Well, welcome everybody. Thank you for joining the session. The title is IoT Device Regulation Compliance in Industrial Environments Complicated title, and I'm going to break it down a little bit for you from a personal experience So for four years, I've worked in two startups First one for two and a half years the second one for one and a half years later one closed unfortunately down Within this time I was involved in shipping three products one was the barcode scanner That is attached to a glove and another one is a logistics tracking solution where the glove application consists of two devices, and we also had two different SOPs sort of productions So we went through this process. I went first process three times and And obviously for for clarification we had we were a European based companies at the time and we had customers in Europe So the agenda for this is there's three columns. There's the norms. So Where does it come from? What effects which product and I'm going to a little bit into a detail or what? What comes from it? So what I have to be aware of as a To how how these norms function and what they are The third at second column is the project. So how is this going to affect me in the project along the line? Or should I know in advance? What's happening along the way and? Third column is the customer because the customer is always involved whether it's in industry So be to be or be to see product customers always there and it's interfering. So What's happening on there? By the way, if you have any questions in between just just raise your hand and I can answer it also So what regulations apply in Europe? We have what's called CE? I'm not gonna attempt the the French spelling here, but what that is it's actually an It's not what it actually stands for CE is not defined But the confirmation at the compliance in Europe with certain regulations is what is understand understood And what this defines is certain product categories in the European economic area So every product you're gonna sell in Europe is gonna have to comply with these regulations If you're in a company out of the outside of the European Union, and you want to sell inside of Europe you're gonna have to comply either way either your your your representative in Europe or Your importer like if you're gonna import products you want to have to make sure these devices comply with the CE One of those is electromagnetic compatibility short EMC What this makes sure is it? It shows that the device is not gonna destroy itself Due to electromagnetic interference, you're gonna probably see that during development But most importantly the EMC testing makes sure that it doesn't interfere with other devices from probably the same category or even other categories of devices So for example your phone Hopefully works if there's also a radio in the room, right? product safety Which of course involves for example that the device should not burn down something like that But also most commonly human safety so that no humans are harmed in the process. There's regulations for that LVD stands for low voltage devices. By the way, this is what I mostly worked on and then there's the radio equipment directive RED the shorthand is I think registered ID is 2014 53 EU. I think this is when When it was finished and it is in effect. I'm not sure when it was in effect 2017 2018, but it is in effect now The radio equipment directive attempts to regulate the use of radio spectrum all across Europe all across across all devices So if you have a radio device, you're probably gonna need to read the RED and accordingly the according standards So for example a Wi-Fi device will have to comply with these four norms the electrical safety the human safety electromagnetic compatibility and the radio standard for example Like and each of these regulations is maybe a hundred hundreds or maybe a couple thousands of pages Right and the thing is you're not gonna have to comply with all of these because these regulations are for certain categories And even they only only some of them will apply to your certain use case Right. So for example, you're not gonna have to comply with Devices or with regulations in the 5 gigahertz band when you have 2.4 gigahertz or sub gigahertz device another norm that's there is called IP it is Regulating the intrusion of liquids and solids into a case of a device This is to my best knowledge not covered by the CE but you probably want to want to have that because Either your devices are working in the outside or even the inside In the industry you sometimes have gashes or or dusty environments Or you have even an underwater sensor or something like that. So you want to make sure your device is actually safe of intrusion of liquids and solids These testings are usually done in pressure chambers. For example liquid tanks water water hoses and it's really that right The IP declaration the IP 5 4 or 6 7 what you see here is a number It's actually the first number defines the the solid the solid category So the the level of solid intrusion and the second number is defining the level of liquid intrusion And the higher the number the smaller the particle or the higher the pressure before water Goes into the device Another one is the IK where I think K stands for kinetic which explains its you're testing for impact onto the device There's ten categories IK 101 to IK 10 and Basically what it means is The higher the number the more energy you're gonna hit your device right so for example if you have a sensor In an environment where there's forklifts around and there's Serious consideration that these forklifts might drive into your sensors Then you probably want to have to test the IK regulation and and and think about okay How hard is this forklift maybe gonna hit my device and you want to test for it to make sure? To to to be able to explain to your customer. Yes, my device is not gonna break in your environment another one Rareer, but also there is x explosive Regulation so for example devices in your flammable material as I said in chemical industries for example you want to have to comply with that Why is that well your device is a possible a factor of risk in these environments and you have to make sure that it is not that the These these companies usually want to make sure that your devices able to sustain very high temperatures or maybe even an example for sensors is that Sensors have to be filled with some materials so that there's actually no air inside the casing so in case someone explodes around it It doesn't get it. It doesn't make it worse for example, there's a battery device and a lithium battery starts fire and this fire because it's such a high degree it's gonna Inflame much more worse things in the in the warehouse So what do you want to have to do there? With these norms well your obligation is to test for it and to develop for it Right, so you have to comply as a manufacturer as a developer with these norms There's no Institute or something that does that for you and then says yes, this guy is Compliant with it. You have to do it So it's your obligation to actually declare and label your devices accordingly like there's no institution that does it for you So you're gonna have to name the manufacturer the device name electrical information serial number Disposal and environmental information on the case readable It has to be readable. It's it's not it's it's not allowed for example to have a small barcode on there And all the information is encoded in there. No, it has to be a readable a readable label Funny thing is they've actually know it's it's not defined Which font you're gonna have to use or how the contrast of the colors have to be for of the of the label but there has to be one so basically the common sense applies and If you're if you're testing Bureau says yeah, okay It's this label is not enough. You have to do better or a regulation Okay Which brings me to another point if you build a product and you're gonna buy other things to To build it basically you want to when I get some components, for example, it starts with by these very simple things like A power outlet for example, right or just a case basically And if you buy that in outside of Europe And even inside of Europe you have to make sure you have to make sure that it is in compliance with CE You have to get the documents from the manufacturer of the devices you buy Before you buy your own before you sell your own product further in Europe that this leads To to a lot more tasks that you that that we for example didn't anticipate in the beginning Okay, you're gonna buy all these things, but you actually need these documents if you're gonna say you are CE Compliant you need these documents from your suppliers And obviously you need to retain all these documents If I'm not mistaken at least for ten years and after ten years the when the product goes off market to actually Because if there's an incident you have to answer for it and show that you actually did the testing Okay, let me let me add another point here Don't know we continue so the project obviously it affects the roadmap, right and See testing is it's not a simple thing and what we did for example, we had always two phases of Testing one was pre-testing pre-compliance so to speak and actual compliance testing The difference is that initially we did some very important tests tests that may fail especially tests that may involve changes in hardware especially in hardware or in software even in lower layers in the software in embedded devices and So we had these the first deadline basically and then there's a second deadline and the first testing is obviously very short and it costs less and the actual compliance testing with your tests that you didn't But you didn't have your full test protocol It's obviously gonna take much longer couple of weeks And it's much more expensive and probably needs more preparation Yeah, because late hardware changes are problematic Everyone knows that because we're talking about the devices here and we have basically a development cycle and these cycles can take Ideally a couple of weeks, but more likely multiple months if not a year So you better be aware that you have to Certify when use yourself do changes to there and and you have to do it into you should do it in two stages Because if you fail the compliance testing you have to do it all over again And still pay which brings me to the cost So these costs are not not very Very cheap especially as a startup. It's actually a considerable amount of money. You have to take Into your hands there. It's at least five digits 10 to 20,000 per device very simple devices to be fair Because each one of these tests which usually involves measurement equipment someone being there and actually a laboratory usually costs two to three thousand euro it varies obviously, but these are not Affordable tests So obviously you don't want to do it all over again During some of these tests your devices are actually destroyed Remember the IK test the kinetic tests of impact into your device these devices are gone You want to destroy them to see the limit of the case, right?  And obviously you don't want to buy your own test equipment if you say I'm gonna do it all of my own if it's that complicated No, you don't because these some of these devices cost in the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars And rarely especially as a startup you can afford that manpower So initially I in my first project we severely underestimated the manpower that is necessary for compliance testing especially preparation in the second product we did it a lot better and What we did was we have to write manuals for the test lab because these guys have to use your device, right? Very simple also, I mean it has to be understandable It's like you write a manual right and you want the guy to to be able to understand how this device is supposed to work So and just as that the guys in the labs what I have to do that Writing your test code and documentation is some of these tests will probably not be the same that you already have in your unit tests or end-of-line testing So you probably have to be you're gonna have to write a separate test code and separate documentation for that I Have one of my engineers we were five people in the in the second company one of my engineers worked At least two months solely on the preparation of the software and the manuals And this was a simple product Of course, you have to build and test produce the test hardware, right? So if you did don't have prototypes yet, you're gonna have to build them Either by hand or if you have an embedded device you're gonna have to have a small test batch Also in the test lab you probably want to be there to answer questions at least one of two one or two days because This just especially if your manuals are not that great, you're gonna have to send someone there and this is Yeah What one two days maybe a week? unlikely, but Just to answer some questions and introduce everyone to the to the tools and obviously the coordination because These labs are gonna have their own test routines. They're they're gonna they they have their yeah, their routines and You want to talk to them how they want to see the information coming out of the device? What do they want? What information do they need? What's what's common for them? And this brings me to the tech So maybe you need some accessible debug I also didn't think of in the first place Because you need some information out of your device Maybe you need to adapt your software architecture even because Your device is usually in low power and not used to continually output certain certain debug information You're gonna have to have mode switches physical mode switches For example job it made things very easy for us for example because with these physical mode switches connect to GPI I also on the hardware we were able to just switch operating modes of the radio for example And that made things much easier for us in testing And this basically is external control tooling The mode switches on the other hand or the other control tools are one thing the other one is the visualization In in testing you usually have your test routines and your test requirements and the acceptance criteria and These acceptance criteria are basically basically that visualizes red or green So what you have to do is actually project or implement all these acceptance criteria into your software Whether it is the external control tooling or your embedded software on its own because you're not gonna have that in your application outputting at what Power you're currently transmitting for example It's not there in the debug output initially Or your order the data at all like for example just all putting the the transmit receive data on some some debug console Yeah, what's just not there which brings me To the customer The customer This is actually very important and we didn't see that in the beginning. He may require additional compliance For example for internal frequency band regulation Which completely threw us off the table like like Off the feet. It's like, okay. We have this these Standards these requirements in the compliance standards, but here we have a customer actually has their own Regulation unit actually inside the company. It was a fairly large customer to be fair, but still So they didn't want to let us ship or roll out our product before we didn't comply with their own standards And they actually had their own testing offices on site Yeah, we were quite surprised by that Specific example was that He wanted us to only transmit on one channel It was a sub gigahertz in a sub gigahertz band. So what you usually do there is frequency hopping Because if you if you transmit a certain amount of data You want to switch the channels because one channel is heavily restricted in duty cycling So in actual transmit time there so you cannot send a lot of a lot of data on these channels usually So what that means is you have to change your module drive and driver implementation, right? And this is very low level stuff. You don't want to fill around there Especially not in the at the end of your development cycle when you don't want to change these types of things So about problem leads that to it means reduced to transmit time with one channel We can can only transmit so much so much data Because in the regulation it says you can only transmit point one percent of an hour or something like that Which leads to a redevelopment of the actual implementation and retesting of disease certification Or if you want to roll out also to our customers with this feature if not You can say okay, we developed this feature for you You do the testing and that's it but in general it means another testing cycle because before you can roll out To this customer and since it's slowly the changes is probably not gonna be a lot of fun and Yeah, in general not probably gonna Change your perspective on the roadmap a little bit The next example is integration For example, the question was can we have Wi-Fi system or API access? It's nothing unusual especially in IOT or in sensor data that you want to somehow process this data So this data has to be actually collected somewhere So why not use the infrastructure at the customer? He says yeah in six months Well in six months we probably bankrupt as a startup And we don't have time to wait for that because then we're gonna have another integration project or another another customer project too bad or What we heard the customer has another device on the shelf for testing and we said oh, yeah How did it go with that device? We said yeah, it's on the shelf for six months waiting for testing Well, we don't want to We also don't want to wait for six months. We want to test now So what this means is We didn't actually have to To be able to comply with certain standards or to comply with the actual Regulations or even the customer's own regulations You have to get there You have to know what the what the customer wants and what the customer's timeline is and this was actual kind of pioneering work at the time because The customers were not used to these short to these short development cycles and that we need it as a startup And especially in hardware. It's very difficult to have a lot of iterations because you have this very little money for a Very expensive hardware product and you don't you want to want to earn money with it as soon as possible And not wait a year until you get Wi-Fi access or half a year I mean they have they have their provisioning processes for example for for certificates or for Wi-Fi tokens API access Sometimes even one customer Said yeah, you want to you want to collect this data this data should go to the cloud Well, no this data doesn't leave the kind of the site But with IOT it says internet of things you want to somehow process this data somewhere You know don't want to get dependent on as one customer because this ends in just Tailoring your product completely to the customer right in a to one customer assuming you have multiple customers For example and a bigger market Can we use Bluetooth? 2.4 gigahertz Now it's frequencies overlap with Wi-Fi I obviously it was also not very fun because they also Regulated their own Wi-Fi bands They separated the Wi-Fi for for separate for different devices for different Areas across the across the manufacturing side and it was completely regulated just as the single band in a sub gigahertz It was to me. It was crazy So it was all there were all these standards and these things I could see that were in the open But once you talk to the customer that suddenly there's There's these multiple additional requirements. We have to fulfill that come on top of this whole compliance topic human factor The work council once blocked our product because they didn't want us to to track their employees What I want to say was this is If you want to want to build a product and you want to be compliant with certain standards, it's not only about Technical aspect, but it's all in this case. Let's say about human human rights This was an actual problem and they delayed the project for I think another one or two months The innovation department blocks your product because we were too innovative and that idea didn't come from them Actually happened worker blocks your product Because we have an industry product. We're usually talking to sales representatives to managers to team leads But who's actually using our product Maybe they didn't even see our product and they say no, it's it doesn't doesn't work It's annoying and he just doesn't use it, right because generally it's maybe it can be his choice to use it or not So what I want to say with this is to get everyone on board involved as many key roles as possible It's not enough to just talk to the sales representative, especially if it goes In the direction of regulation whether it be technical or as we saw about regulation within the company Do not rely on one person to know everything For the Wi-Fi guy for example, there's a separate department and until you know the name of the sky There may pass one or two weeks until you get actual information on why it complains about interference between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for example That takes time Which brings me to my conclusion The technical aspects is only one of many There is the self declaration so you cannot rely on someone else to do the testing for you and then say you are compliant I mean, of course, you can externalize the the testing but still you have to declare you are see compliant The costs and time of product availability is heavily affected along on everywhere. So basically It's widening a bit the picture here to not only let's not only focus on see compliance, but actually It goes to the customer it widens the the view a bit to the product view the customers industry testing and The product designers most definitely affected by compliance for example if the X testing for example You cannot use an empty case if there's a battery inside you want to have to fill it Quality assurance is more important than ever especially as a startup. You will focus more on the important things that bring money but Compliance with regulations is exactly the opposite, right? You have to be very accurate with everything you have to test everything Because eventually you are liable Is what it means So this brings quality assurance to the table very early in in the product cycle Which basically means compliance testing is a separate project, right in the first setup as I said we didn't have all these points in mind, but and and Everything on the way they are surprised us the customer the regulations themselves The implementation into the software there It is an actual separate project in the second company. We managed to to plan for that in advance And we we were able to still Have a product within one year that is for you see you certified and Yeah, this is my conclusion. So thank you for your attention. Are there any questions? Yes I would have a question because I'm In a way a few steps behind you so in a startup trying to develop some products and I'm curious about this CE compliance. I know there are laboratories which can run all the tests for you, but this is in the range of five digits very expensive I Also found in some sources That this is a kind of testing that the manufacturer can do by himself. Is this the case? Can it be managed? What's your experience here? Well? if you want to test your Product on your own you will have to afford all the testing equipment. So you still will need to Get information about what regulations comply we for example got a lot of that information from testing bureaus from offices that helped us with that and Then it depends if you have a radio device, I don't think you can afford the test equipment Yeah, I have a radio device. It happens to be a blizzard low energy, but it's built around the certified module So I would assume this is propagated to the complete system because I'm not modifying anything there I'm just putting some extra software. Yeah, so if you we also had the case where We question also should we use a pre-certified module and what I heard at least what we decided to still test on our own because Apparently it is not enough to to buy a pre-certified module to be able to Declare it, especially if it's that had heavily integrated into the hardware. So if you buy for example, and A module that is sorted on to the hardware and you want to want to say your devices. So this Devices compliant You we still did all the radio testing with the lab even though we knew we are likely not gonna exceed the limits with Bluetooth I know of a different case with Bluetooth there. You can get a lot of the regulation ticked off by using Pre-certified modules and proper software stacks for example in Zephyr. For example, there is a There is a Bluetooth stack in there, and I think one of the chip vendors Was able to pre-certify their software stack for that. So and and in this case, I heard it worked So for for them compliance, especially also saying their product is a Bluetooth product got very affordable but Either way, you're gonna have to talk to the to the to the testing labs. At least that's what we did and Be able to afford to test equipment, which is in most cases in radio testing not that I don't want to go that path Another question would be When you develop a product you really start with the prototypes you try to a small batch of Visibility see how it's working collect learnings and feedback from the customer and then you go for the final product. I My assumption would be that for the feasibility for prototyping It's okay to go without any testing any compliance But of course you have to consider this for the final product Is this the case or there are also limits or Points where I should pay attention to that. Did I get that correct? So what you're what you're asking was the Whether for testing you already need to be fully compliant. Yeah Yeah, that depends on a customer as I said the with CE That never was a problem But especially with the in-house compliance or in-house regulations with the frequency bands that was a big problem In your case, that's so David They did not let us use our product in there before we were before we went through their testing but eventually it was such a big project that Yeah, it was a separate feature We decided only to ship to this customer and then we had enough money and time to to actually build that so that was an actual Side project, okay Did I answer your question? Sure. Thank you. Thank you So what happens if you're if you are not see compliance Can you talk about the liability side of things if you do take a product to market? Which is if you're something that you overlook or if you're not even see approved What what what happened? Do you know about the liability? What are what are the consequences? What what is the worst case? So the worst case I think is if If a site burns down and hundreds of people die And you didn't and you didn't test for it I mean this this testing is not only to be compliant with regulations that some people thought of because they thought it's Important but it's act and it's this testing is actually important, especially in the human safety part where there's actual Where there's actual situations or tests That show your device is not harmful for the environment, right? So the the And what happens if you're not see compliant? Well, that's not sure if someone can sue you I think it's still possible to sell the product but I'm not sure if some some institution from the EU is gonna call you or something I don't know about that, but I'm seeing it more from the from the personal responsibility perspective Where you actually want to make sure your product doesn't harm anyone and it doesn't I mean this is basically all that's for the the tests are very in my opinion very important, especially those regarding human safety and you want to want to do them regardless of of your opinion or whether whether or Your goal whether to be complete C compliant or not But still as far as I know and the regulation says is that all products have to be Compliant with these standards and sooner or later someone is probably gonna ask you did to do the testing Thank you Okay, when I lately Looked for the actual norms. I have to comply to or my product has to comply to there's a Large zoo of norms you can normally choose from e.g. For for the emcee part Well, you have to think about what is for product and maybe there are even multiple norms that fits that When I researched that I found companies that sell you a study you to Classify your products to to the norms. Do you have any experience with that? Did I get the question right is? Where to actually get all the information which product category I'm in and which norms apply to myself Yeah, that's the one part and the other part is Do you have any experience with external companies doing this? Research for you. Ah, yeah, basically the the answer is it was a mix On the one hand, we read the regulations ourselves. That was a lot of work and on the other hand we talked to Offices testing offices testing labs You're probably also gonna get different offers from different labs You're gonna what happens is usually with the first time you talk to them you explain to them What your product is and they are already gonna gonna say, okay? This is probably what you want to test or not. I mean still it's your obligation to tell them what to test But most of that information was We gathered was from these talks also to other sister companies for example or two or two two companies having similar Products and we just asked them which norms that you comply with and what what did you actually test and maybe where? So that this this was the the combination. I'm not aware of a very Specific this text that describes a list of the norms first for certain for certain products Yeah, that that sounds a lot like that what we do too. So yeah, it's good to know that reading and talking Yeah, definitely Thank you Another question Have you done any UL testing? as Sort of for the taking a product that's been see tested and then apply it to the US market With underwriters labs doing the similar There are Did I get the question right is what was the question it's a question What applies from see to the US markets or the FCC? Yeah taking an existing product that you already have see yeah, that's From a development and preparation point of view, it's Probably a lot of things overlap from the functionality. That's necessary in the hardware and software But from a testing perspective, I am not aware That there you can use The the actual test results. I think you There's even for FCC. For example, there's some countries that only allow testing in their country So I as far as I'm aware they do all the testing on themselves in an FCC okay, so It's I don't think there's a general answer for for that because Some some countries want to want to do it themselves and on some maybe they allow for the day They acknowledge your CE and then these and these tests are okay All from from I so I worked more I worked on the on the CE testing and what they What they always said is they they Encourage us to test everything. So and I would assume that Something I think applies to the FCC or if you have an FCC product and imported to the CE market I Think it can get very complicated in in arguing For example a technical difference arguing that your product is compliant with the other other norm Especially if it's not harmonized. I mean for example the the RAD The radio current directive is Attempts to harmonize the European market, but as far as I know, there's also not yet there so it's There for example parts missing for 5 gigahertz. So even there it this is harmonizing the European market has already a challenge currently and I Would not I would not say that that I The next step would be okay. It's probably not harmonized across the world Yeah, it gets more interesting when you have like Brazil and Japan and yeah Everyone has their own little Yes, yes, so so I briefly worked on a project in the railway industry And it's the same they went through certifications in every single of the countries. There's no not Nothing that you can really reuse Especially in the in the compliance declaration in these documents When you when you say okay, you are so you compliant you want to have this This report the test report that says that that has you all the test results And you don't want to go into your FCC test results or in your other standard test results to show okay This is why we are compliant in Europe. I don't I don't think this is a good strategy from a from a planning point of view either Any more questions? Please What was the industry if you have worked for projects in sub one gigahertz Frequency sub one gigahertz. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So the the glove project We were in the ISM band eight six eight megahertz And this is what the example was basically with the hopping where the customer wanted us to only use one one channel And this was in the ISM band in a sub gigahertz You develop the frequency hoping algorithm. No, we actually that was that was actually the the pain of wallet We bought pre certified or they declared it's certified in the C market and We had it led to a To a to a lot of collaboration between us and the radio manufacturer to actually get this feature done and yeah It was a lot of work That's why I may be maybe I'm biased because of that and saying okay There's a lot of work and there's a lot of unknowns especially with these customer specific regulations But I mean the the ISM band in itself is Is unlicensed so everyone one can use it so that's probably why they are very pretty prohibitive there too As in the 2.4 gigahertz example Thank you. Thank you Any more questions, but I thank you for joining a session and enjoy the conference. Thank you so much


larger facility with more high-tech equipment will help the CPSC be more efficient in productive and testing products, products that could pose a danger to consumers. I'd like to welcome you to the Outdoor Power Sports Testing Laboratory. This laboratory is equipped with data acquisition equipment as well as this tilt table built into the floor where we perform the parking brake test that is part of the standard. As you can see the vehicle on the left continues to move. The standard says that the vehicle should be able to maintain its position on this slope facing both downhill forwards and backwards for five minutes without failing and clearly the one on left has not passed that test. This is a cyclic testing lab. What we do here is we simulate the lifetime of use for cribs for example by running them through our crib shaker test, crib impactor test, side rail impact test and then our slat test and combine these simulate a lifetime of use by a typical child out in the field. This is the Durable Children's product testing area. We have the toy lab also over here and what I'm going to be showing you guys today is the Walker stair test. What we're looking for are skid pads on the underside of the baby walker. Right now there's only casters on it. There should be rubber pads here so that when it falls over the stairs it stops short and doesn't tumble. The velocity of the eight pound weight falling will create a set speed that we know a child can achieve. So obviously if it had the skid pads on it it would have stopped short and it wouldn't have gone over the edge. This is the impact testing area and what we're looking for here are any small parts or sharp edges that break off during the impacting. Depending on how old the child is depends on how high will drop it from. Pretty simple test but we're going to take it down so that it breaks one of the laser beams but not both. That would be too far. They'll be outside the regulation and again if we get any small parts or sharp edges out of that that's a failure. You are in the the bike helmet impact lab and here we test helmets. This particular test raises up the helmet so that it reaches an impact velocity of approximately 11 to 14 miles an hour and that is roughly comparable to a lot of bicycle helmet impacts and injuries. This is an important test because it ensures that bike helmets comply with the federal regulations and in this particular example like I've gotten my hand on the outside looks very very similar to anything else that you would see in the marketplace and yet it broke. So that's why we test. This is the CPSC flammability laboratory. We have the capability of evaluating mattresses mattress pads and children's sleepwear to the federal regulations. In this new lab space we have a special burn room that is capable of handling larger scale fires. The room is instrumented with a special hood that can measure the heat release from the fire below. This is an example of the children's sleepwear test. The sample is hung in the test cabinet. Small flame is held for three seconds to the bottom edge. It's a vertical ignition once the specimen is ignited it's allowed to burn until completion. As you can see from this example large flames burning vigorously it would not give a child the opportunity to react very quickly and therefore this sample fails to test. We're here in the chemistry lab of the CPSC and we test children's products for lead in paint and plastics. We're testing using X-ray fluorescence and that's something we do with the same instruments at our ports of entry. We also have another special kind of XRF called an HD XRF which we can use to measure lead in paint down to 0.009% which is the regulatory limit. One of the other things we do in the chemistry lab is test for phthalates. We have a brand new instrument called the direct analysis in real-time mass spectrometer. It's a real advantage for testing for phthalates. Traditional testing requires a lot of sample preparation. We cut the sample up, dissolve it in some harsh organic solvents. We've run instruments that are run time can be anywhere from 20 minutes to half hour but this direct analysis instrument allows us to put the sample in without any sample preparation. We can just take a quick glass tube rub it on top of the sample to get some of the material off and put it into the instrument. Hot gas runs over the sample and brings it into the instrument and the instrument actually measures the mass of the different molecules that enter.  The CPSC stands for safety and this state of the art facility is a testament to our renewed commitment in keeping families safe.


Okay, we've been doing a couple of videos here regarding tabs, searching for them, dividing lines up by them. Here we're going to replace tabs, and there's going to be two techniques for doing that. First off, if I cat out a file, file 2.txt. You can see I have a file here, and a couple of lines contain some tabs. And we can now take that, cat it out, and pipe it into tr, so we're taking the output, basically this, and we're putting it into a new command called tr, and we're going to say with some single quotes here, backslash t, and we'll replace it with a pipe symbol. So tr is good for replacing individual characters, so we're replacing tab with the pipe symbol. If I hit enter here, you can see we no longer have tabs. Where there were tabs, we now have the pipe symbol. And of course, you can do that with other characters. I can do a dash if I want. So here it is, replacing it all the tabs with dashes. We can do the same thing with sed, sed, we can do here sed substitute, and we're going to say backslash t again, using a regular expression. And gee, so this might look a little confusing if you've never used sed substitution before. Basically, let me clean this up, okay. So we're saying use the command sed, and then we're going to substitute whatever is between these two forward slashes with whatever is between the first and second forward slashes with whatever is between the second and third. And then the gee is saying do that all throughout the file, all instances, where if you didn't do that, we'd just do it to the first instance and stop. So what we're going to say is backslash tab, that's a regular expression saying find all tabs and replace it, we'll say the pipe character again here. And then we have to give it the file name, we'll say file 2.txt. And there you go, we've got the tabs replaced with pipe symbols. Nice thing about sed over tr is that we can actually replace it with more than one character. So I can say dash, dash, dash, dash, and replace all the tabs with four or five dashes there. I can replace it with a word, I can say fred, it'll replace all tabs with freds, but you'll notice that all these instances have not modified the file at all. If I cat out file 2.txt, it still has the tabs. So we're just changing the output at this point. If we wanted to change the file itself and be careful doing this because you don't want to mess up your original file, obviously we can pipe it or redirect it into a new file if we wanted, and then cat out the new file. Our original file still exists, unmodified, but if we wanted to change the original file and change it in place without creating a new file, we can just add the dash i to sed. So we're saying sed, we're saying look at this file, so sed, look at this file, find all tabs and substitute them with this pipe symbol and the dash i in place, enter, and now I can cat out my file 2.txt, and you can see we modified the original file. So that's using sed and tr to replace tabs with either other characters or other strings. So I hope you find this useful, I've known a lot with tabs in recent videos, and I hope that you have a great day. Please visit my website, that's filmsbychrist.com, chris at the K, there's a link in the description, there you can easily search through all my videos and playlists, or just check out my YouTube channel, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on any videos, and I hope that you have a great day.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we discuss the following question that says, show graphically that the given system of equations has infinitely many solutions. x-2y equal to 5 and 3x-6y equal to 15. Now, we are given a system of equations and we need to show that this system of equations has infinitely many solutions. Let's see what is the condition for which the given system of equations has infinitely many solutions. For this, first consider a system of equations a1x plus b1y is equal to c1. Let this be equation 1. a2x plus b2y is equal to c2. Let this be equation 2. We consider a line l1 which represents the graph of equation 1 and line l2 represents the graph of equation 2. Now, if the lines l1 and l2 are coincident then we say the system has infinitely many solutions or you can say the system is consistent. This is the condition for the system to be consistent or to have infinitely many solutions. This is the key idea for this question. Now, we proceed with the solution. The given system of equations is x-2y equal to 5. Let this be equation 1. 3x-6y is equal to 15. Let this be equation 2. Now, we will draw the graph of both these equations. First consider the equation x-2y equal to 5. Now, we will find two points on the line which represents this equation. When we take x equal to 1 in this equation, we get 1-2y equal to 5. That is, minus 2y is equal to 5 minus 1 equal to 4. So, y is equal to 4 upon minus 2 which is equal to minus 2. So, for x equal to 1, we get y equal to minus 2. Now, when we take x equal to 5. So, we have 5 minus 2y equal to 5 which means minus 2y equal to 0 or we get y is equal to 0. So, when we take x equal to 5 in this equation, we get the value of y as 0. So, for the equation 1, we have got two points. Say a point a with coordinates 1-2 and a point b with coordinates 5-0. These two points lie on the line x-2y equal to 5. Let's plot these two points on the graph. First, we take the point a with coordinates 1-2. Now, here the x-coordinate is 1 and the y-coordinate is minus 2. So, from this point, we move two steps downwards along the y-axis since the y-coordinate is minus 2. So, this point is the point a with coordinates 1-2. The other point is b with coordinates 5-0. So, the x-coordinate is 5 and the y-coordinate is 0. So, this point would represent the point b with coordinates 5-0. Now, we join the points a and b. So, we have got this line a b which represents the equation x-2y equal to 5. Now, let's consider the other equation that is 3x-6y equal to 15. Now, we draw the graph for this equation. Now, we will put some values for x in the given equation and find the corresponding values of y. Like for x equal to 1, we get 3 into 1 minus 6y equal to 15. That is minus 6y is equal to 12 and from here we get y is equal to minus 2. And when we put x equal to 5 in the given equation, we get 3 into 5 minus 6y is equal to 15 which gives us minus 6y is equal to 0 that is y is equal to 0. So, for x equal to 5, the corresponding value of y thus obtained is 0. So, now we get 2 points say point c with coordinates 1-2 and a point d with coordinates 5-0 and these 2 points lie on the line 3x-6y is equal to 15. Now, we plot these 2 points c and d of the graph. First, consider the point c with coordinates 1-2. x-coordinate is 1, y-coordinate is minus 2. So, this point will represent the point c with coordinates 1-2. Then we have the point d with coordinates 5-0, x-coordinate is 5 and the y-coordinate is 0. So, this point represents the point d with coordinates 5-0. So, this line that is the line joining the point c and d which is the same as the line joining the point c and d represents the equation 3x minus 6y equal to 15. Thus, we have that cd represents the equation 3x minus 6y equal to 15. Now, from the graph as you can see that av and cdr coincident lines av and cd are coincident and we know that if lines L1, L2 represents the equations of a given system of linear equations and the 2 lines are coincident, then we say that the given system is consistent or it has infinitely many solutions. Now, as the lines av and cd representing the equations of the given system of linear equations are coincident that we say the given system of linear equations has infinitely many solutions. So, with this we complete the session. Hope you have understood the solution for this question.


You may not be aware of this, but our visual world lies somewhere between a visual illusion and reality. We actually extract nuggets of information from our environment and fill in the rest of the environment by using predictions and expectations of what we expect to see. Unconsciously, we try to predict what we will next encounter in the environment in order to efficiently process incoming information. But sometimes predictions can go wrong. For example, one time I was approaching a business with pink and purple lights. I expected this business to be a bar or a dance club. To my surprise, it happened to be a T-Mobile store. But most of the time, we are successful in our predictions, and therefore, our visual experience comes from not just a veritable analysis of light falling on our eyes, but rather an intermingle of our lifetime of experience and our perceptual input that gives rise to our visual experience. So what does it mean to see? What does it mean to understand our visual world? It means going well beyond just looking at a scene. For example, because this is a beach scene, we have certain expectations and stereotypical associations of objects that we expect to see and certain actions and behaviors. Therefore, to see is not trivial. Computers are still bad at this problem. Although there has been amazing progress over the last few years, computers would still have a hard time telling you why a 40-foot rubber duck in a river is unusual. I want to understand how we are so good at this problem. And by we, I mean our brains, of course, who do all the hard work for us. And the place to look for answers is a network of brain regions that process the visual environment. These areas process stimuli such as scenes like a beach, more than other stimuli such as faces and nonsense images. And moreover, these areas don't process scenes all equally. The differences in brain response between scene stimuli can reveal meaningful clues about how the brain represents information about a scene. And it can help reveal the code the brain uses in order to understand our visual world. For example, a key question is, how does the brain break apart a scene? What are those visual nuggets that help us predict what else is going on in the scene? Just like a sentence can be broken down into words, how can a scene be broken down into meaningful units? If we could answer this question, we might have a better idea of how the brain represents scenes. But unfortunately, our brains don't tell us what they're doing. And we have terrible self-reflection about how to explain our brain processing. So therefore, we can't just sit in the chair and decide what are the most important aspects of a scene. How does the brain understand what are the critical parts of a scene? By having a lifetime of experience analyzing scenes.  So how can we replicate this analysis power? This is where computer vision and machine learning tools come in. They can analyze big data very well and can approximate the type of processing that the brain may be doing in understanding scenes. By funneling huge amounts of data, computers can define important aspects of scenes and therefore reveal the building blocks the brain may be extracting from the environment in order to understand the full visual experience. Therefore, we asked whether computers could help us understand brain function better than we could understand brain function with our own self-awareness. So we compared computers analysis to scenes, to brains analysis to scenes, to our own self-reflective analysis of scenes. And it turned out that computers did really well in explaining our brains analysis of scenes, whereas self-reflection did not. Finding the similarity between brains and computers is a huge step forward in understanding how the brain represents scenes. Because not only does it add computers analyze scenes in a similar way, but it can tell us how it does it. It can tell us the building blocks of this scene that the brain may be using to extract from the environment to give us our full visual experience. And the more we can reveal about the information that we process to give our full visual experience, the more we can look at how the human experience can shape our perceptual world. This, in turn, can guide engineering of computer systems to help us become better at integrating technology in our everyday life. Therefore, there is a bidirectional, intimate relationship between computational technology, cognitive neuroscience, and everyday life. The more that we can help one another, the more that we can use technology efficiently and seamlessly in our everyday life. So the question that I would like to leave you with is, what will you do with computers that can see and understand? Thank you.


It makes a big difference how we end this war, and it makes a big difference to tell the American people the truth about what our options are in ending this war. If tomorrow the order goes out, I'm President of the United States, I issue an order. End the war today, begin to withdraw all American troops. It will take a year to get the American troops out. Do you hear me now? That's the truth. It will take a year to get them physically out. Now if you leave all the equipment behind, you might be able to do it in seven months. And you leave those billions of dollars of weapons behind, I promise they're going to be used against your grandchild and mine someday.


The first item of business this afternoon is portfolio questions on finance, constitution and economy. Question number one. Richard Lyle To ask the Scottish Government how its ministers helped to promote small businesses, but small businesses Saturday and what position it is on supporting such events in the future. Cabinet Secretary John Swinney The Scottish Government recognises the vital role that small businesses play in our economy and we are committed to helping them to thrive. My ministers, such as Small Business Saturday, helped to raise the profile of small businesses. My ministerial colleagues and I supported the campaign, working with the Federation of Small Businesses. We visited a wide variety of small local businesses on the day and made good use of social media to encourage communities to do the same. We want to ensure that people continue to support their local small businesses throughout the year. Richard Lyle Can I refer members to my registered renters? I am the convener of the cross-party group for showmen. What further help can the minister give to small businesses who may not have fixed premises and may not receive help through the small business bonus, in particular showmen who face reduced income due to the present regulations in the 1982 Licence and Scotland Act, especially as they celebrate their 125th year? Richard Lyle There are a number of ways in which people who do not occupy continuous business premises are provided with opportunities to contribute to local economies. I can think of some of the temporary markets that exist around them at this time of year in different communities. There is one in the city that I represent, the city of Perth. All those opportunities are facilitated by local authorities to enable businesses of this type to participate. What is important is to recognise that throughout the year, the small business community provides a valuable contribution to the strength and the confidence of the local economy. As a consequence, it was a pleasure to support small business Saturday, but of more importance is the on-going support that the Government offers through the small business bonus scheme, which now supports 92,000 businesses around the country. It is a particularly good example of how the Government day in, day out can provide assistance to the small business community of Scotland. Jenny Marra To ask the Scottish Government what planning it is doing to keep the jobs and opportunities of decommissioning the oil and gas industry in Scotland. The Scottish Government has conducted extensive and detailed planning to help to create a decommissioning industry in Scotland to take advantage of a sector that is estimated by all-in-gas UK to be worth a total of £37 billion between now and 2040. That planning work has included establishment of Decorm North Sea, publication of our Scottish Government all-in-gas strategy in 2012, promotion of energy skills with a budget of £6.5 million, career promotion through My World of Work and Other Initiatives, consideration of the essential elements of decommissioning by the Independent Fiscal Commission report in July and publication in October of a detailed report by Scottish Enterprise on decommissioning capacity. Jenny Marra I thank the minister for his response. I am concerned though, Presiding Officer, that much work of decommissioning seems to be going to Norway, to Holland and to the Midlands of England, like Hartlepool, and there doesn't seem to be a substantial amount of decommissioning work being kept in Scotland at the moment. As he said, the industry is worth billions of pounds over the next couple of generations. The oil and gas industry feel that the more needs to be done to keep those jobs in Scotland. Can he step this programme up and identify areas in Scotland where he feels that decommissioning should be taking place? I can do more than that. We were investing in decommissioning, as well as planning, which was what the original question asked. We have invested substantially in decommissioning, and especially in the island of Shetland. Of course, that is being taken forward by the industry, and I myself have had involvement in that with the CNR meeting, the project manager, in respect of the Mercheson field, which is being decommissioned, and a large number of other areas. It is up to the industry to take forward the decommissioning work. We are working extremely closely with Oil and Gas UK and with several operators, with whom I met regularly, most recently, on Monday of this week. I wonder if the minister could just tell us a bit more about what assistance the Scottish Government has provided in terms of improving the decommissioning facilities in Shetland and allowing Shetland to capture this valuable economic opportunity. I have been working over the past three years to ensure that the opportunities at Shetland for decommissioning are pursued. Of course, as the member knows from his campaigning on this particular area in Shetland regularly, Shetland is geographically best placed to be a hub for decommissioning work. That is why I have met on several occasions with Sandra Lawson of the Lewick Port Authority, with Murdo McKever and his colleagues at Peterson SBS, and that is why that work has led and come to a fruition over the past three years, Presiding Officer, to substantial investment of around £1.2 million, levering £20 million of private sector investment in Lewick. We are still waiting for commensurate contributions from the UK Government. Question 3, David Torrance, has been withdrawn for understandable reasons, so I now call question number 4, Mark McDonald. To ask the Scottish Government to what extent small businesses in Aberdeen have benefited from the small business bonus scheme. In Aberdeen City, anestimated 2045 businesses pay zero or reduced rates under the small business bonus scheme and have saved around £25.4 million in business rates taxation through the scheme since its introduction in 2008. On small business Saturday, I visited the Bynum bakery in my constituency. The owner's Allian Fiona rate took over the business in 2008 and have benefited every year from the small business bonus, and they were keen to emphasise the strong support that that is provided for their business. Can the cabinet secretary confirm the Scottish Government's intention that not only in this Parliament but in the next Parliament, if the SNP is re-elected, that the Bynum bakery and other small businesses in Aberdeen will continue to benefit from the small business bonus? It is instructive to judge the choices that members make about the visits that they make on small business Saturday. There we have Mr McDonald visiting a bakery, which maybe is a surprise to some of us given his new svelte figure that he has, but the fact that his first choice was a bakery is instructive indeed. I visited for myself the award-winning florist in Blair Gowrie, something special flowers, which perhaps says something about my softer side for answering parliamentary questions. I can confirm to Mr McDonald that the small business bonus scheme represents significant assistance to small companies around the country. The First Minister confirmed in her address to Parliament in setting out the programme for government on 26 November that the Government will continue the scheme until the end of the Parliament, and, if re-elected in 2016, it will continue for the next parliamentary term as well. Generation report highlights that factors such as capital expenditure, decommissioning and international trade will drive the size and shape of the future workforce. Future jobs growth depends on investment in the UKCS. The autumn statement has done little to encourage investment in the UKCS. Thank you, Lewis MacDonald. Thank you very much. The minister will be well aware that a thousand jobs have gone already in the last few months and that thousands more are on the line. Given the recent report on fuelling the next generation, does he agree that employers in the sector cannot afford to shed staff today and expect to recruit staff tomorrow? Will he encourage the sector to protect jobs in order to maintain continuity, keep confidence high and provide security for the workforce both on and off shore? Yes, that is a fair sensible approach that Lewis MacDonald has highlighted. It is certainly one that I have espoused and sought to deploy in leadership. I spoke to the Opeto business breakfast in November during the national oil and gas skills week. We provide an extra £6.5 million to Establish Energy Skills Scotland. We encourage all companies, small, medium and enormous, to take on young people. A great many of them do, but I think that there is more that can be done and it is essential during these very challenging times that companies do not cut costs by cutting the number of young people that they employ. I certainly subscribe to that principle. Thank you. Question 6. Ken Macintosh was not lodged. I therefore call question number 7. David Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government what assessment is made of the impact on the economy of abolishing air passenger duty for young people. UK Government assessment, certified by the OBR, estimates that the exchequer impact of the policy will cost £40 million in 2014-15, rising to £95 million in 2019-20. However, HMRC analysis concluded that, the measure is not expected to have any significant economic impact. We have urged the UK Government to act on the Smith commission recommendation and devolve APD so that we can reduce the tax to help unlock Scotland's full economic potential, boost international connectivity and tourism. As there is now cross-party agreement on the need to devolve APD to Scotland, it is vital that the UK Government takes early action to implement that. The view is shared by Scotland's main airports, which have written to each of the Westminster party leaders urging quick progress. Does the minister share my view that the child exemption from APD in 2015 and 2016 will provide a reduction in cost to air passengers with children travelling to Scotland? That is obviously good news for Scottish airports, such as in Vanessa in my own region, and, of course, good news for tourism. As the minister has hinted at, it is a taster for the full devolution of APD when the Smith commission proposals are enacted in full. I am delighted to agree with David Stewart, who I know takes an interest in matters of aviation. I am delighted also that this appears to be a measure on which there is cross-party agreement. As the Minister for Tourism, I would be absolutely thrilled and delighted at the prospect of being able to remove one of the substantial barriers and hurdles to attracting more people to be able to come to enjoy the magnificent hospitality that Scotland has to offer and reducing APD and eliminating it eventually would certainly enable that objective to be better achieved. Other than just saying reduce it, what is the Scottish Government's specific policy for day 1 of devolved APD? I did, actually, if Gavin was listening. He does not normally make a mistake if not listening to the answer that he just heard, but I did say eventually eliminated, so I did not just say reduce it. Listen up, Gavin, listen up, but, of course, we envisage that the 50 per cent reduction, which we said was our policy before the referendum, is our policy after the referendum. We do not surely shally in U-turn on our policies like some other parties. I am sorry that Gavin is to spoil the consensus here, because I fully hope that we can get cross-party support from almost all members to reduce by 50 per cent APD as soon as we possibly can. Thank you. Could we use full names in the chamber, please? To ask the Scottish Government what the economic impact in Scotland is of the recent fall and crude oil prices. Minister Fergus Ewing. The extent of that impact will depend on how long the low prices last. There are a range of forecasts suggesting that prices will rebound from current levels in 2015. To minimise the predicted economic impact, it is imperative that the UK Government deliver in full their promised new investment allowance and that it does so by no later than the March 2015 budget. I thank the minister for his answer. In fact, five weeks ago, I asked the First Minister the same question and he told me that recovery was on the horizon since when oil prices have dropped by further $25 a barrel. However, the minister will be aware that, for the economy of Scotland and particularly the north-east, the service industry is vitally important. Is there any action that the minister can take at this stage to encourage confidence in that industry to prevent any attempt to downsize or relocate to other markets from the north-east and ensure that we are in a position to take up where we left off when prices eventually recover? I agree with Alex Johnson that it is important to do everything that we can irrespective of which party we are in to encourage confidence in the excellent oil and gas industry, which is, in many ways, the best in the world. It faces considerable pressures at the moment because of high costs and low oil prices. However, the predictions that many make are that the oil price will recover and, therefore, the horizon may not be that far away. However, I do believe that the most essential element of all—I say this having had meetings in Aberdeen on Monday, and also with trade union representatives here yesterday, representing many decades of experience in working in the north-sea. The essential element is this. Until the tax change that is promised by George Osborne and Danny Alexander a couple of weeks ago is delivered, there will not be further and new investment in the industry because it does not have the detail. Therefore, that is why it is essential to conclude that the promised new measures, especially the new investment allowance, is brought forward in the budget in March. Any later than that, and I think that there would be extremely serious repercussions. The Deputy First Minister announced in March 2013 the launch of the oil and gas analytical bulletin. At that stage, it forecast that the price of oil was to be $113 per barrel. Now it is almost halved at $59 a barrel. Everyone in this chamber recognises the impact on employment and the economy, but we need reliable figures and analysis, and I am sure that that is something that he agrees with. Does he therefore agree with the critique that was made by Professor of Economics Ronald MacDonald today about the importance of oil price estimates? Would the minister agree that it is time to have an inquiry into the validity of these estimates because we need to have confidence in their predictions? He is currently predicting that it would be more than the OBR predicts, and you have always suggested that the OBR is over-optimistic. Will he return thereafter to the chamber with a statement? In that long and somewhat torturous question, I was asked to involve in an academic inquiry of some sort. Frankly, I have not really got time for that. We are too busy working with the oil industry now to help them here and now. That is why we have delivered over 100 additional account management services to 100 SMEs. That is why we have provided over £6 million for energy skills. That is why, unlike the UK Government, we have set up an innovation fund of £10 million. That is why we have increased our SDI staff all over the world and that is why we are most serious of all. What the industry reads right now is details of the budget measures that were promised and from meetings that I have had with operators from discussions that I have had with trade unions and academics in the past few weeks. It is absolutely clear and beyond political debate that what is required for more investment and confidence in the industry is implementation of the vague promises that were delivered in the autumn statement and, most especially, the investment allowance. That investment allowance must be put in place by March in the budget. That is the absolute priority for everyone, not having some rerun of the referendum that Jackie Baillie seems to want. Briefly, please, Neil Findlay. Given his prediction that he was $113 a barrel and that now we see the oil price just now, does he agree with me that he may be a Ewing but he certainly knows JR? Minister, I always have a soft spot for JR. To ask the Scottish Government how the piloting of project bank accounts will impact on small businesses in the construction sector. Minister, Fergus Ewing. Medium-sized businesses based in Scotland form the backbone of our national construction capacity. Project bank accounts should reduce the amount of time it takes for vital cash to reach them and provide confidence for those firms who rely on work from the public sector projects by reducing their exposure to credit and improving their overall cash flow position. Project bank accounts trial projects are on-going and will be evaluated in due course. Thank you, minister, for that answer. Can the minister confirm whether the Scottish Government will continue with project bank accounts and what benefits does the Government believe their use brings? Yes, we have been continuing to trial project bank accounts and I have delighted that the member is taking a close interest in this topic. Of course, the main two benefits that it delivers are that the small business in the contract chain in major works get paid for the work directly and they get paid on time. They do not have to wait for several months, whilst money may sit in the account of someone who is higher up the contract chain. Secondly, as those of us who are, like myself, slightly longer than the tooth than we would wish—remember the lily debacle—the risk is that small companies who are lower down in the chain may face insolvency as a result of problems that are higher up the chain. Project bank accounts are designed to tackle both of those well-known and identified problems, and I am delighted that the Scottish Government is piloting them and trying them out. We will most certainly come back to debate this issue, which the member takes such a close interest in very soon. To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to support enterprise and business across the south of Scotland parliamentary region. The Scottish Government is committed to supporting sustainable economic growth across Scotland. We recognise the particular challenges that are faced in the south of Scotland and work closely with a wide range of delivery partners to promote economic activity in the area. By way, for example, in 2014, regional selective assistance awards, worth over £6.2 million were awarded to 13 businesses across all the local authorities in the south of Scotland parliamentary area, creating 665 jobs and safeguarding 173. I thank the Deputy First Minister for his answer, but it will be of little comfort to the only surviving auction mart on the Scottish borders, which four years ago had a massive hike in its business rates overnight without consultation. The mart is a significant employer and vital to the local rural economy. The mart has a sister mart, similar in footprint, just a few miles across the border near Woller. That mart has rates of around £11,000, whereas a mart in the borders, the rates are around a staggering £90,000—about nine times more expensive to do business north of the border because of this Government's harsh decisions. Will the Deputy First Minister act now to right this wrong so that mart's are not working under such an unfair, non-competitive regime in Scotland compared to England? The first thing that I have to say to Mr Humas is that the valuation process for the valuation of properties for non-domestic rates is carried out entirely independently of Government by the valuation boards around the country. I know that there have been issues about the auction mart. The issues that ministers have engaged directly with auction marts on this question in the aftermath of the revaluation, but I stress that those judgments are arrived at by the independent valuation process. Of course, there is the entitlement and the right for appeals to be undertaken against those valuations that are undertaken. I do not have the information to hand, but from my general knowledge of the position of the handling of appeals, the overwhelming majority of appeals have now been settled. In fact, a very significant proportion of appeals have now been settled. I will inquire as to whether the appeal in relation to the auction mart to which Mr Humas has been settled. That is the due process that is there for companies to determine whether or not the appropriate rateable value issues have been considered in determining that issue. On the wider question about the role of auction marts, I recognise the significance of auction marts in the rural economy. They are significant to provide a focal point for the trade and activity of the agricultural sector, and ministers will be happy to continue our discussions with the auction mart sector, which I know has been taken forward by my colleague the rural affairs secretary. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support employment and the economy in the north-east in response to oil and gas UK's report, fueling the next generation. We in the Scottish Government are supporting the industry by a wide variety of measures within the devolved functions. The industry does, however, require more support from Westminster on reserved functions. In response to the minister's responsibilities, can the minister tell us how Scottish Enterprise will respond to new challenges in the north-east economy, given the fall in the oil price? Given that on-going skills gaps remain an additional challenge for the sector, which it does not need at the moment, as the report identifies, does not this highlight the need to invest in skills and not to reduce investment for the education that unfortunately has been a track record of this Government? I agreed with much until the last sub-clause, but in response to his question, what are Scottish Enterprise doing? Well, here is the report that Jenny Marr asked about decommissioning published in October. I met Scottish Enterprise staff as always do in Aberdeen when I visited on Monday with numerous meetings there. I can tell you that the Scottish Enterprise staff have an excellent team, which are delivering a wide range of support to the industry, and that that is hugely valued and that it has enormously helped, particularly SMEs, to achieve their potential, grow enormously and take on very large numbers of staff, often providing services and goods that are exported throughout the world. However, of course, on the skills front, we have also provided more resources to enable our colleges and our universities, and Aberdeen offers some of the finest in the world to give young people the skills, the training and the qualifications that they need to play a part in this excellent industry. We share the same aspiration, if not always the same conclusions in this matter. When will the next Scottish Government oil and gas analytical bulletin be published? We will publish appropriate statistical information in due course. However, publication of statistical information is, yes, important, but it is not as important, Presiding Officer, as getting the right tax measures for the industry. I can just tell members that I do hope that this will be an approach that is shared across all the parties. The industry faces enormous challenges at the moment. Until such time, as the ground rules are established for the basis of new investment, it is not reasonable to expect that billions of dollars will be invested in new fields, new developments and extensions. That is why the most important message—I think that I am getting it across fairly loud and fairly clear—is that the promise measures by the UK Government a couple of weeks ago must be delivered no later than March. That is the imperative, and I do hope that this will be an approach that is shared across all parties. To ask the Scottish Government what response it has received to requests to the UK Government to meet and discuss the impact of passport control procedures on the cruise liner sector and tourism in Scotland. The UK Government introduced without consultation, faced to document passport checks on cruise liner passengers. The Scottish Government remains very concerned about the damaging effect that this is having on the cruise industry across the UK. The issue of passport checks on cruise liner passengers was first raised with the Scottish Government at the convention of the Highlands and Islands in October 2012. Since then, despite the fact that the Scottish Government has made five separate requests to meet the UK ministers to discuss the issue, we have not been successful. I thank the minister for that reply. I have discussed the matter before both inside and outside of the chamber. I share the minister's frustrations that the UK Government does not appear to want to talk about the issue. However, although the Smith commission proposals do not propose transferring passport control measures to Scotland, it recognises in paragraph 17 that it may be appropriate to devolve further powers beyond those set out in the heads of agreement and that the transferring of those passport control powers could enable a Scottish solution to an industry that is growing and which is having a positive effect upon the economy of Scotland and also in Enver Clyde. Yes, I do, and it is essential that the UK Government does listen to Scotland's needs and that it acts accordingly. Millan, who has championed the issue in the Scottish Parliament, quite rightly highlights that the cruise market, cruise lining in Scotland, has risen exponentially in Scotland, Presiding Officer. As I have seen from places such as Greenock, where it is now a very important part of the local economy sustaining a great deal of jobs, so there is huge potential. However, we do believe that, whereas security issues are, of course, important that the current approach adopted in this regard is gold-plated and over the top, and we greatly regret that the UK Government, despite our reasoned approach to those matters, is not willing properly to engage with the Scottish Government to find a better, more practical and successful solution. Presiding Officer, to ask the Scottish Government when the independent commission to examine council tax alternatives will begin its work and what timetable it will work to. John Swinney Presiding Officer, the commission will commence in early 2015 and it will report in the autumn. I am very grateful for that reply. Mr Swinney will remember that, as far back as 1997, the SNP manifesto promised the introduction of local income tax. In 2007, the manifesto promised scrapping the unfair council tax, and today we have had the reply from the minister indicating a timescale. Does he appreciate the pressure that coslar local authorities have faced in those 17 years? Will he ensure that the appropriate priority is placed in ensuring that a working solution is discovered within that timescale? The last time I looked, I had not been in power for 17 years. It may feel like that to Mr Pearson, but it has only been seven and a bit. If coslar was feeling pressure under the previous 10 years before I came into office, then the pressure was delivered by his good colleagues on the Labour Party both in the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government. That is the first point. The second point is that on local authority funding, local authorities have been well supported financially by the Scottish Government. We have had years of negotiated and agreed settlements between local government and the Scottish Government since this Government came to office. Local government's share of the total budget that is available to the Scottish Government is higher today than when this Government came to office in 2007. On the whole area of local government, local authorities have been better and more securely supported by the Scottish Government. The final point that I would make is that on the establishment of the commission to examine issues around local taxation, the Government wants to proceed on this basis in line with the recommendations given to us by the local government and regeneration committee in the broadest spirit of agreement that we possibly can do. Last week, we talked to the coslar leadership about the steps that we can take in partnership with local government to take forward this agreement. The invitation was made in the First Minister's statement to Parliament on 26 November on the programme for government that we want to include all political parties in this process, and the Government wants to try to proceed with as much agreement as we possibly can do, and I hope that the Labour Party will be part of that agreement into the bargain. To ask the Scottish Government what detail the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy can provide on the allocation of the Barnett consequentials arising from the recent increase in UK Government health spending. I announced on 3 December that the Barnett consequentials arising from the increase in the UK Government health spending will be passed on in full to the NHS in Scotland. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer, which does not really give us any further detail, but I wonder whether he would like to comment on the fact of the publication of the recent report from the Scottish Public Health Observatory, Scott Poe. That showed that, out of 11 actions that can reduce health inequalities, paying the living wage was by far the most effective. Having failed to make this happen in the Public Procurement Bill, will the Government now follow the lead of London and ensure that all public sector contracts require workers engaged in those contracts to prepare a living wage in order to reduce health inequalities? Let me start with the point at which I agree with Dr Simpson that the living wage is the most effective way to tackle poverty and inequality. I agree unreservedly with that point. That is why the Government has taken steps to lead from the front by the payment of our own staff and public sector workers covered by our pay policy of the living wage, by taking forward mechanisms that are supportable in law, which Dr Simpson has heard all the debates that I have about the advice of the European Commission and the advice that we have. We have taken forward steps within law to negotiate contracts that provide for the payment of the living wage, and we have managed to secure that most recently in relation to the Government's catering contract and to the cleaning contracts within the Government. We also, at the National Economic Forum last week, led a debate on the importance and the imperative of extending the living wage broadly across the private sector, and I am delighted to say that that received a very strong and positive endorsement from many private sector organisations that were in attendance, resulting in some companies changing their practice as a consequence of the National Economic Forum. That is what the Government will continue to take forward in concert with the Poverty Alliance, with whom we work very closely on those questions. To ask the Scottish Government what discussions the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy has had with colleagues regarding the allocation in the 2015-16 draft budget for housing adaptations for older and disabled tenants of registered social landlords. I can confirm that the £10 million funding available in 2014-15 for registered social landlords to deliver adaptations to help older and disabled people to live at home independently and safely will be maintained in 2015-16. Can I thank the cabinet secretary for his answer? The Scottish housing regulator reports that an average social housing tenants wait 66 days for medical adaptations to be completed with some registered social landlords taking a staggering 358 days. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that these times sales are completely unacceptable and what action will he take to support the housing minister to ensure that local authorities have the support to help older and disabled residents to have medical adaptations implemented as soon as possible? I agree with Mary Fee that, if an assessment is made that an individual requires some adaptation in their own home to support safe and independent living, they should be able to secure that in a credible timescale, and the timescales that Mary Fee read out there are not credible. I will look carefully at this and discuss it with the minister for housing. If there is any particular additional support that I can offer to the work that I am sure she is taking forward, I will certainly do so. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on how the Scottish budget method of consultation and committee deliberation compares with that of the UK. Over the course of the summer, I engaged extensively in our budget priorities with a wide range of stakeholders, including our partners in local government, trade unions and those from business organisations to third sector and low-carbon interests. Since it was published on 9 October, the 2015-16 draft budget has been on the agenda of over 40 different Scottish Parliament committee sessions, with at least a dozen ministerial evidence sessions. I have already written to the finance spokespeople of the main parties in the Scottish Parliament to seek their views on the draft budget, and I hope to meet with each of them in the new year to discuss it. While I am always open to discussion on how the process can be improved, I believe that the comprehensive consultation and scrutiny process that I have just outlined is one that most stakeholders and parliamentarians south of the border would consider to be a very strong proposition. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. I wonder whether he would agree with me that Westminster's methods are outdated theatre, that they are not fit for a modern democracy, and that they make it extremely difficult for the Scottish Parliament to plan ahead? In the scrutiny terms, the Parliament in Scotland has always established, and it dates back to the very first part of the legislation that we passed in the Public Finance and Accountability Act in 1999-2000, in which we recognise the importance of effective financial scrutiny. It certainly feels like that from where I am sitting, Presiding Officer, that there is effective scrutiny of the financial commitments that the Government makes, but, of course, we are always willing to take forward any suggestions that are made in that respect. Certainly, from my experience as a member of the House of Commons, there are certainly significantly greater scrutiny of financial provisions in this Parliament than there ever was in the House of Commons. To ask the Scottish Government whether it considers that it should establish a Scottish exchequer to accommodate further tax and spending policies going forward. The Scottish Government will continue to build on its reputation for fiscal competence in implementing the limited tax and spending powers that are recommended for devolution by the Smith commission. Those powers will be exercised within a fiscal framework that provides an equitable settlement for both the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments. With the increased powers proposed by the Smith commission, and then again with the inevitable increased further powers in revenue and expenditure functions, such as all welfare benefits and total powers and tax administration collection in borrowing and financial policy, does the cabinet secretary agree that a fully-fledged Scottish exchequer will be necessary to apply macro financial policies in preparation for the independence that will come? For Scotland to be an independent country, it would require to have all necessary skills and capabilities at its disposal to ensure that all functions were properly and effectively exercised. I can assure Mr Brody that, as we take forward the additional responsibilities that we have and we are doing this in relation to the land and buildings transaction tax and the landfill tax, we are acquiring the skills and the expertise to ensure that we can properly exercise these functions. That will be the continued approach of the Scottish Government as we acquire further responsibilities. That concludes questions, and we will now move on to the next item of business. Allow a few seconds for members to change places. The next item of business is a statement by Angela Constance on Historic Child Abuse. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement. There should be therefore no interruptions or interventions. I call on Angela Constance. Cabinet secretary, 10 minutes.


A person is miserable because of some disability from his birth itself. Or he is miserable due to some disease which has happened not because of his doings. According to you, such miserable people should leave the society, or others live in happy. How it is possible? Why do you deal with such miserable people by the society? Now, nobody is miserable because of a disability. Suppose you had only one hand. One hand less wouldn't you make you miserable? It is just that everybody else has two hands. You have only one. That makes you miserable. One hand less, does it cause misery? Does it cause misery? I'll come to you. I know what you're saying. One hand less or one eye less wouldn't cause misery. What causes misery is everybody else has two. I have only one. That causes misery, isn't it? So a disease or a disability fundamentally does not cause misery. It creates a certain physical situation. Misery is caused by you.  Misery is always self-created. Situations are happening. Some situations the way you like it. Some situations the way you don't like it. Some situations the way you can handle it. Some situations the way you cannot handle it. This is how life is happening. But misery is caused by you, isn't it so?  It is other people's attitude towards him which makes him suffer. By himself he doesn't suffer. Actually he is more joyful than most other people or he just doesn't know what's happening. He just doesn't know what is happening or generally he is much more happier than other people, isn't it? But it is your attitude towards him. You constantly reminding him that he is not normal, which makes him unhappy, which makes him miserable. It is you depriving him of many things that a human being needs because of his disability which makes him miserable. So misery is not caused by any situation. Situations are there. Some situations we can handle. Some situations we cannot handle. That's how life is. So every situation that you cannot handle if you want to make yourself miserable or you have lot of opportunity every day and you're making use of it obviously. That's why you're making a case out of it. Why should miserable people go to caves? It will be good. Now, disabled people need not go to caves because they are not miserable by themselves because they have no idea of what is what. All of you are creating an opinion that you are not okay, you are not okay, you are not okay, that may make him miserable. If you just see some people come with two hands, some people come with one hand, some people will come with this bigger brain, some people come with this bigger brain, it is all a part of nature and it is there. What best we can do with them, we do. There would be no misery in disability, isn't it? Isn't it so? If you allowed your humanity to function rather than your prejudice to function, then there would be no misery in disability. So misery is not because of disability. Misery is caused by you because you're unconscious of what you're doing because the basic faculties in you, your mind and body is not in your control, that's why you're causing misery. Please look at your life and see.  Very few, isn't it? If at all if you aren't, that's an unfortunate way to live, that's all I'm telling you.