Hi everyone. My name is Angela Mills. I work for the Town of Amherst. This meeting of the Public Arts Commission is happening on Zoom and will be uploaded to the Town of Amherst YouTube channel shortly. Pursuant to the extension of the governor's order until 2025, all of these types of public meetings can happen virtually and we welcome everyone and I wish you a great meeting and at this time I'm turning things over to the chair of this commission, Terry Holtz. Thank you. Thank you, Angela. All right, we ready? Yep. Welcome, welcome. Nice to see your faces again. Thank you. Now we're being recorded. We don't have any members of the public available today so it's just us. Is it all of us? I can't see the list of names right now. It is all of us. All six of us are here. Thanks. And thank you again, Jim, for signing on to be among us still. We loved having you here. Thank you. I was like, no, he can't go away. It's lovely to have you. Thank you very much for saying that. And will you be able to do minutes today or? That's why I can't see everybody because my computer's not letting me see my minutes and the list of people at the same time. Okay, we're all here. So I think there's an agenda that I sent. Very, very simple agenda. I can share it with you if it's helpful. It would be helpful because I was saying earlier I got a week's worth of emails dumped on me all at once. So recently, so I'm having computer issues. So I'm sorry, that's a pain. It's kind of like having a computer is like adopting a teenager. Yeah, pretty much less expensive. All right, so we'll take a look at our menu. Oh, you know what? I can do the whole sharing screen thing. That's probably easier. Let me do that real quick. Okay. Well, guess what? We're not going to have public comment. Looks like we're not going to. Yep. That's okay. This is a short meeting. I'm not going to take much of your time. This is very directed. We'll have a longer meeting next Monday, which I need to work on that agenda. But I'm sharing my screen. If I can get this right again. All right. You guys see where I am here? Oh, whoa. helpful. Okay. Jim, I said do this agenda so that you have it. Yeah, I see it. Okay. Today's really simple. First of all, I guess let's do a quick, quick roll call. Robert, are you here? Yes. James, are you here? Jim's here. Laurie is here. Here. Do we lose you, Terry? Terry, did you freeze? Seems like she's frozen in time. Was her computer flashing for a while there? Or no, it was in my computer. She's the host, so she would need to let us in. Who's the host? Terry's the host. One, two, three, four. I see six people. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. She's on, but she's frozen. Oh, yeah. Her mic's muted. And Dara's muted, but that's okay. Oh, I see she's kind of... It says Laurie Friedman under Jim's name. Really? Yeah, on my computer. Oh, it does. My name is wrong. That's why, because he used my login link. Yeah, and my name is wrong. My name is Dara Barwadikson, so it's wrong on the agenda, too. Oh, that should be changed with the town then, because this invitation came from the town. Okay. The agenda? No, the agenda's not. That's Terry. We'll have to change that. And Jim is looking like he comes to me because he used my link that I was sent by the town to come on tonight. Okay, it's okay. Oh, so I look... Oh, my goodness. My name is changed to Laurie. Yeah. And I have to talk in a higher voice. I don't know if I have Terry's phone number. Let's see. Does anyone have it? There's something wrong. Terry's, look. Terry. You know what? We should get a contact list. We have everybody's... We should have everybody's... I have someone at 413. I could try it and hope it's the right Terry. I don't have her phone number. I'm going to call or see if it's Terry. Hi, Terry. This is Laurie on the APAC meeting, and we seem to have lost you. And none of us are running the meeting, so I don't believe we can let you in. So I don't know if you're having trouble getting back in. And I don't know if this is the right number for you. I have you as Terry in my contacts, which I might be calling the wrong Terry. But anyway, I am trying to reach you. This is Laurie Friedman at<PHONE_NUMBER>. All I can say is technology ain't trouble free. Well, for those of you who are into astrology, Mercury is retrograde, and that's supposed to mess up everything like this, which... Okay. Well, now she went off. Maybe she's going to try to come back in. I just saw a message that you are now the host, Laurie. I am? Well, I saw a little notice on the corner of my screen, so... Really? She may have... It looked like she was trying to get back in, but I don't know. So it sounds like she's passed the mantle to you in a... Oh, yeah. It looks like I'm a host. Okay. Well, I don't know. Okay. Okay. There she is. She's trying to connect. Yeah. Well, in the meantime, I could give my treasure report just to... Oh, okay. Fill the time. It's not lengthy, but I did find out that in terms of our funds with the town, we'd have a total of $4,184.28 in our account. So how much? $4,041.84 and $0.28. Now, I don't know if that includes the money... Correct me if I'm wrong, if anyone remembers. Was it $2,000 that's designated for this portal gallery? I think it's three. Is it three? Okay. I thought it was two. Oh, maybe... Okay. Well, we can clarify that. I don't know if our balance reflects that money, or if... I believe it does, and that it needs to be used and distributed by the end of... June? June? June? From what I... Maybe, Terry. That's why we are meeting today, because we need to get this... I'm here. Oh, I'm here. I'm so sorry. I just tried to call you, but I don't know if I called the right number. So are you... I don't think you did, but that's okay. Are you five, two, two, four, three, eight, seven? Nope. Oh, I called a different Terry. I can give you my phone number. I'm sorry about that, everybody. I think my web camera finally died, so I'm sad, but I'm here, right? You can see me and hear me? Okay. Am I slowed or anything, or is there any kind of weirdness with the video? Okay. Terry, can you... What is your number? It's<PHONE_NUMBER>.<PHONE_NUMBER>. 9701. Well, at least I have that now. I left another Terry a message. Okay. I'm back. I apologize. Anyway, what did I miss? Did you guys talk about something that I should know? I should have heard. Well, I mentioned that I found out from Holly at the town that we have $4,184.28 an hour account, and I asked, and it sounded like the money from or related to the portal gallery is in that balance, but I wasn't sure. That's what I thought. Okay. I can clarify that with her. I can send her a email, but if you feel confident that they would have paid us first before we did anything, is that typically... I think you're showing us that that might happen because I had to pay it out by June 1st, so I need to call her and ask her. But we also need to, I guess... I'll send an email to Holly just to confirm that that's the case. Thank you. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry, was your recollection, Terry, that it was $2,000 for the portal gallery or $3,000? I thought it was $2,500, but I might need to go back. There we go. Right in the middle, Mikey. I think you can say anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 in the minutes. And I thought too. So there we go. You know what? It says here, award $1,500, so I don't think that's... I don't know if this is even correct. I know I need to figure out what the real... I don't even know what the real answer is here. Okay. I'm putting in the minutes that the amount for the portal gallery needs to be determined. Yeah, that's definitely so before we get this thing. I think that's interesting. And this meeting to spend the money and submit that receipt to... It's to the Amherstown Art Council. Is that where we receive this grant from? I sure hope so. I don't know. I haven't had my meeting with your donor like I was supposed to because I had to go out of town. I thought it was from the Cultural Council. Okay. If you'll give me a minute, I'll go find out if it was from the Cultural Council. I will have to take a two minute... oops, no, sorry. I can do it later. Okay. Yeah, that's one of those things that I was going to meet with you showing it about. If you want me to make a phone call, I can do that and I can maybe find out. I think we can do it later and we know that we need to spend between two and three thousand dollars and have that paid out to an artist for the portal gallery before June 1st. That's, I think, I think it's the end of June, isn't it? Isn't July 1st when the new fiscal year starts up again? That's my understanding. I could be wrong. Well, they usually start. Yeah. I'm afraid to share my screen again because I don't want to lose it. I think I'll be okay now. So I sent you all the open call for artists to PDF. So we kind of went through that the last time we met. I don't remember. Catch me up. So we looked it over together and we made changes. Did we finalize this open call except for the price, the 1,500? No. No. Okay. Okay. Do you all still have your? I think what happened was last meeting we met, we went over the call for the making it public. Yes, that was very important. And we reviewed that and completed, you know, whatever we were being asked to do for that. And then because, and working on that deadline, and then we stayed on not enough for a quorum. Right. And I think it was maybe Mikey, me and Jim, right? Yeah. I think. Yep. Yeah. And the three of us were on and we came up with all kinds of great ideas for the first We really did it actually. I have to say I liked our ideas for what to do. We have minutes from those. I thought we finished it. Is am I wrong? Well, we have a PDF and I had sent it out to you all beforehand, but then I kind of lost track. So I don't know. You sent us a PDF prior to this meeting of a proposal that you had made for a call for this, for the portal gallery. We have not discussed it or reviewed it. But I will let you know where we left off just to bring you up to date on our ideas for it. Yeah, sounds great. I don't think we're going to submit as artists, but I did like the ideas. So just to. Never mind. No, I'd love to hear you describe it. But a couple of things were about the space, which I think we still have not determined is getting the key, opening it up, looking to see what's there. If there's electricity, if there's not the current installation is not working. And I think there was an issue of what I'm remembering. I was heard at one of our meetings was, you know, there's something about it not being insulated and it can't function in freezing. And so, you know, I think there's some things about the space, but then we, the three of us, we're just kind of talking and Jim was saying he had these really great trains, right? Train. Train pieces. Is that right, Jim? Train cars. Yeah. Train cars. I did. And they ran. And that they ran. And we thought, oh, we can put train cars in each one and then have Mikey was, you know, has the connection to the historical society. And we could put connected to train schedules of when the train ran through the history of trains coming through Amherst. Right.  And then a whole story about the hat factory. I thought there's work on the Hills Hat Factory. And there's the historical society has the molds, but they're big. They're like this big. But we could have photographs of them, like 3D photographs in each window. Okay. We could do any kind of business in Amherst. I don't know how this award would work that way. I know we don't want to reward ourselves, but who would be willing to do the work and then who we would give the money to, or would we just donate it? What do you, I love the idea. Well, we're just thinking if we need to put something in, we could, you know, we could get an intern. I have seven interns that I work with on Fridays. See if somebody wants to put something together. My only problem is most of my interns are seniors and they're all graduating. So they're stressed to the max. I see. Yeah. Or if we wanted to partner with a historical society and the payments would be for making 3D photographs or whatever, or, or we just put a call out. I think we came up with these ideas because we felt my question before we jump into what you, you're proposing, Terry, is there enough time? Yeah, that is the problem. I think if we had gotten our stuff together and I had had fewer emergencies, we could have got this out earlier. But right now we have a deadline on this state. It was like May 14th. So yeah, I'm also stressed out about this and I'm not sure what to, we were stressed out about the last thing we did. So, oh, another idea that was proposed. Shoshana was on that call and Shoshona was on that call. Zoom. And another idea was to reach out to the artist who currently is there and ask him if he will just fix it. Well, if he did another one. Or did another one. Yeah, because his, there's a plaque right there that's all about him. Okay. So we wouldn't even have to take that down. So what do we think about this idea? There's two proposals here. Go ahead, Robert. I'm just wondering. So the artist who currently has an installation there, what were the terms of that agreement? In other words, what was the length of time during which is it a, I forget the artist's name, but was there an end date for the current installation? And if so, what, what is that? What was that? I love that none of us can answer that question. Right. Like, who has this information? Probably me if you'll give me a minute, but I'm having trouble keeping up with a conversation and also doing the minutes. So the minutes are going to be a disaster, but oh well. Also, your name is Lori, apparently. Hilarious. I gave him my login information because he didn't get it from the town. And our name is wrong. I think for consistency, we're changing everyone's name to Lori Friedman. Oh, nice. That's a beautiful name. Makes the, so wait a minute, what do we call this? Oh, wait a minute. Was it a artist contract for the poem Windows? That's probably it. Portal gallery. Portal gallery. I think this is it. I love both those ideas, by the way. I think they're really clever. I want to see you want to know what the end date is. Okay. When will the project take place spring summer 22? I'm just going down. This is the proposal. Where are you getting your information? I've been on the committee for a long time. I save everything. Thank you. Defantive information. But defining it like this is very difficult. Would we invite him to just extend his prize? The thing I worry about always is that our local cultural council may decide that we aren't a very responsible entity for distributing grant money to local artists. And that is a thing that does worry me because I really want to have more involvement in the arts. And, you know, that's the only concern that I have is worrying about future grants. When you don't spend money in grants, you know, you guys know this, you don't get considered the next round of grants, which we're going to be applying for soon because summer is coming up. So that's a thing I'm worried about. I just, if you think we can pull this off and get someone new in there and spend the money all by the end of, you know, this timeframe, I'm on board to go with it. I feel like we as a committee commission have come in really and need to really restructure and do strategic planning and to be handed things that we had no information on at the last minute have not set us up well. So we're doing the best we can. And in this case, I just found on the Amherst Town website that the Portal Gallery is five small south facing windows, blah, blah, blah, the Amherst Center Cultural District is supporting the exhibition with the $2,000 recovery and rebuilding grant. So that was the first one. It does not say that it will run through the fall, played it open in the summer, run through the fall. And that article was 2021. Who was this name that we're talking about, please? Benjamin Howden, C-O-W-D-E-N. C-O-W-D-E-N will help. All right, but anyway, you found it. Is that right? Thank you. That's another question. Yes, go ahead. Sorry, Robert, go ahead. Has anyone on this commission approached the Cultural Council to ask for an extension upon? To Lori's point, there's been a great deal of transition in this commission, obviously, the person who was the chair when most of this joined left. The whole make it public project was not managed, in my opinion, successfully by the town. And then subsequently kind of fell onto this commission with no one here having been through the training. So I think it's, to your point, we obviously want to be responsive. We want to be able to administer the grants, et cetera. But we've barely had time to get up and running as a commission. So I guess my suggestion would be to contact the Cultural Council, explain what's going on, and ask if there's any way that we could extend the period to use this money. Because I don't know, I would prefer that we actually put out a call for artists and actually try to make something of this opportunity, given that it will, well, I guess, you know, sort of tied with the make it public, be our first endeavor. And I think we're all committed to creating a thoughtful process. And I just think trying to do something in a rushed way. And also, I think my feeling about what our role is is not necessarily that we should be creating the art, even while the ideas that you mentioned, you know, seem like very good ones. I think we want to really be seen as facilitators to support local artists. So, yeah, I don't know, do you know any of the people involved in the Cultural Council? I don't even know who's. Can I just speak to what I just talked about, Robert? Please. Is it possible, Jim, to give us access to the last three years of minutes? Yeah, I mean, they're on the website for one thing. On the website, we can read all that. So a lot of our questions should be answered. Yep. But why are you calling me Jim? My name is Laurie. I'm sorry. I forgot that it was changed. It's okay. I hope it's okay that I forgot. Yeah, of course. So Robert, to your suggestion there, I feel the same way that we should definitely not be creating the art. I totally agree. So if we extend the deadline until the end of May, do you think, oh, that's just a nightmare. The whole thing is a nightmare. And I feel like we're just jumping right back into the hot water.  And now here we are at another crossroads. We're trying to figure out stuff. I'm suggesting a lengthier extension than just the end of May. I mean, is there, is the source of this money, is it, you know, ARPA funding that they had to spend? I mean, I guess I'm curious to know how tied are we to this June 30th date? Whose deadline is that exactly? I believe Shoshona said that it was, I may not have the name right, but the Amherst Cultural Council that distributes funds and that they have to, we have to spend this money by that. That's the way it always is. Yeah. Well, but I think it would be worth clarifying the source of that deadline. I mean, I understand what you're saying, that it's the cultural council setting that deadline, but I guess I want to know how fixed is that deadline? Well, and also was there anything, I don't think there was anything up last year. So there was not because of COVID. Shoshona said that because of COVID, it missed a year. And I agree with you, we shouldn't be creating the art. I just wanted to throw those out so the kinds of things we were thinking about. I love our idea. I loved it. Wait a minute. Can I just ask a question? Yeah. We can't find out among ourselves if we can get an extension, but I might be able to get a clue myself just by taking a short recess and making a phone call. If not, then we should decide that we need to find that out, schedule another meeting in the near future. I think we have one for a week. We do. Because we're talking around in circles and we can't get out of the circle. Okay. So can I worry also known as Jim, why don't you make that phone call and report back to us May 1st next week. We have a scheduled meeting. We'll get an answer to that question and we'll go forward with whatever that plan is going to be. Okay. All right. So I'm going to find out about a possible extension. Great. And I wanted to say, what do you think of if we cannot get a possible extension? Well, we can definitely get a possible one. The question is, can we get an actual what if we cannot get an actual extension? Would you all be on board for going to this artist Benjamin Cowden and asking him to update what he has there? And that would, we would extend his installation for another year. Well, I certainly think we have no choice and that would be a very prudent and wise thing to do because it's about the only alternative that's practical. Yeah. And we would give him that's what I think. Yep. I agree. I don't even know how you contact him. I don't know who he is or where he is, but well, I bet there's an application somewhere with his name and information on it. I'll also look for that. Okay. So members agree. We will ask the president artist, what's his name? Benjamin C. O. W. D. E. N. Okay. Yes. Of Amherst. So he is from Amherst to extend his present project, right? Yes. Okay. And Jim will get his contact information. Okay. Robert. Sorry. I don't mean to be a pest, but so what are the terms of the extension of this?  I guess I'm wondering what what is he doing to earn an additional award? So I think we can offer it to him first of all. I'll not, you know, we could say we would like to offer you another year of your exhibit. You know, you can either fix what you have in the windows or has something new since he's already kind of made it through the application process. What do you think about that? Well, what I think is that we should postpone the discussion of this because it's contingent upon us not getting an extension. So we may be wasting a lot of time. So what if we what if we find out about the extension and I'll send an email to everybody, which I can do without violating the open meeting laws laws. I don't discuss it and then we'll know for the next meeting whether we're going to be discussing an extension or if we're going to be discussing the money from the council. Okay. So it's I'm going to put on the agenda. So we will circle back to this next week and hopefully get answers and move forward with all the stuff. Right. All right. Anything else for tonight guys? I'm sorry. Thank you so much for sticking with us. No, no need to apologize. I'm just wondering, Terry, do you have any information, you know, given that Shoshona has left the commission and I believe there was a new member who lasted about a week and then looked through. Yeah, they're gone. So we have two open positions. Do you have any sense of what the process is for? I don't think we have. They have been publicized. Wait, I think we have seven members, right? We have six. No, but how many members authorized? Six people authorized. Then we have in terms of capacity. I don't know that. In other words, we're saying we have two vacancies. I'm suggesting it might be one because I think yeah, we're supposed to have an odd number. So it should be seven. So we just need one. We have one vacancy. Okay. That's what I think. Okay. Yeah. So all right. Same time, same channel next week. We'll have lots to talk about. The agenda's going to be long. It might be a long meeting. Bring coffee. Okay. Please tell me anything you want me to look up in advance because I'm just not good enough to look up information and keep them in us. You got it. Thank you. I'm just wondering if there's some reason, Jim, that you didn't get the invite from the town of Amherst for this. I have no idea. I know that I had a whole bunch of emails dumped on me this morning from as much as a week and a half ago. So maybe it's there. It might be there. Yeah. Yeah. Angela sent it last Thursday. So I got back into town Thursday morning and I had her send it Thursday morning. So And it was recent this afternoon. Right. Right. And I usually send up a little reminder saying, hey guys, they're having a meeting, but I bleh did not. So I will try to remember to do that guys. Yeah, that's a good thing to do. Yeah. If you have any other agenda meeting items, send it to me. I'll put the to the agenda and it's going to go out Wednesday. So I you have a couple of days. So you have the town hall stuff, the phone, everything. I have what you sent me and what Angela Mills sent me. So I think we can have a fruitful conversation about the gallery. Yeah, which will you you by the way will be hosting that conversation. Okay, but you have the photograph to put up. I just don't know how to do all that. I should have I should have them. I went through them. Okay. So just I have a question. We have this call for art that is sitting in my inbox and is that going to be discussed? Or what are we doing with that? I can't even look it up. I just we just got it. Hang on just a minute. See if I can come up with it. Oh, never mind. I'll get in touch with you later and to see if it's appropriate to put it on the agenda and I'll let you know what you can decide. How's that? Sounds good. Yep. All right. All right. Big meeting next week. Thank you so much. I'll see you all there. Thank you for tonight. Bye. Meeting adjourned. Good luck, Carrie. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye.


All right, so now I'm actually going to go over two different use cases that might be applicable to some of the research that you may be conducting. And then we're going to let you guys start exploring screen. We have a few exercises that you can download from the ASHG tab on screen if you want to try to work through those. Also, we're free to answer any questions that you may have applicable to your individual research questions as well. So this is the first case, and this is actually a recent publication that came out in April. And this is a group that identified new candidate genes for autism spectrum disorder through whole genome sequencing. So these are rare genetic variants that they've identified and they've identified new genes that tend to be near or containing these variants. One of interest that they reported of 18 was a myo5a. And so this is one of the myosin 5 heavy chain genes. So it belongs to this larger super family of myosin genes. And if you kind of remember back to basic biology, myosin is one of these motor proteins that's involved in transport itself. So at first glance, this doesn't seem to be necessarily a gene that is intrinsically would be linked with autism. So it's something that you may want to be exploring more to see what sort of cell types express this gene and additional information such as that. So you can actually use screen to investigate gene expression. So if we go to screen here, you can search in the search box for this gene for myo5a. You can see there's actually autocomplete options as well. So you can search for this gene in human. And when we search for this gene, it's going to return CREs that are nearby this gene as well as give you these tabs to investigate gene expression through RNA seek data and rampage data. So if you actually look at the expression of this gene, we see it's expressed in a lot of different cell and tissue types. We can change here the scale to TPM. The top one actually though is in this type of brain neuron cells. This is specifically for the GABA pathway specific neuron. However, it's also expressed in a lot of other human adult tissues. We can look at, for example, rampage data as well. So this is going to be capturing the five prime end of transcripts. So it may be capturing, for example, RNAs that may be degraded over time or can't be captured by traditional RNA seek. And here we have the data for all the different transcription start sites for this gene. We can scroll through them. We see this top one here is has really high expression in neural cells. And then some of these other transcripts, for example, are also expressed at much lower levels, but some level in brain tissue. So it seems to be there's definitely some sort of neural role for this gene, but it's a little bit difficult to see just using the human data. So what's great about screening is it also incorporates all of the mouse data. So we can search, for example, for a CRE of interest here. So this would be, for example, a promoter-like CRE. It has really high H3K4M3, and it's proximal to the gene. So we can click this CRE. We see that it has high activity once again in neural cells, but also other cell types. And we can actually go over to mouse to see if there's an orthologous mouse CRE in there is. So if we click this CRE, it will bring us down to the mouse page. And we see that it's at the promoter of the orthologous mouse gene MyO5B. This time, if we look at gene expression, we have a little bit of a different pattern. So, as Jiping had mentioned before, we have this nice matrix of embryonic mouse data. And we can see, in addition to some blood cells, we have really high expression in embryonic mouse brain tissue. So it seems that the expression of this gene, in addition to other cell types, is really high during brain development. And so what we can do is explore this further by using the differential gene expression app, which is this delta symbol here that Michael showed before. So you can actually pick different tissue types to look at the expression for this gene. So, for example, here for interested, maybe in midbrain, we have, for example, from time point 11.5 all the way to birth. So we can select E11.5, and we can go all the way, for example. We'll go halfway to 14.5. So if we scroll down here, we see that this gene MyO5A actually increases expression over brain development. And we can see it corresponds to increased activity in these promoter-like CREs here, as well as these more distal enhancer-like CREs. So even just by looking at initial human gene expression, we couldn't get the whole picture for what this gene might be doing. It seems by incorporating the mouse data as well, we can maybe try to figure out a role for this gene in autism. And more importantly, it enables you to develop hypotheses for all these results. So if you have a list of maybe 50 genes, you want to prioritize actually testing some of these in one of your model organisms, you can actually use screen to try to prioritize which ones you want to test. So that's sort of at the gene level of one use case. And this is another use case looking at a GWAS variant. So this is a bit of an older study from 2010. And this study was looking at the relationship between human genetic variants and levels of cholesterol. So this particular study we've imported into screen already. I'm going to go back to the main page here. So here we can find this study by actually just searching cholesterol. And we have a whole bunch of actually studies here that have measured different levels of cholesterol. This one here is the Teslovitch study. So what we have here are recommended cell types to investigate. And this is based on enrichment of GWAS SNPs compared to a background. And if we look here, we can see the most significant ones are all from liver. So we have the right lobe of female liver here, an adult liver from roadmap, HEPG2, which is a liver cell line. So we can click one of these and we'll give us all this CREs that overlap a SNP as well as our active in liver. And you can sort these as well. And so you can actually start to try to investigate individual SNPs that may be causal based on overlapping epigenomic data. And this is an example of one here. So this is a distal CRE with the D symbol, but it has high DNA signal and high H2K27A signal in liver. So if we click this CRE, we now are brought to the CRE details page. We can start investigating it further. We see overall the CRE itself has very high signal in liver tissue. So liver here, right lobe, as well as intestinal tissue. It also has really high DNAs in colon. We can actually look at intersecting transcription factors as well. And what's interesting is a lot of these factors are almost exclusive to the liver. So for example, a Fox A1 here, if we click, we get brought to a factor book. We can see that in its title, it's actually a hepatocyte nuclear factor, but it's also a transcriptional activator for liver-specific transcripts. Additionally, even in the more ubiquitous transcription factors, we can see that all of the experiments are done in liver. So this is a very liver-centric candidate regulatory element. If we look at associated gene expression, we can see once again we have really high expression in liver. And this is nice because not all the cell types are the same between gene expression data and CRE data just based on what's surveyed in ENCODE. So it's usually another validation. We also have rampage signal, once again, very high in liver. This particular CRE also has an orthologous CRE mouse, which you can click and see. And no surprise here, it's also active in liver. So it's nice that you can use both the human and the mouse data together to further validate your results. What's interesting, I'm just going to go here to this last tab. It's called link genes. So we've been really trying to work on linking distal regulatory elements with their potential target genes. And this is what we've incorporated so far, which is 3D chromatin links through Chia-PET data as well as genetic links through EQTLs, primarily from GTX. So here we actually can see that this CRE has a SNP that is linked with this ABCG8 gene. But we also have supporting Chia-PET data for ABCG8 and it's nearby gene ABCG5. So it looks like since we both have genetic data and physical chromatin contact data, it's most likely regulating this gene. And we can see this further if we go back to our page here. And we want to actually view this in the browser. We can search, for example, liver here. We can pick the right lobe. And we can actually view this in the genome browser, which we'll load in a second. So because UCSC is so bogged down sometimes, this is why Michael's been working really hard to incorporate the genome browser in screen itself. But we can see here, we have on top, we have all of the cell type agnostic CREs. Then we have ones that are active specifically in liver along with the corresponding tissue. So we can see that this distal CRE actually lies in the ABCG8 gene. But in most likely context, these two genes here which have bidirectional promoters. So it appears that biologically that this step would most likely affect the expression of both of these genes.


Gwyn i, mae'r ffordd ymlaen i'r cyflaenau. Mae'r cyflaenau i'r cyflaenau i'r gweithio yn ymddangos Alasyn MacDonald, Ysgrifennidog, Parched Gwyrdys, Musilboda a'r Gweithnodd, Cyflaenau Cymru yn ymddangos gyda'r rhannu. Yn y cyflaenau i'r cyflaenau i'r gweithio, mae'n gwybod. Yn y gweithio, mae'n gweithio yn ymddangos, ond yn y cyflaenau, yw eu ffordd yn ymddangos i'r gweithio, The Conference of European Churches was born. It's aim was to bring together churches separated by the Iron Curtain, gathering was a complex business. In 1964 a planned assembly looked destined for failure when the German Democratic Republic denied delegates permission to travel. Nothing daunted, the conference chartered a ship large enough ac yn ddechrau i gyd i ddyn nhw'r llai ddyn nhw'r leidio ddim yn ddechrau i Gdyn nhw. Mae Llywodraeth GDR yn ddechrau i gyd i ddyn nhw i ddyn nhw, ac yn ddyn nhw i ddyn nhw'r leidio i ddyn nhw. Mae cyntaf gyffredin nhw yn ei ddyn nhw i ddyn nhw i ddyn nhw, 15 anglican, protestant, old Catholic and Orthodox churches from across Europe, from Ireland to Armenia, Norway to Greece. Today, the conference still provides a space for dialogue, promoting the unity of the church. It enables churches to act together on a European level, particularly in relation to the institutions of the European Union and the Council of Europe, contributing to debate and raising matters of concern. I'm a member of its governing board. Meeting today is no longer so difficult and can even be done by video conference from the relative comfort of an office, yet the example of the assembly at sea still has much to say to us. It highlights the importance of gathering across division and, despite difference, of finding the space to encounter one another. In doing so, we come face to face with our common humanity, from which we must not turn away. It is an encouragement to meet, even when that may seem a risky, daunting or well-nigh impossible venture, and in gathering to engage in the kind of respectful dialogue which has open listening and honest exchange at its heart. Such interaction between churches and between church and society is a hallmark of the Conference of European Churches, which has acted as a bridge builder across Europe since 1959. May the assembly at sea inspire and challenge us to be bold in the pursuit of peace, justice and reconciliation across Europe today. The next item of business is consideration of motion 1-0.


Okay, David we're here to talk about drought preparedness in Australia What do you think of the main sort of issues facing Australian farmers in particular? I think there's a raft of issues that they have to deal with one is the way that climate is changing so 600 mils of rain now is not what 600 mils of rain was in 1950 simply because of the high temperatures and greater evaporation which which means that you know You have to farm with less in terms of true moisture availability. So that's a big issue the other the other key issue is that We've run down some of the really important natural assets on farms farm dams Shelter belts those kinds of things and we need to reinvest in those as part of drought preparedness and getting people ready For the next drought that's going to be inevitable that comes through so Phil from your perspective How do you think farmers are going in terms of their mental health and you know where they're at with these kinds of conditions? it's hard to generalize to all farmers but Farmers do have some protective factors that support their mental health Typically rural communities have fairly strong social connections Farmers tend to be fairly resilient But that doesn't always prevent them from having difficulties with depression or anxiety and so on We also know that farmers can tend to be fairly stoic have fairly high self-reliance which can be a barrier to them getting care and we know that the types of Health services that are available in rural areas aren't really the same as what you see in urban areas So that can be a real challenge for farmers. So Particularly in times of drought when or other kind of life stressors that farmers might face Can increase the risk that that somebody in a rural area will experience a mental health problem And so we've got to think of different ways to deliver these types of services in rural areas to make those sorts of things available When farmers do find that they're struggling. So what what might be some of the differences between say Sydney or Canberra and Wagga or Geraldton, what what are some of the differences in mental health services between those places? Well, the big challenge is the restriction in terms of geographic isolation So we can't have the same sort of Proportion of GPS or psychologists in in rural areas There's probably less incentive for professionals to move to those areas So we've got to think about other ways to deliver services or to encourage Health services into those regions E mental health services are one aspect that I work on in terms of having cognitive behavioral therapy available through the internet And we've shown that these types of services can be highly effective for people who are experiencing Multi-moderate mental health problems so it can kind of bridge some of that gap where we don't have health services in those communities okay, so Does that connect with older farmers as well that night and be as sort of digitally sort of savvy as as younger farmers? Yeah, that is a challenge that not everybody likes to have health care delivered through the internet or a mobile phone But we do find that we do reach a kind of very broad cross-section of the community Often uptake is higher in rural areas where they might not have other services available And we're finding increasingly that older people are becoming more trusting or more more familiar with these types of technologies and using them More extensively when they have the problem. Yeah, right. So so it sounds like one of the things that needs to be thought through here in terms of you know drought policy actually needs to connect with health policy and and Health delivery policy and those kinds of things. Yeah, I think you're right And I think we have to think of it from a multi-disciplinary perspective We're sustainable farms at ANU. We're looking at outcomes from an ecological environmental perspective Which which you're leading. I'm looking at the mental health and wellbeing aspects of farmers and and how they struggle with that or or persevere through difficult conditions and we're also working with others looking at the financial aspects of farming and how Overcome some of those challenges and where those intersections lie because all of these things are highly interactive. Okay, so there's That really is a key part of our project isn't it in the sense of There are mental health connections to how well you're doing financially But there are financial connections to how well your farm is doing environmentally in terms of the assets and then one of the missing links at the moment is that link between environmental Condition of a farm and the mental health state of farmers precisely and that's what we're starting to explore and getting more data around that So that we can answer that question more specifically over the next few years Building on a range of research that's been done in each of these areas bringing them all together So how how might you do that kind of linking what what sorts of techniques and study methods? Would you use to try to get at some of those difficult multidisciplinary kinds of questions? Yeah, well it is a challenge and and we're working on that at the moment We kind of triangulating from a range of different research perspectives looking at how health services play into rural mental health Looking at some of the data on the ecological well-being of the farm and how that relates to the farmers self-reported mental health and well-being And then looking at other aspects as to what can support the well-being of the farmer and how Finances as a will play into that as well. Okay. Yeah, so so This is a sort of fairly broad and provocative question But do you feel as as though there's sufficient funding in place to be able to create the right architecture for Improving mental health outcomes in rural Australia? I think it's always a challenge and mental health has often been the poor cousin of physical health in terms of research funding So we're always looking for ways to further expand our research so we can look at some of these questions It's also difficult to get the mechanisms in place to get funding for this type of multi-disciplinary research Because that's not typically the sort of thing that say NHMRC or AIC AIC might fund So most of the funding for this project has come through philanthropic sources But we're also looking to as to how we can grow this project to Influence policy outcomes Policymakers as well as working with the farmers as well and and through these sorts of mechanisms We can have the impact that then brings in further money further funding to better understand these processes So I guess I'm interested in your perspective on how we can influence the policy debate around what can be done for farmers By policy makers in particular. Yeah, that's that is a good thought because traditionally what I I Perceive in Australian agricultural policy is that when we have a drought it's treated as a disaster and You know we have disaster aid as it were and my sense of it is that perhaps we need to re To reimagine and reconfigure that the discussion around How how do we invest in the assets the natural assets on a farm to to make Farmers more resilient to these kinds of natural events that are increasingly prevalent So there are going to be even more challenges that we're facing So how do we change the way for example farm dams and other water infrastructure on farms work? So that when we have the next inevitable drought period, it's not a disaster. Yes, it's very challenging But they have the the scaffolding the architecture around them to be able to better deal with those kinds of things and My hope would be that that would mean that they'll be financially better off but also physically and mentally better off so that that sort of triangle of Key aims about improving the environment of condition Improving the financial outcome and the mental health outcomes all go together as a sort of part of a holistic approach To tackling the problem rather than the you know drought policy must be the sole Responsibility of the Department of Agriculture when in fact there's a financial side or an environmental side and a medical and and Psychological side to it. Yeah, and it's interesting to see the parallels between all these areas In mental health. We have a big focus on prevention So it's not just reacting to the crisis when it happens But thinking about how we can scaffold farmers how we can make the more resilient so that when these sorts of outcomes Such as drought occur They can be more prepared to face them. Yeah because my sense of it is if the current trends on Warming continue and the current trends on drying continue then conditions are only going to become more and more challenging and and Thinking about how we can equip people to deal with the challenges Rather than coming as an ambulance each time There's a there's an issue like that would would put everybody in a much better better space And I think that the Australian taxpayer would see a better return on their investment In the agricultural sector as well So that's that's equipping farmers to be able to to to deal with many of these resilient resilience issues themselves Because nobody likes to be on kind of agricultural welfare. They want to be able to to Have the capacity to deal with these things themselves. That's that's very much part of the psyche of a lot of these very Rugged individualists to be able to work out how they can deal with these problems themselves. Yeah, and how do you see that link to? better environment Leading to greater biodiversity outcomes as well Well, I think this is one of the the exciting things about where sustainable farms fits is that if we can Start to change the narrative around here are the benefits of improving the water quality and the and the water persistence on your farm That will give you a better production outcome in terms of livestock and weight gain in in cattle and sheep But if you do it in in us in a smart way using good science, we'll get a biodiversity dividend as well and We know that some of the farmers are anecdotally reporting that they're When they invest in these restoration programs on their farms, not only do they do better Financially but it seems as though their mental welfare is in a much better state as well So I think there are some exciting win-win-win outcomes across these social economic and environmental spaces that often people theorize about Rarely realize but I think there's an opportunity here in the Australian agricultural space to really do something quite special