Lisa Hurley, the Caregiver Coordinator for the Aging and Disability Resource Center. And I'm the Chair for the Task Force for Dementia-Friendly Shpoing County. And what we'll do is we will have our committee introduce themselves so that you have an idea of who's been working on this project. Hershey Boyden County Health and Human Services. I'm Doug Holti, her father-in-law. And I work for Project Independence, it's a group under TLC homes. I work with elderly and with people of dementia. And I'm Ginny Nighyce with the Alzheimer's Association. I'm Ginne Holti and I'm the founder of the Game Ward. I signed you all in. I'm the opportunity to provide the aging programs of the Aging and Disability Resource Center. Good morning, I'm Ruth Ager and I'm the supervisor of ADRC. Great, what a wonderful committee. And we do have a welcome to campus from Dan. Good morning, everyone. I'm Dan Holt. I'm the campus administrator here at UW-Sheboygan. And I sincerely want to thank you all for attending this morning and welcome you to the campus. This is a topic that is near and dear to many of our hearts, whether you have family members or friends who you have sought assistance and help and worked with as time goes along. So I want to thank you very much for all being here. Take time afterwards if you would like to walk around the campus, enjoy the campus. You are about a week away from the halls being filled with students. So this is lack of students but tons of students coming in and finishing registration and getting ready for their fall semester. So again, have a great day today. Enjoy the campus. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. We're happy to be here. So what are we going to do today? And why did we call you here for three hours? Well, we are going to do some education. We are going to do some focus groups. So that basically means we want to pick your brain. We're going to do a wrap up. And then we're going to talk about where and how are we going to move forward to make Sheboygan County dementia friendly. So for the first hour or so, we'll be in this room and we will be doing the presentation with a little bit of the education. Then we will be moving to different rooms for our focus group. So what we want you to do is keep a couple of things in mind. We have different sectors that we'll be breaking out into so you can think about this. If you're healthcare, you'll stay in this room. If you're business, if you're public service or community organizations, you will be in some of the classrooms down the hall and there is signage and the different committee folks will be taking those different rooms. But and if you're with the community or you're a caregiver, start thinking about which group you would like to participate in. So again, what are we here for today? Why are we here? We will give you an overview of what dementia is. What is dementia friendly in Sheboygan County? What are we going to do about it in terms of building a dementia friendly Sheboygan County? What the vision is? Again, the focus groups and then what the next steps are. So at this time, I would like to invite Ginny to start out with our presentation and if we could get the lights. Okay, so you might recognize this. This is a picture of Sheboygan County. But there are some fun facts I want to share about Sheboygan County. How many of you know that we are on a lake? Most of you, right? But did you know that Sheboygan stands for in Chippewa Indian language? It stands for pathway between the waters. And did you know that Sheboygan County is made up of 513, almost 514 square miles? And you may have known that Sheboygan County is the Bratwish capital of the world, right? Of the world. That's pretty amazing. But you probably didn't know that Sheboygan County has besides Lake Michigan 72 lakes. I didn't know that one. That was really interesting. And Sheboygan County by surfers around the world is called the Malibu of the Midwest for the freshwater surfing. And how many of you know this one? Children, chairs, churches, and cheese. Somebody may be shaking your head. So those are some fun facts about Sheboygan County. Another fact about Sheboygan County is we have almost 116,000 people that live in the county. And in the state of Wisconsin, we actually have 100, almost 120,000 people living with dementia. So what if all of Sheboygan County had dementia? 119,000 people in the state of Wisconsin do, which is more than the population of Sheboygan County. But we know that those 100 and almost 20,000 people live all over Wisconsin. And although these red dots represent those people, there actually should be a lot more red dots in the further northern part of the state. Because there's the majority of people with dementia are actually living in the northern part of the state for various reasons. So that means in the state of Wisconsin, again, there are more people that have dementia than all of the population of Sheboygan County. So that's nothing, though, if we compare it to what is going to happen or what we're predicting might happen. Or where we are headed. So due to growth of the older population in the state of Wisconsin, we're actually looking at in about the next 25 years at about a 68% increase of people with dementia in the state of Wisconsin. So close to or over 200,000 people. That's if nothing changes. And we talk about what could change to make that not happen. Obviously a cure would be the number one thing or the greatest thing that could happen. But also things like how could we slow down the trajectory? So could we put off people developing those symptoms for five or 10 years? Even if we were able to do that, that number would decrease. So why are we here? We know that small changes can make a big difference. And when we're talking about becoming dementia friendly as a county, we're talking about small changes. But those small changes will make a big difference for a lot of people. In fact, in Sheboygan County, we have approximately 2,400 people with dementia. And that's an estimated number because we know there's probably another 50% of that number that is actually not diagnosed and are just living out there. And guess what, folks? Those people aren't living in nursing homes. Those people are living in the community. The majority of people with dementia live in the community. About 20% live in nursing homes, but 80% are living out in the community. So one of those small changes that we want to make is really empowering the community, Sheboygan County, to become dementia friendly. So what I want to do now is just take a couple of minutes. And some of you may already have heard this and already know this, but just to make sure we're all on the same page, talk about what is dementia, what is Alzheimer's disease, and what is the difference, and what are some other things that are out there when we talk about dementia. So dementia is really a general word. We say that it's the actual condition. The condition is dementia. It's an umbrella word. It's a category word. And under that umbrella or category, there are a lot of different types of diseases. In fact, there's over 70 different types of diseases that cause certain symptoms that are classified as symptoms of dementia. And dementia symptoms do include loss of memory or cognitive abilities, but it also includes things like changes in thought process and changes in the way we perceive the world and changes in the recognition and changes in mood and personality. So it's more than just a little bit of memory loss. And it has to be severe enough to interfere with the person's daily life.  It is not a normal part of aging. If you leave with nothing else today, remember it's not a normal part of aging. So then what's Alzheimer's disease? Alzheimer's disease, one disease that causes those symptoms of dementia. It is by far the most prevalent. It accounts for about 60 to 80% of all the cases of dementia. So it's definitely the most prevalent.  It is fatal. People do die with Alzheimer's disease. The course of the disease varies from one person to another person. In fact, we have a saying at the Alzheimer's Association, if you met one person with Alzheimer's disease, that means you met one person with Alzheimer's disease. And those of you that are caregivers in the group can tell us that you see differences from one person to another person. And even though we talk about some general characteristics and similarities, it's different because our brains are so complex. So how does this affect me? Why should I care? Why are all of you here? In your purple folders, there is a one-page handout you were given and it's facts and figures about Alzheimer's disease. And I want to break that down in the next couple of slides and maybe point out some things you didn't know or maybe some things that you did know or maybe something that might be a surprise to you. So first of all, it's the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Sixth leading cause of death. That is across all ages. If you would just factor in ages 65 and older, it's actually higher than that. But over all ages, it's the sixth leading cause of death. It is the only top ten disease right now or top ten causes of death right now in the United States that cannot be prevented, treated, or slowed. And right now in the United States, we have over five million people living with Alzheimer's disease. And we project by the year 2050, that number will be more than tripled. If nothing changes, one in three seniors dies with Alzheimer's disease or another dementia. I had also mentioned that it was the sixth leading cause of death. It also happens to be the only disease at this time where the death rate has increased over the last ten years. All other diseases, the death rate has decreased. Cancer, heart disease, stroke. Even AIDS, all of the deaths have increased in the last ten years. Alzheimer's continues to go up. And we estimate that for every person with dementia, there's probably three family caregivers that are helping to provide support and care for that person. And we also estimate that in 2015, 18.1 billion hours of unpaid care were provided by those family members. 18.1 billion. Every 66 seconds, somebody in the United States develops Alzheimer's disease. So we've been here for about 25, 30 minutes already. Every 66 seconds to figure out how many people is that in the last half hour, about 28 or so. In 2015, Alzheimer's and other dementias cost the nation $236 billion. That's what it cost the nation as a whole. So that means it cost each one of us. And family caregivers spend over $5,000 a year caring for somebody with Alzheimer's disease. Okay, now for some of us, that might mean missing a vacation, but for many out there, that means missing a meal or missing several meals, going hungry because they have to pay for that person's care. Medicare costs in 2016, this year that we're in, we're estimating that Medicare costs for caring for people at dementia will be $706 million. And again, I mentioned that it's the sixth leading cause of death, not only in the United States, but also in Wisconsin and the state of Wisconsin. In 2013, that is a little bit old because it takes us a while to get those statistics, but in 2013, we had over 1,600 people die from Alzheimer's disease. And let me tell you that there's probably close to twice that many that aren't actually recorded as dying with or from Alzheimer's disease. So in case you didn't already figure it out, the time to act is now. Dementia affects everybody. It's everybody's business. And that's why we've invited all of you here today. So I'm going to turn it over to Doug and he'll talk a little bit more about our vision because right now I see a lot of energy kind of going down and a lot of faces that are starting to get longer and longer as I'm going through the facts. Well, guess what? We as the task force and all of you and hopefully more in the community have a vision and Doug will talk about that a little bit more and how we can be a little bit more positive. We did have a video, but the sound did not come through so we just have to skip that a little bit. And she says I'm going to try to make it positive. Well, I'm not exactly going to be doing that right away, maybe, but we do have a vision as a team, as a committee and we have a dream and those are stolen from Martin Luther King's. In his speech he said I have a dream and before he could do that, he first had to recognize a very serious problem and I think Jenny here has brought that to our attention right away here. King had to help bring that awareness to his community and to the nation. Today we're bringing forward another serious problem in our community and nation. A large group of people are being marginalized, hidden from society, ostracized and even forgotten. This group does not come from a specific ethnic or racial background. It's not limited to a certain age group. It has nothing to do with income, wealth, or upbringing. At this point right now, some of you right here listening will be suffering from this disease. You see, it often starts like this, I. I go out to eat with my spouse or family like I've done so many times before, but they begin to notice that I'm a bit confused about some things. I'm having more trouble than usual finding the right words during some of our family restaurant outings. I start to get angry. Really kind of out of control, but the people around me are just doing everything for me. They're treating me like a little, just looking at me different. The outbursts become more frequent. I go to the bathroom and I don't understand why everybody is looking at me so strangely. Then somebody directs me to a different bathroom. I didn't understand. It's the wrong one. I come out of the bathroom and I turn the wrong direction and soon I'm in a strange room with people all dressed in white in this restaurant. They're holding knives at pots and pans. There's steam. There's smoke. There's yelling. I'm afraid. I'm scared. What do I do? Where do I go?  What did I do wrong now? She takes me by the hand and back to the table. My family is frustrated. And as I perceive it, they're angry. They start to see that my fear is turning into anger. They're starting to treat me like a child again. It's outbursts. They're embarrassed. They decide to leave before the food arrives. Episodes like this start happening more and more often and become more intense. My family loves me, but they just don't know what to do. They don't take me out in public much anymore. I guess that's all right with me because I really don't feel safe out there. I'm just going to go back and hide in my room and my family is just going to help me. They'll help hide me where it's safe, where they won't get embarrassed. I'm now officially a member of this group that I mentioned earlier that are being marginalized, hidden from society, ostracized and forgotten, that dementia group. Oops. How do we help these people? How do we go about changing things? Well, it's going to take everybody. This is a huge, huge task. And to educate, and that's why we brought you here, is to try and figure out a way to make our communities more friendly, more accessible to these people. The vision is for Sroyd County to become dementia friendly. What is dementia friendly? Well, you know what? You're going to have to help us with that. You're going to have to help us. How can you make your business, your place of employment, your surroundings more friendly and help us to figure that out together? There are lots of communities that are working on this right now. Yeah, we have a vision. Caring, memory support. We have a dream to see our community develop a friendship and understanding with these individuals in our community and with their family and their caregivers. We have a dream for a community that accepts and makes allowances for who that I am. A community that is safe, which looks out for and cares for individuals with dementia and their family or caregivers. A community where I can venture out again and be a part of. We have a dream that when I enter a business, a pleasant understanding staff sees my needs, walks me to where I need to be, shows me and my caregiver where the family bathroom is. They make me and my family feel comfortable and accepted. A community that might have a slowing at the checkout counter for when I'm fumbling with my wallet and trying to count my money, where the teller offers to help me count the money and where the people behind me are patient and pleasant. We have a dream for a community where I can travel, where I want to go, do the things I want to do and then get home again safely. When I go to a park or business or other building, I see a symbol that I recognize and reassures me that when I am here, there are people around me that I can trust to help me accomplish what I need and what I want to get done. It's estimated that the diagnosed individuals, as Jenny mentioned, of the ones that are diagnosed, there's approximately 50% more in our community that are undiagnosed who are hiding at home with a family member or caregiver. That is a large part of our community. It will take a great effort to help them to feel safe, to come out, to patronize our businesses and contribute to our community. Today, we want to examine the community around us. What can you do? What can we all do to become more dementia-friendly? I'm going to turn this over to Lydia. That was fantastic. So now we're going to break up into the focus groups. And before we do this, I just want to give a little explanation of kind of why we're doing this. So we started working this task force since July of 2015. So it has been a long road to get here. And like Doug mentioned, we've been working on this for a while, but other communities have been working on it for years. So in Wisconsin, the Department of Health and Human Services at a state level has been working on this thing called the Healthy Brain Initiative. So they came up with a toolkit called Building a Dementia-Friendly Community. And in this toolkit, they had a list of different things that communities could do to step up to address some of these issues that we've talked about today. So locally, we thought we really need to get on this. So we went through the toolkit. We brought all these partnerships to the table. We looked at how are we going to address these things. We reached out to other communities that are already working on it to say, hey, what are you doing? What have you done that maybe we could learn from and apply here in Sheboyka County? So one of the biggest things that we found when we did that is that we really had kind of the cookie cutter, you know, the state had made this sheet. Other counties had been doing these trainings, but we hadn't heard anything from the individuals in Sheboyka County themselves. So we thought, you know, you could take two approaches to building this great plan. You could either have the mentality of if you build it, they'll come, or let's have the people on the ground that do work with this every day help us build those blocks and help us in building the plan so that we can really build a plan that addresses those true needs of Sheboyka County. So that's why we're all here today is we have generic blueprints of all the different steps we can take to become dementia friendly, but we want to hear from you. We want to hear from the businesses, the community organizations, the government organizations, the public services, people that work in churches and businesses and parks and restaurants and caregivers and people that live in Sheboyka County every day. We want to hear from you what you think needs to happen in order for this to be a success. So with that... If I could have your attention, please. We'd like to get started with our wrap-up. Hopefully everyone had a great focus group session. At this time, Dan with UW Sheboyka would like to say something real quickly. Thank you so much. You know how you tell the success of a workshop and conference? After the final break, everyone's still in the room. Nice work, everyone. That is great. I wanted to ask a favor of you real quick. One of the things we do with the groups as they come in is UW Colleges and UW Extension have started a feedback program called Tap Into It. It lets us know what kind of programming, services, experiences you've had that you've found beneficial. So as you know, a number of our organizations have gone through significant restructures and reorganizations. This gives us feedback on experiences that you might have had that you say, hey, this was valuable to us as an organization, as a person, or as a community. So I have some cards up here, and we're literally talking two, three sentences kind of thing. So this truly falls in the keep it simple category, all right? I won't finish the whole sentence. But I'm going to leave these up here. And if you have an interest, if you had an experience, whether that's been everything from 4-H to a class you took, to a workshop you had here, or an experience that you had on campus and whether it's at this campus or another one, feel free to fill that out. And then you can just, if it's all right with you, Lisa, they can leave them up here on the table and I'll come back and collect them afterwards. But we do appreciate it. It helps us understand another method by which we can identify what's important to you from a campus standpoint. These campuses are community-owned. They're yours. We want to make sure that we keep the programming in place that serves the needs of the Sheboygan community, okay? So thank you very much. And right up here on the stack. And thank you, Dan, for the use of the facility. Very cooperative in terms of getting things set up and a great facility. So thank you for that. Great to have everyone here. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to introduce Lynn Podian. She is with the game board business here in Sheboygan. And she's going to share with us her local perspective of being dementia-friendly as a business. So welcome, Lynn. Thank you, Lisa. So I have it all written down because I didn't want to miss anything because this is kind of an emotional journey for me. So I'm going to direct your eyes up there. Ready? So. Since we opened 10 years ago in 2006, it's not moving forward. There it is. All right. We have prided ourselves on not only being dementia-friendly, but being inclusive of all abilities.  We go out of our way to make you feel welcome. We give assistance, encouragement, and guidance to everyone. I founded the game board to help my son. Told you it was emotional. Who was diagnosed at the age of four with a severe speech delay? Six years later with color blindness, and a year after that with a neurological writing disorder. His brain was an island and all the bridges that delivered information were broken. Through board and card games, we were able to help him rebuild those pathways, not only redeveloping his ability to be understood, but increase his social skills and maintain friends as he grew. Eric was four when this journey began, and he's about to begin his sophomore year of college. By making our location accessible to all individuals, we have grown a strong, loyal community. Through the recession, we were never at a loss. Our clients supported and encouraged us as we had them. Our customers come from all over Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, the U.S., North America, and the world. Because of our commitment to doing the best for you through our ministry, brain health initiative, rental program, and store, we have the honor of being awarded 2015 Sheboygan County Retailer of the Year and Sheboygan County Best Game Store 2016. We are proud of all we have accomplished. When asked to be a leader in dementia-friendly Sheboygan County, we were humbled to be a part of the movement. We have always felt that this is the only way to run a business, a community, and a world. Whether we call it dementia-friendly or all-inclusive, the message is the same. Love your neighbor. So really, the next question is what's next? What are the follow-up steps? And as we mentioned earlier, a lot of this is just in the beginning stages. So a couple of things is we want you to utilize the great resources that are in your folder. We have the self-assessment checklist. That's what this looks like. So this will be a start. So at least you'll leave here with something that you can take back with you. It's double-sided. Those of you that are a business, an organization, and you're interested in being trained to be dementia-friendly, we have everybody's contact information when you signed in. But we do want you to stop at the registration desk. Let Chris know, Chris, wave your hand, that you are interested in receiving that training. And that would be for businesses and organizations. And if you are an individual from the community or a caregiver as well, we can take your information down. And Ginny from the Alzheimer's Association does training all the time for caregivers and family members. We have an evaluation form that's, as always, right? When you go to these type of things that we really want you to fill out. But keep in mind what we'll be doing is we will be gathering all of the information that happened in the focus groups. And again, we should have complete information from everyone here today, whether you had an email or an address, and we'll make sure that we're able to share that information because I know a lot of folks that I'm here representing my organization, but I know that there are other people that need to know this information. In addition to that, we will put a link to that video a day in a life that we missed because of the sound issue. But what that'll do is that'll give you an opportunity to kind of bring everything back to home base as to where this is going. In addition to that, I know that a lot of us have a lot of events going on and we don't have time for all of that, but Wendy Schmitz with the Senior Activity Center here in Sheboygan has a program going on tomorrow. Wendy, do you want to say a few words about that? In the documentary Alive Enough. Tom brought up in our session that the documentary Alive Inside is eye-opening, mind-changing. We will be showing that at the Senior Activity Center tomorrow at one o'clock and everybody is welcome. And that's certainly another resource. We thank TV8 and Kerry and his gentlemen today for videotaping this. They'll be editing it and they'll be putting that out there as well so that the community learns more about it. As many of you know, the Alzheimer's or the WACTA and Alzheimer's will be Saturday, September 10th and the new location is Evergreen Park. So keep your eyes and ears open. There is a Facebook page for that specifically as well as through the dementia care network. And then another interesting program that'll be coming up will be Wednesday, October 5th at Generations in Plymouth. Working with Generations, Golden Living and Azura to actually bring the virtual dementia tour to Sheboygan County again. I know Wendy had done that at the Senior Activity Center. It was very well received but it actually gives you an opportunity to put yourself in someone's position with dementia. And it definitely is an eye-opener and I have to tell you it's extremely emotional to go through that. And that'll be October 5th and we'll be getting more information out about that. Thank you so much. I know it was an educational and information sharing three hours and that's a huge chunk of your day-to-day on Mondays so we appreciate you being here. Again, spread the word. Sheboygan County is going to become dementia friendly and we're really counting on all of you to help us do that whether it's continuing with the training sessions, with caregivers, whatever that might be. So you can contact me. My business card is in the folder as well at the Aging and Disability Resource Center.  We'll collect them or at the table when you came in. And again, Dan had some cards up here that he explained earlier. So thank you and have a fabulous Monday afternoon.


Hello and welcome to the session. The question says, in each of the exercises 1 to 9, find the coordinates of the foci, the vertices, the length of the major axis, the minor axis, the eccentricity and the length of latest rectum of the ellipse. 8 thus 16 x square plus y square is equal to 16. Now let's start with the solution and the given equation of the ellipses 16 x square plus y square is equal to 16 or it can further be written as dividing both the sides by 16 we have x square plus y square upon 16 is equal to 1 or we have x square upon 1 square plus y square upon 4 square is equal to 1. And ellipse is the set of all the points in the plane such that the sum of whose distances from two fixed points in a plane is constant. Here we have the equation of Felix x square upon 1 square is equal to y square upon 4 square is equal to 1. Now here we can see that the denominator of y square upon 16 is greater than the denominator of x square upon 1 thus the major axis is along the y axis and the standard form of equation of an ellipse is given by x square upon b square plus y square upon a square is equal to 1 where the major axis is along the y axis. And to find the focus vertices length of major axis minor axis eccentricity and the length of latest rectum please refer to question number 2 of this exercise where we have explained that how do we find all these foci vertices major axis minor axis eccentricity and latest rectum that will help us to solve this problem. Now when comparing this standard equation with the given equation we find here that b is equal to 1 and a is equal to 4 thus c which is given by a square minus b square is equal to root over 4 square minus 1 square which is equal to root over 15 and thus the foci which are given by 0 comma plus minus c is equal to 0 comma plus minus root over 15 and the vertices which is given by 0 comma plus minus a is equal to 0 comma plus minus 4 and the length of major axis is given by 2 into a that is 2 into 4 which is equal to 8 and the length of minor axis is equal to 2 into b so 2 into 1 that is equal to 2. Now let's find the eccentricity denoting it by small e it is given by c upon a so c is root over 15 and a is 4 so this is the eccentricity and lastly it is find the length of latest rectum which is given by 2 into b square upon a that is 2 into b is equal to 1 so we have 1 square upon a is 4 so I am cancelling we have 2 into 2 is 4 so we have 1 upon 2. Hence the answer is for the given equation of the ellipse the foci has coordinates 0 and plus minus root over 15 its vertices are given by 0 comma plus minus 4 the length of major axis is equal to 8 and the length of minor axis is equal to 2 its eccentricity e is given by root over 15 upon 4 and the length of latest rectum is equal to 1 upon 2 so this completes the session take care and bye for now.


All right. Well, hello, and welcome to the ADHD talks. I'm your host, Sarah Whitford, and I'm so happy that y'all have chosen to join me today. The ADHD talks is a video podcast hosted by the Alabama Digital Humanity Center.  This is our fourth and final episode of the semester fall 2023. Our guests today are Sarah Bryant and David Allen. Sarah Bryant is assistant professor for the MFA book arts program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. She's produced an artist book, she produced has produced artist books and prints under the name Big Jump Press. Since 2005. That's a weird way to say that. For work can be found in dozens of libraries and private collections in the United States and abroad, including my home. And the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library and the Darling Biological Biomedical Library Center at UCLA and Yale Arts Library. Dave Allen is associate professor of biology at Middlebury College, where he studies the ecology of ticks and tick-borne diseases. Dr. Allen has published his work in numerous journals, including the Journal of Medical Entomology, Biological Conservation, Emerging Infectious Disease and Northeastern Naturalist. His research on ticks and tick-borne pathologians is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. During our podcast, I'll be asking a set of questions which have already been shared with our guests and I've invited them to prepare any visuals that they want to share during our talk. Our conversation will be guided by these questions, but we're always welcome to follow the conversation wherever it takes us. So, Sarah and Dave, I'm going to ask my first question, and this is always my favorite question. Tell me about your research, and the thing that I am most interested in is what makes you feel nerdy and excited? I will start. And I will say that, so my research is printing and designing and binding artist books. I'm a printer, I'm an artist, I'm a teacher, and I get into the tall grass and into the weeds about things like inking and impression and all that kind of physical production side stuff. But also, I spend a lot of time researching and designing these book projects. So talking to people who know a lot more than I do about certain things or reading around certain subjects. And then all of my projects end up hopefully being quite different from one another. They might be about, for example, a book that Dave and I have done together was about world populations a few years ago. Another project is about archives. Another project is about the biological composition of our bodies. So I'm kind of trying to do a lot of different things at once.  Great, I'm an ecologist, so I study the interactions between organisms and different species of organisms, and then also the organisms and their environment. And so I'm interested in how those interactions determine why we find lots of or some species in some places and not other places or why there's lots one year, but then few other years. And so right now I'm applying that work to ticks and tick-borne diseases. And so like Sarah, I also get into the tall grass and the weeds, but literally get into the tall grass and weeds and go out into the field and look for ticks. And then also measure the other aspects of a habitat that would determine how many ticks there are. So how many hosts there are, how many deer there are, how many mice there are, and then do some experiments to sort of understand other aspects of the ticks in the field. Take the ticks back to the lab and test them for tick-borne pathogens with PCR tests, just like the COVID PCR test. And then I'm also really interested then in sort of trying to understand how can we make sense of all that because there are these like huge web of ecological complexity. And I use mathematical and computational models to help me make understand that. And so definitely what I nerd out about is, one, just like how do you understand the world around you? And for me, that's about the ecological world. And then, but I'm also very secretly a math nerd. And at some points, I just try to, I want to use the math because I like math. So that's where I'm nerdy about. I love that. So I was actually showing the tick edition of the Acts of Translation to a librarian friend the other day and she started squealing. She was like, that's R! So exciting to her. She's like the person in our library who is in charge of all things R studio. And she was so excited to see it in there. I think, Sarah, I think you were there when she was over. Yeah, it was great. And I, you know, I know nothing about R. You know, it's like gibberish, but I was so excited because I was like, yes, this is my project. Well, but I think that that is, that's a really common aspect of digital humanities collaboration is often there is a sub like a subject or some sort of functional, you know, everybody has their own role and not everybody knows all of the different programming languages or the platforms or the processes, but together you're able to use these mixed methodologies and these mixed technologies that you couldn't use on your own to produce something that you're unable to produce without that collaboration. And I think, I think that that's something that one of the reasons why I do this podcast is because I want new DH scholars to be able to understand how collaborations are developed and how they are, how you can get a project together and executed when you find people who can partner with you. Yeah, it might be helpful if I can share my screen and show the sort of collaborations that Dave and I have done in the past, and the project that I've been working on now with multiple collaborators and then it can be a little bit more clear how we can bring our weird nerdiness sort of together. I find my PowerPoint. Okay, and I'm going to go to the beginning and start it. This is from a talk I recently gave for Carrie which is the collaborative arts research initiative that funded a lot of the work that Dave and I have recently done and I've been doing recently, and it's a great sort of community building fellowship that I had with Carrie over the last two years that sponsors. If any of our viewers who have watched our other video podcasts if you've seen Rebecca Salthers or Amanda Coase they were also part of the Carrie group. So you are our third Carrie fellow to be on the podcast. I think that's, I mean it's, it's natural because of the way that Carrie is kind of encouraging folks to cross disciplines and work together to create work that they wouldn't be able to do on their own, and that's certainly what happens with me and Dave. We have very different skill sets and very different interests, but they align in certain ways and then we can make these projects that would be impossible for either of us on our own. And we've been working together for a long time I actually think our first project that we made together was in 2013. Wow. So 10 years. And we had been kind of trying to do things earlier than that and I should say I want to do full disclosure now and say that Dave and I are cousins we have known each other for our entire lives. Full disclosure and I don't only collaborate because but Dave and I we also went to college together as undergraduates so we just have had a lot of time to talk and kind of get interested in what each other are doing. So that's kind of, you know, how, how we started and, and years and years ago maybe as early as 2008 or 2009, we started kind of getting together and I would get Dave on the press and he would talk to me about. At the time, his dissertation research, which was on which Hazel. So we've just been talking for a long, long time. I'm going to switch the slide, just to show the kind of work that I do and in fact, if you can see does my arrow show up hovering around. This was our first project here in our first like full finished project, which I can't link to because this is a screenshot but it was a project where I just used it was more of a me stealing Dave's language and making my own project than anything else but I took language from his dissertation and put it into an artist book project. Because of an exhibition invitation that required collaboration I didn't use to collaborate and I kind of like resisted collaboration and a lot of I was kind of like horrified at the idea. So my world has changed a lot in the last 10 years I collaborate all the time, but just to say very briefly that the research that I do this is what it looks like these are these artists books I produce them in small editions I do most of that work by hand, I'm working on operating printing press or handbook binding. The design is all mine, and often in collaboration though with other artists or with people who are in other disciplines like Dave. The acts of translation project that I've been working on now currently has five collaborators and I'm kind of winding it down I really hoped to incorporate additional folks. One of the people who did one of these lectures, or these talks with you Sarah was initially part of this list and it kind of breaks my heart that that my deadline sort of made it impossible for me to continue with everybody. But at the moment, these are the folks who are a part of this project. And the way that this project works is that I spoke with each of these folks, starting with a kind of standard interview. And then branching out into larger conversations which I recorded, asking them questions about how they define the word translation in their work, if there is a definition of translation in their work how they imagine themselves to be engaged in acts of translation in their daily life or in their kind of work. And then, with each of them I identified a kind of particular act of translation and we defined that pretty broadly to say, you know, any kind of transmission, like conversion and transmission of information. So for Dave, who is one of the first folks that I was really working with about this, we were talking about how Dave uses his skills and interests and, you know, his world to translate an ecological system Dave you're going to have to like totally translate all the stuff that I'm saying but translates an ecological system which in his case is a tick population into a mathematical model. So what that process is for him, and also what the importance of that process is. I think I'll just stop talking there, and I'll let Dave talk a little about what that is, what that means and how he, you know, experienced this process of discussion. Go. So, yeah, I love this idea of translation. And for me, you know, the one of the first things that came to mind was how do I translate an ecological system into a mathematical model, and why would I want to do that or the steps to do that. And so the upshot for me is you can use a mathematical model. Well, what you want to do is this model is an abstraction or a simplification of the very messy complicated world that, you know, we can't totally understand, but if we can pare down to the things that we think are the, you know, salient drivers in this case of a tick population. Part of that is just interesting because it forces you to to think about like what do you think is what drives a tick population how much of it is the dear population versus the temperature versus the structure of the leafletter that they live in. And then, can we then encode that into some simple rules that, again, just like forces you to put your thoughts in a more very formal structure. So that is the like the part of modeling that I find very interesting and rewarding and helps then just like shows you what you do or you don't know about the system to begin with. And that like sort of active translation or what it was very interesting to me. And then obviously if you have a model, then it can be very helpful in, you know, projecting, you know, if, as long as the model is does a good job of like how many ticks will there be next year how will there be under different climate change scenarios or what if we were able to vaccinate half of the mice in the field then how many, how many ticks would be infected, and you can sort of interrogate those more applied questions with the model. I don't know if that answers the question but that's sort of just like why I think that modeling is interesting and then, but the key part is this sort of like, how do you translate the world into a system of mathematical equations. One thing that I think was interesting about this whole process working with Dave but also working with Allison Grant who's a photographer here at the University of Alabama, Louveta Harrison she's also at the University of Alabama.  One of the things that was interesting is that there's also this active translation and sort of like outside of the subject matter which is that, first of all, I'm having to ask these folks to translate their experience to me so they have to explain what they're talking about. And this image that I popped up is something I asked Dave to do while he was here was to draw this kind of flow diagram or flow chart of the kind of life cycle of these ticks, as he was, you know, as to explain how he would begin the model process would be happening with me for Allison Grant talking to her about what how she selected these images. So there's, there's this active translation that I'm doing as an artist, trying to first of all kind of synthesize all of these different voices to think about how each of their stories can be in parallel to one another but also how, because I am editing the text from the interviews that I'm doing with these folks. It's actually my voice. Also, that's a part of the language of the book so each of the, I should show. In fact, let me stop sharing my, well actually maybe I can. So I'm going to stop sharing for a moment. And I'm going to show a copy of this finished version of the book, each of these books I'm going to do something weird and run away and run back each of these books in like two ways. I know, I know it wouldn't be funny if I just never came back. They, they first, I have been issuing them individually. So this is Ben Mitchell, the type designer. This is Dave Allen, who we are talking to right now, and Allison Grant. And over there I'm currently binding the subsequent two components of the book. Now that they're all finished, I'm creating an addition where they all go together in this kind of format, that what I like about this format is that you can look at all of them at once, and read across, or you can look at any two of them together. So here I can look at Dave Allen, and Louveta A. Harrison, and see how their texts might echo each other. And so there's something kind of this is I've only just finished the first copy or two of the way these books all go together and it's been very rewarding, because I can see how those texts have these unexpected connections.  I'm not saying that these things are all, you know, really simple and that they dovetail perfectly but there are these themes that are kind of overlapping even as we're talking about translation or communication we're also talking about what it is we're communicating and why. I kind of see myself in this role of I'm also this I'm kind of just like translator standing on top of all of this material, trying to kind of fit it all together and weave these stories together in certain ways. So one last thing and then I'll let Dave speak because I feel like I'm being a bit over the top talking here but I in each of the pastimes for the book I've got language from all of those collaborators. I'm kind of woven together that you can maybe see or not see where some of the things that people were you know, Dave would be speaking about the dirt and the leaf litter, and Allison Grant be speaking about the earth and the soil and it's just this kind of beautiful way that these things can go together. I'll go back to my screen and then would answer more questions. I think I would like to dive into the next question, which I think is a really interesting question for this particular conversation because neither of you traditionally consider yourselves digital humanists. What is your history with digital humanities, how much have you considered it in the past. And I consider this collaboration, a lot to do with what we do in the digital humanities. And I'm wondering, sort of, you've already answered the question of how you arrived at this project but I'm interested to hear from you. You can conceptualize yourself within that sort of sphere of what we call digital humanities. So that is my question. Dave, do you have an answer first. No, I think you should go first. To be honest, you know I don't really think about the digital humanities. I mean I feel like it's something I'm engaged with but it's not something that I'm really interrogating or thinking much about. I am a person who's working with my hands quite a bit but I'm using a lot of digital tools. I'm working between and concurrently you know so I, I'm making these projects that in the end they do exist primarily as a physical object, but I'm also documenting them pretty consistently putting up videos of them and the subject matter is often related to things that require, you know, a lot of different digital tools. I think that's, I guess maybe a sort of vague answer to the question. I also think that I'm in this discipline that collaboration is sort of at the heart of book arts practice. And historically has been a key part of working within these traditions so usually you've got, you know, book binders and printers and all those kinds of paper makers calligraphers all that all the kind of individual disciplines that merge and overlap. Books are made by people who work together. And so that still remains to be true when you are thinking about books the way I do as an artist I'm, I'm seeking ways to incorporate new things and make new work using tools using people using all kinds of things that I have at my disposal. So now it's your turn Dave.  So maybe that I guess I didn't do enough reading the questions before but I definitely am sort of like think of myself as, you know, a scientist and am in my silo of like the classes that I teach are. Science classes and you know the my research that I do is science and so what I've really appreciated with Sarah is just thinking about this sort of like arts humanities collaboration with science and I think our first project was a little bit more. We're going to use the tool to like show you something and so it was I was a little bit more sort of like science communication through art, which I, which I loved and and I think that, you know, and maybe there was definitely digital methods quite, even though we printed them with analog. There was like intense digital methods to go through those data. And so I mean I think that that probably would be digital humanities. 100% methods are methodology, you know, within the digital humanities. And I think that the, the conception that in order to be a part of digital humanities you have to have, like, your presentation has to have like, purely digital. Like manifestation is, it's a misconception. Because a lot of digital humanities work ultimately gets published like any other scholarship gets published in that it turns into a journal article, which is text based. So I think one of the things that that happens at the nexus of these collaborations and specifically this one that that you all have done both the the figures and the tick project, the the the intense computational components of it being translated through art is is such a core humanist act. Right. Because art is is a fundamental discipline within the humanities. And it, it works to explore what it means to be human in so many different ways. And the tick project, I think also explores sort of those ideas of post humanism. We're still talking about entities, and we're still talking about populations and growth send all kinds of different things but we're also exploring like how that bumps into the human experience. I'm particularly interested for a moment to talk a little bit about. So Sarah is thinking about putting together a website that has all all of the recorded interviews of the collaborations and a lot of process video and some really fun stuff which I also think you know that idea of documentation is also very important to. The interdisciplinary digital humanities. World. Right. So, I thought maybe maybe what I can do is show I know I've been zipping the slides around and I want to touch back to the population book which we sort of briefly mentioned without explaining. Maybe we can do that in a minute but I want to show the book that Dave and I have made which is a component of this larger book so I have the book in my hands and I have the video here which I will try to play it's also on my website, which is big jump press. com you can find all kinds of, you know, projects there, including acts of translation, and I'm on the way to putting new images up of the whole completed project. But I thought I would play this video and perhaps read a portion of the text. So that I'll see if we can get this going. There we go. So, and these are Dave's words, but I have quite aggressively edited them. Sometimes. Well, we'll talk about it in a minute I guess but some so a model has to be wrong. Why is the tick population changing. It is embedded in a complicated ecological system, a system which has also changed. Dear populations are different forest structures different. The question can be hard to tease apart. I am an ecologist. I try to understand and describe the vast complexity of these biological processes. I want to predict the future with a nice neat equation. A model is an abstracted generalized expression of what we know about a system. If it is too complex, it will not be useful. Even a flow diagram as a model drawing one helps me translate a messy lifecycle into something simple enough to communicate pools of populations and between each flow or flux a transition from one life stage to another. What we see now is going to be so different in 50 years. Let's stop there for now. Oops. Get out of there. There we go. And so Dave's book, as I mentioned, it sits next to these others that while the text is different, I think the tone is similar, because it is me who's kind of editing them and putting them together. I did a project several years ago about where I combined language from Plato's Republic and the Corbusier's Radiant City. It was a totally different project. But one thing I realized was that the language fit together really nicely and I have this suspicion, this is a real digression, but I had the suspicion that it's because of the time period of the translations that the translations were done around the same time and that the language fit together. And I think about that as I'm translating as I'm kind of editing these different interviews, you know, I have hours of interviews, and then I have these text documents that are just, you know, vast. And I'm going through physically with a highlighter and a pair of scissors and digitally with a lot of copy and pasting and all kinds of different things are happening and so that intervention that I'm doing is certainly I'm creating a text that has my voice out of the language from these other folks and sometimes I do it and I think it works well. Other times, you know, I made this one edit to Dave's that it's so funny it came up a family reunion because as I mentioned, we're cousins but where we were talking about this project to folks and there's a moment where a moment that I really liked where Dave was talking about that some things are very difficult. I'll just read this passage and then we can talk about how I'm a criminal for what I did today but parts of the life cycle are easy to observe but other parts are like dark matter, they are hidden. I never find any engorged ticks and I don't know exactly why some things are very difficult to measure. I think that's so interesting, but it's also not entirely true because Dave does finding gorgeous ticks he just doesn't find them what in the leafletters Yeah, you only find them on an animal yeah on an animal and so it was an it was an edit and I don't know usually I feel like I run that stuff by or maybe even out, but I, but in the end though I like it better this way. And that is interesting, like it's not entirely true, but it's doing something that I wanted it to do, which is to say, echo this idea that a model has to be wrong that things are. It serves a higher truth. Right, you're making it. It's funny too because this had this I had a conversation with the type of the type designer, where I was trying to set up the design working on the mock up with him was very difficult in a great way because he's so invested in the way that the letter forms look and the design looks. So it was a very different process because he was very deeply involved, as far as even things like I don't like that ligature that the type which is a joint letter like an FT is a ligature. Most people maybe don't even see them but we're all using them all the time. It's one letter form designed together so they would be or not so I then would be looking very closely and he'd say no I don't like that ligature let's get rid of it. And he told me you know we were I was trying to set up a system for the design of the book and it was about a line break where can I break this line and there's one way to break it. Where the line would kind of consistently work with the design principles that we kind of set up and there was another way to break the line that was totally different but it broke for meaning. And so we had a big conversation about breaking for meaning, and how that was more important in that instance, and I feel like the same thing sort of is happening here, where we're editing for meaning, but not truth, or the opposite. You know, I don't know. There's just some interesting things that I think that what I'm experiencing which people won't necessarily experience when they look at the book is this sort of all inclusive experience of talking deeply about translation with all of these folks, I feel like I've lived inside this project for years now it's been almost three years I think. So I think for the website getting back to the website, I feel like it's a possibility where I can put out there, some of those experiences that I am having that could not possibly land in the books, because these books are not. They have to be small, they have to be short to do the job that they're doing. It's also very interesting. I just love talking to you about this stuff. I think one of the things that we talked a lot about is your process and sort of what your goals are with this. And I have an interesting question that is that is more for me than anything and that is, when you're making something like this and when you're collaborating with someone, how do you conceptualize audience. This project specifically and more broadly when you're, when you're putting something like this together, because audience changes a lot of the decisions that you're making. Right. So I guess, that's an interesting question for me, my background as rhetoric and audience is something that we talk a lot about so I think it's interesting maybe just to look at our other project and talk about it, because I think that's one of the times when Dave and I both had to think carefully about like this one is a little bit more subjective. But the, and I Dave I want you to speak about this one I feel like I'm talking maybe a little too much but the, I'll give the broad strokes of this. And then I'll ask you a question Dave, and then I'll let you take it away does that sound okay. This project is a book we did in 2015 so it was a while ago now. And the book is about world populations and also about how we describe world populations. So what we did, and I could not possibly have done this project without Dave is that we went to the State Department, international database, which has figures population figures for every country on earth. Country or region they call they say region, and not all regions are countries, and we just took every region that they described. And Dave created with that data population pyramids which I have here, kind of a, we did a Kickstarter for this project so we have lots of kind of goofy images of it. This is like the simplest and obviously a deeply flawed way of looking at a population. It relies on a pretty serious gender binding, but it is kind of a classic population data visualization kind of thing super simple way of seeing a population at a glance so you've got men on one side women on the other side, age going up. And what we did was that we took all of that data or Dave took all of that data and Dave created these population pyramids, and we made, I guess there were 228 regions. So Dave made 228 pyramids and then we joined them to make them look sort of like human figures. So here, here's some hope here's some serious digital humanities action. And so we talked a lot about what what the shape the kind of width of those figures would be I mean Dave did a lot of kind of sculpting to make sure that we had kind of proportionally something that would fit well with a book form. So there's lots of discussions about that. And we started to layer all these figures played around with our ideas, and in the end printed all of that material on drafting film and created an enclosure where the drafting film could be laid down upon a grid and interpreted, but also layered, and sort of played with and you can see you can compare and contrast. But one of the things about this is that the project is the it is even though this is data data is subjective and I feel like I had a lot of very interesting conversations with Dave about what that means how we were we were incapable of interpreting this data because it was a snapshot, not, you know, a time. And if we did this book every year we might be able to interpret what the data was saying but at this stage, all we could do is kind of look at what was there. Speaking about audience. I know this is what we're getting to here. I also know that it was very important to Dave that we describe the methods, the sources and all that kind of material, because this is this I feel like was a project. These two projects are different in that the acts of translation project, I was kind of guiding it, because, you know, of the nature of this project. This project relied very, very heavily on Dave's areas of Dave's like abilities and skills. And so maybe do you feel comfortable talking about audience for this book and your comfort level with making a work of art out of this data and I'd be so interested to hear you speak about it. Yeah, definitely.  And so I also was worried about like, oh, you know, there's definitely different considerations when you're thinking about human populations and not human populations and how do you represent them and how do you do it with like a research integrity integrity. So that I think was was something that I, you know, and I talked to Sarah about and sort of worked through. I really liked this, you know, ability to layer and so that the reader could explore the data to and so that this form that Sarah and I came to together felt very rewarding that we could, you know, that the reader was really engaged with the material in this way that's different for like a standard format of a book. But then again, because we were, you know, making these choices about how do you match up these two different countries and, you know, where are these data come from and, you know, it felt important that we were very, to me like very clear about each of those steps. And so, in that is more of almost like what you would see in a scientific paper of, you know, these were these is where we got the data from these are the limitations of the data this is the, you know, the how they're incomplete or the sort of like political perspective from which they're they're drawn and then these are the steps that we took to, you know, make this smooth line, and these are the, yeah, the technical steps that we did, so that we could just be very transparent about that process, because you wouldn't a scientific paper so that someone else could, you know, interrogate your methods or replicate your methods. And so I don't know if we have we probably don't have a picture but that the part of then there is a little more traditional booklet in there that walks through each of those steps. And then I audience I think is super interesting. We know when I write a scientific paper I have a very like clear sense of who my audience is, and it's this totally narrow field of people who are going to read like the Journal of Medical Entomology.  And so this feels like so foreign to me of, you know, like, who is this audience and like. And so, you know, I think some of it is then just like, well, I mean, I think for this one, I, since I was more involved with the process and some of these design choices. I don't know if I still had an audience in mind but it felt like I was thinking about the audience more, even if I didn't have like who that person was in mind. So what I like thinking about with this project, this is so personal not not necessarily about audience but it's about Dave is that when we finished this book, we were a finalist for an award, which was a really nice big book arts award and you have to go and like, there's an envelope and they read a name stuff. I was like, living in England at the time and I was nine months pregnant. Like I was so pregnant and Dave went to this huge book art thing at the Minnesota Center for book arts Dave, I like I always think about how wonderful it is that you went to represent us at this huge book arts event, you know, with all these book arts folks.  And how what a weird experience that I love that they were very friendly and fun and they were total nerds and it was funny to see this other nerd subculture. I think what I'm hearing. So as you guys talk about this is how much collaboration turns into sort of conceptualizing each other as your audience. And it's really nice way like when you're talking about this, the care that each of you go into to be able to understand and translate and make legible each other's contributions has been. You know, I think, if, if, you know, if a studio artist and an ecologist can find a way to communicate about these things, then perhaps it broadens the audience out to a lot of other people in a way. Catherine's got a question. Hi Catherine. What, what are you, what's up. Hello, can you all hear me okay. Yeah, absolutely. Well, just on that point that Sarah was making there is so interesting this project and is the ability to speak across different disciplines like speaking to each other and finding common ground is in the acts of translation project as a whole. It's an incredibly hopeful project I find like so much about academia is about these academic silos each discipline becomes a silo, and it's very hard to talk across disciplines often for people to communicate with each other. You're making that happen in this book the acts of translation across so many very different disciplines. So I find an incredible sense of hopefulness in that of community. And I was wondering if you could both just speak a little bit about the, the rewards of that type of work but also I seem the challenges it's not easy to to hop from one silo to another to create meaningful communication to the, the active translation is a difficult thing to do. So if you could speak a bit about the challenges and rewards of this type of interdisciplinary communication and community. I'll start and say that. First of all, thank you, Catherine, you know, I think this book has been unexpectedly meaningful for me. Firstly, because I am having to go outside of my experience and spend a lot of time listening to people about kind of intersecting issues that it. Like I get to inhabit all of these worlds and it gives me this opportunity to, I don't know, think about all these folks in a different way. Also, it's just fun to get to know their, like, I get to know these people more deeply, some of whom I didn't know very well to begin with others like Dave, you know, obviously we've known each other forever. And, but I feel like I know him better now after having completed this book. I'm off the track. I don't even remember what I'm saying anymore except to say that I initially, with each of these components of this book, there was always a moment where I was like, I don't think this is going to work. You know, I don't, this isn't coming together. And then you just have to like buckle up and knuckle down and do whatever, whatever everything makes the most sense and then you find that connecting point. If the connecting point is there, then it just comes really naturally, which isn't to say there isn't tons and tons of work to edit it and agree about it and, you know, make a kind of cohesive thought out of all of these conversations. But with every single one, I thought, I, I'm not sure I can make this work. But once I got over that hurdle. Now I feel like I can make a book with anybody. I can make a book with anybody. Everybody has something to say and everybody has this. I mean, I know I'll move on and I'll do a different project but I feel like I could do this project 100 times. And this project for the rest of my life, and I would be satisfied because it has been so rewarding to spend all of this. I actually feel quite emotional about the project. It's funny because it's coming to a close now and I had to write the call upon, which is normally in a book it's just like this book is made of this and this is my process and this is, you know, the typefaces, 2,000 and something signature here edition one out of 50. And this time I was just like agonizing about what to say, because I wanted to say thank you, because it has meant a lot to me to make this book. So thank you Dave. Thank you very much. Now I've rambled and I've lost. I've lost the track. So that, um, no I'm ready to answer that because I found this. I also was like what is going on here like I don't understand what this is going to be and I think that for me some of the challenges is I want it to be so literal and so I think with the first project it felt more like okay like we're just finding this new way to and we can describe what we're doing versus here like okay I want to tell you about how the model works and I want to be very explicit about like the point of the book is to tell people about my model or to tell me about people about tick populations, because that's what I do I'm a and I'm describing my, and so what I think when Sarah was like no we're interested in the translation we're not actually trying to describe your model and I was like wait no but like that's that's what we're doing we're describing my model and so I think that that was what was challenging for me is just saying like that was that difference. And then obviously the rewards are, I mean, a it's just like super fun to work with Sarah. And so thank you Sarah and be it's, I mean as as a scientist it's just so rewarding to be in it in a different type of creative discipline because I mean the science has creative outlets in the course of design experiments and thinking about the structure of a model but then it, I mean, and I think this is obviously true for Sarah to where there's creative parts and then there's like totally like meticulous fussy rope parts. And I guess I didn't have to do those parts for this project and so just, you know, working with an artist and thinking outside my discipline is is obviously so rewarding and then being forced to describe something in a way that, you know, that that that's more broadly understood is is obviously a very, very important process for any wedding. I think that I had to have a lot of faith in doing this because this project has taken place over a number of years. I identified collaborators and worked with them. I finished Alison Grant. Her component first that obviously helped once one was done I kind of knew the form things were going to take and I, at least in terms of dimensions, you know, and typeface because I'm keeping those things consistent paper. But with each. I had to just move forward with each collaboration, having a belief that they would echo and work together and not worry too much. This book is different from all of my other books because all of my other books I have completely designed it and worked it through before production. This book happened in stages where I would be working on the design of one project while I had already printed another and one of them was already bound and being sold in different places and so it just was kind of almost a little out of my control and I felt a little out of control and it's only now that all the components are done. And I'm binding them over there but they're designed they're printed there isn't any more of that kind of work to be done. Now I can take a step back and look and I'm finding these beautiful things like each of these people is using language, like Dave describes his last words in his book, or my last words that I picked for him, I should say, is that I exist in the middle. I am a flux between the natural world and the code Dave Allen Dave Allen, Ben Mitchell the type designer. He talks about how so he's designing Southeast Asian scripts extensions of fonts. So he'll be designing the Burmese or the Khmer for a digital design that already exists in Latin what we use. So he says, you know, I'm, I'm a link, I can be a link between language communities and the computer. People are using that language like I'm a bridge I'm a link I'm a, I'm a, oh, Lou Veda Harrison Veda.  I'm using the words I can't remember exactly but a connection between the composer and the audience. And that's her role she's this connection. Everyone is talking about themselves as this point of connection and it, it, it echoes so beautifully all together and that wasn't my intention, you know, at least not in the beginning toward the end I had a little bit more of an idea. But these things sort of evolved. And each of these projects they're very simple on their own. And that was part of what was hard for me because Dave, I wanted to tell everyone about your model. Awesome. Just like I wanted to tell everybody about how Ben Mitchell writes unicode proposals in his free time for no money to, to make like language communities have access to digital tools right like everyone here is so interesting everyone's doing such amazing stuff and I want to tell everyone everything about them but I had to use only one tiny fraction of what we were talking about and then have hope that when it all came together it would become a more complicated and sort of resonant project. It's been so amazing. I want to make sure that anyone else has a chance to ask any questions before we wrap up. I have enjoyed this talk so very much. Me too. Thank you so much for inviting us Sarah, and David for, you know, continuing to work with me. I love all the things we do together even the projects that we make that we don't finish or don't work I mean it's not like everything we try to do works out just like any other project and anyone else's research and you know we're all just starting a lot of things and finishing some of them. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. No, I've enjoyed so much and thank you so much Sarah for the introduction or the invitation for this talk. Absolutely. I just appreciate you sharing your work with our ADHC community. And the time has come for us to wrap up this podcast so I will just leave you with a thank you. Thank you to the folks who are here. I know that some people will tune in later but Catherine, thank you for coming. Larry and, and my mother. Hello. I'm glad to see all of you. And Sarah especially big thanks to you. Absolutely.


In this video, we will talk about eye gaze detector. This is another sensor to detect human's eye gaze or eye trackers. So, how does eye trackers work and how it is detecting eye gaze? So, please check this blog and in detail, so let me show the blog. Again, the blog is from iMotions because I mentioned that iMotions is a company which integrates different sensors and they created a core engine which combines the data from different sensors to provide you the combined one single system so that you can do analysis better. So, eye gaze is detected using detecting your eye people and the reflection of where some light or some reflection happens. That direction is used to say which direction you are looking at and your distance from the screen, if you are watching a laptop, that distance from the screen is used to say, are you looking at a which place and what are the location you are looking at and that is how the eye trackers work. So, read this blog, it is interesting. And the typical eye tracker in a portable eye tracker this is a simple eye tracker. Tobi Eye is the company is the leader in eye tracking devices. It is a typical eye tracker small device which can be attached to your laptop screen and then you can start collecting the data. And what happens or there is more and more other eye trackers like you can wearable eye trackers in the glass you can put those eye trackers. This will be told I will show the latest ones from the Tobi Eye. So, what happens is the eye tracking data collects the participants eye gaze data. These are the products by Tobi Eye. Tobi is the company which is pioneer in this field and they make eye trackers devices. The latest one is Tobi Pro Glasses. There is no need to have extra, extra some device or you have to focus on this other thing is gone. Now based on this the new technology they able to detect eye gaze even in you are interacting with the object you are looking at some product or something like that. And this is the Tobi Eye Pro you know the research level eye tracker. Also something called Tobi Eye Nano this is a small and that can be used for the research also. And they have more devices you know. The one Tobi Eye also had one device one device called Tobi Eye 4C. Tobi Eye 4C is developed especially for the gaming purpose. It is very, very low cost in the sense it is for the level of technology they use they do not get much. The Tobi Eye 4C is around say $100 or in India you can get in Amazon after import and everything you just get it for 13 to 15,000 rupees. So in a research it is really you know it is very easy and you can collect say 10 eye trackers and you can collect data. But the purpose of Tobi Eye 4C is for gaming. So you cannot use Tobi Eye 4C for a search purpose that is the declaration says that you cannot copy data, analyze data from the 4C. So yeah people do not use 4C. If you are using 4C talk to Tobi Eye Company and get the license permission again you have to pay huge money for getting license. So for research purpose they have Tobi Eye 4 Pro Fusion or Tobi Eye XR120 kind of devices or Tobi Eye Nano is you know 60th eye tracker that is really good and that is not really costly it might cost 2 to 3 lakhs so that it is easy for you know people to start buying and making some research out of it you know do collect data and create some such proposal. So Tobi Eye eye trackers we are talking about collects data at a particular frequency. So let us see. There are other eye trackers which is not based on you know external device just based on the you know webcam. Commercial ones such as Tobi Eye Sticky, Tobi Eye is also you know giving things called sticky it is webcam based detector anybody can use it and other one is called Real Eye. Real Eye is very interesting one. Let us see what is Real Eye. So Real Eye is a screen based webcam eye tracking you can give a try it for free just launch demo and actually detects the you know where the student is looking at based on the emotions. And after that it gives the analysis of data it is not just you know detection also. It is not much costly compared to Tobi Eye for the search purpose. But there is a one more is from the Brown University it is called a WebGaser it is also free it is open source so use it. The challenge is when you test all of them you know it needs a proper lighting it is that the students is interacting with the computer laptop. It is lighting should be in our face so that we can detect the light from the screen and the pupil direction has to be detected to detect where on the screen the student is looking at it. And it is very sensitive. It is you cannot detect you know if I look at a particular place of looking at a W it will not be correct no it is not so accurate like a Tobi Eye detects like the screen you know the external eye trackers. The reason is webcam is on top for example if you are looking at laptop your webcam is on the top. If I am reading the you know bottom off of the page my eyelids are kind of closed I am reading so the webcam may not be able to detect. So why I would say that go ahead and try real-aid.io or demo and start looking at the you know bottom side of this page you will see the accuracy is not so correct. But if you are conducting a research where the area of interest is large this webcam based eye trackers will be beneficial. The reason is buying a no research grade eye tracker from Tobi Eye and conducting a study in a real classroom for 30 students is not possible even if you have a lot of money. So go when I say AOI suppose this is my screen the computer based learning on the screen and maybe this is the menu and there is a big picture and there is some text. In your research if an area of interest is very big such as you want to capture how much time a student spent on menu how much time a student is looking at picture how much time a student is looking at text that is the thing. And by using this information you want to you know understand students learning then this is perfect you know this webcam based detector might work for you. So check it out and I would not suggest you to go for you know a real eye or web guesser works pretty much same compared to really just how to integrate it and connect data on it. And the some of the feature extraction the analysis is not really tough it is easy I will show how to do that. So there are two you know there are two features key in an eye guess detector the one is called fixation the other one is called circuit.  For example if I am fixating on this particular moment this is the one part you know you are fixating on here and I would say anywhere my fixation I am looking at my eyes is looking at anywhere in this box for more than say 50 millisecond or more than say 100 millisecond I call it as a fixation this is a fixation. So when you are leading something actually you are fixating from point to point. So you fixate here then you fixate here then you fixate here then you might fixate here something like that the moment between the fixation right is called saccade. So the transition between fixation is called saccade that is a two key features in the eye guess detector.  So raw data looks like this you know timestamp and the xy portions let me so raw data looks like this you know just a timestamp and xy portion. So what is xy portion for example in your screen consider this is 0 0 if a screen size is you know 900 x 600 or something then this will be the 600 900 something like that sorry this is 900 x 600 because x is 900 so something like that or you can change where to start 0 0 or how it works is basically it takes a center this is actually a 0 0 from here it actually takes the coordinate value and eye tracker might give you the values in this kind of you know this kind of values 0 0 it can convert it based on the way you want it. So the raw data looks like this you know the timestamp the x portion y portion timestamp x portion that is an exact raw data. If you want you know the orientation like your eye movement also it can also can be added because it is a point of reference from where you are looking at it. So also the important thing is sample rate I mentioned in you know you know some slides above that there is a sample rate 60 hertz or 90 hertz. There are Tobii nano it says 60 hertz. What is 60 hertz means they collect 60 samples per second which means at every 15 milliseconds you will have x y portion right. So the eye guess is so accurate and in a research you know you know in a reading kind of research the sample rate is around 1300 x that is a that is the really recommended version high rate transition rate because are you looking at which word are you looking at you know which letters such a kind of analysis. But I would say 90 hertz to 120 hertz or 60 hertz is better you do not know go for a high end kind of sample rate. If you use a webcam based high tracker that is the webcam based high tracker the sample rate will be 25 hertz right it is not much. So you have to make sure that is also issue there. So I will say what is fixation and circuit this is a feature from Wikimedia the Creative Commons license. So this person actually fixated on this particular locations here first then he fixated at the phase then he fixated here then fixated here fixated here then fixated here then fixated here then oh fixated first here is 0 sorry not in the first place. So this is how the fixation movement happened and the line 1 2 3 4 indicates the sequence and this line is a saccade you know that is a fixation. Also there is a this kind of high trackers give other kind of information that is called heat map heat map in the general meaning heat map that after you looked at look at this particular Wikimedia page after 5 minutes where you spend more time fixating it is not talking about sequence or saccades instead it is giving where you focus more. This is the more focused area more focused here these are likely because this area were not actually looked at at all. So this is very helpful if you make advertisements or some marketing some product where is this participants why is this customers are looking at. So that is what very useful for you know marketing areas. But we can use the sidetracking data also for the learning analytics that is the whole idea of this. So I said we can use high trackers for the learning analytics how can we use that for learning analytics. So write down your answers after that I assume the video to continue. So you can detect learners cognition whether they understood things or not the reading skills or the focused attention, engagement, the performance lot of things can be detected from the eye tracking data. I will show one example. So in this paper we predicting learning by analyzing eye gaze data of reading behavior from EDM 2018 paper. In this paper they used a system called Betty's brain open-ended learning environment.  If you are interested go and check the page called Betty's brain from Vanderbilt University by Professor Goudam this was they have all those Betty's brain system in a web is there. Betty's brain as you know this is the agent Betty. The students role is to teach this particular agent to solve a particular problem this Betty. Initially Betty's brain is plain there is nothing in it and you can ask your teacher there is a master Mr. Davis you can ask him whether we need any help with that. But your goal is to teach Betty go and do that. So in order to teach you have to understand some climate change or some science concepts. So all the reading materials is given here and there is a now there is a content a student has to read it and they can take notes and after taking notes or after reading it their goal is to go and create a concept map. This face is called Betty's brain initially it will be empty then you have to create a concept map this is a concept and this is in a relation between these two concepts the causal relationship and it increases decrease if deforestation increases vegetation will reduce decrease. And this marking read and all is you can mark it is not the system marking it right on you can tick mark it as a correct or you can tick mark it if I do not know something like that. This marking is also based on your you know taking the quiz and based on the answers you can think of it. Then you can ask Betty after you create the map you can ask Betty to take an exam. When the Betty takes exam you can take exam on multiple sections or whole chapter multiple subsections and when the answers are correct it is marked here and if you select it which particular path is used to answer this particular question is given here. So you know that these two path is correct so then you can mark them in a green mark that is how the student marked here. So the idea is that a student is teaching Betty to do something when the student is not able to do that it is not the student is failing the Betty is failing that is how the feeling goes on the emotion is actually changed. So this is a Betty's brain you know in the system we have area of interest in each text I am just going to put the same title here because it is going to be hiding it. So when a student is reading a particular line when this heat is reflected back to the earth it is reabsorbed by the earth surface and becomes absorbed heat energy. So there are two concepts involved heat reflected to back earth and absorbed heat energy. There are two concepts and there is a relationship if there is a more heat reflected back to earth there will be more absorbed heat energy that is how two concepts relations. Consider I am creating you know relationship between these two and this heat reflected to earth and absorbed heat energy if it increases absorbed heat energy also will increase this is the causal relationship between these two concepts. So what I did I took the science book and I marked each and every sentence here in this whole chapter like some 7, 8 pages. I marked everything mapped to a particular concept particular concepts and particular causal relationships there are only 25 in it. So I mapped it then I created a AOI my AOI is not very minute but not very big also so my AOI is this something like this or my AOI will be like this. So whenever a student is looking at this page and if the student looks at this particular AOI and if he converts his knowledge to concept map it makes the map correctly I would say that the student understood what he is reading. If the student spent here still is not able to you know convert that into a you know correct causal relationship then the student did not understand here. So using this data we created you know a simple classifier and we use the features from the eye gaze data like a fixation count, fixation count on the AOI, average fixation on that particular AOI and saccade angles, saccade amplitude kind of more extended features from the fixation and saccade only. By using this you know by using this eye gaze features from the eye trackers on the exact AOI and the corresponding concept map or corresponding relation between two concepts. We label them and we try to predict the student's ability to make the concept correct just by the eye gaze information. So eye gaze data and read actions and performance of subsequent edit action were used to label data to train the validate classifiers. This is a simple idea that we label data, we use trend fold class validation, train classification and unlabeled data is given to the learn classifier, the classified pages for read. Then we used to linear regression to model the student's ability to classify the information whether they are able to pass it or they are able to create a concept map correctly or not just based on the eye gaze data. And we got a good accuracy say 80% but Kogan's capacity is really good. It indicates that just by looking at students fixation and saccades on particular AOI we can tell whether the student understood the concept or not at 80% accurately. That is what this whole exercise is about. So what I am saying is if you use eye tracker, webcam, webcam based eye tracker or any eye tracker and you can actually predict where the student is learning. Is the student learning, is he learning really learning? It is just simply reading, is reading is converted to a knowledge or not. These kind of information can be obtained and can be predicted easily using eye trackers. So yeah in this slide we saw what is eye gaze deduction and why eye trackers is used in NDA and I also give one example. In this week we saw that I tried to motivate you there will be data not just from log data or the human observer. We can have a data about the student's facial expressions, data collected from different sensors like eye gaze detector or GSR or other data and we can combine this data to provide complete model of the learner like holistic approach. The challenge in multi-modal learning analytics is combining data and providing the useful information to students. That is still a challenge and it is a lot of people working on that. And I hope I motivated you on a field called multi-modal learning analytics. As I mentioned this is not a one week lecture. It is in its most of a semester course to teach multi-modal learning analytics and play with the data. So thank you. Next week there is a final week we will talk not any topics like we will talk about next steps in learning analytics. Thank you.