Okay, so I'm going to talk about the work of my team here. So Rosie Ware is the postdoc on the project was around for the first three years. Unfortunately, she can't make it here today. She's moved on to new pastures. And Becky and Rosie here are two PhD students who've worked over the past few years on some of the stuff I'm going to talk about here. Incredibly hard at times. So for the uninitiated sedimentary DNA is ancient DNA that occurs freely in sediments. And it comes from a number of different types of sediments. And as an area, it's about a decade and a half just over an age. So we typically get stuff from permafrosts. There has been some river systems and lake systems, ice cores. There's fantastic work that's coming out on cave sediments and hominin in evolution currently. And obviously marine cores, which we're going to talk about today. So you're taking these back to the beginning of the Lost Frontiers project. And I've stolen here my favorite rendering from Martin of the landscape as we understand it to look just to visualize what's going on. We have this fairly sort of simple idea that we're going to use DNA to populate the landscape. So we'll bung things like trees on it. But like I say, sedimentary DNA is that it's still a developing field. And particularly at this time, there were a number of challenges to overcome. Not least the most basic, is it really there? Is it real? Can we actually determine what types of organisms are there? Which is not a trivial problem, as you'll see in a moment. Kind of connected to establishing that it's real in the first place. And then can we say things about the frequency of organisms in the landscape? Something about the biomass, which I won't talk about so much, but it did come up when we were analyzing the tsunami stuff a year or so ago. And then we move on to questions about how the DNA that we see that's there and we think we know what it is and we're pretty sure it's genuine. How did it get there? And we'll move on to that later in the talk as well. So starting off with the, is it there? There we go, excuse me. Is it there? We have various aspects here. So we need to understand how DNA breakdown occurs in the environment. I shall begin on by talking about that. And we'll also talk about these other aspects of authentication, phylogenetic assignation, and some of the issues of topology that we're coming to really just now that all the data is coming together. So of all the different ways that DNA can potentially break down, we were thinking about this a lot in the 90s. It turns out that it mostly only breaks down in two ways that we see in ancient DNA. And both of those are hydrolytically driven. So we get a depurination process. I get my laser pointer up here. Okay, so depurination, which basically knocks out a purine base, one of the bases in the DNA chain which exposes the backbone. And that leads to fragmentation. So when we look at DNA reads, DNA sequences, we tend to see quite short sequences. We will see a distribution of DNA sequences that looks something like this. In reality, the distribution of DNA molecules actually follows this sort of exponential distribution. And we tend not to see these when we're doing our analyses, partly because they're not being extracted in the DNA process and partly because we can't process them bioinformatically. There's not enough information. They're not long enough. But the important point here to make is that it's not really the mode here. That's the important part of the maths. It's the parameter that described this exponential slope which is called Lambda. And that'll pop up in a different guys a little bit later in the talk. And the second type of breakdown is this process down here of deamination where cytosine, one of the four bases of DNA will lose an amine group where it actually becomes a uracil which is the RNA equivalent of the thymine. So we actually get a change in the DNA sequence. And that shows up on the ends of molecules and that's become over the past decade or so the standard way of identifying whether your DNA is really ancient or not. So this graph here demonstrates the length of the DNA molecule. And then towards the end it's showing numbers of mismatches or proportions of mismatch. And this red line ticking up here is showing that it's finding thymines when it expects to see cytosines when it compares DNA sequences to a database. Okay, so those are our two basic sorts of parameters. Now, a few years back, our group started looking quite intensely at environmental correlations to DNA breakdown. Partly in the wake of our first work with Vince actually around 2014, 2015, looking at the Moldner cliff sites. And in this particular study here, we looked at basically all the polygenomic data that was around at the time, about 183 studies and correlated with environmental variables to understand how you can explain that fragmentation. So this is that lambda variable. And the important thing that I need to say from the start, and again, this is quite important in understanding the topology of the DNA in the Stogoland landscape is fragmentation doesn't increase with age in a noticeable kind of a way when we take stuff out. That's because fragmentation happens very quickly. And after that, it's very difficult to tell the difference between say 10,000 years and 500,000 year old DNA. On the other hand, deamolation that change from a cytosine to a thymine does increase over time. Now, what that tells us is that DNA in the environment isn't continually breaking up over time. It's basically disappearing in signal because of bulk diffusion processes. So it all depends about how closed your system is. So things like bones, like Petros bones in the skull, which are very, very dense, are great closed systems. So they're just as damaged as any other DNA of the same age. But because they're being held in a small box, there's more of them. So it's basically a frequency game that we're playing here. So we expect to see DNA damage correlate with environment time. And a first sort of glimpse of the type of thing that we're seeing from the Dogoland data is that pretty much seems to be the case. We say we've got people which are more acidic environments. You get a lot more in the way of hydrolysis going on there. We see more damage, so greater lambda values here. Whereas if you go to more salty environments, so there are good reasons why I don't really have time to go into why salt will slow down the process, you see less damage. So we've got a nice sort of correlation between environment and the level of DNA damage. So we needed to do a number of innovations in this project to be able to study the sedimentary DNA. And the first of which was establishing an approach to authentication. So this reflects a lot of the work that Ashley Rosie Everett has been doing during her PhD. But what we really need to see is the ends of the DNA molecules. Now, although authentication has been used for the past decade or so as a method of identifying whether your ancient DNA is real or not, the conventional approaches require a huge number of DNA sequences from a single species to be mapped against the genome. And our problem is that we've basically got a metagenomic situation here where we'll have maybe just a few reads from each different species. So we've developed a tool called Metadamage which will shortly be available for download through the unconventionly named Github. Beloved of computer geek types to download the program. It should be immensely useful to the sedimentary DNA community. And basically this gives that sort of typical output showing, as you can see in our embryo fighter, we've got damage on the ends of the molecules and we've got a confidence interval because we can deal with quite low numbers of reads. This has actually got a fair number here, 3000, but we can be really quite sensitive. We can go down into just a few hundred reads and still see a damaged signal which is immensely powerful relative to what's available out there at the moment. Okay, so we've got a process of identifying whether our DNA is real or not. And then we've also been developing this phylogenetic as a nation approach. So so-called PIA or phylogenetic intersection analysis which is published and available for download. And it's a very stringent pipeline because once you are using metagenomic DNA in order to get that authentication signal, you're basically looking anywhere in the genome. So it becomes actually quite difficult to accurately say what organism you've got. So quite briefly what this algorithm will do will give you a phylogenetic range in which your organism can occur. And it also, from the way the algorithm's set up, starts off with the starting assumption that the DNA you're looking for may not be in the database and quite often it isn't. So it takes into account database density of occupation. You're gonna go into that too much, but the long and the short of it is we're about 90% plus confident of our phylogenetic as a nations, sometimes more, sometimes less. Okay, so the third innovation to deal with sedimentary DNA is to worry about DNA movement post deposition. So whether there's leaching up or down. And this has been a big problem in terrestrial sediments in particular. So what we've done here, and you're not gonna see too much of this, is but it's a statistical framework to test whether samples are different from each other using things like beta distributions to check to see whether there's any homogenization process going on. Okay, and then the last thing we did, again, I'm not gonna talk too much about this, but it's in the tsunami paper in geosciences, is to get a proxy of biomass. So then the amount of DNA that's left behind by an organism is a function of the organism's size and the size of its genome. So that takes into account those two factors. So things with very large genomes are gonna be more present, especially if they're large. And in that way we could show during the tsunami episode that we get this increased presence of biomass of trees in core one A. Okay, so let's give you the background. What I'm gonna talk about in our data here, and again, like all the other talks previously, we are literally just analyzing this at the moment in very early stages of integrating, particularly with the other environmental sources. And I'll talk about this line, of course, going up and down the river system. So this is a lot of work that was generated by Becky more recently and then Rosie Ware in the first few years of the project and a little mention of some cause up here. So particularly core 27, right. So I've shown you this already. We are generally quite happy that our data are genuine ancient DNA. As you can see, all our PIA authenticated data is over four million reads and we can see that in our extraction banks, we don't see damaged DNA coming through. So we're pretty confident in the data that we've produced. So that's what the data look like. The problem from here on in is we've got about 600 plus taxa, which would make quite awful sort of paralogs of pollen diagrams and diatom diagrams. So what we've done is to analyze the correlation of occurrence of organisms together. So basically we've got a correlation coefficient matrix which tells us which taxa occur with which other taxa and helps get rid of some of the degeneracy. So sometimes we've got family level assignations, sometimes their genus level and often those occur in together because they're the same organism. We can invert those into a distance matrix from which we can make a principal component analysis, more accurately principal coordinate analysis. And from there, we can skip up into dimensional space making hyper cubes. So that's a fancy term. You can just think of it in three dimensions if you've got a three dimensional graph and just broke it up into squares into cubes. We're looking for similar occupancy of the various different taxa. And from that we build what we call plant guilds. So those represent basically different depositional categories of plant taxa. And I'm gonna talk to you mostly about plant taxa in this because there's a lot more of plant data than anything else. Okay, so we've got about 56, no, not about exactly 56 plant guilds and these are they and some are more interesting than others. And some, even if we skip up to 10 dimensions remain quite large. So this one in particular here, we've still got 60 taxa or so in here that do not want to stop holding hands with each other. So they always co-occur together. And then we've got other groups. So up here we've got our Zostra, so seagrass groups. So this is our representation of marine environment. And we have other groups that represent some things like reeds. So I'm gonna pick out some color codes here. So green, remember represents this sort of marine inundation. We've got a reedy group here in green. We've got a grassy group here in brown. And very much like Ben was talking about earlier we've got this a lot of salics, a lot of willow occurring, willow and friends. And then this big group here you'll see it's got a lot of taxa in it but it doesn't feature very much. It's very restricted geographically. And then I will come to this towards the end of the talk. We've got some interesting groups. I noticed quite early on this occurrence of jugland ACA and you'll see next door juglands. So Walmart, which both surprised me, worried me and excited me in turn. So I was driving my group up the wall I think over the next couple of years trying to establish whether this was a real signal or not. We'll come back to that a bit later. So we've got this guild structure. And what we can do is go through each of our samples within the cores and there are 322 in all. And we can ask of that sample what the guild structure is, what percentage of the guilds represented. And we end up with this much simpler sort of thing to look at. So this is a typical three types of guild that we see a lot of. So we've got this marine kind of situation going on here. Zostra dominated, we've got a Willow dominated and Grassland dominated often with that reed group with it as well. Okay, so if we look at those against sediments, now sorry because we're going up to birds eye view it's very difficult to pick out here the key hasn't perfectly rendered but the general point I wanted to make here was that we see a lot of changes in sediment types. So a change in depositional regime going on without much in the way of a change in the plant guild structure. It doesn't look like the incoming sediments are changing the plant make-ups that we see. And similarly, we have plants changing over time without the co-change with the sediments. So my first impression of this data is that the sediments coming in are not really driving the plant presence which sort of takes us to the first step of thinking about the DNA depositional model here. So in cases like Zostra and Reeds we might expect them to be actually in situ. And then things like Phaelix and the other trees we have a sort of more proximal situation going on where to position is anybody's guess, leaves coming in. And then we've got our sediment sources coming in here. And I've sort of formalized this a little bit. So we've got our influx from sediments, but, and we're coming back to the importance of the lambda and the half-life of DNA. You've got DNA disappearing from the water or decaying. Disappearing is probably a better word for D there. So our deposition of DNA is basically a sum of these various different factors and it's got to be the influx minus the decay. And obviously we've got efflux going on here. And what it seems to me is that S and H for the most part are larger than I minus T. And here we have just building up. So what's an important fact here is the half-life of water, of DNA and water. And we do know from sedimentary, I'm sorry, from modern DNA studies that that lambda, and this is the same lambda that I showed you at the beginning is greater than one. That means that the half-life of DNA in water systems is typically less than an hour. So this stuff is getting stripped out very, very quickly. So I expect under normal conditions that DNA is not really coming in on sediments influxing. But when you have a sudden influx such as the tsunami, and we do have examples of sudden gravel deposits, then this value of I minus DT can suddenly increase and have more of an influence. So we can have influential aspects going on there. So I'm under the impression at the moment that actually what we're seeing in the DNA is mostly a local deposition of DNA. Okay, and this sort of summarizes what I'm saying. I'm gonna have to speed up. So these other points you can ask me about afterwards. So here's the river system and we've got a couple of transects going up the river system and then across. And that is going to be displayed in the next slide. We also have ELF 27, which is around up here somewhere that we're gonna look at now. That's just to remind you what the guild structures tend to look like. And then there's this other guild structure which turns up, which we'll talk about in a moment, but this has that warmer signal that I was talking about previously. Okay, again, we've gone up to bird's eye view. So this is the Southern River system with a mouth here moving up to the top. And then we've got the second transect across the top there. And then we've got seven and 20 that Ben and Tom were just talking about as we're further away and then 27 further away again and 22 is right up on Dogger Island. And what we've got here is the sample stacked against all the various different radiocarbon and OSL dates. And this is sitting with Tim and Kevin at the moment to map against sort of age models. So what we have here is some absolute dates and samples tend to be stacked around you. So we've got an OSL date here and samples stacked up around. So we've got a sort of a first impression of the age distribution going on here. And broadly speaking, you can see lots of that green structure of Zostra going up and around the top here. And in the center here, you've got lots of salix structures going on. Over time, we've sort of got this broad inundation impression across cause going on. We can, I can take you through the, I'm not sure I've got enough time actually to take you through in too much detail. What we've got in early stages, we've got Willow down in the bottom here. So this is deep in the Pleistocene and the sort of Rivermouth cause. And we've got Willow, we've got cold taxa like the Dryas and Aracaceae. And then as we move into sort of 11 and a half to 13 and a half thousand years ago, we're sort of spanning that sort of Allerod and younger Dryas periods where we're seeing again, some Dryas going on. But what I shall actually start showing you is some of the distribution of some of the interesting taxa going on here. So we've got Dryas popping up around about the younger Dryas. It also pops up later on. And we can also, just to demonstrate the usefulness of the guilds here, we fill that information out a little bit more if we've got the guild that occupies that has Dryas as a member. So it's a sort of a cold guild, interestingly popping up in this period around here also. And if we look at something like Betulaceae, so this is Birch, Birch and Older actually. We see that it pops up all over the place fairly early on, but uniform throughout the cause. Something like Coralus, we've got it turning up. We've got it turning up very early. So we've got what might be presence of Coralus in Allerod period. And then quite similar to, I think what Ben was showing later, we've got this sudden appearance of it around about that sort of 10 and a half year, 10 and a half thousand year mark over time. And again, then pretty much pops up everywhere. And then we've also got Oaks following a similar sort of distribution that occurring fairly early here. Okay, more interestingly, I think in some ways is Lyme. So we've got Lyme, and I know this is a complex deposit over here off shore, quite old and in Elf 27, but occurring a couple of a thousand or two years earlier than the UK mainland. So it looks like it's generally a bit warmer earlier. Again, pending the development of age models as we sort of integrate everything together. And there, there's an example of where we've looked at specifically these Tillia reeds. And these are the ones that have been through extreme I'm sorting and we see a damage signal. We're pretty sure that's real line. Okay, so just sort of getting towards the end, we've got the presence of this, this juggling signal. So this Walnut signal. Now Walnut, we don't expect to be in Northwestern Europe. As I'm sure you appreciate, doesn't produce a lot of pollen either. Recent studies do place it in sort of South French Gaucho refugia, but in the archeological record, actually the oldest Walnut remains are about 10 and a half thousand years ago from Spain. And there's quite a long tradition of using Walnut or moving Walnut around. And what we're seeing here is what's apparently is about from 11.3 thousand years up to about eight and a half thousand years of presence of Walnut. And then much later in much lower quantities further up the valley. Now the Walnut signal is real. So it's definitely Walnut, they're 100% matches and there's not really anything we can mistake it for. And it's genuinely ancient stuff. So it also occurs in its guilds, as I remind you here, with some typical disturbance indicators like nettles and wheat. Not, sorry, not wheat, that's just the wheat tribe, but we actual wheat is not there in the system. So we've just got wild cereals going on. So I'm currently thinking we're developing the opinion that this is a possible anthropogenic signal. So if we would put that on back onto that landscape, this is where it occurs and the size of the trees here are relative to frequency. So that's your 11.3 to eight and a half window. And then much later on, we get small instances that it's further upstream and then eventually up around core seven. So I've burned up quite a lot of time here, but broadly speaking, again, it's a rapid overview of everything that's going on. The sedimentary DNA appears to be mostly local deposition. This is something we're digging into and trying to understand at the moment. And we're developing depositional models as we speak. So we're in the process of integrating with the rest of the team. We basically see a willow tundra to start off with and like the others, we move into a birch woodland and we can broadly see the inundation process going on. And I put it to you that there's possibly an anthropogenic signal in the data. Okay, so this has been, again, a lot of teamwork. So thanks to the broader team and particularly the dating guys at the moment. And I also say an extra thanks to a guy called Logan Kester, who was a fellow in my group a few years back who we still interact with. It's helped us out with some of the analysis here. And that I shall stop and I shall stop share. Thank you very much, Robin. We're right on the hour, but I think we should have time for a few questions as we're going into a one hour lunch break here.  Right, so it would have been a two hour talk if we were going to cover that as well. So like I was saying, there is a lot more of the plant DNA and without a lot more interpretation to be done with the plant DNA. Animals do turn up and they're very low frequency. So it's very hard to put sort of statistical surety on anything that we see there, but we see broad trends. I mean, the usual sorts of suspects, there are going to be boar and bovids and that sort of thing, canids in the system. Interestingly, Becky found European turtles in the data which she traced through. So for a time, and we might still be thinking this actually that there's a mild aspect to the landscape at some time points. But there's not a huge amount to say really on the animal front. Okay, so Mark Bateman's asking, is there any reason to believe changes in DNA not seen in sediment changes could be due to post-depositional biotubation? So right, yes, so this is one of the things that we worried about from the get go and that's what we did our statistical framework. So what I should have pointed out actually when I showed you the broad data in its raw form is that for the most part across cores we see stratigraphical integrity. So they are statistically different to each other as you move up and down the cores which tells us that DNA hasn't been moving. So we don't, I mean, there's always gonna be exceptions to the rule obviously, but as a rule it doesn't look like the DNA has moved much since deposition. And Christopher Brooke is asking about the difference in the half-life of DNA between fresh and saline water. Okay, so then, so okay, there are two aspects there. In free water it's all gonna be about diffusion. So it's gonna be similarly quick to get rid of. In terms of actual breakdown, so there's two different aspects to half-life here. If you're in a high ionic environment, what you do is you interfere with the hydrolysis process. It's basically works on the polarity of molecules. And we have done some work on this and we see for the sorts of temperatures that you expect in sea water about a 16-fold reduction in the rate of DNA breakdown in terms of accumulation of deamination signals. But in terms of the actual signal disappearing, that's the DNA sort of diffusing out. So there wouldn't be such a great difference. So it's all about the DNA getting fixed in situ. Once it's fixed, then it'll last a lot longer in a saline environment. Okay, I mean, there's few around the macrophosal traces of juglands and the set of DNA, clarify how certain this is late glacial holocene and not derived samples, given that the macrophosals such as azalea are present in your cause and commonly found in earlier Pleistocene deposits. So my thinking on, so this was suggested as well, we're trying, I mean, I'm presenting this to the group and they're trying to understand, I wouldn't say I persuaded everybody for sure. But my thinking is when sediments are redistributed, and the move, so you got complexity going on, you come into the situation where you've got this half-life of DNA coming into play. So where you've got rearrangement of sediments, I think you lose that old DNA. So I don't think this is an old interglacial deposition. Now the exception to that rule, I would say, would be when you get a certain influx, a violent event that tears up a load of sediment, such that it remains cloudy. And again, we're outside of my area of expertise. It'd be a question for Tim, but I would imagine that's the sort of situation that you retain your OSL signal. So the sediments remain looking old. So this was my point here that the DNA as it's going down, I think should reflect the age that the sediment appears to be by the proxy's measurements, even though that might actually be older sediment, but the OSL signal, I think it probably shouldn't actually. So my current thinking, and again, we're at early stages, is that I don't think it's some super old DNA from a previous interglacial. Whether it's later, like modern walnut going in, I'm not sure how it can be, but it does show the damage that's consistent with everything else of that age. It seems to match. Yeah, and I think we'll be hearing more about that consistency in ages later on this afternoon, probably on some of the OSL profiling and turnabout. So we can leave that again for commentary then. A question here from Melanie Munt, mentioned that it's particularly problematic in terrestrial environments for the post-depositional movement of the set of DNA. But in terms of submerged landscapes, is there likely to be any possibility of the existence of set of DNA where preserved materials are largely absent or where the environment is particularly turbulent? So that question seems to be, can you get DNA when you don't have macrofossils broadly? And yes, there's a fairly solid track record of that in the literature now. And we're starting to understand better in terms of DNA decay processes that's within the realms of possibility. What I would say the area generally in ancient DNA and sedimentary DNA in particular is we don't understand yet in detail the interactions with surfaces of the DNA molecule. So it's not just, it's same with proteins as well that the preservation in the environment that you're talking about here is largely about the exclusion of water to sites of reaction. So if you get tight binding, so anecdotally everybody knows in the field that if you've got clay, you've got silica, DNA binds to silica, you tend to see better preservation going on. So these things can potentially be held in certain substrates for long after there's any larger macrofossil remain. So there's something about it being turbulent, what's? I think the environment of deposition I presume in that case. Yeah, and I don't think DNA doesn't do terribly well in a turbulent situation. And this is how we break DNA up in the laboratory by rattling it through sort of physical stress. So I would not expect, and in a turbulent situation I would have thought the other process diffusion would probably kick in. But that said, I mean, depends what you mean by turbulent. So when we see the Tsunami episode, it's very short period of time and probably this stuff is being brought in actually on biological physical material being dumped trees, the situation in the DNA is there a long time after the trees have rotted.


Good morning and welcome back to PMC's Airways newsletter on Leslie McVane. This November has been an exciting and rewarding month for us here at PMC and we hope to make even more meaningful advances on our obligation to the community this December. As we continue to redefine freedom of speech and the importance of media in our community, we're constantly finding new ways to provide for our community. Let's kick things off with our annual appeal that helps PMC provide these services. Each year Portland Media Center calls on its community for support in keeping the services and content of PMC alive. This year we're asking for your support so we can continue to provide meaningful workshops, programs, and content to the greater Portland and southern Maine area. In this fast and changing world of media, it's organizations like ours that remember the importance of community and give the opportunity for free speech and expression back to you, our community. No amount is too small nor too large, so give what you can to help ensure that your community has a voice. The best of all things Irish and Maine 2021 edition is now available on demand at the Maine Irish Heritage Center on YouTube. You can now watch the entire show including the 16 winning performances and two new shorts about the Irish arriving in Lewiston and the preservation plans for the Maine Irish Heritage Center's magnificent home in Portland. Highlights include a moving rendition of the town that I love so well by James McClade, Irish dance from the Stilton School in Gorm, and secret recipes for both traditional and gluten-free Irish soda bread. You can watch on demand by going to the Maine Irish Heritage Center on YouTube. Next up we have Patience on the News and his December episode. PMC is excited to announce that author Gigi Georges, former White House assistant to President Clinton will be the guest on the December edition of Patience on the News. Gigi is the author behind the newly released book Down East, Five Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America. Scott Planning writes, Georges gives these communities and the reader a gift, a story of renewal. I know of no other book that gives such a portrait of the complexity of life in the rural community. You can watch Patience on the News Wednesdays at 7 on Channel 5 or watch On Demand at Portland Media Center on YouTube. Now, let's talk about the staff at PMC. PMC is excited to announce two new members of the PMC team. Dean Raymond and Warren Egger are the latest additions to PMC's initiative to bring new forms of media and opportunities to the greater Portland community. Dean Raymond, former PMC board member and longtime employee with WGBH in Boston is joining us as our production coordinator. He also leads our new podcast initiative and helps maintain PMC's improved network systems and production facilities. We're also joined by the executive producer of the syndicated TV series, A Waste of Time, Warren Egger. Warren takes up the role of our social media coordinator and is focused on bringing PMC into the next generation with internet livestream, short form YouTube content and all new ways to watch PMC content online and On Demand. He's also the one behind these visually amazing newsletters. Feel free to reach out and give a big PMC welcome to our new team members by going to portlandmedia.org backslash our team for more information. On November 8, the City of Portland and its supporters gathered at Bedford Park to unveil their all new first of its kind roundabout on Brighton Avenue. This roundabout not only relieves the headache in your commute downtown but also showcases a brand new sculpture created by artist Mark Pettigrew. We spoke to Carol Schiller who tells her story of how this unique piece of art made its way to a regular old roundabout in greater Portland. You can watch the video on the roundabout this December on Portland Media Center on YouTube. It's exciting to see how much PMC has grown this year and as we close out the year we can only hope that 2022 brings as much growth as 2021 has. From everyone here at PMC, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season. Stay warm, stay safe and keep creating.


Prompt number five, the open topic. Easier said than done. What to write, how to impress, stick around, or key strategies you want to be armed with when tackling the open topic. Thank you for joining me on my channel for the best college essay advice. Subscribe and hit the bell to be notified when I post new video. I'll wait. Fun fact, the open topic was a number one essay prompt on the Common Application last season. So if you have applications on both platforms, the coalition and Common App, this is a great essay topic to consider. Now by the end of this video, you will have three key strategies you want to implement when approaching the open topic because so much freedom can be stifling. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie with Write Your Acceptance with hundreds of students already in college or graduates by now. I know how to make the admission officers remember you. And now it's your turn. Stick around. Tip one, teach something you learned. This is one of the most adaptable concepts for any of the topics really because it shows growth. So let's say you dedicated time, tears, effort, years to archery, debate, soccer, ballet. And so now you are teaching that in some capacity as a coach in community service. And so you can bookend the experience by something you learned and then now paying it forward by something that the craft that you're teaching. Tip two, make sure your essay has an elevator pitch that you can boil down the topic of the essay in one to two takeaways. Sometimes with so much freedom, students will go on a tangent here and then go on the other tangent and get so inspired and talk about this in the squirrel. And so that type of lack of focus is what we want to avoid with so much freedom. You want to make sure that an admission officer reads it, digests it and then can attribute a favorable characteristic or character trait to you after reading the essay. Do you have a topic for your essay? If you're not sure, it's going to work, comment below. I'd love to help. Tip three, do I hear a high school student or a college applicant? I know. I know. The application says that you can borrow an essay from your four years of high school, but do you really want to chance it? That's like when a girl says she doesn't like flowers. On the first date, you don't get her flowers. I mean, with so much freedom, you're going to want to know how to structure your essay. I have a free college essay guide to download in the description below. And if you found this information useful, please comment boom below, give us a like, subscribe and share with your fellow college bound friends. Thank you. I'll see you soon. I want to get a quick shout out to University of Memphis Tigers for my cousin who just graduated and fellow writer acceptance alum by the way. So I'll see you soon. Bye.


It's no secret that a lot of Hollywood writers and directors are not exactly fans of business and free enterprise capitalism. That's been true for a long time. A couple years ago, I did a whole episode on this point called Hollywood's Favorite Trope, It's Just Business. It's actually one of my favorites and totally worth checking out. The way that different ideas are presented in entertainment and media plays a really important role in shaping the values that become dominant in our culture. And I've long believed that the way business people are often portrayed in movies and TV shows has really skewed people's understanding of reality. The evil capitalist narrative wasn't always as common as it is now, but you really start to see the shift in the movies of the 1970s and 80s. That was a weird time in American cinema. On the one hand, you had overtly jingoistic, pro-America, anti-communist movies like Red Dawn. On the other hand, you had quintessentially anti-capitalist movies like Wall Street. Of course, there's a lot more like the latter than the former. Interestingly, one of the most consistently anti-capitalist genres going back well into the 1970s is horror. Directors like George Romero made no secret of the fact that their movies were commentaries on war, race relations, consumer culture, capitalism, and mainstream conservative thought. Heck, Dawn of the Dead is about a group of mindlessly consuming zombies attacking a shopping mall. It's not hard to read between the lines on that one. But the movie I want to talk about today is a classic from another one of the most legendary horror directors, John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live. There will be spoilers, but I think after 32 years, the statute of limitations may have expired. Hit that subscribe button, ring the bell icon to get all the notifications, and get ready for this thrilling short edition of Out of Frame. They Live isn't a terribly complicated story. A drifter, whose name we're never really given, but is listed in the credits as Nata, arrives in town and starts looking for work. He goes to the government employment office and is told by a pinch-faced heritain that she doesn't have any jobs available for him. Not to be dissuaded, Nata stops at a construction site nearby and asks the foreman if he needs any help. The foreman does, but it's a union job, so Nata needs to join. On the job, he meets Frank, who shows him a tent camp slash homeless shelter across the street from a church that seems to be perpetually having choir practice. This is They Live's Chekhov's gun. It'll be important later. Throughout the first half of the film, misery is everywhere. Entire families are out on the streets, the wealthy elite care only about their own vanity. The police appear to take a great deal of pleasure in harassing the less fortunate. Frank takes a particular relish in telling Nata that everyone is out to get everybody else. The whole deal is like some kind of crazy game. They put you at the start in line. The name of the game is Make It Through Life. Only everyone's out for themselves and looking to do you in at the same turn. This is not a cheerful setting, but Nata is an optimistic guy and he's a curious guy. So when the police raid the church across the street for no apparent reason, he decides to check it out. He discovers that the church is actually a front, their choir practice is fake, and the people there are engaged in the nefarious practice of making sunglasses. For this heinous crime, not only is the church ransacked and the staff run out, but the homeless encampment is raised with bulldozers and the residents' corral killed or chased into hiding. Naturally, the only thing for Nata to do is try on a pair of the sunglasses. And through these sunglasses, he can see the true state of the world and why the people are so miserable. What normally appear as billboards and magazine are actually instructions to obey and submit and consume. No independent thought allowed. And hidden among the regular humans of the world are horrifying aliens who bear a striking resemblance to skinless anatomy dolls. The aliens have completely infiltrated human society, disguised among them as police officers, politicians, bankers, television personalities, and the idle rich. They're brainwashing the humans into complacency through TV and advertisements. The whole state of the world is entirely engineered. I can understand being a bit pessimistic during the 80s. The hippie movement of the 1960s never actually ushered in an era of peace and love like it was supposed to. The Vietnam War had been a devastating blow to American morale, and it was followed by a terrible economic climate caused by incredibly irresponsible fiscal policy in the 1970s. Even as late as 1988 when they live came out, it wasn't at all clear to the average American that the Cold War would ever be over. Death in the American Dream was extremely low, and if you think about it through that lens, it makes some sense to set movies from that era, especially horror films, against a depressing backdrop. But in an interview for the great documentary Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue, John Carpenter is super clear about his agenda with They Live. I had this deal with Universal that makes some movies where I would write the scripts and I'd have complete control and such, which was great. And I wanted to do something about Reaganism, and because it just pissed me off so much. Now, whether or not Reagan was a principled politician who was truly dedicated to the limited government philosophy he spoke so eloquently about is a discussion for another day. The fact is, a lot of the anti-capitalist animosity from the entertainment that came about during this time period was really built around the writers and directors hatred for people like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. But despite the fact that Carpenter was railing against what he perceived to be the prevailing conservative attitude of the time, the bad guys in this movie are largely politicians and police. Even the petty condescension at the beginning of the first act comes from a low-level government bureaucrat, and that's pretty typical of the genre. Carpenter was by no means the only director of the day annoyed with conservative political aesthetics in the 1980s. But while Carpenter might have been good at identifying problems, like corruption and ill intent within the halls of power, the solutions he proposes ultimately don't prevent the same thing from happening again. In They Live, there's a very clear distinction made between the bankers and big business people who are either evil aliens or unwilling league with them and the everyday, fully human small business people like the newsstand owner Nada Encounters shortly after putting on the sunglasses. And there's a very clear division between the alien ruling class and the hapless humans they subjugate. But the problem in the 80s wasn't, and still isn't, that the wrong people are in power. The problem is the power itself. But instead of getting to the root cause of what Carpenter was so upset about, we get a metaphor-heavy, trope-filled slog, up to and including And there it is. Carpenter gives us the explicit scapegoating of the free market. But it obviously isn't the case that a society and economy totally controlled by politicians and their alien masters can be a free market. And it all misses the point entirely anyway. As I said in our recent feature episode on Wonder Woman, the problems of the world aren't caused by a single person thing or force. And those problems won't disappear even if we could wave a magic wand and replace the bad thing with a good thing. We all bear some responsibility for our current situation. It's easy and simple to reject that responsibility by foisting the blame on the other guys or free enterprise or even big government for our own failings and shortcomings. But as easy as it is, it isn't helpful. All of us have a remarkable gift for getting in our own way and messing up our own plans. But acknowledging the fact that we each have agency and personal responsibility for the outcomes we experience in life is the first step toward actually fixing the things we don't like about ourselves and the world around us. It isn't that they live, it's that we live. And the world we create won't be determined by politicians or by body-snatching aliens. If we want a better world, it's up to us to do it for ourselves. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. I'm not the biggest fan of horror movies, but we've decided to fully embrace spooky season this year. But you know what's not horrifying? Entrepreneurship. It's literally the basis of free enterprise as a concept, but it's also something you can apply to every aspect of your life. And we're hosting an awesome webinar series during Global Entrepreneurship Week this year. Starting November 16, Fee's Entrepreneur Week event will feature four days of amazing speakers, beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time every day. I'm leading a session on creativity on day two that's going to include my friends Kevin Lieber of Vsauce 2 on YouTube, Assassin's Creed Syndicate and Journey composer Austin Wintery and HBO's Lovecraft country artist Afua Richardson. But there's going to be great stuff happening all week. If you're interested in attending any or all of these webinars for free, check out the link in the description. And as always, be sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel. Hit that bell icon, listen to our behind the scenes podcast, support us on Patreon and follow our brand new out of frame accounts on Twitter and Instagram. See you next time.


Is there a lost city in the Amazon? In 1541, Francisco Orellana was the first European to cross the entire length of South America from West to East along the Amazon. He reported seeing incredible cities, millions of people, and a thriving culture. However, a hundred years later, when other Europeans got into the Amazon, they couldn't find these cities. A strong theory is that the Spaniards brought smallpox into the Amazon, and smallpox devastated the local population because there was no immunity to it. There was a massive die-off, and the cities were deserted. Within 50 years, they were completely overgrown by the jungle, and that's why they were not seen by the explorers, who came a hundred years later. But now, the forest is being cleared, and we've begun to see the traces of those cities.


Felly, nid i fynifio i gael y gallu, nid i ffugwgrifion ni, rydw i ni. Fy nhw'n gweithio ar gyferiwyr gyffredin nhw y byddai ar cleanse seven, six, eight, four yn mynd i ddim yn rhaid i Jeremy Balfour yn rhaid i sportu wneud i glasbynad diwrnodd. Mae'n ddigwyddol i ddim yn ddo Godi ac rydw i dyfodig yn ddigwydd i arni i ddim yn rhaid i ddim yn ddigwydd i ddim yn dyfodig. Ddigwydd o Jeremy Balfour i ddigwydd i'r ddigwydd i ddim, I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead this debate this afternoon. I am very supportive of positive action that can be taken to encourage and support disabled people to participate in sport. As someone who is sport mad and born with a disability, I can see that there are far greater opportunities for those who have a disability now than even when I was born just a few years ago. I would also like to take this opportunity in particular to welcome Megan Dawson-Farrill and Steffan Hogan, who are watching this debate from a public gallery. Megan is a T-54 wheelchair racer who competed in the 2014 Commonwealth Games for Team Scotland and was a gold medalist of the junior world champions. She preached us all to same in that she holds the Scottish T-54 record for 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500, 5000, 10,000 and marathon. Perhaps Brian Whittle could learn a lesson. Steffan is a single-arm amputee who was one of Scotland's top young swimmers. Steffan enjoyed in illustrious career as a power swimmer winning multiple medals before transferring to the sport of power triathlon, representing Scotland at a national championship and Great Britain on five occasions. In addition to their tremendous sporting achievements, both individuals have used their extensive experience in disability sport to become disability inclusion training tutors, rolling out an inclusive teacher training programme to give more disabled children a positive and inclusive experience at PE and encourage the next generation of young disabled people to lead a full and active lifestyle through sport. Research commissioned by Sports Scotland and the Quality and Human Rights Commission identified that disabled people in Scotland are less active and have poorer experience of PE in school and are more likely to face difficulties in pursuing their dreams. Research identified that training and education, both on physical activity and disability equality, is essential if it is to be delivered properly and has the potential to raise awareness of access attitudes and assumptions. PE is often people's first experience of sport in school. Research recommended that teachers receive training on disability in sport to help to improve pathways to sport. Similar issues were identified at an education focus national conference run by Scottish disability sport in 2009. The key recommendations of the conference were to design, develop and deliver a nationally recognised training programme to help early-years practitioners, primary teachers, PE teachers and secondary PE teachers across Scotland to participate and help children to enjoy the activity of sport and PE in school. Scottish disability sport subsequently worked with its sister organisation across the UK to develop a disability inclusion training workshop. In Scotland, training has been tailored to meet the needs of a collective of excellence and plays to the Scottish credit and qualifications framework. Scottish disability sport initially received funding from Education Scotland and Sports Scotland to allow a national roll-out of the workshops in regard to the area. That has continued and funding is still there up until March of next year. Over the past five years, 396 workshops have been successfully delivered across all local authorities in Scotland and nine educational establishments, involving 6,000 participants, have also taken part. External research and evaluation of the workshop has taken place and revealed that 88 per cent of close participants were involved in education, 79 per cent were teachers or training assistants. Three quarters of the respondents worked with young people with a disability, suggesting that the targeting of the training was very effective and that people came away feeling far more confident to be able to teach people with disability sport in schools and to take it and teach their workforce. Most importantly, the course led to a positive outcome in a classroom. One primary one teacher described how a challenging behaviour for a boy in a class could not be explained until she attended the course and struggled to play a ballgame where she wore glasses with limited vision. Back in the classroom, she discovered that the boy had no vision in one eye, and her experience of wearing limited-vision glasses gave her some insight into how he must feel. As a result, identifying the vision issue, he is now doing much better. Teachers also refer to the impact that training has had on teaching styles, to be more inclusive, to include the whole class, not just picking out certain individuals. The training continues to evolve. Following further consultations with teachers and practitioners and in conjunction with the National Artistic Society, there has now been new training brought forward in regard to those who face different challenges. Scottish disability sport is now working with 23 Scottish Government bodies to meet the needs of coaches and disabled participants within their own sport. Under the drive of charity Trust Rugby International, with the help of SRU, they now have branches of the clan, both here in Edinburgh and Ayrshire, and are hoping to go into other parts of the country. The clan has pioneered unified rugby, gathering individuals from different backgrounds and communities with the dissonant support needs to play rugby. In conclusion, the success of disability, including training, is multifaceted. It is about wide and comprehensive partners that work with Education Scotland, Sports Scotland and local authorities, making sure that it works for everybody and is something that can be taken forward. In conclusion, I would ask the Scottish Government to commit to continuing with this training and beyond March of next year to find the appropriate way to fund it and to support it and to roll it out across the whole of Scotland. I now call Jackie Baillie to be followed by Fulton MacGregor. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. May I offer an apology to the chamber as I need to leave before the conclusion of the debate, and I have apologised to the Presiding Officer in advance. Let me also make a declaration of interest. I am proud to be the honorary president of Dumbartonshire Disability Sports Club. I thank Jeremy Balfour on that basis for securing this important debate, because it allows me to talk about Dumbartonshire Disability Sports Club. The club was founded by parents, principally due to the lack of opportunities for children with disabilities, and they wanted them to have those opportunities to participate in physical activities. They have been helped along the way by sports professionals and an absolute army of volunteers, far too many for me to name this afternoon. However, it is now very much an essential thriving community resource and a truly valuable asset for my local area, because it provides young people of all ages, all abilities across every town with really valuable opportunities. I want to pay tribute to Alan Clark, who is the chairperson of the club. He and his many helpers have driven this activity forward. Whether it is swimming, athletics or football, and I commend some of them to whoever the Scotland manager is, because they are certainly very good indeed, they have had exposure to all sorts of different sporting opportunities. They have achieved their goals of raising the awareness and profile of disability sports, which has been critically important. They have increased volunteering opportunities because everybody wants to go along and help out. They have increased the sense of belonging to your community and provided, in a practical way, much-needed respite for parents and carers too. It is the transformation in the children and young people, which is absolutely the most important thing for me. The achievement, the laughter, the joy on their faces, the improved confidence—it is truly tremendous and a joy to see. Do you know what? They are really good at it too. I expect to see some of them in the future at the Paralympic Games, at the Special Olympics, because there should be no limit to their ambition. International events like those show the world that athletes are athletes regardless of disability and that anyone is capable of sporting greatness. Opportunities to participate at a local level are the foundation, in my view, for encouraging our children and young people to develop their potential. Let me highlight just one local example. That is a young man called Gordon Reed. Gordon holds singles and doubles titles, far too many to name. He is a Wimbledon champion. He has inspired a generation of people, with or without a disability, to get involved in tennis. I confess that I need to try harder, but he is an inspiration. He comes from Helensborough, and we are incredibly proud of his achievements. However, he was diagnosed at age 13 with transverse myelitis, but with access to local opportunities, good coaching and mentoring, he has risen to the very top of his sport. We need to make sure that we fund and support local disability sports clubs, because they are, I think, the future that will enable Gordon Reed's generations to come forward. I am grateful to BBC Children in need for supporting Dumbartonshire, but we also welcome the initiative from Scottish Disability Sport, because by providing training to those interested in becoming involved in sport for disabled people, we encourage that greater opportunity, that greater participation in our schools and in our communities. I conclude by commending Jeremy Balfour again for bringing this debate to the chamber, but in particular thank the coaches, the sports professionals, the volunteers and the parents who make supporting opportunities available to our young people with disabilities. I call Fulton MacGregor to be followed by Brian Whittle. I would also like to pay tribute to Jeremy Balfour for bringing this very important debate to the chamber. I know that it is an issue that he has always been very, very passionate about, and it is something that he brings in to many of his speeches. I would also like to bring it to the chamber today, on the week in which the Parliament made a statement on the British Sign Language national plan, which is also very important. It is an issue of equality, and that is what it is. For me, it is as simple as that. It is a great motion, and it is about equality. As Jeremy Balfour said, it is not the disability that prevents people from taking part in sports, but rather the barriers that are created by the stigma of having a disability. The Scottish disability sport has worked to overcome this stigma and works to coordinate athletes and players of all ages and abilities with physical sensory or learning disability in the widest area of sports possible. It encourages those opportunities for that to happen, so I would also like to pay tribute to SDS for the work that it is doing. In relation to some of the local examples of what Jackie Baillie had done, yesterday I met Leonard Cheshire disability, who, as people know, is an organisation that is working with folk who are facing these barriers. It is mainly in terms of work and schooling, but also during the discussion yesterday, it came up that they are also looking at helping individuals to get involved in sports, so that is another area where they are working. It might be just a suggestion if they aim different naturalities watching, and I imagine that people from SDS will. There might be scope for a bit of joint-up working there as well, if they wanted to have a conversation with each other in my own local area. The local school, for example, at Christon High recently, I was there for the international women and girls in sports week. As well as talking about that and the fantastic work that they are doing, getting female participation in sports, I also heard about a lot of work that they are doing to make all sports accessible to everybody within the school. Like the other schools in my constituency, I did not want to leave any schools out, but it was just because I was physically there that they are doing fantastic work to make that accessible. I got a briefing just on exactly how they are doing that, so that was really, really happening to see. I also want to mention the shining stars in Kate Slaven from that organisation. A local organisation in Coatbridge should do a fantastic job, giving real opportunities to young people with disabilities. They actually do that through the Forum of Music in Theatre, which is, of course, different to sport, but the principles are the same. The young people, she tells me every time I meet her how they started off, so it was just confidence levels, and then through that confidence just grows. They have been at various locations, including recently at the Westminster Parliament, singing for MPs and other folks. That is absolutely fabulous to see. I was also at the SFA grassroots awards recently, and a lot of the folk got awards there. They were talking about awards for setting up disability teams. That was really good to see in some of the people who come up on the stage to talk about receiving the award and what setting up a disability football team had meant to the parents. I do not actually mind saying this in the chamber, but it was really eye-worn. That was stuff that people were doing on a volunteer basis, and I think that that should be commended at every chance we get. I say that I am coming to the end of my four minutes, and I did have quite a lot of things to say, but I will simply conclude by again thanking Jeremy Balfour. I know that he has also joined my cross-party group in the future of football in Scotland, and I am sure that the two of us will continue to push us forward, and again, the Scottish disability sport. I declare an interest in that I am a senior track and field coach, a former chair of the Scottish Coaches Association and a member of the European Coaches Association. I can also start by congratulating my colleague Jeremy Balfour on securing the debate, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute. As you know, it is a subject that I have a keen interest in. First, I want to suggest that the title of the debate is a bit of a misnomer, because this debate is not about disability, it is more about a debate to celebrate the abilities of sportsmen and women and to call for the coaching and teaching practical and theory training to be expanded to allow teachers and coaches to encourage access and participation to another sector of society. A few years ago, I took on the coaching responsibilities of a Paralympian palsy. He was already an international-class athlete with the drive and single-mindiness required to reach this level, and his expectations of me were rather high. I remember the GBA head coach for disability athletics coming along to an early training session to discuss how I was going to adapt to my training programmes to suit someone with this kind of disability. I said the same way that I do with all my athletes that I work with. I said not much of a little confusion. I will continue to assess and adapt his training programme according to his responses to training, because all athletes are different and respond in different ways to physical and psychological inputs. I can tell you that this young man was a 400m runner, and it does not matter what physical adaptations that are required in training, if we get it wrong, he will come into the home straight carrying a bear on a sofa with his family, commonly known as athletics parlance, as his backside falls out of his shorts. I will say that I have cleaned that up a tad for you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It does not matter who you are, there is a physiological and emotional requirement for a sporting event. I threw him in at the deep end, with all my other so-called able-bodied athletes, and he thrived. That is exactly what he wanted and needed, to be treated with the same brutality as everyone else, just as part of the squad. I laughed at him the same as any other, as the rest of my squad, when he hit the ground after a rather difficult session. Did we have to adapt his training? Absolutely. I have to do that with every single athlete that I coach. In my opinion, Scottish disability sport, in helping to develop a UK disability inclusion training model, is breaking down perceptions, that fear of working with this community in a sporting environment. That perception or misconception that is somehow coaching this section of society requires a different skillset. It may require an understanding of specifics of the individual and their limitations, but how does that approach differ from coaching any other sportsman or woman? I still coach and then my squad have a young man who won the 100m, was second in the 200m and third in the long jump at the Special Olympics earlier this year. He is a category T20 with a learning difficulty. All that means to me is that the verbal inputs and instructions are adapted and perhaps not given in batches, but coaches adapt their inputs with all their athletes. He is part of my squad and has been integrated and accepted like any other athlete would. Also at those Special Olympics, I was a young man who I have worked with who won a gold medal for cycling. He is quite heavily autistic. That posed a difficult challenge for me and a different challenge for me. He has to be watched constantly because when all the drinks bottles are lined up, he does exactly what you are supposed to do with drinks and he drank all of them. The squad and I have to have his back all the time. Inclusion and physical activity is a great treatment for poor mental health, as has been said by Sam H, and poor mental health is a significant challenge for the disability community. Inclusion has to start in school when the same opportunities must be afforded to all irrespective of background or personal circumstances. Let's ensure that teacher training and coaching includes upskilling in this area. I will come to my conclusions mentioning the fantastic Kayleigh Hagel from Kilmarnock, whom I met at a disability sports training camp at the Sports Arena in Kilmarnock. She is a para swimmer and a race runner and a world record holder and training towards the Paralympics in Tokyo. The run-byte club in the air, when I met them, I took my kit along to train with them. When I saw the speed that we were going round the track, I left my kit in the car. Finally, how can I not mention the MSP team of myself, Dean Lockhart, Colin Smith and Alexander Stewart, aka Davros, who took part in the Scottish power chair football team challenge during the recent Scottish championships, and we were trounced 6-0 in 10 minutes. It wasn't pretty. Deputy Presiding Officer, opportunities to participate, no matter your background that are out there, let's celebrate them and do everything that we can to make sure that all can access. Please have a few words from John Mason, followed by Maurice Corry. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I hadn't really intended to speak in today's debate, but I'm happy to make a few comments. I was particularly struck by Jeremy Balfour's speech and Jackie Baillie's speech, which, for me, I have to confess is unusual. The point that she made about confidence, because I know as an individual, as a boy, the difference that it made to me when I found a sport that I could actually do, because we were forced to play rugby at our school and I was absolutely hopeless at rugby and I hated it. Then we got the chance to do some other sports, including cross-country running, which I then found that I could do at a reasonable level. Clearly, it seems to me that if that made a difference to me and my confidence and my whole standing within the school, because I went from somebody who was mocked as not being a tall sporty to somebody who could actually do something, I think that applies also to many disabled young people. I strongly believe fundamentally that every person has something to offer, every person has something that they are good at that other people cannot do and be that in the academic field or the sport field or culture, or whatever it is, everybody has got something to offer. Unless we give young people the chances to try out different things, they and we are never going to find out what they are good at and what we as a society can gain from. The other thing that I just wanted to mention was that we recently had a visit to my constituency—I checked, it was the 23rd of September—from the National Deaf Children's Society. That was at the Tocross swimming pool, which, as members will know, is the best swimming pool in Scotland and happens to be in my constituency. Obviously, where Commonwealth Games and so on took place. I was very impressed at what they were doing. First of all, they have a vehicle and an exhibition as to the different aids and adaptations that they can help with young people who are deaf. Things that I had not realised were explaining to me at that time because a young person in a pool cannot wear any of the equipment that they need for hearing and are therefore dependent on a trainer teaching them what to do. If that trainer is standing at the edge of the pool and the young person is in the pool, it becomes incredibly difficult. However, one mother was telling me how her daughter, when the trainer got into the pool and was able to be close to them and she could lip-read to some extent or perhaps hear to some extent, that made an absolutely huge difference and for her, her swimming really took off after that. Clearly, we have to think of finances in this area. For families encouraging young people, disabled or not, to take their sport very seriously can involve quite a lot of cost. I do not think that there is an easy answer to that, but I just thought that I would mention that as well on the way past. Thank you very much. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you, Jeremy Balfour, for bringing this excellent debate to the House on such an important issue today. For all speakers so far, I have spoken. He has highlighted the importance of these opportunities and facilities for disabled people to partake in sports. The more we need to do to encourage that, the better. Jackie Baillie referred to my local area and the success of the Dumbartonshire Disability Sports Association, which has been excellent. I commend it. It is an exact example where we have areas of deprivation there and we have disabled people in that community who have been denied the opportunity to access the facilities that more able kids and people have been able to do. I am delighted that she mentioned Gordon Reid, the Helen's Rowland Tennis Club member. I have to declare an interest. I was a member of that club, but I am also proud of his great success on the international stage in the wheelchair tennis and the sport that goes with it. He is an excellent example of what can be done if the facilities are made available to people like himself. I must declare a small interest in that my parents started Gordon on his tennis travels when they brought short tennis from Wimbledon to Helensborough some 25 years ago, and now it is called mini tennis. I am very proud that there is some connection on that. Gordon was one of the first young players who actually put through the system. Can I just turn momentarily to disabled servicemen and women? We have seen this wonderful example that Prince Harry has put forward with the Invictus Games. I would ask and encourage the minister that we might bring an element of that or even that to Scotland at some point. I think that it would be an excellent idea. We have had it held, as you know, in Toronto recently in Canada, a member of the Commonwealth, and I think that Scotland would stand high if we could look to do that. As I say, it is something that demonstrates the ability and the skills that many ex-servicemen and women who are sadly disabled from service in operations would only be a great and dignified way of celebrating those wonderful achievements that they have achieved. We do see it in both the Paralympics, Invictus Games and others how well they are doing and how things have adapted very well. Finally, I thank Jeremy Balfour for bringing this debate to Parliament and to everyone who has contributed and to welcome the elite athletes to the gallery and congratulations on their wonderful achievements. I would also like to start by acknowledging the great work that is being done by Gavin McLeod and his team at Scottish Disability Sport in highlighting the benefits of getting people participating in sport. Fulton MacGregor mentioned breaking down barriers, and the Scottish Government firmly believes that there should be no barriers at all to participating in sport. Everyone should be able to enjoy sport. Whoever they are, wherever they are and whatever their background, we all know the benefits of sporting activity to all, including those with disabilities and those with poor mental health, as Brian Whittle iterated on how important it is for people to be active when they have poor mental health and the benefits that activity can bring. I am proud that the Scottish Government is determined to create a modern, inclusive Scotland that protects and respects human rights, of which a key element is promoting the equal participation and access to sport. The excellent UK disability inclusion training course, run by Scottish Disability Sport, will help to achieve that by providing participants with the tools to help to teach sport for people with a disability. The workshops have been individually tailored to meet the needs of five key groups coaches and volunteers, teachers and staff in education settings, Scottish Sports governing bodies, sports development officers and leisure service providers. By the end of the workshops, participants should be able to do the following things. Recognise the influence perceptions and experience have on interactions and our expectations of others. Recognise different communication styles, as John Mason mentioned. Identify appropriate disability-specific terminology and be aware of appropriate etiquette. Articulate the principles of the Equality Act 2010 and identify the key aspects of legislation that relate to your role within sport. Recognise specific barriers to participation and consider ways in which any challenges can be addressed and potentially overcome. Identify the participation opportunities within disability sport. Know where to go to for further information and finally recognise how to influence, even change practices and facilitate inclusion. This workshop will help to improve opportunities for all to participate in sport and physical activity. I was pleased that members took the opportunity, taking part in the debate, to highlight the work that is being done in their local areas to encourage those with disabilities into sports in their own areas. I know, for example, how much is done in my own area, not least at the wonderful new Aberdeen sports village. I thank Brian Whittle for bringing to the debate his particular knowledge and experience in this area. I want to emphasise that, for our part, the Scottish Government is committed to supporting equalities in Scottish sport, ensuring that people of all ages and from all communities across Scotland have the opportunity to participate in sport and physical activity. In April this year, the Minister for Public Health and Sport announced an additional £2 million investment in sports governing bodies. Those extra funds are being distributed by Sports Scotland to help to meet the Scottish Government's priorities on reducing inequalities in sport's participation. The First Minister also opened the national sports training centre and ever applied this year the first sports training centre of its kind in the UK. The state-of-the-art residential facility is designed with inclusivity in mind for disabled sport, disability sports users, both performance and community users. That will ensure that Scotland is even better placed to support our disabled athletes in the preparations and to help to ensure that sport and activity are accessible. The Scottish Government works closely with Sports Scotland on equality matters. Last year, Sports Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commission published an equality in sports research report into equality in Scottish sport that Jeremy Balfour mentioned. That report looked at who currently participates in sport, the barriers to participation and suggests potential solutions. Equalities and inclusions are one of the three priorities for improvements that were set out in Sports Scotland's corporate plan for 2015-19. As a sector, sport must recognise and understand the protected characteristics as well as the associated complexities if we are to effectively address issues that may be preventing or constraining people from getting involved and progressing in any aspect of sport. The equality at Sports Scotland report outlines progress towards ensuring equality is integrated into its day-to-day work and provides an overview of how it has delivered against equality outcomes. It also sets out three new equality outcomes for 2017-21, one being that sports organisations and people working in sport will have an improved understanding and awareness of the needs of people with protected characteristics. That outcome underpins commitment to show greater leadership, to influence and drive the changes needed to address inequalities and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to get involved in sport. In conclusion, I would like to put on record my thanks to Scottish Disabilities Sport and Sports Scotland who have been working together to ensure that every child, young person or adult with a disability can participate in sport and physical activity. I know that the Minister for Public Health and Sport is looking forward to working closely with Scottish Disabilities Sport following the launch of their new strategic plan this year, inspiring through inclusion 2017-21. For me personally, I would be interested in seeing the evaluation of the UK disability inclusion training course. I will take forward Maurice Corry's idea of bidding for Invictus Games to Scotland. We have a great record in delivering sports in high-profile sporting events in Scotland. The Commonwealth Games was one of the first to have huge inclusivity for those with disabilities. It is a great idea and I am sure that we can take it forward together. Thank you very much. That concludes the debate. I suspend this meeting until half past 2.


Presented by DuPont. As we begin our story, the seeing eye, may we remind you that here it is, and we have an announcement that has something to do with Christmas after a cellulose film. DuPont makes this transparent wrapping material under the trademark cellophane. Many people find cellophane in its bright colors the ideal joyous wrapping for Christmas gifts. Several experts in package design and decoration have summarized their experience in a little six page folder illustrated in full color called 33 Secrets of Gift Wrapping. This folder shows you how to do a number of unusual Christmas wrappings. You may have a copy free of charge if you write DuPont Wilmington Delaware. Just ask for 33 Secrets of Gift Wrapping. As an overture, Don Voorhees and the DuPont's cavalcade orchestra will play a special setting of Jerome Kern's recent song success. A fine romance from the picture, Swing Time. Listening the cavalcade of America brings you the story of the seeing eye. A school in Morristown, New Jersey where German shepherd dogs are educated as guides for the blind. Bringing new opportunities, independence and faith in life to those who walk in darkness. Our scene is Highland Hospital. In a room on the second floor, Donald Dean, a college freshman, is recovering from the effects of an automobile accident. His mother meets the doctor just outside his door. You should be feeling very grateful this morning, Mrs. Dean. Young man's life is no longer in danger. Oh, that's wonderful news, doctor. And his eyes. His eyes are all right, too. Be as brave as you can about it, Mrs. Dean. I think it best to warn you. There is a possibility that the nerve is completely paralyzed. And if it is? He won't be able to see. I'm going here to take the bandages off right now. Be brave for his sake. I'll try. I know you will. Well, how are you today, young column? Fine, thanks. I've been waiting there, doctor. Miss Wright says you're going to take the bandages off. Certainly glad. I'm so tired of not being able to see anything. Who's with you? Hello, dear. Oh, mother, hello, darling. It's just in time for the unveiling. Doc's going to take this veil of gauze off my eyes, and I'm going to stop impersonating justice to have a look at the world. How many bandages are there, doctor? Three, whole steady now. All right. When can I use my eyes again? A lot, I mean. Why? What do you want to do? I want to get back to college, of course. I missed a lot, but I'm going to try and make it up. Maybe I can go to summer school. Well, I wouldn't count on it. There. The first bandage is off. Oh, that's a relief.  It certainly beats well to get out in the light again. Where are you, mom? I'm here, dear. Come over here and sit on the bed. So the first thing I'll see will be you smiling at me. Here, here. Hold still now. All right.  I'm sure glad it's over. What's the matter, doctor? Mother? Yes, Don. Mother, is anything wrong? What is it? What's happened? Doctor, I want to see you. Please take the last bandage off. I have taken it off, Don. Weeks have passed. Don is at home, strong again physically, but helpless.  Mrs. Dean, about to leave for the office, is telling him goodbye. That's your luncheon ready for you in the eye spot here. Do you think you can manage? Sure, I can manage. I'll try not to break the plate again. I should be able to get around the house by now, but I seem to get more awkward all the time. Oh, Donnie, you don't. Why, you get about wonderfully. Oh, don't kid me, moms. I know. I haven't adjusted. What am I? Just a burden. Donnie. I was going to get out of college and do big things and take care of you. Now what can I do? Sit here while you work to support me. I can't stand it.  Don, don't talk that way. Why, nothing else matters as long as I have you. You know that. Of course I know it, mother. I'm a robber to talk this way. Nerves, I suppose. No, no exercise. Just sitting here. I know. You hear that clock? What clock? The grandfather's clock. You never notice it when someone's in the room. You should hear how loud it sounds when you're here all alone. Listen, you hear it? Sometimes I think I'll go crazy. Well, I'll stop it right away. No, don't. What's the use? I'll get used to it, all right? Is Sammy coming to take me for a walk today? Yes, dear. He'll be over at one o'clock. Why don't you walk through the park, Don? That'll be a change for you. Yes. Big event of the week. Shuffling through the park, holding on to the little neighbor boy. Better than sitting here, though. You sure he'll come, mother? He promised. Well, I'm a curry mound here. I'm a little later this year. Goodbye, dear. Bye. Have you worth?  Sure. Everything's perfect. Come on, run along. Mother. Yes, dear? I... I'm sorry I was... I'm glad. Oh, you weren't bad. Dear, good... Goodbye, dear. Goodbye. Hello, Sammy. Where are you? That's all right, Sammy. Maybe some other time. Now, you start. Every kick for a second. When you do that 3,600 times, there's an hour gone. An hour. One hour out of a lifetime. I might live to be 80. I might sit here all that time listening to you ticking, ticking away the years, the empties, empties. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Months pass and Don sinks into despondency. He no longer makes any effort to help himself. He's not here tonight. Don, dear, I saw Miss Arnold from the Society for the Blind today. What do you think? Morris Frank from the Seeing Eyes in town. And he's coming up here to see you tonight. What do you want to see me for? I wanted him to, Don.  That's the place where they train dogs to guide people who can't see. Miss Arnold says it's like a miracle the way they work. What's the idea?  Oh, Don. Oh, Mother, I'm sorry, but what's the use? I'd never trusted dogs to take me around. And I don't want to see Morris Frank, whoever he is.  I don't think he'll be that way. He's not much older than you are. He's blind too, you know. He is? Yes. He doesn't let it interfere with the things he wants to do. Oh, that's probably Mr. Frank now. I see it. You're Morris Frank, I'm sure. I'm Mrs. Dean. Please come in. Good evening, Mrs. Dean. I came up to meet your son, Don. Please come in. May I help you? No need. Buddy, forward.  Which way, man? Straight ahead. Don, this is Morris Frank of the Seeing Eye. My son, Donald Dean, Mr. Frank. How do you do? How do you do? This is Buddy, my dog.  I know. Buddy did. She and I came over alone. Look, how could Buddy find her way up here? Don't tell me she's that smart. Well, she is, in a way. Miss Arnold said go straight for three blocks, then two blocks to your right, and three to the left, second house from the corner. All I had to do was count. Buddy did the rest. You must have a lot of faith in a dog on that one. How do you hold on to her? She has a harness with a handle on it. Not too rigid, and you can feel every move she makes through it.  When she stops, you feel for a step or a curve. How does she know where you want to go? Well, I tell her. Forward, or right, or left. But if it isn't safe to go at that particular time, she won't move until it is. Well, she must be a dog in a million. Well, she is to me. Gores Leica do the same things for their masters. We're educating more every day at Marstown. Where did the idea come from? The first time I ever heard of it was in 1928. Someone read me an article Mrs. Harrison Eustace had written for the Saturday Evening Post. How did she find out about them? She was at her home, Fortune of Fields in Switzerland, experimenting and breeding German shepherd dogs for intelligence. She and Elliot Humphrey had been to Potsdam to visit the school where these dog guides were trained. I was so excited over the article that I wrote and asked her how such a school could be established here. She invited me to come to Fortune of Fields and learn to work with buddy. And you did? Did I. I spent five weeks learning to use buddy, but I didn't realize all it was going to mean until one morning when she took me to the village and I went to the barbershop alone. The barbershop? But I don't know. You know what that did for me, Mrs. Dean? To me it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. Well, I went home and sat down and laughed out loud just from happiness. For years I'd want to smile on my face because I had to, and at last I could laugh because I wanted to. For you. You didn't need anyone to help? I didn't need anyone but buddy. The minute I realized that, I wanted every blind person in this country to have a dog. Mrs. Eustis and Mr. Humphrey were both enthusiastic about starting a school in America as soon as it could be proved practical. But we decided I must try going everywhere with my dog in all kinds of traffic and under all sorts of conditions. When I was perfectly satisfied with the results, I was to cable them and they'd begin plans for the school. So, Buddy and I came over to make the test. You came from Europe alone? Sure. I was shipped over, American Express. Blind baggage, I guess. But I came back on my own with Buddy. Well, weren't you afraid? Well, it was pretty exciting. I'll never forget the morning we landed. We left the dock and started across West Street. A big chance. Don't let me down, will you, girl? We got to show them. What's this, the curb? All right, I'm ready. From the sounds, I'd say if we could cross this street, we could cross anything. Now, let's find out. Buddy, forward. Does this bus go to 26th Street? Yes, but you can't bring that dog in the bus. But I'm out here, but you mustn't. No dogs allowed. Buddy isn't a dog, she's a guy. I must have her to lead me. Lead you? Yes, you see, I'm blind. She takes me about. I thought you was leading her. Is there a dino on this train? Yes, car ahead, sir. Everything comfortable? Blended. We've got special orders about your dog. Gee, she's a beauty. Must be mighty intelligent. Will you sit here, sir? May I help you? My dog will take care of me. Thank you. I'm going to send a cable. Here's a blank, sir. Would you write it for me, please? Mrs. Harrison Eustace, Fortunate Fields, Switzerland. Just cable a one-word success and sign it. Morris and Buddy. That, Mrs. Dean, was how the American school was started. At first, the dogs were trained in Europe and shipped over here. But now they educated at the school in Marstown. Well, you... you can go places all by yourself, can't you? Anyplace in the world. Well, Buddy and I must run along now. Just thought you might be interested in knowing about this kind of a dog. I am. I... How do you get one? Right to the seeing eye at Marstown and apply for admission to a class. Of course, you have to go there to live for a month, you know. What for? To learn to use your dog properly. I thought they were already trained. They are. But you're not. You have to know what to do as well as a dog. Mother? Yes, dear. But I... I want to do something for me right away. I want you to write a letter to the seeing eye. Eventually, Don goes to Marstown, spurred on by a new hope. He arrives on the same day with seven other men. Elliot S. Humphrey, director of training known affectionately as Jack, greets them and talks to them about the purpose of the school. You see, man, it's pretty much up to you. You make progress in proportion as you throw your fears aside and try. Now you may all go to your rooms and someone will guide you over the house and show you where everything is. After that, you'll be expected to take care of yourself. Gee, I can't do that. Well, I couldn't find my way into the home. You find you can do it and let you like it once you've tried. I don't know. You're Don Dickens, aren't you? Yes. I'm a guide here. I'll show you the room. Oh, thanks. Steps here. Be careful. Turn right. Right. Now, more steps. Your room is down this hall. Here it is. The bed's here and the chair is over here. There's a bureau on this side, three drawers. Your suitcase is on the bed. You'll have time to unpack before lunch. Unpack? I can't unpack for myself. I haven't done anything like that for a year. Why not? There's nothing to matter with your arms, is there? No, but haven't you any consideration for me? I can't see. I'm blind. Then why should I have? I'm blind, too. Wow. That's telling me. Well, let's have a try. Mr. Humphrey? Yeah. Here's your dog. Oh. His name is Lad. Let him know you like him. If you're to depend on him, he's got to love you, you know. He's your own dog from now on. You sleep here beside your bed and lie at your feet when you're at table. Oh. Where is he? He's at the door. I'm taking over his leash. All right now. Call him. Come here, Lad. Here, boy. Boy. Come closer. That's a good fellow. Nice dog. There. Look, Mr. Humphrey. He's licking my hand. He likes me. Oh, Lad. I've got you at last. Just touching you. Knowing what you can do for me makes the whole world seem different. You know what I'm going to do, Mr. Humphrey? I've been thinking about it for weeks. Now I've made up my mind. As soon as I learn to go about with Lad, I'm going back to college. It's commencement day at Cromwell College more than four years later. The exercises are almost over and members of the class of 1936 in historic halfway chapel are about to receive their diplomas. Bob Norton, Don's roommate, standing next to him in the first row, speaks under his breath. Are you nervous, Don? Yeah, a little. Well, relax. Hey, Lad, is there anything better than you are? He should. He hasn't missed a lecture in four years. No. Nor a game, nor a dance. You've given him a busy life, all right. Well, here comes the big moment. Please see the gentleman, please. Dr. Holmes, let it begin. Yeah. I feel that I have a special privilege. We are graduating a young man who, in his four years, has not only made an enviable record for himself as a student and as president of this class, but in so doing has overcome one of the greatest of physical handicaps, total blindness. In the devotion of his magnificent dog guide, he has found a substitute for his own eyes and gone forward with unfaltering courage. Together, they have shown us here at Cromwell that while there can be no sight without eyes, vision is a thing of the spirit. Donaldine, will you come forward? Lad, he's calling it.  We've got to go up and get our diploma. Holy and carefully, the seeing eye has developed the possibilities of giving freedom to the blind. An increasing number of sightless men and women are being restored to independence through the aid of the splendid shepherd dogs, whose faithfulness and intelligence earn them this tribute from the cavalcade of America. This evening, in Chicago, several hundred men and women are gathered in the Drake Hotel at a dinner in the hostesses of the Seeing Eye Society. The guest of honor is Mrs. Harrison Eustis. You've heard her mentioned in our cavalcade dramatization. Now we will hear her in person. Ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Harrison Eustis speaking from Chicago. It has meant a great deal to the members of the Seeing Eye to watch more than 250 sightless people gain independence and freedom with seeing eye dogs. And to see these people gradually take their rightful place in our seeing world. And I, in behalf of the Seeing Eye, wish to express our gratitude to the public who have made it possible for us to educate these dogs and teach those without sight to use them. I also wish to express my appreciation of the work done on this and other radio programs to explain and dramatize what we are doing. For only when the public fully realizes the value of the dog as a substitute for human eyes can we be sure of wholehearted support. I thank you. Many of our friends have suggested that since the cavalcade of America presents significant episodes in this country's history it would be appropriate, briefly to outline in these stories of chemistry the history of such a national institution as the DuPont Company. For the progress of DuPont has closely paralleled the progress of the nation. Such an account takes us back 134 years when America was still to be built. In 1802, a young Frenchman named E.I. DuPont de Nemours encouraged by his friend, President Thomas Jefferson established a small powder mill on the banks of Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware. Black powder was a vital necessity to the pioneers. They used it as gunpowder to obtain food and protect themselves. As frontiers were pushed back they used it as a blasting agent for clearing fields, mining coal and metals, building roads, canals, railroads and many other projects that make for progress. Later, black powder was replaced for many blasting purposes by dynamite and other improved commercial explosives. Old-fashioned gunpowder gave way to the smokeless variety which primarily was made for sporting uses but when the safety of the country demanded for aiding the national defense. At the turn of the century, the world entered a chemical era and DuPont kept the pace. Utilizing its knowledge of cellulose chemistry DuPont produced coated fabrics such as fabricoids plastic such as pyriline, finishes such as buco, photographic film, rayon and the transparent wrapping material for which DuPont's trademark is cellophane. From the company's experience in coal tar chemistry have come dyestuffs, perfume bases, ingredients for medicines to relieve sickness and pain, photographic chemicals and products to improve rubber, oil and gasoline. These new offspring of chemical research so far overshadowed the original DuPont product that powder now amounts to less than one percent of DuPont's annual business. So it can be seen that as the nation has moved forward so has the DuPont company for its supplies products that serve basic human needs thus providing better things for better living through chemistry. Don't forget if you would like a free copy of the illustrated folder called 33 Secrets of Christmas Gift Wrapping just right to DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware. The story of Christmas deals will be the subject of the broadcast next week at the same time when DuPont again zents the cavalcade of America. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.