Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Edge 2016, brought to you by IBM. Now, here are your hoes. Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. We're back, Michael Goodenoff is here as the chief technologist at TechScape, IBM partner, Michael, good to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. It's great to be here. Thank you very much. What a wonderful group of people that I'm kind of following right now, huh? It's been some great interviews. You know, IBM always brings great guests on to theCUBE and their main stage, it's always thought provoking.  I mean, they're trying to catalyze discussion and thought and it's...  Well, thank you, really appreciate you coming on. So tell us a little bit about TechScape and your role. So TechScape today is really heavily focused on a Cisco solution, we're in New York City and we're solving a lot of problems within that entire ecosystem of productivity as a whole, to be very honest with you. What's natural within the telecom industry is to shift towards the phone lines and the phone systems that are more advanced. That's a lot of where that initial collaboration kind of begins and then it goes well beyond that. It also brings in an AI layer to add into the total analytics and the assistance to that space. All of the advancements that TechScape has made has really been around top tier providers. I think we see a lot of people that have focused on trying numerous different technologies within their research and development and we've learned I think along the way that it's really imperative to kind of follow the top tier, follow the best practices, the compliance, the APIs and other components. So we've really built ourselves around a real strong foundation of those best practices and governance. Where do you find top tier? I mean, New York financial services you would think is top tier, right? Is that sort of going to school with those guys? Is it the cloud service providers? It is, so I mean I was born from cloud service providers really at the end of the day. IBM was really the birthplace of where I stem from and my focus, however from a New York where there's every business, every line of business within that city, smart buildings, intelligent buildings, building management, building ownership, construction, all new construction, the development they're in, all of these draw in that analytic side of the fence. They all draw in amazing amounts of data and needs for enhanced capabilities around either security or compliance that protects their employees, right? Along the life cycle of that development process. So there's so many innovations that are really hitting us from the city. It's extraordinary, it's everything from managing the buildings appropriately and effectively to being predictive in how to empty an elevator 30 seconds before a brownout because you don't want to have any major issues and people trapped within the building. So yes, really hedge funds are there to the financial side of it. They tend to be very, the financial vertical as a whole. They tend to be very ahead of the game. The financial industry is very much ahead of the game within the analytic side and their adoption has always been on the larger size of that innovation, so.  I know down, you know, greater New York City area tends to have some of the more advanced people. You've got the clients that need, you know, as many of the solutions you're talking about. You can talk about how the channel's been educating itself on some of these more advanced solutions. Yeah, you know, it's amazing because as a channel, as an organization within that channel, it's about architecting solutions and bringing them together, right? And so when you're a standalone organization, you know your products, you know the research that's been given to you, but if you're not the researcher, you truly don't know and understand the pros and cons to their true painstaking level, right? You haven't contacted the health tests, you haven't sat with the user experience testing, you get the research that comes from that. So I think ultimately, you know, we sit in a space where as channel partners, you can fill me in on exactly where you're at. We can find, we can form a consortium, we can form a group or a partnership where I can rely on some of the intel and development that you're doing and you can rely on that from which I'm doing. We can share products and product stacks. And so it is important to make sure that the connectors we're using help within the migration process, help within the evolution of the life cycle, help within the advancements of AI or the cognitive platform, the adoption of, and the real key is intelligent business processes, right? And that's what leads us into the business intelligence, which leads us into the AI, which leads us into that cognitive side. And so the birth of virtualization, the birth of an advancements within these layers of technology have really given us the ability to manage a micro system, right? A microcosm of technology. And by managing that, we understand capacity planning, we understand the fundamentals that we're going to bring into a larger analytics platform. And so really, our evolution has been throughout the partner side to understand that, to understand your experience, because I'm one-sided. I know my customer and I know their experiences. Yeah. So you set yourself up for your co-founder of something called the Cognitive Consortium. Most people are still kind of getting, you know, wrapping their brains around the whole cognitive term. What caused you to found this and give us a little bit of unpacking of what that group is? IOT is another piece that's an evolution from the cloud, right? Developers getting an ability to develop something for $47 because it's sensors and a simple processor, and actually testing that and developing a platform within the cloud. It's a phenomenal place where we're taking, you know, the average college student is coming out of school now, not to try and become a major place in a corporation. They're not really building, they're building a resume around, I'm going to build a company, a technology firm, a software, an IOT device. I'm going to, because they got the tools. And that's what we've done. We've given them the tools now in an open source, in a community way. And that comes from the open, you know, that open world at the end of the day. But we've given them the ability to find all the information. 20 years ago, we were rolling out the first, I was telling people they had to get off their physical calendar, and they were freaking out, right? Now, and it went from- Have the date timer. Right? And it went from mice, and it went from keyboards to being gyroscopes and GPS systems. The unbelievable productivity in the past 20 years is absolutely amazing and extraordinary. And so with that, there's the birth of the need for solving major problems. Like what's happening in smart buildings. Like what's happening, you know, we're dealing with projects with NASA right now and the International Space Station. We're dealing with projects around agriculture. You know, water conservation, world hunger. They're real problems that can be solved with IOT. They really absolutely can with the tools that we have at our fingertips today. It is an amazing time. The question becomes, how do we truly know that we're successful, right? We haven't had a time in history where we could map our roadmap to success and analyze it and almost be predictive on it. That's the dawn of this era. And that's the extraordinary part of what we're about to be, what we are being birthed into.  As long as they get, it builds off of an intelligent business model. They can't be pying in the sky in it. They can't be, you know, they have to come into it understanding what their growth expectations are going to be or their market is, right? Sorry. I love this discussion. You talked about, you know, the box seller and we talk about it all the time as that business is going to go away. And everybody talks about wanting to be a solutions provider, but so often that means, okay, we do a VMware solution or an SAP solution and Oracle solution and that's fine. You're taking solution to a whole new level. We're solving some of the world's hardest problems. Okay, so you might need Oracle or SAP experts. Fine, great. But you also need some creative people. What kind of skill sets comprise, you know, the folks in your organization? You know, it's pretty wonderful, right? We have chief marketing officers. We have astrophysicists. We have astronauts. We have chief technology officers. We have people who are working on, and I want to share the stories, but I just so can't because they're, but working on the most amazing IoT technologies that are solving major problems around the airline industry and the train industry and then not so major issues, you know, issues around how to give advancement to robotics to our students, right? Which is much more giving and much more fundamentally, you know, at the core of what we do. But, you know, we're confronted with a problem from one of our members and they say, hey, this is happening and we bring a round table together to discuss it and to talk about it and talk about what architectures work and how they don't work. What data modeling is good or isn't good. And you find expertise in so many corners and it's a community. And that's the whole key, right? That's the huge call to action for you folks. And it always has been, to be honest with you. My knowledge stems from IBM, which was a community at the time and I was born to the best education in my opinion at the time of the greatest minds ever, right? And so that was the main frame all the way into the virtualization onto the X86 or the SystemX platform, right? So it's just been an amazing experience straight across the board. Talk about the data architecture of these IoT systems. I read a stat, I mentioned it before Stu, that David Floyer, one of our senior analysts, predicted that 90 plus percent of the data that lives out at the windmill is going to stay at the windmill, is going to stay at the devices.  And I saw that, and I've seen other stats, maybe half, 40%, but he's saying 90, 95%. The vast majority is going to stay where it is. Analytics will get done there. Add some color to that. What do you see in your practical experiences? You know, I think the key is security, right? So the key is where does the device sit and what does it do and what is it capturing? So right now I think what we have is a small problem around being able to secure the transmission of that information back, right? We're starting to see the birth of mobile chipsets that can be put onto these devices at a very inexpensive cost. The Wi-Fi, you know, the layer around security as a whole has been a major issue. If the user's walking through a mall, you can come up with plenty of examples of what might happen when they, you know, go through any type of a wireless system. I think we're now moving into the point where the protocols are matching what we need, not only are the protocols, but the language that's on the other side of it. So we're not just talking about a binary level chip. We're talking about something that has intelligence that's sitting over there, Intel Edison. There are just so many examples, right? Raspberry Pis, there's just so many examples right now. It's ridiculous. The Latte Panda just launching out with the Windows integration layer to it. So this brings a higher ability to process at the end. The question is, do I want to, sending binary data is a wonderful thing, right? I mean, at the main frame, right, at the end of the day that was really one of the most secure ways to deal with it. But today I think we have the ability to deal with that processing at the end. And the question is, can I consolidate that data string? Can I, and it's the cost of moving data that's really the problem in today's world, right?  In order to truly run a true cognitive platform or a platform that's going to allow me to process hundreds of millions of transactions within seconds, it has to be as close as possible to this CPU, right? So, I don't know, I'd love to believe that. But this is a dumb terminal, like it comes back to the basics of where we've always been with where that binary code lives. So right architectures are going to define it. So it remains to be seen. And then you mentioned connectivity. So everybody talks about instrumenting the devices out there, but there's got to be connectivity or else you're doing truck rolls. Exactly. So what are you seeing in terms of the connectivity infrastructure that is out there? Is that? I see, I see, no, no, it's brilliant. If you really want to know the truth, you know, you're looking at the AT&T's and the Verizon's of the world. They're abandoning that public cloud platform. They're getting away from that commoditized layer. They're staying true to what they are, which is connectivity. They're creating a connector. They're creating that outlet. And that's again, something that's been discussed many times here, right? It's about really creating that connection, that connectivity or that transformation or a translation of data point to point. So it becomes an aggregator, really. It becomes, you know, how are you going to either aggregate or deal with that data where you're going to put the right engine right in and to what point. But, you know, it's really interesting because if you look at the Microsofts of the world, they're creating a partnership now with the telecom partners that are out there in the world and they're trying to expand into that telecom world vastly because again, it comes down to the connectivity in that space. So that whole world is really transforming right now and going through a major transformation. And the truth is, it is going to be the cognitive layer or the analytics later and also that AI layer, right? It's kind of a beautiful thing if you think that all I need to do is train my AI to take some actions, my cognitive platform to take some actions. If a lot of these cloud providers keep within the same actions as we go, that connection, all of those components, they can be driven automatically and predictively plugged before we hit their problems. And that is where I see the vision of our future is being no longer caught in the middle of fire drills. We're going to have time to sit and look at models and incredible models that are going to solve our problems like we've never been able to fathom in the past. And I'm so excited by it because it's the community. Watson's been there, but it's the community that brings it to life. Mike, you're pretty passionate about the technologies you're working on. Before we get to the end, I wonder, can you share a little bit about that you've got some military veteran outreach programs that you're part of? Share it with our audience. Yeah, you know, I think I got a number of different really things that I'm passionate about. You know, the military right now is really a major focus for me. We just did a major piece at the Channel Partner Show out in DC. We brought a number of women veterans to the show and they were able to experience the entire floor. They were able to experience looking at things from a project management perspective, from a technology perspective, looking at things from a logistical perspective, identifying where they might plug in when they get out of the, you know, when they're getting home. We met some really brilliant individuals out there. You know, honestly, some of them just leveled me.  And it really, it speaks volumes to the way the military is kind of integrating technology into their average soldier. And it's a very different thing than when I was in in the early 90s. We didn't have any technology.  So it's such a different world. And these folks come back really understanding so much more. It's about plugging into the industry. And so my outreach has always been to getting them involved in learning or understanding how they can plug their skills and expertise into the system. And there's some great success stories, obviously, that have really come from that military background. So yeah, it's a very passionate thing for me. And yeah. I love the story, Mike. I mean, your website is great. If you want ordinary, you're in the wrong place.  So congratulations on what you've done with your organization and good luck. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. All right, keep it right there. But Stu and I will be back. It's a wrap. Day one, this is IBM Edge. This is theCUBE right back.


Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with industry expert and the founder of the term technology metals that Jack lifted. How are you today, Jack? I'm fine, Tracy. Thank you. Jack, you were fantastic at the technology metals summit, so let's start there first and foremost. What was your favorite panel? I was extremely interested in the panel on the various alternate technologies for the separation and purification of rare earths that got my wrapped attention because it was the first time I think that all of the experts were together and could talk to each other as well as answer the same question. That was very interesting. And, of course, for all of our audience members, we will be publishing this panel. It's just being edited right now. We had how many? We had seven experts from seven different firms. Yes. And then the panel beforehand, we had an additional extraction technique process because we couldn't fit him, periodic products, on the final panel. So of course, we did. We had seven people on the panel, seven different companies represented on that particular panel. And prior to that panel, we had an eighth technology extraction process. Can you tell me what was the most surprising thing that you heard from that panel? How far along they are. This work has been completely masked by the industry's interest only in the share price of the various companies. In fact, as far as I could tell, all of these technologies are allied with a particular rare earth junior so that they're not competing with each other. They've already competed and been chosen by a rare earth junior. It's really interesting to see this. So the technologies are each backed, so to speak, by a particular junior, which means that they are focused on a single type of deposit. Now that's the interesting thing because in fact, I think all of them have universal application, a general application, let's say. But we heard about their application to particular rare earth projects. There's a lot more to tell about all of these technologies, a lot more to hear. All right, so speaking of that, I'm going to put you on the spot here, Jack, and we're going to go through the list. Of course, we had Jay Pickerts from Rare Element Resources. Frankly, he was one of my favorites on the panel. I thought it was extremely articulate and I enjoyed receiving an update because Rare Element Resources tends to be on the very conservative side in discussing their technology. Did you have anything you'd like to add for our audience on Rare Element Resources process? Yeah, I was very impressed and I've been calling their process what I knew about a targeted solvent extraction, by which I meant targeted to their deposit. But they urged me to call it zero discharge or zero effluent type of solvent extraction. And what they're emphasizing is that they have no waste product, no waste stream. And since we need to know, from a chemical engineering point of view, that when you're processing things like separating, you're separating where it is, sometimes half the cost can be just disposing of waste products and managing the environment. Therefore, I believe that the solvent extraction system developed by Rare Element Resources is state of the art. Okay, well, that's, I appreciate your feedback and for our investor Intel audience, please note that Jack Lifton did not moderate this panel. He actually spoke and we're going to talk to you about this in just a minute. But let's run through the rest of these gentlemen, please. Neil Izat from IBC, Advanced Technologies, which of course is supported and endorsed and represented by UCOR, Rare Metals. Tell us a little bit more about this. The gentleman who spoke is the son of the man who actually made this technology commercial and has worked on it for about 50 years. And I believe that company's been in existence for about 25 years. There's no question that the process, the molecular recognition technology is now one to be called a standard process. Again, its application to UCOR is a particular application, but it has broad application and it's already in use in several industries. I believe precious platinum group metals and I know for a fact it's used to purify copper and enlarge copper refineries. So it's application to where Earth's was the interesting part. And of course, I think that Mr. Izat was extremely technical, but it was very interesting and I urge people to follow the technology. Speaking of technologies that can be used in other industry sectors, we of course had Texas where Earth resources, K Technologies group, Wes Berry was actually speaking on this panel. So I found K Technologies very interesting and enjoyed the team that was there. Yes, the K Technologies has developed continuous iron chromatography, which is perhaps a mouthful. But in fact is the logical development of iron exchange chromatography, which was the original process used to improve the separation of rare earths about 50 years ago, just during and after World War II. Continuous iron chromatography is the current state of the art of iron exchange chromatography. And it's again applicable across the board has been used for example in the uranium industry, the fertilizer industry, to separate zirconium and hyphenium for the nuclear industry. And now is being applied to the rare earth industry. I see very, very bright future for continuous iron chromatography. Very interesting, but I want to just jump forward here. The keynote presentation by Amanda Lacaz, you did a great job of introducing her. Can you tell us what surprised you? I noticed Linus was up 42% last week with their stock. And actually had to put a news release out explaining that they did not have news at their stock. Do you think it's because Amanda was in North America, Jack? What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, yes, actually the Linus story is getting better by the day. It looks like they're going to be successful. They're going to make a success as measured by profitable. That's the important thing. So that it looks like Linus has done the right thing, as we like to say in the USA. And it's working out. That's why the stock is going up because the news from Linus is positive. There's no negative news, deadlines weren't missed, the projects didn't not run. It's the thing that people want to hear and quite frankly, let's be honest. At this moment, light wearers outside of China, it's the only game in town, so you better play it. Well, I personally enjoyed Amanda's presentation on a number of levels. I loved how she talked about operations, bottom lines. I liked how she quoted you, Jack. And then I wanted to ask you, were there any surprises from the panels that you thought were interesting that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise had you not been at this event? Tracy, there are actually too many to comment on. Let's put it this way. It was a great learning experience for me. I know that people don't think I do this, but I actually was listening and I was making notes because a lot of things were. People have to, you can't just pick something out of the air. These are holistic stories. These were development companies. And quite frankly, the field is narrowing dramatically, but the survivors are strong. They really are. I realize the market is down. It's hard to find a capital for development, but the market has chosen the survivors. And I urge investors to pay attention to the fact that these companies have fought the good fight and they're still there, support them. There is no company out there in development that I don't think should be brought to into production. I mean, today. Jack, you were absolutely fantastic at the Technology Mental Summit. I understand we're doing another one in May or June. So take a look at your calendar and get back to me as soon as possible. And as always, it's a pleasure. Okay, thank you.


There has been an enormity of artifacts and structures discovered in Mexico this year And we have news to bring you guys of another stunning discovery one which belonged to the legendary Lord Pacal You heard that correctly guys, so wait do you hear this? Archaeologists are describing the discovery as a landmark moment as they announced what is thought to be a mask belonging to the most important figure in Mezzo America Pacal the Great The sarcophagus of King Pacal is one of the most talked about subjects when it comes to the question of alien technology on this earth The sarcophagus lid of this great Mayan ruler has some pretty curious depictions it appears to show the king operating the controls to a spaceship Complete with life support and a huge flame at the exhaust it is Incredible and this leads to the speculation that Lord Pacal was an ancient astronaut This recent discovery by the National Institute of Anthropology and history is important because we know very little about the life of this great leader and indeed the technology He appeared to have had Having become king at age 12 Under Pacal the great's 68 year-long reign the ancient city of Palenque Prosper and he instructed the building of its finest architecture the newly discovered mass depicts Pacal in his old age At the end of his reign a perfect rendition to accompany him on his way Knowing that Pacal the great ruled until his death at 80 years of age and that the coated face Resimbles an old man. It is very likely that the sculpture symbolized it It is noteworthy unlike other Mayan sites where representations are generic and Palenque many of the features We see in mural paintings or stone carvings our faithful reflections of specific characters The mask was discovered in a building called house II. Other ritualistic objects were also buried with the mask Palenque was a Mayan city and southern Mexico from 226 BC to 8800 located near the U Sumasienta River archaeologists believe ancient residents had developed a special Relationship with the river and offered objects to encourage its ecological sustainability Nearby another structure now called house C would have been used around the same time archaeologists believe that there was a pawn to the northern end of a space between the two houses Measuring 6.5 meters long by 3.5 meters wide and 20 to 30 centimeters deep the two places have some of the best examples of mural painting in Palenque One of which is the site where Pacal was crowned as a young boy According to an oval tombstone depicting him receiving a headdress from his mother archaeologists also uncovered a figurine resembling a river shrimp with lilies and fish accompanying it Together they believe these items represent the importance of the aquatic world in the area and the society's reliance on the nearby river The archaeological team is working under a grant to restore the historic area to prevent future damage They say they will conduct a structural analysis before continuing excavations While the specific origins of the stucco mask are unknown Experts noted its naturalistic size and style The artifact they added was part of some architectural decoration A UNESCO world heritage site Palenque's ruins continue to offer fresh glimpses of the lost Mayan civilization Palenque was at its height between 8500 and 700 the elegance and craftsmanship of the buildings as well as the lightness of the sculpted reliefs With their Mayan mythological themes a test to the creative genius of this civilization Earlier this year archaeologists harnessed sophisticated technology to reveal lost cities and thousands of ancient structures deep in the guatemalan jungle Confirming that the Mayan civilization was much larger than previously thought From its heart in what is now guatemala the Mayan empire reached the peak of its power in the sixth century ad Although most of the civilization's cities were abandoned around 900 ad That's it for now guys just another piece of history that was previously lost The mystery of lord precal and his fascinating spaceship depiction may still one day reveal the hidden truth about our ancient past Comments below and as always thank you for watching


This study investigates the possibility of using exosomes secreted from pre-differentiated stem cells to replace stem cells in order to facilitate bone regeneration. Exosomes were isolated from stem cells that had been pre-differentiated for either 10 or 15 days and then loaded onto 3D printed titanium alloy scaffolds. After 12 weeks, it was observed that the exosome loaded scaffold was able to regenerate bone tissue just as effectively as the scaffold without exosomes. This indicates that the exosomes may be responsible for the successful regeneration of bone tissue. Furthermore, the researchers found that the exosomes contained specific MRNAs, which could potentially explain how they were able to stimulate the PI-3K slash AKT and MAPK signaling pathways, leading to the activation of osteoblasts and ultimately the regeneration of bone tissue. This article was authored by Meng Meng Zhai, Yi Zhu, Min Jing Yang, and others. We are article.tv. Links in the description below.


Okay, so not too long ago. I sent out a survey to my patreon supporters to let them vote on What the next series is going to be on and they had a few different options and the voting was split between two series one of which was Small web server hacks or tricks and the other one was video editing with blenders We got two different ends of the spectrum there. So of course, I'm gonna be doing both But first we'll be touching on the small web server tricks. So On my second channel, which is the hardware channel I'm currently working on a serial port hacking series where I'm taking apart different devices and getting Root shells on them using the serial port pogo plugs routers modems that sort of stuff So be sure to check that out if you haven't But since I'm working on that and I'm going to be doing a little bit of Software on that end once you get the shell I'm gonna start off by having some of those videos on this channel where we set up some services on these small devices since Small web servers would be a good choice to put on these devices So after that then we're going to get into these small web server Videos, it's just gonna be tricks on how to get minimalistic web servers on there You may have seen some tricks like using netcat to serve up a web page But I'm gonna take that steps further because in most those trials. They're serving up one static page I'm gonna show you how to create a a web page with embedded images and other things so that It can all be served up with netcat. I'm also going to show you other tricks on how to get Minimalistic web servers running so after that short series then we'll get into the blender video editing where I'll go over again I've done motion tracking But we'll do a little bit more with motion tracking and we'll look at look doing things called Pin drops or callouts in blender using motion tracking will get into camera tracking as well But then we'll also be going over basic video editing how to import video Fade from one video next how to add effects how to change the timing all this stuff Basically that we just went over a few months ago with Kate and live we're gonna do them in blender So I hope you're looking forward to that and I thank you for watching as always visit my website films by Chris calm That's Chris of the K. There's a link in description It's a great place to keep up to date on all my videos from both my channels Be sure to subscribe and also check out my second channel. Have a great day


The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC says it has little role to play in the conduct of direct primaries of political parties and stakeholders bicker as Lagos for Lagos joined the People's Democratic Party, PDP, over irreconcilable differences. Well this is Plus Politics, I am Mary Anacorn. The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC says it has very little role to play in the conduct of direct primaries and bi-political parties. Professor Yakubu Makmud, INEC chairman disclosed this when he met with members of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation in Ibucha, the meeting following a resolution of the House mandating the committee to interface with INEC on the cost implication of direct primaries parties as contained in the 2021 Electoral Act Amendment Bill. Representative Mokta Bakterra for APC Bologna stated that Makmud told lawmakers that the conduct and funding of primaries were basically the function of political parties and not the empire. Well joining us to discuss this is Gideo Lagoon, he is a legal practitioner, and Beodum show me a political analyst. Thank you so much gentlemen for joining us. Thank you very much, it's a pleasure to join you. Okay great great great. Before we start this conversation, last week I spoke with a commissioner in INEC in charge of voter education, Mr. Festa Sokoye, and I did ask a question about this direct primaries issue and INEC's position on it, the cost implication, and the bickering over it. Let's take a look at what the INEC commissioner said and then we will start this conversation. You see the commission really does not want to get involved in the debate on the issue of direct or indirect primaries. The truth of the matter is that within the existing legal framework, the Electoral Act 2010 as amended that is in existence as of today. The law provides that political parties may adopt direct or indirect primaries or indirect primaries. We have monitored the direct primaries by some political parties, so this direct primaries is not new to our electoral legal framework. Yes there is no doubt whatsoever that if all the political parties adopt direct primaries it will involve cost and that indirect primaries involves less cost. But that is neither here nor there. What is fundamental is that Section 4 of the Constitution of Nigeria gives the National Assembly the power to make laws for this country. Secondly, if you also look at Section 228 of the Constitution, it also gives the National Assembly the power to make laws relating to the internet democracy within political parties, including their primaries. So as far as the commission is concerned, if in their wisdom the National Assembly makes provision for only indirect primaries and the President assays to meet, we will find ways and means of implementing the internet of the law, because that is what we are obligated to do. So I'm going to start with you, Ambassador Logo. Mr Okoye was saying obviously diplomatically that he does not want to get into that conversation or the debate about direct primaries and the funding. But looking at the existing laws and of course the electoral act and what the National Assembly is proposing now, how feasible is this especially with the tag of billions for conducting the selections? Apparently it's the responsibility of the parties to fund their primaries. What we talk about primary is we talk about the first aspect of presenting candidates to go and represent the parties at the general elections and that is left to the internet democracy of the party. And I think the debate now is whether it's costlier to have direct primaries or by delegates which is indirect and the third one that is allowed under the act that is now being amended is by a consensus where you can all agree that okay we are not even going to conduct any activity, we just consider the fact that this person should go and represent us at the general polls. And of course it's not the business of INEG to make money available at the primary level. I think the role of INEG as stipulated is minimal, which is to carry out oversight functions and monitor the activities in a way that we have credible free and fair primaries. And then for those who believe that they have the popularity with the words and the grassroots, they may not be afraid of the primary selection because when you talk about the primary, all the card holders in the party can come out to choose who their representative by the election will be. When you talk of indirect, that means some delegates will go and represent them at the convention to choose candidates. And the candidates that are chosen there, that decision becomes binding on the other parties. So if you ask me, the direct primaries appear to be more representative of democracy than the indirect. And when we even talk about the cost, it's probably because we are making reference to our society where the processes are so highly monetized. In an environment where you can deploy IT, you may not need to gather in a physical space to carry out direct primaries or indirect primaries. When a decision will come, for instance, may be exposed to corruption like incentives, giving them money to ensure that they vote for a particular candidate, then you may be talking of cost. And for anyone who wants to venture into politics, you should expect that it's capital intensive. But then credibility of those who are involved in this direct primaries process is what has been called to question because you just mentioned the issue of technology. We're yet to deal with the teething problems that INEC is facing, especially with what we saw in Anambra, the beavers, malfunctioning. These things will always happen. But then when we want to develop or push for such technology used during direct primaries, then we need to also look at the credibility of the people who are handling the technical part of it. Who's to say that there's not going to also be some form of inducement virtually? You know, within the human circle, you may never have a perfect presentation. But you upscale, like you brilliantly mentioned now, we have the infrastructure gap to support what is ideal. Whether we like it or not, the economy of the future, the governance system of the future is artificial intelligence driven. So we need to start from providing electricity, providing the infrastructure that will support effectiveness and efficiency. And if that is the direction the government is moving, then you provide the template for those who will operate within the system to keen to it. If, for example, now by dividends of governance, we have constant electricity, IT facilities are affordable, people can engage virtually, effectively. Then we won't have to be talking about mobilizing millions of people to Abu Jhabi because we want to conduct primary elections. So that's what we are saying. So and elections are critically tied to governance. When people are elected into offices, they should look at the future and put things in place that we enhance performance, improve our circumstances and ensure that we catch up with the system in the global arena. There are examples of good governance. So for me, if we have these challenges, it's because we have made a choice not to progress as a nation. And of course, if it is very important to the nation, we prioritize and ensure that those things are put in place. They are not rocket science. They are not impossibilities. They are possible. Some countries of the world run this system effectively. Okay.  So there are a group of CSOs who have disputed this 500 billion claim just as you have come up with an IT aspect or a perspective as to how we can reduce costing. They're not just asking that the federal government, just to send the idea of 500 billion cost. They're also questioning why it's taking Mr. President so long to extend to this bill, even after INEC has responded to his message. You know, let's put it in perspective. The president has about 30 days to ascend the bill of veto it on the transfer to his office by the National Assembly. And I think this was passed to him on the 19th of November 2021. And it should be expected that he will consult the Attorney General of the Federation, the INEC, the National Assembly, which he has done. And of course, the political parties, because the INEC had to advise the president that, okay, why don't you talk to the direct stakeholders in this, find out what their policies are before you ascend to it. And some stakeholders are saying, even without the consultations, go ahead and ascend to it. Then if we have issues, we raise it, which may be costlier, because that means we may have to start going through the process again. And it is expected also that as a government, the government should have sat down through the value chain of this amendment to look at the best practice globally and incorporate that into what we are trying to put in place, particularly when this is an attempt to improve on the Electoral Act of year 2010. And if you look at the Act of 2010, it gives permission, like I mentioned, to three approaches to primaries, the direct primaries, the indirect and the consensus. But this time around, under the amendment, the legislatures are only recommending that only direct primaries should be approved for all parties to choose their candidates that will be presented at the general elections. While some are comfortable with this, some are not comfortable. And talking about the cost, I mentioned earlier, one of the advantages of technology is to help you reduce costs. I recall when the COVID-19 pandemic swept in early 2020, even the Federal Executive Council meetings were held virtually. And you can imagine how much it cost the nation to hold these meetings physically. The meetings of presidents of headquarters were held virtually. So you can imagine the cost of traveling with the team that we go with the president. So by and large, if we want to make progress, the possibilities are there. So it's now a matter of whether we are dragging our feet or in lockdown to catch up with the global environment. Like I said earlier, right now, it's all about artificial intelligence. And talking about the infrastructure, you look at places like the UAE, they have the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence, they're already engaging the future economy. So why can't we also do that? But it appears that we are still at the rudimentary level. And when we choose to remain there, we have difficulties even implementing the laws. I don't know if I agree with you that we are at the rudimentary level, because I mean, Nigerians have been in the forefront of coding and all kinds of things in terms of AI and tech. But it is not necessarily we. I'm guessing that this should have been, is the government ready to embrace this level of artificial intelligence or technology in our electoral system? Remember, some years ago, even early this year, the issue of the e-voting has continuously been debated. It was almost a push and shove for us to even include the idea of electronically transmitting results. So really, is it the people that are unable or is it the government that's unwilling? You know, the role of the government is to regulate the society. So the government should not be seen to be limbed in dealing with situations. So if the government wants it done, it can be done. We see these things happening. I mean, the level of security to find around Asu Bila. Could I say of section 14, subsection 2 of the Nigerian Constitution in Nigeria, that I said the security and the welfare of the people should be the primary purpose of government has any meaning. So on possibilities, these things are possible. And when did government put this in place? The people don't have any excuse going forward. For example, if this amendment flies through and we stand by the fact that all parties must conduct their primaries through direct approach, then who is going to contend with that? It becomes the law. So whatever the government puts in place, we regulate the activities. And that is why we keep advising that you look out through the window and try to find out how some countries have achieved it. Like I said, for example, in Singapore, Singapore is already considering the future of the workplace. What will happen in the future? And they are preparing their people for that encounter. And that is what we are saying. And when I made reference to being at the rudimentary level, I believe you understand me. A level where sometimes private personal interests get what the policy makers will roll out. So if people are more powerful than those who are in favor, we will escalate our governance mindset. Then you go for what is best. As we engage on this topic right now, we have some professional organizations that have been carrying out e-booting for years. I belong to one. And it's been so smooth. Before the day of the AGM, you can cast your votes in your car, in your sitting room, anyway. These devices will work if we want them to work. But when you have those who will not allow them to work, they will scuttle everything. And it's costly for us. The big question now is, are you ready for the progress? For example, when the COVID-19 came and there was a lockdown, people stayed at home. It wasn't a matter of whether you had an option or not. And as we speak right now, I think the government just gave a directive that civil servants below the grade level 12 could return to office physically. Some of them have been operating virtually. So whoever thought that that system could come in, right now we are talking about hybrid HR management. You can work in the physical office, work from home, work from anywhere as long as you are delivering. So these are possibilities. The world will not remain the same. Interesting. Go and study the Brazilian template, get around the world and see the great things that are happening. I mean, recently an election took place in the UK, who heard about the rankos and the rankos. So it's about choice. And the government is the biggest stakeholder when it comes to formulating policies and implementing policies. So the direction they take us, either to pay off our indebtedness extensively, and we did pay off. So the government should not be seen to be given excuses. You must deliver and you must, right now with the globalization concept, you are not alone.  And you put those as part of your policy implementation.  You can, if you even want to do an informal study in Harvard Business School without living lucky in Lagos there, these are possibilities. It is a power of IT. And that is where I stand, that we can make progress. While I agree with you, while I agree with you and the position that you've taken, it takes me back again to, you know, the hiccups, even as we're having this conversation, we're having to hold our breaths to be sure that you can hear us from the other end. So I don't know if we're really ripe enough in terms of the technology, the bandwidth, if we have the way we saw. But then again, from this conversation, it looks like that's what the political parties have to deal with and worry about. But going forward, 2022 is just around the corner. We're just a few weeks, if not two and a half weeks away from 2022, which is campaign season, which is a campaign year. Now, if we do not get this bill signed into law early enough, how do we make sure that 2023 is free for incredible already? We have had, or INEC, right, that has had opportunities to test, you know, to see if their up to power was the kind of electronic or e-voting system that we're aspiring to. And we've continuously seen almost the same kind of issues creep up. So really, are we probably punching above our weight?  Don't forget that this amendment has been on. Before the 2019 election, we expected some amendments to be assented to. They were never assented to and the elections went on. You see, so like I said, it's either the president assents to this or you battle it or whatever the case may be. If that is not done, then the old act, we've been in operation and that means the status quo of the fact that you can have direct primaries, indirect primaries, or consensus primaries, we hold and we go on. And whether our elections will be free, fair, and credible, is a big question for what we choose to deploy. And I think we have made a bit of progress in that area. If we look at the recent Anambra State election by virtue of the governorship election, by virtue of the ways of the federal government and the things that happened, the insecurity, many would have expected that some unnecessary influence would have been wielded. But if people insisted, no, this is the candidate we need. And then all the arms of government came together and the relevant stakeholders came together. So if we can choose to allow the will of the people to prevail, then we may begin to move in the direction of putting in place those we trust to represent our interests. And that, again, is a very strong argument for the proponents of direct primaries. If I am a member of the party, I should be giving the direct access to choose those we are going to represent me. And I may now decide not to exercise that mandate. And this is what we are talking about. And democracy is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  You don't cut my hair in a sense. So when we get to that level, even politicians would begin to ensure that they do what we please the people. And having said that, we need to give confidence to our environment, which is already written, whether it's direct or indirect, there are still possibilities and the temptations of corruption.  It's all about getting what I can get. So that is why at the general level, we must develop this country and bring disparity to the people. We have to go. Thank you so much, Barista Jireh Ulogun, for being part of the conversation. Unfortunately, we lost the connection with Mr. Showami. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. God bless Nigeria. All right. Well, thank you all for staying with us. Coming up on Plus Politics, the move of the Lagos for Lagos group to join the PDP in this state has been greeted with criticism. We'll take a short break now.


Hello. Today I want to show you how we can capture shape information with multi-skilled topological loss terms for 3D reconstruction. My name is Dominik Weibel. I'm a PhD student at the Helmholtz Center in Munich in Germany. Geometrical loss terms such as the dyes of binary cross entropy do not capture contextual information. However, that information might be relevant in a spatial reasoning task, for example, that could be used for speeding up 3D imaging, as that is prohibitively time-consuming as it requires stacking of 2D images. Geometrical loss terms compare a model's 3D prediction with the 3D ground truth, for example, on the basis of a binary cross entropy or dyes loss. We want to integrate contextual information with the topological loss term. Therefore, we extract topological features from the 3D prediction using a cubicle complex, and then we can extract features on multiple scales such as connected components, cycles, or voids. The same we do for the 3D ground truth, and then we can compare these two feature distributions using the Wasserstein Distance Symmetric from Optimal Transport. That allows us to incorporate topological information and add these two losses together. The topological loss is very stable, computationally efficient, maybe added to any neural network, and is invariant to spatial transformations. To prove the usefulness of the novel topological loss, we integrated into a model called Shaper. That Shaper model is designed to perform a spatial reasoning task solving the inverse problem of 3D shape prediction from 2D images. Here we use 2D microscopy images to predict the 3D cell shape. Our two-step training approach includes a first supervised training step, and then a discriminator is added for a second adversarial training step. We perform two experiments, one using the topological loss and one not using the topological loss. In the first row, you can see the results without the topological loss, and in the second row, the results with the topological loss, and third row, the ground truth. For two data sets, one red blood cell, and one containing nuclei. Visually, you can see that the surface of the red blood cell in the second row is much smoother as compared to not using the topological loss. But also quantitatively, the model looks really promising. For example, for the relative surface area error, and we get much lower values for when using the topological loss, and same for the surface roughness. This would have not been possible without the amazing team at the Institute of AI for Health. I thank Matthias Meijer and Scott Edwil for providing the second nuclei data set, Bastian Rieck for providing the idea and the topological loss, and Karsten Mares, my PhD supervisor. Please find the paper as a publication at Michael. To briefly summarize, we've used the Shaper model to perform experiments showing how well our topological loss is enhancing a spatial reasoning task, which is based on a cubical complex, and then extracting the topological features, and results clearly improve visually and quantitatively.


Moose Lake Willow River home against Aiken. Both teams 5 and 2 in the first quarter. Rebels in the red zone. They give it to Anakin Oswald with room to his right. He's in for six. Eight to nothing. Trying for more but the Gobbler D prevents that. The interception by Jake Kikowski. A good gain along the far start line. Makes some man miss. In the second quarter, Gobbler is on the Rebels 17. Owen Miller on the crossing round. He'll take it in for the score. Just out races the defenders for the touchdown. It's eight to eight after two, but Moose Lake Willow River ends up with the victory.


Professor Bruno Basso and I thank him a lot for having accepted our invitation. Bruno is a Michigan State University Foundation Professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University and he is a pioneer in the use of digital agriculture technologies and his talk will be about pathways to sustainability with digital agriculture towards carbon negative crop production. The floor is yours Bruno. Okay. Can you see my screen and hear me okay? Everything is perfect go ahead. Okay great. Well thank you very much for the invitation. It's always a pleasure to have the opportunity to present some of the latest work that my lab and colleagues in this field have been doing. Digital agriculture plays a critical role when it comes to design but also one of the major question is how we scale technologies, how we scale sustainable agriculture such that we can have a carbon negative farming system. I have to start with some of the challenges are probably you may have heard already so I'll be really quick but it's just a paramount importance to understand the threat that we have. We have to feed more people even though we've been doing that at a rate you know yields complete to go up in some places but in others are stagnated or going basically not growing because of various reasons and majorly affected by climate, less water and in a changing climate. One additional component is that we still waste the significant amount of food. 70% of the water that we use is used in agriculture which basically poses a significant threat for the future in terms of expanding more land with less water available. Now the figures below are just really quick snapshot of what is happening in the context of agriculture in the sense of indirect land use. So we're losing some of the best land especially in the US but in many other places because of this urban sprawl and so cities come basically invading this very fertile soil. The city of Houston has about 5% organic matter outside and the city keeps basically taking this land away. We have deforestation that continues to occur. You can see that pretty dramatic picture both the Amazon, Southeast Asia and many other places who lose land by fires and land degradation. We lose about a pound of soil which is half kilogram per every bushel of corn that is produced in the US Midwest and a bushel is roughly about 60 kilograms. So it's significant amount of soil, top soil which means obviously fertility, soil organic carbon and so on and then water quality a few years ago even in the area exactly where I'm located in the region of the Great Lakes that's the kind of images that some of these lakes because of eutrification due to excess amount of fertilizer both nitrogen and fosters. Now curbing the emission is mandatory. We need to avoid warming and the animation here shows at the current rate we have about 6 years and 8 months 16 days or so before we reach 1.5 scenario of warming and we have 24 years before we get to 2 degrees. Well those are pretty serious and threatening type of images because again the thresholds and the tipping point planetary boundaries will be further exacerbated under these threats with more extreme events. It's not just about increasing temperature. This is also pretty well accepted by the majority of obviously all the scientists that warming is occurring both if you see the line going on the global but it is very important to pay attention to what happens. So this is a temperature compared to a baseline of 1950 to 1980 and so in the 90s starting from the 90s and 2000 as you before saw several blue collars. There isn't a single blue color happening and it's basically all pretty dire dark red occurring and this is on a global scale. Some places have already gone over 1.5 degrees as hotspot. In addition to the temperature we have had increases in precipitation both amount as well as intensity of the rain. The Midwest is receiving significant amount of greater rain which causes is not always positive. We have often the opposite problem. We got too much water that we need to get rid of and even though they are benefiting from a longer season because you have less plus frost three days so you basically could gain up to a week or more but that requires adaptation. So I'll be talking about that how important it is to link agronomics with genetics in order to adapt. The agriculture is none new to challenges. I've put it all together here. We know that these are some of the breakthroughs that we had and each of the breakthroughs unfortunately came with a level of major environmental disaster. We had the introduction of mechanization really allowed us to start producing food to feed the growing population but at the consequences of a dust ball we basically lost all the top soils of the prayers all the way that the soil reached Washington DC and that's when Roosevelt started the soil conservation service. After that you know the introduction of fertilizer and agrochemicals have allowed basically the green revolution be able to have improved genetics that were responsive to fertilizer and technologies to be able to have graded yields and feed obviously Norman Bullock received a Nobel Peace Prize for that. So that led to going from some conventional level of breeding to an incredible you know biotechnology breakthrough now all the way to gene editing and so extremely powerful and important and so there is a bright future in in that context but doing things in the laboratory have only they can only go so far they have obviously to be tested in the fields and field is dominated by uncertainties by different climate soils interaction with the agronomic management and so that's where data data you know collecting information over space and time and so in the last basically 10 years we've been witnessing data science and modeling satellite drones data analytics obviously the omics scientists continue to advance quickly microbiomes both you know soils and plants and so what is what is coming it's basically digital twins basically reproduction through artificial intelligence even in agriculture there is a major constraint that you'll see a little bit more that agriculture is often probably erroneously confused with a big data genetics generates a significant amount of data but the observation in the field are limited so AI may have not all the possibility but there are ways to do it with we link to crop simulation more validly validated crop models and then AI will have additional data to be trained on so a digital twin is simply a bridge between the physical and the digital world to promote innovation and performance to go all the way to the circular bio economy a crop simulation model fits the definition of a digital twin we grow plants on the computer be able to understand the genetic traits and be able to quantify all the different process that occur in the soil both from and you know soil water balance the soil carbon greenhouse gas emissions prolificio fairness in new traits of cultivars and so there has been quite a bit of advancement in simulation modeling linked to biogeochemical model all the way to basically have a cloud based analytics where the farm is completely you know digitized and now these are as anything that comes as new there are early adopters in all the way in implementing changes but in the research domain there is a significant amount of interest from funding agency to be able to link artificial intelligence and digitalization with agronomics and genetics the one of the critical thing again that the agencies the funding agency in the US the National Science Foundation DOE NIH or USDA have this common goal of one health so the healthy ecosystem lead with soil and water you can read soil carbon sequestration health ecosystem lead to healthy healthier food healthier food healthier farmer healthier communities there's much more demand from the consumers to basically generate improved products and traceability how was it produced even by accounting for biodiversity threats or civil rights that we exploit resources and so i'm heavily involved in the sustainability of food companies as well as big pharmaceutical in the context of agriculture so there is quite a bit of sensitivity on sustainability and gender and so that's I guess is a very promising thing in addition to having now voluntary but potentially becoming mandatory soon so Michigan State I call lead Regenerative Ag Center highly funded by USDA as well as matching fund from different food companies the agriculture is witnessing for the last I would say 20 years or more in in terms but it was even earlier but the quality of the data wasn't as important I mean as a good quality this occurred thing because the military allowed us to put GPS on tractor and be able to be used for civilian civilian news they removed the delusional precision so before it wasn't possible to know the exact location but there is a revolution and as you probably know agriculture is often in the media to be able to link again you know food quality food production food security with sustainability all the way not necessarily to show off here but to be able to have you know an editorial on Forbes which is never necessarily paid any level of attention to agriculture and so this level of technology is becoming much more integrated on the farm for example I mean we've seen robotics they're becoming much more on the commercial side you know drones spraying their commercial application already but even this center pivot that can apply water every single row of maze so the other thing is this is a cover of our basically an NDVI images on a weekly basis of our planet you know basically breathing and dying on a yearly basis you can see the movement and we've been doing that for a long time but this is a high resolution obviously to be shown at a global scale but we have now gone into the possibility of monitoring these are daily image there are 1200 images in this slide 1200 photographs snapshots at three meter resolution so there's very little that we can't see from the sky and be able to have additional ground truthing and linking that with crop against simulation system of different sorts is critical the the other critical piece is the geospatial sensing and so one of the things that farmers mostly associate with is the possibility of monitoring this yield across so this is a measured yield maps at every two square meter where basically is recorded across and you can see how much variability so 68 percent of the US corn is harvest with this level of machinery 45 percent so half 45 million acres are mapped and the problem is very little is implemented in variable lake we we define one of the most critical layer this yield stability when you have 15 years 20 years of yield monitor farmers have tend to have a short memory of what happened and they can visually integrate all these images so if you start we develop this procedure that you basically look at how different one pixel is from the neighbor and how different the pixel is from over time and so you'll see areas that they are constantly having ideals versus area that they're constantly underperforming or areas that they fluctuate from one year is good then two years in a row can be bad or vice versa so we we can't depend on yield mapping from farmers so I personally scale with several you know publication to be evaluated for if you have interest is basically you can now through remote sensing imagery you can now click on any single field and be able to get a yield stability map having the common land unit across all these with us is a very data rich Europe also so this could something be reproduced in Europe and so we learned that 48 percent of within field is constantly high yielding 25 percent is always underperforming having leading to nitrogen use efficiency obviously all the other resource use efficiency and then unstable is 27 percent with we did a mass balance with very heavy impact on co2 energy economics and fertilizer and we matched the number of the amount of fertilizer that ends up in the Mississippi River the big difference is now we know where it comes from the same news is that 25 percent of the land causes 85 percent of the pollution the other thing is we were able to quantify at scale areas within a field where they're more vulnerable to water deficit or excess water this is a typical image for people that have spent time in the midwest that you will see every at the end of the spring you can clearly see imagine that the yield of this field is not going to be uniform and so understanding both again this stability of yields and trying to match that and positioning the landscape is a critical thing that we've been helping farmers with and so these are the share of the crop land that is more prone to excess water versus the water deficit and yield time so once we know that where this land and land is located where how contiguous these pixel are these are the low yielding areas across 80 million acres so if we were to implement some action some level of alternative management we will have significant amount of benefits and obviously you we can propose this kind of thing in terms of policy or incentives and farmers will need to adopt but on the analysis you'll see immediately you have nitrate leaching reduction because you clearly see you clearly understand that you're not putting as much nitrogen since if for the last 10 years your dislocation has not been giving you a yield more than five tones why you knew it was a nitrogen when the rest of the field could have been at 12 with the same amount of nitrogen if it is low and stable and these are only the low and stable areas so you can see quest more carbon you can have biodiversity benefit so what are some of the implementation that we can do the first one I was invited to write this basically news of use of precision conservation and so the maps and the analysis is immediately to get the attention from any producer is a profitability map because it's we know pretty well the cost of production there is no secret as long we understand the management which is also relatively predictable I mean especially across the states we know how much nitrogen is applied you know some typical field of Iowa versus Michigan or you know Missouri and so on so the areas where they understand that they're losing money on some of these areas the variable rate technology allows again understanding where you could have basically a response and then you go with optimal fertilizer because we need to continue to produce the yield and continue to feed the world or whatever other use the system have been allocated to so on the other areas we can plant pollinators so this is a project that we recently got funded where we incentivize the removal of the low and stable zones in basically by planting prairie strip and pollinators and so you have speed lower effects you have a lot of benefits but the greatest thing is that the food companies are and you know embracing that because it incentivize you know carbon sequestration because you have perennial plants you know deeper roots and you sequest more carbon and you can both receive incentives for production as well as production in terms the areas next to are produced where biodiversity is present as well as carbon credits and so this is an example we send out prescription or precision conservation we monitor them and this is really resonating to the farmers we the power of the modeling allows us to run scenarios and so these are changes in soil organic carbon including all the zones together and so if we continue to do conventional nitrogen plowing we will continue to lose about close to 400 kg per hectare per year of soil carbon versus no-till and cover crop which are leading towards a sequestration of just organic carbon which is about 1200 CO2 equivalent so the carbon is between 300 and 400 so one of the example last year we sent 25,000 acres of prescription map this is some of the fields you have an imagery within season to to move from just not just strategic level of application but also tactical to capture what is happening in season that's an example of prescription maps but if you see the low and stable areas if comparing a uniform application versus the variable rate the yield there is no leakage in terms there is no reduction in yield compared to the uniform but there is a substantial amount of benefits in terms of nitrogen use efficiency so reduction again building ecosystem services and agriculture needs to become much more you know basically the provider as you know yield is a big ecosystem services along with now avoided emissions and reduction of nitrate leaching this is an example of a prescription map so the farmer they joined this program under 25,000 acres they have to return to us the as-applied map the as-applied map is basically physically a check for a farmer because they could claim to a registry avoided emissions because they if you go from again this is an example of one of the application of side dressing we also place boxes so that farmers if they need to see the the evidence of putting the high rate versus the and this is a very very large boxes you know half acre or so the the benefit of seeing that again is critical for farmer and they can claim the avoided emissions so that's an example of to show that if where you put a large amount compared to where it should have been low but the rest of the field was low you see that there are basically the yield was consistently low and so the benefit which is this point this point right here the inherent variability is much greater so the best predictor of yield is yield but you have to have an historical understanding and separating the unstable zones which they fluctuate they fluctuate given done you know the weather variability which can also be studied you cannot have analog analogy between years and you can capture position in the landscape but in many parts of the world where the field is flat and highly managed you will only have either high or you have much more stability if if the the variability is present in terms of instability is due to to soil depth which will be easy to detect by having hemogenesis so just to conclude you can click on any of this map and we send the prescription the the synthesis and so one other question would be for farmers you know they haven't adopted this technology yet they want to know what if can I move from conventional tillage to no-till and plant cover crop how much carbon how much humic form the slower carbon will I gain what are that you know the percent change in cumulative nitrate leaching those are all the dots where we have farmers data we fly over and and collect so it's um is becoming critical the um one of the things that I wanted to show as a very quick example so I'm not doing justice to that but we play we strongly believe that the understanding of future genetics and so in this case there is you know greater and kernel number kernel weight and the efficiency of our cumulating resources so there are several traits that we use that were improved within boundaries that could be possible and so the the impact of future climate in the ui this is strictly for the west midwest which is kind of a winner because of you know more rain in many places obviously you have extreme events which can be wiped out but the future the adapter cultivar would bring benefit and again the climate smart commodity is something that is happening in the u.s the u.s government has put three billion dollars in incentivizing farmers to do regenerative and climate smart practices and so one of the things that I work on is on mitigation as well as adoption adoption so you go from the stability map to the rx which is the prescription avoided emissions and in the in relation of the avoided emission there can be a premium like we have in italy new europe for pre a protein but now we can be in relation to reduction of emission now i know i don't have much time but i want i i like to invite you to read these two papers in p one is in pna s that i recently published in an egg system with some quarters in how we go from a linear system to a circular system that emphasizes on electrification um you know biola uh biologicals improved genetics partitioning you know more carbon to the roots creating energy on the farm with bio digest here and applying that by the state improving by diversities and and so on so with that i'm going to leave you obviously just to to show the talented group of people that helped me do this work and i wanted to thank the agency for funding it and again thank you very much for the invitation and especially michele for um suggesting my name thank you very much indeed thanks a lot bruno for the fascinating presentation we have time for questions we have two questions from the floor please thank you professor for a nice presentation i have a short question about uh can we move to climate smart agriculture like we we we conduct land suitability of crops and and we we predict that after 10 years the climate temperature would be this and precipitation every crop has a specific requirement so can we move that side which is the second side of the remote sensing data analysis thank you yes um that is that is correct i mean each each crop has particular you know characteristic and you know they will perform better under a different interaction between soil and climate the thing that i would suggest in terms of be able to analyze you know what if is is to be able to reduce the risk before implementing practices or new crop there is a role that science and you know digital system can play because you will say what if i plant this crop here what are my you know the possibility of the outcome you know the probability of obtaining something before implementing the reason i say this is because too often we have to move away from trial and error in agronomy to say you do one study okay you get a result and it was a particular year we can capture historical weather we can capture the interaction between management genetics soils so that's one contribution that this part of the science that i've introduced plays a critical role we have another question thank you sir for the talk that you've given please um haven't worked with uh many rural farmers for many years now i think one of the experiences i have is to try to bring down climate change to the understanding because you keep on saying climate is changing they say they can't see it you say the climate is watching away your soil they say my soil is there it's just a small portion that is to watch away so i i developed something for my institute with a couple of scientists that science information should be given to people that are not of your knowing in a very very low level so that they can imbibe and also i don't know what you say about these in in in the case of ai because i've tried to look at ai to solve some of these problems for me especially in rural areas but limitation of data has been a major problem because data is the food of ai and um what can you suggest in that way when i don't have data and also um i try to use carbon credits the benefit of carbon credits for uh my sensitization program for for farmers especially that if you go if you do afforestation or reafforestation that you will be able to invest carbon and that you get credit for it but most of the time they come back to tell me i applied for carbon credits using my afforestation farm or whatever i did i i didn't get a credit for it so are these sources that this credit can be a harness um i think i'll stop there thank you very much okay well you raised a very good point i want to just be immediate to one word that needs to start you know floating much more which is called techno diversity you cannot what you seem today here it's not transferable in you know immediately with the way you would say you know in a small holder farmers but some of the technology can generate information even we can run models and the imagery can be flown over anywhere but they need to be synthesized and be able to be discussed with local stakeholders and people then own the technology we cannot send technology imposing technology thinking that you know we know more than the locals and we're going to solve that problem so it needs to be more dialogue i'm a physical scientist obviously but there is a critical role for social science to work in in connection with scientists like you said in be able to synthesize information what works in one place may very well not work in another and that's again where the digital twin comes in so there is a level of science in in the form ourselves even of training you know some of the local scientists to be able to use these systems in order to have this risk analysis now on the carbon credits yes that is going to be an instrument i just came back two days ago from south africa and they're selling carbon credits there there are obviously different contexts they're very large farms in many places they're trying to push towards a small holder farmers but the carbon credit is not a panacea is not something that everybody says okay i'm gonna join you have to have a quite a bit of strict regulation in the sense you have to create additionalities you know you have to pool more sure to or build this sequestration you have to have some level of auditing and certification so it's not a simple thing but we i think i can tell you that the world is working towards the possibility of rewarding farmers even smallholder farmers to implement practices that they're more climate smart the the problem is that building carbon it's not necessarily easy in places like tropical soils where it's really you know warm you may not have often you know the conditions so it's a delicate thing and again before you embark on this technology a lot can be known ahead of time thank you uh do we have other questions no if not thanks a lot again bruno thank you again very much i wish you yes i hope to see you soon bye


Okay, next week, I'll be eating breakfast in London. An insignificant thought to many, but this is the breakfast that changes my life. Now, it's really not important what it is, but yet it will be the first. And I know I'll always remember it as the first breakfast of my new life. Even though I still kind of have no idea what I'm doing, I at least know where I'll be doing it. And I know this is really cheesy and sappy, but I just know that eating this breakfast will be overwhelming because a breakfast like this brings you home. It brings you to all the people that have gotten you this far. I honestly couldn't be more heartbroken about it because these are not ghosts. They are real. They are tangible and 2,000 miles away or more depending on if you live in Indiana. Go, Katie. Go, Katie. Hello, Internet. We're in the hospital because I'm fine. But we're just having a cheeky little time. We're playing the game where you try to make the noises. Automatic hand sanitizer. Everyone's paying for my Paul McCartney impression for you all. I'm Paul McCartney. I'm Paul. Hello, everybody. Welcome to London. OK, so I have to start from the beginning, especially if you are new here. So two years ago, I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland by myself in about like 2021 and pretty much ever since then I have been plotting my return. And then finally, after last year, I finished up my last year of college. I spent many, many, many hours applying to grad schools over in the UK. And so as many of you guys know, last year I had to move back to Charleston to complete my final year of college. And I hadn't been to my college in two years. So I really wasn't super looking forward to it. Honestly, you guys saw me online like way less than I've ever I've ever been online. Here's the tea. Last year was honestly one of the best years of my life so unexpectedly because I rekindled and made some of the best friends I've ever had in like my whole entire life. And saying goodbye to them again was, as you saw, it was incredibly emotional. I did cry all the way on a flight from Charleston to DC. I cried the whole time. The man next to me probably thought somebody had died. And so in this video, I really want to cover just everything that it takes to move, especially to a new country, if this is something that you're interested in doing because there are a lot of steps that happen before you even book your plane ticket. And you guys will see at the end of the video like I'm in London. You'll get footage from the last couple of weeks, which is super exciting. As you will see from this video, there's a lot to moving that is incredibly stressful. But one thing that doesn't have to be stressful is finding a place to live. Today, I would like to thank our partner, Amber, students. Amber is an online platform that handles the hard bit for you, which is finding a place to live in a foreign country. I just moved to London, so there isn't even a language barrier, but trying to figure out the rental market has been the most insane experience of my whole entire life and tune in for next week when I talk about all of that. So if you're busy like me crying over your friends, I really suggest that you check Amber out to find a really cool, nice place to live. And if at the end of this you are interested, please check out my unique link that is going to be in the description of this video and it is going to be in the pinned comment. You can search for apartments with your own preferences. You can view details like amenities and photos of each apartment. There is a wide variety of choice on Amber's platform as well, so you definitely won't be stuck without options. They also help you find roommates, which can be a really difficult part of moving to another country, especially if you're moving alone because you won't know anybody in that country. So trying to find people that have similar preferences to you can be really important. One of the greatest things is that there's no negotiation. So Amber does all of that for you, which is so nice because getting into bidding wars in other countries is definitely not something that you want to be involved in. Amber has a prominent supply of housing in the UK in places like Coventry, London, Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Birmingham. And they also have housing in over 20 plus countries all over the world. So even if you're not coming to the UK, definitely check to see if your location is on their list. And on their website, you can search for your specific university. You can search for your area. You can research room info. There are 24 seven assistance online that can help you find properties. Community reviews, which is always helpful so that you can really know what real people are experiencing using these services. And then the best part is you can book through Amber and they will handle most of the difficult paperwork for you. So again, if this is something that sounds interesting to you, please make sure to check out my unique link, which is going to be in the description of this video and in the pinned comment. And now we can really get into it. So we're just going to do like a little bit of like create information before I get into like my actual experiences moving abroad. For me, my avenue to move abroad, you know, if you're young in your 20s and you just like don't only know what to do with your life because I always talk about gap years on my channel and studying abroad, but sometimes you don't get to that when you're in college. So maybe you want to do it after college. Maybe you are in between careers and you want to try moving to another country. There are a lot of different avenues that you can go through to get yourself over there and definitely doing some research. But I decided that I was going to go to grad school. This is something that I've always wanted to do. I always knew that I was going to pursue grad school. And so it just seemed like sort of the natural next step for me to get myself over to London. And surprisingly, grad schools are actually a lot cheaper in the UK than they are in America. All of the pieces just kind of fit together. And after my year abroad in college, I just kind of knew that this was the path for me. And in total, I ended up applying to four schools and I ended up choosing UAL, which is the University of the Arts London. And it was the only like arts program that I applied to. The rest of them I applied for like my actual degree that I already had in the US. I applied to all these schools around October, November-ish and UAL was actually the last school that I applied to. I think I finished up my application in January, but I had already gotten into a school. So I sort of knew in like November of last year that I was going to be moving back over here. Once you accept your offer to get into grad school, which I accepted maybe around June, I would say, I booked my spot and basically the next step is you have to wait for a cast number. So if you've never applied abroad before, this basically means that your school provides you a number that allows you to apply for a visa. So for months and months and months, I heard no word from my school and they actually had a backup of issuing cast numbers. So I was maybe supposed to move like ideally early September, but I actually ended up moving two days before my program started, which was like October 2nd. And this was kind of a nightmare, but I'm here now and it's all good. It's fine. Sometimes these things do happen. So I'm going to let past me explain. And welcome to what are you doing? Lay down. Do you want to say hi? Do you want to say hi? Oh! My dog, Tony, if you've never seen him before. If you guys don't know, I am starting a program at UAL in the fall to get my masters. I have a place to stay when I arrive in London now, which has honestly taken so much of the stress out of my life because I'm already moving to a whole other country, new city, new school on top of that, having nowhere to live like that was really stressing me out.  But hopefully I will get there before my program starts because that's really stressing me out. But that is honestly just part of the glorious world of going to study abroad. It comes with a lot of different stresses, but it's fine because I want to do it like so badly and I'm so excited, but it's also just a pain in the f***ing self. Hello, everybody. Excuse my appearance. Okay, so I have been waiting to go to the UK forever now and I just checked my email and my visa approved. It was not supposed to be approved for like another 15 days. And so now I'm like, I'm having an aneurysm. So now I think I have to move to another country on Friday. It's like, I know I wanted this the whole time. Now I have to go on a plane. Everybody, so this is, I'm in London. Yeah, I'm in London and I had my first day of school today. Man, I'm alive, you know what I mean? I think that I felt like I would feel a lot more overwhelmed. But this time around, like I feel very comfortable. I haven't really felt anxiety about like all of this yet. My program definitely seems hard. Definitely not like for the faint of heart, but I'm moving to London. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but I'm feeling really okay. Like pretty, pretty good. I feel like I've done this before, which I didn't. I felt like it would feel completely different, but I just kind of feel like I know what's going on. And I don't know. I don't know if it's because like the first time that I moved to Edinburgh, like I didn't know how the buses worked. I didn't know how, you know, I can't like conversational things. Like I didn't know those, those conversational things that are different and words and language and tone. And I don't know. It was just like so much more confusing. I feel like I'm doing okay. I am staying with a family friend right now, which is so nice. I'm commuting downtown for school. Oh, I was on the tube today in the train, actually. This guy's like bike fell over. So he got up out of his seat and then this other guy, like the door's open. So like all these new people came on and he took the guy's seat and the other guy that came back and he was like, sir, that was my seat.  And then he made, they were gotten to like a fight, but it was the most polite fight. Like when I think of like fights breaking out on that train, I think of like two New Yorkers like screaming at each other, but they were like politely sir f***. And it was just, it was so quiet too. It was like the quietest, but most aggressive fight I've ever heard. And it really, it was quite funny. I mean, not funny, but it was just like, what is happening? I don't even know. We just got done with our first day like fully working in a TV studio and this is something like I've literally, I've never done any of this before. Um, I've, I've done YouTube like all of these years. Um, but like to be in all honesty, like I don't, I don't know like all this stuff and I was super nervous coming into all of this thinking that like I would be someone with like the least amount of experience or like I wouldn't have any idea what was going on. And um, this has been honestly guys like the most weird experience of my life. And I don't, I share these things not to be like, oh, poor me. Like like all of that kind of stuff. It's just that growing up, I was so quiet in high school. Maybe I had spaces that I could go where I felt people also felt the same way that I did and college like not really so much. I feel like I sort of had to create those spaces for myself. Like I had to create YouTube as a spot for me to be creative and like to be myself. And like, yeah, I was in like arts classes, but I still really never felt like like being myself was easy. I've always been someone who's like very adamant on being yourself, but I've always done it really quietly. Like I, YouTube has always seen like who I am because I'm alone. Like when I'm alone, this is like my truest self, right? Or at least like one version of like my truest self. When I'm around other people, like I'm really quiet. Like I'm most of the time, I didn't really want to put myself out there until I got a little older.  And like 95% of the room is like, wow, that's cool. Like without hesitation, like I have never been in that situation before. It has always been like, I've always been apologizing for who I am. I have always been apologizing for, I've always been, I've always been apologizing for who I am. Even if I didn't feel like I have to, I had to. I did it to sort of like maybe ease others' comfortability around me or I don't even know why. And I'm not saying that like those things ever stopped me from doing what I wanted to do, but there was always friction. There was always, it always created a dissonance between like, this has been so frictionless. There's no friction. I have just, from the get go, from day one, I have been able to introduce myself as the person that I want to be able to speak up and say like, I'm proud of this. And I haven't done that. Like I look at YouTube, like I literally don't mention it. Like I don't tell people about this because I think it's embarrassing. Like isn't that sad? Like this is something that I have literally poured my heart and soul into and like you guys have seen that over the past three years if you've been here the whole time or if you've seen like my study abroad diaries, like I have poured my heart and my soul into getting better at this and to sharing one piece of what I have gone through for, honestly, it's for that one comment that I get that it's just like, oh, this made me feel less alone. I can make one person feel like they are not going through something alone. Like that is, that is why I make these videos. And I just feel like I am in this point right now where like being myself in quiet for so long has allowed me to get to this place where I can be myself as loud as I want to. I'm just really grateful. I'm grateful that I hung in there. I'm grateful that I didn't give up. I'm grateful that 20 year old me picked up a camera terrified. I'm glad that 21 year old me booked a plane ticket to Edinburgh terrified because now I'm here.