Northeast states of India fascinate tourists with their unique natural beauty. Tall mountains mesmerizing green valleys waterfalls lakes wildlife and people amaze us beyond our imagination. The Honorable Prime Minister of India, Srinarendra Modi, has recognized the infinite possibilities of these states and has given the highest priority to the development of the eight northeastern states. The government of India has taken several concrete steps for the development of the northeast states, especially in providing connectivity through rail, road, air and waterways. In addition, mobile and broadband connectivity is being ensured in the entire northeastern region. As an outcome, even the remotest of the villages today in the northeast are now being connected with the rest of the world through internet facility. The vision of digital India through the national broadband mission is being implemented in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizuram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura by the Department of Telecommunications. Broadband connectivity is being provided to the people of northeast through optical fiber cable, mobile towers and satellites. Over 6,000 gram panchayats are connected under Bharat Net project and 1,787 mobile towers have been commissioned in many uncovered villages. It is proposed to saturate all villages of the northeast with broadband connectivity by 2025. With the vast infrastructure, digital revolution is taking place in the region and today it has become easier for people to access education, health, business and agricultural services. People of far off and remote villages in the northeast states are now becoming self-reliant and by sitting in their homes they are able to access government services just with click of a button. They are taking local products to the global markets. Farmers are now managing their crops better and are able to sell online. Students are accessing online education services. Broadband connectivity is also creating new employment opportunities for the youth. In Meghalaya, the Department of Telecommunications has sanctioned 1,294 crore rupees for setting up 4G mobile towers in all the unconnected villages and national highways. 321 towers have already been commissioned so far and 891 more towers are planned for completion by December 2023. These 1,212 towers will ensure saturation of 4G mobile services in the entire state of Meghalaya. Because of internet, I cancelled this local handicraft online. It is very easy for us to access internet services. We are able to do all our official work because of being connected in a remote area. We are having a lot of trouble because of internet and online orders are also coming. We are also able to access internet services. We are also able to do all our official work because of being connected in a remote area. Fulfilling the dream of honorable Prime Minister for the northeastern region's connectivity, the government and telecom service providers are working relentlessly to bring in 5G services to the northeast. This journey of development will continue as we pledge to bring smiles to the people of northeast India.


So I will speak about electronic skin in robotics and humans. So when it comes to humans, it is more or less the second skin I will be talking about. It's a multidisciplinary topic, having some input from electronics, material science, and some from biology, chemistry as well. So before I start the presentation, I go to the main part, the brief background about my group, which is bendable electronics and sensing technologies. What we do is we try to understand the sense of touch in humans, how we encode our data from various parts of the body, and then use this information to develop electronic skin for robotics. Giving robots the sense of feeling, our touching object, our soft object. And in the process, some of these technology also then brings back to, is brought back to wearables or prosthetic limbs, et cetera, to improve our quality plan. So for example, health monitoring. And then leading to which leads to cell health management. Some of the examples of robotic hands and skin solutions that we have developed are shown here. This is the high-resolution technology integrated here on the palm of a robotic robot. This has 30-20 robotic hands with sensors embedded in the structure itself, so nothing outside. It's like our old receptors inserted in the skin, embedded deep in the skin, that kind of structure. In fact, what we offer here is a robot covered with electronic skin. Graphy-based skin, in this case, on a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb, which is ILIM, coming from TouchBionics here in Levison, and another example of 3D printed ant. We also in my group work on virtual real and virtual interactions. So creating virtual objects, as you see here. This is virtual fire, skeleton, and controlling these virtual objects, either through gestures or even directly touching them and feeling these virtual objects. These are my students. They respect their own images here. The key which is that you can have in space, and then you can interact with the virtual objects, as well as you can feel them. For example, in this case, you are lifting the globe, but you have a sense of great judgment. So that's something not there yet. This is the first prototype we developed where you have haptic feedback. You can feel these objects. In this case, there's a virtual push button.  So that's the kind of work we are doing with the globe. The core technology behind all these works is divided into four parts. One is related to starting with nanoscale structures. So building atom by atom, nanowires, then printing those nanowires on flexible substrates, and printing them in such a way that they lead to electronics. So it is not the electronics that you see at home, which is all kind of light electronics. So it's the electronics we develop is something that can bend. And that's important because skin is present on a curvy substrate's surfaces. It's not flat. Here, the world is not flat. There are so many curvy objects around us. If you want to cover them with skin, if skin, in a sense, if you want to give them a sense of feeling in whatever, it could be a pressure, temperature, or any other sensitive parameter, then you have to have that kind of arrangement. Here, complimenting this box here is the ultra-computers. These are the chips that we use in our computers. Currently, they are flat, as I mentioned. But if you pin them down, it can be flexible. It's like you got a aluminum bar. If you take these slices, like aluminum foil, we use every day, which is quite flexible, but the bar itself is not flexible. So we pin down the chips and make them flexible. We also use materials, such as graphene, to make transparent skin. In some cases, transparency is important. I'll come back to some examples where I'll show why transparency is important. And integrating all these in such a way that they lead to the full coverage of body, whether in this case. And all this work is the key people who are behind all this work. My team is shown here. And before I start, I would like to acknowledge all their hard work. So here is the outline of my lecture. I'll spend a couple of minutes to explain why electronic skin is important, both for robotics and for humans. And then I'll move to the second part where I'll explain the technologies that are available immediately in midterm and long term. And these technologies are also a dimensional scale, some are narrow scale, some are chip scale, which is a centimeter, size scale, and some are large area. For example, you have already seen where the entire body of humanoid was covered in this scale. Then I'll go to using these technologies, how these technologies we are trying to use them to go of second skin or go use them in variables, etc. I'll go to that part and finally I'll conclude this lecture. So coming to the first part, why electronic skin is important. I would like to start by asking questions to all of you. What is the first sensory monality you came across? Any biological animal comes across life. So that's the first question, and the first question answer is given here into the sense of touch. It is the first feeling that we have in the book itself, you have sense of touch. You don't have vision there, you don't have audio there. Sense of touch is also important in our daily life. If you look at this example, think of putting your hand on an ice floor for some time and then try to grasp an object nearby. Very likely you will fail. You can see that this glass in this case will slip off of your hand and you will not be able to do anything about it because for temporary or sensory sense of touch, your sensory feeling is lost. This also highlights the importance of Earth sensing or through artificial being, the quality of electronic skin. And if this is so important, the next question to all of us is why are we developing prosthetic limbs which are cosmetic in nature? Why do we not have the sense of touch? And then the next question is what can we do to bring sense of touch in such systems, in such artificial systems? If you look at other examples, in this case robotic syncopulation, if you go to a car manufacturing plant, you will see how it's working in cages as you see here. There is no human in this cage. And if by chance any human enters into the space, you also come across this type of use. Now, the question that this raises is why are we creating machines which are unseen? In this case, it is no fault of machine, machine was meant to work in a cage. It turns that human entered into the space. So then question is if we can cover the solution in this case, if we can cover these robots with something that can detect a person approaching a robot, then it will become unsafe. So in that sense, touch sensing or skin is also important for safety. In future we talk about more and more interaction between human and robots. Also at home, we already see some carpet cleaning robots, et cetera, at home. And this is going to increase the future. And if that's the case, safety becomes important. Safe interaction is critical. So robotics is evolving faster also in the scenario of industry 4, where we expect robot and human to work next to each other as school workers. And in that case, physical interaction is there. Wherever physical interaction is involved, sense of touch is important. I can give lots and lots of examples where sense of touch is important. In starting with the social robotics where emotions are important to the industry, where such tasks as given earlier are important. Here is some more, a sketch that I made. Some examples which are currently for future research. At the center are some scientific questions we are trying to address. We are trying to find solutions for these questions. And on this side are some of the futuristic ideas how the research can open up new opportunities for us. So for example, in case of minimal invasive surgery, as you see that perspective here, currently it serves the tool to consume through a keyhole. And this tool does not have any sense of touch. There's a camera at the end here. And you can see this in the dark space, dark area. We are trying to see the tissue. We are trying to feel the tissue. It's normal for us to perfect the volume to understand the difference between hard and hard tissue. Can you imagine how can you understand the difference in hard and so forth by looking at it? It's difficult. There are always visual illusions. But if this particular instrument has a skip all around it, you can get tactile image and you can then understand whether the tissue in contact with the instrument was hard or soft. So that's one example here. The Vincino mortis is an example where currently there's no tactile feedback. So that's the surgeon sits here and looks at the console and they try to operate the patient in a very precise way. And if the touch and same touch feedback or an active feedback is available to the surgeon, then this type of the surgical operations will be much better. The precision can be achieved here. In this case, we look at our mobile phones. Every day we purchase online retail in one sector, which is quite rapidly growing sector at this point in time. But we cannot feel the feeling if you want to buy clothes online. We cannot feel the texture at this point. So we just see the image and then there is a lot of this thing we purchase and we send it back. So that's not a good time for the economy also. So many things are going back. Can we do something? Can we use touch sensing? Can we create an active feedback? And then this lead to next generation of touch screen interfaces. This is already there market on TV. If you look at the larger display and you touch that, you can have some vibration feedback. But that's just the beginning. More is yet to come. Example, in long term, we will also think of elderly person sitting here through the brain controlling the soft, robotic limb as you see and playing with the grandchild. So in a way, the kind of age is natural. We cannot bring it back. But there are technological solutions available that continue to bridge the gap that comes with age. To do this, we have to then work on various ways. How can we render? These are some of the factors, not all. Looking into what in the task that we're going to need to do, then this decides what kind of sensor is needed. Then we have to look into the factors such as do I need softness, flexibility, vulnerability, etc. And electronics and electrical factors here, fast and reliable operation. If I put a sensor on the finger of the robot and that sensor is slow, then the reaction from robot will also be slow. There is no feedback. That does not do the job very well. You need a real and very quick response from light beam like us. And then if you consider all these factors, then there are these factors which are engineering-related factors or manufacturing-related factors. That means it should be very questionable, maintenance must be easy, our economy, reliability, etc. So these are lots of factors we need to consider while developing such a scheme. If you look at our own scheme, these are the soft tissues, these are the finger prints that you see on top. Then you have dermis, epidermis, and various receptors are embedded in these soft layers. So at various depths. Currently the technology as I was mentioning, the electronics is flat. And in this case, if you look at biology, they are looking at sensors at various depths and you press them. A population of these receptors gets activated and they together give us some signals which we interpret as a cylindrical surface or a flat surface, etc. So that the population gives us that information. So in a sense, if we have to develop such a scheme and which gives us a rich experience from the environment, the first thing that we need to do is to work on electronics. Because computing is all about electronics today and if electronics is non-flexible, then I will have to redesign the robot or let's say we have to make the world a factor. Which is not possible. So electronics must be made to meet the requirements and it must be made to be comparable to the flexible. So and not only this, it should have a various type of sensors which can allow us to detect the temperature, the softness, hardness, roughness or crossy surface, etc. and it must be on the entire body. The difference with respect to skin and other sensory modalities, eyes are too, they are centralized. But skin is distributed all over the body so it has to then you have to look at the large area. So that's the difference with respect to other sensory modalities. You have two ears, two eyes, one nose, but then skin is all over. And this has been ignored under a couple of years ago. People do not consider skin as the whole body when it comes to robotics.  They are making robot that they do some task, pick and place kind of task. But now this has opened very interesting direction where you want to expire the whole body. For example, lifting a heavy sand bag where you don't use fingers, you just grab it and the large contact with the body becomes so important to plan and execute the task. So not only this, if you look at the whole body, we have large number of sensors. So this is some example of various parts of the body, even the mechanical receptors. Now mechanical receptors are just one part of the population of receptors we have. These are receptors sensitive to pressure. And there are separate receptors which are sensitive to temperature or they're basically sensitive to pain like that. If you look at this number in the palm itself, you have about 5,000 such receptors. Now imagine you have to read these 5,000 sensors on that basis you have to take an action. So how fast our system is and then you have to have electronics with that kind of speed. If flexible one which does not exist, on top of that you have another problem that you have large number. That large number leads to large data and big data today is a big problem. But there's a lot of information in that big data and that's why this is also an interesting and exciting topic. If these 5,000 sensors are to be read at the same time, you need at least 10,000 wires. Now try to put 10,000 wires in your hand and think about the dexterity. What happens? So I'm just highlighting the challenges here. How do we deal with such challenges? I'll give some examples later. So before I move to the next part, I would like to define at this stage what I mean by electronic speed or conformable electrons. So large any type of sensor that you see, physical sensor or chemical sensor, integrate on a flexible substrate. It can be one sensor, it can be 10, 100, depends on the application, plus other functionalities such as energy harvesting. I mean we have cellular energy and that's how our receptors work. And local distributive memory which we have as well and some signal conditioning taking place here, signal conditioning means if there is a noisy signal, you filter it out. That's pretty standard for electronics. And possibly if you can connect in such a way that you don't need wires, so that's the kind of ideal scenario you have of wireless communication and all that put together on a flexible substrate is what I mean by, what I refer to as an electronic speed. This is more than the human speed because we are not sensitive to many chemical sensors. So when we are working in any artificial system, why can we not develop systems which give more capable of detecting more parameters from the environment than just the speed? And that way robots can be more than humans. So coming to the next part, with all these challenges around us, we started looking into what are the potential solutions. So I'm moving in this part to the solutions that we have been exploring for the development of electronic scale. What are the materials I can try? What are the methods, fabrication methods, manufacturing methods I can try? And we looked into various directions and actually put them all in the slides. So there are so many solutions available.  We have to look at how we have to change our perspective and we can get what we want. So with this, the first solution that we looked into, we got electronics around us. Okay, it's not flexible, it's flat. What can we do to use it so that we have some quick solutions? That was the first target and I call it as an immediate solution. And that solution came from the technology that has been there since early 80s. If you go back and check your printers, the ribbon is quite flexible and it has conductive wires going through it. So that we call it as flexible printed circuit boards. Now that's flexible. If you can put these small PCBs, small electronic components, chips, etc. we can integrate them on such a board, it will be a flexible scheme. So that's immediate solution. It is not ultra flexible because more components are simple then flexibility is also an estimate. But to begin with, we started with this solution. That was a European Commission project through which we developed this iCut, we call it iCut. That's a human-like robot. When I was working in Italy, it was in that lab. But this iCut, when it was developed, there was no skin on this iCut. And that led to this project which we call as robot skin. In this project we developed the skin covered the entire body, let's say most of the parts of the body part in the skin. This is nicely packaged skin which is also available now commercially in different designs, different colors, etc. But the key point behind this is the development of the skin is the school of lab concept. So from the electronics point of view, a spherical surface is the most difficult surface to realize electronics on. Because most of the techniques we have developed they are based on light and light travels in state line. So when it is a surface, light goes at this point, the area light travels in mode and that makes it very difficult for us to make electronics on surface. So what we do, what we did here to overcome this challenge is this concept, you order a spherical surface, you take triangle projections and from those triangle projections you can make a 2D layout. And that way if I have a 3D map of my body I can make 2D layout of my body as well. Once I got 2D layout, you will see that 2D layout is actually made out of triangles. So I can then make PCBs, printed circuit boards in a triangular form and I can cover most of the parts. Once it is covered you then rebuild the 3D surface again and that's how we can make a generic skin. It can be any type of robot, any surface you can cover most of the parts. I say most of the parts because with triangle projections you don't have to lose some percentage but you anyway cover most of the parts. These are some examples shown here. That's the an actual 16 triangles on each 16, on the backside of these triangles we put electronic chips which are essentially a camera or sensor signal in pre-digital data that digital data then can be sent to computer on world computer on robot. And these are the capacity sensors when you press the sensor the distance between the electrodes will change and that use a measure of the change for the amount of force that is applied. You have put sensors on your mobile phone also but they cannot be called a special sensor because they are essentially switched.  It does not give you a measure of pressure that you are applying on your mobile phone. So that way this is a third sensor, a third screen on your mobile phone is a very simple example of electronics in that industry here. This scheme was then implemented on various side of robots to show that it is a generally solution. In this case, Hicub this is a Casper robot which is used in the University of Petrochire and it is used to teach autistic children. And this is the now this is the software from Japan they have purchased this. Now robot is a commercial decision to go to com which is also used in promotion. So they are trying this skin and that kind of the scenario I was mentioning for safe interaction in a manufacturing plant is what they are trying now. And it also led to interesting directions where you interact, you study and vision together as you see here in this video is in large contact. So before the skin was available the kind of contact or the figure tip you are touching and then clicking in place or now you can contact large area and actions can be based on that. So it is a simultaneous contact with the area in a particular area. So the technology was also then miniaturized and then integrated on the finger tips and you can see how the robot is able to now use this technology back to manipulate the soft objects. So not only this we also some students are trying these existing solutions they are like embroidery, they are putting level quotes and they are trying different experiments the light would change the walking pattern somebody dancing it would change that way so they are trying different combinations. So then this was the so far I have discussed what are present in our solutions that are available from critical innovation we can go up the electronic scale. But that has a limitation because the kind of availability that we can achieve is for large services for this part it's fine for this part it's fine but when I go for a small curvature such as if I have to wrap around this 90 degree curvature this kind of technology will not work. We talk about today's smart cities we talk about internet of things connecting every object with each other through internet 5G communication that is coming out if we put all these technologies together then electronic scale can also be applied to objects and objects come with all type of curvatures big, small we have to prepare for every curvature pattern. In that case the kind of technology that we need I will move in the next part which is inorganic semiconductors conformable flexible electronic scale I call this scale here which means electronic scale. So one example is here I mentioned that silicon, normally silicon is the material we use for development of the chips chips that are used in all the electronics that we see here and this is not flexible. So the moment you try it's a brittle material the moment you try to bend it it will crackle. So one way to do this is we take this silicon and see earlier and we encapsulate the polyurethane in this case it's all mine and you can see this example it can be wrapped around the substrate and it can be conspired to itself. So basically what we do is the technology that we have today it does to the same technology it's like milking more of what exists today we make the chips we make electronics on that and then after it is post processing set we guide from the backside we thin it down to about 10 micrometer when it is 10 micrometer it looks like quite flexible still it is brittle I mean it is fragile you have to handle it properly but variability is possible not only this we are able to print silicon now so that's something a very new topic as well we try printing of material which was so far considered to be non flexible brittle material. So in this case what we do there is also a problem related to manufacturing some of the steps we need for the fabrication they require temperature more than 1000 degree flexible substrates are normally plastic they would melt at under 150 so we need to have some step or compatible steps to match with the final substrate and those are other challenges that we are overcoming we have many of those challenges and in this case so for example this is what we do we use a PDMS which is a silicon rubber we use also these days silicon rubber so we use this to pick up the wires these are narrow-stream wires so you don't see these wires with the vignette and you need microscope to see these wires so you transfer them on a flexible substrate or you can print directly without this one you can directly print as well this is printed surface so after you print you will develop the transistors which is the basic relief block of electronics and you have such a sensor on the clothes it will give you a measure of exposure to so the ultraviolet light so for example when you go to beach the sunlight the UV exposure can be quite high and it can lead to skin cancer as well so such solutions can give you and warn you in advance that you are exposed to excessive UV and it's time to then go to shade in simple way what we do is shown here in this animation we realize these nanoscale structures on the wafer wafer is a standard silicon wafer that we have on which we utilize electronics we pick them and we place them on the flexible substrate and we place them in such a way at specific locations where we want the electronics to be and then you connect them to the surfaces flexible and this also takes care of the temperature because all high temperature processing steps are done at this point which can withstand high temperature and also we will be talking about some example by doing this we are shown here this is one transistor that an array of transistor wrapped around this is as a silicon device I must say the performance of these flexible transistors is at far with the performance that we have today there are many other solutions people are trying using organic semiconductors etc. directly but they do not need to normally do not need to high performance and high performance is very much needed if I want my mobile phone to use as a wristband and its performance is just because its flexible that does not cut I do not want performance to be low and I want functionality from childs to people so that way we do not compromise the performance in this case and that shows the vision how this can be extended from the manufacturing point of view how this can be extended to large area so for example we have the roles of these nanowires as shown here we print them and we have got this set up in my lab if you are interested sometime you can read the visit also and you can show how we print all these and we get in this case one example we show your simple device one transistor and one resistor as shown here as an example and some more examples are shown here all of our printing different type of materials one case silicon nanowire another case zinc oxide nanowire this scheme for the printing arrangement shown here and finally what we do is from here so we print these wires to get transistor this is the pressure sensitive layer you press the layer the current between this in this path will change because that change is a measure of amount of pressure and by printing I can get the speed of the large area so that now gets me to the next point where I I want you to see some more complexity so far I was talking about electronics alone electronics some of these electronic devices become sensor some are the transistor which needs to read our et cetera but that's not all our speed is more complex we have sensing embedded it's intrinsic sensing along with actuation the sensors receptors are emitted the muscles are the actuators we have so the skin must have sensor actuator computation also embedded in soft material and this becomes a very complex and interesting exciting as well I give one example here that we have recently developed and this is a soft material that has sensors all with it's intrinsic sensing the material is prepared in such a way that the itself can be called a sensor but it's a soft material as you can see that's the more light movement and this also does that so this I am not included here these wires that you see they are basically giving the sensing output it goes and you get both so that kind of work is next I was mentioning about how sensors are embedded in soft material so in a sense we are going from electronic skin which is artificial skin which is just a flat surface to both complex which is soft surface as well as flexible and sensors embedded in these gaps here is another example where we are using 3D printing I don't know how many of you have heard of 3D printing it's easy it's very popular that you can print layer by layer you can print complex 3D structures you don't have to make mold etc to make complex structures you can use 3D printing but so far 3D printing as we used to print only one type of material and that's plastic so in this case what we have done we have modified our DIY 3D printers to allow the so print plastic and conductive material together conductive material is basically needed to connect to sensors and to give the data so it's a heater that connects the wires so that also addresses one problem that I was mentioning earlier about large number of wires so we print this this fingertip in this case so here we print in such a way that the capacity of sensor becomes powerful structure there is no separate sensor needed again an example of printed sensor so for example in this case we print the plastic we print the light gray color is metal then we fill up some soft material on top of that another wet metal it becomes a capacitor then we press it the distance between electrodes will change and that will give you measure pressure or applying force and then also by 3D printing some of the electronic components are published you put them together you embed in such a way that you won't see anything else now this is interesting because it is quite robust with respect to the skin I was presenting earlier which is wrapped on the external surface in this case electronic sensors etc are all embedded and there is no problem of wear and tear and 3D printing is also cost effective so it can lead to operable limbs artificial limbs and can have much greater impact these videos they show all the response from various sensors that are not done in this way then example is interesting completely some of the nanowires that we are developing we develop in such a way that they have controlling gait is usually the controlling element but if I have multiple gaits this can act like a synaptic function that we have the way we process the information in our body through neurons multiple inputs coming the summation takes place at this point if this summation is a threshold and that threshold could be based on memory from the past or it could be based on some experience then next the signal passes from this one to the next one that way we have implemented this and we have demonstrated also through simulation as well as through application of devices a very impressive point you basically activate the population of receptors and if you consider the first spike of response coming from is the population of receptors that gives you a measure of the angle force, direction of force in location numbers so on the one contact for political information we don't have to send all raw data to the brain the brain does not have the capacity to process that many receptors so we have distributed computing in our body and that's how this distributed computing we are trying to implement in the next generation of skin not only this skin is also important the power inside, power behind all these sensors is also important and that takes me to the next part can we grow up energy around the skin so if I take you back to 10,000 sensors the amount of power that these sensors will be will be huge and if you use your laptop for some time the heat generates can be problematic sometimes so if you want to have such a skin which is actually quite important because sensors are working all the time that will not be an acceptable solution so there has to be some solution which generates energy and cools down and such in that you are we have been working on sensors as graphene now graphene is a 2D material when I say 2D it's not 3D like this one it will take a slice of the leg of your pencil and take single atomic layer and some level thickness that will be graphene so we transferred that kind of material on flexible substrate and one example is shown here 25 centimetre or 25 centimetre graphene was transferred graphene if you look at us a reaction microscope it looks like place no place as you see here and it is highly connected and transferred it's 98% transferred so we use this to develop sensors and you see here I will not go through the publication process but the point here is the sensor that we got with graphene we compared with similar structure we made a goal graphene leads to 2.5 at least 2.5 times more sensitive sensors and because it is transferred if you place this transfer of solar cells the skin does not block light this means you can generate energy and part of this energy could be used to operate the skin and rest can be used to operate motors so in that sense skin becomes an interesting people talk about large area restoration of sensors skin is a challenge there is a problem but if you look at it differently it's a huge opportunity because it's large area it's solar cell if you think of large area they generate huge energy and that energy can be used to power motors not just the skin with this version the skin was then integrated the graphene skin was integrated and we then used it the signals were used to grab soft object so an example shown here is with or without blood sensing enabled blood sensing so in this case technical feedback was disabled so it crushes the technical feedback the the graphene is quite as you can see it does not crush that we also generate energy by contacting so for example patting energy why do you have the right combination of materials as you see here in the back if you just do that you can generate sufficient energy so if I put this type of material on this side and this side and I am walking I can actually generate energy and this could be used to power some of the devices I am creating it's not sufficient to power it can be used to power some of the LEDs etc as you see in this case BEST that already has about 30 LEDs so we have also extended this we have also extended this please remind me of the time I can go I have several slides here okay so this can be extended as we extended already to roll up something we call a solar scale so in this case we don't need any cut sensors or graphene touch there we have used it in such a way that solar cells become a cut sensor so in that sense this is one device or does multiple things it generates energy as well as can be used as cut sensor how do we do this simple thing is solar cells generate energy only when it reaches the solar cell if you block it at least either there was a shadow or there was a contact we use this principle to use solar cells also as cut sensors and that has a implication on many electronic gadgets you can make keyboards etc with all which is all the type of generating energy and can also be used as your switches of your keyboard so that's one thing we have and this example is shown here how it can be used in recordings so that video shows how we have used it as a proximity sensing also solar cells continues to generate in this case it generates from the calm area itself it generates 380mW and if you extend it to 4W which is 1.5cm2 more or less it will generate more than 1kW and 1kW is good enough 5W to 100W each so that's a lot of energy and that's why this scheme is actually an opportunity it's not a problem and we have also generated a flexible supercapacitors which store this excess energy and which can be used when there is a sunlight which also has been done and we demonstrated in this case this is the solar cell and this is the flexible supercapacitors which can be used and this is also used in hybrid cars so then you can use these solar energy to operate motors therefore the first example can be demonstrated last year okay this is a whole range of technologies I have several other examples there's many of these videos are present on the YouTube channel of my group if you go to YouTube search D-E-S-D-U-G then you can watch these videos let me take you to the next part which is these electronic skin technologies that I have presented how could we use them in our lives in humans what examples we have developed here in the University of Glasgow the first example is is related to non-invasive health monitoring so diabetes is a big problem quick test is the common standard test you have to take blood every now and then now because of these frequent blood samples the adherence to the very cold the practice of the it becomes difficult if there was a non-invasive technique which means you only have to take blood then it will lead to vector results and this is scientifically also it has been mentioned how can we do this if you compare the blood with sweat and tears you will see the composition of the various analyzes in sweat and tear it has more of a same analyze that you see in blood the concentration is different so many groups initially tried tears a solution, contract lens, electronic contract lens and so forth putting biosensors on the contract lens which can detect glucose and through glucose then you detect diabetes and it becomes an optimal solution but not everybody is very complex whereas everybody is stress so if you can develop a solution which is a sweat based solution from sweat you can detect the glucose level and then from there you can detect diabetes level now there is a big problem that is yet to be resolved for the solution in the first step in that direction and the big problem is how do we correlate sweat based solution with blood based solution because blood is done in the cold standard we have developed the sensors P.A. Sensor particularly which gives an indication of change to the glucose level that shown here is the antenna also connected if you put it on the body it will absorb the sweat there is a mobile for mobile lab also developed there is no battery leave it here because through NFC you can power the sensor here and all data comes in mobile and this is the real time data you can detect the antenna so in real time you can change you can even see the changing values of the analytes from the sweat and then you can detect from them the glucose level so next example is communication between deaf and blind people we have developed solutions for that this is how deaf and blind people they communicate that sensing is very central to their communication so they do have these codes the next slide these codes are given different combination of fingers refer to A, B or C and that's how they talk to each other so what we have done we have used this blood sensor and actuator some of the integrated sensor actuator that I am showing over here we have integrated them on gloves and by reading them they can get the background feedback as well as they can transmit the sensing so in that sense two people deaf and blind people they don't need to be together they can be in a distance and yet they can communicate in the same way and this communication can also be then extended to a normal person and a deaf and blind or a working deaf and blind or a normal and blind so it can be extended in many ways so this is an example here so that's the communication this is the brain informer that's the integrated blood system which allows this type of communication we have tested these devices also with the subject 20 subjects and results were quite different we are further improving this technology so that it can be used in daily life not only this we have some of these materials that we have developed on artificial skin we are using them to accelerate the wound healing now wound healing is a problem especially with age that it was healing process so far if we can use some materials which accelerate the healing and that will direct impact on the quality of life so one example we have recently published this paper it is based on lysine lysine is based on amino acids it's kind of easing our body, it's bio-compatible and we noted that lysine is piezoelectric so you press it and it starts so if you consider our body from the electronic engineer point of view it's basically some circuits that are waiting and the whole side circuit is broken so one circuit is broken no current goes through that that current across us and no current flowing you have to then bring some material which allows this current to flow then healing can be possible this is what we are doing I have explained it very simply actually it is bio-contrast so what we have done is this lysine based material that's on lysine and hydro-symbol are bio-compatible and we we use them using them we have developed the piezoelectric sensor this sensor can be embedded in the compression bandage in a small bandage it is piezoelectric it will generate local times but at the same time it can act as a stress sensor so it can be a measure of stress the studies have found that the compression bandage the amount of pressure you apply that also influences the own healing rate there is an optimal pressure that leads to a faster healing the interesting point of this sensor is that it also results in water after some time so this material is interesting that way so there is no high G issue once you throw this small bandage this type of bandage it will melt the material and so it is connected to sustainable electronics for the future these are some examples shown here this is the sample after one minute you can see it starts to dissolve and after five minutes it completely dissolves so it does the job and then after that it dissolves slightly taking it close to the real skin we are working on the next topic is synthetic skin so how can we use this electronic skin sensors etc if you look at the real skin our skin is a piece of electric image so in that sense we have worked on this type of material that you see here it is a collagen mesh scaffold we make this type of material and we compared with the we noted that it is also a piece of electrified skin and this type of material is used in tissue engineering in past surgery etc so in that sense some of the knowledge that we have from the artificial skin we are really bringing it to the synthetic skin which has a huge implication in many areas and some of these applications are given here but can be used for skin regeneration there are a few aspects that will be very constructive so you can generate skin excellent wound healing prosthetic self-health management human skin model for research we can use such artificial system to develop skin model and then skin model can be used then to study our human skin and alternate to any other testing also this type of research has scope there and that makes the menu of the application also and makes most responsible scientists so in that in the end of this talk I will play a short video which concludes many of the things I have stated so how can we do it this video shows how we develop skin, put them on the body hand and in this case our prosthetic limbs can be used by the beauties so this is the 3D printer that is printing the hand with all the sensors that's a primary aid I will show you that earlier so once it is done we also have sensor components we test these components as you can see here when you stretch how much of the productivity changes etc integrated on the body hand in this case it's integrated to tummy actuators motors are there using EMG you can control the the muscle symbols you can control the movements and then in this case MQT the band and is able to control the movement of the fingers of this prosthetic hand so that's basically we ask the MQT to think that they are closing where they are grasping something and when they think that way they are actually able to do it because muscle continues on to that in the same way as the normal hand that shows the design how we design this type of thing on the computer before it is taken to the printer and that way we complete the whole loop I would like to say tech licensing is very important for the safe interaction between human and machine in fact all are animated on checks so I actually gave 3 years ago 4 years now a TED talk and the title of the TED talk was Animating with Animating and that's basically what I am also showing as somebody here how can we go off skin and touch and this could be applied to other objects also it could be applied to the glass or the mouse etc the mouse does not need any kind of feedback this type of communication is just to see people each other remotely but you won't really feel the movement so that's the example of what I was showing where you can create virtual objects somebody you are relatively sitting in America display and preview here also the consensus is very important I talked about the technology which enables it flexible electronics which is a disruptive area that can add new dimensions to energy electronics industry also so an electronic skin is a vehicle but then the technology that we are developing for electronic skin could also be used for the exhibition of electronics so that way it is disruptive and will have enormous in fact electronic skin electronics, the technique that I presented made it actually by printing is also in its own a very important area in the future you would like to print electronics like we print out of papers today so in some command write some codes in command computer script and it prints electronics to you so that is the impact with that you have to develop electronics fast printing techniques must be focused electronic skin could underpin the advances in several areas several applications that includes biotics, health care, instrument of things, variable systems and small cities etc I would like to encourage the funding, generous support I have received from various funding agencies this includes engineering and physical sciences research council I am a credit fellow in PSRC European Commission so the project is currently going on around skin development of skin under my European Commission Scottish funding council some of the work related to the health care side of the funding for society and what I can mention here thank you very much


Hello, hello, hello everyone, and welcome to training presented by RISC-TV. Hopefully you guys are enjoying all the training that we are giving here on RISC-TV on Forex, and hopefully you guys can join the team and start making pips with us. So furthermore, let's talk about Forex Pip. You all probably heard of the term pips, points, pipettes, and lots thrown around. And now we're going to explain what they are and show you how their values are calculated. So pips are important to a forest trader in order to have success. So before you start trading with the Forex market, they're comfortable with the pips values and calculated profit and loss. You need a measurement to express the change in value between two currency is called a pip. So as you can see here, we have the UR-USD and the USD-JPY, which are two pairs. We have two pairs, and it's UR and USD-JPY. So if the UR-USD moves from 1.1150 to 1151, that is a .001 USD rise in value is one pip. As you can see right here, if UR-USD goes up, then this pip right here will go up. As you can see right there, so that'll be one pip. So pip is usually the last decimal place of a price quote. Most pairs go to four decimal places, but there are some exceptions like the Japanese Jampere. They go to two decimal places, as you can see right here. So for example, for the UR-USD, it is 0.001 and for the USD-JPY, it is 0.01. So fractional pips, there are points or pips. So these points are prepared, which are fractional pips equal to a tenth of a pip. So for instance, if the GP-USD moves from 1.30542 to 1.30543, that is a .001 USD move higher and is a one pip. So if you can see right here, if we are training the UR-USD and the pip goes, let's say you're in a cell for the USD, right? And this pip-pip right here is one tenth of a pip, which is the number five. So number five is the pip, and the number four is the pip-pip, which is one tenth of the pip. So if we are in a cell on a UR-USD, then this pip-pip will be going down. So if it moved by 0.001, then this pip-pip will go to three. But if it moves 10 pip-pips, that's one pip. So this five will go into a four. And then the same thing with UR-USD. If we go in for a buy on the UR-USD, and this zero gets moved up by one, that is one pip-pip. But if this four, which is the pip, goes up to five, then that means 10 pip-pips equals one pip. And you can see right here, in this picture right here, the UR-USD. This is how it will look when you're trading with a platform. So as you can see right here, you have the 1.36 to one on one. So the big numbers are the pip. These small numbers right here on the right, those are the pip-pips. And that will be the end of our training today. Hopefully you guys learned a quick study of what is the pip-pips. And we will have more training for everyone here in BCB. Thank you guys and have a beautiful day.


You know when I first moved to live in China, I had observed these elderly people in the park doing Tai Chi You know doing this what I viewed as real old people stuff doing these little movements like this in the park and Once I was speaking to this older woman and she was saying you know Tai Chi is all about yin yang yin and yang and I thought well This is like some cutesy pseudo spiritual whatever stuff But as I got to practice clinical medicine in my private practice I learned there is encoded in this ancient symbol science a very profound Healing wisdom and in this video here today. I thought I would share more about the practical Day-to-day life applications of this yin yang principle. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hain doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master the day Now before we jump into this video There are two very important links right below the video there The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles Or virtually via telemedicine you can reach out to my private practice and contact my clinic right below And the second is that I've put together a free guide Which is for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine And that is the first link right below this video So there was some profound wisdom hidden in this old lady's piece of advice that everything is about yin and yang You know when I was a young kid born in the 80s I thought that you know wearing this yin and yang necklace made me feel so cool because I loved watching Ninja Turtles And I wanted to become a monk slash doctor slash sage slash holy man But I didn't understand that yin and yang was not just this balance in life But that there's a relatively profound principle underneath that has really useful clinical applications and really pragmatic Applications in your daily life ultimately yin and yang is about finding the middle path right you know in Buddhism a lot of it is about finding the middle the middle way and Daoism is similar in that regard Understanding that Somewhere if you try to bring things back to the middle most often if you can find that harmony then things will be in balance Whether that balance is a physical balance right even just in terms of physics if you find right the fulcrum It'll help balance a weight put the fulcrum in the proper area rather and also the metaphorical balance Right how stressed you feel on a day-to-day experience internally so Where yin and yang becomes pragmatic reality depends on how you apply it so first and foremost yin and yang Understanding these is why we get sick perfect example yin and yang food Right all of us have to eat food to survive and yet food is the number one leading cause of death in America because Diabetes Heart disease cardiovascular disease even the cancers that are related to diet These are some of the leading causes of death in America right now at the time of filming this and yet is food bad Does that mean you should never eat food or you should never eat? Obviously not It's about yin and yang meaning not just what foods to eat, but how much we eat So this idea of yin and yang is all relative and then even we can take it a step further Which person are we talking about now right are we talking about someone who eats 2,200 calories? But also exercises an hour a day and walks one hour each way to work because they live in New York Or they live in Paris or they live in Milan are we talking about someone who eats 2,200 calories? But is happy and has no stress versus someone who's a super stressed out executive that also smokes cigarettes and has three glasses of scotch at night That yin and yang balance of diet is going to have a very different Ultimate effect on their health So the context of yin and yang varies a lot now another important aspect of yin and yang is Understanding that they are relative meaning yin and yang is different for each person like for example How much rest you need? How much downtime you need? Let's say work is active. So it's young Yin is rest is passive. Hopefully it's passive. So we'll say rest sleep or all yin time off vacation recovery Now how much yin time you need is going to be different for everyone, right? The stressed out executive that works 70 80 90 100 hours a week is going to need Frankly more sleep than the average person who works. Let's say 30 to 40 hours in America and maybe comes home and unwinds So it's not just we all need rest if you're pushing hard and going all out Hard workouts you have high stress in your life. You have a lot of responsibilities. You have young kids The amount of yin downtime you need is that they're going to be greater or it's going to be greater quality So that's why for people that are working really really hard like they are training like sprinters But they're not resting the way sprinters rest I mean Olympic athletes can sleep 10 or more hours a day because of the extreme demands they're placing on the body But you know what millions of Americans do every single day? They're working like an Olympic athlete and yet they're sleeping like someone working in a labor camp They're sleeping like six hours a day. So they are now pushing young to the extreme They are working more than their body physically should and they are decreasing the yin the amount of rest that they should So let's say this is excess young excess work and regular sleep eight hours a lot of people are push push pushing but decreasing the yin so You can see the balance going from like this To this to this and we say an excess of young becomes yin the most extreme example being if you keep push push pushing yourself with no rest and no break You can have a stroke or a heart attack right and many executives and CEOs find themselves in that position So understanding this balance is all relative your needs are going to be different from someone else So in terms of you and your own life when we talk about finding the Tao or Living a life in alignment with the Tao or finding the middle path What is yin and yang for you yin and yang can be Work and rest right you may be Intuiting that there is an imbalance in terms of work and rest for you right now You may be the single mom with three kids and a job You for sure are overdoing and that may just be what you have to do for the time being You may be working excessive hours. You may be eating excessive food, right? You may be Not working out or not moving enough, right? So there's an excessive yin and not enough yang and the net result is lethargy or diabetes so Reflecting where in your life that balance is trending in the wrong direction Because once things get to the extreme Then they flip Again, the most extreme example being you push push push push push no rest boom massive heart attack That's dramatic for most of us. That's not going to happen for most of us What will happen is you push push push to a crisis point and then you get sick or You feel some explosion of symptoms related to stress and then you have to back off for a couple weeks It could be you just push push push with your diet And then you feel acid reflux and indigested for a couple hours But for each of us in each quadrant of life Whether it's diet or sleep or work rest Something else Understanding where that balance is is key to maintaining health over the long run So pay close attention to where you are on that middle path and what this dial is doing every single day That's what I have for you today guys again. Check out those links right below this video


Digitalisation is massively transforming our global economy, fundamentally changing the way we live and work. Innovative technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT, big data and cloud computing are driving demand for new skills. For young people, this represents new opportunities of employment and entrepreneurship. Participants at WSIS Forum 2019 discussed the solutions required to reach the ambitious target of the Global Digital Skills for Jobs campaign. Equipping 5 million young people worldwide with job-ready digital skills by 2030. Every year the organisers of WSIS Forum innovate by introducing new tracks and services, and this year with no exception. From workshops and sessions on the role of ICTs in sports to efforts to enhance accessibility. We started in 2009 with 300 participants and now we have more than 3,000 after 10 years and we have more than 300 workshops during this week of WSIS Forum. Over the years the Forum has evolved and constantly innovates to address the concerns of the day and attract new stakeholders and participants. We believe this is a perfect venue to interact with other stakeholders in the digital economy, not just governments, but those that have day-to-day experience and face opportunities and risks of the digital economy. We learn more about how to protect the children also how to use IoT, blockchain. The very richness of the speakers and wonderful content has made this particular WSIS Forum 2019 as a massive success. My take home is that ICT is supposed to be an enabler to ease the people's lives. We've heard some great new ideas from other parts of the world as well which will give us definitely food for thought and to seek out new partners in our future projects and developing our projects further as well. I feel really excited because with all these people all decided all together we can create concrete plans for the future. So that's it from us in Geneva for WSIS Forum 2019 where we celebrated the 10th anniversary of what has become the world's largest gathering of the ICT for Good community. In the years ahead the Forum will endeavor to remain a powerful platform to bring positive change to the rest of the world by using technology of course but also greater collaboration.


What is Z doing Vim? It does a lot of stuff. I couldn't even tell you all of it. What's up? Welcome to this final lesson in our short course on Vim, covering all the letters from A to Z. We finally made it to Z. And Z is an insane letter. There are so many things. It's one of those ones where you can use it with literally every other key on the thing. There's something for everybody in this. And it touches on a lot of features that we actually haven't been able to cover like, foldering and windows and like code collapsing, all that kind of stuff. So all of that stuff is here and likely associated with some kind of Z command. It really is like a grab bag of all this stuff. Now, I want to show you what is useful or what I use most often for navigation, like in daily use. And there's actually a lot of things for us here. So I want to show you real quick. Let's go into Vim. And I have created a new Lipsum file called Lipsum long.txt. And you'll see why we needed the extra length. Now, this file is much longer. So I can go down. I have five paragraphs of Lipsum. Now, one of my favorite things that Z does is it allows us to redraw the document with the cursor in a certain place. So if I do ZT for Z top, it will move the cursor to the top, but actually take the text with it. So, you know, we're on that second paragraph and that moves that to the top. We go to the bottom. Let's do this one. We do ZB here. You'll see that this full line is at the bottom of our window. One final one, we can do ZZ and that is going to center that line inside of our window. So that's super handy. I love ZZ a lot. It's super easy to type and that's usually what I want. I want to be able to see some context above, some context below, but have that line right there in the middle. Now, there are some other things that ZZ can do. If we change this line a little bit to crash, I can type ZZ and that will save and close. It's like a right quit. This is a very handy alias so you don't have to do colon WQ when you know that you have a file that you've changed. Let's open that up again. Now, let's say we have something that we don't want to change, so let's delete that. If we don't want to change this, we can do ZQ and that's an alias for colon Q bang, which means quit and don't worry about the fact that I changed this file. Now, if we open that up again, we'll see that we still have crash here. That last change was not committed. So it's really all of what I use for Z. If you want more, you can type help Z or just colon HZ and get everything that there is for Z. Now, as I mentioned, this is a crazy command and literally all of the letters do something here. So this is just so much to cover. We could do a whole series just on what the Z prefix commands do. So maybe another time. So I'll see you tomorrow for the congratulatory summarization video.


Day 12, The Beginner's Guide, suggested a whole bunch of times by Zenethrium and others before it finally crushed the competition being seconded by 30 people. The weirdest thing for me about The Beginner's Guide is that anyone ever thought it was true. Even outside of the controversy with the parent side of my former critical outlet, looking back on contemporaneous coverage, a lot of people were hedging their bets, saying it probably wasn't real, but also maybe. And that's ridiculous. Not just because the whole thing fits too neatly into a thematic narrative or because the narrator is clearly acting and not very good at it, but because the game would be a whole lot less interesting if it were literally true. The Beginner's Guide is an 80-ish minute interactive experience created and narrated by Davey Reedin, one of the minds behind Indie Darling, The Stanley Parable. But even if he didn't introduce himself so explicitly, you'd know. The Stanley Parable is just one of those games that hit the zeitgeist and everyone who pays even the slightest attention to the indie scene is at least aware of and probably understands the meaning of. Its deconstruction of player agency was hugely influential and impactful. Like the game inevitably changes the way you think about video game scripting and the illusion of choice.  What you're supposed to be doing, or perhaps what you are doing, which is really what you're supposed to be doing, it's a good game. I booted it up for the first time since 2013 while working on this, granting me an achievement graciously gifted to those who go five years without playing. I still enjoyed myself. Kevin Brighting has a lovely voice that makes being stuck in the world a lot more bearable. Reedin doesn't. But we've got to listen to him anyway as he spins a yarn about Kota, a game designer whose work has been hidden from the public because, quite frankly, he doesn't want it to be seen. So the story goes, between 2008 and 2011 Kota made a number of interesting little games using Valve's source engine that were never released but were shared for whatever reason with Reedin. After 2011 Kota stopped designing games or at least clueing Reedin into his creations. And after a few years of silence, Reedin decided to compile these experiences into the beginner's guide in the hopes of maybe convincing Kota to come back into his life. These unreleased works are presented one after the other in order of their creation. As a way of showing both Kota's progression as a designer and, more relevantly here, Reedin's growing obsession with Kota's designs. They last anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes and are presented in various states of completion. Some are unfinished. Some are finished from a design perspective but are impossible to complete. Some others are finished and can be completed but none of them has what you could call a traditional narrative. Sometimes the meaning is still fairly obvious while others are deeply abstract but there is always room to interpret the art, how you see it, or there would be if Reedin weren't constantly telling you his interpretation of things. And this is why the beginner's guide must be fictional because if it's not then it's like being on a first date with a man sporting a chin strap fedora combo. It's some douchebag talking about this cool thing that only he knows about but instead of letting you actually experience it, he constantly interrupts to tell you what he thinks and therefore what you should think and blah blah blah. If Kota is real then the fact that Reedin made this whole thing about himself is so much grosser. He's just a narcissist using someone else's work that was presumably repurposed without permission to self-flagellate for an adoring public that paid up to $9.99 plus tax. But if it's all him, if Kota is a construction that he is using for plausibly deniable self-flagellation before an adoring public that paid up to $9.99 plus tax, that is interesting. That is playing 4D chess with monopoly pieces. I like it when people commit to the bit and I can't think of many harder commitments than creating a game that is littered with hundreds of notes that a player can read that it claims were left by other players despite having no system by which players could actually leave notes and so clearly came from the creator himself but many of which are antagonistic towards said creator and then taking that whole thing, pretending it was made by someone else and narrating over a player's experience of it to say that none of what you're reading matters.  Yeah, it's pretentious as hell but pretension is only a bad thing when it's boring.  There is no time to get bored because every couple of minutes you are thrust into a completely new experience and like not all of them clicked with me but that's okay. Friends throwing spaghetti at a wall, some of it is bound to stick and though it's all presented through the lens of a game designer talking about someone else's game design, the ideas are far more universal. The effects of isolation, the futility of trying to truly know another person, the double edged sword that is creativity and creation. It gets pretty heavy and maybe a bit heavy-handed but as someone who wouldn't be talking about the game if it were not for a ridiculous attempt to jumpstart a creative drive that over the last year has just kept on slowing down, the moment where I was faced with a literal creative engine and had to try to convince it to start back up again, well that hit real fucking hard. 8.5 out of 10. Thank you so much for watching and thank you particularly to my patrons, my mom, Hammering Marko, Kat Sarkata, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Magnolia Denton, Elliot Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Willow, I Am The Sword, Riley Zimmerman, Claire Bear, Taylor Lindyce, and the folks who'd rather be read than said. If you liked this video that is great if not oh well. If you want to see more you can suggest what I'll do in three days in the comments so do that. Nice.


Forest bathing is a term coined in Japan in the 80s. Since then we've learned that it has benefits beyond just the exercise. In this video we'll look at some of those benefits and whether or not you actually need to visit a forest to experience them. Previously, I showed how exposure to nature can have self-reported psychological benefits, but there was a dearth of data on changes in objective measurements, so I was excited to see this paper. On the effects on levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva of those partaking in forest bathing, which just means visiting a forest and surrounding yourself by trees. The level of cortisol in your saliva is considered an indicator of your stress level, and after walking in a forest compared to walking in a city, or even just after hanging out in a forest compared to a city, people's salivary cortisol levels were significantly lower. Wait a second, the same effect was found before they went to the forest. Forest bathing was associated with significantly lower salivary cortisol, both before and after compared with visiting an urban area. Therefore, it appears that just a thought of going to spend the day in a forest relieved stress, so when comparing the effects of forest bathing versus urban visiting, the anticipation placebo effect may play a more important role in influencing stress levels than the actual experience of being in a forest. So I was ready to dismiss it as just another nebulous psychological effect until I read this. Studies on the effects of forest bathing on the immune function showed that visiting a forest can induce a significant increase in the number and activity of natural killer cells.  That got my attention. It all started with this study. 12 men were taken on a long weekend to walk in some forests, and almost all the subjects, 11 out of 12, showed higher natural killer cell activity after the trip, and not just a little, about a 50% increase compared to before the trip. Now, just exercise can affect immune function, but they weren't walking in the extra, they were just walking in a forest instead. Yeah, but they also were taken on a trip somewhere, introducing other variables. How about randomizing them to go on some city trip versus the forest trip? And if there is some special forest effect, how long does the effect last? Do you have to walk in a forest every day? Before jumping into all of that, how about we first see if it works in women too? Same kind of setup, and same results. A significant boost in natural killer cell activity walking around in the woods, and this time they went back a week later to retest them, and they were still up, though after a month they came back down. But hey, I mean once a week should do it, but it was a multiple day trip. I mean, who has time to hang out in forests all weekend, every weekend? How about just a little day trip? The title gives it all away. Boom, same thing, right? A same big jump measured the day after the trip, compared to before, and with the same staying power, natural killer cell activity still boosted a week later. This suggests that if people visit a suburban forest park once a week on a day trip, they may be able to maintain the increased anti-cancer immunity. Okay, but I'm still not convinced. I mean, how can you attribute the benefit to the forest itself when all you have is before and after data? To make the case that nature had anything to do with it, you'd need a control group that, you know, took the same kind of trip but went to somewhere else instead. And here we go. It turns out visiting a forest but not a city increases human-natural killer activity. Here's the forest data just like before, but nothing on a trip to go walking in a city. By the end of the forest trip, 80% of the subjects experienced a boost compared to only 1 in 10 of the city walkers. And both trips were matched for physical activity and alcohol and sleep, other things that can affect immune function. And so here we go. Confirmation of boosted immunity but only on the forest trip, indicating that forest bathing does indeed enhance natural killer cell activity. Moreover, they found that the increased activity lasted up to 30 days after the trip. Check it out. Still up a week later and even a bit up a month later. This suggests that if people visit a forest once a month, they may be able to maintain increased natural killer cell activity. Okay, so now that we know that it's a real effect, the next question is, I mean, why? I mean, what is it about forest that gives us the boost? And you can imagine a big pharma thinking, right, can you make it into a pill? We'll find out next. Studies on the effects of forest bathing, a traditional practice in Japan of visiting a forest and breathing its air, have found it can induce significant increases in the number and activity of natural killer cells that can last for as long as a month.  Okay, but how? I mean, why did the forest environment increase natural killer cell activity? What is it about the forest environment? One thought is that the boost may be related to reduction in stress. I mean, if you measure the amount of adrenaline flowing through people's systems, I mean, did hanging out in a forest, but not a city, drop adrenaline levels down? Yes. So, I mean, that checks out, but drip some adrenaline on human blood cells in a petri dish, and there does not appear to be any effect. I mean, the stress hormone cortisol on the other hand dramatically suppresses natural killer cell activity. So, you know, maybe the forest led to less stress, less cortisol, which released the natural killer cells under its thumb, and you get that big boost? Well, we know being surrounded by nature can decrease levels of cortisol in our saliva, but what about our bloodstream? A significant drop after a single day trip to the forest. You know, about a week later, the cortisol was normalizing, and the forest effects sometimes appeared to last an entire month. I mean, anything else that could cause a longer-term immune system change? Maybe we've been missing some of our old friends. If you sample outdoor air, you can pick up an abundance of microorganisms floating around from the soil or water, which are absent in indoor air, which is dominated by organisms that either live on us or are trying to attack us. So maybe on a day-to-day basis, in terms of keeping our immune system on ready alert, it might not be sufficient to encounter only the kind of biased microbes of the modern synthetic indoor environment that lacks some of the old friends and probably bears little resemblance to the microbes we evolved to live with over millions of years. Or maybe it's the plants themselves. Maybe it's the aroma of the forest. Trees produce aromatic volatile compounds called phytoncides, like pineene, which you can breathe into your lungs in the forest. But do these compounds actually get into your bloodstream? One hour in the woods, and you get like a six-fold increase in circulating pineene levels, circulating throughout your system. Okay, but to fully connect all the dots, the phytoncides, like pineene, I mean, these three essential oils would have to then induce human-natural killer cell activity. And guess what? Phytoncides induce human-natural killer cell activity.  A combination of wood aromas improve the recovery of mice put through the ringer, but this is the study I was looking for. If we want to know if the magic ingredient is the fragrance of the forest, then let's see if we can get that same boost in natural killer cell activity, just vaporizing some essential oil from one of the trees into a hotel room overnight. And it worked! A significant boost in natural killer cell activity, though it just boosted their activity rather than their number. And being in the actual forest can do both, so maybe it's a combination of the tree fragrance and the lower cortisol levels working together. Ironically, these phytoncide compounds are part of the tree's own immune system, which we may be able to kind of commandeer. The researchers speculate these compounds may be playing some role in the fact that more heavily forested regions in Japan appear to have lower death rates from breast cancer and prostate cancer. Being out in nature has been found to be an important coping strategy among cancer patients. Turns out this could potentially be helping more than just with the coping, thanks to the fragrance of trees.