric vehicle. And those are beginning to be more and more widely adopted by us as consumers. So we really need to start thinking about what other required changes that our distribution feeders may need to start facing. And so I have several key questions listed here on the left. As you read through those questions, I encourage you to think about some of those questions. For example, where should we deploy all of our renewable energy sources? Should they be deployed randomly wherever each individual home owner decides to purchase a PV system or an electric vehicle? Or should there be some bigger picture and bigger plan that should enforce those? How do we protect safety, security and reliability of our new electric distribution feeders? And who is responsible for that? Is that still utilities responsibility? Is that now individual home owners responsibility? Is there a mix of those? And how basically do we define that as a proper architecture? How do we make sure that the grid still stays safe in terms of protection? There is a lot of work that goes on in the electrical grid that is not visible to us as traditional consumers. For example, protection by fuses or protection by relays and circuit breakers is typically not seen by traditional consumer. But this is something that needs to start changing as we adopt more and more electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. So with this, I will go over some of our current achievements and plans. So next slide, please. So as one of our accomplishments for the first year, we have graduated several students and I will use Gazeta Varys' dissertation as an example of one of our really interesting achievements. His dissertation centered on decentralized robust optimization for transactive scheduling of distributed resources. This is obviously as applicable to our distribution figures. And the question of his thesis was, how do we take uncertain solar resource shown on the upper right as a series of graphs of solar irradiation throughout the month? How do we take this typical uncertain and somewhat unpredictable solar irradiation? And how do we optimize all of the energy transactions that may happen on one of the distribution figures? So picture on the lower left shows a six-post test system. This is how power systems are modeled in power systems transmission and distribution infrastructure. Each of the circles represent a traditional or a green renewable energy source. And pictures on the right, middle and bottom, show mathematical formulation of how each of this optimization of energy transactions can be formulated. I understand the numbers are very small, but you can see that we are representing some of the loads such as electric vehicle and some of the exchange of the electrical energy with neighbors on the same feeder as those arrows that go between customer 1, 2 and 3 and basically provide bi-directional energy and information communication. So this was a very interesting and very useful formulation of this mathematical notation that can now be extended to much larger systems. Obviously, there are many more than six customers on each of the feeder. So we are looking at how to extend this mathematical notation into hundreds and thousands of customers. Next slide please. Another example of our accomplishments is looking at how do we actually interface with real hardware on the grid. And by real hardware, I mean PV system with a traditional inverter or any other of the components that actually do produce electrical work and electrical energy conversion. So the picture on the upper right shows a similar notation of a certain bus IEEE electrical standard system. And we are looking at things like how will this hardware respond in case there is a fault or a problem as indicated by this yellow short circuit symbol. And so we are modeling how some of the traditional and new advanced smart inverters will respond to these issues and how will they protect the consumer and how they might isolate and island the whole system. Next slide please. As additional accomplishments we are working on, we have already published several publications and we are working on many more. Additional interesting aspect of our work is that we are also looking at how these distribution systems will work with transmission planning. So paper on the right shows our exploration of transmission planning for different objectives and some of those objectives include being able to function as an individual microgrid or islanded microgrid. Next slide please. As part of our work we are also looking at some of the other hardware deployments and as I mentioned we are working on some of the hardware in the loop interfaces. Figures on the right show some of our lab installations of hardware in the loop inverters, microgrid cabinet and our PV system plus storage system on the roof of our own electrical engineering building where we are collecting the data from this PV system and we are implementing algorithms that I described briefly from the thesis by Hazel Abaris. Next slide. On UNM side we also have strong contributions from the UNM representatives that I mentioned at the beginning. They did a lot of good work on looking at every use cases that will form some of our distribution feeder microgrid use cases going into year two. Additionally there was a survey that was administered looking at how traditional customers, traditional electric utility customers might respond to some of those changes. For example, will they be interested in adopting those changes or will there be some resistance? What kind of incentives or what kind of dis incentives should be employed so that customers are interested in participating in this infrastructure? That survey has already been administered in June. Additional survey is in the planning stages right now to be deployed a little later during year two. And also there are additional publications in terms of journal papers that have already been published or still under review. Next slide. And so I keep on alluring that there is a lot of work planned for year two activities. As you read through this slide I'll just mention some of the highlights that we really need to start building up on the year one work where we have done a lot of characterization of different variable parameters. We built mathematical models and now we need to actually start putting those models to work. Additionally we will start looking at how do we define metrics for resilient microgrid and what does that mean. Also what does a sustainable microgrid mean. And then we will start looking at how do we combine those mathematical models resilience models resilience metrics and basically look at different optimization of different microgrids. And with this I will hand this all back to Anne. Great thank you Olga. And we had a question that came in while you were talking and it was could one of the professors and I think that will be you please explain how a distribution feeder microgrid is different from a typical microgrid. Sure should we address the questions now or at the end. Why don't we just address that one right now. Okay sure. So there is a slight difference between distribution feeder microgrid and traditional microgrid. And when I said slight differences that could be the size whether it's in terms of energy and load balance. Distribution microgrid may be smaller than traditional microgrid by the virtue of the fact that we are only looking at the residential customers not heavy industrial customers. However some of those boundaries are really somewhat blurred and what we're really looking at here are distribution microgrids for distribution infrastructure that is already in place and some of the future developments. But we are not looking at larger microgrids like industrial parks or commercial customers. Great thank you. Okay I would like to introduce our second speaker is David Mitchell from New Mexico State University. He's an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering and also want to recognize him for just being awarded the New Mexico EPSCOR excellent mentor award. So congratulations David and please go ahead. Hi good afternoon everyone thank you Anne for the introduction. Yeah okay so the goal of this research is to design a comprehensive network architecture that will complement the DFM architecture we just heard about from objective one. And this is generally a difficult problem since existing internet protocol or IP solutions will not scale to handle the data volume and demands of smart DFM. Actually the paradigm that we're going to build this infrastructure on is called information centric networking or ICN. And for those of you that might not be familiar with ICN it moves away from traditional end-to-end type IP network communication and instead of naming devices ICN named data or information. This will actually be a first of its kind DFM network architecture that promises several benefits such as improved efficiency, better scalability with respect to information, bandwidth demand and better robustness and challenging communication scenarios. It's design forms activity one and this will be led by Jay Mishra at NMSU and Michael DeVette Sikiotis at UNM. In order to realize this DFM networking architecture we're going to require three critical supporting activities. Activity two will investigate new and incorporate current advances in wireless coding and compression technologies and this activity is led by myself and Hongkwan at NMSU. Activity three will propose methods to enhance the security level of the ICN based architecture which actually by itself might actually present new vulnerabilities and this will be led by Jun Zhang at NM Tech and Jay Mishra at NMSU. And finally activity four includes the development of novel techniques to preserve user privacy in this data driven network and this will be led by Dong Wang Shin at NM Tech. So in the next couple of slides I'll just give a brief overview of each activity and highlight our your two goals. Okay so I've already talked a little bit about the ICN networking paradigm forming activity one and some of the research highlights from year one include exciting proof of concept results that show named data networking or NDN enables much better convergence and oscillation damping for packet delivery than conventional IP does in DFM networks and this is illustrated in the upper right figure for those of you that know the area. Another area of significant progress was our investigation of the two-way communication impact between electric vehicles and the microgrid and that model shown there in the in the lower right. And building on these results our first goal for year two is to develop a token bucket and prioritize scheduling scheme to be deployed at the routers in the network and this will actually be a critical component to check that the data transmissions conform to say defined limits on the bandwidth and burstiness. Our other goals aim to move our promising theoretical results to our practice including both large-scale software and also hardware in the loop opal RT simulations and these can be used for example to assess the impact and performance of say critical and reliability messages. Next slide please. So we know that the volume of network traffic in the smart DFM may in fact be orders of magnitude higher than the current mobile broadband with stringent low latency and interoperability requirements. In activity two and thus far we've developed sparse graph codes for ultra reliable low latency data communication he's actually akin to and recent developments in 5g cellular and these schemes show remarkable performance when compared to say state of the art color codes and turbo codes shown in the upper right figure. We've also investigated concatenated graphical models for joint data compression and channel coding. Our year two goals in this activity will focus on the challenging extension of these novel point-to-point protocols to and extend those to say the multi-terminal DFM network architecture as well as validating the theoretical models with real and say PMU data. Next slide please. Okay so along with those benefits I discussed earlier the addition of ICN based network architecture to the DFM infrastructure will greatly increase the system complexity and in fact introduce new vulnerabilities entry points and paths that could be exploited by potential adversaries. In year one we investigated efficient authentication schemes for DFM networks including a biometrics enabled multi-factor authentication for electric vehicles and the situation awareness based scheme for smart grid enabled home area networks and that's kind of illustrated in the upper right there. Another research highlight was a novel intrusion detection scheme for DFM shown in the lower right. Goals for year two include an investigation of a so-called identity based cryptography for authentication and methods of achieving secure group communication in ICN based DFM networks that's particularly challenging for us. Then we'll also build on our exciting preliminary results for an intrusion detection system that utilizes semi-supervised outlaw detection and deep feature extraction for detecting cyber attacks using PMU data. Okay next slide please. So activity four I'm here we're talking about privacy and we know privacy will be a critical issue for wider adoption of DFMs and we of course know that fine-grained energy usage can improve the efficiency cost effectiveness and adaptability of DFM operations but it may also cause invasion of user privacy. For example data collected from DFM systems could be used to make inferences about a user's private life such as home occupancy. And your highlight your one highlights in this activity include a Dempster Schaefer based approach to develop a risk based privacy mechanism as well as a comprehensive DFM privacy ontology that provides a standard taxonomy identifying practical privacy factors for each data type and this is illustrated briefly on the right here. Our goals for year two build on this privacy analysis and ontology aim to characterize the uncertainty of these privacy threats and provide a cost benefit analysis for maintaining a given desired level of privacy. Okay and I'll just wrap up here by highlighting some areas for cross-group coordination and the DFM architecture from objective one that's our objective architecture clearly will drive the design of our ICN based networking architecture and so we'll need to study the interplay between the power and information networks exploring joint optimization and control models. We're also proposing to co-model power and information in other prosumer by that I mean consumer and our producer settings especially those involving electrical vehicles in either fixed charging like a charging station or continuous charging such as inductive charging along highways as well as being in different urban and rural settings. Ares of coordination involving objective three that's our decision support include primarily our data driven challenges such as compression and communication of large datasets like PMU smart meter records the feature extraction how we handle that as well as those machine learning approaches to intrusion detection I discussed in activity three. Finally we anticipate heavy coordination with objective four and that's our deployment as we begin transition of our theory and code based toward our software and hardware in the loop simulations and with that I'll wrap up thanks for your attention. Many thanks David. We'll transition then to research goal three decision support and our presenter today is Manel Martinez Ramon who is a professor in electrical and computer engineering in fact all of our professors today are in electrical and computer engineering though our project spans many disciplines including computer science, mechanical engineering, economics to name a few. Manel is the king Felipe endowed chair and professor at UNM and go ahead Manel. Thank you so I'm going to present the research goal number three can you please go to the next slide this is the overview of our research goals and objectives while we are in this research goal we're dealing with data and in such environment we have tons of data this data is non-structure is heterogeneous and it might have problems like lost data tamper data and all sorts of anomalies in the data and in this scenario we have to provide tools to extract knowledge from this data that provides machine learning intelligence to the decision-making tasks in the grid. So our objectives are mainly three the first one is the one in which we attempt to clean and preprocess the data in order to preserve data integrity for example here we want to structure the data we want to detect when the data is missing for example or the data is incorrect and in this in this objective the participants are at Yosia Strada and I'm myself from the UNM and also Huy Pinkau from NMSU and the second objective the second objective is the one which is related to actually provide knowledge to the grid and here we apply techniques to produce anomaly detection these anomalies they can be simple simply data missing or corrupted by malfunctioning systems it can be anomalies caused from data tampering or infractions in the network and we also intend to provide a forecast of the energy and the energy usage and production and also database querying database querying is is very important in this scenario precisely because the data that we have is not structured and it's massive and finally so in this in this part of the project so the participants are myself at Yosia Strada Abdullah Muin from the UNM and Alora Boucheron from NMSU in the third part we attempt to produce this decision making tools and the main idea here is to produce autonomous agents for complex systems that are able to autonomously produce planning technologies next slide please one of the what one of our achievements is in multi-characteria queries as I said before we have we have potentially a lot of data and we want to use this data to answer questions for example where do I get my energy or what is the best service to fix a given problem and this question has been solved and published in a in a conference paper so the next please next slide the the other another achievement or an upset of achievement achievements is related to the use of variation approaches for decision support and we apply this theoretical techniques to range of things for example we try to answer the question of what is the best set of data to train a machine that is able to produce a given forecast and we do it using a probabilistic a probabilistic modeling of of the data we also have different approaches to actually produce forecasts and these approaches they doesn't only produce a reasonable forecast of the energy that we use or the energy that we are going to produce in the next hours or days but we also provide with confidence interval to determine whether our prediction is good or is bad we also are able to study the sky and we do it in order to know whether the clouds are going to let us produce energy or not in the in the next seconds or minutes which we also have probabilistic models of aggregated residential and energy in order to train our models and in order to explain the behavior of the grid next slide please another approach for prediction of solar power is not done by using patient approaches but using deep learning and in this example we have used a deep learning a deep learning machine which is called long short-term memory network and this network it basically observes the temperature due point and other methodological variables and only with this and with provided we have enough enough data for training we are able to do a prediction a very short-term prediction of the solar power generation with a very low prediction error and the results of this research are in a manuscript under preparation by we next slide please another example of our work which is conducted mainly by professor Tilsa Estrada is related to distributed stream analysis for morphing graphs and the idea here is that the IOT appliances can be modeled in order to determine whether these appliances they are working autonomously or they are working in a coordinated way when they are working in a coordinated way sometimes is because of an attack a coordinated attack and then using probabilistic analysis of probabilistic modeling is it possible to detect or predict this this coordination this coordinated behavior and prevent attacks getting this slide please this is another of the examples of our research and this is an application which is dedicated to the detection of anomalies in the network there are many approaches for anomaly detection in in the network some of them they are supervised some of them they are unsupervised and in in this case the researchers they intend to use the very well known super vector machine to do anomaly detection but in a in an environment in which there is a huge quantity of data usually the super vector machines they have an outstanding performance in anomaly detection over many other approaches that are probabilistic but their problem is that they can only deal with limited limited samples and here we have an environment in which this is not true so the researchers there they have introduced a machine that is able to combine the use of a massive quantity of data with the performance of the super vector machine with successful results next slide please and finally we're also working in autonomous agents for complex systems so we have the smart grid is is itself a complex system in which many decisions they have to be taken at the same time and and they have to be autonomous because of a variety of reasons first not always there's not always humans available to take the decisions they don't have all the information and sometimes communications they don't allow to coordinate the the the whole grid to take these decisions and also the complexity doesn't scale properly so the our team is researching in methodologies that are autonomous and they use game theoretical approaches to do this task this night please this is our second year work plan and I have to say that all activities they have been progress as scheduled we don't have any delays and also I have to say that some of the activities that were programmed for the future we already started them we have published eight or more papers and we have some more that are already submitted of 13 committed for the whole project also 10 presentations to conferences and we have several PhDs in in progress also we have submitted several grants related to this to this project then so in objectives one two and three just in order to be to go finishing I have to say that we are going to proceed as scheduled initially without any change next slide so finally for our areas for cross research coordination we are already working with research group one in modeling simulation of faults and tests of multi-objective fall detection systems we are planning to work with group four in data sharing in messa del sol and in prosperity I think it's going to be a great thing is if we have a availability of the data that it's produced in these two sites and I also take the word of research group two that mentioned that we can collaborate in in data processing and and supervisor supervisor semi-supervised learning we are very interesting in that so we will be happy to invite David to our next group that's it thank you thanks manel and thanks to those of you who have asked some questions I see a few questions in the q&a we're going to hold them until the end of our final presenter but if any other questions that you can think of that come up please do put them in the q&a and we will have time to address them at the end so our final presenter is Ali Bedram he is an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Mexico and he is also our first epscore hire as part of this project so please go ahead Ali thank you and that's my pleasure thanks for the introduction so please go to the next slide so I'm going to talk about the research group four which is the deployment research group before I start about the activities that we have and the plans for the next year I'm just going to quickly talk about this research goal that what is their objective what is the main goal of this research activities that we have on this under this research goal so as Anne mentioned the overarching goal of the distribution feeder microgrid and this project is to address the resilience and sustainability of distribution feeder microgrid and then also throw some sort of a trade-off between these two factors and it's very important to provide an interaction I want the key components of distribution feeder microgrid which are built in research goal ones two and three research goal one we build the power system architecture for the microgrid and then we build off the communication architecture research goal two and then we have the decision-making and control system overlaying control system that just oversees all of the activities to make the correct decisions for the operation of the microgrid so this research goal that is going to provide this interaction among all of the activities that we have on the under the other research goals and then the end goal is to provide a smooth path from modeling the algorithms the these designs that we have in the research goal one to three from modeling to simulation and then finally to an effective deployment and demonstration so that is the main goal of this research goal and then the objectives that we have so the sorry the objectives is to build some sort of a hardware in the loop testing facility at UNO and NMSU Olga we briefly talked about that and also develop realistic scenarios for the operation of the distribution feeder microgrids under various stress conditions and demonstrate the improved resilience and sustainability and please go to next slide so I'm going to quickly introduce the team members at UNO is myself and Professor Jean Ler and then the students that I would like to thank them for their contribution to the microgrid must also microgrid which is one of the main sites for the deployment activities they have done a great job and also the students that have worked on the hardware in the loop testing laboratory to preparing hardware in the loop testing setup next slide please and here you can see the NMSU team they have also done a great job although briefly talked about the activities that they have done for completing their hardware hardware in the loop testing facility and they have done a great job in Southwest technology development institute next slide please so one of the major components for this research goal is the test path so the idea was to choose the research test paths that are actually a good candidate for demonstrating a distribution feeder microgrid and on the right picture you can see the different research sites at the Santa Fe community college we have the microgrid lab and then we have also the Los Alamos circuit 16 at Albuquerque we have the PNM phosphorous site and then the sodium 14 which supplies mesodosol microgrid and then at Los Cruces we have the EP lab and also SWTDI so these are the main test paths that we have in mind for the deployment purposes and also in parallel as I mentioned as one of the major components we want to develop hardware in the loop testing facility and we have ongoing activities at both UNM and NMSU to build up this facility hardware in the loop facility which I'm going to talk about that in the next slide so this is the HIL test thread in UNM so in general the hardware in the loop testing can be categorized into power hardware in the loop and control hardware in the loop power hardware in the loop takes care of integration of the power equipment like for example inverters PV systems or for example battery energy storage systems to the rest of the simulated model in a real-time digital simulator like OpalRT which both UNM and NMSU is using and currently at the mesodosol microgrid we are actually building this HIL lab and the plan is to energize it hopefully by the end of spring we have purchased all the equipment and we're just waiting for some electric job to put the equipment together and then energize it and then the facility is going to be ready for the power hardware in the loop testing and you can see that we have purchased a regenerative grid simulator some inverters a PV simulator and then the inverter control modules which are all integrated into the OpalRT as the real-time digital simulator and next slide please but more recently actually we could develop a control in the loop test thread I would like to thank Vinod and G1 for taking the lead and the reason that we needed this test thread was in research goal one we developed a cyber secure control algorithm for the distribution distributed control of distribution feeder microgrids and we needed to provide some hardware in the loop testing results and we developed this test thread and as you can see we have the Raspberry Pis for Raspberry Pis which hosts the control of each inverter or distributed energy resources and then this is a small microgrid with 4DRs and then these Raspberry Pis are integrated into the actual system which is simulated inside OpalRT the top right photo and you can see some graphs for example when we apply the cyber attack on the frequency control of a microgrid you see that the frequency is fluctuating and we have diverse frequencies for DRs which the end result is just it's going to collapse the microgrid and it's going to damage the microgrid in terms of the frequency stability but when we apply our attack detection and mitigation on the Raspberry Pis we have the stable operation for the microgrid in terms of the frequency and this test thread can be highly used for the research code 2 especially and also research code 3 when they apply the communication and control techniques and they want to see what is their impacts of their algorithms in a hardware in the loop testing test thread. Next slide please. So as a part of research code 4 we have partnered with actually some local industries and vendors in New Mexico and our technology as I mentioned has been a great partner especially because of their recent DC microgrid projects in New Mexico we have been working with them and also PNM especially with their goal to have it carbon free by 2014 they have been a great help they have been collaborating with them and also every ZMS and El Paso Electric also have been a great partners for this project and please go to next slide. So for this year the work plan actually from the UNF side the major goal is to complete the test thread especially the hardware in the loop testing setup and also from anyone's view side complete the SWTDI test thread and enhance it and Olga mentioned about the recent improvements that they had to their hardware in the loop testing facility and Olga and her team are going to host the workshop to define the relevant DfM scenarios it's going to be an October 3rd and 4th and then we are also planning to build the distribution feeder microgrid models based on existing and prototype feeders and also we have already implemented the model of the Studio 14 in Ophalarty in Simulink and then we are also working on the open DSS and then moving forward when the hardware in the loop testing facility is ready we can utilize that and do the actual testing of the algorithms that are developed in the other research goals on a real hardware in the loop testing facility considering the Studio 14 atmosphere also and next slide please and this is going to be my last slide so in terms of the Keras research group coordinations we have been coordinating with the search goal one so you saw some of the results that we developed the algorithms in the search goal of one and then we developed a hardware in the loop testing for the algorithms that were developed in research goal one we are also working with research goal two especially the control in the loop facility that we developed with Raspberry Poise and Ophal can be utilized for testing cybersecurity or the communication techniques that were discussed and also we have been working with the research school three for data sharing and data set acquisition and utilization so with that I hand it back to you and thank you very much thank you Ali so we've purposely left time to answer some questions today we'll make sure to end right at 1 p.m. but I will just work through in the order that they have appeared and the first one is for Manel it's from Adnan who's working with Trilsay and he asks are we also focusing on anomalies generated by extreme weathers or power outages yes well in principle our algorithms they deal with any kind of anomalies and the only constraints that we are applying are related to the distributed you know they probably distribute mission models but we are not limited in terms of the applications of the the applications of our algorithms so the answer is yes I guess great and I think this one's also for you Manel without the reference slide it's a little harder but it's it's from Carl benedict at UNM and he said what is the structure of the objective one activity 1.1 level three data repository content what's the size what are the access methods let me see 1.1 well here we are just starting with that because we still don't have a clear idea what are all the data that we are dealing with so and also I'm probably not the person to answer this but probably my my colleagues would be better than me to to answer that question so what I'm gonna do is to not to leave this question unattended but write a better answer with the help of my group colleagues yeah and it sounds like further discussions that we need to have among all teams so on the same data train and somebody else can pick this up maybe we will start with Olga for all activities producing data how are you documenting those data for use and sharing within your teams between teams and for future discovery and reuse and I'm sure Carl himself would have a webinar he could give on all of this Olga yes so this is a very important point all of the data that we are generating must be available for not only our own researchers but also available to the general public general research community and so as part of this project we have we're basically looking at uh complying with all of the requirements of saving the data preserving the data as Anne mentioned at the beginning there are basically mechanisms for each university to archive each of the data sets and what has been done with this data in terms of results and analysis so what does that actually mean that means that if anybody has a request for any of the data sets that request can come through either EPSCORE or either the universities and basically responsible researcher will respond to that data or a librarian or an archiver will respond with that data in terms of making the general community aware of these data sets well it's basically the steps that we are doing right now through this webinar or through any of the other conference presentations through any of the publications through any of the collaborations with our partners um we obviously don't just you know archive this data and hide them and not tell anyone but we do present this data and we always make sure that we mention that this data is available just like Manel did with the repository just like Anne did with say stating that all of this data is preserved and so on so on so Anne and Manel is there anything you'd like to add no I think that's great any other um panelists want to add to that okay not seeing anybody unmute themselves I'm going to move on to the next question um from a student for Ali Bidram on attack and mitigation graph I see that the grid frequency is stabilized within 10 seconds of attack but there is still a sudden drop in frequency right before stabilization is there any way to mitigate that too this sudden drop might damage our hardware or user's appliances uh no that drop that we have is not uh is not considered sudden drop uh so we have a slight decrease in the frequency after the attack detection and mitigation is applied and we are done from 60 to 56 hertz and so that is okay but if for example it's gonna last for five to ten seconds it's gonna damage the power system equipment and this attack detection has some delays because uh you assume that uh so the attack is applied and takes some time for the attack detection to figure out what has happened and if there is any anomaly and then once the anomaly is detected it's gonna use the mitigation scheme so we have both attack detection and mitigation so that's why we have a small delay before the frequency is restored to six years so I can actually add to that a little bit um that frequency decrease that is shown on the graph just like Ali said such a short term decrease will be acceptable uh to the equipment and to the electric grid and when I say a short term will be acceptable we obviously need to know how short or how long is still acceptable and so there are requirements and uh specifications for what is acceptable and what is not acceptable so basically we consult with all of the standards and that's where we say okay this is acceptable or if something that we model is not acceptable then our next goal is to make sure that we can design a mechanism that will prevent that great thank you well I want to make sure that we end on time so I will just end by answering one question which was can we access this afterwards and the answer is yes all slides and a recording of this webinar will be on our website um you can go to the website at the webinar area and access slides recordings and see the future webinars that we have lined up as a reminder the next one is October 25th at noon Gary Oppendahl he's a very dynamic speaker um if you have additional questions after the webinar feel free to get in touch with me and I can get them answered and we really appreciate everybody's time today so thank you for attending and thank you very much to our presenters


Thank you, Michael. And it is a distinct honor to welcome you all here this morning and have the privilege of introducing our keynote speaker, Dr. Thomas Zaz. Dr. Zaz is, in my opinion, certainly one of the most influential psychiatrists in the world today. He's influenced and I think indeed shaped our thoughts about mental disorders and addictive behaviors. His lifelong work has been motivated by a very keen intellect and a passion for his work. Among his most important works are his well-known myth of mental illness, my personal favorite, Insanity, the idea and its consequences, and his newest book, which I have a copy of here, Our Right to Drugs, The Case for a Free Market. At a conference several years ago where Dr. Zaz was one of our featured speakers, I said that Dr. Zaz was the superego of psychiatry. I'm not sure that he liked the idea, at least at first. I haven't really changed my mind. He continually reminds us of the limitations and the roots of mental health treatment. His classic book about drug use and drug pushers and oppression, Ceremonial Chemistry, reminds us just how easy it is to oppress and persecute drug users in the name of health and treatment. Dr. Zaz's work stands as a testament to the humane dignified treatment for consenting patients who are struggling with addiction. Dr. Zaz is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center and he's a defender of liberty and a champion of personal freedom. His work warns us of the significant risks to freedom when society, either for benevolent or malevolent reasons, wants to impose or improve health. Dr. Zaz's work also teaches us that it's very easy to substitute retribution for treatment to take a phrase from George Valiant. It's a distinct pleasure for me to introduce my colleague and friend Dr. Thomas Zaz. Dr. Schaefer, Mr. Wädel, ladies and gentlemen, let me first thank Mr. Wädel and Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union and all the other hosts, sponsors, for inviting me and the honor of asking me to present a keynote address. I appreciate it. Now, I did plan to make some comments. I have written extensively on this subject and so I thought I would speak informally just from some notes. And let me begin by saying that although some of you may not believe this, I'm not really interested in the conventional sense in either the criminalization or the legalization of drugs, as these terms are now used. I'm interested in why we are now treating this particular subject in this particular way, given the fact that this country, and especially this city and this building, is devoted to studying the relations between the state and the individual. It's devoted to the proposition that in this country, everyone who reaches the age of maturity, is presumed to be in a criminal law, innocent until proven guilty, and in conventional civil law, competent until proven otherwise. So when you reach 18, you can do all kinds of things which have tremendously harmful consequences of society. And I hope that no one, if I point out that the most harmful thing someone can do is to produce a child that he or she is not prepared to take care of. It's far more harmful than smoking marijuana on other people. So what I want to discuss is the way drugs fit into this scheme. Now, second point, language is all important in this, because in the war on drugs, like in many other moral crusades, the crusaders have seized the vocabulary and are sort of winning before the first shot is fired, because how can anyone be for drug abuse? How can anyone be for addiction? How can anyone be for cocaine babies? This whole rhetoric, obviously this is impossible. So the issue is not being for the abuse of drugs. The issue is being for self-responsible behavior. And if we know anything, we know that the more controls are imposed on people from without, the less they will control themselves and vice versa. Many of Mark Twain's wonderful stories are devoted to this subject. If you treat children, adolescents, as if they were responsible, they will act responsibly. If you treat them as if they were irresponsible, they will act irresponsibly. Now let's take an example here of a subject which may seem completely unrelated. One of the most dangerous implements in our society is the automobile. I believe the figure that's usually given is that 50,000 people get killed every year by cars. Now I don't know how many of those killed themselves and how many of those I don't know if these figures exist. I don't remember them if they do. And how many are killed? It's so to speak, innocent people run down by drunken drivers or simply by people who may be on some other medicine or don't know how to drive like this, or are too old to drive perhaps, like this elderly woman who ran down 20 people in New York a week or so ago. Cars are dangerous things, yet we allow them. They are not regulated. They are regulated in the sense that you have to have a driver's license. If you drink and drive, you get punished. Now of course you don't get punished nearly enough in this country as compared to other countries. So that's how we regulate automobiles. Now it seems to me rather strange that I don't regulate other things in the same way. Now Svaz, now let's get to drugs. My main objection to the present discourse on drugs is that it is medically oriented. And my objection here is too prominent. One is that one of the problems in the war on drugs and in the whole attitude towards drugs is that since approximately 1914, the Harrison Narcotic Act is a kind of a watershed mark, but since approximately that time, there has been a steadily increasing medical monopolization of drugs so that the medical profession and the government are in alliance in a paternalistic way telling people what they can take and what they can't take. And this is epitomized, symbolized by the distinction between prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs. Now the hypocrisy and idiocy that this has given rise to is all around us in advertising.  I think I advertise constantly on television which says if it was any more powerful you would need a prescription. Which means you little kiddies, you know you can have it because you know it's not that bad, but if it was any stronger you would need your governess, doctor, government to tell you that you can have it. Then there are all these drugs which like motrin or benadryl which can get in a certain strength over-the-counter but in a greater strength only by prescription. Well all you have to do is take two benadryls and then you're up to the prescription side. Now this to me is crucial because I don't see and I am not really trying to pick a disagreement with my friends and colleagues who are trying to combat this moral, this holy war on drugs by trying to medicalize various drugs, by trying to point out their medical value. But I think that's quite hopeless because I don't see how the illegal drugs can be made available essentially in like over-the-counter drugs or in local food market while completely harmless drugs like pennies harmless in the sense that they don't do any harm except they might possibly give you some problems with yeast infection or some other medical problem yourself that you might want to be quite capable of using intelligently remain illegal. Now to me it isn't just heroin and marijuana that are illegal, every drug in America that's any god is illegal because if you have to go to a doctor to get a prescription to get a drug ladies and gentlemen. That's illegal and the American people have forgotten this because we all get drugs now like the people in Russia had to get permission to immigrate. Now if you had to get a government permission to immigrate we didn't consider it to be free immigration. For 20 years various American governments agitated against the Soviet system to let people out which means that the government can't ask you at the border why are you leaving. I live in Syracuse which is only an hour away from Canada and perhaps because I was born in Hungary I'm always very stressed that when you go drive up to North on the American side there is nobody you drive across the bridge it's on the Canadian side that they ask you good morning what are you doing. Nobody in America ask you why do you want to go to Toronto. Now why should anybody ask you why you want a drug. I'm coming to one of the most interesting distinction which is also basically linguistic and it's terribly simple namely we as mature Americans are now getting drugs only if we need them we can't get them because we want them. This to me is a quintessence of infantilism. In a capitalist free society you get something because you want it and you pay for it. It doesn't matter how many cars you have the dealer doesn't ask you do you need another one or do you need a bigger one. They don't ask you why do you need a six-cylinder engine why is the four is enough are you planning to speed are you planning to abuse the horsepower of it. It doesn't ask about the dosage of the power and now we come to another aspect which is completely neglected especially by the press, by the media in relation to the war on drugs and there is that drugs have only peripherally to do with what is now considered to be their only legitimate parameter to with health. We have now gotten ourselves we present company I hope excluded we have gotten ourselves into a frame of mind where we think that the only function of drugs is to give it to somebody who is sick to make him healthier like insulin. Well do I have to spell it out for you? How wrong this is? Well I don't know whether I do but I will. I put on my reading glasses so I don't miss any of them. Well since time immemorial people have used drugs for the simple reason to make themselves feel better. Whatever better means. Now better basically means one of two things generally since human beings come in two conditions awake and asleep. When they are awake they very often want to fall asleep and when they are asleep they very often want to wake up. So the presence and stimulants are as old as mankind and they have been taken for which is nothing to do with health. Upers and downers we now call them in a kind of a pejorative way. Then of course and I don't want to go into that too much because I sort of identified with this subject and I just will mention it there is a religious reason the strictly religious ceremonial reason like ceremonial wine in both the Jewish and Christian ceremonies and the ceremonial forbidding of alcohol in Islam. So there you see this is a religious dimension which we deny or slide at our own peril. Then there is the issue of conviviality. Smoking jackets, the whole culture of drinking, smoking, opium dance and so on. Now let's keep going. Then there is a whole category of using chemicals, drugs which by the way in our current war on drugs mentality are generally associated with making people less capable of being productive citizens as if drugs were the problem of not being a productive citizen and not education and family structure. Drugs have nothing to do with it. The fact is that drugs can be really much more effectively used to enhance your capacities than to disable yourself. After all most people who smoke tell me unfortunately I have never acquired that habit tell me that they smoke because it makes them feel better. And of course Freud never tired of emphasizing that if you don't smoke there is no point in living and he didn't consider it an addiction. It was something to which he was entitled to do not to mention cocaine to which he was also liked when he was depressed and didn't have a good practice and so on and enabled him to work. Now the fact that coca leaves have been used by poor Indians long before this country was discovered and long before there was Christianity and white men and so on. Again it's all forgotten in this. I mean there were these poor people starving and with coca leaves they could work harder. Sports. Now I don't see what's wrong with people taking anabolic steroids if they want to run faster. And again I hope I'm not offending anyone but there are lots of ways in which you can improve or disimprove your performance. It seems to me again that religion is one of them. If someone is a very religious person and believes in God and prays and so on and gets a great deal of sustenance from this I would think this would enhance his athletic or other performance before a contest as compared to someone who is an atheist and doesn't have this particular source of strength. Now if you don't, if you, let's assume you are married or have an important relationship and in the morning of a contest your wife is particularly nice to you. I'm sure that would help and if she's particularly not nice to you I'm sure that would hurt your performance. So also as long as drugs are, as long as the rules are the same for everyone it seems to me that whether or not people use drugs is irrelevant. It's simply one way. After all the very process of training for a sport may not be very healthy for your body if you're concerned about health. After all playing professional football or boxing are not very healthy. After all boxing is a way, a professional way of inducing brain damage. Much more effective than taking drugs probably for causing brain damage. Now let's come to an entirely different area. A very hot area, used to be a very hot area in this city. Actually I interned in this city at the Harvard Medical School at Boston City Hospital almost 50 years ago at which time it was of course illegal even to mention birth control to patients. Now that has changed now but it hasn't changed that much because are you 464 or whatever it's called it's still illegal in America, it's legal everywhere, elsewhere. Now the whole area of controlling reproduction in various ways, fertility drugs, contraceptive drugs have nothing to do with health, they have to do with how you regulate your life, right? So where is the medicalization here? It's no more medical than abortion. Now the interesting thing is that a very large number of people in this country now believe that a woman has a right to an abortion. Now I'm not going to get into that thicket. But let me only point out that no matter what you think about an abortion an abortion is the right of a woman to get rid of a living fetus from her body. That's what it is. Now whether this is justified or not morally personally is another issue. So you have a right to do that but you don't have the right to put a silicone breast implant in your breast. Only if you have cancer. If you want to look better you don't have a right to do that. Poor Marlene Dietrich, it's a good thing she's dead. Why? What about the whole monopoly of surgery and drugs for improvement of looks, plastic surgery? Well that about exhaust the list of things for which we take drugs and as you see health is way down the list on here. Now let me talk a little bit about the relation between the ceremonial and the technical aspects of drugs to which I referred in terms of religion. There was great consternation in this country. It sort of died down. When Salman Rushdie was declared to be a person of non-grat and he was going to be killed because he wrote a book which libles, defames Islam. When Salman Rushdie is just one person that the Islamic government, not that I'm here to defend them wanted to kill and he has been killed yet. But how is this different from American planes going to South America and killing people there because they are growing something on their own soil? In the last analysis you see I don't see how honest decent people can deny the effect except by paternalizing the population. How they can deny the effect that there is no drug problem at all. If there is a problem it's a problem of infantilism and lack of self-control. There is no dangerous drug because a drug on the shelf is not dangerous. The danger of drugs is one danger in the United States or one of the few dangers obviously is not the only one. It's a danger par excellence, protection from which we do not need the government or the medical profession or anyone else. All we need is abstinence. Just like we don't, a woman doesn't need the government to protect her from being pregnant and man doesn't need the government to protect him from getting AIDS. If you are sexually abstinent, well you know it's a high price then you certainly won't get certain things. Okay? Isn't that obvious for drugs too? So now we are coming down really to the nitty gritty of what the Warren Drugs is about. Now the Warren Drugs as I see it started in America in 1906 with a pure food and drug loan. It didn't start 20 or 30 years ago with marijuana. It started with a pure food and drug loan and I want to see a few words about that and then I will stop. I don't know if you will stop me or shall I stop myself? Is this a matter of self-control? Let me put it to you this way. It's not exactly a democratic decision. Well I will stop myself at some reasonable in the near future. You're doing good. Keep going. Thank you. Drugs are a matter of self-control. Really, let me collect my thoughts to get this right. What we need the government for, we are really coming down now to the nitty gritty of what political philosophy is about. Political philosophy not 101 but zero. I mean why do we have a state? Why do we have a government? Forgive me for spelling this out. You will only take a second. We have a state, we have a government in order to protect us from dangers. What dangers? External dangers? Enemies for which we have an army and internal dangers? Criminals.  Right? Now what was the 1906 food and drug glow about? Until 1906, as I hope you realize, people could sell and buy virtually anything both in the way of food and drugs. And those were the days of so-called patent medicines and again language is wonderfully revealing. Patent medicine meant that you could buy cartes little liver pills or a lady a pink or whatever it meant. And that's all it said on the label. So you know what you are buying. And then partly through media agitation, there was a demand, not really from the population, this was not a consumer demand, that people ought to know what's in the bottle. So there was a requirement to put on the label that it contained, which it usually contained, 20-25% alcohol and 2% or 3% cocaine or morphine and naturally it made people feel better. Now that was 1906. The same thing with food, that there were certain regulations that the government imposed. For example, if you had a tuberculosis cow, you could not sell the milk, you could not sell the meat and so on for health problems. Now to me this is so obvious that this was a law to protect people from unscrupulous vendors. It fell in line with the traditional duty of the government to protect us from, and I'm using classic libertarian language here, it's nicely alliterating, from force and fraud. The only people are supposed to use force on us as a government. And of course the only people who use fraud on us is the government. Otherwise it's not a sprinting money or making promises, political promises. They can use force.  This is to protect me from you. And there were several interesting Supreme Court decisions. One decided by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who I gather his father was born a couple of years from here. In 1911, which I discussed at length in my book, in which actually the government tried to sue a gentleman, I think named Sullivan, because he advertised one of these things which was correctly labeled as curing everything from anemia to cancer. And the government said, but this is mislabeled. The Supreme Court held. Of course it's mislabeled. Every advertising is mislabeling. Everybody promises something absolute, doesn't don't lipsticks and deodorants. Everything promise that you'll get the most wonderful girl and boy if you use it. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Supreme Court held that the labeling only pertains to what is in the bottle, not what ingesting it will do to you. Now somewhere after the end of the first world war, this gradually metamorphosed until by the end of the second world war, drug laws and now this is full blown are clearly, consciously, unashamedly directed to protecting you from yourself. And if you don't obey the protection, then you're put in jail for 20, 30 or 40 years. Some protection. So my ending message is that we can talk about criminalization. We can talk about medicalization or legalization. And we can talk about a genuinely free market in which drugs, all drugs, including all prescription drugs, I do not see how there can be any change in the war on drugs without a real confrontation of the issue of prescription drugs. If someone, I'm always told well, but people don't know what to take. Well a prescription, the abolition of prescription laws doesn't mean that you can go to a doctor and get a quotes prescription. And the more that you can go to a garage and ask them what oil to put in your car. But it would not have any legal standing. You would not need it. You could just get it if you don't know what to take. For most people who are not physicians or even if they are physicians, they would be well advised to do that. So we can have criminalization, we can have medicalization, we can have various forms of legalization and we can have a regulated free market in which drugs are sold essentially like tomatoes and green peppers. But that requires something which is gone from America. And that's why I'm not very up. This is obviously what I'm presenting to you I don't think is particularly relevant today except as a beacon to think about. Because it requires something which is gone now. And that is caveat emptor. You can't complain. You don't have to take anything.  Because that's why you shot your mother. And that's the kind of country we now live on.  It's a real case a couple of months ago. I hope you read about this. And it's now every time someone takes some drug and it doesn't agree with him or her soon. Well, we can't have it both ways. That's one of the reasons why I understand why many new drugs are not being tested or not released. Drugs for AIDS and so on. Now, to illustrate where we have come, it so happens that just before I left Syracuse last issue, I get the US News and World Report and one of their major features is called Underground Medicine. Four or five pages. A quest for state of art treatments is turning thousands of ordinary immigrants into activists and sometimes outlaws. And it tells a story, which I'm sure you all know, that all people with all kinds of diseases from AIDS to cancer of the prostate are going to foreign countries, especially Mexico, to be able to have their diseases treated. Well, I just don't think this is the idea that the founding fathers had in mind for this country. But if you are sick, you should not be able to get whatever you want and then bear the consequences. The government and the medical professionals just protect you from yourself. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Saz. I told you there would not be enough time. I'm sure we could all sit for another hour and be spellbound by his common sense. I wish those of us in government who make policy had the common sense of Dr. Saz. We'd have a much better country, a country that perhaps would live up to its ideal of liberty. I remind it ironic that America, a land that prides itself on liberty, should imprison so many people. In fact, more people per capita than any nation on earth. Which leads us into the direction of the panels and workshops we have. I remind each of you to look carefully over your schedule, know which workshops you wish to go to.


It is the Persian New Year, and in honor of the Persian New Year, I've decided that I will be playing as Ali Farman, okay? Ali Farman, he is an Iranian immigrant, he is here, he comes to America from Iran, he wants to make a better life for himself, okay? Hello, this is Ryan Kindle, how can I help you?  Hello, I come to Los Santos, I am brand new, I need to buy a vehicle, a car, I'm looking for maybe do taxi drive, can you take me to... Can you maybe take me to a car dealership? Ah, yes, are you from Northern Canada? Eh, sorry? Are you from Northern Canada? No, I am from Iran. I'm like, very Northern Canada, I just kind of assume, and I will be there very shortly, my friend, and we will bring you to a car dealership, and you can buy yourself a very fancy, fancy car. Okay, I am very thank you. Salam, hello? Man, not quite yet. Ah, hello! This is your, okay, you drive like my uncle. Oh, your uncle is a very good driver or something. Eh, he is in jail, and he talked to a police... No! Oh my God! Oh, God, I'm in!  Oh my God, Ryan!  Ryan! Shit! Where is he? She's shot! Ryan! Ryan! Wait! Hello? Oh my... Are you okay? Are you okay? They crashed into me, I was... No. You have to get him! He's going to get away! Who? Stay with me! What? I'm fine, I'm going to stand... Red Corvette! Pretty sure, the guy named Prince, he was driving a little red Corvette, he went the other way. Damn! What about this vehicle over here? That was just a double collision. Yeah, double collision. Do you need a ride to the hospital? How do you feel? Eh, I have no... I am new, I am from Iran. I... You're good? I am very... I am very, I am very scared. I am here, I am from Iran, I do not know... I am very scared. My leg, she is... My leg is... I have very pain, I am very much pain. Spital 2, man, do you need to go to the hospital too? You're fine, just check yourself in like that, you flex your E muscle. You catch the man in the red Corvette! I want to see him in jail! That's sort of a big...   Don't kill anybody, don't say that. Call the police, okay? I will, I'll let the police know, because I'm that kind of man.  I know, excuse me? About what happened? It was Red Corvette, yes? Red Corvette? That crashed, that was... Yes? Yes! Let's go get my vehicle, come on! Let's get to that car! Red Corvette! America has lots of opportunities. But a lot of assholes.     Oh, okay. A quick word? A quick word? Just in private, just real... Sorry, sorry sir, just real quick. Yo, come here real quick. Yes, sir. I'm listening. Oh, okay. Alright, over here. Can you give us just a little bit of space? It's a personal conversation. I think he's got some sort of STD or something. Make us look good. Okay, yeah. Yes, sir, come here. Mr. Depressed Walk Dude, yeah. Get over here. They only have two of yours. Ah... Hey, what are you doing? Why are you dragging off of my vehicle? Oh! Hey, sir! Sorry, I had the... My jeans come up to my... It's a very... It's very much... It's very much sweat, you know? Oh, that's nasty. If you have to use poop, you can use that. There's like bushes around city. I tend to use the ones off on the side. No, it's okay. I fixed it. Yeah. What if we give this man some of the product we need to get rid of? I've heard worse ideas. I've heard worse ideas. Sir, on a scale of one, the drug user... Oh, no! Excuse me! Excuse me! It was me! Excuse me! It was accident. I had scared. I was scared. I thought... I was very scared. I'm so sorry. Why are you laughing? You think this is funny? I am so sorry. You think this is funny? I'm so sorry. Now the cops are here.  No, I am so sorry. I have no... I have green card. I have green card. I have green card. Okay. All right. Don't worry. I have a backup. It was accident. It was accident. No, no, no reports. We got reports of people acting out of control. No, no, no. Replay. Put your dog inside. It was candy inside. What am I doing? None other. None other. Put your dog inside. Replay. Oh, is there a problem?  Yes, there's a problem. Why are you doing this? This is brutality. Uh-huh. Speaking of brutality, what's this report? I'm getting people throwing fisticuffs over here, huh? Y'all have to let you drink. Right here. I am very... I am very sorry, Mr. Police. I have... I spent two years. I spent two years in Iranian army. I did Sarwasiv Barato Dossal two years. And I was very scared. He scared me. And I believe it was an attack. It was an honest mistake. Ryan, are we gonna press charges? Uh, no, it was an accident. I missed a replay of the assault dog. It's not a problem. You probably should have mentioned... Police are kind of assault. Uh... Police have tomato? I saw this tomato. Hello, Kimball. Oh! That's right! Hop on the bus. Hello. Hello, how are you? I don't know where they're going. Let's just find out, I guess. Hop on the bus. Welcome aboard the bus. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome aboard, gentlemen. Where's that Raj? That's Raj. Alright, where do we need to go? Yeah, hardware store to play. Alright, as you can see here. Oh, hey! Raj, how are you doing? Why did you fall out of the bussy? I tripped and fell out of the bus. I apologize. That was awesome. In the army career... Nobody in America knows how to drive. Everybody drives like Iranian. No, I am not from Spain. I am from Iran. No, I'm Iran. I understand that you're from Spain. I get it. Please stop telling me that. There's one on the ground still.   What's wrong with the shitting? You have a problem with that? You keep it inside of you in Spain? No, you go to the bathroom. To remove it with metal, or assistance in Spain or something, I'm confused. No, you go. You go, you wipe. Oh, my God, Kimball! Are you okay? Yes, I'm good. Just doing a little exercise.   She is dead.   She's in the yard.  Of course.  She was not working well? She wasn't pulling plow every morning. Three in the morning, like I told her to. Why would you not put her in a boat? If a woman cannot work, if a woman cannot work, then she is of no use. Right? That is not very true. Oh, very good. Very good. Very good. It's just a misogynistic Persian man. Here we are. There we go. One moment. Let me out. Let me out. I think it's so funny, dude. I'm loving this.  I don't listen to Spanish music, no. Hey!  What are you, man?     You come here!   Oh my god! Don't you come here!  Can't believe he's...  Oh, don't you come here! Quickly drive away, Eugene! Everything I see on TV is true? Everything I see on TV is true? Drive away, Eugene! America, they shoot everybody! Eugene! Hello? I'm just going for a trip. I'm not getting caught. Thank you very much. Eugene, this is crazy as fuck! What are you doing? I'm stopping. Raj, you need to run. You need to run, Raj! No, I didn't! Drive, Eugene! Drive! Eugene, I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle right now with your hands up in the air. Alright? Eugene, get back! Okay. Is he right? I want you all to place everybody in cuffs and we're going to GSR test them.  Sir, don't run! Don't run! Don't run! Don't run! Don't run! Why is there a gummy on the ground? I haven't done nothing! I haven't done nothing! Youssef, what's going on, man? Tell me a little bit about what happened today, man. My name is Ali. Ali Farman.  Ali, what's up, man? No, it is okay. You look alike, I suppose. Yeah, you do. So, I am from Iran. I come here. Today is my first day in America. I am looking for a car. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for an American woman. I need a BMW. It is misunderstanding. I joined the bus. I joined the bus by Eugene or Raj, I know, with these guys. And I do not know... I have the lean boys right in front of me as well. Running down. I do not know what I am doing. Did a mime shoot one of your tires? I have no car. I have a green car. I have a green car, but I have no car. All right, sir. Listen, you're free to go at this time. Just vacate the premises. All right? Yes, sir. Thank you very much. That's what I thought. He said I could go.  To Iran. It is always like this in Iran. Triple, wait. Give me triple. He's the nice officer. Where's her, Mr. Give me triple. He's the nice officer. It's going to be okay. Don't worry. What's your name? My name is Ali. I am from Iran. This is my first day in America. I am so scared. I am so confused. Do I put my hands up? Or do I take my hands down? Don't worry. Look, I'm from Southeast Asia. I know you're from the Middle East. We've got a lot in common, all right? You're going to have to learn a little bit about America, all right? Okay, no, no, no. That's not, no, no. Okay, where'd you go? I'm going to confuse. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I didn't even know where you were. Okay. All right. I'm going to tell you a couple of things about America. All right. Number one. Pussy's cheap. You can get somebody on the corner for $50 if you want. Pussy? Pussy? What is pussy? Vagina is cheap. Vagina? It's a free country, so you can do a lot of things like this. Watch. What are you doing? It's completely, it's freedom to do whatever you wish. This is America. The land of opportunity freedom, buddy. Yes, I don't know. Whichever you wish, but the police is there. They chase us. No, no, no, no. You're fine. Relax, relax. First of all, we need to fix this wheel or something. Um, We need a wheel of some sort.  Yes, I know. I know everybody drives like your mother in America. I'll teach you the ways of being an American. Okay. First things first, we need to get you a Glock. We need to get a gun from the courthouse. How much money do you have? Um, I have, I come to America with 15,000 Iranian toman. It is a $5,000. You have $5,000. Yes. Okay. First thing you do in America is you give me 3,000 of that. Oh, no, no, no. I, uh, my conversion is wrong. I have $400.  All right. Well, we need to make some money. Where's the courthouse?  I need to find the courthouse. They're like $5,000. Why would you need to buy? Because I just got caught with it. I don't want to keep, I'm going to get caught by the police with a gun.  What are you doing? Why would you hit the cat? Oh, no, it is a cat. No, it is a cat.  It is dirty. All animals are dirty. Cat, dog. They're dirty. They're very, very dirty. Why would you say the cat is dirty? They're so nice. They go... They're like little lions. Sorry. Sorry, my mistake. I missed. Look, look, look. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. What is your name again from Iran? My name is Ali. Ali, I wanted... I did that to teach you a valuable lesson. All right?  Get in the car. Let's go. Oh, don't you call me? What are you doing? It's America, Ali. You do whatever you want. Land of the free, home of the free. Oh, whoa, whoa.  Oh. We're Officer Leo Anderson.  No, no, no. Put the bag in. Ali, Ali, Ali, stop. You have to... I'm sorry. You have to be... You have to forgive me, please. My friend is from Iran, and he's a little bit... He doesn't know American customs. And in Iran, it is the term of India. We see this car?  We see this car. This car is worth more than the GDP of Iran, okay? Stay away from it. I have a deer. I have a goat. I have a cow. I have one horse. I see your little Willy out in public again. It will be tased, do you understand? That's goddamn right. You tell him. Yeah, yeah. Is it Willy like a movie? Like the shark? The free Willy? You're just going to use that ID right there. Mr. American, you put down the weight set in the welding zone. Thank you. I'm very sorry. You have to excuse my friend. It's Iranian custom to lift weight. I thought you were a car man. That's just like him. For you, sir, since you already have a criminal record pertaining to licenses, sir, it's going to be a $5,000 fee for your weapons license. Get over here, Ali. Let's get out of here.  I'll be in the office. Unbelievable. He doesn't want anything to do with us because we're from a different part of the country.  Yeah, pull it in the right side. With $5,000 you set up a bit. Have a nice day. I am honest man. I come from Iran. I want to live American dream. Listen, I want to live American dream. I want to buy a gun. I want to find an American woman. I drive BMW. That's all I want. I just want a nice life. Get out of here, Ali. It's not worth our time. What was your idea? You told me that you thought I wouldn't get the gun license. What was your idea? What is my idea? Yes, tell me please.  Then he buys his gun. All right, deal. Do you have $3,000? I have $3,000. I think in my bank. I think in my bank I do. All right, well, yes. Okay, so we'll go hide in the back. He'll grab a gun license and then he'll be able to buy us firearms. Perfect plan. What do we do with gun in America? We shoot people. That's what we do. Oh, like in the movie. Yes, like in the movies. Exactly. Ali, go get your license. Right away, quickly. He'll stand outside the door. Say you didn't even know who we were. Let's go. Okay, he'll make a foreign exchange for me? Yes, he'll make, he'll change from the Iranian Krona to I only, I only have Toman. I only have Toman. If he accepts Toman, I'm okay. He'll take a lot of it. Tomano, tomato.  Hello, sir. Yes, how can I help you? I'd like to buy one freedom license, please. Freedom license, okay. Freedom from where? One freedom to shoot all of which I please. Okay, that concerns me because that, that so-called freedom license is a weapons license, sir. It allows you to carry a firearm in this city legally and it doesn't give you the right to go around shooting whatever you see or want. I am new. This is my first day in America. I do not know the law but I am here for a live American dream to have freedom. I want to find American women. I want to drive BMW. I have Winchester. I like to shoot the Winchester. Yes, sir, you have your firearms permit. Is there anything else I can do for you here at the courthouse? Yes, I would also like to find a license to buy one woman for my wife. That is usually about $50,000 for my experience. Mr. Kinder could probably help you out with that. Very good, very good. Yes, I have freedom for shooting. Okay, now we need to go to the store and get some weapons. Let's go. Oh my god. What are you talking about? Buy multiple and we'll give you the money for them. So I do not understand. Do you not have a freedom? No, we lost our freedom. They took it from us. This is land of opportunity. I give you opportunity for freedom. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you for the freedom.