First question is from Frank D. Murano. How does exercise temple affect the aesthetics of resistance training? Tempo. We had to decode this first. Yeah, I feel like this was a debate that we had trying to interpret this question. So the way I interpret it is he's saying, okay, how does the tempo of your lifting change how the exercise affects your body? In other words, how does it build muscle if you go slower versus faster or pause or whatever? What's the difference between the two different tempos? Justin thinks the aesthetics of the movement. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, I don't know. That's the way I read it anyways. Of course you do. Yeah, aesthetic is being like the way that the actual performance looks and the technique and all that kind of stuff. Interesting. Okay, so I'll start with mine and then you can answer that. So as far as the aesthetics of the body is concerned, now if you look at studies, these will compare different tempos and determine which one builds the most muscle. It's very similar to what you see with these rep range studies. And in these short studies, which are typically anywhere between 12 weeks, usually six weeks, 12 weeks, or maybe 16 weeks, they'll determine that a particular tempo builds more muscle than other tempos.  So essentially good form tempo would be the one that would build the most muscle in these studies. But here's a problem with this is that these studies only last 12 to 16 weeks and your body adapts to tempo just like it does to rep ranges. So if you always train in this kind of controlled tempo, then some explosive repetitions or some slower repetitions will probably get your body to start changing again. From a performance standpoint, tempo I think is a little bit more important in terms of what you want to stick to. If you're an athlete, depending on the sport, you probably want to be more explosive with your repetitions. But if we're talking about just developing the body, I think it's important to work with different types of tempo and break it up. I like to do every month or so, I'll slow the reps down or I'll focus on a portion of a rep where I'll pause at the bottom or pause at the top of rep. And then maybe the next four weeks I'm going to go heavier and be a little bit more explosive with my movements, or even go lighter and be more explosive to where the bar moves faster. All tempos, most tempos I should say, build muscle. There's a little risk with the faster tempos, so I tend to tell people to stay away from those unless they're really, really good with their technique and form. But other than that, they all build muscle. The one that you're used to is the one that's going to work least for you, so work within all of them. Yeah, I think that's a more interesting interpretation of this question. I think the other one I was thinking of, the way that I read it being tempo, being important, going slow, for instance, learning techniques. I think that it provides more opportunity to sort of navigate and figure out how your body sways one way or the other based off of the imbalances that you need to determine. So tempo being a factor in the very beginning, I'm always very much geared in the very slow tempo, being able to be controlled, being able to stabilize, and then we start sort of messing with that tempo and building up the speed of it once I feel like the technique is polished and it's mastered. And then we can start really applying some more speed to those reps to get those types of benefits that you mentioned in terms of stimulating the muscle in a different way. Well, so I took this similar to I think Sal, as far as like what this person was asking, although I think Justin makes good points for what he's talking about. It's just like changing up exercise, rest periods, this is the same conversation that we have with that. And it's to Sal's point of the sticking to a range, sticking to a tempo for four to six weeks, if you've been doing that tempo for X amount of time, the best thing you can do to build muscle or have an aesthetic physique is to change that up, is to do a different tempo. Now that all being said, almost always when I got a client, and this kind of goes to Justin's point, I would always slow down the tempo. It's very rare, and I've said this on this show before, the next time you go in a gym and look around at everybody bench pressing, doing all the movements, and just see if you see a four to two tempo, you just don't see it. You never see it. You never see it. You never see somebody take four full seconds on the descend or on the negative, a two second pause at the bottom and then two seconds on the pause. You just count it, count it and show me somebody. And that is technically to the studies that Sal is alluding to, that's technically the best tempo for building muscle. So if that's the best tempo for building muscle and hardly anybody does it, I think it's one of the first places I go to teach.  And most clients get great results from it just because they've never slowed their tempo down that. And then it plays into Justin's point that he's making. It also is easier for you to make the adjustments to their mechanics and to address things that are going on in their body. So it's even better for getting good form and techniques. So that's my go-to tempo to start. And if anything, I'll lean even slower. So I might even pause longer at the bottom. I might even take the descend or the negative longer than four seconds. It might be five seconds. You just don't ever see that anymore. You don't see anybody really train or anywhere ever, right? You never see anybody training this way. And there's so much value both to both points these guys are making. The point of Justin's of really working and honing in on the technique and form to Sal's point. Most people don't train in that tempo. So just by training in that tempo, you're going to see change in the body.


Assalamu alaikum and good morning. It's Monday morning and welcome to morning barakah It's approaching the days in which Allah sent down the Bible to the prophet Jesus peace be upon him Masha Allah the original scriptures of the words of Allah are amazing and truly a blessing Absolutely indeed brother Bilal. It's very important time one. We should not take for granted Get them most out of the spiritual nights Speaking of the holy books. We are blessed our own brother Mustafa Ali Beautiful recitations today will be reciting Surah Ibrahim We also have brother Ibrahim Asari in the couch and who's going to be doing great daily du'as and Today's du'a will be recited for after Fajr As-Salaam We also assisted du'a with spiritual upliftment from the holy Quran. Really looking forward to that this morning How to get rid of bad habits using inspiration from the holy Quran And today we also have nutrition and health Brother Bilal will be in the kitchen discussing healthy fats life coach and MLP Muhammad and chef Ben and it's always good to have a balanced diet in this holy month That's true. That's true in the month of Ramadan We should be paying attention to our etiquette and fortune Should I say sister Zahra and sister Masooma Jaffa will be discussing this in Ramadan etiquette Today's topic is the holy Quran and how we can make the most of the holy month of Ramadan using our holy book Insha'Allah I'm really looking forward to sitting down with sister Masooma again And even more than that we have little Abbas and I think he's been up again And he's going to share a daily headache with us To end this fantastic show before your morning prayer We have our very own side Muslim Shah from Akran SOS on the couch with your questions and queries I can't wait to see him today. The topic he has in store for us is sushi It's quite fascinating isn't it? Mix of Muslim. I think it's sheer and sunny Right now it's time for our morning barakah competition details You and a friend could win the chance to visit Imam Hussain and Abul Fadal Abbas Peace and blessings be upon them for July 2018 For the competition details stay tuned for brother Ahmad You want the chance to visit Imam Hussain and Abul Fadal Abbas peace be upon them both while you've come to the right place Morning Barakah is giving away two free tickets to Karbala this July 2018 I'm standing here with the holy shrine of Imam Hussain alayhi salam behind me to give you the chance to send your salutations to the Imam in person The exclusive morning barakah competition is the chance for you and a friend to visit the holy shrine of Imam Hussain For your chance to win answer the following question Name two names given to the holy land of Karbala in Iraq We need your emails with your answer and details which include a telephone number phone name and dress entries are free of charge and closed by the 30th of June 2018 All entries after may not be accepted so please put your entries in before the deadline To enter you must be over the age of 18 Now it's the part time of the show which I really enjoy I'm listening to brother Mustafa reciting Quran Peace be upon you brother Mustafa Peace be upon you too It's good to see you today as always And I believe that you'll be reciting from Surah Ibrahim Ayat 3-1 to 3-4 Ma'sha'Allah that was very beautiful a very beautiful recitation of the holy Quran I enjoyed it so much and it's such a blessing and now we move on to the section of the Dua with brother Ibrahim Peace be upon you brother how you doing Peace be upon you Peace be upon you too Welcome to this show again Thank you once again Always a pleasure Insha'Allah today we're going to be talking about Dua after Salah Insha'Allah Which is obviously something that we've discussed previously It's very important to sort of remember to pray after pray to make Dua after praying If you'd like to give a bit of explanation about the Dua you're going to recite for us Definitely so today this specific Dua Of course there are many Dua's that are recommended to be recited after prayer This being one of them and possibly of course all Dua's are beautiful but possibly One of the most beautiful ones and all of my favorites Just because of the things it mentions within So insha'Allah if I recite the Arabic first then we can The people mentioned Allahumma shfiikul mariyiz Allahumma sudda faqranah bighinaak Allahumma ghayyir su'a haalina b'husni halik Allahumma qdi'annad dein Waghnina min alfaq Innaka ala kulli shay'in qadir Wa sallallahu ma'ala muhammadin wa aalihi t'ahirin Allahumma salli ala muhammad wa aali muhammad So of course the very first people it mentions is the inhabitants of the graves So the very first thing is it is asking Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala O Allah grant them pleasure, grant them happiness for those who are within the graves So the translation goes as follows O Allah bring in pleasure to the inhabitants of the grave O Allah enhance all the poor ones O Allah satisfy all hungry ones O Allah provide all the naked with clothes O Allah help all those who are in debt By settling their debt O Allah relieve all the aggrieved ones O Allah help all the strangers to return home O Allah release all the prisoners O Allah rectify all the Muslims if there is data wrong O Allah heal all the ill ones O Allah fill in our poverty with your richness O Allah change our ill manners through your excellent manners O Allah help us settle our debts and save us from poverty Verily you have power over all things And that thing is just beautiful You're starting off by making da'a for all these people And then you relate it back to yourself straight after Is this a da'a that's recommended any time or is it particularly for the holy month of Ramadan? This is in fact a da'a that is recommended to be recited after prayer generally And like we said within Ramadan just because of the blessing of this month It's just that extra thing too Everything just has that extra thing too Even prayer reciting Quran It always has that extra thing too And I always say this I'm not going to come here in front of the cameras and say Oh do you know what no no no When I come to recite you want to open the Quran when it's not Ramadan It's hard it's hard it's not as easy Ramadan I have that thing where it's like Do you know what yeah I can open this Quran Extra zeal Yeah Other than that it's like and the same thing goes with da'a But this da'a captured my imagination Because it's in comparison to the others There's a little twist on this one that is praying for others Praying for others Because you know sometimes we can become absorbed And not like I say for us to ask for our needs But you know sometimes we can become so absorbed in our own world And our own needs that we're praying for ourselves We're praying for ourselves just for our family I think it's the etiquette of Ahubayt isn't it It's Lady Fadmah Salaam alayha used to pray for everyone around Before her own and then herself And I think these it's showing the etiquette isn't it That think about all those people in need And actually not just thinking about those But think about how many do not have And that we have you know and when you're looking at You know close those that are naked Well alhamdulillah we don't have you know Yeah alhamdulillah And certainly where we live you know the poverty You know we have so much to be grateful for Especially this month And I think one of the most beautiful things about this month Is the unity and it doesn't matter Which school of thought you may belong to But when you see others for instance Muslims Muslim sisters are quite obvious with our hijab And you all know that we're all fasting You know and it's such a beautiful feeling That you're in this collective worship with Allah There's real power in that collectivity Hundred percent Real power in that collectivity I think other people religions don't understand Because a lot of other people have a face you know Well you know Muslims fast but They was fasting before the Quran was revealed Fasting before Muslims and stuff I'm saying it's true the Quran confirms that It was fasting before but There's no religion I'm aware of now That's you know any revealed or any spiritual path Where it's a collective fast for a month There's nothing like that And the power is of all As you can feel the spirituality in the society You can feel it Yeah definitely and especially when you go to Muslim countries It's the feeling just intensifies You mentioned you've been in Ramadan in Najaf Well it's just the beginning we left just before unfortunately Oh unfortunately but I went Two years ago and I fasted the last ten days In Najaf So I got the I was in Najaf And it was just beautiful It was just something else But you mentioned Fatima Tezahra And how she used to always pray for others From that we get one time she Someone came to Fatima Tezahra And they asked her Oh Fatima Tezahra Why is it that you always pray for others Why don't you pray for yourself He said Have you not heard the Hadith from my father Sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wa salam In which he said Your neighbor before yourself Teachings about al-Bait Great examples Great Akhlaq And of course we see in the Quran Rasulullah used to always Go for those in need Go Do whatever he could Literally whatever he could Just to Get to them before he gets to his own house And the same was with Fatima Tezahra She gave away everything she had There were days where Imam Hassan and Imam Hussain wouldn't eat Yet the poor ones would be eating Because Fatima Tezahra and Imam Ali used to always Seek out to them I think that's very beautiful And we should take a great example from that Definitely because I think in the societies we live And we're promoted to think about Well sort yourself out first Before thinking of others Because you matter first But actually Al-Bait are giving us you know Such pristine examples That think about the others around you And I think What you have between you and Allah Is a secret isn't it They wouldn't have announced that Our children are hungry But it's ineticate to us isn't it Like you know these lessons Do you know what It tends to work better in society as well I see Why because if everyone's thinking about themselves The poor ones who's going to help them There's no such thing as There can't be a poor one There isn't such a thing There's always going to be someone who is poor Somebody has to have by definition less Yeah 100% So he's going to be there for their aid Me myself let's say as an example I'm very well off right now But in a few days time How do I know I'm going to get Stuff coming in Things change Things change yeah I don't have anything I'm going to need it Now I'm not going to be Maybe I'm not going to have the Health to stand up for myself You know often I mean We have Masha such good Homeless feeding the homeless drives in London And I remember reading an article about Homeless person in London That one of the national newspapers had run And they said well how did you get to the state He said You know his everything just fell apart His relationship fell apart His motivation for work fell apart He was an educated person Had a very good job And suddenly he found himself Like not having a will to live And he said I gave everything up Because things just you know Like a domino effect broke And there he was on the streets And this wasn't somebody that was Scrounding on drugs And you know had an awful upbringing We just don't know what tomorrow may bring Right We just don't know Just like people that are not They say the believer shouldn't be hopeless Because even if you're in a Tight jam or a difficult situation You don't know what Allah has got For you You know to change that situation To elevate you and likewise You know those who are fortunate We should just be humble And not be arrogant Because that can be removed By circumstances that we just don't know Nothing is written forever is it And often when you see people In difficult circumstances they're You know even when we're saying Okay fasting is difficult It's not easy to be hungry For you know however many 18, 19 hours But the will power that we grow from it You know the resistance, resilience We develop It's amazing how much Actually power human beings have If the mind doesn't control them And you mentioned Ramadan and fasting The thing is One of the purposes of fasting Is to actually feel the hunger Of the poor ones Is to actually feel the thirst Of those who don't have anything to drink Exactly So then when you come And then you're in that state Where you feel what someone else is feeling Yet with that you are making dua For all those who are in need Just adds that spirituality effect And I think we've been talking About that every single episode The spirituality effect Gains some insight Of the less fortunate At least some Mishala was unfortunate That's all we've come to The end of the show Mishala, it smells so quick That was really quick And I just think from the dua That you recited That something that we can sort of Magnify in this month Is perhaps to think about the ones That are less needy And you know Perhaps elevate ourselves By helping others Inshallah Another episode Inshallah we'll see you Keep us in your da'as Inshallah like always Thank you so much Inshallah like always And next up we have Dua Maxumi Discussing bad habits And baraka pearls Assalamu alaikum I am Da'a Maxumi And I'm here to show you How the Holy Quran Can improve your life Let's talk about the bad habits We all have bad habits But they're not haram to do In the month of Ramadan And why can Ramadan help us combat And break the bad habits How can both the fasting side And the spiritual side Help bad habits Well, let's talk about Our bad habits For example, sometimes You like to watch a lot of video games Or play a lot of video games Watching too much movies Or too much YouTubers Or going out, dining out In a shisha calf They're not haram But in the holy month of Ramadan It's not spiritual It doesn't help your spiritual soul The month of Ramadan Is a blessed month In which one must connect together With Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala By listening to Quran By reading da'a If ta'a after the iftar By sitting with family Connecting with relatives Doing salat raham It's more important than Locking up yourself in the room And watching video games all day Or watching movies Even though it's not haram To do it in the month of Ramadan But it's considered as a bad habit Ramadan can help combat bad habits Like those that I mentioned Because we realize that We change a lot in Ramadan Instead of us listening to music We would listen to more of Quran Instead of us being outside all the time We'd enjoy our family So it helps us connect With family With leaving your bad habits To listen to more Quran To connect yourself with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala By the time the month of Ramadan ends You're used to the spiritual thing that you're You do on your daily basis You get you miss reading Quran You miss hearing supplications and da'as So instead of me being in my room Playing video games And watching YouTube all the time I would be like I want to sit with my family I should read a little bit of Quran Because I got used to it In the month of Ramadan So bad habits can help In the month of Ramadan Because slowly slowly You'll get used to In changing those bad habits For example You'd have something like Anger management We all have anger management But in the month of Ramadan It's not really spiritual To be angry And have bad manners and khlaq So what does the month of Ramadan do When you're fasting It helps you to be patient And to control your anger And when the month of Ramadan Is complete and it's done You will get into the habit Of being used to Being patient and calm That being said Having those bad habits Are not recommended in Islam So take your notebook out And sit down and list down The bad habits that you have And try to avoid doing them On day to day basis In the month of Ramadan Until you practice How to live your life Without bad habits And you would accomplish a goal Imam Ali A.S. says Who is the one who is a loser Who's days are equal Are a loser And the one who was the most unjust And those who They're today Is worse than they're yesterday Is curse So we should always change Our bad habits And not go to the minus We should always change ourselves And not be like how we were yesterday Nutrition and health I have with me today Sister Fahima Mohamed Salam Walaikum My NLP coach Live coach NLP practitioner Yes And Ben the chef Hello Yeah You're not cooking today Ben It doesn't look like you're cooking today But what do you have in store for us? We have got a beautiful gorgeous salad To prepare for everyone It's really just to showcase The sort of nutrients that you need Over the fastened period And yeah just making sure you get Everything that you could possibly need To keep you going What's it called? This is a mixed leaf Boiled egg, tomato and radish salad I love the ingredients already Interesting The fact that I can see spinach over there And a lot of the times We have spinach that is cooked So this is an opportunity to have it Raw spinach Raw spinach This is baby spinach Does it differ? Does it differ? There's different, yeah A lot of the time when we're going to cook our ingredients It's going to obviously take away a lot of the Health and nutrients in there So this is a good opportunity to have your greens And also it contains a lot more of the water That we require To keep us hydrated Ah the hydration Because it's always an issue As we're fasting and Ramadan is always an issue Fasting is something light It's easy As well as the fact that We can have it in the morning If you fancy It's not everyone's taste But a lot of you know For the evening as well Alongside your main meal It's a really good dish But this one because it's got eggs in there It's very high in protein And it could be taken as a full meal If some days you don't feel like having Because as Ramadan goes along And the days your tummy gets a little bit smaller And your intake is a little bit less So this is a good place to eat We hope that for, we're hoping It depends We're hoping For some, you do know for some it increases But that also does That's a really interesting point Because I think a lot of us Because we stick to the traditional foods And that is not actually beneficial for us at all It increases So easy on the grease guys Easy on the grease That is it Definitely So we can start by So yeah We're just going to start Start with the leaves Just got some Lettuce here Fantastic vegetable for Salads I love green I love green I love green Can't get enough green Raw foods There's a kind of raw food movement That's going on these days Being promoted more and more and more As people were going more vegan I'm not necessarily promoting any veganism But just saying that as people go more Into less animal product foods And more vegetable based foods Is raw food diet Do you know anything about this whole Raw food movement Alkaline versus acidic foods And this type of Of course And also the practical reasons for it I mean I personally like to be as quick as You know if I want to be in the kitchen So having it raw is less preparation Less time And obviously it holds more More of the nutrition in there Okay And you know it always has been Basically research have shown That it's better for you to have raw foods But as research goes along as well We realize that it has changed With our concept Especially with eggs It used to be something that we shouldn't have Or have only the whites Or you know not the yellow Whichever way Cholesterol Good cholesterol Bad cholesterol But it depends Because the cholesterol does not Necessarily raise in the blood So that's why it's fine For us to continue to have that now And so with new research all the time Always keep yourself updated Don't just go with the information That you've learned before And that's a really good way of Sort of increasing To involve intellectually right Of course We have to involve Absolutely And research is you know Proving to show us that there is changes In everything Especially in our food and diet So we need to be up to date with that To realize that there are certain things That we can't have Absolutely And we should have And it will actually increase us You know in our likelihood Of actually eating better And fresher And opening up our palates To even you know Things that we wouldn't normally have Because there's always that fear For some people when they hear cholesterol They think okay You know heart disease Because of the effect That some cholesterol will have Building up in the arteries and Making blood pressure irregular right So but there's very good cholesterol So it's kind of challenged that Eggs at one point Were considered very bad for cholesterol If you eat too many eggs Or every day It was considered quite bad Now it's not the case There's new studies that have come out And it's not so bad for you It's actually a great food A great food A great food to eat And as humans we evolve We are changing ourselves all the time And our bodies are changing You know so we need to know You know what's happening around us And how our food is being prepared How it's actually being grown And all of these things do take effect As to what we put inside ourselves So you know That sort of knowledge I think we always have to be You know up to date with And give ourselves you know The time to take that You know sort of extra step To research I can't help watching Ben Your technique with the With the rice If you're getting the most out there Right Waste not what not You know Yeah and you're not serving up For any chunks No no no Hunks Yeah and actually if certain Ingredients are not necessarily your favorite In order to have it Cut in a thin way Yeah it makes it easily Yeah yeah I mean guys at home If you've got a mandolin A mandolin would be great here If your knife skills aren't great You can just Try not to mandolin half of your thumb off Yes be careful guys Be careful But yeah so simple right Yeah And just packed full of flavor And nutrients I mean this raw thing If you're Anyone who's cooked carrots before What happens when you take the carrots out What does the water look like It's orange isn't it That's half of the nutrition going away That's good vitamins and minerals That are just being left behind You're going to throw that away right So So try and stick to it To the raw food Exactly But just remember when salad Obviously when we're going to garnish it And we're going to have you know Sort of like the dressing You know cut down a little bit of the salt Because obviously that's going to make you feel a bit thirsty So you know try maybe having a little bit extra Maybe I don't know Lemon if you wanted A bit of olive oil And you've got some vinegar there I see Which is actually very good for you too So all of these things Is something to consider when you're fasting Especially Absolutely So it will not actually you know Dry your palate too quickly And make you feel thirsty throughout the day And that's just food in general But obviously we do add You know salt and pepper Whatever it may be in our foods It feels like a kind of a payoff You know you kind of cost benefit Because you know the more seasoning there is The more tasty the food is But that means possibly more salt And more drying out Exactly And you want to be able to taste the ingredients as well You don't want to master the beautiful ingredients That you that you've got Yes because you know there's some things like salt Or even other sort of like balsamic vinegar You know can be overpowering So we need to obviously you know check that Before we actually Balance it's all about balance It's all about balance So Okay here comes the spinach Here comes the superfood Now we're adding the flavor We've got we've got beautiful ingredients here But we're going to sort of make them even better With this little dressing that I've made It's just vinegar and oil There's no need to That's olive oil we're having Yeah vinegar and olive oil There's no need to jazz it up You know just simple Simple dressing I love the colors of that as well That's it It's got a vibration to it It has a vibration It's fresh for the summer It's really healthy It's quite filling That's it You put vinegar in there I think there's something about The Prophet he's been blessing me upon him Talking about the benefits of vinegar That or Anything you know about it helping digestion in general Well it does help in digestion But also everything within balance Because we need to know our body So that we make sure That whatever we have is in keep with us It is no point even saying general You know information about this is good Or this is not good Because like I said We have to study our bodies first Know ourselves And that's why it's highly recommended To know your body type And what it is that's good for you Because when we even giving this kind of information Really it's for you to go out there at home And search for yourself yourself Because you know That's what people always get confused of And that's why things don't work for them Because they're using general information Which doesn't work for them Not made to measure Not tailored Not tailored for themselves Yeah exactly So I always generalize and I say If I'm going to coach a client one to one Then we do individual research and work With regards to their body type Their weight What exactly it is that they're doing And using in their diet What is their goal What's their trigger What's happening in their daily routine And that's an individual sort of requirement Okay so you take it in a lifestyle into consideration And also people's intolerance to food Dislike to food Or people's aversion to food Because I guess all those things differ right Yes And our cultures do come into play Because we're so used to the same types of food We're so used to the same sort of ways of doing things And a lot of it is really not healthy So we need to sort of open up our minds a little bit more Of the foods that you know is for us Regardless of where we come from Do you encounter resistance then Or people kind of like an unwillingness Or a slight fear of stepping into the unknown It's not really as resistance But it's the fact that you know People are not willing to change They're not willing to open up to new ideas Because if they're going to attend a family occasion If they're going to certain restaurants It's always the same And unfortunately it's not healthy And especially when there's loads of people They just think they've just got to fill the whole table up With everything and not necessarily Most of it's not healthy And it's not actually giving them anything And in Ramadan we have this a lot And you feel bloated, you feel tired So at the same time you know We need to we need to be able to worship better We need to be able to move better And how can we do this Our food helps with that That intake in our body gives us You know not just metabolism It gives us energy It gives us even the thought in our brains In order to be able to you know So you're one of those who believe That food can help with Concentration or state of mind Absolutely Absolutely There's a lot of research that shows that And even just generally fasting We don't even address the fact that A lot of people find it really difficult But fasting is such a good benefit for us In so many ways A lot of athletes do that A lot of sick patients Even that will fast into you know Intimately because they feel that It will help their body detox Or even just help with their balance Just generally in life So you know we've got to know these advantages So that we actually do drive ourselves To actually make the benefit You know to the limit Ben are there other salads That you can combine, create I don't know put together That is good for so whore For you know Something that will put something Rich in the engine that won't bloat you That's the thing we're saying that That won't bloat you but It will help you the next day When you're engaging in fast I mean the name of the game with this one is Replenishing your water And getting that those minerals and vitamins So do your research There's so many great superfoods out there Like beetroot Avocado as we had in one of our other episodes They're just absolute superfoods If you eat one of those a day You're going to be you're going to be laughing So yeah You can even have like kidney beans And lentils and things like that And you can hold Pulse of the pulses Now you're entering the pulses And it's actually filling And it's a little tasty Extra protein It's so amazing Food is such an amazing thing But people you know Because of the lack of knowledge Or education Just generally awareness around it It could really deter you From actually creating something That's going to be so fulfilling for you Yeah food tends to be such a social thing You mentioned culture I remember Food tends to be such a social thing So it is People need that extra encouragement To break away And try something new right Get away from the norm Try something new And you know Open up a different lens And like I said You know It will not just help your body It will help your mind It will help your movement Generally And we need to obviously You know Do so much in this day and age So you know What better way than this And there's so much processed food There's so much you know Ready-made foods That's around That's packed with salt Yeah this is the why This point of this program is to show It's quick and easy It's simple And it's most important and healthy And nutritional So you know So this was fast food This was fast food This is a real fast food With a twist It's actually healthy for you You know That's what you want Fast as in quick Yeah But not as fast as in Full with cheap unhealthy ingredients Process I mean This in itself is a great side dish You know But add some Add some chicken to it That's true Add some other proteins to it And you've got You've got a main meal there And we've How long do that take? Exactly It's literally A couple of minutes You know Exactly And you know When you're tired You come home That's You don't want to be Fashing around cooking Yeah This that and the other You just want to keep it simple And it looks so colorful Because I know that there's going to be Moms with young children out there And you know There's always a bit of a struggle To get them to eat their greens But this I mean this looks a bit appealing I mean Can you say a little bit about How you work with moms In terms of working with children And stuff like that Because you know Children are They can be a kind of law Unto themselves Of course You know they can be changing Yeah It's trying to manage their mindset And trying to Help them think that Even if they don't like it Try it again Because like I said Our palate changes all the time And if you are trying something as well That actually helps Because a lot of time We cook for our kids And we don't eat it ourselves And they do have a different way Each child does differ So you know And we tend to try and cater for each one But you know what There's one meal You gotta This is what's cooked today And this is what needs to be eaten Otherwise there's going to be nothing Sometimes you've got to be a little bit tough And you've got to show them This is how it's done We cannot cater individually We're not restaurants And we can only have the time for that Yeah So but you know It's not practical It's not practical It's not actually a good way as well To actually teach children That this is what's available This is what's good for you And this is how we need to sort of look at things And just try Sometimes they just say no Because they just don't know At least get them to put it in their mouth Yeah And that sometimes can actually be the winner itself To actually get them To actually eat it To actually like it And you can do it again So there's many variations And obviously it does differ from client to client Of whoever it may be Mums or even ourselves We ourselves are so resistant So we need to look at ourselves first And we're the best of teachers We need to be the role models And we need to carry that forward And the truth of the matter is Even to this day for myself I eat carrots I don't particularly like carrots But my mum Well I'm not going to waste her money And it's not going to happen In terms of wasting their ingredients I mean Carrots were served And carrots were enjoyed That's it Whether I enjoyed them or not They were good for me What you instill from a young age as well Regardless It will be something that you'll remember You know In a lifetime We're habitual creatures As they say Yeah Yes In a good way That could be good And somehow We get good habits Yeah So we Yeah We just keep that That is a perfect takeaway message To instill And keep Instill those good habits They're good So up next we have Ramadan Etiket With Sister Masouma Jaffa Quran Ramadan Thank you brother Bilal For that episode on Healthy Fats Interesting discussion And seeing the outcome of the food So now we have our Ramadan Etiket And Hamdullah We have Sister Masouma Jaffa Joining us once again As-Salaamu Alaykum Alaykum As-Salaam How's your fasting going? Alhamdulillah Good Good Good Good I'm sure Mashallah Inshallah God is blessing you with lots of barakah And thank you for joining us And these busy nights Obviously everyone has hectic lives And so today We're going to be speaking about The importance of reciting Quran And why we recite it And the benefits we get from it So firstly Why should somebody recite Quran? Because they are the words of Allah It's the only thing that we know 100% Is actually authentic These are the words of Allah Not changed at all So much so that when God tells the Holy Prophet You know say He actually says say So he says it word perfect It's not even being changed Even that little bit And if I love Allah I would want to know what he says It is a book of guidance for us It is a book that allows me To connect to my Creator And the peace that I feel when I'm reciting it It's unbelievable So really beneficial to your soul Guidance Lessons in life And often actually people will say Yes the Quran is 1400 years ago Yes there are lessons from the prophets They don't apply to us And that's quite interesting I find Because often you will see The ramifications still in our lives today So the stories of Prophet Yusuf The betrayal of the families And you know And how Prophet Yunus has that separation All these things we have There's so many things that we can actually relate to Can't we? So in this holy month Somebody can't do like Obviously it's recommended to do the whole Quran And much trust some people can recite more than one Once they do it What are the spiritual benefits of even reciting one verse So we have for these that says that in this month If you recite one verse It is as if you recited the whole Quran Wow what a mercy Can you imagine It's like why wouldn't you want to just take time out to recite it But I think also life does go on People can't sort of take the whole month off So don't beat yourself up about it Maybe use this as a way of bringing the family together So maybe sort of between all the family members Recite the whole Quran rather than reciting on my own That's special right now If you've got five people in the family You can all do six Jews each And that's doable That's lovely So you know you're not only connecting to Allah But you're connecting with the family as well to Allah I think that's beautiful When you worship together as a family It brings you closer together as a family Definitely yeah That's such a beautiful recommendation To not feel that you have to And so for those that Arabic isn't there Mabatang Is it okay to just recite the Arabic Or should we be reading the translation as well How would you recommend So the Quran is only the Quran in Arabic So it's really important that we do actually recite The holy Quran in Arabic But obviously it's a book of guidance If I don't understand what it's telling me Then how can it guide me So it's really important that I not only recite it But I reflect on it Because Allah constantly is telling us in the holy Quran Why do they not reflect So I don't want to be one of those who does not reflect And reflection is not tafsir A lot of people are scared to reflect Because they think it's doing tafsir of the holy Quran And we don't have the knowledge to do tafsir In fact there's a hadith from the holy prophet Which says that you know If someone does tafsir from their own self With no knowledge or anything Then there will be a seat reserved for him In the fire of hell But reflection is not tafsir And I think that's really important to understand Reflection is where I Look at I read a verse I look at its translation If I don't know the Arabic And I just contemplate on what God is telling me personally To build that relationship then with God Personally And the beauty of it is Because the Quran directly talks to each one of us Dependent on our situation That same verse When I look at it today And reflect on Will have a different meaning to when I look at it Maybe in a year's time Or in ten days' time When my situation has changed It's so true isn't it And it's so beautiful But we don't get that benefit Because we're so focused on reciting And reciting is a good thing I'm not saying it's not a good thing It's a very important thing But that should not be our any focus We should reflect And then also In order to actually understand the deeper meaning Actually look at the tafsir that we have Which have been written by the scholars Who have knowledge So it's really important And I suggest that we do the reflection before the tafsir Because when we do the reflection after the tafsir Then it guides us It narrows down our reflection Because now we think we have to think this way Right You need to expand your Yeah, so just allow the Quran to talk to you Talk to your heart Talk to your soul Not go into the Quran with any preconceived ideas With no sort of This is what I believe And therefore the Quran should give me proof to that Rather just allow it to talk to you But I think it sounds like the prerequisite of it Really to speak to your soul and your heart It's the clearance of your heart The sincerity The genuine communication you want Allah to speak to you Exactly Because otherwise if you know you could I could just imagine people They've obviously written awful things about You know when I was thinking about Salman Rushdie's book That they want to misinterpret something They can actually come up with something very, very deviated And then the Quran itself says that Those who have perversity in their hearts The Quran will actually increase the perversity So if you go in with preconceived ideas Then yes it will actually It won't benefit you It's a matter of allowing Allah to talk to you through his word And I think it's so beautiful what you said Because I think some people may think Well am I worthy of God talking to me What have I done? And yet he says call upon me And I will answer you But that's what you're saying, isn't it? And I think the sad thing is You know when we have the Quran We treat it with respect And of course we should But it's not disrespectful for me to make notes It's not disrespectful for me to put like You know my sort of sticky notes Where I actually make Because that's me using it Absolutely You know if the Quran looks used Then that means that actually I've taken it on and I've You know it's like If you have a letter that's been sent to you By your beloved You know you'll keep opening it You'll keep reading it And it will look used It won't look You know like a lot of us We just keep the Quran on the top shelf And you know we're so concerned about respecting it That we don't actually use it Using it is not disrespectful If anything not using it is disrespect Absolutely I remember going to Ziyara once And there's a lovely sister who Mashallah teaches you know the Zawar And she had brought along her Quran And they had so many sticky notes in it And all these pages And I just sat in awe Thinking Mashallah You know the her relationship You could tell just by the sticky notes You think Subhanallah how Allah You know puts a light in people's heart To enable them to open up And actually you know Receive that guidance from Allah So we've got the holy nights Coming up Nailah the Qadr Is that one of the most important things to do Is to sit and the reflection of the Because obviously we're told to reflect So would you say Best one of the best deeds would be to recite Maybe Quran or reflect upon those verses It is a very highly recommended D to do Again we've been given specific surahs For those nights So we have surah Ankhabut, surah Rum, surah Dukhan So maybe before the nights If we can actually Look at the translation of those surahs Reflect on them Look at the tafsir of those surahs There's a lot of commonality between the three surahs So again, you know, there's a specific reason Those three surahs have been chosen Because the whole of the Quran is beautiful Every surah in the Quran has an opposition Could you elaborate on that point Just for our viewers in terms of To say somebody doesn't understand But how are they connected How would you In your sort of understanding So there's lots of I mean like for example All three surahs talk about the signs of Allah And you know how we should reflect On the signs of Allah Because that will bring us closer to him They all talk about The difference between a believer And an unbeliever So there's lots of different different things And again each one has its own separate message So for example Surah Ankhabut Talks about You know the spider's web And how much time he spends making that But how fragile it is And again it brings it back to our life How much time do we spend in this world You know making our lives for this world And yet it's all going to go It's all going to go So you know when we die None of this matters It's what we take on to the next world That matters So you know Surah Ar-Rum Which talks about You know the prophecy of the Romans Defeating the Persians No one thought at that time that would happen So again even though we think something's Not never going to happen It's impossible God can make it happen So you know even the specific Messages that are in those surahs The commonality that are in those surahs There's so much to learn from it It's just literally just sitting there And just making your notes on these surahs So that you're actually prepared for this This is the most important night The night of Layla to cut is the most important night Of your whole year Why would we not prepare You know And no guarantee for next year is there Exactly I mean people deal with this last year And noticely And it's not even the fact that You know it's preparation for someone else It's preparation for my own self I have a say in my destiny for that year God's allowing me to have a say Why would I not want to have that say And the more I connect to the Quran The more I connect to Allah Because it's through his words that I'll connect to him I'll understand him more I'll understand what Is what he requires from me for my own self Right So it's not even the requirement he wants Because he benefits But because for my own self For me to reach my potential My perfection So that when I actually meet him You know I'm ready for that meeting I'm the best version I can be with myself So you've said a brilliant advice Before the Knights of Gaza Read those surahs And prepare And surah Qadr as well Obviously to understand the benefit of this night And benefit and then learn Absorb perhaps what the messages are So that on the night One of the most recommended Acts of worship Are to recite those surahs So actually sit and recite those If we can But now when you're reciting it You're reciting it with understanding With a much deeper understanding Having reflected on those Because again We've got to remember that the The Knights are really really short So we've got to ensure that We get the maximum out of these nights So if I sit there and try to Look at the translation on the night Right Yeah You're not going to have time Unless you're on the other side of the world And obviously have a benefit of a longer night So and then also as the Qadr nights go Then we've still got the seven days Or you know even days that we and some people Do for much attempt All odd nights and they're doing Qadr But we've still got to carry that on haven't we So what would be your tips as a final message to sort of I think it's beautiful how God's put the night of Qadr On not at the beginning of the month Where you think you know you're the strongest Because you're not weak You have just started fasting Because it's not about the body It's about the soul Okay And usually when you think about I can examine it at the end of the year So it's not at the end of the month So true yeah Okay it's actually Coming towards the end But you have the sort of seven nights after it And I've been thinking about this and reflecting on it And I think it's beautiful because By the time you've gone sort of three quarters Into the month Your soul is spiritually you know Stronger It's more connected to Allah So you're ready for this amazing night Okay Once you've had this amazing night Where you've actually thought about What you want going forward And you make resolutions And it's about reconnecting to Allah Re-evaluating your life Prioritizing things Making sort of resolutions on what you're going to do Then you have the seven nights In order to implement those resolutions Bring them into your life So you can see how it's brought in Because you're still in the month of Ramadan So you're still You know you've still got the bark of the month You've still got shaitan locked up You're still on that training ground Where you know it's much easier To implement those changes Then because you've implemented them in the first Those seven nights Then you can continue Once the holy month finishes Because now it's easier to continue Something you've already started Rather than trying to start it Yes When the holy month isn't there Yeah So make it habitual And then inshallah we'll continue After the holy month Thank you so much once again Times flown by Thank you I've really benefited Inshallah so have our viewers Thank you so much once again And inshallah we will see you soon And next up We have our own little Abbas So cute And he's going to be giving us a daily hadith And the night of Ghadr Is the most important time of the year So make the most out of it See you again inshallah Morning Baraka Ramadan special You quick and your questions answered With the Sayyid As-salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh As-salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh How you doing Sayyid Alhamdulillah Can't complain, how are you? Good, good Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah Thank you and welcome to the show Thank you for having me again You're welcome I came on an empty stomach this time Nanjay We'll make sure you can have some sandwiches If we have time, if there's time So we have a question Go ahead And it's from a young adult When approaching a time for iftar Me and my parents have arguments Because the Shia and Sunnis Break their fast at different times I have converted to Shia Islam And my parents are still Sunnis Should I break my fast with them Or shall I do it at the time It's deteriorated for the Shias I don't want my fast to be void This issue does come across quite a lot Especially when we have a congregation Of Sunnis and Shia together Especially for the reverts I know it's a bit of an issue And also when friends get together And you want to do iftar together Or even pray together The timing It's never so apparent Than it is in this holy month Indeed, indeed, indeed Erkan wise You are not allowed to open your fast A minute before Maghrib Avan So in this situation I'm afraid not You can't open your fast with your parents And you'd have to wait until Maghrib Avan To open your fast However, your parents should be understanding Your parents should be accommodating And it's only 15 minutes Like it's not a big gap It's not like an hour, two hours or so It's only a couple of minutes Some people would say, is when you're hungry Definitely, I mean you're hungry But you could say, you know Or let me just, you know, do Wuduq first Then maybe I'll pray before I eat Or, you know, maybe I'll garbage So would you say recommend Recommend sort of Not to obviously go head on And argue but to divert And perhaps Indeed, I mean there's In the kind way We don't want to create a hostile environment At all, you know And you know There is different opinions In different months of And we need to tolerate that And accept that, okay You're going to open your fast at this time I'm going to open my fast at this time And there's no need to create a conflict There's no need at all However, if you're embarrassed to say Or do you know what I need to open it a bit later So that Let's go to the toilet Maybe do Wuduq Or just sell and pray Make an excuse Just before I want to read a little bit of Qur'an It's not like you have to delay Or distract yourself for too long It's only, you know, 15 minutes So I don't, there's no need It can be quite difficult though Because I know in gatherings Parents can be quite, you know So this is a young child And you know, parents have their set ways We've taught you and you're doing something differently And even in gatherings where With friends They can be obviously understanding And you know, when we have Gatherings with them Sunnis and you know It's never an issue Everyone is just like Yeah, we've just got a different time And Bismillah, you start eating So it's not And often they will actually delay this Or we start eating But, and I know in some Sort of group lifestyles that we've done Community I went to one that was predominantly Sunnis And I think I was the only she out there And I was the last one to eat But again, I'm older And I can, and I'm, you know I can make my way around I'm quite confident But for younger people That can be quite difficult and daunting Those people like uni, for example Yeah, I can understand I can understand it's intimidating If he's breaking fast And they're looking at them and saying Go on then, go on then Eat it then Is it yambora, hamdila, shukra and brava And they've got the banana there Trying to hang, trying to hang back Trying to hang back Will it go, Bismillah and brava Please Yeah Please Practically The money in my uni days, yeah I remember that it can be a little intimidating and At least uncomfortable And a little uncomfortable part You know, Ashia We don't need to shy away from our beliefs So we don't need to shy away from our practices You know, it's, you can say Oh, you know, I used to say Oh, I got a couple of more minutes You know, I never thought, okay No problem So what would you say to a young person To give them reason If they have something that says Why is it like that? Why we're all Muslim Eat It's time for school Oh, okay So in terms of, I mean Why do different months have Yeah, different months have different timings And different So maybe different methodology for calculating Is that correct? Are they calculated work all the time? And also different methodology And different, you know For example, let's say sunset So when is sunset? Is it once the sun has set it Or is it when the sun is setting When it starts to, you know, set halfway through What are the indications of that The sun has set What is the indication of time? Mm-hmm And then, Mashah, today In today's day and age We have, you know, Greenwich Time Medium Where we can give you a specific, you know Timing Calculated Calculated at this time The sun would set And sometimes at the art You give it a couple of more minutes One or two minutes extra Um, you know, according to the Shia We always say when the redness has left, you know Sky and it's on the one side Um I'm trying to think now Rising So yeah When the red is on the western side So the redness is all around And it slowly starts to creep Towards the west And when the redness is all in the west That's the time of Maghrib That's the time you can open your fast Mm-hmm So, you know Others may say no It's when the redness is in the east That's when you can That's when the sun is set So quite nuanced So yeah, so there's different Like I said, methodology And different indicators Of what time is Maghrib And that's depending on What month have you followed And this is why we have a difference in time You know And then, you know Do you think that difference is a positive It's a benefit Or do you think it causes division amongst us? I don't think it causes division I don't think it's a benefit neither I think it is there Because people have different interpretations If anything It shows that our religion is open to interpretation And our religion is a tolerant religion Where we can tolerate respect And we can, you know Yeah Accommodate people having different opinions And different rulings In regards to Islam That's perfectly fine You know We don't have any Imam here at the moment Until the Imam comes May Allah hasten his reappearance, inshallah Until the Imam comes We can't say what is 100% Until the Imam comes When he comes then everything is 100% We have no room for discrepancies Yeah Yeah It's a shame, I think Because again Because we're a minority school of thought And I know certain areas They're predominantly Sunnis And you may be the minority Shia But it's important to feel that confidence Isn't it? In your faith That this is what my fig says And this is what I mean, Shia Islam When I was growing up And you know, I grew up I was born in the 80s And I grew up in the 90s And too early now When they called the 90s But Shia Islam wasn't a dominant I mean, a predominant religion People didn't know much about Shia Islam People thought If you're a Muslim You're a Muslim, that's it In general, that's it They didn't know the difference Now kids as young as six, seven, eight Know that there's Shia and Sunni There's two types You know We don't really I guess that has its pluses and its minuses We're not a religion Or a group that is unknown And you know, not familiar with the community Here in England They know who Even if there are many misconceptions Exactly, exactly But it's taught in religious education It's a country where it's like a second We were growing up We weren't taught They were just a Muslim And you know Exactly The only time they knew about the Shias was So it's a one The point I was trying to get to was that We don't need to shy away No We don't need to feel that Oh no, no, no I'm Shia, sorry No, we don't need to say Yeah, I'm Shia And this is what we did This is our faith We don't have to be like, you know Proud as in like Yeah, yeah This is who we are, you know Confrontational We're only confrontational Or condescending or anything like that You're wrong and I'm right I'm like, no, you don't have to say Look, this is the methodology I follow And according to my sheikh Or my say it is this time So, you know, I'm gonna wait Absolutely, it's absolutely fine Do you have any tips and pointers For those new to religion of Islam They're first fast Second fast Also, you know, enjoy the experience Definitely try to do it with the community Don't do it yourself Getting contact So the more involved you are Yeah, getting contact with other Muslim brothers and sisters And, you know, so you're all talking together And because there's Mashallah and Ramadhan There's loads of events that are happening So, you know, you can attend There's grand circles of Seer Touchweed Grand lessons There's loads going on in the community For 30 days, you don't have to feel, you know You don't have to be onfasting About myself or on my own No, get involved Do it with the brothers and sisters It's a really nice communal holiday period Any tips for the community with regards to those Like the same question But maybe projected that there could be a community For all Muslims that are fasting, you know Trying, you know For the veterans For the veterans of the community For the veterans as well Make sure you're doing programs Holding events It's 30 days We have a little Qadr Mashallah We have a couple of birthdays Imam Hassan's birthday We have the Ishtarad of Imam Ali Alayhi Salam Amirul Mu'minin Let's get active Let's get Ramadhan Everyone knows we're fasting The public know Everyone knows Most government buildings and public sector Isn't it a really good time to start introducing Islam To people who don't know Why not invite non-Muslims to come have Ishtar Or why not encourage non-Muslims You know what, why don't you fast for one day Just see what it's like At the end, come to the mosque And then eat That sounds beautiful That's a beautiful dawah Yeah, yeah Fantastic Well, I think also there's What would your tip be for somebody who's not perhaps Near a community More isolated Maybe Muslim That's only a reaver How would What would they do Move No, I mean for those who want that quite distant For whatever reason I know brothers who you know They're working Maybe they're working Because they're far from families and that It's that for a lot of Muslims in the US A lot of Because America is such a big Compared to the United Kingdom It's such a big country And some people are very isolated So you know the best thing is To try and find the community To close as you can You know and if you can make the journey go for it If you can't Mashallah Most of our programs and stuff online Why not go and just you know Make sure allocate some time Go online and then watch some lectures Specifically for Ramadan Some live lectures If I'm saying TV we're here To help you from before your Ramadan period You know what's the channel We can help you and get you into that Spiritual zone To help you excel in your spirituality this Ramadan Also like you said in the previous point That it's not necessarily about Sharing your fast with Muslims You could invite your colleagues or whoever And join the celebration of opening your fast Indeed I remember watching a famous celebrity Not mentioning the name is Russell Brand He came to this communal Iftar that we're having You know when he came to support the charity And what they were doing And you know it was really nice And shall we come more of this Absolutely Definitely open Even open your centres locally And inviting non-Muslims And actually having a collective There are actually initiatives in the UK Where they are host their hosts Centres host the non-Muslims But definitely to get involved I agree I agree Making it Islam real and relevant To the society that you live in And not just isolated Any last pointers before we Oh yes our last point is I mean I'll try Your takeaway message My takeaway message to the people You know for the whole All the Muslim Omar For the Ramadan sisters This is ours This is our month Let's get together Let's make it very very spiritual Let's grow together as a community And get closer to the Imam of our time Get closer to Allah SWT As a community And let's not go empty handed Let's take our non-Muslim brothers and sisters With us and let them share with the experience For further more For the reverts If you finally get difficult You can do Taqlid of Saeed Saadik Shirazi And he will allow you to open your fast early If you want Even if it's too long If not please get involved with your community Find out local brothers and sisters around Do not be by yourself This Ramadan That's the main thing Don't do it yourself Because you know it gets boring It gets lonely It gets tough Indeed So you know find your local centers Call up your brothers and sisters then And get together Have like local meets Group of stars and things like that Really get involved And grow together as a community Insha'Allah Thank you so much I hope you have a blessed day Very nice I will do my best Thank you so much It is very interesting Thank you for having me Good point is that Insha'Allah Our viewers have a blessed hour And a blessed day Enjoy your fast


Hello, I'm Steve Furber. I'm Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Computer Science here at the University of Manchester. And today I'm going to talk about computers and brains. Computers and brains are both information processing systems with some similarities. So they both take inputs and process those inputs in some way and generate outputs. But there are also major differences in the way they work. And in today's talk I want to try and convey some of those similarities and some of those differences. Now of course we're not the first people to be interested in brains. And almost 200 years ago this lady Ada Lovelace wrote about her interest in brains. Ada was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron. But she's best known for her work with Charles Babbage who built early mechanical computing machines. And she worked with him. She thought about algorithms that could run on those machines. And to many people she was the world's first computer programmer. But more relevant to today's talk are her interests in brains. And amongst her extensive notes which are held at the University of Oxford, she says, I have my hopes of one day getting cerebral phenomena such that I can put them into mathematical equations. I hope to bequeath to the generations the calculus of the nervous system. Now this was very high ambition indeed for 200 years ago and even today we don't know how to achieve the objectives that Ada set for herself. Sadly she died quite young at the age of 36 and never got to progress this agenda much further. If we come a little closer to today than just over half a century ago a very well known computer scientist Alan Turing came to Manchester and this slide shows the house where he lived. It's a fairly undistinguished semi-detached house about 10 miles south of the city centre. In fact it's quite close to where I live, fairly near Manchester Airport. And on that brick archway you can see to the left of the house there's the blue plaque that's shown below that says Alan Turing, founder of computer science and cryptographer, lived and died here. And indeed this is where Turing spent his last few years because he'd moved to Manchester because Manchester had built the first machine to implement his big idea from the 1930s of the universal computing machine. Now while he was in Manchester Turing worked on various things but most relevant here is the paper that he published that's shown on this slide with the title Computing Machinery and Intelligence. And this paper begins with the words, I propose to consider the question, can machines think? In this paper Turing goes on to say this isn't a very well posed research question and so he turns it round into a test for human-like artificial intelligence which he calls the imitation game. But which we all simply know as the Turing test. And in this paper he reckons that all a computer would need compared with the Manchester baby is more memory. And he reckons about a gigabyte should be enough and he predicts in this paper that by the turn of the 20th century computers may indeed have that much memory. And this was a remarkable prediction because it was about that time when a typical desktop PC would have about a gigabyte. Now you have to remember that Turing wrote this paper very early in the history of computers in 1950 and the Manchester baby machine that he came to Manchester to use had 128 bytes of memory. So extrapolating it to a gigabyte was extremely far sighted. And at the turn of the century computers would have the gigabyte. They'd also be about a million times faster than the Manchester baby machine, but they would not pass Turing's test. And indeed even today no machine has convincingly passed Turing's test. This would have surprised Turing a great deal.  Until we understand natural intelligence it's difficult to see how we can build a human-like artificial intelligence. Now Turing came to Manchester to use the machine that's shown here, the baby, and it's shown here with its two principal designers, Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn. And Manchester's been building big computers ever since that day and the most recent of the big computers is the machine I'm going to talk a bit about later. This is the Spinnaker machine that we've developed for brain modelling applications here in the university. But for now I just want to compare these two machines. There's just over half a century between them and you can compare them on the basis of their physical size. The baby machine would be a bit taller than the man and as wide as a typical room. It would use about three and a half kilowatts of electrical power and with that it would execute 700 instructions a second. And if you do the arithmetic then you can see it would consume about five joules per instruction. If you take a modern energy efficient processor such as the one we use on Spinnaker then it uses 40 milliwatts of power and with that it executes some 200 million instructions a second. And if you do the same arithmetic you get a number with lots of zeros after the decimal point and the ratio of those two numbers is the improvement in the efficiency of computers over those 63 years. And that ratio is a factor in the region of 25 billion. Now that's a huge number. It represents a huge rate of progress in computer technology over half a century. And it's very hard to get your head around these kind of big numbers. But one thing I like to reference this to is that I understand that the UK road transport fleet that's all the buses, cars and lorries in the country between them use about 50 billion litres of fuel a year. So if the energy efficiency of cars that improved as fast as the energy efficiency of computers we'd be able to run the entire country on about two litres of fuel instead of requiring super tankers applying the oceans with vast quantities of fuel every day. Now of course that's not a criticism of the car industry. It's much harder to improve the efficiency of cars than it is to improve the efficiency of computers but it just gives you a reference point to see how much progress we've made in computers. Now it's not the first technology that's gone through this rapid progression and again going back to Victorian times another university character, William Stanley Jevons looked at steam engines and he published a book with the type of the coal question. What he observed in this book was that James Watts' newfangled coal-fired steam engine was much more efficient than Thomas Newcombans and yet, and so you'd expect that the coal consumption would go down because the steam engines would use less of it but actually what he observed was that coal consumption was going up instead and you don't have to think about this very long to work out what's going on as you improve the efficiency of a technology the number of uses to which it can be put increases even faster and so the total amount of energy that's consumed goes up rather than down and of course we can see that with computers. There are so many computers in the world today that even though they're formidably more efficient than they were 50 years ago collectively they are consuming an increasing proportion of the world's energy resources and this is a concern. It's not a problem to which I have a solution but it's one of these factors that we have to bear in mind when we think about building more efficient technologies. The picture at the bottom right of this slide is a picture of Manchester in Jeven's time. Today it's a lot cleaner and nicer than it was then because all of those coal-fired steam engines have been replaced by cleaner and more efficient technologies. Now the progress in computers has been largely driven by one particular technology which is the integrated circuit and this picture shows a close-up of an integrated circuit. In fact what you're seeing here are mainly the layers of metal that connect the transistors together on the chip. If you look carefully you can see three different layers of metal in this picture stacked vertically and if you look very carefully right at the bottom of the stack of the transistors that are built into the surface of the silicon itself then there are a couple of transistors towards the bottom left of this picture. Now if you took the chip out of your mobile phone and magnified it to this scale then the total area of the chip will be several square miles at this level of detail. So these are formidable technologies that we have available today. Again an analogy I find useful is that the job of designing the wiring for a modern integrated circuit is about the same as the job of designing the road network of the planet from scratch. So that's every road and public footpath on the planet that you have about that many wires on a modern chip. So it's a formidable challenge and of course on the chip if you get any traffic jams then the chip won't work as intended. So we have to use the best tools available today to put these chips together and to guarantee that you don't see anything that resembles a traffic jam. And that's delivered formidable technology at very low cost and that's one of the reasons why computers are so prevalent in today's world. Another reason is that we've learnt how to turn most things that we're interested in into numbers because computers really can only handle numbers. So we've worked out how to turn sound into numbers in the consumer marketplace this happened earliest about 1980 the compact disc came out and then photographs came next in the 90s we saw advances in digital photography which mean that an old fashioned camera that uses chemical films is now quite a rarity and then we went from still pictures to moving pictures and only over the last 20 years has most broadcast TV converted from analog systems to digital. Because we can turn all these things we're interested into numbers we can use computers to send the numbers around to process them and to store them and this has required a formidable amount of work and of course we've not done everything that needs doing we have more senses than hearing and sight and we still don't fully understand how to digitise other senses such as touch although there is progress on that or smell or taste I'm not entirely sure that I personally wish to live to see the invention of the smelly vision but I'm sure it will come one day. Once we've turned the things we care about into numbers we then have to be able to do three things with them we need to be able to store those numbers to process them and to communicate them and the early history of computers was very much focused on the first of these storage digital storage was the biggest challenge in building the earliest machines I remember in the 1980s talking to my colleagues in the computer business wondering whether we'd ever be able to store a single track of music on a solid state chip today I have my entire CD collection on my phone for no particular reason other than that I can and so you can see how much storage technology has advanced just in the 30 or 40 years since the 1980s Now how does all this work? Well here I have a demonstration a very simple demonstration this is an old iPad tablet computer and I'm going to open a document on it so that's a library of documents I'm going to open this document which happens to be a data sheet with a spinnaker machine and I'm going to flick through the pages there and what I want you to do is think about what's happening how does that work? it's being built by engineers so clearly we know in great detail how it works but can you explain how it works? well I don't know if you can answer that question but let's start when I push my finger across that page firstly the computer has to be able to sense my finger and it does this because it has a very fine mesh of electrical sensors behind the glass screen and they can detect where my finger is so as I move my finger across the screen the sensors can detect the finger and detect its movement that's not the aspect that I'm particularly interested in here when the machine detects my finger movement it then has to make that image move as though I were pushing it with my finger now that image is formed from about a million little picture elements it's about a thousand by a thousand and each of those picture elements can be programmed by the computer to be a particular colour we see here white, purple, red, yellow those colours can be changed if I want the image to move a bit to the left what I have to do is basically read the value of each of those picture elements and copy it into another pixel a few pixels to the left of the one I'm ready from and if I do that for all the million pixels on the screen then the image will have moved a little way to the left what does it take to do that? well it takes about ten basic instructions to read the value of a pixel and write it in a new location and there are about a million pixels so it takes about ten million instructions to move the image a small distance if I want that image to appear to move smoothly then Hollywood is known for a century what I have to do is update the image about 25 times a second so 25 times 10 million means I need to be able to execute about 250 million instructions to create the impression that that image is moving smoothly to the left and that's the key to how computers work they can execute very large numbers of very simple instructions to create the illusion of all sorts of things that are familiar in the real world that they synthesize in their artificial world if I move to a more up-to-date iPad then I may have two or four million pixels on the screen and the amount of computer I require to move an image up by a factor two or four to maybe a billion operations a second now if you're familiar with this technology you know that most of this work is not done by the main processor it's done by a specialized processor called the GPU but the principles remain the same so how do we understand how the machine implements this well let's look inside so here's a tablet if we peel it apart inside we'll find a circuit board with lots of black plastic chips on and then if we go and peer inside these chips we'll find they have contents with names like an arithmetic logic unit and ALU, some memory those are made out of logic gates the gates themselves are made out of transistors the transistors control the flow of little clouds of electrons around the system and the transistors themselves, as with all matter are made out of atoms and if we want to understand how the machine works if we go down to the atom that's too low level there's too many of them, it's too complex if we just look at the tablet from the outside we can see what it does but we can't understand how it works so to understand the tablet we have to go to an intermediate level of understanding and the typical level that we use for example on a computer science course is the level of these kind of block diagrams where we have a block that's called a microprocessor we have a block that's called memory and we try and understand the relationship between these and we know how to build these out of logic gates and we know how to build logic gates out of transistors so we can engineer systems and if you want to understand what's happening at the level of the microprocessor then you can look at the memory which is basically just a very large set of pigeon holes each pigeon hole has a unique address when you put something in a pigeon hole and you're expected to stay there until you go look in the same pigeon hole later and then you find what you put there earlier and you can move the contents of the pigeon hole across to the microprocessor which has a much smaller set of pigeon hole called registers and it can do things with those registers under the control of instructions and there's a typical program down the left of the screen here load register 0, that's the pigeon hole in the microprocessor from memory 3 that's the pigeon hole in the memory with address 3 do another load to register 1 then add register 1 to register 0 and put the result in register 2 and store register 2 in pigeon hole number 6 in the memory and so on so these are very simple data movements very simple arithmetic operations and the way the computer achieves its impressive results is by doing these very simple operations very fast so that's the first key message of this talk is that computers work by doing really quite simple things very fast indeed and if you do enough simple things fast enough you can create some quite rich and complex phenomena now if we look at brains then brains have some different properties firstly brains don't do one thing after another they do many things at once our brains are built from brain cells which are called neurons and we have just under 100 billion of those that's 10 to the 11 and they're all operating at the same time so instead of doing one simple thing the brain's doing many things at once and each of those neurons has a lot of connections and if you add them all up you find that inside your head you have something like 10 to the 15 connections which are called synapses that's a thousand million million synapses and those synapses are not static they adjust, they change and indeed to the best of our understanding they are where all your memories are stored and your personalities form from how your synapses connect your neurons initially of course as a result of your DNA but they change throughout your life through experience so in some sense you are your synapses now if we look at other characteristics of the brain we can see that brains are formidably power efficient if we try and build a model of a full human brain on a computer we need a computer that will consume tens of megawatts of power whereas your brain runs on about 20 watts so the biology is much more efficient than the best microchip technology we know how to build and some of the key to that efficiency is that unlike the computer which runs very fast indeed the biological technology is quite low performance nothing inside your head works on timescales much shorter than a millisecond whereas computer chip designers worry about picoseconds that's tens of a million millionth of a second also the communication inside your brain is quite slow compared with that in a microchip your brain is also very good at coping with component failure while you sit there listening to me if you're over the age of about 20 you're losing about one neuron a second that's not a big problem it only amounts to one or two percent of your neurons over the useful life of your brain and your brain can easily accommodate that if you start losing 20 or 30 percent then you have a problem but that typically doesn't happen in the healthy brain and we've no idea how to make computers that can tolerate that kind of degree of component failure but the key to the brain is this massive parallelism that lots of things are happening at once and those are quite complex things so brains do complex things quite slowly computers do simple things very fast indeed brains do complex things quite slowly now I do have to offer a caveat here that of course our understanding of the brain is far from complete so whenever I tell you something about how we think the brain works we're generally not completely sure that we've got anything like the full story today but to the best of our knowledge these are things, these are facts which apply to the brain now again if we want to understand the brain then we can look at the whole brain that's too big and complex to understand we can take it apart and we can see it's made from various regions or modules the modules are constructed from neurons which go ping every so often that's how they communicate the neurons contain DNA and at the bottom of all matter the DNA is composed of atoms if we want to understand the brain then there are too many atoms it's too complex at the level of the atom if we look at the top level all we see is the function so we're interested in levels in between those two extremes and most of the time people who try to understand the brain look at neurons the basic brain cell for which the brain is composed and here's a picture of a small area of cortex that's the outer layer of your brain and the darker blobs here are the cell bodies themselves and the hairy stuff the wires that connect these together so you can see that this is a very complex system to begin to understand if we look at the brain cell then this is the cell called a neuron it's a bit like a logic gate it has multiple inputs typical neurons have thousands of inputs and it has a single output and on the output a very communication mechanism is through spikes so every so often if the inputs to the neuron are sufficiently interesting to that neuron the neuron will go ping it will send a little impulse out down its axon to all the neurons it connects to and so again if you've got your head around the idea that your personality and memories are all formed in your synapses then your thoughts are patterns of spikes between your neurons and these spikes operate it a few spikes a second hundreds of spikes a second just as neurons have many inputs the output connects to many other neurons and we have these synapses at the connections and the synapses adapt in response to experience and that's really our best understanding of what's going on inside the brain now here in Manchester we've built a computer to try and contribute to our understanding of the brain and we set ourselves the target of putting a million mobile phone processors into one computer from the outset it was clear that even with a million mobile phone processors we can only get to about a percent of the human brain in fact even that's a bit optimistic or you can think of it if you prefer as 10-hole mouse brains the mouse brain is conveniently very similar to the human brain but a thousand times smaller so it's a machine that's bigger than most computers that can support brain models but it's still a long way short of the full human brain we designed this computer from the microchip upwards so the heart of Spinnaker is this silicon chip which took about five years to design in my lab and we've had it since 2011 and we package this chip with a memory inside the black plastic package at the bottom left of the screen and then we can build machines with these chips so we have the basic Spinnaker chip we can tile a two-dimensional printed circuit board with these, this board has 48 chips that's 864 processors and then we can assemble these boards into machines of different scales and the biggest machine is the one that's in the Kilburn building in Manchester and that contains over a million processors distributed across 11 typical data centre cabinets and this has been online at half the scale seems March 2016 full scale since November 2018 and offers an open service which is accessible to users anywhere across Europe or around the world it's supported under the European Human Brain project but it's openly available to anybody who wants to use it building these machines is quite interesting and here are all those chips being arranged in a 2D mesh and then divided into units of 48 to put on circuit boards and then these circuit boards have to be wired together here are a couple of people in my group working very fast as usual and they are involved in the job of wiring these boards together to form the large machine so there are a lot of cables in the machine and we don't want any of these cables to be too long or they won't work reliably but instead of building the machine in a simple flat way we fold it and interleave it in two dimensions and then the longest wire that we need to connect any two boards together is just under a metre in length so we can assemble these boards into the machine room cabinets and then these are built into a room that's been especially converted to have the cooling equipment necessary to keep the machine working reliably and then we can wire them together and here you see three of my group busy doing the wiring of the half million poor machine they're wearing headphones not to listen to music or entertainment but because the computer these headphones are wired to is giving them instructions and the machine is also lighting up little LEDs to plug the wires in when they've plugged both ends of a cable into the machine then the cable is tested and so you can be sure that there are no mistakes made in the wiring because they'll be detected very early and corrected and the entire wiring job took just under four and a half hours and they looked suitably pleased with themselves at the end of it so that was the assembly of the big machine now what can you do with it? well obviously a primary use is brain modelling and one of the more detailed models that's been run on the machine is a model of a cortical micro column this is a small fraction of the brain just about a square millimetre of cortex where the cortex is the outer layer of your brain like a sheet but screwed up to fit inside your head and this has 77,000 neurons 285 million synapses it's quite a complex model and we can run this both on Spinnaker and on the conventional supercomputer and compare the results to check that we're getting sensible answers a slightly more abstract application is to build a stochastic neural network that will solve sonoku and similar problems and this is... it was developed by one of my PhD students who forms the basis of his PhD thesis and this solves the hardest class of sonoku problem in about 10 seconds which is a lot faster than I can do it but then I don't have the rules of sonoku widening my brain in fact I don't really spend much of my life doing sonoku so this is a more synthetic problem that it shows that there's a lot of flexibility in modelling neural networks on the Spinnaker machine so where does this leave us what does this say about the future well, Spinnaker is just one example of a recent development in this area and what you see if you look around is that there are many developments in computers that are in this direction of enabling machines to increasingly sense and make sense of their environment and these kind of control systems can now be used to enable new sorts of products such as driverless cars which you hear quite a lot about in the news they aren't really quite here yet but they are coming and at a more domestic level robot vacuum cleaners the example here is Dyson and this uses a fisheye lens you can see on the top to look at your room analyse what's there understand where it is and it will work out the route it should take around the room to clean your carpet as well as it can as we learn more about the brain this trend of building machines that have cognitive capabilities will increase rapidly I think and this is a relatively new phenomenon but for your generation this will have significant consequences that you should be thinking about and this is going to I think change life for everybody over the next decade or two so to conclude my talk what are my key messages I hope I've conveyed the fact that computers have progressed spectacularly in just over half a century they work by doing simple things very fast indeed brains are also information processors but they work in quite a different way from computers that we still are not close to fully understanding but it does seem that the principle mode of operation is that they do really rather complex things quite slowly unlike computers that do very simple things very fast here at Manchester one of our contributions to the science of brains is to build the spinnaker machine which is a computer designed specifically to be good at modelling parts of brains and we hope that an outcome of this research will be to help us understand how the brain works and in turn we hope that that new knowledge will help us build better computers in the future