By our 70s, one in five of us will suffer from cognitive impairment. And within five years, half will progress to dementia, and the progression from cognitive impairment without dementia to dementia and death. The earlier we can slower stop this process, the better. Although an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease is unavailable, even interventions just to control risk factors could prevent millions of cases. So an immense effort has been spent on identifying risk factors for Alzheimer's and developing treatments to reduce them. In 1990, a small study of 22 Alzheimer's patients reported that they had high concentrations of something called homocysteine in their blood. The homocysteine story starts back in 1969, when a Harvard pathologist reported two cases of children, one dating back to 1933, whose brains had turned to mush. They both suffered from extremely rare genetic mutations that led to abnormally high levels of homocysteine in their bodies. So is it possible, he asks, that homocysteine could cause brain damage, even in people without genetic defects? Well, now here we are in the 21st century, and homocysteine is considered a strong independent risk factor for the development of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Having a blood level over 14 may double our risk. In the Framingham study, they estimated that as many as one in six, Alzheimer's cases may be attributable to this elevated homocysteine in the blood, now thought to play a role in brain damage, cognitive, and memory decline. Our body can detoxify homocysteine, though, using three vitamins— folate, vitamin B12, and vitamin B6. So why don't we put them to the test? No matter how many studies find an association between high homocysteine, cognitive decline, dementia, or Alzheimer's disease, a causal role, a cause-and-effect role, can only be confirmed by interventional studies. Now initially, the results were disappointing. Vitamin supplementation did not seem to work, but the studies were tracking neuropsychological assessments, which are more subjective compared to structural neuroimaging, actually seeing what's happening to the brain. And a double-blind randomized controlled trial found that homocysteine, lowering by B vitamins, can slow the rate of accelerated brain atrophy in people with mild cognitive impairment. As we age, our brain atrophies, slowly atrophies, but the shrinking is much accelerated in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Kind of an intermittent rate of shrinkage is found in people with mild cognitive impairment, but so the thinking is maybe if we could slow down the rate of brain loss, we could slow down this conversion to Alzheimer's disease. So they tried giving people B vitamins for two years, and they found it markedly slowed the rate of brain shrinkage. The rate of atrophy in those with high homocysteine levels was cut in half. A simple, safe treatment can slow the accelerated rate of brain loss. A follow-up study went further by demonstrating that B vitamin treatment reduces by as much as seven-fold the brain atrophy in the region specifically vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease, to the disease process. Here's the amount of brain atrophy over two years in the placebo group. Here's the amount of loss in the B vitamin group. Less brain loss. Now the beneficial effect of B vitamins was confined to those with high homocysteine. Indicating a relative deficiency in one of those three vitamins. So wouldn't it be better to not get deficient in the first place? Most people get enough B12 and B6, but the reason these folks were stuck up at a homocysteine of 11 is that they probably weren't getting enough folate, which is found predominantly in beans and greens. 96% of Americans don't even make the minimum recommended amount of dark green leafy vegetables, the same pitiful number that don't eat the minimum recommendation for beans. In fact, if you put people on a healthy diet, on a plant-based diet, you can drop their homocysteine levels 20% in just one week, up from around 11 down to 9. The fact that they showed significant homocysteine lowering without any pills, without supplements, even at one week, suggests that multiple mechanisms may have been at work. They suggest it may be because of the fiber. Every gram of daily fiber consumption may increase folate levels in the blood, nearly 2%, perhaps by boosting vitamin production in our colon by our friendly gut bacteria. It could also be from the decreased methionine intake. That's where homocysteine comes from. Homocysteine is a breakdown product of methionine, which comes mostly from animal protein. And so, if you give someone bacon and eggs for breakfast, then a steak for dinner, you can get these spikes of homocysteine levels in the blood. Thus, decreased methionine intake on a plant-based diet may be another factor contributing to these lower, safer, homocysteine levels. The irony, of course, is that those who eat plant-based diets long-term, not just at a health spa for a week, have terrible homocysteine levels, mediators up at 11, but vegetarians and nearly 14 vegans at 16. Why? They're getting more fiber and folate, but they're not getting enough vitamin B12. Most vegans can be classified as being likely to suffer from hyperhomocysteineemia, too much homocysteine in the blood, because most vegans in this study were not supplementing with vitamin B12, or eating vitamin B12 fortified foods, which is critical for anyone eating a plant-based diet. But if you take vegans and give them B12, their homocysteine can drop down below 5. Why not just down to 11? Well, the reason the mediators were stuck up at 11 is probably because they weren't getting enough folate, but once vegans got enough B12, they could finally fully exploit the benefits of their plant-based diets and come out with the best levels of all.


Okay, first up is an update. Okay, we've updated. I realized that our old LED ring trinket kit Which people love making LED goggles was using the old trinket. We love the old trinket, but it's time has come and gone It's been upgraded this net kit now comes with a Trinket M zero same thing and here's a good news the code's the same and you'd also use circuit pythons So same price updated to use a new samd 21 bigger and better We also have more compute module for us You know these compute modules we had none and now we have a whole bunch of different kinds this one I want to get the exact Model correct because there's so many this one is the 32 gigabyte MMC with Wi-Fi and four gigabytes of ramps. This is like a beefy. This is like a beefy beefy compute module It's got the Wi-Fi you see that on top left. We have the antenna kits as well. It's got flash MMC on it So you don't need a separate SD card and also MMC so it's gonna be faster at 32 gigabytes and four gigabytes of RAM So this would be actually perfect for heavy compute computational stuff and machine learning on the edge type projects You'll need that extra RAM All right next up next up. These are adorable edge launch USB C connectors Actually ordered these a really long time ago and they finally came in They are interesting because normally we only have USB C connectors that like a cable plugs into but this plugs directly into a computer as seen on The Serpenti the Arturo's board that we also stocked check that out But if you're like hey, I want a connector like that We have them. I'll show them real fast on the overhead maybe although our photos are quite good Okay, so that comes on Strip and you get 10 And Let me show you so that here's some things about it. So you're probably like Wait, I know that you don't like SMT only connectors like this because they have a mechanical You know stress on them and it's true. I wish that these had these tabs as through hole But they there's weren't available. I believe this is why I took so long to get them I was going back and forth.  You actually use that as an SMT pad to give you some mechanical strength These are the pinouts the pins are not the same pins as the USB C socket connector that we use Check the data sheet. It's it's not intuitive. They're they kind of come out in a slightly interesting order And then here there's a little cap. I don't know why there's a cap maybe to protect it and then this is the USB C Plug so this plugs into the computer and then you can you plug it either way and you have a USB C connection So, you know, I don't see a lot of devices that plugged directly into USB C But I thought this was kind of a unique and interesting Connector and in case I ever did want to use it for something. I wanted to have them in stock So now we do too All right, next up we have two versions of what I think is going to be the hello world for machine learning Yeah, machine learning is really fun You hear a lot about it and maybe you want to play around with this Especially in my opinion the most interesting machine learning is vision recognition because we're humans We see stuff and maybe we want to make machines see stuff and recognize what they're seeing Vision has historically been incredibly incredibly hard to do with computers like There's all jokes about how like, you know, 34 years ago It's like how hard can it be to recognize what bird is in front of a camera turns out really hacking hard But with machine learning, uh, it's actually not too difficult Well, I mean it's still difficult But you have a much better chance of training it because our machines have gotten faster We figured out ways of convincing computers what they're looking at and how to let them differentiate what they're looking at So, um, you know people can use machine learning on their phones You can use it on your computer But maybe you want to have a device like something that's a standalone device that can do machine learning vision recognition for you So we bring the brain craft hat. We released it a couple months ago. We've done projects with it It's you know, basically designed to plug into a Raspberry Pi 4 And make it easy for you to design any kind of machine learning project Particularly vision projects because it's got a little display on it That you can see what it's seeing which I think is really helpful because we're trying to like debug what is being recognized So, um, you've got a Raspberry Pi 4 and you've got the brain craft hat and you've got the Raspberry Pi camera And here it is all plugged in together. Okay, great an sd card But now you actually have to you have to actually train the model right you have to train the vision And historically, this has been really really hard to do You've had to like get all these photos and you've had to tag them and you have to classify them And it's just like it's been really Not fun to do Like I did it once and it was like you spend, you know days training your model Use all this compute time and then in the end it's like maybe it works and you just start over from beginning And that's where um lobe comes in. So lobe is this free software from microsoft that you use in a browser And what's neat about it is it does all the hard parts of machine learning where you don't have to collect data Instead it just uses your computer camera And you know you train the different classifications and then it does the computation for you and it spits out this file You put the file onto your Raspberry Pi and suddenly ding dong the Raspberry Pi can recognize Whether a package has been left in front of your door or what kind of plant is on top of your desk or You know, you can play rock, paper, scissors and you can recognize your hand gestures without you having to type in like rock It's a you just just make the fist or a plane or your your two fingers and it knows if it's rock paper or scissors So really basic machine learning stuff, but again historically really tough to do How do you recognize when there's a bird at your bird feeder? Let you know or take a photo of it so you can go and like watch some cool birds Or maybe there's a squirrel and it shouldn't be a squirrel and you want it to like scare the squirrel away All these fun projects you can build Recognizing things I saw a project on the Raspberry Pi blog recognizing when there's a dog outside being walked outside your apartment So you can go outside and maybe pet the dog or just look at the adorable dog Um all these vision projects you can do with machine learning and you train it using lobe and it makes it really easy So easy that a school kid can do it, which means also Phd students can do it There's a kind of equivalent things to me so have two versions one without and one with this is the one with a Raspberry Pi that's right this stuff There's one without the only reason is a lot of people already have a raspberry pi 4 or pi 400 I'm looking for something to do with them. They want something to do with them of these So there's an all-in-one kit that has everything you need. It's got like the power supply even it's got the Uh, the fan.  Okay two versions next up Next up kale Sockets, uh, these aren't this isn't kind of cool. It's like a little alien friend These are sockets that are used for mx mechanical keypad switches And what it means is you don't have to solder in the mechanical key anymore, which is awesome Folks who have done mechanical keyboards for a while remember used to have to solder them in well like a year or two ago I think kale the company. I'll just print it on this came up with these sockets and you can see it here Um On the back of one of our neokey breakouts and when you solder the socket in and it's really easy to solder It's like the pads are really large It um, and you know the the other side has little two holes in it And then you can plug in a mechanical key switch and you don't have to solder it in It isn't like a perfect permanent You know connection you do have to add a little bit of mechanical support But the electrical connection and like the basic mechanical connection is done for you. Let me see if I have Okay, let me um, let me show on the overhead real fast. I'll show it with the other new product The uh feathering so I've got here a feathering a pcb with two Mechanical key switches in a yes, you clicky clicky clicky. Okay, but what if I'm like, oh, I don't want this kind of clicky I want a different kind of clicky. I want a gatteron switch. I want an mx blue. I want mx red. I want mx gray whatever these um, you just pull them out carefully And you can see the socket Is flat against the pcb you can kind of see here the two sockets here coming out and then on the back those Two sockets are soldered onto the back of the pcb So this makes it really easy for you to you know flip around different switches customize them Um, and then again you saw it is possible to pull them off They're mechanically stable if you're only pressing down, but if you end up, you know pressing from the side They they do tilt. So that's why you might want to use a little bit of glue Or epoxy just to kind of give them a little bit more strength Still enough that you could pull it off if you really had to or wedge it off But enough that you could uh switch up keys. So yeah sockets Um, and they come in a pack of 20 next up Translucent keycaps As seen on our keycap projects, uh, these allow light to shine through them. They're translucent They're a little bit big. They're not symmetric, but um, they're fairly inexpensive and as seen here Uh leds shine through them quite nicely note that because most keys you're wondering like, why doesn't the whole keycap light up? Um, the way the leds on mechanical keys and key switches work is they they don't come from the center They come Along the side that's a normal thing for keycaps and they're all like this So even though the whole thing is translucent, you're not going to get full Translucency across the whole body of it. That's just sort of part of the deal with mechanical key switches Um, that said, you know, they fit very nicely onto any mx Compatible uh keyswitch Kale boxes are shown here or um cherry mx's or gaterons or or any of those uh compatibles Um, they click on they're completely, you know, 90 degree symmetric so you can put them on any which way And uh, like I said, they do allow your glowy light to shine through Yeah clicky clicky. All right and star of the show tonight besides you lady and our community is The neokey feather ring. Yay so much keyboard stuff coming out. So, uh, we had last week the individual neokey um breakouts, right, which uh I think we had Hold on Uh Yes No, no, I can't see. Oh, sorry this one Pardon me. So that's the individual ones, right? So this is showing a cutie pie with two individual keyswitches wired together But you're like I have a feather and I don't want to have wired up two individual switches Great, we have this feather wing the feathering has two kale sockets and two neopixels in it Uh, they're wired up directly to pins like five six and nine And and it's just like two keyswitches and they're on a feathering You can turn into a little keyboard if you want you can make into a mini controller hid or Really anything you like, um Sky's the limit as it were And uh, let me see if I can find my plug So I can show the the live demo So let's go to the overhead and shut off Thank you Um, okay, so you've got here if I press these they turn off very handy for showing the demo So this is just uh plugged on top of a feather. It's a standard feather wing shape It'll fit on any feather We have uh, the only one I'd worn is the esp 8266 doesn't have a lot of pins It'll still work, but you're kind of using the the only three gpa you've got um, you can Plug in any mx compatible switch you like and you can see there's a nice bright neopixels that shine through Um, and we use kale sockets and there's a little reset button as well So you can reset the board you can also change which pins the neopixel and The switches are connected to if you wish, uh, there's little jumpers on the bottom I'll plug this so you can show you there's a little jumper You can cut this and rewire if you if you want to but uh, I kind of picked what I thought were pretty good defaults And then you put whatever keypad you want on top and you're good to go um I will note that this product does not come with the key switches and it does not come with The key caps either like it comes just like that and uh, we will be stopped in the photo It's in the photo, but we will I want to demonstrate. We will be started. We have to we have to show How it works and we have to show the things that it works with yeah And then the neopixels are tied together in a row So they just it just looks like an led strip of like two neopixels basically They're not even though like the only turns off when I don't press it. They're not actually connected I have a little bit of code that's reading the key presses and changing, you know, which ones are lit So they're independent Elements want to make that clear That's the place


My name is Sanon Ponto and I am a 12 year old from Brooklyn, New York. I am the developer of the game called The Code. I first started the game design 2 years ago when I used Scratch. Later on, I started Game Star Mechanics since that was my school's preferred choice of learning. Since using Game Star Mechanics, you can learn how to make a game and what makes up a game. What inspired me to come into this competition was actually my new computer science teacher. Again, since we used Game Star Mechanics for school, the teacher informed us about a new competition that popped up and we were more than welcome to enter it, so I did.