Hello, my name is Victor Castro. I'm a data scientist at Masteno Brigham in Boston. And the title of my talk today is Assessing Machine Learning Model Performance in Diverse Populations and Across Time. And the focus of the talk is lessons learned in developing and replicating a machine learning model that we built in the earlier part of the pandemic back in March. Well, the model was developed around June of 2020 based on hospitalizations in the Masteno Brigham healthcare system, which encompasses six hospitals, academic medical centers and community hospitals. And we used predictors from laboratory tests, results prior medical history, and some vitals and other demographic information to train the model. And so the model itself was using a data set of 2,511 admissions. And we used a LASO regression using the tidy models package, which I highly recommend, makes things nice and clean and also really helped with replication six months later. And specifically, we use the GLM net engine of the tidy models workflow. And again, the predictors included demographics, prior medical history lab results, and vitals at presentation. So typically that was at the emergency room, but it could have been when they were transferred from another hospital. And so the way we did the training and the test was we use three hospitals that kind of feed to each other. So there's two community health centers, community hospitals that kind of feed into one academic medical center. We have two different of those situations. So we use one as the training, which so that had one academic medical center and two community hospitals. And then we used a test set, which had again, one academic medical center and two community hospitals. And these are kind of the demographics. And so the training set was about two thirds of the data. And I'll show you this table just because it's going to come up later in the talk important point in the talk. But you'll see there's there's there's a pretty good distribution, as as is widely known, you know, especially the earlier part of the pandemic, the older older people were being admitted more often. And there was actually over different different ethnicities and race were also overrepresented compared to our typical hospital population. And then I just point out this, the model was trained to predict two things. There's two different outcomes, two different models. One is COVID-19 severity, which was defined as either an ICU admission, mechanical ventilation, or death. And then a second model, which was just a mortality, so death and outcome. And so overall, we had 11% of patients that died and 18% that had a severe, severe outcome. And here's how the models, the finals model looked again, this paper is published in JAMA Network, published last summer. And the the number of predictors that was actually quite a few predictors that were were fed into the lasso engine. And these were the kind of the final models, one column is for the severe illness model, and the other one is for the mortality model. And you'll see age is a strong component, baseline oxygen, some lab tests, prior history of respiratory infections, COPD, that kind of thing. Nothing super surprising here. And the model performs, the models performed pretty well. So we had an AUC of 0.807 for the mortality model and 0.847 for the severe outcome model. And I show one graph here, it's a Katherine Meyer survival curves, splitting up the model predictions into quintiles. So this bottom line here is the top quintile of risk, which is what we usually generally use as our cutoffs of the top 20% of predictions. And you'll see that that line actually does just penetrate in the x axis here is time since since presentation to admission or presentation to the emergency room. And so this is the severe outcome model. So you'll see it actually separates quite nicely. So we are really excited to see this. And then so that was published in June and or in the summer or sorry, in October, based on data through June. And then earlier part of this year, we decided to look back and say, okay, the pandemic has changed quite a bit. And we had different waves. And at the time, we were kind of in a second wave of the winter wave in New England, which was different than the first. And so we're saying we were looking at how well does the model perform given all these changes that were happening. And so we recently just actually published a paper as a research letter in again, German network open, which is a follow up looking at that. And so this is kind of the lessons learned and kind of the focus of this talk, how we did that. And we're hoping to get into some our code, hopefully to share some some tools and make that available. And again, that's using the yardstick package, which is part of tiny malls, which is really nice. So this is again, is a table one. And it looking at comparing patients from the initial training set, which is March, April, May, primarily, and then a replication, which is the subsequent period. And really, as we expected, there were kind of big differences. The difference in age differences in specifically ethnicity. So there are quite a few more Hispanic patients in the first wave compared to the second or the subsequent waves. And and notably, there was a significant drop in our outcome. So as you remember, the number that was 18% of severe illness in the first wave. But when we in the subsequent time period, that was dropped down to 8.3%. And similarly, deaths, the outcome of death was was was almost half of what it used to be. So that that was, of course, great, great news. But we want to see how our model performed, especially because linear models like lasso regression is is pretty sensitive to changes in outcomes. And this is another kind of view of how the outcome changed. And the graph on the left is the proportion of severe by month. And the blue box describes the initial training set, the time period for the training set. And you'll see the earlier parts were quite higher and slowly dropped down. And then it kind of became stable after that initial training. And again, that's really good. And so this is kind of the crux table of this talk. And aside from the outcome changes, we wanted to look at how the model performed across different subgroups. And we define kind of subgroups by gender, age groups, race, ethnicity, and whether they were admitted to one of the academic medical centers or community hospital. And again, this left quadrant here describes the original performance in the original test set. And you'll see the ACs were sometimes better, sometimes worse. But we we actually didn't really look into this the first time around. And this is one of the big lessons learned here is that we were actually quite underrepresented in our initial set in terms of some groups. So in the initial wave, there are actually no patients under 50 that died. And in the subsequent waves, there were seven. And we predicted that. But there was really no way that the model could really do well. And it was never in the training set that there was any patients in those groups. Similarly, a few Asian patients. And some really small numbers with the outcome in this initial set. And while the model performed really well in this training set in the test set from the training period. And again, this is PPVs and specificity sensitivities in the top quintile. When we got to the evaluation set, which again was the subsequent period. The ACs actually held pretty well. So this group where we didn't actually have any patients under 50 AC was pretty poor. And the biggest drop we saw was in PPV. And again, that is probably over it is because of the change in outcomes, significant drop in outcomes. And so, and again, quite a bit of difference in the different subgroups. So you'll see compared to the Hispanics, PPV.13, non-Hispanics.23, whereas in the kind of original set, we had it a little bit closer. And so I encourage you to look at the paper with the results. And so I wanted to show you, since this is in our conference, how I did this and how relatively easy it is to do this with the yardstick package, which has been kind of a game changer for our work. And so I will show you this is kind of a dummy version of our dataset. But, you know, we have one row basically per admission per patient. And then you have your categories here. And this is the view from our studio. You have your categories of how you want to break it down. One row per patient. And then this is the true outcome, whether they actually had the outcome. And again, this could be, in our case, it was either death or severe illness before discharge. And then this model class is the model prediction. And this is, again, based on the cutoff of the top wind tile. You know, you can also have a continuous prediction, which you can use to calculate the AUC just for brevity. I'm not going to show that here. But I will mention that putting this, making sure that you maintain the same parameters from training into the end evaluation is not trivial. So there are quite a few steps, as we know, from generating the data, transforming the data. And the tiny models package does make it great, because you can just create that workflow while you're doing the training and then save that. And so you want to save the model, but not just the model, you also want to say the transformations of the predictors. And then also the cutoffs that you use from your training set. And you pull those through, because you don't want to take the top wind tile, for example, of the predictions in the evaluation set, because that's not fair. So again, the yardstick package is what we use. And just a few lines of code. So you could just load the yardstick package. And I have the URL there. And then you can define your class metrics. So these are the ones you saw on the table. So specificity, sensitivity, PPV, NPV. And that's a metric set. And then I'll walk you through a little bit of this code. So the D is the table you saw earlier. And we pivot that to be longer. So you have one row per patient per subgroup. You group by the subgroups. And then you use deeplier nesting function. And then you do a map across the different nests. And basically apply these class metrics function passing in the truths, which that second to last column and the last column in the data frame that you saw. And then once you do that, you basically have your results. And you can nest them and then pivot wider. And this is how it looks, similar to the table. Pretty few lines of code. And this works with large data sets pretty efficiently. And again, you can calculate AUCs a little trickier, but not much more so. And also confidence intervals can be calculated as well. So this brings me to some conclusions. Number one, our COVID-19 risk prediction model maintained good discrimination. The AUC was comparable between the training period and the replication period. But the calibration was diminished by sharp reduction in outcome of COVID severity, COVID severe disease, and death. And probably to fix this, we would need to do some recalibration of the model. And the second thing is that assessment of the model performance over time is quite useful and interesting. It was really worthwhile to understand what was happening. And we would advocate for a lot more of that happening, especially in the literature, where we see quite a few publications with clinical risk prediction models, but very little replication or assessment in other sites or even within the same site across time. And the last point is probably the most important is to assess the risk stratification models across the patient subgroups. And we didn't do this the first time around. We didn't actually look at what our data looked like by subgroups and specifically how represented they are with the outcome, which had a significant impact on performance in those subgroups in both the test set and the replication set. And so hopefully here I show you an approach to do that with your own modeling, pretty straightforward to look at that. And it's super important because we just need to pay attention to make sure that these kind of modeling approaches operationalized in clinical settings don't adversely impact subgroups that might be underrepresented. And so I want to call out one interesting paper in the literature by Mark Sandak at Duke where he looks at presenting sort of like a kind of a drug label for models, which I thought was really nice. And I put here he has an example in his paper, which I have a link for down the bottom. And it looks like a drug label and it just basically says, okay, this is how the model works. This is how it's trained. This is kind of a limitation. And so understanding the limitations of what population it was trained on can be communicated in this kind of thing. And this is a way more detailed than, for example, what you see in the tripod recommendations for publishing models in the literature. So I think this is really cool. I'm hoping to work on look at this approach more in the future. And some of the just sort of thoughts that just looking at, I saw on Twitter recently, a nice discussion, which I have this link here, about what do modeling choices impact performance in subgroups that are underrepresented in the data. So the kind of the excuse I would say usually used is that there's not enough data for these underrepresented subgroups. And that is true that there is less data typically for a number of reasons. But that's not the only excuse that bias exists. And modeling choices do have quite a bit of impact as well as transformations of data set of predictors and other things. And this is a nice diagram of where all those biases can be introduced and kind of ways to approach that. So I encourage you to look at that. And then just some thoughts about maybe figuring out ways to optimize models for representativeness in underrepresented populations. And I know there's quite a bit of work happening on that. So I look forward to that. So thank you for listening. And I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.


Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, Veeam, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, welcome to a special CUBE presentation here in Barcelona, Spain. We're live at Cisco Live in Europe. I'm John Furrier with my co-student admin, head analyst for networking and for Wikibon. Stu, we're kicking off Cisco Live. In Barcelona, it's the European show to the main North America show in the U.S. But really kicking off 2018 for Cisco and some stark changes to Cisco's positioning. Really, they've always been innovative, but you're starting to see what they're thinking in terms of cloud, multi-cloud, IoT, and the role of the network and the networking industry. Two different things. Again, we're going to break that down. Day one of two days of wall-to-wall coverage. Again, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Stu, I got to get your take. Yesterday was kind of a set-up day. Everyone's coming in for these conferences. Big story was the women connected women's conference with DevNet and across Cisco. Great turnout, great energy, and then today the keynote with Rowan who's up on stage for Chuck Robbins who did not make the trip. Really kind of laying out the vision for Cisco. Your take so far on Cisco, DevNet, the women's conference and the keynote. Yeah, so John, first of all, I know we're excited to be here. So it's first time we've had theCUBE at one of the Cisco Live events. We've done plenty of shows with Cisco, tons of Cisco people in the alumni database. It's actually second time I've done Cisco Live. The last time was 2009. My description in 2009 was you had network engineers that were in their wiring closets or somewhere in a dark dungeon. They kind of crawled out, got their CCIE recertification, got a couple of free beers and t-shirts and then kind of went back home after they did some networking. It's a very different vibe here. My question coming in to this show is how much is Cisco a software company? You used to, you talked about Chuck Robbins isn't here, but Chuck and John Chambers before him used to, they talked about the software innovation and then they pull a chip out of their pocket and say, we spent a billion dollars innovating on this chip. Now, what was nice here in the keynote this morning is a lot of talk about the future. Software is a piece of it. Intent-based, content managing the pieces. Maraki getting up talking about wireless. It's not about boxes, ports, cabling. It is about software, but Cisco's going through their transition, John. How do they go from kind of the quarterly sales targets of working with their traditional partners to this multi-cloud software world? Intent, absolutely a big piece of it. Cisco's got such a broad portfolio, John, so much to get into in the next couple of days. And good points, too, about the software role. And then Cisco's always been moving up the stack. They've been following theCUBE, you know we've been talking about this. You look at the old guard companies. Cisco falls in that category. Okay, the new guard companies, Amazon, cloud, and some new startups, they're playing with cloud economics. They're playing with a whole new generation of software developers. Gone are the days of waterfall. Hello, Agile, Agile programming and development. But Stu, the big contrast now with cloud is the perimeter does not exist. This opens up security, which is the number one thing on the keynote that Rowan brought up, as well as the main speakers. This is huge, because now there's no perimeter. Classic networking days are changed. Cisco's always been talking internally about moving up the stack. They're finally doing it. They're doing it fast. And they have to because of the air under siege. Yeah, John, so let's dig into that a little bit. I mean, you think back, Cisco was one of the four horsemen of the internet era. It was Sun, Oracle, Cisco, and I'm trying to remember who the fourth one was, but I think Intel was there. So Cisco's been there. Security always been part of the Cisco portfolio, front and center. Any customer I've talked to, I love, there was a stat up there that 71% of customers said that security might be impacting innovation for customers. And I joked, I said, well, 29% are living in a hermetically sealed underground bunker if they aren't worried about how security is going to impact what they're doing. Maybe they feel that they've solved it and they're not slowing down because of it, but absolutely, security front and center, a lot going on in that space. IoT, I have to be honest. Cisco's been talking about IoT for many years, and I felt like they kind of, for years, it was like, well, there's going to be trillions of devices and we're going to network them. And I kind of said, okay, that's nice, but really how are you solving the business problem? How are you helping me? And really, that's where kind of the update is to where they're going, where Cisco positions, where they have the assets. They've made a number of acquisitions in the space, everything from the SD-WAN, Viptela's company, we followed pretty closely for a number of years, as well as AppD or AppDynamics. We interviewed them at Amazon Reinvent. It was over a billion dollars for that acquisition, really a software company. Doesn't mesh with the traditional Cisco model, so a lot of changes going on. Cisco positioned for a lot of those pieces, but definitely a lot of challenges as well as opportunities for us.  One of the things that people, if you follow the industry know, if you're a historian like us, they got it right. Stu, their vision of internet of everything was absolutely spot on, just 10 years too early. They had that awesome campaign and it was more window dressing and vision, but it actually was panning out. If you look at what they were talking about 10 years ago about connecting devices, they pretty much nailed it. However, they missed a lot of things, so they didn't move the stack fast enough, in my opinion. And two, the cloud came on really, really fast, but now they're already seeing that as an opportunity. But it's a double-edged sword, like I said on my tweet during the keynote. They could make a lot of money with the cloud by doing multi-cloud, but it's a double-edged sword. If they miss fires, Stu, this could be a problem. So let's talk about that. What does Cisco need to do in multi-cloud to really be that TCP-IP moment? Because you got all kinds of new dynamics with networking, you got end-to-end, but now you have a surface area, including IoT, that's everywhere, smart cities, sensors, on-premises, and in the cloud, all over the place. So this is a huge, complex equation, but Cisco's not new to complexity, your thoughts. Yeah, first of all, John, nice job on-premises. We got it right. From cloud standpoints. On-premise, a shortcut that I, you always use, Stu. Absolutely, still talking about data centers, talking about edge computing, talking about those, but Cisco, like many of the, hate to say, legacy companies, had a little bit of a falter when we talked about public cloud. The whole inter-cloud message really was a little bit complicated. We talked to some really smart Cisco DEs and got to really understand it a little bit, but at the end of the day, Cisco really understands they have a huge piece of their ecosystem as the service riders, and that's who they're working with. Cisco is not selling to Amazon. Amazon buys from some of Cisco's competitors, but they're not selling to a couple of the biggest hyperscalers out there, and that is a risk for Cisco. But, huge ecosystem, thousands of service riders, that's who Cisco needs to partner with. That was part of the inter-cloud message, and that's been rebooted with how they're doing it. They really look at, in Rowan's keynote this morning, it was about the management interface. Cisco has always made lots of pieces, but the challenge is I've got lots of device managers, and how do I get multi-cloud? I'm using Amazon, I'm using Azure, I'm using Google. I've got my own data center, IBM, Oracle. Cisco partners with lots of these companies, how are they going to make it easy, and why do they have the right to be in the center of a lot of those discussions? They partner, yes, but I would argue that, if I'm going to be critical of Cisco, they got to partner smart in a smart way. So the kind of partnerships they need to do now is really joint engineering partnerships, because if you look at the big whales right now, it's Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The rest are all either customers, like the Facebook and those guys, but the real cloud that they really need to go after, and don't forget Alibaba and all the Chinese and European clouds as well, with GDPR, a lot of complexity there as well. They got to do partnering at a deeper level. So the new Intel inside model is over. It's now cloud inside with Cisco. They got to think differently. This is not an alliance with them as a channel partner or them in charge. They have to come in and understand that they have to peer with these clouds.  I met with them last week. Their site reliability engineering team is freaking phenomenal. They got chops, they know networking. They're going to push Cisco hard. Your thoughts. Absolutely. Look, when Google Cloud launched, I said Google has the best network in the world, stop bar none. Absolutely. There are SREs setting the bar for how people look at these environments. I didn't hear much public cloud discussion. Cisco, I'm worrying, is a little bit over rotating towards that IoT and edge piece. Edge does not get rid of cloud. Amazon's not going away at all. Cloud and Edge go together. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, you think they understand the edge and what that's going to take there? All of them have a play with devices. Even, Microsoft's phone might have failed, but absolutely they've got applications and they know what's happening at the edge. Google, come on, who created Android? They understand how to get there. Amazon's got Alexa all over the place. Google, of course, has their smart devices. So, John, didn't hear anything about voice in the discussion here. They talked about things like telepathy, which struck me as a little bit interesting. Google has communications. They've got WebEx as a platform. They've got Spark on the phone to be able to communicate. They've got a lot of unified communication. Collaboration. I mean, John, I know one of your topics of interest, not just the networking of devices, but the networking of people. Cisco looks a lot about it. Any take you want to have on that piece of it? Yeah, I mean, here's my take. I love this intent networking concept with context. I think they're spot on on that. I think Cisco really needs to add attention and reputation because as you have promiscuous devices out there, from IoT to wearables to automotive, you're going to have trust issues around the network nodes now that these network nodes are going to have different personas, if you will. So, if you look at that, I think they really need to add attention and reputation to what to pay attention to in real time and the reputation of, say, a device or node in the network. That has to be added on top of intent because intent is just contextual and they've addressed that. So, to me, that's the holy grail for Cisco. They got to build these new stacks with these new software variables so they can scale both in real time and kind of in a typical network way, which is normal for them, but real time's where it's at. Low latency, wire speed, this is the language that they understand, but bring it to the cars. Bring it to those devices. They got to nail that. So, Stu, they have to think differently and I think the re-imagining of Cisco, the vision is about looking forward. Rowan's speech today was awesome on that front. He took us to 2015. It was awesome. It was 2050. 2050, I mean. I mean, phenomenal. That is what Cisco needs to do. Show their customers that they're not just a gear company. They can't be a gear company anymore. They got to move to the software model and they got to have proof points. They got to look at apps that they don't want anymore and either get rid of them or double down. So, it'd be interesting to see that, Stu, what they will double down on. Is it Spark? I mean, I download the Spark app. I have no friends. Is it a social network or is it a collaboration tool like Alibaba Ding Talk? Right. I mean, it's not WeChat. It's not Facebook or Twitter. Yeah. Applications, Stu, they're kind of looking at the edge. They have to have a position there. Your thoughts. So, John, I think you're right. I was happy not to see a bunch of boxes up on stage talking about that. Now, not to get me wrong. We're going to be talking about a lot of the networking technologies. Where is the intent-based networking? Lives on the portfolio Cisco products. There is what they're doing with the service providers, what they're doing in the campus environment and from a wireless standpoint, Meraki obviously centered what they're doing there. They have UCS has been the workhorse. Really, Cisco in the virtualization age, they felt that they missed out on buying VMware. But UCS really took the virtualization age and drove them into a market that everybody kind of didn't think that they could get into, kind of expanded the TAM. But UCS has kind of plateaued out from a revenue standpoint and where can they go in the future? You don't see UCS was built for kind of big workloads. When we hear Dell and HP talking about how do they take compute to the edge, haven't heard Cisco saying, oh, their architecture wasn't built for kind of those small, low cost, low margin pieces. So where will they add value and get revenue there? I think hardware gets deprecated over time and it really is software. Where are they going to get that move? First of all, they made a number of big acquisitions but John, we haven't talked about, they've got somewhere between 50 and 60 billion dollars that's going to be repatriated back to the United States this year and that can make them even more acquisitive than usual. Yeah, they're going to have to definitely take that money from overseas bringing in like Apple did and then go on a spending spree. But Stu, let's kind of wrap the segment up on the kickoff. Talk about kind of where they should go. And to me, the big story at Cisco and following these guys over the past decade or so, you've seen them foundationally rock solid on networking. No doubt about it. And even UCS, you're kind of critical but also they've done a good job there. They had the foundational footprint and you're starting to see them move up the stack. And I think the big story to me is what DevNet's doing, going into their network engineering community and turning those guys into modern cloud native developers. To me, that is critical to Cisco. It's an investment. Is it going to be long in the tooth? Will it be real? To me, it looks real. DevNet can transform and create an innovation surge. Cisco needs that innovation to come from their own community. They need to come from new developers while keeping their existing. Because that's going to be ultimately what's going to be built on top of the Cisco Foundation. That is the network. And to me, I don't think they need to make it a lot of moves right now. I think, let the developers be creative with innovation. Use the cash to buy companies and let those flowers bloom. To me, that's the model. If they try to do the old internet days where they would just integrate companies in, there's not a lot of companies out there that can just plug into their model right now. Yeah, definitely, John. And we've been tracking for years, a lot of the software pieces that Cisco's been working in. They've been big supporters of us at OpenStack, in Docker, the container world, at the Kubernetes show. So Cisco absolutely beating the drum towards that software. It takes a little while for the big tanker ship that is the dominant player in networking to move from relying on that hardware. There's that big iron. It's not like they can just flip a switch and say, hey, we're software and our margins and our sales are all going to be different. UCS, great, but it kind of reached a high watermark and where does that transition and move forward to? And as you said, partnerships are going to be key and not just lift service, but true engineering, where are they going to develop? Where are they going to find there? And DevNet, great buzz already. The labs here have been just cranking nonstop since I showed up. Lots of people digging in and not just the old certifications. It's really, builders, John, is something that you hear the Amazon community talk a lot about. Definitely the DevNet group gets that mentality. And the community is technical, Stu, so they'd love to get their teeth on these demos. There's black hat demos, there's white hat demos for security, always good. I want to give a shout out to the Connected Women's Group at Cisco. I attended their session they had yesterday. It was kind of a get together, very inspiring. And as a man, inclusion is very key. And Cisco actually, Stu, is doing something really that I noticed, which is they've swapped diversity and inclusion, and they call it inclusion and diversity. And they recognize that the conversations that need to include everyone, then the diversity issues can be addressed. So shout out to the Women's Connected Network here at Cisco for that great event and got a great group of people. I also want to shout out to our sponsors that allow us to come to Europe to get all the top stories here at Cisco Live. That's the Cisco team here on the partner group and of DevNet, thank you to those guys at Cisco. So check them out. Veeam, IBM, and NetApp, thanks for your support. About two days of wall-to-wall coverage here in Barcelona live with theCUBE. We back with more coverage and interviews after this short break.


Patriot Prime Reviews is a channel for adult collectors and may not be suitable for children under 13 years of age viewer discretion is advised Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another Transformers review, but before I get started I need you guys to do me a favor if you're watching this video right here and are not a subscriber of Patriot Prime Reviews Please hit that subscribe button right now. It won't cost you a thing Will help me and my channel out tremendously. Also, make sure and visit my sponsor toyhacks.com Toyhacks provides reproduction and upgrade decal sets for transformer toys from generation one to the latest modern figures Make sure and stop by the toyhacks armory where they can equip your figures with new weaponry in multiple colors and toy stages provides backdrops for figure displays and photography Each purchase with toyhacks earns you RoboSense that can be used for future purchases. You can check your balance anytime in your cart Toyhacks is a company run by collectors for collectors So check out toyhacks.com and make your collection stand out from the rest and tell them Patriot Prime sent you now onto the review The featured button in this video is Transformers generation selects black Royche now normally I show off the box with these figures, but since Royche is a generation selects figure The box is just this plain cardboard box with a spray painted Autobot logo Transformers war for Cybertron trilogy and his name there on the sticker. So for the box There's really not that much to go over. He also comes with a sheet of instructions That as usual are very well illustrated and very easy to follow He also comes with two purple blasters and a little black dagger Now originally I wasn't going to get black Royche He came out a few months ago and though I thought he looked cool I really didn't have any desire to get the figure because I'm not that familiar with the character of Other than I knew he was the drone of black Zarek and then lo and behold Hasbro announces a Scorponok remold of black Zarek. So I had to get Royche here So before we get started, let's go ahead and add the weapons to Royche We're gonna put one weapon up here on his shoulder and We'll put one in his hand And also give him his black dagger Now as you probably know black Royche here is a repaint of Earthrise fast track So this review is going to be more of a comparison than an actual review since I have already reviewed Fast track earlier and they are basically the same figure now I thought they were just a repaint, but I was wrong taking a closer look at the figure Look at the head sculpts Fast track has these silver antennas on the back of his head where black Royche does not so there is one Difference that I wasn't expecting. I thought they're gonna be a flat-out repaint But there is a little bit of remold now, of course the rest of it is repaint and it looks Glorious, I absolutely love the gold and black coloring. It just really pops on This figure especially there with the blue on the chest. Let's see that is that's the same blue That's on fast track. Let's see any other similarities here No, that's that's pretty much it the rest is just all paint scheme And I love the purple wheels the purple weapons the red eyes the figure looks great I really dig this guy. He's much better looking in hand than what he looked like online So now that we've seen the robot mode. Let's go ahead and take a look at vehicle mode In vehicle mode Royche looks great. I love the gold and purple It just really works for this figure though He still has the same problem that fast track did as these sections here really do not want to stay Pagged together now here. He is with Earthrise fast track So you can compare them to the one big difference, of course is fast track does have those antennas on the back Where Royche doesn't they kind of look like Exhaust ports, but they look really really good together and can also be used to utilize of course the Titan master Like if you have Scorponok or Zarek here can plug right there on the blade that sticks out the back of Fast tracks they've got that going on So you can do that the exact same way with Royche now that is actually a pretty lame way to drive a vehicle I really wish there was a way they could have utilized the cockpit there to get the Titan masters more secured But it is what it is.  Well, if you plan on picking up the upcoming black Zarek release Without a doubt absolutely those two are going to go great together Just like fast track and scorpion now if you don't plan on picking up black Zarek It's kind of up in the air if you already have fast track You know what you're going to expect from black Zarek though. I really do like those gold and purple colors Now guys if you enjoyed the video don't forget to like don't forget to subscribe and don't forget to click that bell icon To get notified when I upload new reviews. Once again, this is Patriot Prime signing out


wow the second phase of skylights is open which means this hotel is now the biggest hotel in the whole of Africa so this is a phase two and right here is phase one I don't know if you guys can see it I've done a couple of videos on it and I'll show that when this one is complete it'll be the biggest in Africa this is gonna be my first time going to sleep in there so come along let's go


The communications network that you probably haven't heard much about. We're in the headquarters station of that network right here in the concourse of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Mars stands for Military Affiliate Radio System, and it's quite a system. As its name says, it's a military network, but it's manned on a voluntary basis by civilian amateurs. Hams, as they call themselves. More than 6,000 amateurs stations plus service-operated Mars stations at Army, Navy and Air Force installations all over the world make up the network. Its purpose is to promote interest and to provide training in military communications procedures and equipment. And to provide a network of thousands of stations to serve as an emergency communications backup if conventional communication should be disrupted. Worldwide Army participation is supervised by Army Chief of Communications Electronics. This old fella is typical of the kind of equipment in use when the idea started back in 1925 at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During World War II, operation was discontinued, but it picked up again in 1948 as the Military Amateur Radio System. Then in 1952, the name was modified to Military Affiliate Radio System. The name was changed, but the initials remained the same. M-A-R-S. There's an interesting story connected with this picture. This amateur rig in the Tokyo home of a signal-court captain named Joseph Zyglinski was General MacArthur's only communications link with Korea at the beginning of the Korean War. Regular communications were disrupted and for two days until Army radio equipment could be flown to Korea and set up. Joseph Zyglinski and other amateurs in Japan and Korea were it. If there hadn't been a handful of amateurs so enthusiastic that they would build transmitting facilities like these on their own, we would have been working blind that first couple of days. Today, Joseph Zyglinski is Chief Engineer of Mars here at the Pentagon Headquarters. Still not recovered from that amateur radio bug that bit him when he was about nine years old. We'll see more of the headquarters operations later, but first, what goes on out in the Mars networks themselves? On just about every major military installation and certainly at every Army headquarters, there is a Mars station. Here amateur radio fans who happen also to be in uniform can continue to progress in their avocation and at the same time serve a specialized military purpose. Servicemen operating a military Mars station learn not only military communications procedures and methods, but they get into all phases of repair, maintenance and modification as their time permits. They learn from each other, the old hands teaching the new, as has been the Ham's tradition since amateur radio began. At regular intervals, the civilian affiliates of Mars receive on-the-air training and communications techniques, procedures and equipment to enable them to function better as part of an emergency backup communications network should the need arise. Alpha-4 Uniform Sierra Alpha, Slant Alpha, Alpha-4 Uniform Sierra Alpha. In the Ham tradition, these sessions are as informal as they are informative. Good evening, fellas. This is Wade Nelms, the Director of the Third United States Army Mars, talking to you over Radio Station A-4 USA, located at Fort McPherson, Georgia.  Mr.  The oscilloscope will be discussed. There are many good manuals and textbooks on the subject. Okay, fellas, that's it for tonight. I hope the Clarence Health will improve and he will be back with us next week. In the meantime, I hope you will write him a letter, send him a Mars grant and wish him well. Clarence is doing a good job for us and let's... In addition to on-the-air training, Mars affiliates who have been with Mars at least six months can enroll for free courses in all phases of communications electronics. Furnished by the Army Signal Center in school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. These free courses cover just about every aspect of electronics as applied to communications. And Mars affiliates take advantage of every opportunity to dig still deeper into a subject that fascinates them. Well, they wouldn't be hams in the first place. They learn a lot from Mars. On the other hand, Mars and the electronics industry as a whole learns a lot from them. In Collierville, Tennessee, you'll find a case in point. The backyard of Paul Wilson, Mars affiliate A4HHK, holds a spare time project which for sheer size alone is a bit out of the ordinary, especially when you consider that it was all handwork done in spare time using surplus components supplied by Mars and a lot of typical ham ingenuity. But let's hear about it at first hand from Paul himself. Hello, I'm Paul Wilson, A4HHK. Glad to have you here. Come along and I'll show you around. I'm right proud of this installation you're about to see. But not being a millionaire, I could never have done this on my own. The surplus equipment Mars issued was what made it all possible. They supplied most of the equipment, some of the hardware, and we supplied countless hours and much elbow grease. Well, here we are. I mentioned time and elbow grease. It took nearly three years to complete this project, working mostly with hand tools, block and tackle, putting it together piece by piece and bolt by bolt. Oh, I had some help. My son Steve, some of the neighbors, and ham friends who took an interest in the project.  I worked on the project in my spare time, weekends, vacations, whenever I could. Actually, the major components of this installation came from three different military systems. The main tower structure weighing more than 10 tons was from an FPS3 radar. The power pedestal was from yet another radar. And the 18-foot diameter dish came from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where it was used in the UHF circuit. To make them work together, I had to make some modifications. I built this stub tower to raise the dish high enough to clear the platform when aimed at the horizon. I used tubular steel obtained from a nearby junkyard to make the supporting framework for the dish. And the counterweights are ordinary grease drums filled with steel reinforced concrete. It took a lot of planning and some experimenting, but we got it to working. A space-age antenna built on a shoestring. One main area of experimentation has been our moon-bounce project, bouncing Morse code signals off the moon and back to Earth. Some hams at the Big Dish in Erecebo, Puerto Rico recorded some of these signals, sent from here in Tennessee to the moon and back. And now we'll let you hear how they sounded. That rushing sound in the background is just the noise of deep space. Using only 300 watts of power, the signal is traveling nearly half a million miles through space at the speed of light. We've also run other experiments such as making communications through amateur satellites carried into Earth orbit as ballast aboard military rockets, making daily measurements of solar radiation, and tropospheric scatter transmissions over the horizon right here on Earth. In most of these, I'm working with Mars members. And since communication is a two-way street, it's always team effort. All of this experimentation is in terms of VHF and UHF, the very high frequencies and ultra-high frequencies, where there is as much to learn today as there was years ago when ham experimenters opened up new horizons with shortwave transmissions. We hope to find some answers and make some contributions, too. Meanwhile, we're proud to be part of the Mars network that stands ready to provide backup communications for our country anytime the need arises. Paul Wilson is one outstanding example of the dedication that Mars affiliates give to experimental and developmental projects. Oh, I could give you dozens more. New designs for antennas. Modifications of existing equipment. All done in the member's spare time. And often at considerable expense to themselves. And it is all aimed at improving communications. And communications is an essential of life in our time, especially in times of trouble. Remember Hurricane Bueller in the fall of 1967? Ham operators of Mars and the radio amateur Civil Emergency Service helped in the evacuation of thousands of people threatened by the storm in Texas and Louisiana. The same kind of work saved lives in the disastrous floods in Wisconsin and Minnesota in 1965. There have even been times when Mars was the only communications network left in service when conventional channels went up. Remember Alaska in 1964? At 5.30 on March 27th, activity was normal. People going home for the weekend. On board a ship in Anchorage Harbor, the early spring weather was welcome. A crew member was trying out his movie camera, taking shots of some people on the dock. Then at 5.36 on the ship, the horrified seaman took this shot as a huge chasm opened in the floor of the harbor and the water emptied into it like some nightmare waterfall. Soon after the inevitable tidal wave came rolling in with the force of a dozen hurricanes. The normal communications lines were completely knocked out. Yet now and here was the time the communications were most vital. To know where damage was worse, to know where health was needed most and what kind and how much. Amateur operators went into action. They used rigs in their cars and trucks and in their homes, around the clock. Sleep was forgotten as the news of damage in a refuge filled it into and through the network set up by the ham operators of the 49th state. Newly homeless hundreds were told where to find shelter and food and the air was full of messages, lists of the safe and the missing, requests for aid and instructions on how to deliver it. Before regular communications were restored, more than 10,000 emergency messages had to be handled by Mars civilian and military operators, proving once again the importance of a backup communications network when disaster strikes. Such is the nature of shortwave transmission that a lot of these disaster messages from Alaska to the continental United States were relayed through Mars stations in Hawaii. And the gist of all the action funneled through this station. Headquarters. This station is a central clearing point but thousands of messages each week. Many of them are personal messages from service people to their families. For in addition to its role as an emergency network, Mars serves as a massive handler of personal communications through its amateur operators both in and out of uniform all over the world. Also licensed operators in the services can use the headquarters equipment in their spare time as scheduled operations permit. Most of the communications traffic handled through here is in printed messages. But it's not unusual for a soldier in Vietnam to talk with his family here in the States by a combination of radio and telephone known as the phone patch. This phone patching is something you have properly heard about. The volume of calls from Vietnam has skyrocketed to several hundred thousand a year through the Mars facilities. The story of that operation is a remarkable one. This is a Mars station in Vietnam. Not too long ago there were none. Today there are more than 50 of them scattered across the combat zone from the Delta to the Highlands in the cities and in the back country and recently on hospital ships as well. Each station serves men of all services anyone on duty in the area whatever service arm he may belong to. To give you a feeling for how this unique and vital morale operation works let's follow through with a typical call from the beginning. A soldier, Sergeant Mike Webster has heard about a nearby Mars station where a man can actually arrange to talk to his family back in the States. This is the first chance he's had to come over and check it out. Sergeant, can I help you? Yes, I understand that I can call home from here. How does one go about that? Right, here at the Mars station we contact the United States by amateur radio and the radio amateur there in the United States contacts your party by regular telephone lines to your home. He charges a collect and then we hook you up through the Mars station here. What can they call me? No, it's better if you ride home ahead of time so they will be sure and be home. They told me all about how the Mars station worked so I can't wait to hear your voice. It might be late. I still haven't got this time different straight but let the kids stay up just this once. Remember the date now, Thursday the 17th. Going to talk to Daddy! Daddy, Daddy! Well, he says here in his letter that we should be ready for his call on Thursday the 17th. Isn't that wonderful? Oh, mommy! Thursday the 17th. Sherman Oates, California. Lenore Jensen, Mars affiliate A6NAZ and her husband Bob have just finished supper. Lenore, do you realize that in just three minutes you have a schedule with Vietnam? Uh-oh. And I have to tune the transmitter to a different frequency.  All right, mom. If you'll finish up in here. Sure, I'll finish. Okay, well, do. Like a great many other Mars affiliates Lenore Jensen regularly gives her evening time and the facilities of her excellent amateur rig to making it possible for American servicemen a long way from home to talk to their loved ones. A long way in this case means just about exactly halfway around the world. Some 10,000 miles as the short wave flies. Hey, A6, KPR, that's maybe eight years. Thank you. Alpha Bravo 8, Alpha Charlie. Alpha Bravo 8, Alpha Charlie. This is Alpha 6, November Alpha Zulu. Do you read? Over. Roger. Lema Charlie. Loud and clear. Over. You're good here, too. Good signal. Nice sunny morning over there. Over. Ah. The moon out back in the world? Over. Yes, it is. How many listings do you have waiting? Over. As many as you have time to run. Over. Okay. Read me the first three. A6, KPR, that's maybe eight years there. Roger, Roger. The first listing is going first with the person. It's typical of all the volunteer operators that they think nothing of giving of their time, their money, and themselves in this way. As they say, it's what they like to do. Going to San Diego, California. Callie Martin. Person as they start. Mike Worcester, the last name himself. Whiskey. Echo. Echo. For Mike Webster and his family, the big moment is about to arrive. Morning, gentlemen. As you're making your calls this morning, please remember that the phone patch is not secure. Do not discuss any classified information, any troop movements, any troop strength, or any troop location. Also, please do not mention any casualty information, and do not use any profanity. Sergeant Webster, would you please step in our phone booth, number two, where we are getting your party on the line now. Operator, I have some calls from Vietnam. Yes, that's right. I'll collect from this number. Now the first one is to San Diego area 714, person to person, to Mrs. Mike Webster. Phone number 792-6720. And the calling party is Mike Webster. Yes, I'll accept the charges. Hello? Mrs. Webster? I'm a Mars operator near Los Angeles. We have a circuit set up so you can talk to your husband by radio. That's wonderful. Well now, just to help you before we start, Mrs. Webster, remember this is a one-way street. We can only talk in one direction at a time. Now when you talk, your husband can only listen. And when you want him to talk, you say over and off, let the switch so he can talk back to you. All right? Oh yes, all right. Okay, now we're just about ready. Hello, Vietnam. Alpha Bravo 8, Alpha Charlie. This is Alpha 6, November Alpha Zulu. We're ready on that call to Mrs. Webster. Over. Oh, this is just wonderful. Mike. Well, it's just wonderful to hear your voice. Over. It's great to hear you too. How are the kids? Over. They're fine. They're right here by me, and they're just fine. We had Bonnie's birthday party last week. Would you believe seven years old? Over. Oh, I wish I could have been there. Can I talk to her for a moment? Over. Here she is. Hello, Daddy. This is me. Over. Say, how's my girl? She's just wonderful. Seven years old. Say, did you get my present? Over. I got the doll, and she's beautiful. Her name is Allison. Over. Allison. That's a very pretty name. Allison Webster. I like that. Over. Allison Webster. Allison Wonderland. Over. Well, that's a pretty name too. Look, honey. I've just got a couple more minutes, so let me talk to Mama. Mike, Junior's here too, dear. He'd like to just say hello. Over. Hi, Mike. How's my boy? Over. Hi, Daddy. I'm fine. Are you in the war? Over. Not too much, son. Don't you worry. I'm fine, and I'll see you in about two months. It'll be before you know it, okay? Over. Gee, they sounded great. I want to see you all so much. And it won't be long now either. Over. Thank goodness for that. We're counting the days. Let me know as soon as you know. Over. Well, I'll write you about it, and I'll write a little better than I have later. Okay? And I'll call you next month, again. Over. Wonderful. You know you're in our prayers every night. Over. Yes, I know. Look, love, our time's up. I'll write you more often, and you get the kids a big hug for me, okay? Over. I will. And thanks to everybody who had anything to do with making this possible. It just meant so much. Over. Yes, and that goes double for me. Well, look, I've got to get off. I've got a lot of fellas waiting in line, and I'll see you as soon as I can, sweetest. Goodbye, love. Over. See you soon. Goodbye, my darling. Okay, Vietnam, that was loud and clear. Now, stand by for Mrs. John Carter in San Francisco. This operation is no small factor in the high level of morale among American service people in Vietnam. And United States commanders recognize this. The telephone patch program, which the Mars stations are carrying out for the benefit of the American military men in Vietnam is a big operation, both in scope and in importance. As you have heard, some 50 stations are now operating in Vietnam, and additional stations have recently been installed aboard the hospital ships, repose and sanctuary to enable patients there to talk directly to their homes. It is an opportunity deeply appreciated by our fighting men to talk even briefly to loved ones 10,000 miles away. The voluntary work of the 6,200 civilian affiliates of Mars in the United States and of all of the Mars operators in uniform is truly a labor of love. Despite every difficulty, weather problems, and time zone differentials involved in talking halfway around the globe, to date literally hundreds of thousands of such calls have gone through, as have hundreds of thousands of personal printed messages as well. So I welcome this opportunity to express sincere thanks in behalf of all those who have benefited in the past and those who will benefit in the future for the work of all civilian and military alike who participate in the highly effective Mars operation. This as we said is the hub, the headquarters station, but the web of intangible energy which animates the Mars network reaches around the planet. Its objective is service and discovery. Its mission is to stand ready to function at a moment's notice providing backup communications in any emergency. People, all of them, in uniform, or out, are enthusiasts. People thought up in the benign magic of radio communications, hands, wherever you are their messages are flicking through the air around you at the speed of light. The air is full of voices all you need is the proper equipment to admit. And today more than ever before a great many of those voices belong to the people of the military affiliate radio system. Mars.


Felly mae'r ffordd yn ysgolwyr, mae'r ples 1761 a'r gwaith yn rhan o'r pethau hefyd. Felly mae'n gwybod i'n gwybod ym Mhwyslach, Cymru, ymlaen, a gydag yn fawr i'r ffordd ymlaen, a'r gwerthu'n gwybod i'r ffordd o'r gwaith i'r lluniau yma. Felly, rwy'n gweithio i'r ffordd. Ac mae'n gweithio i'r ffordd yma, mae'n gweithio i'r ffordd, ac mae'n gweithio i'r ffordd. Llywodraeth gyflym hynny, daeth yng ngosod Cymru. Rwy'n meddwl gweld amwysydd cwrdd, neu o ddim gallu llwyddo. Daeth fy modd ei Llywodraeth yn barf 5, yma yw'n gwybod ychydig i maen nhw'n gyrhau gryfed jarwyd nhw'n cefnod eotio'r groes cyfan. Mae'n gwybod dan cyfu a'n gweld ach chi'n gyrhaf. Ac mae'n gyfynwyd ychydig, fel oedol gyda'r acfer y brwy gladlywyr, yw'n system efallai i chyfwyr yn gyrwyl. Felly dyma'r credu cydwydden nhw'n tynnu'n gwybod o'r rongodion, sydd gan ddaw ar y ddollion a thech yn ddilyn o'r cwmdeithas. Gwyn dark ychydig oherwydd mae'n gwybod yn ddedig a fydd yn teimlo gwybod oherwydd a ddweud oherwydd roedd oes y ddweud ond erioed o grannu. Felly eu cofnodol efallai mae'n gwybod, nid yn gydig gwneud fwy o'r cwmdeithas. Mae'n gweithio gwaz i ddafyn yn yddydd o'r gweithfyrdd. ac yn golygu y cyfnod y cyffredin iawn, yn gwneud y cynhyrch yw i'r bwrdd yma yn ei wneud. Fe wneud, yn gwybod y parw 5. Y Llyfr Ddweud Lŵn Gwllfyn Ysgoliad yn y fwyllgor o'r Llyfr Ddweud yng Nghyrch Y llyfr ymlaen yw'r ysgrifennu i Llyfr Ddweud yng Nghyrch gwniol yma yn 1898 ac yn gwneud yr oedden nhw dr Alistair MacKenzie, James Braid, Fred Hortry, ac rwy'n gwybod Tom McKenzie o Yburter MacKenzie. Mae'r gweithio am y hyn sy'n rhoi gwylio lŵn. Rhyw o'r hal 3-5. Mae'n ei ddod o'r pryd i'ch ddod o'r ffynchau. Mae'n rhan o'r dda. Rhyw o'r ddod o'r ddod, o'r ddod o'r ddod, o'r ddod, o'r ddod. Mae'r ddod o'r ddod. Rwy'n gwneud 4 oed yn gweithio, ddod o'r ddod o'r ddod o'r 5 oed yn llun. Rwy'n wasbio'n llun o'r ddod o'r hal 3 oed, Ie, mae'n bwysig oherwydd mae'n gwneud am y dda ni nad yw'n fawr, ac mae'n dweud y buncarau. Mae'r gwasanaeth arall o'r corso'n credu o'r nghymru ar y ddyma ddweud ar y ddefnyddio'r 1 o'r 4 oly.  Wite, 6ol a tisig hit it three off the tee shot so let a long iron in. Of which I stuck into the right bunker. I've now played the shot and I'm sitting on the green but what interests me when I walked backwards and got the camera back on? I mentioned that the bunker's been a major feature already that we can see but I love the way in which it's positioned as well. Because a lot of bunkers you see, they surround the green Felly y ffordd yn mynd i'w ymddangos ar ein drwydd wrth ac nafnwn eithaf dwydd y siwr. Pes i ddefnyddio fod yn ddefnyddio fod yn rhan. Mae gwymau arall ac yn ddefnyddio fod yn ddefnyddio fod yn ddefnyddio'r ffordd. Yn ddechrau rhan ffordd yn cymryd ac yn ddefnyddio'r ffordd yn arfer. Mae yma'r llwylau o'r ddalfyddd o'r ddas yn dechrau. Mae'n bobl yn ynod, fel dw i fe, yna'r rhan ffordd am yr oedd. Mae'r rhan yn y cull o'r 15' o'r pahyr. Go on. Oh my word. That is quick. Wow. These greens are pure. We're playing what looks to be, I can't even see the flag at the minute. We're playing a little par 3, 10. Look at the views over there. I think. I'm trying to work that out. Is that perhaps 5 over that side? I need to get my bearings. But whatever anyway, what a lovely location that is. See what we've got for this par 3. We've got a little 114 yard pin stuck on the back and imagine a tiny green and some tricky bunkers. Well 13th holder, 12 and 13, back to back par 5. Both probably reachable in two with the kind of Sunday best, but arguably you would choose to do what I want to do, which is play an iron for your second shop, because again, it's that thing that we've seen on Verity Every All. Bunkers to catch sort of every distance in terms of the next club in. So I've got 235, so that's on my limit in terms of 3. We're not going to get there. Bunker right is 192. So I'm going to look to try and play something in between those two bunkers and leave a wedge in, but it's like I've said all the way along the course. It's more about a strategy of how you get your way around, because on the T-box didn't look anything from what I could see back there, but then this hole really opens up your second shop, but then, like I said, ask that question. And where do we want to be for ideally for our third shot in? So I've gone with 6 iron. I think that is bang on. Hopefully you're picking up some ball flight. So I've clubbed it so that shouldn't get to the second bunker, and I think that's bang on and leave myself a bit of a wedge in. A stunning design, you know, the layout and again, the way every hole and I've picked up on this one on 13 just seems to sort of meander and weave its way through the bunkers and then when you get to the greens, well, we'll talk about them in a minute or two, I think. Well, we did exactly that. I hope we literally got that yard which bang on in between the two. So I left a 50 yard pitch in and you can already see the movement in the greens from back here, so getting near the flag is not easy I've found. That could be good. Sit down, ball. Sit down. And you just see it just trickle away to the left-hand side because, like I said, reaching the green is one thing what I've found on a few of them. Putting on them is no easy task. These things are like lightning. Right, it's a nice visual for where we've just come from. Interestingly enough, and you won't be able to see on that camera there, to get to that pin there's a slope off this right-hand side which is then you're taking on this bunker just over the side of it to get the ball close. So I don't think we're finishing too bad of a position. Up hill put. And there are rarity as well because coming down it's light lightning as I've just said. Roll out. Just dying off to the left. There's that little slope kicking in there. I've never listened to my own advice so we'll assume we can make that one. And par 5, but like I said, back to back 12 and 13 really is kind of what the course is all about like I said. Not necessarily overly long but that strategy getting the ball from A to B is needs a bit of a thought. I've absolutely no idea on that ball has come to rest. Seriously. We've pitched it short so it's obviously hop. Ah! Well there you go. I hadn't addressed the ball thank God. It was literally hanging on by a couple of blades of grass anyway. We might as well stick around for the bunker shot what is now then. Grab. Ah! Not too bad. White 16 is clearly all where we can and you can have a bit of fun because it's pretty much an island green or we've certainly got water between T and green. We chose to play it off the white because it's the more fun if you like. We go straight direct over the water to the flag, the yellow teeth to the right hand side to the cut across the angle. So we've got 156 there's a bit of breeze I'm playing 7 iron and to be honest with you I've got to get every bit of it because if this hovers and stalls we'll probably get a bit of a splash. Right, come on hand. Oh that's good you know. Be right. Be right. Oh! He got the splash. Oh that was right on it. I said if it hovers and stalls and it did just a little bit. Oh my word. Do you know what in my head I was thinking going to home. I'm in the water. I said I'd make reference to the greens and you know what they've been absolutely pure from start to finish one to 18 and incredibly quick as well. There's some obvious breaks but there's also some subtle undulations that you can see even just in this green alone. So it's kind of important that you find the right tier I would say. But then the pace I genuinely have three putted on quite a few occasions. I just quite honestly maybe the fastest greens I've played on this year. I've done it again. Look at that. I mean I was just trying to sort of roll the ball up and seriously it's again it's gone past to sort of leave that uncomfortable one I would say. Incredibly good though and pure. Not the best of finishes in terms of that chip but I've got to say in terms of the game itself. Bunsfield Lynx how would I sort of summarise I suppose and it's absolutely immaculate as you can see or hopefully you've seen the greens have been arguably the quickest I've played this year in quite some time and they're not just fast they're true. Plenty of movements in them and they go back to everything I've said throughout is kind of the strategy in which you plot your way round is key to getting round here but any other key feature of course is just where it's located so close to the city centre makes it an ideal location for whether or not you fancy visiting the city of Edinburgh and then getting yourself a nice easy round of golf just a couple of miles outside of the city centre. Pretty perfect.


Let us now look at the functional architecture, that is, the suite of services which are offered as functions to execute important tasks in the domain of IPTV. So this involves essentially all the domains, but we are interested in looking at what exactly is the relationship of IPTV with the engine architecture. So we will start with three functional architectures. And then we are going to look at each of these functional architectures from the functions viewpoint. This will take probably this module and the next because we are interested in going into details in each one of the functional architectures functions. So basically the functional architecture is needed because we need the network functions to provide connectivity, IP address allocation and data delivery. Then we also need service functions. For instance, IP television content to be requested, to be initiated, to be delivered under certain QoS. So all these come under the umbrella of service functions. So primarily three different kinds of functional architectures have been defined and these are most natural. The first one is non-NGN based. When we say non-NGN, it means that any other ITUT or IEEE or 3GPP standard implementation is non-NGN implementation. So if any one of these is used, then the overall engine architecture is not capitalized. So the next one is engine architecture but without the use of IP, multimedia subsystem, the well-known IMS. So that's the second option. And the third option is once we do not have neither of these, in fact we have NGN and we have the IP multimedia subsystem all combined together, which is the best of all. So let's start with the background. So essentially the architecture which is discussed here in detail is NGN based IMS including architecture. And since the overall architecture is going to be such that it has to be backward compatible, so it is also generalizable for non-IMS based NGN IPTV services. So the IMS services in the case of non-IMS based NGN services is provided through something known as control functional block. Now these are the modules which are proprietary, which are provided by different technologies. For instance, as I mentioned earlier, IEEE based standard 3GPP and ITUT, etc., ITF, etc. So you choose either of them as long as it is not IMS based, it is going to make use of some functionality and that is what is addressed here as the control functional block. So it means that if you want to provide IPTV services, those IPTV services will have to be provided essentially through some way and those are the possible control functional blocks which are integrated in this generalized architecture. So the well-known modules in the NGN like network attachment and control function and the resource and admission control function, now these functionalities actually are provided by the same functional blocks for authentication, address allocation, resource control, etc. So it means that this architecture, the one that you are seeing right now is quite flexible, which is going to cater for NGN based non-IMS IP functional services as well. For now, let's look at it one by one. So we have the NGN architecture in the middle, we can see the service stratum, we have the transport stratum. Then on the left hand side, we have the end user functions. On the right hand side, we have the management functions and the IPTV content provider functions. Now a lot of functions within this overall figure and even when they're within the NGN architecture, we have the application functions, we have the service support functions and the service control functions and here you see the IMS here and then we have content delivery function and then we have the transport function as well under the transport stratum. So it means we have got a lot of functions, all these functions can be grouped together. So the headings that you see here are actually the functional groups which you can say have associated set of services. So let's start with the end user functions. So the end user function is actually the place from where special content request is initiated for IPTV. So it can be divided into two functional groups. One is the IPTV terminal function that is the user equipment functions and then the home network function that is how the user equipment is going to be connected through some kind of gateway mechanism with the NGN based IMS IPTV architecture. So as far as the IPTV terminal functions are concerned, these are typical device based functions which include taking the user click or user URL request. So it means a user clicks, it means it would be a control command, the system or the end terminal equipment is going to take that command and it is going to interact with the application depending upon what particular command the user has given. So it is also going to involve obtaining the service information, for instance, which programs are being offered at the moment. Then certain kind of encryption decryption and encoding decoding is also required. And then once a user makes a request, a reply comes back. So that reply is then decoded and finally displayed. So end user functions are very important. The home network functions are essentially related to networking. So having connectivity between home network and external network and including all the required services, for example, address allocation, if that is being implemented and if the forwarding has to be done based on IP routing information, then we have the application functions. Now the application functions actually sit on the farthest end. It means the user now from the ITF has the capability to choose certain content. Now this content is there. So it means the application functions would provide the user with the capability to select and purchase the content. Of course, this content will have to be provided to authenticated users and its execution is all dependent upon if the user has the subscription, which is available. So it uses user profiles and metadata. For instance, user settings, what are going to be the global settings in terms of time zones, the language settings, typical linear TV settings, the video and demand settings. If a user is interested in personal video recording, then PVR settings and then a certain a service action data, that is, if a user has carried out some action associated to certain service, it generates some data, but that data has to be recorded as well at the application. For instance, if a user pauses the video in the middle of say watching movie, then it needs to be bookmarked so that a user can later retrieve it. Likewise, recording the contents by the user actually has to be done in a methodical way. So a list has to be maintained in what exactly a user is recording. So it means the application functions are also going to be related to the content creation, content preparation, its encryption, decryption mechanisms and its overall protection so that non-authorized users do not view it.


Repetition and Rhythm, Using Songs in the EFL Classroom Songs, What Are Songs? Mary M. Webster defined a song as a short poem or other set of words set to music or men to be sung or single, and often stand alone, work of music that is typically intended to be sung by the human voice with distinct and fixed pitches and patterns using sound and silence in a variety of forms that often include the repetition of sections. I will like to emphasize on some major factors that makes songs in the classroom very important in learning a new language and the general upbringing of children. Repetition and Rhythm The terms repetition and rhythm are vital in the classroom, according to psychologists, they claim that songs help the body and mind work together, it has been found to stimulate parts of the brain, and also studies have demonstrated that music enhances the memory. Exposing children to songs during early development helps them learn the sounds and meanings of words. Dancing to songs helped children build motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression. For children and adults, songs help strengthen memory skills. Retentive memory can be achieved in kids through repetition and strong rhythms, I can recall that there was a study in 2016 at the University of Southern California, and it was found that musical experiences in childhood can actually accelerate brain development, particularly in the areas of language acquisition and reading skills. Using Music, Songs and Rhymes as a Teaching Aid I remembered when I started teaching English abroad, I had no one to put me through, no one to give me insights or share experience with me, I was literally stranded and had to learn all skills all by myself. At first, my classes were very boring I must admit, because I focused only on board work, teaching per se and left out the fun part which is using music, songs and rhymes as a medium to aid proper English language learning in the classroom. Some of my students do not like seeing me at some point, co-teachers and my headmistress often complain that some children sleep off during my lessons, I felt incompetent and devastated. Songs, a tool for memorization, coordination, and imagination. However, I promised myself to change the situation of things by attending other classes conducted by more experienced ESL teachers then I realized their tiny secret which is songs, music and movement, dance. After attending their classes on two different occasion I found out that songs actually help develop language and reasoning, a tool for mastery of memorization. Increases coordination, builds imagination and intellectual curiosity and keeps the children constantly engaged in the classroom. I discovered a lot of interesting activities that can be organized with songs. I think, that the songs are one of the best methods of familiarizing students with a new theme, or reviewing some forgotten grammar rules, or increasing the vocabulary of the students. While listening to music you enjoy as the same time you sharpen your language skills. Also, I agree, both reading and listening skills can be improved by listening to the songs with lyrics, carefully selecting songs. Children of all ages express themselves through music. Even young infants bounce and move their hands in response to music, it doesn't matter whether they are sure of the lyrics or not, they just follow the rhythm. Many preschoolers even make up songs and, with no self-consciousness, sing to themselves as they play. This is the part where the teacher must make sure to include the basic vocabularies or sentences to be taught in the class in the composed songs or he can carefully select from popular songs available. As far as I know, repetition creates retention or remembrance, while rhythm creates a fun and interest in the learning process, so the combination of the two creates a very stimulating environment in the classroom, kids likes to move and sing at any phrase or even mimicking a fellow's name. As an ESL teacher, I can't imagine what the mood of any classroom or perhaps mine will look like without music or songs involved.  The key to toddler music is repetition, which encourages language and memorization. Be for preschoolers, they like songs that repeat words and melodies, use rhythms with a definite beat, and ask them to do things. Pre-school children enjoy nursery rhymes and songs about familiar things like toys, animals, play activities, and people. See for teens, teenagers may use musical experiences to form friendships and to set themselves apart from parents and younger kids. Final Things to Consider Finally, the process of selecting a song is one of the most difficult aspects of using music in a lesson. Here are some things I probably need to think about to ensure that I get the right song for each lesson. I must carefully examine what it is I want my students to learn in the lesson, is it going to be a lesson focused on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, or a particular topic? What is the language level of my class, how old are my learners? The answers to these questions will guide me to which songs I will eventually use. In teaching of English, the use of songs in the classroom must not be ignored. Are you ready to teach abroad? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


On March 5th, 2015, sailors gathered in the Hanger Bay for an all-hands call and a United Service organization's performance with Admiral James Winnefeld, the Vice-Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff. The first thing I want to do is thank each and every one of you for your tremendous service and sacrifice. You are protecting America. We appreciate it, and thank you very much for what you do. He was accompanied by athletes, musicians, and celebrities including Kira Kazinsev, Vice-America 2015, and American idols Philip Phillips, Diana DeGarmo, and Ace Young. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and I couldn't have picked a better place to come. And I'm just so thankful, especially to the Admiral, to Admiral Winnefeld, for allowing me to be here and say thank you to our troops. Reporting from USS Carl Vinson, I'm Peddiot Sir James Guthney.


We're along Little Pine Creek in Lycoming County, which is a tributary to the Susquehanna River. We're standing next to a water quality monitoring station that was set up by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission back in 2010 in an effort to monitor the stream's water quality so that if there were any impacts from shale energy development that data could be collected and we could look at any trends to see if in fact there was an impact from drilling or hydraulic fracturing or production activities. So the five parameters, pH, temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and turbidity are all measured here on a continuous basis. Some of these parameters can really be helpful to determine if there was some sort of impact from upstream drilling activities. In particular, the conductivity of the river's water quality here can be a telltale sign if there was any spill of fluids from a well-drilling pad because the conductivity or the water's ability to transmit an electrical current would increase and therefore the conductivity value that we're recording would also increase. This data is sent via telemetry to a database and then this data is published online so you can look at real-time data on the water quality at any of these 60 stations around the basin. On an annual basis, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission then looks at the trends they see in the data and publishes a report that's online and can be available for anyone to look at if they're interested in the water quality at any of these locations. Looking at the data for this station here, we see that the pH is around seven so it's neutral right where it should be. The conductivity is around 160 millisiemens per centimeter. The dissolved oxygen was eight milligrams per liter so anything above five is where you want to be and the temperature was about 19 degrees Celsius or about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So all the water quality parameters are right where they ought to be.