The advice that we have received is that trip should leave as early as possible in the morning in order to avoid the great heat because, in essence, there are hardly any trees. So, among those that want to go, please agree that you should get up very early out of bed and give order to avoid a relatively uncomfortable situation. Thank you, and please, can all the tourists often address questions to any one of the guests? Do you want to be educated in terms of the current situation? Or maybe I would like to ask a question to the man, how does it come up to 61 million people? 61 million and yours how? 61 million people in the South Union and Greece. How large are the amount of money that is out here? Well, the question was 61 million there, among the comedians. It gives the sum of all these comedians, for example, 70 million Ukrainians were started to death. Then 6 million Kulaks were sent to Siberia. 90 million were killed. So, that's his number. So, he calculated that. Here, that's not explained. However, there is a, I can refer you to a very good scientific work on that. I, Jay Rummel, who is a professor of demographics at the University of Mali, he wrote the one book, which I advise all my students to get back ready for that. So, death by government, death by government. And which Rummel calculated the death of my comedious government. So, one hundred and seventy two billion people. He, however, did not calculate the death of my comedious government. Then, he, however, how he does it, he comes with the same number, he is doing forecasts of population growth. So, what would be population of Soviet Union, if nothing would happen. And then, he would, it comes from that, there are no casualties of the Second World War. And he came up with, I think, 59 million. Then, when I was in Soviet Union, they got underglasses of all policy. On TV, they had questions and answers with the chairman of KGB, Mr. Khrushchev. And I think they got a planted question from Mr. Khrushchev and Raymond Bennett. He said, he came up with 42 million people. He said, no, no, no. And Mr. Khrushchev, he said, I don't know this numbers. What if we will meet in a week? And in a week, the whole country was glued to TV screen, to see how many skeletons they had in their tumble. And Mr. Khrushchev, he said, the number is about right, comrades, 42 million. However, it's been postures to believe that all of them were killed. And Bennett said, they died on premises of KGB. He said, yes, they died on non-premises. But they died most of national causes. And I'm sure if you don't feed people or you close them inside, they admitted themselves for KGB. However, there is a letter of different numbers. Starting from the lowest one, I saw about 20 million. The highest is 61 million. So the numbers are, I think Stalin was right, saying that death of one is a tragedy and death of a million is sadistic. So that was his response to that. In the sense that even if it's 42, not 61, 47 and a half, it's an endless number. I have three more questions. Mr. Martafarian, at least, this is in the top of the log. What would you say is the influence of the subject in Russia of today, in which groups in particular would refer to subjections about today's question? Can you give me my question? Yes, what would be supporting subjections of today? The subject, the form of subjections, and what's the influence in today's Russia in which groups would refer to subjections as an influence when they are making? We may add two short questions. Mr. Martafarian, how would you say that a particular brand of constant quantities of shame was brought to Europe, which would create a situation in which it was brought to Europe? And Mr. Anthony, would you conclude that all kind of garbage in general is more psychological than a physiological phenomenon, as well as evidence? So let's start with Yuri. Well, Solzhenitsyn, I would say he is on the mainstream of Russia's science right now. He is the mainstream. He is a kind of... Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. Mr. Martafarian. The first question is I think it's very specific to this, because you don't need to call them, I think they are a bit of a problem in the United States, but they are not a question of question. I think they have to do with the culture of the United States, but I think you may have a lot of things to do with that. But in the United States, I think it's generally a question of gender, which I think is important for England, I mean, well, I misexpanded it, but it's like Jesus. Continuing moral support from religious institutions, particularly in the main, American, main line, by saying these are the dominant, prestigious, Protestant churches, but as a mainstream Protestant culture in the English-speaking world, I think it's permeated by these more, with this attitude that's very much consistent with what they call the grounds. Mr. Daniels, I'm not the best if you can, he still needs to answer the question, if you still remember, Mr. Daniels. Yes, I do, and the question was about, I think the two religions say, some primarily, psychology is one of the, one of the most visible, for genres, yes. However, I am qualified by saying that within psychology, I also count the cultural factors as one of the most important ones, yes. Gary? No, you. Now, this question is directed to Mr. Chokri, and I think you're just saying that it's very accurate when this expression of politics is such a bit, but I'm a little bit dubious about the attribution of cause, because I think your attribution rests on the distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism, and that seems to be a nice, or, for example, Max Weber says, Protestantism is a torchbearer of Catholicism. Being in a cell box isn't the most probably to choose. And now, what Thomas Wood says is, that's a really important point there, is that among both groups, there's such a well-challenged perspective, that if they don't believe in the distinction used, now, I have to give you a question. One of the groups for me was Indian Bishop, I'm sorry, Eddie Cowell, who lived by Kenneth M. Noble, loves the red mounds. Such a writer is the Curator of the Community of Ecology, and he says that all such, especially at the beginning, political love, he puts the beginning of what he calls quote, a suffering situation. To me, this is a better ideological tool for drawing conclusions that I think are accurate. Let's see. What exactly is the question? Oh, God. Would you agree that the distinction made by Meno, that the real price of the issue is not Protestant, Catholic, but rather, identifying the suffering situation in some political. Yeah, by the way, I'm not saying that Protestantism, and it's the only cause of what I've described. I think it is a very important cause, and this is the argument I'm making about multiculturalism, but it's a sequel to that strange of Marxist, the extent of the influence of Catholic countries, and I'm sure that there are similar patterns there, and we've had, I think it's interesting, the work that you've just done about this. First of all, it's about Catholic countries. And the United States, and I've been saying that for a bit. I think it's about the idea of a nice discriminatory, and not about the idea that Catholicism is that it was not Catholic. Let's go back a little bit. Okay. But what you said is that the issue was not the issue of the Christian culture. There are some changes. Who's not saying that? It's not even about the issue of the Christian culture. It's about the change of the American culture, and that's what happens in the Christian culture. I have my footage down to the underpass to the right from the top, and that's what we create back up. That's it. I said I'm going to take a picture. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I think it would give men another reason to walk away from their limited by saying I don't have a license to marry. I don't want to go through the process of getting a license to marry. Therefore, see later. So I think that's not going to go immoral as your problem. Security backfire. We actually went through that. Yes, I have another question for Anthony Daniels. And we're just reminded that intellectuals are not concerned about the implementation of their ideas. And generally, the idea is that legalization is something that should be implemented. What impact would it have on your practice if you were still practicing? I mean, do you believe, as a practitioner, that it is a good thing that it would bring benefits or if it is a crack-off idea that it should resist? Actually, I think it would deny the argument in favor of legalization and I can see some arguments against it. However, my principal interest has been to understand the nature of addiction itself and the reason that people become addicted. Unfortunately, what we've got in Britain is a culture in which people want freedom and responsibility. So what they want is free water as a freedom from the consequences of their actions. So it's one thing to have the freedom to do what you want, where you are willing to take the consequences. And it's another way you want freedom to do what you want and want other people to take the consequences, not actually what you want. With regard to legalization, some of the advantages that are claimed, for example, that it will reduce criminality, are not true. Because the source of criminality is from the culture which reduces addicts, not the addiction presence itself, etc., of course, for the criminality of the biggest violence. But the vast majority of criminality comes from the fact that the people who are addicted are criminals. And they're criminals before they're addicted, and so I don't think they must do it. In that particular respect, it will improve. But I can't be sure. If there would be no welfare state and you would have to pay the full consequences of your own actions, would you then be in favor of legalizing all of us? Then I think if you would have to pay the full consequences of your own actions, then I think it would be a very different matter. But I didn't really see any prospect of the dismantling of the welfare system. So since I'm talking about it, it will be easy to legalize products. It will be relatively easy. It will be much harder to dismantle the welfare system. Any other questions? Okay. This is from a question from the European Parliament. Are there any people with more origin than European people? So why? Why? Are there any people with more origins than European people? Are there more reasons for the situation? Are there more reasons for the condition I described than we mentioned as contributing factor? I think there are. I think the major reason that we have these problems are political. And I think the modern liberal democratic state has destroyed social institutions. I think it's out of what they'll come through now of all these intermediate institutions. And I think it's a major culprit for the kind of social world integration that is going on. By the way, I do not speak as an absolute anarchist or a capitalist anarchist. I am not against the state per se. I mean the state of the past, I think, sort of positive functions in terms of maintaining order, preserving my same forcing laws that made social development possible. I think today, I think the question is, are there any people with more origin than European people? Are there any people with more origin than European people? Let's get to the other side. Let's get to the other side.


The problem that we're interested in engaging with here is a broad problem, but also with a kind of site-specific component. And that is, what are all those screens doing in museum spaces? As museums, which are institutions that are deeply dedicated to creating staging, structuring experiences of physical artifacts in a certain kind of viewing space, grapple with, first of all, the increasing prominence of digitally-based forms of art practice, media-based art practices, but also with a larger question of how their traditional object-based collections could interact with a world where data is like a kind of halo that surrounds us in everything from our everyday activities to the kinds of cultural and social and economic experiences that we have. And not surprisingly as a feature of this new set of realities, museums have started to install wall-sized media spaces into the design of their either existing structures or future structures. In the case of the Fogg Museum, which as many of you know is undergoing, is really completing a really kind of dramatic expansion of its traditional plant, there is a designated room that has a media wall. So the question that we're interested in addressing is, what should one, what could one do with such media walls that somehow interacts with the core mission of a museum as a structure, particularly a university museum, a museum that has a particular vocation, not just to prepare high-quality programming, but also to be involved in research and teaching. So our group is going to be working out a series, I think, of programming scenarios, ideas about ways of expanding the visitor experience through this media space that will be part of the Fogg. But again, this is a case study that's applicable to a number of other kinds of cultural institutions, including libraries and archives that are experimenting with these kinds of media walls. And especially I think what we're interested in thinking about is how those parts, those invisible parts of an institution like a museum, which in the case of most museums is by far the bulk of their permanent collections that sit in storage, often invisible even to the very guardians of those collections, how we can somehow create experiences of collections as aggregates using visualization tools, for instance, allow visitors to somehow experience an institution through its collections, to not only navigate those collections, but interrogate them, to make those processes part of the museum visit experience, whether it's on-site or off-site. The other piece I think that we're going to be actively thinking about is the dialogue between those physical collections and these sort of data-driven ways of engaging with collections. What are the emerging, the interesting, the engaging models of curatorial practice that would link these kinds of environments, build a bridge between forms of exhibition practice, of curation that are deeply rooted in the tradition of modern museums, but that somehow add value, expand the sort of range of experiences, the richness of experiences one can have in a face-to-face encounter with a physical artifact? So those are the broad contours of what we're going to be doing. Yeah, I think what's distinctive about engagement in these ideas in the context of this initiative is that we have a case to contend with. We have a physical space that's undergoing transformation. We have an institution that's undergoing transformation. And museums are very challenging institutions to work with. They're very exciting institutions to work with because they afford us such great riches, such great experiences. And yet they have a number of constituencies to whom they're answerable, especially in the context of an academic museum, multiple and often competing missions and interests. And to a certain extent, ultimately, it's a zero-sum game. It depends on who steps up to make these marvellous ideas that we have possible. So the case is an immersion not only in these kinds of very exciting questions about how museums and the objects in them interact with the world, but how that world interacts with the museum, in a sense, and how we actually get something built. So we'll have the opportunity to work with curators, art historians, with designers, with technologists, and spend time thinking about how these institutions body forth in the world. So that engagement with the challenges of real, I think, is something that I'm very excited about.


I think Alaskans, we tend to do things our own way, tend to be turned off by people who are showy and braggy and put other people down. Most Alaskans are really interested in hearing what your ideas are, not what your opinions of other people are, especially if they're not flattering. One of the things about Alaska that's so great is everyone is related, everyone is connected, and that helps really generate an environment where we can work together. And all of those type of dynamics really help with rank choice voting, where I was very conscientious about not insulting anyone or people that other people supported, and there are so few of us that we all have to be pulling in the same direction. You know, I didn't have any thoughts of winning. It was a large field. We didn't know exactly how many people would be in the field. We landed on a field of 48. So I felt like the odds were pretty much insurmountable. At first I was up against three millionaires with tremendous name recognition, with dynastic family names, a lot of connections that I just didn't have. But getting into the final four and the final three really was a game changer. There have been candidates who repeatedly win their seat just by tearing down the other person and beating that other person. And that's just not... I don't think ultimately for America and for democracy, I don't think that's a winning recipe. And I don't really think that Alaskans like that. I really see rank choice voting as a way to help America heal from this really divided time. I mean, we can now see where these closed primaries bring us. It's extreme people on the left. It's extreme people on the right.  They're so busy hollering at each other and calling each other names. I think rank choice voting makes the campaign more civil because we have to be talking to everybody's first choice voters and hope that you are their second choice. I think that's the critical piece is to eliminate closed partisan primaries because that gets more people from the middle who can appeal to a broader cross-section of the voting public. So I am very hopeful about rank choice voting and optimistic about it, and I think it's a very good thing.


The light, we got lost in the park. I got lost in the park on the way up here. So thanks very much to my organizers, co-organizers, and also want to acknowledge the various funding sources for this. What I'm going to try to do today is to raise some challenges rather than providing answers for the most part. And following up to some extent on Daniel's lecture, I want to specifically explore the role that mathematics and physics might play, because that's what this institute was set up for, but also especially suggest the potential benefits of an ecological and an evolutionary perspective. And in turn, the fact that ecologists and evolutionary biologists are learning the power of studying microbial systems as the way to get at some of the general questions of interest. So across a wide range of systems, so I'm not following one with one. I thought I had it all shut off here. So on the upper left, you see starlings over Rome. Plus, if you look carefully, one hawk. But the examination of systems, whether they're physical systems like magnetization or whether they're biofilms or whether they are systems of vertebrates, in all of these systems, there's interest in understanding how macroscopic patterns might emerge from microscopic details, largely independent of some of those details. And so in the scaling problem, one has to try to determine what are the details that are important at the microscopic level. So like these examples, microbial communities are complex adaptive systems. It's a term you're going to hear a lot of. Karina said that's what she works on, which is true. This means systems that are made up of individual agents who interact with each other and based on those interactions, they're emergent patterns. So they're problems that go on multiple scales. They're conflicts that go on on multiple scales. There's complementary function, as you heard right at the end of Daniel's talk. And we won't understand how those macroscopic patterns are emergent from the microscopic interactions and indeed not just the microbial communities but the broader ecosystems of which they are part. Now in physics, whether we're dealing with pressure or changing temperature or the like, statistical mechanics develop that thermodynamics is a way to understand how we can describe the broader macroscopic properties in terms of large numbers of individuals smashing into each other. And it's much easier in physics than it is for biological systems where there are highly nonlinear interactions. So that means we have to find ways to scale to relate phenomena across scales from cells to organisms, from organisms to groups of organisms, all the way up to ecosystems and the biosphere. And if I were talking to a different audience, I would include the social and economic systems in which the biological systems are embedded. And to ask questions like, and you'll hear a lot about this this week, how robust are the properties of the ecosystem? How is the robustness of those macroscopic properties relate to things that are going on much finer scales, the ecological and evolutionary dynamics? And to ask if we can develop nonlinear statistical mechanics of microbial systems and of the ecosystems of which they are part. My former post-doctor, Andrew Hyde, my current post-doctor, Chadstrom, Rone Stocker, an ETH of many of you know, and his group, have a fairly recent grant from the Silence Foundation, which asks, how do we derive macroscopic equations for all these things like the interaction rates from individual-based models of ecological interactions? One of the most successful efforts, in my opinion, to do that is from Mick Follows in his group at MIT, who worked in particular with Penny Chisholm, in which his group has derived a group of equations Daniels suggested to us for a nutrients phytoplankton and zooplankton in the ocean to try to describe the macroscopic dynamics of the ocean using standard uptake functions and things of that sort. And then putting lots of types into competition, doing rather crude evolutionary competition, just to sort it out and see what's left at the end. These models have been remarkably successful in predicting not where individual species will be, but where what they call ecotypes, groups of species across the planet. These models work very well. And we and others have been working in a large number of collaborations in order to try to put these into an evolutionary framework to understand the dynamics. This is a paper that George Hatch, German Eye, just published in Ecosystems. And I want to focus on these, or do I need that? On these features, which is understanding marine ecosystems as complex adaptive systems. And the three things after the colon are the things I want to focus on. Emergent patterns, critical transitions, and public goods problems, which you heard from Daniel at the end of his lecture. Now there's been a large increase in agent-based models. The increase in computational power is very seductive. We can build models in which you can look at individuals and give them all the rules you want. That's the great advantage of these models. It's also the great disadvantage because the models are too complex. You don't really know what's going on. You don't know how robust the outcomes are. They've been used for bird flocks, for fish schools, for those reindeer that you see at the bottom in which individuals are simply following other individuals and wonderful emergent patterns come out. And they can be used in microbial communities. But one has to be very careful because ultimately, especially in this building, one ought to be trying to use those as ways to get at reduced dimensional descriptions, either using well-trodden methods like hydrodynamic limits or moment closure techniques as we're often used in statistical mechanics, or the newer data-driven equation-free methods that my colleague Giannis Kevrickides and others have been developing or other approaches to aggregation. But ultimately, we ought to be taking those into agent-based models and collapsing them into much smaller dimensional sets of equations that help us understand what's going on. So there are a number of theoretical questions I want to raise, especially having to do with the microbiome. And this is where I think the great challenge... My group has been starting to interact with Marty Blazer's group at NYU and Jalex Xavier's group at Sloan Kettering to look at questions of this sort. Can we understand the macroecology, which is a term from ecology, of the microbiome that is how are things distributed within the body and across regions? How do you measure the diversity of the microbiome community? What's the importance of neutral theory? Which got its start in population genetics, but it has become popular since Steve Hubbell's book in ecological theory as well. Or has everything got a purpose there? An important ecological notion is of competitive release. That is, you eliminate one competitor and something else spreads. Can we help to understand the microbiome and medical treatment of it using ecological theory? For example, heavy uses of antibiotics often attacks many organisms, but not see difficile, which often goes into outbreak in individuals that have had treatments with antibiotics. What about the ecosystem dimensions of the human body and the microbiome? Nutrient cycles, you just heard this in the last few slides from Daniel. H. Pallori, I'll come back and talk about in just a moment, but this was especially of Marty Blazer, H. Pallori is declining in the human population, which he thinks is a bad thing. As you may know, H. Pallori has been associated with ulcers and with stomach cancer, but Blazer's hypothesis is it's actually protective against esophageal cancer. So what's going on in terms of our microbiomes? By the way, I recommend his book to those who haven't seen it called Missing Microbes in which he argues that heavy use of antibiotics and caesarean sections has reduced the diversity of our microbiomes and caused outbreaks or rises in things like asthma, esophageal, reflux, obesity, et cetera. What about the theory of biological evasions very well developed and the role of probiotics? I take a probiotic every morning, I don't know what I'm doing. There's no theory associated with it. How many organisms is one introducing and what is the theory associated with the dynamics of the community in relationship to the things that you introduce through probiotics or of course what's received more attention to antibiotics? And can we understand these communities in terms of their ecosystem properties and how those evolve? So these are the four topics I want to focus on. First of all, temporal patterning. In an ecological community, or I should say a traditional ecological community, like a forest community, one understands that disturbances occur all the time, that when those disturbances occur, a certain species that you see on the left there begin to come in to occupy space. They get replaced by those who are not as vagile in getting there but are better competitors which in turn are replaced by others that are more down the spectrum until you get to the competitive dominance at the end that take their time getting there. This is a standard secondary successional pattern. Do those successional patterns exist in the microbiome for sure they do? But what do we know about patterns of colonization and succession in the microbiome? So that's why at the beginning I wanted to raise questions and in microbial communities more generally. What about daily cycles and other cycles? What about like seasonality? What can we say about those? Now, there are two different ways to think about, whoa, you okay Bruce? Make this one a little tension. What was I talking about, everybody remember? There are two different ways to think about what's going on in terms of ecosystem structure and function. One is the issue that I'll come back to at the end that Daniel touched on, the notion that there's co-evolution at multiple levels to the mutual benefit of the host and the biome and of the multiple species who are in centrophic relationships. But in addition to co-evolution there's another process going on which is just self-organization. That is things come together in their emergent patterns and maybe there's a filtering so that the ensembles we see are more robust than other ensembles, but it's not an evolutionary process in the same sense that we typically think about where selection's going on for particular types. To some extent the co-evolution and self-organization can be destructive to the host and to some extent it can be beneficial. But the fact that this can be destructive also of course applies to our own cells. Cancer is an example that I mentioned Martin Blazer's work already about the role of H. Pallori and its relationship both to stomach cancer and GERD. Tumors are a good example of a breakdown of the public goods, of a breakdown of the commons and that tumor cells begin to proliferate and to do so ultimately to the harm of the host. So that's a self-organization process. Selection hasn't operated sufficiently to restrain them. Obviously it has to some extent or else we'd be having cancer at much higher rates. Together with Corina who we'll talk later but probably not about this. And George Pacheco you see in the center of physicists and game peers and David Dingley a terrific oncologist. We've hoped to explore another aspect of the public goods dimensions of tumors in that tumor cells have to produce things like cytokines that are crucial to the growth of the tumor. So it was David's hypothesis that he could engineer tumor like cells that don't produce these and he's done that. And now the question is, which is a game theoretic problem, can you get them to spread? This might be a novel way to treat cancer by getting the proliferation of cheater cells that don't produce what's necessary for the tumor to grow. So I talked about temporal pattern. I wanna talk about alternative stable states now. This has become a topic of great current interest. Not the first time this has become a topic of current interest but Martin Steffer's book called critical transitions in nature and society which talked about the multiple stable states that could exist under certain conditions as shown by the diagram on the left. And the early warning indicators that might be associated with the potential for a system to flip from one state to another. Martin has led a number of publications on this topic on early warning signals and Jeff Gore and his group have been applying this and I imagine we'll hear from Jeff, will we hear from you about it in coffee breaks and things but he's not gonna talk about it. And I think this is a very exciting idea that before the transition there might be early warning indicators of those changes but I wanna exercise some caution here as well. I started in this field before almost any of you here maybe before any of you here. In the late 1960s when Renee Tom popularized the notion of catastrophe theory we spent a lot of time reading those papers, the ways in which systems could transition from one state to another. They became very popular and then because of overreach that is just because A implies B doesn't mean when you see B it's because of A but people started to say well it must be this phenomenon going on all over the place. The whole subject lost its currency and I worry that the overreach on early warning indicators which are characteristic of a certain class of transition would have the same effect. But there are a number of theoretical questions for microbial communities that this raises. Are there alternative stable states in our microbiomes or microbiomes of the microbial systems more generally? For example, could the early application of antibiotics have a permanent or a nearly permanent effect on community dynamics or given enough time would we eventually recover from that? Bruce Levin could answer that question and probably will a little later. Even if the early effects are transient could there be long lasting ecosystem effect? Remember that antibiotics are given in agriculture in order to make animals fatter, it works. That's why Marty Blazer has argued that there's an obesity epidemic that to some extent is associated with the use of antibiotics. We don't know the answer to that. And in the last part I wanna talk about the spatial patterns and coupling in space and time. This is the second goal of the assignments grant that we got. How do you understand the importance of heterogeneity in ecological systems and the spatial distribution of resources and consumers and organisms ability to exploit this. So here's an area that potentially can build on foraging theory from ecology, but it's complicated by problems of detection and uncertainty. For example, one of the most successful sets of equations drawn from mathematics and physics to apply to microbial communities was the work of Evelyn Keller and Lee Siegel long ago. They were interested ultimately in slime molds but that led them to the study of chemotaxis and the development of equations which to this day are still widely used to describe these systems and I think work very well. But how do you derive these equations? They're not usually, there are multiple ways as most of you will know to derive diffusion equations and diffusion like equations. One of them is to just look at fluxes across boundaries and write down those equations. But if you wanna take into account the fact that you're dealing with individuals and derive equations for the movements of individuals, this was what I was implying earlier on and find the correct way to derive the continuum limits, then there are complications. And in the Simon's grant, because of the great capacity of Roman Stocker's group to make measurements in the field, we wanna understand where cells can do chemotaxis in terms of what they can detect and how important noise is. Many of you will know Herbie Levine's work and the beautiful work that he and the late Eshel Ben Jacob did in studying the fantastic emerging spatial patterns in these communities. Well in ecology, there's a lot of work traditionally on spatial patterns. What you just saw were largely in Eshel Ben Jacob and Herb Levine's work, emergent patterns and dogenous patterns in constant environments. But the first thing an ecologist would do would be to map out something like this where this comes originally from the Holdridge diagrams but this is my late colleague, Robert H. Whitaker in which you look at different regions in terms of their temperature and their humidity and say what kind of vegetation you would expect to appear there, not which species but what kinds of vegetation, where would you get tropical rainforest, where would you get tundra, where would you get grassland, et cetera. And to a first approximation these work very well then often within these regions there's some multiple stable states that are possible. There's some overlap, the boundaries are not as sharp as you see in this picture. But we ought to do this at multiple levels for the microbiome. For example, at a previous meeting on this topic that I went to at the Wellcome Trust, another Segre who hoped to be here, Julia Segre, talked about the microbiome of different parts of the skin. Well that's very different than of course than what's in your gut. Most of us when we think about the microbiome the first thing we think about is the gut but there are many other different regions in the body with their own microbial communities. And of course when you get a cold or something of that sort it will affect different regions because different microbes are living in different regions of your body. Can we map this out to understand what the community looks like in different parts of the body and what about globally? Well work has begun on understanding differences in the human microbiome. In response for example to what people eat in different areas as well as other environmental conditions. So we need a Holdridge diagram for the human body and we need a Holdridge diagram to understand the distribution of the microbial communities across the globe. The idea of endogenous patterns as in any kind of community has always interested theoreticians. And the most famous piece of work is that by Alan Turing who was interested in developmental biology and how an organism can develop a homogeneous cell with really no blueprint and just rules for local interactions and no external forces except gravity could develop over time and he proposed an interaction between two species you here and activator species and V and inhibitor which have their own dynamics of interaction given by F and G and then diffuse and diffuse at different rates, you and V. And his idea was that an initially homogeneous distribution of activator and inhibitor could become destabilized when there's a random perturbation of say activator which stimulates production, causes the activator to rise up, causes the inhibitor to rise up but then the inhibitor which ought to be dampening it down if it's got a higher diffuser rate diffuses the way the activator keeps going. There's inhibitor over here which suppresses activator production and that breaks symmetry and patterns can emerge from that. So there's been a lot of work not so clear how well this works for the systems that Turing originally proposed but people have looked at this in ecological systems. On the left the tiger brush patterns that Echudmyron and others, Chris Klausmeyer have studied and this work on the right that Karina led with a number of people here as collaborators in trying to understand the degree to which these patterns might be observed or things like these patterns or these patterns modified by other factors like termite mounts in ecological systems. Early on Lee Siegel and I and Akira Okubo separately proposed that this might work to understand the patterns of plankton distribution in the oceans and we thought about phytoplankton as the activators, zooplankton as the inhibitors. The trouble is that really didn't work very well because the zooplankton don't move randomly so the diffusion model didn't work and in fact, instead of there being more spread out as the inhibitors should be, they're the ones that are more patchily distributed so that led to an attention to collective motion more generally and mathematical approaches to describing those. Going from the individual based model to the ensemble, my student Danny Cohen, I'm sorry, Danny Grubow led this research and later we did work with Glenn Flarell and Don Olson but what Danny did in this thesis was to start with Newton's laws, force equals mass times acceleration but the forces were not just the forces inherited from the fluid dynamics and from chemotaptic motion but from individuals moving towards each other so this is an individual based model. He did this for every individual, developed the statistical mechanics on the ensemble and then using some local rules about Poisson arrivals derived Eulerian descriptions so that there are standard ways to do this and very few, little of it has been done for microbial communities. The last thing I wanna mention was the last thing that Daniel talked about which is the last bullet in this paper namely public goods and their role in these systems. Whatever we have, as I said at the beginning, phenomena going on a multiple scales in an evolutionary process, there's potential conflict between what's good for the individuals and what's good for the group and how do we get to the emergent property? So as I said, this is the last part of Daniel's talk. I almost put down the penultimate part because he went from talking about public goods to talking about the emergence of ecosystems but I would argue and I think he would too that that's still a public goods problem. How do we get the emergent properties of the community that sustain everything? So in ecology, there are lots of examples of public goods and common pool resources. I don't wanna get into the economic distinction between them, think of them as the same for now. The most obvious one is information. When you have collective search going on, some individuals are foragers and some are simply scavengers on that. How much of the available nutrient pool do you use up?  But if there's a structured environment, you might actually leave things to use later. In particular, if you have scenario force that Kielearn or something else that holds it available to you, that might be a good thing to do. But once it's out there, a neighbor can still steal it so there is the same sort of conflict that Daniel talked about. Nitrogen fixation poses exactly the same problem. Individuals fix nitrogen. Let's say a plant does it, it's in their leaves, the leaves drop to the ground, neighboring trees can utilize it. Antibiotics are classic public goods problems in two ways. One is in nature, bacteria, for example, produce antibiotics and I'll talk about this a little bit more in just a second, other individuals can take advantage of that by being resistant to it but still benefiting from the competitive effect on natures. And we all know about the problem of antibiotics in our societies and the overuse of those antibiotics. And bacteria produce extracellular polymers that allow them to form biofilms. Many of you said you're working on quorum sensing and these also produce an extracellular matrix for growth. In the paper with George Hagstrom, we talk in particular about syntrophy and the point that which others have documented that often one finds a strong correlation with the genes for production of different extracellular enzymes. So there seems to be some sort of high level cooperation going on. It's been called the black queen high thought hypothesis that different lineages either specialize in public goods production or in cheating. This is very analogous to the producer's grounder literature in ecology, behavioral ecology. Bacteria also produce toxins to which they're immune but as Bruce and Lynn Shal showed when they tried to evolve this in a well-mixed medium, it was very difficult to do because cheaters arose. However, and this is work with them, I actually used to give Bruce credit for it but he told me I shouldn't do that. Rick Durett and I built a spatial model that showed that if you had the cheaters together with the wild types and the toxin producers in the same culture in a spatially structured environment you could get coexistence of all three types. The problem is that the colicin is the toxin. Producer allows the individuals to produce it to out-compete the colon sensitive types but the type that's resistant can out-compete the producer because it doesn't pay all the price of production and still gets the benefits but it loses in direct competition with the colicin-sensitive type so you get a non-hierarchical competition. In a spatial environment, the three types chase each other around and you get coexistence. And this was followed up by Ben Kerr and his collaborators who did experimental work building on our model and demonstrated that this can really go on in nature. And finally, as many of you know much better than I, bacteria also cooperate. They produce these public goods. I already mentioned the extracellular polymers that are important for quorum sensing. And so with Kerry Nadell, who was a joint student between me and Bonnie Bassler and Jalex Xavier and Kevin Foster, we examined this problem some years ago taking into account that some bacterial types turn on the production of this extracellular polymer at high density, some do it at low densities, some potentially do it constitutively, some don't do it at all. So we put these types into competition, allowed nutrients to flow and watched under what conditions one could get to production of these extracellular polymers in relationship to mixing, et cetera. So there's a lot of potential for modeling to understand these problems. I stuck these slides in after listening to Daniel's talk because the sorts of questions that come up came up several centuries ago in economics where Adam Smith, whom you see pictured on the left, said against Charles Darwin here, talked about the invisible hand. He said that the baker, by pursuing his own interest frequently promotes the interest of society more effectively than when he really intends to promote it. This is an idea that at least produces many notions of an economic organization that society's more organized themselves. This is sort of a very conservative philosophy, let the free market operate in that area. Of course, we learned in 2008 that we hadn't heard before that the invisible hand that Adam Smith talked about doesn't protect society, that one needs some balance. So I think it's an open question, the degree to which these sort of considerations apply to microbial systems. So let me just summarize. Collective phenomena and emergence characterize all complex adaptive systems from microbial communities to the biosphere. There's a potential for critical transitions. Fundamental challenge for those with mathematical and physical inclinations is to learn on a scale from the macroscopic to the macroscopic and understand in particular consensus formation and how collective phenomena emerge, but also characteristic of these systems is conflict between individuals and collectives at the public goods problems that they raise. And so finally, I just want to go back to where I was at the beginning and to say that I think methods from not only mathematics and physics, but ecology and evolution have a lot of potential that Bruce has been arguing this for decades ever since I was in high school. To inform the study of these systems, but I also want to argue that all four of these disciplines can be inspired by these new applications and lots of examples in mathematics in particular where applications, for example, for biology have inspired new ideas in mathematics. So it's a great time to be in there.


I'm going to talk about controversial issues in EFL classrooms. This is based on some of the research that I did as part of my dissertation for my MA in English language teaching and applied linguistics. So I'll explain a little bit more about the context in a second, but first I just want to show you a few examples of some recent world events really. And I just want you to have a think about what happened in your classroom surrounding these events. So did they come up in class? Did you raise them? Did students raise them? And as a result, did any controversy emerge from them? So the US elections and I guess since then as well, Brexit, the equality referendum here, the refugee crisis and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. So if you want to just have a think about it and reflect on it for a few seconds or if you would prefer to maybe choose one or two of them to have a quick discussion. Yeah, sure. So the reason that I selected these topics, I could have chosen any number of topics, but the reason that I selected these was for the most part quite a few of them are seemingly fairly innocuous. But in my experience they have led to potential controversy in classrooms, in multilingual diverse classrooms. And it was actually the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the aftermath of that that led me to my research. So before I go on to that in more detail, what have you got here? Parsnips. So what are the parsnips? What's the relevance? Who else here? Alcohol. Pork, alcohol. So parsnips is this acronym for a kind of a list of taboo topics that publishers, so publishers use this list of kind of taboo topics as a guideline for what not to include in course books. So politics, alcohol, religion, asexuality, narcotics. The eye. It's isms, basically ideology. So anything from communism to racism. Pork can also be sometimes it's pornography. This is an unofficial list. So my kind of second question that led me to the research was, is this sanitisation that is appearing increasingly in globalised course books? Is this creeping into classrooms as well? So there are the kind of two questions that led me to my research which was how teachers approach politically and culturally sensitive issues in multilingual classrooms. A bit of a mouthful and a huge area, but what I was interested in looking at was, you know, I wasn't so interested in the specific topics or anything. I thought it was more about how teachers deal with them when they arise both in a planned way and spontaneously in class. Which is why I was looking at it as the springboard, I guess, was the kind of current affairs things, the more unavoidable topics. So I interviewed experienced EFL teachers with a track record of excellence in the classroom. So it was teachers that I was working with who I knew for a long time, who were very, very experienced and had high levels of qualifications. I was in a typical language school context, it was actually in London. Very, very mixed demographics and very mixed motivations as well of the students and very mixed ages. A super diverse multilingual setting, so there was a huge range of nationalities among students. And the key thing is that, you know, in a language school where people are there specifically to learn English language, there is no specific content. So the content is driven by the language. So I was focused on what teachers are using in the context. So the first question was, what are teachers' attitudes towards sensitive issues? And overwhelmingly and surprisingly given that they were experienced teachers who considered themselves to be, you know, very politically aware, the overwhelming attitude was fear. And that seems quite dramatic, but actually the language that teachers used during the interviews was very dramatic. And it was very much related to fear and I'm afraid and I'm terrified of approaching these kind of things. So what kind of things were teachers afraid of? So they were afraid of the teacher causing offence, of being ethnocentric, possibly, you know, as I said it was in London, so maybe a bit of colonial heritage, colonial guilt there as well, but they were afraid of offending students and imposing their views in some way. They were afraid of students causing offence, they were afraid of relinquishing their expert status. So if there was a topic safer instance, if it was a geopolitical conflict between learners' regions, so at the time it was while the Russia and Ukraine incident was ongoing and the teachers were dealing with classes with, you know, a lot of Russians and Ukrainians in the classrooms. And rather than, you know, moving to them, moving to the students and getting their thoughts and feelings and opinions and expertise really as people from the area, they were more comfortable with just standing back and not approaching it at all because they didn't want to be the ones who didn't know. And they were afraid of course of conflict and tension within the classroom, especially given situations like what I just described. So the strategies then that teachers use, so if fear is the main approach, the main strategy that they used was avoidance. So rather than approaching these topics, and again I'm talking about a lot of topics that would have been, you know, world issues, global issues that would have been there, you know, in the classroom, at the touch of a button. All of these teachers were dealing in classrooms with technology, with Wi-Fi, so they all had access to various news sources. They would have used them quite a lot, but still they were reluctant to approach any of these kinds of issues. But what I found throughout the interviews, through reflection and narrative inquiry, where the kind of conclusions that the teachers almost unanimously came to themselves when they thought about it was actually this fear and their assumptions were mostly unfounded. It wasn't based on anything. As I said, experienced teachers, they hadn't actually had any experiences that justified the fears. The worst-case scenario that they discussed was a kind of, okay, let's agree to disagree on that one, you know. Or there might have been kind of some mild tension in the class which quickly blew over and then, you know, again, teachers came to the realisation that actually that was kind of good because it broke the ice and it freed up discussion. This is just a quote from one teacher who described a situation where there was, from the course book, there was a discussion on evolution and there was a student in the class who had never heard of the concept of evolution. And other students were surprised and shocked and were kind of, you know, quite agast at it. And the teacher got into this difficult situation where he felt very ambivalent. He didn't know how to deal with it. And this is what he said in the interview that if it was anywhere else apart from a classroom, of course I would say that evolution is a fact, not for debate. But I think in a multicultural, multinational classroom, it's difficult to be so forthright.  And what ended up in his words happening was that the student who, he described himself as a mislearning opportunity because the student who hadn't heard of the concept of evolution because it wasn't in his educational background. Through no fault of his own, felt, I think, a little bit ostracised and distanced from the rest of the class because he just kind of brushed over it, who was never actually dealt with. And, you know, he felt that other students were kind of talking about him and laughing at him and it created a bit of a division in the class by knocking from together. So I want to look at how these types of incidents can be developed as positive learning opportunities. And also the teacher's role in that.  So research has shown that what those, the beliefs of those teachers, what they showed was actually unfounded in terms of learner beliefs. So research has shown that learners, the teachers tend to underestimate learners resilience, their ability to manage conflict and their emotional intelligence. Keeping in mind, of course, that these are adult learners with a very broad background. However, there is evidence of benefits of approaching these issues. So it increases learner and teacher motivation. More challenging controversial content can lead to deeper engagement. Non-trivial content, as it's sometimes described, can engage learners both cognitively and effectively, leading to fuller self-investment. So when learners are more concerned about their message rather than how it's getting across. Teachers who are willing to embrace sociocultural difference are received better by learners. So acknowledging difference. And as one of my interview, he said, if it's a good, healthy discussion, the elephant in the room is let out and they can relax and talk about something that matters rather than shopping. So finally, just some suggestions for the teacher's role in avoiding this kind of avoidance. Facilitate respectful debate. Encourage critical thinking among learners. Allow space for more than one narrative. Allow multiple perspectives. Don't position yourself as the expert. We're experts in language, not necessarily in content. And allow the students themselves to be cultural informants, so give them that power. There's plenty of other ways, so everything else that you might be able to think of yourselves. That's it.


Entrepreneurship Tuesday. We are all about matters, business and economic growth as well. And we have an interesting guest who is live with us in the studio. But first things first, you can interact with us on our social media. And that includes Facebook, Instagram and on Twitter as well is at Y244Channel. You can find us on the hashtag Y in the morning. And by the way, we are available on DSTV, GoTV, literally all TV distribution platforms as Y244Channel. And we also got a TikTok channel as well at Y244Channel and personally at Brian Sokwa 101, including everywhere else on social media. Now, the topic that we're about to delve into is a very interesting topic. If you are an interested person, just move close to your TV with a pen and paper because they're going to talk about cross-border trade. What exactly is it? And none other than to talk about this is the president of the... She's the president of DSC to Kenya Chamber of Commerce, Christine Miner. She is live with us in studio. Good morning, Christine. Good morning, Brian. Right, you're welcome. How are you feeling this morning? Good, good. The weather is cool. Yes. And thank you for having me. You're welcome. It was raining cats and dogs, they say. Yes. But now let's get to know you a little bit. How did you get here? Because I'm looking at it.  Now, just talk about a little bit of your journey and how you got to be the president of DRC to Kenya Chamber of Commerce. Yes. So first, I'm going to explain the DRC Kenya Chamber of Commerce is would say a platform or an organization that is advocating for bilateral trade between Kenya and the DRC. So the reason why it was founded in 2021, it's been two years so far, was because we saw that there was a gap between the trade that the rest of East African countries are doing with DRC and Kenya. And so there was the need of educating people and just sensitizing the business community that there is opportunity in DRC and vice versa. Sensitizing the Congolese that they should look at Kenya as a market and also the potential that is also in Kenya for the Congolese market. Right. But my journey as an entrepreneur, because I am an entrepreneur, started when I was just 21. I launched my first business in South Sudan and it was actually a manufacturing business. I was very young and it was quite risky but I had the opportunity in this country. I remember we had a small juice business with my mom and the business was not doing so well here. The competition in Kenya was very high. And so someone told me, why don't you take your business to South Sudan? The country is very hot and I think your juice would do very well there. Right. And believe it or not, I reached out to one of my friends who was there. I got a little bit of capital. I think it was $400 a ticket and I went with my goods and my raw materials to make juice in South Sudan. Right. And that's where my journey started. Right. And it went well but I had to progress into soap making business. Right. So this was now at 22 years. Right. I had my own employees and then moved on to starting a marketing and PR firm. Right. In South Sudan. Where I was for about five to six years. And so my move now, when I was in South Sudan, I was part of the Kenya Business Association in South Sudan. Right. The Association of Kenyans in South Sudan. Right. I used to assist Kenyans a lot when it came to issues like when some people are arrested or issues to do with burial or just Kenyans who want to invest in South Sudan and they want to find their way around the government offices. So I was part of the Association leadership and also welcoming the politicians and the leaders from Kenya who'd come to South Sudan and tell them what our issues were, liaising with the embassy. And so when I moved, when there was issues in South Sudan and moved business to DRC, I continued to do the same. Right. So my passion was to really assist and sensitize Kenyans on the opportunities across our border. Right. Because I believe that our people are very industrious, very hardworking. And so I believe that the opportunities for Kenyans across the border. Right. And so that is why I continued in DRC and did the same by launching the Chamber of Commerce. Right. And of course leading it, yes. Right. Interesting journey. I feel like you weren't as a person selling juice and now you are rushed to, you know, this throne that you have right now being the president. Now, just to back it a little bit. Initially before you went that direction, you mentioned that you did marketing. Like how did you lose off an edge out of that to this? So I, well, I did, you know, this is what happens, I think, with business people. Right. We do move a lot with the demand in the market. So you move from one product to another or a service to another based on the demand that's already there. And that's my business journey, basically. And so I moved from PR and marketing, not because I wanted to actually, but because the war that started in South Sudan. So a lot of people left. There was an exit of a lot of businesses. Right. And, you know, during that period of exiting, you don't know what to, that's when I just moved business to DRC. I was also doing logistics. So when I moved to DRC, I didn't move with the marketing and PR firm. I just moved with the logistics. I had been in contact with the DRC markets when I was still in South Sudan. So it was just natural for me to continue as we wait for the issues in South Sudan to settle. So when I was in DRC is when I noticed that first of all, they want many Kenyans and especially in the areas of Kinshasa. I would imagine maybe it's because of the language barrier and also a lot of people do not know the opportunities that are there. Because they speak French? Yes. The language barrier, they speak French and Lingala. Right. However, I always say that language barrier... But you're conversant with that as well? Yes. But now you can speak Lingala and French? Not Lingala, but French, intermediary French, yes. A little bit of French. But I always say that language should not be a barrier because when I went there for the first five, six, seven years, I wasn't speaking French and I was still able to do business. And so by noticing that there wasn't many Kenyans and you would notice that there are so many Chinese and Indians and Lebanese, just people from all over. And also Uganda, you get into supermarkets, you find Ugandan goods, but you just don't find any Kenyan products anywhere or just Kenyans basically trading. So that's the push that causes us to come together with the officials on that side and decide to promote trade between Kenyans and DRC through the chamber. Wow, interesting. Yes. I know what to ask. What are some of maybe the achievements that you managed to bug, not only just for yourself, that you'd say even when you have a chance again to meet the current president, that you'd say maybe, yes, I achieved this but I think the government should come in and at least do extra. What are some of them? So apart from assisting individual business people to set up in DRC, just assisting them to get through the legal requirements, educating them on the culture differences between our country and DRC. We've been able to do a lot of sensitization in Kenya through several events. We were able to do an agribusiness conference. The very first, I should say, conference with the DRC government in Kenya to ever be done. So we did that last year. The agribusiness conference was a success and we were able to secure tracts of land for several Kenyan investors to do agro production in DRC. We were also able to launch something called the Micro and Small Enterprise package for the chamber. I am a strong believer that cross-border trade is not just for the big weeks. It's not just for the big banks and the big corporations because I went across the border with my small juice business. So I'm very passionate with assisting the Micro and Small Enterprise community to also think about crossing the border with their trade. So we did a successful launch of the Micro and Small Enterprise package. This next week, we're actually launching an ad network platform. We've been able to get data for 12 million Congolese, a market of 12 million Congolese. That's a huge number. It's like half of the population. Yes, so we have access to 12 million Congolese online. And through our ad network, which we are launching in the next one or two weeks, our Micro and Small Enterprise will be able to access the market of 12 million people. Through our website, it's going to be a self-service advertising platform that is very, very affordable and very well customized based on the products and the services that our business people are going to be advertising. So the idea of that Congo is so far and we always have to come and maybe connect you with someone physically. You just get on the platform, put your products and your services and you're able to access the market in the DRC. And of course, vice versa for the Congolese who are in Kenya. Something else we've also been able to do. There's a lot, but I'll say this finally. We've been able to secure scholarships through the Commonwealth of Learning, through P4CDA. We've been able to secure 200 scholarships for online courses in about 10,000 courses online for the Congolese and the Kenyans, especially those who just left university who are looking to have extra skills so that they are more employable. So these are some of the things that we've been able to do as a Chamber. Well, fantastic. Great achievements right there because I'm looking at it also as well as from your background like how you started and here you are. Now, let's switch gears a little bit. For a person who's watching right now and they want to go that direction. Of course, these are two countries neighboring each other and now he is trade involved. Maybe what are some of the rules and the fundamentals and some of the basics that they need to be aware in terms of even trade and this includes even, I understand something like tax restraints can come up especially when it's between two countries that are trading. Of course, the constitution of that country and ours, these things they have to agree on. I understand also before it is kept, trade embargoes. I don't know if you met that as well. Well, like you realize Kenya, we can't do this but in Congo we can do this but then let's sit down and talk and have a conversation and then we can allow this to happen. So talk about that for a person who's watching right now. Yes, so and this is where like I think you had asked before where would we want assistance from government? I think our government has done a lot so far to allow trade to flow freely between the DRC and Kenya. Number one is that DRC joined its African community. So that was a very big step because once they join a lot of legal requirements are going to be a bit almost the same between the countries. Customs for goods are going to be unified but I would say that there are still a lot of issues or challenges between the two countries. Number one is that we do not share a border. So for us to trade with the DRC it means that the logistics costs would be higher than our neighboring countries. Number two would be of course the language barrier. And other things I would say like for example there are some products that we sell in Kenya like Mira and in DRC they consider it a drug. So just being able to discuss with the government and show them that this is not a drug, this is a product we sell in Kenya and we export and it is actually safe for consumption. Those are some of the issues that we always have to discuss and advocate with the government to allow the products in Kenya to be sold in DRC. But I would say that we especially the peace process that Kenya has been championing the Nairobi agreement and the Luanda agreement. It's come a long way in making sure that there is peace in the eastern side of DRC because Kenya trades a lot more with the eastern side of DRC. Why? Because it's closer and also because they speak Swahili. And so just the step that the East African community has taken to enable peace in the eastern part of DRC is also very encouraging for the business community. And we're hoping that with the strides they've taken that we're going to see a peaceful DRC because DRC is open for business and then there's going to be confidence in people again to trade with the country. But let me just say like I always say that DRC is a safe country and the issues that are there are mostly on the eastern side. So there is another whole part of the country that you can actually safely trade and that's why we advise people at the chamber. Before you come to us, let us advise you based on the product and the service that you want to take to the country which are the best areas for it. So that you don't waste a lot of time doing your market research only to end up with information that we already had for you. So it could be something that we believe in Goma it would do well. It would probably do well in Kinshasa or in Lumumbashi. So these are the kind of advice that we are able to give. What are the places that are high security, the security is not so good and which are the places that are safe. But so far the government has been very helpful. I think apart from just unifying the common market between DRC and East Africa once we are able to see that and there is no visa policy. Does it still apply? Has it been approved? Not yet. I think it's still in the works. But so far Kenyans can get visa on arrival or you can just get the visa at the DRC Embassy in Kenya before traveling there. Yes. From what I hear you saying is that there's a lot of opportunities in there. Yes. And what if when it comes to mentorship especially young people that have dreams of being like you in Lumumbashi or Goma like you mentioned there may be platforms that they can access right here in Kenya or just in case they're on the other side as well. And there's a place where you mentioned the Kenyan Embassy partnering with also the Kenyan Embassy in DRC and also vice versa as well. Yes. So far our plans for the youth have started with us with the scholarship program that we've started with. We're in partnership with a consulting firm in the DRC that does mentorship for the youth. And so the first step was to offer the scholarships because we found that that was the need that they have most to be skilled and be able to be ready for the job market. However we do work closely like I said with the Kenyan Embassy in DRC whenever we need any assistance or whenever we are stuck or there are challenges we definitely contact our Embassy in DRC and whenever we also have like the events we had here in Kenya where we had the delegation from the DRC come for the Agri-Business Conference we leased with the DRC Embassy in Kenya and so we work closely with both embassies to make sure that their solutions and that the challenges are met. Right. Interesting. Do you guys have things like trade fairs and expos that foster let's say culture exchange? There's a place where you mentioned how's the culture in DRC and what's the culture in Kenya? Can they interact and can we come up with something special? Have you conducted that so far that has enabled trade between both sides? Yes. So we were part of the trade mission that was done by equity and the DRC and Kenyan government in 2021. Right. And it was a successful trade mission of about 300 Kenyan business people that traveled to Kinshasa, Lumumbashi, Goma and Bujimai. So that was one of the trade missions we were part of. So we've not had our own but we've been working in partnership with other organizations that are holding trade missions and sensitize the business communities of the trade missions that are in existence. We were also part of another trade mission last year but the trade mission was between really the rest of Africa and DRC. So we were also in partnership with an organization that held a trade mission last year in June. However, our plan really is to actually customize business trade fairs or business missions, let me call them business missions for smaller groups because we find that when it's a trade mission for a bigger group people feel that their needs have not been met or it was really generalized. So what we are doing is we are organizing business missions that are specific to the sectors for our business community in Kenya and in DRC. So if it's hospitality, we do a small mission for a few people for hospitality, if it's ICT and all the other sectors. Right, interesting. And what are some of the, let's say tips, you had shared that in one of your description what are some of the tips for the youth maybe? And also women, you know, there's something called FLEM, female-led and made enterprises that is to support the women, what are some of the tips that you'd give for people, especially like general now, you can just give general. But also if you want to narrow it down to the women that would want to venture into cross-border trade. Number one, I'd say first of all, just be confident. Be confident and be ready to take the risk. So that's the first step.  But there are certain disciplines to any business, whether it's in Kenya or you're crossing the border. Secondly, don't cut corners. I always say do not cut corners. So it doesn't matter who tells you, I'll find this for you in an easy way. You don't have to do this. You don't have to, you know, you don't have to go through the registration process as they tell you. Yes, I always say don't cut corners because it will come back and bite you. So just follow the due process. Be patient and as long as you have guidance and that is why the DRC, Kenya Chamber of Commerce is in existence, as long as you have guidance of people who know the market and understand the market and the environment, then you'll be good to go. Also be very cautious of the culture. I think you find that a lot of people, probably your business is doing so well here. You know you're known and you're famous and people love your product. And then you cross the border and no one really knows you exist and you have to humble yourself and pick up from scratch. So be ready to do that. Be ready to be patient with people because you're talking about people from different cultures. Alright, interesting. And maybe just briefly I had forgotten I must ask this. For a person who wants to export and import products from both sides, is there maybe like a process or is there a portal? How much do they have to go to the embassy as well? This platform that you've created will enable them to do that seamlessly. Yes, exactly. So the platform we've created is actually to cater for that which has been a challenge. Number one, getting the market and number two, getting your goods across the border. So when we launch the ad network, the platform on our website, then the market will be able to access either markets through our platform. And movement of goods between the countries is really not an issue actually. It's never been an issue. It's just that people need to be guided on which areas they should focus on. Alright, my director tells me we are past our time like already five minutes.  Do you have a social media platform, a portal, etc. In just less than a minute, this is your camera. Yes, so our social media platforms I'd say for the Chamber is our website is www.drckenyachamber.com We are also on Twitter and we are also on LinkedIn as DRC Kenya Chamber. I myself am also on Twitter and I'm also on LinkedIn as Christine Minor on both platforms. Alright, I know you can't give your number but it's alright. You're comfortable? Once I go to the website, there's a number that you can contact, yes. Alright, interesting. Thank you so much. You have been speaking to Christine Minor. She's the president for DRC Kenya Chamber of Commerce telling us just a quick scoundrel of what happens right then. Definitely, if you're watching right now you've learned one, two, three things that will help you go in that direction and as well she has left her details. If you're interested, please go there right now and interact with her and contact her. On this note, we're going to take a very short break. We are coming back next with the rest of the programming. Kalami Val is up next. So stick around for that conversation at 224 for the channel. I'm Brian Soko101. The hashtag is still Y in the morning. Stick around.


Karakam heads of government have drafted a blueprint for the economic recovery of the region from COVID-19. The heads have accepted the final report of the Karakam Commission on the Economy, which contains a 12-point action plan in response to COVID-19. Central to that plan is the proposal by St. Lucia's Prime Minister for a brand strategy to better an evil market penetration. Here's Lisa Joseph. If we could now collectively spend more money on one singular brand for the West Indies, that's how much further we could go. Prime Minister Hon. Alan Chastney is confident that the Caribbean can derive more earnings as a region under a unified marketing brand. In fact, the Caribbean tourism organization, the CTO, realized this during two critical periods, 1991 during the Gulf War and 2008 financial crisis. The CTO launched campaigns advertising the Caribbean as one destination with multiple options. The success of the Caribbean brand and the power of that Caribbean brand that's been built all over those years, many countries that you would not normally associate as being in the Caribbean now affiliated themselves to the Caribbean. So Cancun is considered Caribbean, Costa Rica is considered Caribbean, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, even Colombia in Cartagena is considered now Caribbean. And so is that really the image that people can note when they think of Caribbean, whether or not, but they use that word Caribbean to help promote the image of their country. Hon. Chastney says branded differentiation is important and as such the Caribbean should embrace and build on the powerful brand already created by West Indies Cricket, the University of the West Indies, and the West Indies Rum and Spirit Producers Association. You can still have your national identity, so San Lucia, West Indies, Jamaica West Indies, St. Kitts West Indies, to show you how it works. You can't put Cancun West Indies, you can't put Guatemala West Indies, you can't put Panama West Indies. Right, so it is a very definable group and when you now start thinking of the power of that brand, it's not just tourism, it's the success of our cricket teams, it's the success of our track stars, it's the success of our entertainers, it's all of the collective successes of the West Indies and more importantly when you include now the history of the West Indies. Carycom Heads of Government have taken note of the idea and have integrated it into a common tourism promotion plan. The proposal is also included in the economic recovery plan for the Caribbean post-COVID-19. Hon. Roosevelt Scarrett is the Prime Minister of Dominica. We need to create a West Indies brand as was indicated by the Prime Minister of St. Lucia. We are known as the West Indies, the University of the West Indies as indicated, the West Indies cricket and I think it's important for us to start promoting this definition of ourselves as the West Indies rather than the Caribbean which extends way beyond the Carycom Group. Prime Minister Chassani says all sectors can benefit from the West Indies marketing brand. The diaspora Hon. Chassani suggests can be enlisted to drive the brand in their adopted homelands. The Prime Minister of St. Lucia is longing to see the creation of a West Indies music label among other ventures. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting.