Cleaning up after your dog can make our creeks, lakes, and drinking water cleaner for all of us. Dew, scat, droppings, pet waste, whatever you call it, your pet's business becomes everyone's business if it's not picked up and properly disposed. It's more than just a mess to avoid stepping in. It's also an environmental hazard. One dog alone may not seem like a problem, but if you consider a pack of dogs, you begin to see how pet waste can have a major impact. Montgomery has 226,646 people and approximately 52,430 dogs. Those dogs expel about 40,000 pounds of waste each day. That's the equivalent of approximately 25 dump trucks, full of waste each day. The state of Alabama has a population of 4.9 million people and 2.8 million dogs that expel more than 2.1 million pounds of waste each day. That's the equivalent of more than 1,300 dump trucks. If not properly disposed of, all of that waste can end up in our creeks, lakes, and drinking water. When it rains, water flows across surfaces and can pick up pet waste and other pollutants, which is carried through storm drains that flow into nearby creeks and lakes, polluting our waterways that are used for swimming, recreation, drinking, and other uses. Droppings from sick pets may also contain hookworms or roundworms that can be passed on to your pet. In extreme cases, they can even be passed on to people. Waste can also contain the Parvo virus, a debilitating disease that attacks a pet's lower GI tract. It can be fatal. Nobody looks at a cute puppy or kitten and says, I'm going to hurt this guy today, but by their inaction, they could be hurting them as well. A number of cities have installed pet waste stations that offer residents biodegradable, throw away pet waste bags, and public trash bins. If you're not near a pet waste station, you can purchase bags at a local store and keep them on hand. There are even bag holders that connect to your leash, so you will have them wherever you and your pet go. Cleaning up after your pet will help keep water cleaner for all of us. This solution starts one day at a time and one pup at a time.


Hello everyone. So far we have been discussing the fundamentals of nuclear chemistry and then some of the analytical techniques based on nuclear phenomena and also the radiochemical techniques. Today's lecture I will describe some of the applications of radioisotopes in societal applications in the service of mankind like healthcare industry and so on. So before going to the actual applications let me explain what are the fundamental principles underlying these radioisotope applications. So there are mainly three concepts or three properties of these radiations that enable them to be useful in many many fields. So I will just explain them. The first one is the radio tracer concept. I had also explained it earlier one of the lectures on the tracer-based analytical techniques and the underlying principle is that the radioisotopes have the same chemical properties as their stable isotopes. So this property of radioisotopes helps them to trace the path of their stable isotopes. You take any industry or even a chemical reaction where you want to understand the mechanism of the chemical reaction then you can label one of the atoms with the radioactive atoms and see how this particular reagent is moving in the chemical system. Like sulfur containing chemicals their reactions can be studied by sulfur-35 labeled compounds. In fact many of the reaction mechanisms have been understood using radio tasers or labeled compounds. So we will discuss that applications in many many areas. Second property of these radiations is that these radioisotopes emit radiations that are highly penetrating and because of that high penetration power you will find many many applications of radioisotopes in the industry like datagraphy or even in the non-destructive testing investigations. You will see there are many of them. So this is the main concept. They can penetrate through thick absorbers like what I have shown here is that alpha particles will travel this way like if we have a fluid transmission experiment then I by I0 will follow four alpha particles they will travel same distance and after that there will be certain fall that is the typical transmission graph for alpha particles whereas the gamma radiation will follow exponential decay. So there I could be a landlord law. So you can use make use of this intensity decrease with thickness of absorber in many many applications. And the third is the effects of radiation. Now there is any radiation can effect can create defects they can generate free radicals they can produce heat they can even kill pathogens and they can damage the cells and these properties of these radiations find them very useful in medicine for example in cancer treatment therapy of cancer and also modifying materials by polymer like polymerization or you can create defects in materials like diamonds you know you can create the different colors in diamonds and add their value they produce heat they can you can use them as a source of heat like the 38 plutonium is used in satellites as a source of heat so you can power like pacemakers then they can kill pathogens so that this is utilized in us in food technology you can prevent this prouting of the fruits and many many applications they can even induce mutations in seeds and you can produce improved varieties of crops by using radiation induced mutations. So the list is endless and I will cover some of the examples of these three concepts in my talk. So first let me in this particular talk discuss the applications of radio isotopes in healthcare and this applications could be based on radio tracer concept or they could be based on the radiation effects on in the human body so all sort of applications can come. So in radio isotope applications healthcare one of them is in vitro that means in the test tube in the laboratory you can do analytical determinations of the different biological components of our human blood or many other you know bio fluids you can determine for example we discussed in the radio and the techniques the radio immuno assay where you can determine the concentration of T3, T4, TSH or even other like prostate specific antigens you can determine by using labelled antigens and interacting them antibodies and then finding out the concentration of these molecules at very very low levels like nanomolar concentrations but they are done in the laboratory. In vivo in the body if you introduce radio isotopes then you can do investigations of diseases and the chemicals that are introduced in the in the body in vivo they are called radio pharmaceuticals they are like medicines they are pharmaceuticals compounds but they are labelled with the radio isotopes so we will discuss them in this lecture and also the radio isotopes by virtue of their radius and effects by virtue of killing the tumor cells we can use them in therapy and lastly the sterilization of medical products this medical products you know when they are implements the tools the suture the seizure the tweezers and on different implements used in operations so they have a chance of getting you know in effect infected again during handling so in this particular case what happens you can pack them you can pack them in a cardboard boxes take them to the plant for irradiation and after irradiation they will be opened only when they are being used for the operation so you can sterilize the medical products implements tools by using registries I will not discuss this much in this particular talk but I will talk about first two diagnosis and the therapy okay so now let us discuss what are radio pharmaceuticals so radio pharmaceuticals are pharmaceutical compounds but they are labelled with the radio isotopes so a special radiochemical formulation the formulation is a radiochemical is a compound of adequate purity so it should have a desired radiochemical purity radio nucleic purity that is what we mean by adequate purity and pharmaceutical safety so there are pharmacopoeia for different their quality control measures to be taken with regard to pH sterility and so on pyrogenicity so it should be suitable for oral or intravenous administration to humans for performing a diagnostic test or for treatment so any any no compound to be injected intravenously or orally in the human body has to pass the tests of this this kind of quality control measures so the pharmaceutical safety is important so that we will discuss in my talk so this is a general definition of a radio pharmaceutical now radio pharmaceutical can be used in diagnosis diagnosis of diseases wherein we image we take the image of an organ it could be static or we can see the dynamic flow of the body fluid of the blood then we can get the dynamic image of an organ how they metabolism is taken place in the human organ so that you can do using diagnostic applications where you inject the radio isotope labelled with compound and then in the body wherever this radio isotope is going that particular organ we can do they take the image in static or in a dynamic or you can have sequential images so this is another application and then we have the therapeutic applications where you can do you can use radio nuclei externally it's called teletherapy from outside we can expose the cancerous tissues and kill them or we can introduce the radio isotope in the body either by a shield source in a cavity or by using a radio isotope labelled compounds so this radio isotopes essentially are emitting those which are introduced in the human body in the form of a compound like radio pharmaceuticals they have to have particulate emission like beta plus or alpha beta minus or alpha so that they can do the damage to the cancerous tissues so in radio pharmaceuticals if you inject into the human body then they are required to have particulate emission beta alpha so that they can kill the tissues in their nearby city so that is the kind of requirement we have for the pharmaceutical in therapy okay so let us see for diagnosis diagnostic applications what are the kinds of radio isotopes we can choose for diagnosis as a pharmaceutical so one of them is the decay mode the decay mode see what we are doing we are going to take the image of the organ in which the gamma the radio isotope is distributed so it should preferably emit only gamma ray so it should not be emitting a particulate because that particulate will unnecessarily damage that issue so there are not many radio isotopes it should be not emitting particulate because the gamma is emitted only after beta or alpha decay so but there are like internal transitions the isobaric state is there like technician 99m it will decay by only internal transition to 140 kV is the gamma ray and having half type of 6 hours that is an ideal for diagnostic pharmaceutical first is that it should not emit preferably any particulate emission the second is that the energy of the gamma ray should be in the range of 100 to 200 kV why because if it is below the 100 kV energy then it will be stopped in the body itself which will not come out of the body and if it is more than 200 kV then the efficiency of detection will be low so 100 to 200 kV is the optimum range of gamma energy for a good image that is the reason why gamma energy should be in 100 to 200 kV more than 200 it is since it will go down less than 100 the gamma ray will not come out for the body it will be attenuated by the human body. A flight should be short preferably few hours again the reason why it is so because you do not want the radio isotope to be in the body after the image has been taken so it should come out of the body or it should tie down in the body itself so that few hours science have optimum for the diagnostic investigation. Lastly it should have a versatile chemistry that means it should be able to complex different metal ligands and it should those ligands having high affinity to different organs so a particular metal ion multiple oxygen state will be ideal because different ligands may bind in metal ion different oxygen state. Some of the examples of these radio isotopes that are used in diagnosis are technosome 99m ideal in fact it is called the work horse of nuclear medicine about 80% of the nuclear medicine investigations for diagnosis are done using technosome 99m. So gamma ray is ideal half-life is ideal indium 111 ideal gamma ray energy but half-life is little long 123 iodine half-life is and gamma ray wise ideal that is why there is huge demand for 123 iodine though it requires a genome target enriched genome helium 101 you can see half-life and gamma engines are quite good gallium 67 3.26 days and good and iodine 131 though the half-life is long in you will find in many applications it is very very useful it can be used in both diagnosis and therapy it has the gamma ray energy it has the particulate emission function. Now once you label a compound and prepare a radiopharmaceutical there are certain pharmaceutical quality control measures you must establish and this belongs to the physicochemical control, radiochemical control and biological control. In physicochemical properties you should inspect the solution that this should be clear this should not be an turbidity pH should be the proper zone which will be incompatible with the body the chemical purity of the compound there should not be any other impurities and sometimes you use in the particulate form you know some some micro spheres are used for some treatment so the particle size would be in the proper range. The radiochemical control regards to radioactive concentration what is the concentration of radioisotope is millicury or microcury or curie. So you know depending upon the requirement specified by the doctor and do nuclear medicine personnel you should specify that concentration radio nucleic purity there should be no unwanted radioisotopes and the radiochemical purity the chemical form of that molecule should be whatever is the desired. For example if you have fluorine in fluorine fdg then fdg should be only there should not be any other derivative of fdg so that kind of purity has to be established. So there are measures to specify to determine the radiochemical purity by that thin layer chromatography or p-pachromatography radio nucleic purity by gamma spectrometry radioactive concentration by counting the sample. Then you have the biological control sterility for injectables you would have to have to be sterile it should be the pyrogenicity means it should not produce heat in the body. So this is a very important requirement of the pharmaceutical and it should be distributing in the organ of your interest. So these are the properties that pharmaceutical should have. So I have just given you a figure that whatever different organs in the body which are likely to get affected by a disease then there are radio pharmaceuticals both in terms of the radioisotopes as well as the molecule which for which there has been hardly there in development to produce those kind of pharmaceuticals which will be selectively going to the particular organ. For example you want to see the glucose metabolism in the brain then you have fluorine 18 labeled fdg you want to see the thyroid update thyroid functioning if whether there is any malfunctioning of thyroid you can do sodium iodide labeled with 131 iodine or even you can do technetium 99m because technetium also can go to thyroid. Then for heart you have a apetine fdg and there are there is one thalium also thalium 201 also will go to heart so you can do for stress test. Then for bones you have the you have ethylene diamine tetra ethylene phosphinic acid sulfur asomerium labeled fdg TMP or you can have asperus labeled orthophosphate again for the bones you have volume 156 hydroxyapatite. So in fact there are some of the few you will find that for example for the prostrate there are prostrate specific antigens. So if you label that antigen with a particular compound like lutecium it will selectively go to prostrate and you can do the image as well as you can do the treatment of the prostrate case. So for every organ almost every organ in the human body you will find there is a particular pharmaceutical and if there is a proper labeling a device at all so you can do imaging of different organs of the body. Now what are the experimental techniques for this you have this technique called for imaging scintigraphy and it is also called the single photon emission tomography spec. So the principle of spec is that suppose you have the organ which is containing the radioisotope here and this organ is now in the human body it is emitting gamma radiation isotropical. So you from outside this is the machine for respect so the camera this is the camera you the patient is made to lie on this and the camera will detect the gamma ray coming out from the organ. Now the radioisotopes emitting gamma ray in all directions but you have detector only one side and you want to take the spatial image so as a function of as a space in space how the organ is distributed that means how the activity is distributed in the organ. So you have a detector where the gamma ray is made to pass go to the detector through collimators. So it will go at a particular angle so that tell you in which bin this gamma ray has come. So you can this is segmented kind of system. So this collimation helps you finding out the place from which the gamma ray has come. Then the gamma rays are detected by the detector mostly scintillator, sodium iodide, helium or BGO type of scintillators. And there are PMT photo multiplier tubes to take convert the signal the photons converted into electrons at a PMT. And then there is a position sensitive position sensitive circuit to identify from which place in the organ the particular gamma ray has come. Like for example this collimation will give you this particular position. So we can see in organ and we can construct the image by help of a computer. So that is the principle behind the spectrum. So it essentially gives you the 3D image of the organ in static or in dynamic. Like this is just to give an example expect images like for this Technician 99M labeled a MIBI. It is called MIBI, Mythoxy isobutyl isonitrile and it is a heart imaging agent. You inject intravenously this Technician 99 MIBI and after 15 minutes you take the image of the heart of the person from outside. Externally you are non-invasively you are monitoring the gamma rays that is coming out of the human body and you can see as a function of time how the when the heart is pumping the blood you can see the different images different cross sections of the heart and if a particular portion has got infractuous that means in the blood is not reaching there the muscles are dead you can identify the doctor can identify which portion of the heart has become infractuous means it is dead. So that kind of a investigation can be done using pharmaceuticals labeled with proper radioisotopes. Similarly you have this scintigraphy image of Lutisium 177 labeled EDTMP in DOCS which are with how to be having osteosarcoma. You can see this is how you keep the patient in the expect machine and you can see the inflammation so the sarcoma that the particular tumor in the animal can be seen in the bright intensity of the radiation the radioisotope is going and depositing there. So you can see that you can even the Lutisium 177 not only can do the diagnosis by means of gamma ray you can also do the treatment because therapeutic application requires emission of high energy beta particles which Lutisium 177 emits. Now that was the spec imaging so you just single the photon emitting radioisotope and you take the camera and it will take the image of the organ but resolutions in the spec are not very high and therefore the positon emission tomography peak pet has become now more popular because of the resolution in terms of the space the spatial resolution is excellent in pet and pet you require a positon emitter the positon emitters are carbon-11, nitrogen-13, oxygen-15, fluorine-18 and also gallium-68. You can see their half lives are minutes and the beta plus positon energy and the way they are produced. So exotin is in fact these days most commonly used because it is having a half life of about two hours so from the cyclotron they can be transported to the hospitals whereas the other isotopes carbon-11, nitrogen-13, oxygen-15 their half lives are even less than 20 minutes and so they require the cyclotron to be present in the hospital. So immediately you transport the pharmaceutical to the hospital within few minutes and then you can do the pet analysis but fluorine-18 you can take from cyclotron to other hospitals in the city and another thing is gallium-68 is one another very interesting pair it is a generator you have germanium-68 decaying to gallium-68 and you can take the you can take the generated to the hospital and we milk the gallium-68 which is then injected into the one body for pet investigations. So this is again the principle behind the positon emission tomography. So now you have a ring of detectors which is not single detector you have a ring and the patient like MRI it is like MRI so the patient is made to lie here is the detectors in circle the patient. So suppose you have an organ here it is odd shape organ and then from different parts of this organ the gamma rays the positons are anyway annihilated so gamma rays are emitted and the 511 KV gamma ray they are emitted at 180 degree so you know the positon emission and so from a particular point you will see that the two detectors will receive an event at 180 degree. So similarly this event is these two events are coming from this place so this because of the coincidence phenomena you can identify from which place in the in the organ the the higher level gamma ray has come. So this is the schematic you have a this is actually a annular one this is a circle it is a cylinder type of thing and then this is a BGO detector a way and it is like circular array and then this data are fed to the computer to do the you know investigation to computer simulate the distribution of activity in the organ. So from sub pet machine very compact machine and in the cyclotron the arms you produce the positon emitter you have to have the very fast chemistry there is a radiochemical unit which will separate the radiochemical and then you can level them and then transport to the hospital. So this is the general principle of the pet machine and the images that you get from the spec versus pet you can see this is the image of a brain using spec and pet so you can see the mark difference improvement in the image of the brain using pet vis-a-vis the spec image that is why now the spec is becoming very very popular among the nuclear medicine practitioners. Now let me come to the another application of radioisotopes is therapy therapy of cancer and here there are three techniques one of them is tele therapy as the name itself implies the radioisotopes from outside the body and you concentrate the you focus the beam of a gamma ray onto the organ that is to be irradiated people use koval 60 source which is emitting high energy gamma ray 1.17 and 1.33 MeV and the gamma rays are focused onto the tumor so you have to put it in the proper shield and then allow only a beam of gamma ray to come though the gamma ray is emitted in all directions but you are collimating the gamma ray to come to a particular tumor so then there is a huge activity required because you cannot focus the gamma ray only you can collimate so about 12,000 tury of koval 60 is used in one machine or it is tele therapy so this is where the patient lies and this is the source koval so you can it is not a shield and the the gamma ray emitted is the koval 60 is emitting gamma ray to irradiate the particular organ so though koval 60 is most commonly used there are now advancements going on you can produce gamma ray from electron beam by means of beam Stalin you can use protons for therapy and you can use boron neutron catheter therapy that means you suppose you can you can you want to produce protons you can have neutrons you can you can have a neutron source for treatment of the cancer so you use borons and the neutron will induce the reaction in the boron and give you alpha and lithium 7 so this alpha and lithium 7 essentially what will happen so this alpha and lithium 7 are now highly charged particles highly charged particles and they will damage the cancerous tissue so you have to take boron level compound to that organ nearby that organ and bombard with neutrons selectively because boron has got very high perception for neutrons you can do the damage of cancerous cells by using this technique so there are many techniques which are being used for cancer treatment one of them is teletherapy other one is brachytherapy not all cancers can be treated by teletherapy because from outside you cannot take the gamma ray to particular organ particularly the deep-suited tumors like cervical cancers prostate cancers ocular cancers you know eye cancers so these are deep-suited so you you may unnecessarily damage the other organs so the those tumors which are not available by teletherapy they are treated by brachytherapy brachytherapy you use tiny sources they are placed in a cavity well which can be placed in a cavity and the particularly people use 192 iridium and 125 iodine 125 iodine has a half life of 60 days and gamma ray energy is 35 kV or so and 192 about 100 200 kV gamma rays so you put the the sources for a particular period of time and after that these are sealed sources so they are not going with the blood bloodstream you can just take them out after proper exposure these are the typical you know this this needle-shaped pins source they are sealed sources they are called ocuprostra sheets because they can be used for ocular cancer as well as prostate cancer so they are they are made in the laboratory and this is the typical drawing of the feed you can see the length of this is 4.5 millimeter and the diameter is of the drop 0.8 mm so very thin tiny needles and wires look like wires they can be placed behind the eye and placed in the other places of the human body so wherever you want to do the treatment the prostate cancer so you want to irradiate the prostate with the this gamma rays you can do that and the lastly we have the radionuclide therapy radionuclide therapy is that like radionuclide pharmaceuticals used for diagnosis then you can tag the radionuclide pharmaceutical with the radionuclide which is emitting the particulate emission and then do therapy so the radionuclide will take the radionuclide to a particular organ and the radionuclide will limit the particulate gamma a particular radiation alpha or beta and that will kill the tensor system so 131 iodine is used for thyroid disorders yttrium 94 treatment of arthritis and phosphorus 32 for skin cancer yttrium 90 and phosphorus 32 are pure beta emitters the high-energy beta is described the tumor cells and so for example iodine you can use the beta for thyroid disorders so even for therapeutic agents you know but if you have some joint diseases like arthritis then there are radioisotopes like yttrium 90 rbm 169 rhenium 186 they can use for treatment of joint diseases one of the examples we can see here immediately after the treatment the the distribution of that you have the arthritis you know so there is some fluid deposition and that you can take the image of that knee with these radioisotopes after three months of treatment or after six months of treatment you can see that the patient is recovering that particular inflammation is going off so this image is taken with yttrium 90 hydroxyapatite for treatment of arthritis so you can use these radioisotopes which are emitting particulate radiation for treatment of many types of diseases and lastly there are theranostics means therapy and diagnosis so they have dual purpose of not only doing therapy but also diagnosis so they are called this is a new concept coming up last few years now the radioisotopes having dual properties so they emit particulate radiation like beta alpha and also they emit gamma radiation and therefore they can be used for both diagnosis and therapy so for example when a patient is undergoing iodine therapy you can monitor the therapy what is happening to the patient as a function of time using gamma ray emission so iodine 131 is one of the isotopes it has got a beta minus and a gamma ray and 177 lutecium is another isotope which has got a very good chemistry ideal gamma ray energy 100 to 200 and half line and particulate radiation so this is the image of lutecium 177 hydroxyapatite which is used for treatment of arthritis in medium-sized joints like elbow, wrist and ankle and you can see immediately after therapy and then after one month of the therapy how the inflammation is vanishing as a function of time so this is how one can carry out investigations of therapeutic applications of radioisotopes you can do teletherapy you can do bachytherapy and if you support there are it in the in the tumor is in the glands sometimes even the bachytherapy will not help so you can go for radionuclide therapy and the theranostic ones help you not only in therapy but also in diagnosis as a function of time while the therapeutic treatment is going so that's all I had to say in this particular one the next lecture I will talk about the other applications of radioisotopes in industry and so thank you very much


Hi, this is Dr. Don. I have a binomial distribution problem requiring you to create histograms, and it can take quite a bit of time if you do it manually, but using stat crunch, we can knock it out very, very quickly. I'll show you. We're going to go to stat calculators binomial, we bring up our calculator. What is our n? Our n is one, two, three, or four. We don't use the zero. So n is four, and our p is 0.4. I'm going to put that as less than equal to four, so it makes sense. And so we get our histogram, zero, one, two, three, four, and that kind of looks like alpha. So let's do the next one, p of 0.5, click compute, and you can see it's symmetrical, and that kind of looks like b for beta. Last one is 0.7, zero, one, two, three, four, kind of looks like Charlie. So let's see if that works. The answer is alpha, beta, Charlie. So use that calculator, it's very quick.


Hi, I'm Kath and I'm an Argos Tester. I'm from South Wales and I've got two daughters aged nearly two and four. Today I'm going to be showing my first thoughts on the Amazon Echo studio. My first thoughts on the sound quality was the sound that comes out of it is unbelievable. I haven't heard anything like it and I've had a bit of experience with different speakers and I really like to find a nice good sound quality and it fills the room with sound like I've never heard it before. Everything can be controlled the volume, the tracks, the songs you want to play. You can ask it to restart the songs as well. I've got a sort of playlist that I use for certain songs that I love. So I've already got an idea of the quality of those songs. When I've listened to them through the speakers I've already got the comparison and listening to it through the studio the sound you can hear each instrument and you can hear everything. It just surrounds you in this sound. It's amazing. We've used the FireCube as it gives you that connection to be able to access the Dolby sound which is just the fantastic surround sound that you can get from it. If a car came across the screen from that side of the room that's exactly where you heard it coming from. There's just something about the studio that puts you more in the experience rather than just having the experience of the sound itself. We use Alexa for so many things in the house. We use her for alarms, any sort of reminders. I cook regularly so I'm forever setting timers with that. We've also got our smart bulbs and smart switches so being able to connect those up to the same Alexa is fantastic. We can control the whole house. A fantastic feature I love with the Amazon Echo studio is being able to just mute the top. You can press a button on the top, it mutes the studio, the red ring comes up and you know immediately that that microphone has been switched off.  I didn't have to dry my hands. I could just ask Alexa straight from my voice to phone my mum and make that phone call and do what I needed to do without having to stop what I was doing at the time. The ease of use is unbelievable. It's got everything that I'd love in a speaker. Definitely recommend this to my friends and family. I already have. I've actually bought my mum an Echo herself and she can start using a bit more smart products around her home.


Good afternoon everybody I'm Tommy O'Brien coming to you live from TFN headquarters in St. Petersburg Florida one PM Eastern time on Wednesday three hours left to go in the trading day we got markets in positive territory S&Ps right now positive by 14 points trading at twenty four nineteen get the Nasdaq positive by twenty five points trading at seventy five fifty two the Dow up a hundred and fifty two points trading at twenty five thousand four eighty five oil we got EIA this morning big time build of six million plus barrels bigger much bigger than they had expected oil down two dollars and fourteen cents trading at fifty one thirty four you get gold up four dollars and ten cents thirteen thirty two gold had made it as high as thirteen forty eight early early in the day and the dollar index up hundred ninety six ticks ninety seven one ninety five notes and bonds pretty tame the ten years flat the thirty year is actually negative ten ticks at one fifty three twelve we'll start it off let's jump over to the futures markets we'll start it off with the S&P little bit of volatility we reach a low this morning just prior to about eleven a.m. as Tom and I were wrapping up the program you're the S&Ps at twenty eight oh one quite a run over the last two hours from then twenty eight twenty a solid twenty S&P points in the last two hours Dow thirty little bit of volatility pretty similar action you trade higher from most of the overnight the market continuing quite the run it had yesterday the Dow trading twenty five thousand five oh one Nasdaq one hundred seventy two oh two lows at a similar time frame seventy one fifty so you're talking about a solid fifty Nasdaq one hundred points in the last two hours there's your gold contract so quite a run overnight we reach the highs at about eight thirty this morning eight thirty what else do we get we get eighty P payrolls quite a miss twenty seven thousand jobs added versus an estimate of like one seventy five and that is the smallest number since March of two thousand and ten quite a number maybe it'll mean something as to the economy job growth and wrapping it up crude oil there is your drop at ten thirty we're trading at fifty two seventy five coming into the EIA numbers we get a big time build Tom and I were on the air we dropped from fifty two seventy five by the time you got off the air we're basically down a buck fifty from those levels at fifty one twenty four kind of been bouncing around did make it as low as fifty dollars and sixty three cents cheap oil we had a gas build as well cheap gas prices coming at us stay tuned folks we got a man Steve Rhodes coming up right now at the trader's edge Dave White live at two o'clock with the power trading hour and Tom O'Brien live from three till five stay tuned Steve Rhodes coming up right now


I run forestry in Bhutan, you know, it's almost a new concept. I think people, all the chemicals realize importance when our green areas started to be replaced by, you know, gray areas. And to start with, I think a lot of people do not know much about Bhutan, it's a small country nestled in the eastern Himalayas, it's a small country, I said, with an area of about say about 39,000 square kilometers, a population of less than a million. And we have a constitutional monocular system, and our development process is not guided by GDP, but what is known as the Gross National Happiness. So we actively pursue this philosophy in our development plans. During forest, at this point of time, we have about 72% of our country in the forest cover, and about nearly 20,000 square kilometers of protected area. The constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan mandated that we have a minimum of 60% of forest cover at all times. And the country generates about 2.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide, and we sequester about 4 million tons of carbon dioxide. So we not only carbon neutral, but we are carbon negative. Timbu is the capital of Bhutan, and at this point of time, through UNF assistance and GF funding, we are implementing an urban ecosystem-based adaptation project. So it's a small area, 26,000 square kilometers, but the population is growing rapidly. And along with the population, there's rapid infrastructure growth. If you look at the pictures, just over 40 years, we have transformed ourselves from a green area into a gray area. And this is quite boring. And of course, we do have a plan to guide urban development, but what was planned in a structural plan is no longer valid because development is happening faster than what was envisaged in the structural plan. The mandate for urban forestry lies with Timbu Trumday. Trumday is the national name for the municipal body here. And the Environment Division is responsible for managing forestry and mitigation activities. So they do have a division. They also have a section which looks at parks and micro gardens, plantations and management. Forestry and tree-failing clearances. So as I demanded, this urban forestry and city-build location section is responsible for maintenance of trees and flowers within the municipal boundary, getting our landscaping works in public spaces, development and maintenance of micro parks and micro gardens, development and maintenance of all the Christian children's parks and nursery management to supply saplings. This section is also responsible for issuing forest clearances and monitoring legal activities. This is background why there was a need to set up an urban forestry and beautification section. So I think we started this quite late, just 10 years ago. And it's the first section exclusively dealing with urban forestry and beautification section and housed within the municipal corporation. So Timbu has developed so much in the last 40 years. And the reason why this section was created was to ensure that its infrastructure development activities harmonized with nature and to engage in people in my residence, the value of services provided by an urban forest. So ever since its inception in 2011, the forestry section in Timbu Municipal Corporations carried out an initiative called My Tree Program in 2012 to inculcate a sense of ownership and love for trees and nature and youth. The section also carries out plantation trees in degraded, trapped lands to increase vineyards in the country. Beautification landscaping around about the flower plant is within the city. And monitoring of the survival rate of trees plants within the city and management of nursery for production of saplings. And the section is also responsible for development and management of all the box microgaddens. We had a flower exhibition in 2017 and the section initiated the creation of that microgadden. And the section is also responsible for production and conservation of its lands. And monitoring tree felling and issues of forest clearances. So pictorially these are some of the activities like the sections of the responsible development of degraded stream buffers.  And this is what we did to the slopes, created footpaths, planted trees, but what are the challenges? As I said earlier, it's a new concept, urban forest management plans are in the process of development. We do not at this point of time have what you would call an urban forest regulations. And because of this rapid urbanization, we are losing a lot of trees. And we are also feeling the impact of climate change because urban heat island effects were not heard of some years ago. And incidences of forest fires are also increasing, especially during the winter months. Just one more minute. Thank you. Well, we also like the trees, we got, as I said earlier, we don't have regulations, so we like to have regulations for urban forestry. And since it's a small section, there are few people working in the section. And since this is a new concept, there's a lack of awareness among the residents of this urban center called Tupu. And a lot of work needs to be done actually to bring the benefit of urban forestry in the forefront. So with this introductory presentation, I must say thank you for giving me this opportunity.


Oh, and welcome to Fegments, The Power of Imagination, my 35th episode overall. I'll talk more about that in a minute. The first happy holidays to all of you. Today, we're going to take a look at 2022 through the lens of 2021, I guess. Talk about what I've learned in the last year, I think, and what I predict for next year. If you watched any of our baseball shows, you know that prediction is not my forte. So if you hear a prediction that you don't like, don't worry. It appears that I'm generally wrong. But I've thought about it and I'll offer you some of this as I seek to entertain and inspire. I did have a scheduled guest for this show and he's opted out until early next year. He's a friend of mine, a 15 fighter pilot who lost a son to suicide. And it's a conversation that we both think is important to have, but I want to have it at the right time for him. And so we'll see him next year in 2022. My first show happened on January 25th of this year. And since then, counting this one, there have been 35 episodes of figments on reality and figments the power of imagination. Now you can find playlists both on Think Tech Hawaii and on YouTube form. And I think there's some pretty good episodes. I'll talk about a few of those in a minute. And they're also available on Spotify and the Apple podcasts. So if you don't want to see me, I understand. I'm not hurt. You can catch those there. I've had some amazing guests, mostly on figments on reality. And I've got a quick sample of a few of them. My first show was with Dave Fingers Goldfein, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, a great combat pilot, a real hero, much overused for it in my mind. Very popular episode because he's a highly regarded guy. And Fingers talked, but not about his experience as a combat pilot, but about taking a year off to seek to be a roadie for rock band. And you can find it on the playlist if you'd like more on that. The other shows I had included another flyer. So some military things, Slickagiri, friend of Vine, another F-15 guy that I flew eagles with. And he talked about his experience flying and flying and flying and flying 25,000 plus hours in helicopters and eagles and airliners. And if you have any interest in aviation, that's one that you might want to watch. Of course, I had to have my daughter on, first of all, because she's awesome. She didn't ask to be on, but she is awesome. And she talked about leadership. And folks, if you choose any episode to watch from the playlist, this is the one I recommend because I think about what she said every day, really. She's a great leader. I learned a lot about leadership from my kiddo. And when she talks about the connection, purpose and mastery, it makes perfect sense in what humans want and how that influences what you do as a leader or as a human. And so I recommend that one. Recently, our most recent Power of Imagination episode was with Ed Hawkins. And he talked about China-Taiwan or Hawaii during a China-Taiwan conflict. I've never heard anybody else talk about that. Ed's a great guy, golf buddy, intelligence analyst, and retired Air Force Colonel. And I think that's what I've sought to do is bring folks to you that you might not otherwise hear from talking about things that you might not otherwise think about and show how they made their pigments a reality and help inspire you to do the same with yours. Because if I've learned anything from doing this show, it's the power of people out there in the world, people I know and people I don't know, what we can accomplish if we set out to do it, refusing to be intimidated by the idea that it might be undoable. So what else have I learned about pigments and people doing this show? One, it's hard work. It is hard work, but it's worth the effort. I try to make sure I get things right. And that hard work of trying to get things right has taught me that what I might have believed may not be true. And I think that exercise in critical thinking, self-critical thinking, is an important one that too few people in power frankly engage in, and perhaps in the media. And that's not a political statement if you watch any episode. You know that I don't engage in politics except at the ballot box. But you're not always right. And you have to be open-minded to the idea that you have something to learn. And the hard work of getting ready to do these shows, both the power of imagination and pigments on reality, has done that for me. Second thing I learned at Guests Matter, I have some great friends. And in addition to the folks you saw, you talked with Susan Helms, the astronaut, Simon Lee, the diplomat, Andrea Marie Jacques-Maton, my friends from the Hollywood industry, three-time Emmy winners, Julie Wade, my niece, all of them have stories that I find inspiring. And I hope you do too. So Guests Matter. And I'll seek to have more guests. So maybe I'm not so good by myself, but some of the solo shows have been well-received, but Guests Do Matter. And I may reduce the frequency of all Figments episodes to every two weeks just to avoid overexposure and to make sure that I can find guests like the ones I'll have in the coming year that are already lined up. That said, it's worked pretty well, 7,500, almost, about 7,464, I think. Views on YouTube alone doesn't count Vimeo or on the ThinkTech platform.  She nudges me and says, you need to do this. You need to do this for you. And maybe you're making a difference. And maybe it's good enough. If maybe I'm making a difference and getting people to think and learn, then it is worth it. The other lesson is encouraging to me from a discouraging event. And that is that Afghanistan really touched an earth. Many of the views, the 7,500, almost views, came from my shows on Afghanistan, and on the withdrawal and on the need for accountability and those who didn't do well, and they didn't. And the reason I find that encouraging is that that means people care. And I send notices of the shows on Facebook and LinkedIn to people I don't know. So I don't think it's all folks like me who are watching this former military interested in security affairs. I think that the public is generally interested and wants to better understand what's happening and why. And that's encouraging, right? To me, it's encouraging, especially in a year like 2021 because what a year it's been. What a year. If you thought 2020 was challenging, let's take a look at what's happened in 2021. First of all, we had January 6th, the insurrection in the capital. And I'm going to make an unpolitical statement. I don't think that matters very much.  We're going to do it anyway because that's the nature of our democracy, but I don't think that was very important. It certainly got people's attention and the media's attention, but if you look back in our nation's history, while there haven't been identical events, there's certainly been descent and debate and protest sometimes violent. So I hope we move beyond that. The second thing that of course took the headlines all year long was pandemic, pandemic, pandemic, pandemic, the Delta variant, all of the restrictions. Should we have the restriction? Should we get vaccinated? Yeah, we should get vaccinated. We should be thoughtful and careful and protect ourselves in each other, but we'll talk more about government overreach later. I have a prediction on the pandemic. Remember my baseball track record? I might be wrong, but I'll make it anyway. That won't stop me. And then we got a new administration, the Biden administration. And then as I said, I'm non-political. So this isn't a political statement, but here we go again with another spectacularly unpopular administration. That's two in a row, not good for America. We need our presidents to succeed to some measure. They don't have to have universal agreement or even a broad mandate, but having two presidents in a row who by all polls and reports are broadly unpopular just exacerbates the divides in the country. I think this unpopularity in the Biden administration due to two non-political factors. The first is what I called on a figments on reality episode, the Washington problem. With only four years between Democrat administrations, we recycled many of the leaders who are in key civilian positions. Many of these I know personally and professionally and they're smart people and they're good people and they want to do well by the country, but they've been traveling in Washington circles in the same circles, reinforcing what they already believe and repeating things that have already been tried and largely not necessarily failed, but not worked very well. Same could happen with Republicans people. This isn't a political problem. We need greater diversity of thought in our leadership and new ideas and new approaches to the very difficult problems that we face or we'll just keep doing the same stuff that doesn't work. The second, and this sounds pejorative but I don't mean it that way, but thus far the administration has shown a significant level of ineptitude. What they've done, they haven't done well. I'll give two examples and again not a political judgment. I want them to succeed because they're my government they're your government, but the Afghanistan withdrawal was completely bungled, totally botched by debacle, period. And there's no other way to view it. The emergency airlift when everything went south literally and bigger diddly went very well and kudos to those who made it work on the ground and in the air, but it was a debacle, it was inept. And the other one I'd cite is the current legislation, the bill back whatever bill in the two efforts at legislation have been marked by fits and starts and lack of agreement and just not well done. I don't know that we'll ever get the current bill under consideration passed. I don't know that I want it passed but that's really not the issue. The issue is do jobs, make legislation, make progress and that failure demonstrates to me some ineptitude. There's a broader political failure. So I guess there are really three points to make here that shows the ineptitude, not just of the administration but of our current elected officials. I talked about it in the last on reality and that is the failure to reach a budget that leaves us operating under a continuing resolution and that's a failure, an absolute failure. 15 times since 2001, I believe we haven't had budget done when it is due to be done and that's a failure on both sides of the aisle. And I proposed in a recent on reality and I restate my proposal, but if you can't pass the budget, you shouldn't be eligible for reelection. Period, it's your job. Congress holds the purse strings, especially the House of Representatives, so do your job or get a different job. So it hasn't been a great start to the Biden administration and regardless of how I voted and I won't tell you, I want them to succeed so our country succeeds. They gotta do better, I hope they do. I mentioned Afghanistan as a debacle and the aftermath is tragic, but that clearly defined much of the year right in the middle and August, September, very sad. And then we're further 2022, just in case that wasn't enough we had the China Taiwan with the US of course, tensions and the Russia-Ukraine matter and both very dangerous situations that we should all be concerned about. One of my biggest concerns is naivete and my concern with regards to naivete is that it exists on both sides. I think both Russia and China have flawed understanding of how uncontrollable events get in contact. I think even in US security circles that there are many who have a sense of disbelief and don't realize that this could really happen, war could really happen folks and that disbelief isn't good. In the China Taiwan US case, many experts will cite the economic ties as a deterrent to conflict. I would encourage them to go back and look at the very significant economic ties that existed between Japan and the United States in 1941. So we can't count on that. We have to realistically but soberly recognize that war could happen and do everything we can to prevent it without caving on key issues like Taiwan's right to move forward peacefully and whatever means that might be other than independence because we've already voted that off the island. See what I did there, but peacefully is the key. Before we go on to 2022 and my almost certainly incorrect predictions, let's talk a little bit about what I see coming in the next year. I hope I'm wrong on some of these, I hope I'm right. But anyway, on January 10th, I'll return, I'm gonna take a two-way break and there'll be a figments on reality on third and then back to figments for our imagination and connect with a guy named Ricky Ellison. And Ricky's a really interesting guy. I don't know him well, our paths have crossed but he's agreed to be a guest on one of my episodes. And Ricky's story is that he's a native of New Zealand who came to the US, played at the University of Southern California football and then played in the NFL. And now he is a highly respected missile defense expert, a security expert. That's quite a journey. And I know you'll enjoy hearing from Ricky about that journey and how he got there, why he cares so much about what he currently cares about. So here we go, I'm taking a deep breath, folks. Deep breath, drink of water with my cup for my granddaughters, predictions, predictions. All right, gonna talk about the pandemic, conflict, the economy, political dysfunction and then mention a few black swans, things we don't think that could happen, but they might. So it's on a crime, the end of the pandemic. Here's my prediction, yes. What? It has been very contagious, thus, by the way, a disclaimer, I am absolutely not an immunologist and I know what I read online and elsewhere. And I don't really know that, I've formed opinions. But I think it is because it's highly contagious with limited effect and very low lethality. And so my belief is that we will see the emergence of the common COVID, just like the common cold. And is there the possibility for an extreme mutation of the COVID-19 virus? Sure, is that normal? No, it's kind of unusual, actually, for a more lethal, worse virus to emerge from an existing virus. So I think we're gonna see the common COVID. It doesn't mean COVID's going away, it means it'll be part of our lives, but a more normal part of our lives, less disruptive, less lethal. And then what? What does that mean? Everything's good, we're back to normal? Probably not, because I'm very concerned about government overreach and all the things we've done. And a tunnel vision reaction to Omicron, like we're seeing with imposition and restrictions that while they may make some sense, they really don't seem to be required and don't seem to be particularly effective. And it's very difficult once you overreach with your regulatory power to walk that back. And we've gotta walk it back as quickly as we can reasonably do to get the economy further back on track and get life further back on track and get to the point where kids go to school normally and people go to work normally. I'm absolutely not careless about COVID. I'm thrice vaccinated and I wear my mask when it's appropriate and take reasonable caution in every way that I can to avoid getting infected, but life has to go on. And that's not being pragmatic, that's being thoughtful about what's good for the country. Tunnel vision approach that puts COVID at the center of our lives cannot continue because the rest of our lives are being disrupted in some cases destroyed by this singular focus on a single virus, well, plus variants. What about Russia, Ukraine? Onto the next item of interest on my predictions, what do I predict? I don't know what Putin wants. I'm not a Russia expert by any stretch, but here's what I know. Well, I think I don't, based on observation of his behavior in his entire time as the head of government in Russia or the de facto head of government, and that there's no greater good that he's pursuing, that whatever will be will be disruptive and not good to the United States and thus the United States must be ready to respond and ideally respond early with effective deterrent measures because he's not out for anything good. With regard to China, Taiwan and the US, you can check out my show with Ed Hawkins or the unreality that I did about China, Taiwan and the US. We know what Xi Jinping wants. He wants for unification of Taiwan and he wants it now. And it's a political imperative for him inside China. The United States has to find ways to deter and avoid conflict because the worst thing that could happen in the world was conflict between US and China without caving, without appeasing, without failing to acknowledge the areas that China is operating outside international norms and one of those is human rights. So you must think that I support the diplomatic boycott of the Olympic Games in China. I don't because I think it's, first of all, not going to make a difference. Other than further inflame, the nationals perver inside China and China doesn't like it publicly, but they probably like that internally. It gives them a windmill to tilt at, a lightning rod for anti-US sentiment and it doesn't accomplish anything. We've got to do things that matter, take actions that have effect. And I think this will just stir the pot and not have any positive effect. Again, we can't just cave. We have to find things that matter and they're not all confrontational things. There have to be ways that we can work with China to establish a relationship that is good, not just for the US, not just for China, but in a imaginative way makes the world a better place. How about the economy? How about the economy, folks? I took economy, economics in college for about two weeks, dropped that class. So who am I to talk? But I've got a webcast, so I can. The economy is not good. Thank you, Captain Obvious, but it's not very good. We have supply chain issues that are a part of our economic delays. Are those going to disappear? Hell no, they're not going to disappear because there are underlying matters that are causing them and we're not going to quickly reduce the shipping backlog or quickly get the workforce back to work or quickly address dysfunctional regulations on shipping vehicles and drivers to get back to normal flow, add pandemic COVID into that. And no, it's not going to disappear and that's going to be a burden on the economy for some time to come. Inflation is another challenge and it's a very serious challenge. 6.8% current mark, the highest in nearly 40 years and wages have grown over the same period, but by 2.2% less. That means American families are losing money and if you don't see that at the gas pump, you're not buying gas in Hawaii or probably anywhere else. That corrosive, the corrosive influence of inflation on economy and society is far reaching and I don't see it being overcome. I think this is going to be a very difficult economic year. And that that will drive, what? American political dysfunction, my next topic. The economy will drive the landscape and it's not going to be good. I don't see anything that tells me that we're going to see a quick recovery and guests will get blamed. Those in office and that means right now the Democrats with control of the Senate, the House and the White House, they're going to take a hit. I don't see how they cannot. Again, not a political judgment. It's just the way things work. It's the economy stupid, as was once said during a campaign. And what concerns me most is as we go through our next political transition in the mid-term elections in 2022, can we find some viable candidates? Can we find some people who are not extreme either way? And please, and that aren't all old white men, I'm an old white man, but we need intellectual and background diversity to a greater degree and that's both parties. The governor should be governed by people like them and right now at the most senior levels, they're not. And that's got to be fixed. It's incumbent, a nice word incumbent, but it is paramount that the two political parties do better at recruiting suitable candidates, suitable, credible, devoted candidates closer to the middle than the extreme and closer to the middle, because that's where most of us live. So I don't see political dysfunction ending anytime soon. I do see it ending. I am an optimist about American democracy. What about the Black swans? I think there could be a cyber pandemic this year. We've seen several cyber attacks, one the other day in Hawaii, attacked our bus in handy van, handicap van system. And I really think there could be a significant widespread outbreak of cyber crime, cyber terrorism, and that we should be concerned about them. I'm concerned about the collapse of democracies. I think that's probably the most troubling trend in the world, the Biden administration is taking some action to address that and reinforce the importance of democracy in the world system and the rule of law. But we'll see. I think there could be a global recession based on what I've said about the US economy. Not in this alone, in the modern world. And the effects of that would be far reaching and go well beyond economic matters as people and nations fight for resources, pardon me. On a happier front, there's news today that South Korea and North Korea have reached an agreement in principle for an end of war agreement. And I think that's great. And I hope the US supports it. No, it's not easy, imperfect. But as I said many times, including in my prize-winning paper for the Asset Forum, when every paragraph starts with technically still at war, it's very hard to make peace. So boy, I think that would be awesome if they reached an end of war agreement and that became a place for going forward. Finally, the best black swan I can imagine is returned to normal because the world isn't a bad place. It doesn't have to be a bad place. And perhaps it can get back to life as more close to what it was like in 2019 and before that. So what would Fig do to get to the good black swans and shoot the bad black swans? One do, on a personal front, do what you can to encourage return to normalcy. And that is in both your personal and political interactions. Stop being so angry, okay? It's that simple. Don't be angry. We need to take the risks seriously, especially cybersecurity. And that touches all of us. If you're watching this, cybersecurity should be a concern of yours. We need to take the threats to peace seriously as well. War could happen. And we should insist from our leaders on a commitment to deterrence with a clear-eyed realism that war is not out of the question that can't simply wish away the possibility. On the pandemic, whether or not Omicron marks the return or the emergence of the common COVID, as I said, mask when appropriate, vaccinate. Geez, please vaccinate. Why not? Says the veteran of like eight anthrax inoculations in the Air Force. But we also need to shake off the yokes of government and insist that our leaders do their other jobs. COVID is one job. It's not their only job. They need to do all of their jobs. And they're making excuses right now at the local, state, and federal level for not doing their jobs based on COVID.  Feel very strongly about that. And then finally, the one thing FIG would do and will do and recommends you do is write your senators and representatives and tell them to pass a damn budget. It's their job. It's their most important job. It's what makes the government work or not work and they need to do it. So there, that's probably as angry as I've been during any of my 35 FIGments episodes. I really thank you for joining me. This is an important endeavor to me. I hope I've provided some value to your life and your thinking. I'll return after a lovely two week break of puppy training for our new miniature schnauzer ACE on January 3rd, 2022 with FIGments on reality. I'm sure there's gonna be some news that will give me something to talk about. And then finally in closing, let me thank Think Tech Hawaii, a wonderful nonprofit corporation that does more than 30 shows a week. Gives us citizen journalists a chance to opine, to share, to introduce some of our amazing guests and friends, and I think makes the cyberspace a little bit richer. So happy holidays, aloha, and thank you.


and welcome to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee, and I am your host for this program. Today, I am excited to introduce our guest on the show, Executive Director for Aloha Harvest, Brandon Tomita. Brandon, thank you for being on the show. Kathleen, thank you for having me. Of course. Tell our viewers about yourself. All right. Well, thank you. My name is Brandon. As you mentioned, I'm the Executive Director of Aloha Harvest. For anyone who does not know what Aloha Harvest is, first of all, I don't blame you, but we are the largest food rescue and redistribution company in Hawaii. We are serving the island of Oahu, and we are actually in our 25th year of operation. So we started in 1999, the Haoli-Maoloa Foundation, and Bob Harrison with First Hawaiian Bank really got us started. What we do as a food rescue company is we get food that would otherwise go to waste from your sources that could be a store, that could be a restaurant, that could be a farm. We get that food and we get it over to a recipient agency. These agencies could be anything from a church, a nonprofit, a food pantry. Anyone who's going to help us get that food into the hands of the community that needs it. So overall, our mission is two parts. Number one, reduce waste, and number two, work on increasing food security. I think that is wonderful. And before I delve into that further, I understand that it's been a few months since you got into the position. Where were you before that? And how are you bringing in your previous leadership experiences into this new Executive Director position? Yeah, I started with Aloha Harvest October 30th of last year. So now I think it's been about, it's going to be about four months somewhere around there, if I'm doing the math correctly. Prior to this, I was the Chief Operating Officer of Wahiwa General Hospital. I had been there about four and a half years, started right before COVID. And of course, obviously COVID brings in this time warp where you feel like you've been there forever. But what I do bring with having past experience in a small entity that faces some of the same issues that all of us in the nonprofit arena currently are facing. Number one is being able to operate in an arena that is a bit chaotic and a bit uncertain, especially on finances. I joined Wahiwa General. And you know, it's no secret that Wahiwa itself had been really struggling financially for a number of years prior to me joining. A lot of the nonprofits right now because of, you know, unforeseen circumstances do sort of face kind of uncertain financial situation, you know, through this next year or so, potentially even further. And so I think that kind of ability to scramble and make do with what you have and really kind of fight through, I think that's going to be a big push there. But really what I do bring from the healthcare side that I would like to see us incorporate in Aloha Harvest is the integration of food security and overall connection to health. You know, coming from healthcare as a nonprofit, you are required every three years to do a community health needs assessment. And in Hawaii, we have the benefit of having a really good association that helps lead all of the hospitals through that process. Through COVID, you know, the number one concern, I believe the number one concern was actually food insecurity. And you know, that's obviously something that we're addressing as a healthcare provider, though, as a hospital, as a doctor's office. Your focus really is to get that patient, that customer treated and back into the community. You don't really have that ability to really kind of work on some of these social needs. And so I think that's the part that I'm most interested in. You know, we have a number of different programs that Aloha Harvest. I would like to see how we can work more closely with the healthcare coalition that the healthcare community to really address some of these needs of their patients. I think that's great that you have that background and you have that goal. For people that may want to have a clear definition of what food security or what food insecurity is, you can take that either way. What is food security? What is food insecurity? And like, who does it affect? I think the simplest way to put it, food security is not having the fear that you're not going to be able to get a meal, right? I mean, that's about as simple as we can state. Who it's affecting, it's not just those who are, you know, the houseless community or those who are really in that poverty line. Through COVID, we've really seen an increased demand in food supplies and food stuffs coming from the, you know, kind of reaching even into the middle class. The Aloha United Way has their Alice Drive and I'm going to try and struggle through to get the acronym correct. But essentially, these are families who are working, but still can't make all those ends meet. That, you know, getting to that point where you have these citizens, residents, you know, community members, family members who are just at that tipping point, you know, and really are seeking that, what are your basic necessities are? If they are, you know, pushed over towards the, you know, further down that poverty line or poverty rating, you could see this bigger push into the houseless community into those who are really struggling. So that's what we're trying to work to prevent. Working with our partners in the community. That's about, you know, there's a lot of different definitions, but to me, that's the easiest way to define food security, food insecurity. Do you have the fear of being able to get your next meal? Is how is the food sourced? What is the process? I know one of the goals is to minimize food waste because you mentioned before in a previous conversation that we had, like earlier this week, you mentioned that there is a lot of food waste and the organization is trying to address that by using it, but not by making sure that food doesn't go to waste and is used in a better manner in a way that helps out people who may need it. So what is the process? Like how is it vetted, you know? Right. So there's different avenues to have food wasted and unfortunately one of the biggest ways and, you know, I'll be the first to admit, I do fall into this area as well.   I take a look at it and now it's bowed and I can't use it so I've taught it out.  What we are generally working with in our arena is larger stores will have stock that is, you know, about to hit their best sell-by date, your best buy date, your sell-by date. And they know that they're going to have to rotate that stock out because there's more shipments coming in and if people don't buy it, you know, it's going to be, it's going to go to waste. And so that's a good source right there that we can get. You have other avenues of this. So let's say a restaurant.  And so you have these foods that are prepared and then at the end of the night they realize that they didn't put out, you know, X number of trays, X number of items. That's a food item that we can take and get to one of our recipient agencies. You also have a farm. You have farms or even residents. We do have a community harvest program which the small-scale gleaning. You could have a tree of avocado and, you know, you have 100 avocados every day on your yard and you don't really know what to do with them. Farms have this on a larger scale, right? They may not have either the time or the labor to pick some of these items. We can go ahead and help that out too. Glean these items, get it, get it over to recipient agencies. So there are different avenues that we can get. Obviously the restaurant prepared food route brings a little bit more risk and there are steps in place to make sure that the food doesn't get out of that window to where the food is unsafe. There are, for us, the benefit is we've always had a protection to, you know, liability-wise, there's a good Samaritan law in place. If a donor is giving the food in their best efforts, we can take it, we can get it to our recipient agency, to the community and we're protected from the liabilities there. The Biden administration has actually expanded that protection over to even a person-to-person type interaction, you know, in an effort to reduce waste and to address food security as well. So there are liabilities in place. They're understandably some larger entities are a little bit concerned, even though that, you know, that laws on the books that they would be held liable for anything that should go wrong on the line. So we do work with them as much as we can to put them at ease that, you know, we do follow steps to make sure that everything is safe throughout that process. And your organization does not store the food, is that correct? So then you, so how does that scheduling work? You talk to the donors or the organizations that you work with and you figure out how that, like, how pickup works? Yeah, sometimes it's going to be frantic phone calls and their texts back and forth saying, hey, there's just, you know, food available. It's coming this afternoon. Can you guys take it? Yes or no? You know, and it's a work that I really got to give it up to our ops team, coordinating that. Sometimes it's a little bit more controlled than that. Those who have donated and are used to our process, we do give them aluminum trays that they can go ahead and pack that food in, cold start in their facility, and then we can pick it up the next day, which is one of the reasons why besides fuel and labor, one of our largest costs is aluminum trays, not even kidding. We spend, I believe last year, somewhere in the arena of $20,000 to $30,000 than aluminum trays, trays and lids. So that comes in and it goes out pretty frequently to be able to collect this food item and get it out to our partners. So there's a, and you just made me think about this now, there's a good amount of unpredictability when it comes to getting food in to disperse to those in need. Is that kind of where we're going? There can be. Fortunately, I think we've had, our ops manager has been in place now for 13 years. So as far as unpredictable, they've seen everything and so I think the unpredictable can be sort of predictable. What does help is there are a number of recipient agencies who have worked with us for so long and they basically will say yes to anything. They'll say, bring it over. We'll figure it out. And so that is really helpful. I myself didn't get to experience this. There was a pickup. It was supposed to be about 11.30 at night. It turned out to be about 10.30. It wasn't so bad. And they were, it was five minutes around the corner. I dropped it off to them and they were more than happy to take it. So yeah, it's helpful to have people who have already been through the process and really helps it go smoothly. But yeah, at the times where it is unpredictable, if not our routes, we do depend on a large number of volunteers to help pick up and deliver these items to the community. So that's really helpful. You mentioned earlier restaurants and there's also hotels and like wholesale distributors. If there were families or even individuals that wanted to donate, is there a process for that or is it just the wholesalers or the much larger organizations that you take food from? We actually do get a lot of even walk-in donations. So at any given point, I'll be in my office and I hear the elevator door open and someone comes down and they go ahead and they walk in with a bag of something and we're more than happy to take it. Sometimes it could even be like something you don't eat like body wash or slippers or whatnot. We do work with so many different community agencies that will just take whatever and hand it off and they'll be able to figure out what to do with it. But yeah, if it's a pickup, our rule is going to be, hey, if you're going to call us to come pick it up, we do want to make sure that it's at least five pounds to me. We're at the trip out there because it is a fuel and labor cost initiative, but we really do appreciate even the small individual giving because it all adds up. As of January, we rescued our 35 million pounds. We're just going to redistribute 35 million pounds worth of food now over the last 25 years. The rate of rescue really picked up during COVID. Prior to that, it had been a much smaller organization and then my predecessor actually helped grow the operation over the last four or five years. What type of food does your organization take in or don't take it? Wait, is there a criteria for what you can accept as donations? We actually taken a lot of produce, a lot of packaged goods obviously because these are things that are going to be kind of moving in and out of stores pretty quickly. During COVID, we saw a lot of eggs, a lot of milk, a lot of produce like bananas or oranges or potatoes, things like that, which were essential to get out to the community. The good side, the bad side of that, it's great that we were getting these items, but it's bad because it meant the stores just couldn't get that inventory out, so they're struggling on that side. There isn't too much that we don't take. There's even times where I look at an item that comes in and I'm saying, I'm not even sure what this is, what do we do with this? We'll work with the community to try and figure out where things go. If we get something like an exotic spice or some kind of food item that I'm not too familiar with, we ask around first, what would you do with this? Who could we possibly contact for this item and see if they'll take it? If not, we end up holding a couple of things until we can figure out the match for it. That's actually good to know, because in my head, I'm thinking it's mostly just produce, like you said, but I was unsure how your organization takes in meat or even not necessarily junk food, but snacks that are packed. How does that get distributed, and it's good that you've pointed out that there is a five pound minimum in order for your staff to go over and pick up those items to be dispersed to those who do need it? We do. Recently, we had a pretty large donation from one of our partners of candy. I think it was like kind of getting that Halloween stock out and getting ready for the next wave coming in. We're sitting on pallets of candy, and I was kind of laughing with our operations team. I said, what do we do with all this? We have just probably the most amount of candy I've ever seen. Who do we give this to? And really, what kind of blowback people come back to us as we try and work on a pallet, and here we are handing out just box. But if it's donated, we'll find a way to get it out there. I absolutely appreciate that. I think I already asked about how you did it. Did I already ask about how you vet it? Is there an official vetting? Is there a checklist? We do, especially for the prepared foods. If it is stock food, we have kind of a general guideline of what would be accepted, what would not be. So as we look through some of that, especially donated from an individual, if the container is open, we're probably not going to take it. If the container, if it's a cat item and it looks unsafe, it's bulging and it's rusty, again, we'll probably not take it. We'll take it and just throw it out. Items that are open are always going to be risky. So we'll take a look at that. If there's anything that looks obviously wrong, if you do bring in some kind of meat item and it's green when it should be red, then that's obviously a concern. We'll probably dispose of that as well. So yeah, most of it is your basic step-by-step food safety. Prepared foods, again, a little bit more given guidelines. Restaurant industry is very familiar with that. You have that four-hour window to make sure your temps are in control. And one thing I want to make sure we get in there, we are, I think I spoke with this earlier, we are now starting to rescue fish and this is fresh caught fish. It's slowly hitting the news, but we've been working on this for a little bit now to get fish from United Fishing Agency in partnership with the Hawaii Long Line Association and Fresh Island Fish Company. Getting fish from the auction site, fish that would otherwise potentially be wasted because it's not so good. Getting that out to our partners in the community, very exciting to get this project underway. And again, it's going to come with an increased risk, making sure temperatures are in control, making sure waste streams are considered because you have this whole fish going to a partner now. Can you handle this fish? First of all, can you cut it up and prepare it? And if we give you a large volume, can you handle that? And can you responsibly get rid of whatever is left over from the fish? So yeah, we're just starting, really excited to get this underway. So yeah, that's another one where we're going to have to make sure we dot i's and cross t's as we get this project going. Yeah, that was my next question, new initiatives. Aside from that, are there any other initiatives that you want to mention? You know, as I mentioned, kind of at the top, coming from healthcare, having that background, I would like to start to look at how we can work closely with some of our partners in the community. Like we're saying, with hospitals, you don't always have that knowledge or ability of what's out there, right? Knowledge of what's out there, ability to point them in the right direction to a service provider. If your patient says, yes, I am concerned about my next meal, I am food insecure. So having that kind of on my checklist of things I want to get done, that's going to be the next initiative. One of the other large projects that we are working on is we have a USDA grant. This is for our Oahu Food Resilience Hub. Basically, what our long term goal is, is to get a large warehouse space. So like we talked about, you know, it's usually a mad scramble, if something suddenly comes up, takes a little bit of that away. We would have the ability to store larger volumes of food, make more equitable, more efficient decisions, and then possibly also get more involved in the emergency management apparatus for our, definitely for our island, because we're Oahu based, but overall being able to help manage any sort of food distribution needs in the event of a hurricane, a fire, a tsunami, anything of that nature. So that is an upcoming project as well. We're kind of step by step getting there.  Like, let me just simplify one of my last questions. What is your why? Why did you choose to head this organization? You know, there's three, three parts to why it shows a little harvest. Number one for myself personally as a professional, I wanted a company, you know, as the executive director, I answered directly to the board. And so having that board relationship is important. And this board is a young slash youngish board, very good intentions, you know, very, the response to me actually saying, yeah, I'm going to come over was a reason.  It's a it's a good fit to good relationship. But number two is the mission. And our mission is one that is appreciated. It's your rescuing quality food to nourish and sustain the community. That's something that, you know, it's very much appreciated. The company has good brand equity with almost everybody in food service. And I do have a lot of friends in food service. My food service friends know what this is, even if most of my other friends are like, what's a little hardest? Number three is the people who are here. You know, they have a lot of them have been here for years and have really put their heart and soul into this company. It's a small company. We have 1617 employees total. And so it's a combination of all three of those that made this a good fit at this point in my career. Thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else that you would like to add that we may not have gone over in a few minutes that we have left?  Obviously, that's where we first met. We were fortunate to be a part of the giving machine campaign. We're very thankful for that. And as a part of my little two minute, you know, kind of speech to the room, my main focus was to ask, how can we help? And that's something I think that's going to be critically important. You know, my time at the Wahiwa, we knew that we couldn't compete with all the big systems. You know, we just didn't have those resources. We knew that our part in there was helping as much as we can with what we had. So how can we provide service to the rest of you to make sure that the coalition benefited? That's the same question we have now. As we enter this time of uncertainty, how can we help? How can we work with you, the other non-profits that are out there? Or even for-profits, just depending on what their mission is. How can we help, you know, benefit our community? Our vision is, of course, a resilient and sustainable Hawaii, where food hunger and food waste and hunger no longer exist. So how can we help achieve that? That's wonderful. If people want to learn more about Aloha Harvest, where do they go? So fortunately, I have here our website. We are alohaharvest.org, pretty straightforward. And I believe our social is at Aloha Harvest. So depending on how you get your news or information, Aloha Harvest will pop up, you know, if you go ahead and put that in your search. That's going to be the easiest way. We have our data, we have our reports, we have all our contact information on there. We usually guide people to our website because it has a pretty thorough view of our company. And of course, if there's anyone in the, I'll say at the younger generation, for more geared towards, you know, Instagram or whatnot, yeah, at Aloha Harvest. Young-ish? Are we part of that? Are we young-ish? You know, I would have said yes, but I think day by day I'm starting to realize no answer. Well, Brandon, thank you for being here today for our viewers. We just had Brandon Tomita, executive director of Aloha Harvest on the show. Thank you. Thank you again for being on today. And thank you to Think Tech Hawaii as well for making shows like this possible. Thank you to Jay Fiedel, Caramon Lee, Mike, who helped us out, and Hayley. Until next time, Aloha.