Hello and welcome to the NTN Nightly. I'm Nisha Trance. Thank you for joining us. From one students around the island are being educated about the immediate consequences of substance abuse. The sensitization campaign is being led by the Substance Abuse Unit in conjunction with the Royal St. Lucia Police Force. Officials say the campaign is critical, given that research shows that students as young as 10 years are both exposed and indulging in substance abuse, especially alcohol. The Life Skills for Drug-Free Living Program is aimed at providing students with the necessary skills to resist social and media pressure to smoke, drink and use drugs. Acting Program Officer in the Substance Abuse Unit, Nadia Smith Lambert says, this program is expected to develop greater self-confidence in students when making decisions about drug use. Given media, you find that we have advertisements for alcohol and also for tobacco and other drugs. Now students are also seeing those messages that are sent out to adults and thinking that it's okay, if it's okay for adults, it's okay for us minors. We want to clarify that it is not okay. Yes, it's a legal drug, but it is not okay for minors to be using any of the legal or illegal drugs. So at the end of the program, they basically develop skills such as refusal, skills, self-control, self-esteem, race and self-esteem to be able to say no when they see those messages, when they go out into the community and they offer those substances. Sergeant in the Royal St. Lucia Police Force, Alex Morgan says, it is necessary that students are aware of the effects of drug use on their education and future development. We felt necessary for the safety of our children to understand the dangers of drugs and the harmful usage of drugs, what we can do to them and how we can erode their futures as well. So if we felt it necessary to work along with them, to educate them as much as possible as to the dangers out there and what they can do to avoid themselves being caught in the trap of drug use and its abuse. Assistant councillor of the Rosalie Secondary School, Michelle Bess, believes this program will lay a foundation for healthy decision making among students as it relates to drug use. We're hoping that the students could use this information for themselves in making the correct decisions and also for the pairs to help guide the pairs because we know most of the myths out prevalent in society is geared towards encouraging the students to use marijuana to use drugs. So we hope that the students make the right decisions and we're hoping that they delay and also reduce the use of marijuana and other drugs. The Life Skills for Drug-Free Living program is delivered to students in six classroom sessions. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fynnell Neptune. The Parliament of St. Lucia has given consent to amendments to the Income Tax Act. Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Economic Growth, Job Creation and External Affairs, the Honourable Alan Shasne explained that the amendments would enable the government of St. Lucia to maximize the collection of revenue and reduce the level of arrears owed to the government by its creditors. So the amendments of the Income Tax Act, this amendment is to facilitate the collection of revenue by Inland Revenue Department where persons may be in receipt of payments from the government of St. Lucia, however, have outstanding tax arrears. In many cases, persons collect large sums of money from the government of St. Lucia whilst leaving their tax liability unsettled. These amendments will provide a mechanism by which the Controller of Inland Revenue Department can request from the Director of Finance or the Controller of Customs to offset any tax liability outstanding against the tax arrears of a taxpayer. Prime Minister Shasne highlighted the amendments to be made. The amendment of the Income Tax Act is as follows. Section 127 of the Income Tax Act is amended by inserting immediately after subsection 3 the following new subsections. 4. The Controller may direct the Director of Finance and Planning to set off the amount of tax debt or part of tax debt against sums due by the government to a tax debtor if the government holds controls and has custody or has monies belonging to the tax debtor and is due to make payments to the tax debtor. Or 5. The Controller may direct the Controller of the customs and excise tax department to set off monies due to a person against a tax outstanding by that person. That was Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Economic Growth, Job Creation and External Affairs, the Honourable Alan Shasne. In more news out of Parliament, the Minister for Commerce, Industry, Enterprise Development and Consumer Affairs, the Honourable Bradley Felix, presented a bill to amend the Trade and Export Promotion Agency TEPA in Parliament last week. The essence of the bill was to change the name TEPA to Export St. Lucia. According to the Honourable Bradley Felix, in recent times there has been a rebranding of St. Lucia and the agencies representing the country abroad. The intention was that the name Export St. Lucia would more closely align with what the agency represents. Although the current name Trade Export Promotion Agency speak to the agency's primary function of export promotion, it has become the norm whenever you refer to that agency, you refer to them as TEPA, which unfortunately Mr Speaker is devoid of any export of national significance or national significance. It was therefore suggested that TEPA's name be changed to Trade St. Lucia. However, in 2018, the National Export Council took a decision to request that Cabinet consider changing the name from Trade St. Lucia to Export St. Lucia. It was thought that Export St. Lucia was more in line with the main functions of the agency and would actually have more impact. The name changed to Export St. Lucia became effective July 1st, 2018. The countdown is officially on for the Ireland's 40th anniversary of independence. A Yolong calendar of spectacular events has been planned. Among them is a community drill series by the Royal St. Lucia Police Force. Here's Anissa Antwine with the details. In commemoration of St. Lucia's 40th independence anniversary, the Royal St. Lucia Police Force will be hosting a display of drills in four communities around the island. The drill force will include 40 police officers from different divisions accompanied by the Royal St. Lucia Police Band. Elvis Thomas, acting assistant superintendent of police, explained that the force will be performing a series of drill displays and battle drills which will culminate with a short match. Every year during independence we have a parade. The officers will be matching but they will be having some special drill displays as part of that match. So you'll see us doing left, right and slow match and these things but it will have a combination of some maneuvers as if they're dancing. If many of you can remember our 30th anniversary, the parade, we also had a special drill display there but then this one this year will be even better than we had before. Sergeant Alex Morgan of the Community Relations Branch who is responsible for preparing the showing as well as the right marker on the parade encourage the public to come out and support the initiative. The display is a treat more or less to the public from the police in precision and fancy drills. We will be doing activities which is not the normal police drills but something in the mix, something to captivate the public as well as the interests of the persons doing it. We will be doing north, south, east and west and we'll be going to various districts around the country namely Souffre on the 8th of February. On the 10th we'll be visiting the community of Viewfort and we'll also be visiting on the 13th, we'll be in January, that's Larishow specifically and then we'll be doing Grosley on the Friday night. Now do we do the Friday night on Grosley? We know Grosley Friday night have the activity but it's a way to start the Friday night. The drill displays will take place in the communities at 5.30pm. From the Government Information Service I am Anisia Antoine reporting. Members of the public will soon be able to report on lawful activities and make general inquiries when the city police department launches its three-digit toll-free emergency phone line next month. His worship Mayor Peterton Francis says the new service will permit city police officers to speedily respond to any incidents taking place within the city of cash trees. According to Mayor Francis, introducing such a new service is designed to reduce the pressure on the official 999 system. The new emergency phone line will also make it easier for the general public to share information. And this is NTN Nightly. Preparations for the hosting of the Animal Sports Awards are heightening. We get the inside look on the other side of the brick in the sports segment with Ryan O'Brien. Small household electrical appliances when faulty can give rise to big problems. If you have just purchased a small appliance from a store and you are concerned about the safety of the item, an appliance has been at home for some time subjected to wear and tear from regular usage. Have it tested by the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards. It is better to be safe than sorry. For more information contact the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards at 456-0546 or email slbs at candw.lc or visit the website at www.slbs.org.lc. St. Lucia Bureau of Standards making quality and standards our way of life. Now for happenings at the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports, I'm Ryan O'Brien. The organizing committee for the 39th National Sports Awards due to be held on February 16th at the Royalton St. Lucia Resultant Spa held another of the weekly planning meetings on Monday morning. Arrangements are progressing smoothly and judges are expected to deliberate sometime this week to determine who will walk away with the prestigious awards on the evening. A shortlist of nominees was announced during a press briefing last week and will be presented to the judges for the scrutiny. Among the shortlisted are for Junior Sportswoman, Julian Alfred Athertics, Katie Kyle Swimming, Megan Williams Tennis, Junior Sportsman, Shelton St. Rose Athertics, Kimani Melius Cricket, J.N. Odlam Smith Swimming, De'Andre Caldron Table Tennis, Sportswoman, Laverne Spencer Athertics, Kiana Joseph Cricket, Eliza Markey Football, Sportsman, Albert Reynolds Athertics, Lindell Masler Boxing, and Larry Edward Cricket. An estimated 22 teams are expected to compete in the 2019 Massey United Insurance Secondary Schools Cricket Tournament, scheduled to begin on February 14th, 2019. Officials from the sponsoring company and organizers at the Ministry of Development and Sports met this week to iron out logistics of the tournament that sees Archipel secondary and the Arthur Lewis Community College as joint defending champions. Teams will be placed into four groups and a number of venues have been identified for the playing of matches that's expected to run for a three-week span, barring any unforeseen circumstances. These venues are the Mendoville Park, Rosalie Plainfield, Larry Seuss Denry, P.I. Plainfield, Philip Marsley-Ground, and the Wend Plainfield in Monipo. Four matches will be played daily, and several teams are expected to have members of San Lucia's successful Winner Islands and the 15 Cricket team among their ranks. Now to Schools Volleyball. The Ministry will be staging a Schools Volleyball Festival on Thursday, February 7th at the V.G. Mullipurper Sports Complex. It's a teaser head of male and female under-20 competition due to commence February 12th. Thursday's Festival is also open to both primary and secondary schools. Isabel Alexander Markey is School Sports Coordinator at the Ministry of Development and Sports. And what it is it is geared towards is sensitizing all those schools, the players from the various schools in the under-20 category, notwithstanding since our coaches have also been working with the primary schools, they are also invited to that festival. So it is not competition to say, but you get a feel of the different skills and drills of volleyball and we will come in it with maybe a four-side volleyball scrimmage between the teams, whichever how many teams that we are able to muster out of the schools that are common word for the festival. That's our update from Youth Development and Sports. I'm Ryan O'Brien. When the authority of the heads of government of the OECS and its other ministerial councils meet and adopt policies for the organization, they rely on the OECS commission to transform these into action. The OECS commission is the secretariat of the organization, a grouping of officials headed by a director general, mandated to implement the decisions of the government, but also empower to make recommendations on the strategic directions of the organization. The OECS commission organizes meetings, prepares budgets, conducts research, undertakes projects, negotiates for and represents the OECS member states. It is organized along several components. There are the commissioners from each member state who along with the director general form the commission that oversees the work programs. There are also technical divisions with specialized units between them, as well as diplomatic missions in Brussels and Geneva. All these complement each other to make the OECS commission the engine of regional integration in the eastern Caribbean. The OECS has a proud past and together we are working towards a brighter future for all our citizens. For more information visit www.oecs.org And this is NTN Nightly. Almost 10 schools in St. Lucia are set to benefit from book donations from the non-profit organization Hands Across the Sea. More in this report from Alicia Ali. Hands Across the Sea is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising the literacy levels of children in the eastern Caribbean. To date, the organization has partnered with the government and civil society to complete over 90 projects on island reaching almost 30,000 children. Clara Paul is one of the literacy links for Hands Across the Sea in St. Lucia. She said she is encouraged by the strides that have been made thus far. Every year, Hands Across the Sea purchase tens of thousands of only new children's books from the publishers. All books are sent, all books sent are selected purposefully for the students in mind. We link with principals, teachers and Peace Corps volunteers who are in some of the schools to get a wish list that we use to put the books together. In this project cycle, almost 10 schools will have in-house libraries with completely new books catering to every skill level and competency. Education officials say they are elated and encouraged by this development. We at the Ancelary Primary School are extremely grateful this afternoon for the opening of the Ancelary Primary Schools library. This resource is of vital importance to the school in its quest to encourage and motivate pupils to read. I am hoping that with the opening of our school library today that our students can continue in the quest to achieve even greater heights as Hon. Derek Walcott himself would have said. We are going to read more, we are going to know more, we are going to explore more and I am hoping also that makes us better people. The special education unit is always excited when members of civil society and the corporate community take an interest in supporting special education. My excitement is partly because sometimes it feels as if we in the special education family are engaged in the struggles all alone. It feels that way sometimes.  In addition to donating new books hands across the sea works with schools to create or rejuvenate lending libraries and partners with the schools to ensure the gains in literacy are sustained. The beneficiaries during this cycle are the Ancelere Primary School, the Forsay Jack Primary School, Lady Gordon Opportunity Centre, the Saint Aloysius Artsy Boys Primary School, the Roblo Combined School, the Laquamengo Combined School, Diga Combined School, Beanfield Secondary School and the Antropo Secondary School. From the Communications Unit in the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Alicia Alley reporting. The electrical division within the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labor is embarking on a public education drive on the legal requirements for routine inspections of domestic and commercial electrical connections. The Electricity Supply Act which regulates the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity on St. Lucia, stipulates that all connections must undergo periodic inspections. According to the law, all commercial establishments must have electrical inspections done every two years, and for domestic connections the inspections must be done every five years. All swimming pools must undergo annual inspections. Citizens and business owners are advised that they are to hire a certified electrician as part of the procedures for applying with the electrical division for an inspection. The electrical division plans to hold meetings with key stakeholders to promote greater adherence to the law. And that brings us to the end of the NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7.30am. You can also catch up with us any time on the St Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel.


Yeah I definitely think I was doing you know noting how things were going for me and I think I was definitely do you know it was my time to put a good hit on the ball you know they've been getting me out so yeah definitely definitely from the offensive perspective how difficult has this start to the season been mentally and were there any adjustments you made in the batter's box to put you in a better spot to succeed. The difficult thing that has been especially for you has been something that has been frustrating mentally that has been done to correct if there was something to correct. Yeah you know it has been a lot of work a lot of continuous work with our hitting coaches Marcus and PJ you know it was about concentrating in my in my zone considering the pitches that I can control having a good rhythm at the plate making sure that my timing is where I want it and I think I was able to do that today and that in the last two of bats especially in the last two of bats and looking forward to continue that you know on the next couple games. Thank you guys. Take the next one from George King. Gary what did you think of Montgomery tonight.  I think it was just a couple pitches you know that were left in the zone and they were able to take advantage of those but other than that it was it was a battle out there and we were able to hold for it.


Yesterday, Jay Bruce got his first hit as a Yankee, a two run single in the sixth inning after the game on his 34th birthday. He said if you would have told Jay Bruce at 18 that he'd be the starting first baseman for the New York Yankees at 34, he may not have believed you. When I was a kid, I mean, this was, you know, it was the Bronx bombers.   And, you know, I've had some great, great organizations that I've played for. And it's been a winding road for me for sure.  Just two games in, but has it lived up to your expectations so far? It's been great. It's been great. You know, I do my best to keep the blinders on during the season and really don't give much energy to anything other than just getting ready to play every day. But it's been awesome. The Yankees organization has been incredible so far. They've made it extremely comfortable for me. And the way that I've been welcomed to the team has been great. You feel comfortable at First Base, but there's still some work to do. What is the work that you feel as though you need to do at first? There are so many little nuances and small things that come along with being good at the position that, you know, I just haven't gotten to experience yet. And I think more reps, more opportunities, and more time there, and more instruction and, you know, we'll definitely help that.  And, you know, I just haven't done it a lot. I haven't done it a lot. So I look forward to continue to get, you know, getting better there, and we'll see what happens. Bruce is once again in the lineup playing for First Base.


Russia warns Israel about attacks on Syria, spreading conflict to their countries in the Middle East is unacceptable, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, while discussing a spate of recent Israeli airstrikes with his Syrian counterpart. Lavrov brought up the issue of Israeli airstrikes, which have become more frequent against the backdrop of events around the Gaza Strip, during a phone call with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a readout of the call, both ministers emphasized the danger of attempts by external forces to turn the Middle East, in its current explosive situation, into an arena for settling geopolitical scores, the readout added. Mekdad phoned Lavrov to discuss the situation in Gaza as well as a number of bilateral issues and the progress in ending the war in Syria. Since the Hamas incursion from Gaza on October 7, Israel has bombed Syria at least three times, repeatedly shutting down the airports in Aleppo and Damascus. One of these attacks was acknowledged by the Israeli Ambassador to Germany, who said it was intended to disrupt weapons deliveries from Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once said there have been hundreds of strikes on Syria over the past decade. On the rare occasions when the Israel Defence Forces comments on the attacks, it claims to have acted in pre-emptive self-defense against Iran, accusing Tehran of supplying Hezbollah militants.


My name is Mark Kelly. I'm the co-founder of All This International. All This International helped companies scale and grow AI engineering teams in Ireland, North America and in Germany. Today I talked about AI in action. One of the businesses I set up was a not-for-profit business called AI Ireland. What we talked about was the 51 podcast interviews I did with companies around Ireland who are doing applied machine learning. So I talked about AI in transportation, AI in conversations on chatbots, AI in commerce, and talked about the importance of a national AI strategy. I talked about the benefits that come from having a purposeful and meaningful strategy to do this. Later on I gave some examples about how we can go on that journey and what the difference was between applied AI that were actually around the state today and the difference between all the hype. In All This International we're a specialist AI recruitment company. We help companies hire AI engineering teams and what we find is people don't necessarily know how to build AI and data science machine learning teams. We help them go on that journey from the executive level. We'll help put in a senior person to look at how you're actually working your systems and how you can deploy and apply AI and then also looking externally and say how can we actually apply AI that disrupt the market.


Progressive leave since we've been out here, it's been a crawl, walk, run method and overall the Marines have developed from beginning to now. I believe the training is important because the overall goal for the squad leader to be ready for deployment is to see what he has available to him as far as what assets we have, as well as the junior Marines to see how it all comes together. Overall intent of this was to make everybody aware of the agencies and what they can provide.


Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President of the United States and Mrs. George Bush. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce the Presidential Escorts who will escort them. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mrs. Reagan. Ladies and gentlemen, please remain standing in our beloved United States and as we listen to our nation's leaders to remember our roots and to share our hopes. Before the invocation, after a long and courageous struggle against cancer, we mark his passing with feelings of deep sadness but with genuine gratitude for all he meant to us, Geno Barone. His son of Italy and of America, from the cold fields of Pennsylvania, touched millions. He served the powerless and challenged the powerful. He was so proud of his Italian roots and so loyal to his heritage. He was a friend and inspiration to many in this room. We are sad tonight for his passing. We have been enriched by the values he taught us, but most of all we are immensely proud he was one of us. We pledge to each other and to the Barone family who are with us tonight that we will not forget what he taught us about compassion and community. Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro and Mr. John Zaccaro. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, the Honorable Ronald Reagan. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Frank. Thank you very much. Mr. Toastmaster, Reverend Clergy, and all of you, I'm very happy to be here with all of you. In fact, let me try this. Sono molto contento di essere qui. And I, too, would like to extend an official welcome to our honored guest from Italy who were with us here this evening. As I look out at all of you here this evening, I can't help but think that you're a living affirmation of the sometimes desperate dreams of those world changers who came here and invented America. I say desperate dreams because those who traveled here by wind-driven ship or by steamer wouldn't have been making that terrible journey unless they were in search of something that had eluded them at home. Economic opportunity or personal freedom were a chance to make one's mark. The Italian-American experience was never an easy one, but it was one of great triumph. Italians, of course, made their mark on this country early on. An Italian found it. It was named for an Italian, and it was explored by Italians. But after that came the immigrants, and it wasn't easy for them. The Jews of the Borroling ghettos, the Irish living tend to a room in Boston, and the Italians looking for work in Philadelphia all shared some rough beginnings. But what distinguished these groups of immigrants is that they yielded more than their share of genius. In fact, you might say that Ellis Island was one big incubator for American greatness. All of the immigrants, and certainly the Italians, changed our country by adding, too, the sum total of what we are. They did not take from. They added, too. The Italians did it by hard work. They went to New Orleans and became longshoremen and fishermen. In Washington and Oregon, in my home state of California, they started out as hired hands and eventually built up their own farms. In Pennsylvania, they took the heavy lifting jobs, the manual labor. In New York, Chicago and Boston, they opened barber shops, fruit stands, restaurants, and eventually small banks. These immigrants were guided by habits, principles, and traditions that they took from the old country and transplanted here. They believed in the central importance of the family, the dignity of hard work, and faith in a just God who would reward effort and encourage virtue. They stayed in America, worked hard, and little by little secured the things that eluded them. They became the backbone of the American middle class. Many of them went on to great achievements and to fulfill the desperate dreams of their fathers and grandfathers, their mothers and grandmothers. I was told the other day about one family that had done especially well by the way. It was a few years ago and they moved out of their apartment in the city into a big house out on Long Island. And a friend said to the 12-year-old son, how do you like your new house? And he said, oh, we love it. I have my own room. My brother has his own room. My sisters have their own rooms.  I want to add that the thing I like about Italian American families is that no matter how many rooms they have, they're always together. The family bond is strong and loving. There are numerous examples, of course, of Italian American triumphs. Many of them are sitting here on this dais. One of them was recently chosen to be the vice presidential candidate of her party. And I understand the pride that all of you feel. And Congresswoman Ferraro, all I can say is, and here I go again, congratulazoni. Monsignor Gino Barone used to say, there are only two lasting things we can leave our children. One is roots, the other is wings. And what can we do these days to make sure that our children are given both? And what can we do to ensure that all of the immigrant sons and daughters of our country have the same chance to prosper as the sons and daughters of Italy have? My views on these things I think are well known. We believe that the Italian traditions of faith and family, the dignity of work, and the importance of effort should be encouraged. And that's why we've tried to gear so many of our efforts toward the family, the prime generator of life and human virtues. We believe that protecting economic freedom means fighting inflation with unrelenting determination for inflation is the deadliest tax of all. Because we believe in justice, we've tried to make society a safer place. We believe that families have the right to take a walk together in a park in the dark in a city without having to fear for their lives. They pay taxes for that right, but violent crime has deprived them of it. We're tough on crime and we think we must be. Victims have their rights and always will and always must. But victims and potential victims too have their rights and we've tried very hard to make sure those rights are respected. Let me add here that in the area of organized crime and drug trafficking, our government and the government of Italy have formed an extraordinary joint working group. Representatives of Italy's Interior Ministry will be in Washington soon for intensive high level meetings with the Justice Department. The Italian government's cooperation on this matter has been complete and I believe the working group is another reflection of the excellent relations that exist between our two countries. Italy by the way deserves a lot of credit and the thanks of the world for its heroic efforts to fight crime and domestic political terrorism. All of us remember that day in 1982 when Italy liberated General James Dozier from the hands of the Red Brigades. The courage of the Italian forces took our breath away and I had the pleasure in Rome of meeting the young men that finally broke through that last door in the face of the enemy guns and affected the rescue and I want to tell you I'd feel you could send them to do some very tough jobs without arms. They were the most capable young men I've seen in a long time. Italy has been very effective in this fight and they're setting an example for the world. We believe in the neighborhood. We believe that the closer political power is to the people it affects the better it will be wielded. We believe that human experience has taught us that local control is an integral part of political freedom and we believe finally that the first and last key to making sure America will always be a haven for the immigrants who've enriched it is to ensure the peace and to ensure the peace we must remain militarily strong. Down through our history most American presidents have understood this. Our friends know well something that we know and something that our adversaries know. America can be trusted with military might. We don't like war. We never have. We're not an expansionist country or an imperialist country. We seek only to protect, never to act as the aggressor. Our nation must always remain what God in his wisdom intended it to be a refuge, a place of safe haven for those looking for the human rights that have eluded them in the place of their birth. And it must always be a place of limitless opportunity for the children and grandchildren of the dreamers who journeyed here. If we keep these things in mind then truly the children of the future will have both roots and wings and the dream will endure. Before I leave you tonight I want to add just one more thing. Decades and decades back there was an Italian immigrant who came to America and he started a family and worked hard and raised his children as best he could. One of his sons became a milkman. He too worked hard and married and had a family. And then the male man, or the milkman I should say, raised his children as he had been raised. They were taught to respect honesty, decency, and hard work. They struggled to make ends meet. All of the money went to the education of their children. They put one son through college and when he said he wanted to be a doctor they put him through medical school. Because of their diligence the son became a prominent surgeon in a great hospital. One day that surgeon, that son of a milkman, saved the life of a president of the United States who had been shot. I know this story because I was the patient. Dr. Joseph Giordano is the surgeon. The hero of the story is Joseph Giordano Sr., retired milkman and inheritor of the Italian American tradition. I have thanked Giordano's but I've not had a chance to personally thank a group like this for all that you've done to keep the tradition alive. And so, grazie. Thank you all very much. God bless you. Ladies and gentlemen in about, please be seated. In about 20 seconds I will be introducing Bishop Bevilacqua to deliver the benediction.


Marios asks, Can you explain the process from the time an Ethereum user wants to execute a smart contract, until it is uploaded on the blockchain, executed and displayed on a valid block? That's a great question, Marios. First of all, in order to explain this, keep in mind that there are effectively three different types of transactions in Ethereum. The first one is a straight payment. That's a transaction that happens from a regular account, as it's known in Ethereum, an externally owned account, or EOA, to another externally owned account, basically from a private key, public key pair that a user has, to another private key, public key pair in the form of an Ethereum address, to another user. So this is just a payment from one user to another, from one address to another, exactly the same as you see in a Bitcoin transaction. There is another type of transaction where you send payment and data, or both, not to another user, but instead to the address of a contract. So this is a big distinction in Ethereum between an address that belongs to a user that has a private public key behind it, an externally owned address, or EOA, as it's known, or an address that belongs to a contract which does not have a private key behind it. It's run by the code in the contract. So an address that's run by a contract can receive a transaction, and this transaction may include data that tells it what to do, or a payment. And that's how you make a contract run in Ethereum. You send a transaction to the contract address, and instead of that going to the address of a user, it goes to the address of a contract where the contract executes with that input. Finally, there's a third type of transaction, a kind of special transaction, which is sending data to the zero address. And what that does is it registers a contract for the first time. So let's put all of those ideas together and explain the process from the moment the Ethereum user wants to run a contract. Now, let's say that contract doesn't exist. Well, the first thing they would need to do is write the contract, compile it, create the code for the contract, then embed the contract in a special transaction to the zero address, and pay to get that contract mined. Now, at this point, what that will do is it will create an address for the contract, and it will record the code of the contract onto the blockchain. So now the contract can be run. To run the contract, any user would then send a transaction to the address of the contract. And that transaction can contain some value, like a payment. It can also contain some data, and the data may call one of the functions in the contract. Or it can contain both value, payment, and data at the same time. Once a user sends a transaction to the address of a contract, the Ethereum virtual machine, and this applies to other blockchains that use a virtual machine, will start executing the contract, passing the transaction as input to it, so that the contract knows what to run. And then that execution happens under the consensus rules, and it causes changes to the state of the contract. It might cause a contract to make a payment, to call other contracts, to run a function, to update some internal data, etc. All of these things happen as a direct result of that transaction to the contract, which is what causes it to run. So every contract runs when it's triggered by a transaction, and using that transaction's input as its input. A contract doesn't run on its own. Contracts never run on their own. They have to be triggered by a transaction. And before that even happens, the contract has to first be registered with the Ethereum blockchain. Can you explain how a user can define the gas price? They have paid for a transaction. And if not enough gas, the transaction will still be processed. Is there an advantage to always put more than what is required, in order to get the transaction process faster? When you create a transaction in an Ethereum wallet, your wallet gets to set two parameters. One is the gas price, and the other one is the gas limit. The gas price creates an exchange rate between gas and Ether. Gas is not Ether, but it is used to measure Ether, meaning that the gas is priced in the Ether. For example, you say how much gas you want to put in, and then each gas unit has a price in Ether, and that price in Ether determines how much you are willing to spend, in total, to have that transaction processed. If you have enough in your limit, then the transaction will be processed, and you will be charged how much gas you actually used in your transaction, which depends on what contracts you are executing or what payments you are making. For example, a simple payment costs 21,000 units of gas. Now, when you create a transaction, you can set not the amount of gas, because that is really about whether it will execute or not, but you can also set the gas price in order to prioritize your transaction vis-à-vis the other transactions. In that way, it works very similar to Bitcoin fees. The way GasWit works in Ethereum has similarities to the way Bitcoin fees work, but there are some important differences. By putting a higher amount of gas in your transaction, you make it more enticing to miners, so that they will mine it at a higher priority or sooner, than if you have a lower price. Again, this mostly matters when the blockchain is operating at or near capacity, at which point there are more transactions than can fit in each block, and some have to be prioritized over others. Gas determines that. There is a separate question, however, in Ethereum, which is the gas limit. You have to understand that one of the things that Gas does in Ethereum, is it prevents unlimited computation or denial of service attacks. That is its most important function. It does that because in Ethereum, processing a contract, a transaction that leads to running a contract, could run forever. It could involve other contracts. It could create loops. It can just keep running, consuming memory, updating data, and trying to do a lot of different things. Because everybody has to run that transaction and that contract, in order to participate in consensus, that means using a lot of resources on the system. In order to prevent runaway or abusive transactions and contracts that use too much computing, you have Gas. It is basically a system of controlling how many resources are being used. This is different from its function as a fee. The function is a fee to prioritize one thing. Again, the ultimate function is to set a limit on the maximum amount of computation you are willing to pay for.  The network will take that maximum amount of gas from your account when the transaction starts executing, and then will gradually count how much of it you are using. If you run out of gas mid-computation, you are going to get an error, the transaction is going to get rejected, you will lose your gas, you will pay the fee, and your transaction won't actually work. If you have enough gas, because you set a high gas limit, then your transaction will execute, and you will be charged only for the amount of gas you actually use. That is how the function works. Remember, gas does two things in Ethereum, unlike Bitcoin fees that do one. It is used to prioritize transactions when the blockchain is at or near capacity, by ensuring that the transactions that are more important, because people are willing to pay more for their gas, are processed faster, and prioritized. Secondly, the main function of gas is to control how many resources the Ethereum blockchain spends on validating transactions by putting a limit on how much computation and data storage operations happen in the form of gas.


Okay, well, I'm really excited to be here. This is my first CSDMS meeting. I'm grateful to Talk to you all about something that I find really interesting working with machine learning stuff sort of at the interface of postal models data and using these really interesting computational tools so before I begin I just want to Acknowledge all the collaborators that are involved in the work that I'm presenting There's a longer list of people who have been involved in machine learning and coastal work that I've done but these are the people who have been key to either the work that I'm going to present or led the work that I'm going to present or Have deeply influenced the way that I think about machine learning here And I also want to acknowledge the fact that all of you in the room There could be some of you who know nothing about machine learning and some of you who know a lot about machine And I want to try to bridge that space a little bit and hopefully Convince you all that if there if you were working with a numerical model that has parameterizations or closures associated with it then machine learning at least can provide some some Useful potentially useful maybe an interesting way to deal with that issue so When I speak about machine learning this goes under the broad heading of data-driven science which has been in the news at Full-velocity full volume for quite a long time So here's Chris Anderson's great article from wired in 2008 the end of theory the data On the right is the fourth paradigm book from Microsoft research This is Pedro Domingos who's a machine learning researcher his popular press book the master algorithm and NSF one of NSF's current 10 big ideas is HDR harnessing the data revolution and You know, there's a lot of work going on in data-driven science science is a data is based on data So this is not something necessarily that's new that we're using data for science but I at least want to point out that the velocity or the volume of data that we're dealing with now is interesting To have to grapple with these issues and also that machine learning is this tiny subset in my mind of this data-driven Science world where we're trying to make sense of the data. We're trying to pull information. We're trying to try to pull knowledge. We're trying to pull Insight out of the data stream using computational techniques or more rigorous computational So my own introduction to machine learning which I think gives a One example of how somebody who is trained as a geoscience can come to this as I was walking to my office as a Graduate student wondering what the hell I was going to do that day and I was listening to this to an episode of the podcast radio lab called The Limits of Sciences episode and I strongly recommend listening to it. It's really interesting and in it the the host is interviewing two researchers that are working on This simple mechanical systems like the double pendulum or multiple spring mass and spring systems And they're using motion tracking software and taking the data streams that come from them And then running it through an algorithm algorithm that they built To try to detect physical law conservation laws or in variances on the right is a if you can reduce this down This is the Hamiltonian of the double pendulum system And what is this really got me interested interested because it's a way of dealing with these Machine learning it's a way of dealing with data streams and pulling out potentially rules Or other expressions of the data that we could potentially use in interesting ways So in the crib sheet in my mind, I mean there's a time I don't want to define machine learning But the operational definition that I'm going to be using right now is some sort of algorithm that takes data and develops a Generalization makes something generalizable that we can test that we can do science on that We can use as a hypothesis test to try to reject and I'm going to primarily be talking about regression tasks here Where we're trying to predict continuous variables as opposed to classification tasks. We're trying to predict discrete variables Okay, so that sort of ends the introduction That I want to give and I want to move the springboard into two examples that are sort of step-by-step one where I'm developing a parameterization and then deploying it in a model in a way that Hadn't been that that was exciting for us to do and then as the last part of the talk I just want to leave with five ideas just things that I think are interesting And could be useful to this community if you were thinking about how machine learning could integrate with with models in general or earth surface models or things like that So I just want to leave so bear with me as I stepped through this example and then Leave you with some ideas So the basic machine learning parameter is so Machine learning takes data and tries to pull something interesting out from it So that the parameterization I'm going to try to develop a simple machine learning parameterization for a run-up And this is a cross-shore profile You can see the waves breaking on the beach in the dune wave run-up is just the maximum vertical extent That's of the wave up brush on the shoreline above the still water line So that's denoted in the blue dot you want to predict we're interested in predicting right wave run-up as a coastal scientist because it's It sets if some place is going to be flooded or the erosion of the dune or other coastal processes moving sediment around So run-up is a interesting and very well studied problem So it's usually parameterized as some run-up is equal to a function of way offshore wave height h wave period t and beta which is slope the beach slope that the waves are breaking up on and Fortunately, there's a lot of available open data here and I'll get to this data issue further on in the talk But there's hundreds of data points Tense hundreds of data points mostly hundreds of data points provided by the USGS as part of a nice experiment and the typical way in which parameterizations are built for run-up is you take these three parameters and you Non-dimensionalize them or you figure out you regress them against each other in some creative way and You're picking through that regression through the linear regression or nonlinear regression the functional form of the line That's going to be fit through the data cloud. So that's been very successful and it's used in operational and forecasting models But when you have a lot of data and pairs of data like this with with run-up being paired to the wave parameters and the Morphologic parameters of data you can it then opens it and enough data then you can open up to doing things no more Computationally intensive search strategy. So I'm first going to introduce this machine learning technique of genetic programming Which is and how we do how we can build a predictor with Before wave run-up. So we the idea here What genetic programming is is it falls into the category of evolution evolutionary machine learning techniques and it's a population-based search strategy whose strategy where we're trying to find the optimal equation that fits run-up using these three input parameters So we specify some set of variables and some mathematical tools that relate these variables to each other But this is a symbolic regression problem. It's not defining the functional form It's just defining the toolkit that we can use So what we're doing is dumping these variables and dumping these tools into a bag and shaking them around and seeing what comes out in this stochastic population-based search strategy and I'll define and I'll show you how that's done But so we define so we define this as this sort of stage and then we give the algorithms some training data and with that training data and with the variables and the Functions we shake the bag around and pull out a population of different predictors that we could use to Come up with run-up equations and these populations are in fact equations themselves So the populations is a population of equations and they're expressed in this nice graph form with nodes and edges so The the algorithms that you can use you can set this as a parameter how big the population is but in this case I'm going to pick up a population of two to show you an example of how this works So the first pop the first predictor is just run-up equals four times the height and second is run-up is equal to two plus The way period the bet so we're operating on these population of predictors using vaguely evolutionary rules So this is the first generation to get to the second generation that we test all of the predictors Versus the data set that we've given us training data and we retain the best predictors. We keep the most fit Equations the ones that are bad we toss them out or we operate them on them with these evolutionary rules So they either Get crossed over they mix with one another or they mutate so T can be switched around and Here's an example of a crossover and that's the second generation and then we operate with the training data on that second generation and we rinse and repeat and we rinse and repeat and we rinse and repeat and eventually we get a whole family of predictors a Whole population of predictors That we hope can solve this run-up problem reasonably well So after a bunch of different formula tests so after 10 times 10 to the 11th predictors are actually used against this training data you end up with a plot like this So on the x-axis here is complexity. This is the measure of how many nodes are in the graph How many nodes are in that description of? Of the equation of each individual member of the population and on the y-axis is just an error metric here I'm using mean square and the line here all the dots are different The best predictor at that given size the one with the lowest error So this is referred to as the Pareto front and what you need to do there are a bunch of rules in the literature and there are a bunch of heuristics And and you can apply information criteria measures, but what you need to do is select from this the the Predictors that you eventually want to retain you can imagine that this very complex predictor away at the end With very low error is probably something that's overfit and something at the very top might be under fit So there's unfortunately I don't have to I don't have time to get into it But you there are rules that you can apply here to pick the predictor Here's an example of larger complexity that you can see on the bottom right and Here are the two predictors that we ended up selecting they're at the bottom of a cliff and This is what the results look like so this is not run up at swash Actually, which is one component of run up and on the x-axis is the observed values of the swash And on the y-axis is the predicted using these equations different predictors And I told you I'd use I pulled two machine learning predictors on the left and the right and the right pan left in the middle And the right panel is this non machine learning or traditional empirical prediction This is new data That it's being tested against So this don't train don't test with training data That's the only most important thing of my talk do not test with training data So this is testing data It's new data that wasn't shown to the algorithm and you can see that the machine learning techniques do oh and the This is the line is the one-to-one So that the algorithm develops these two technique these two predictors that are able to effectively Predict in this case the swash, which is one component of run up They fall closer to the one-to-one line than the traditional prediction scheme the problem is there's still this irreducible scatter associated with it So, you know, you should throw more data at it, right? See the scatter resolves. So Fortunately, I've had the great fortune of working with Tom Buzin and Kristen's winter at the University of New South Wales Where they have lots of data. So this is Narabean Beach in Australia. It's a very well-studied site And like I said, you usually have hundreds of data points for Hundreds of data portends to hundreds of data points for a run-up prediction experiment That is at least open and free in the wild for us to use Kristen and Tom are part of the water resource lab, which has a lidar mounted on the top of the building Which is able to take measurements of Run-up on a wave-by-wave basis. So they graciously gave gave us 8500 measurements of hourly paired run-up weight offshore wave height offshore wave period and Beach slope measurements. So this is great We get to use more data to see if the scatter resolved But as we all know more data makes the problem worse probably Well, yeah way worse. So this is another observers predicted experiment. So we cannot this is not Data in this case is not the universal asset that's able to solve this problem by to come up with a better predictor and We were sort of at an impasse with what to do here and I have You know, this is not surprising that more data doesn't work. We're trying to come up with a deterministic prediction scheme for a complex non-linear process that's Parameterized with three simple terms wave height wave period and beach slope the beach slope is a morpho Has morphodynamics involved in it the waves are have directional spread association with them We're not including offshore morphology like near shore bars things like that So it's not surprising in a lot of ways that we're trying to reduce the scatter and it's not getting any better So instead of thinking deterministically we tried to think probabilistically So we're using another technique here. I'm using a second technique on this data set machine learning technique That unfortunately has the same acronym This is gout. We're using the technique of Gaussian processes here So just for a moment, let's ignore the plot but Gaussian processes are a probabilistic machine learning technique We're defining the probability of any given function How it fits through a data cloud. So it's a probability of functions that can be used to fit the data so if you imagine that we have this big data cloud which Stensibly is behind this gray outline. You just ignore what the gray outline says If you imagine that the data is somewhat behind the gray outline That there is the mean of this So we give the algorithm all of this data and it plots out This is a single slice in one dimensional space in two dimensional space of what the data sets On on the x-axis is height and on the y-axis which has been cut off as the speaker's no good Is is r or run up? So you can imagine that if we if we give all this data and then run this probabilistic technique And that's finding a probability distribution of functions that fit this data set the black line through it The mean value is the most probable function that fits this data cloud Okay, the nice thing about doing this technique is we've tuned up this probabilistic techniques Which tells us the probability of any given function as it moves through the data cloud So we can draw from the probability distribution We can take the green line, which is one draw through the data space and through It's an it's a probable function that could fit the data cloud or the blue line or the orange line And all of these are reasonable run-up prediction schemes So instead of trying to come up with one deterministic scheme Which would be the black line in this case and we plot it up and we have all the error associated with it We can draw multiples. We can draw one two hundred thousand different run-up prediction schemes So now we have all these run-up prediction schemes Well, we can feed this into a dune erosion model making what Giovanni Cocoa and I call a hybrid model Where some component inside of a larger numerical model Is built using data or using machine learning So here's that crusher profile again And I was told when I started modeling that you should draw a picture of your model and then describe it in words So here's the picture the waves run up the beach and erode into the dune And in words the volumetric dune erosion is just proportional to the square of the excess run-up Above the dune toe So that's the model and I'm going to go into no details until I cut it up because I did a great job So the cool thing about using this dune erosion model is it's simple It's very fast and we can feed run-up is a key component in it So we can feed that mean predictor that black line Then we can feed feed the green prediction scheme Then we can feed the orange prediction scheme And we can feed all the different prediction schemes and get up with get Together and get a a whole spread of dune erosion estimates from that So in a way we're self creating an ensemble And this is what it looks like when you're done when we've drawn a hundred different run-up prediction schemes and a hundred different Run a hundred different models from a storm that hit this area And on the x-axis is the profile lines So lines of profile and on the y-axis we're showing the dune erosion volume That's that's been eroded from these profiles And if you look only on the left side of the plot, which I prefer that you do You will see that the observed values in pink Are denoted and then the ensemble mean is in black and if you look on the left Looks pretty good, right? We don't know what's going on the right total but these gray Bands show you the shaded percentile range of if how of the ensemble so 99 so these are Express the ensemble the range of the ensemble So the idea here is that we're able to provide not only the classic deterministic how much five You know this this much do this much sand is going to erode, but we're also able to provide some Uncertainty or estimates to potentially managers who would be concerned about this sort of stuff This paper is currently in review right now in the system special issue I strongly urge you to go online and give it a great review Okay, so I want to that sort of ends how I'm thinking about Presenting the machine learning work that we've done that could relate to Models in this hybrid way where we're taking data and machine learning components and putting them Inside of models and trying to create creative ways of dealing with parameterizations And instead I just want to talk to you now I want to shift gears a little bit and talk to you about five things that I see as potential and five futures five Things that I'm personally excited about related to machine learning that I think might be relevant to this audience Versus open data we I can't do Anything with machine learning without access to data And I would love to be able to cite you as a paper and then you again as a data set So open data is critically important. You can see on the top. This is the data sharing statement that I see a lot Research data is available bottom request from the first one or here's a recent grl paper that says please note The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors So that's how data and supporting material is being lovingly archived So I'd love there, you know, I did want to read one thing I just saw a dear colleagues letter from nsf that describes and encourages effective practices Or data and encouraging persistent identifiers like dlis So nsf is keen to to this idea too Me and nsf, you know, they're following along in great footsteps so I If you make your data findable accessible interoperable Interoperable and reusable fair I would love to be able to find it using some of these great things like data site or google data set search And then use it and collaborate with you and do all of these great things. So I really encourage you to think about uh data sharing practices that are separated from just supplementary material And lastly, we don't have benchmarks for um For lots of these machine learning algorithms that are earth science specific. So I'm very keen to see Benchmarks created where we can test different machine learning algorithms and understand where they do well and where they don't do well with different earth science datasets So two is um time series prediction So we work on systems that have solid phases in them. So Auto regression and memory effects come into play And there's been this real revolution in how to deal with time series prediction and machine learning primarily driven by a specific neural deep neural network architecture called long short-term memory And here's an example from Frederick Kratzert Where on the x-axis is time this is time series and on the y-axis the bottom is discharge and The kratzer led a group of people on this paper who are creating our rainfall runoff model With a long short-term memory that does very well in prediction And in systems that have snow. So inside the neural network There's a space that Accumulates information accumulates memory when the temperature is below some value and then dumps it when the temperature is above some value There's a space inside this thing that he's tuning up that knows what snow is in the context of this. This is a very cool paper And his work is very cool. And I think this sort of time series modeling Can guide what we can do On earth surface processes in the but for this was Investigated with near shore bars like 10 years ago in coastal processes But the network architecture of the neural network and the training methods We aren't quite there yet and these two new techniques on training and new architecture techniques. Can I think? Do a really neat job on time series prediction Okay Images are a weird diverse set of data that personally I haven't really dealt with much but There's this great paper by bus come and Richie where they're taking Images from coastal california and semantically segmenting them into regions where there's rock There's land and there's water and dealing with image data set trying to pull out information or insight from them That could be used for modeling or understanding surface processes I think is a frontier Including and I'm I'm currently working in the space trying to pull out images from social Volunteer social media data from social media streams and detect from them weird behaviors that are going on like humans using bulldozers In the middle of a storm event both on the coastline to build back some dune It's home dune. That's actively eroding or dig out some river channel as it's actively In flood stage. So I think finding these weird fit a weird human behaviors Pulling out pulling that out pulling that information out and sifting it from the large set of image Data is particularly relevant I've been looking at this plot On the left For 20 years now work, you know close to since it was published. It's a brad Werner's Plot of the different scales and the hierarchy of processes that occur So down at the bottom is sand grains and fluid physics and the dynamics associated with that and the dynamics associated with bed form shape And bed form crash line position and on the top pattern scale variables all of these Scales might have dynamics associated with them rules that Control how they evolve through time and these emergent picking out these emergent things though is a drag For my phd. My advisor made me pick out ripple defects and ripple Bifurcations on the bottom on the right through very long model simulations that were run with the cst in this cluster and instead now You can train up Algorithms to be able to detect those things for you and pick them out and detect how they move and their dynamics associated So if we can do that There's this hope that we can not only detect emergent things and figure out dynamics associated with emergent And not only detect them but figure out the dynamics associated with these emergent variables and these emergent Things so i'm sure this isn't related just to bed forms. I'm sure picking out river junctions Or I don't know what everybody else does but picking out emergent river Emergent dynamics, I think is interesting And lastly I want to talk about jennifer montaño's work. She's at the university of auclain and she's sort of wrangled this big group of people So look at shoreline Change prediction at this one beach in new zealand at tiruah So on the bottom panel, you'll see two plots in the black This is a time series plot with shoreline cross shore position as the shoreline is moving forward and backward And on the top panel is all of more traditional Empirical models for it and on the bottom panel is a bunch of different machine learning models So these sorts of competitions where we're comparing physical models or more traditional models And then machine learning models with each other. I think can highlight what spaces machine learning works. Well, what spaces Physical traditional models work. Well, how they interact with each other how we confuse them together So this sort of competition where you're getting together and In a friendly way Competing about who's who's uh, whose technique is the best. I think is a is a definite future Okay, so I'll let you read the in summary. I just want to thank you all for listening and the a lot of this work If you need more coastal examples Giovanni nifaniel plant and I just published a paper in earth science reviews Which existed for a long time as an earth archive preprint and as a member of earth archive as a community member. I'd love to Tell you all to submit preprints there if you're at all interested and I'm happy to answer any questions Later So thanks very much So we're actually going to have a panel discussion on machine learning later this afternoon So we'll be able to follow up on some of these ideas while we change over speakers. Are there a couple of questions for evan? Yes I think that that's a um I started just by being interested in one technique and I think that leads you down the rabbit hole of what technique will work I don't know if I don't know a great answer to this question other than diving in and trying it out with the technique I think most of them tend to work well Or the problems that we all deal with relatively low dimension problems there is this uh, there is this current trend of using auto ml, which I think is Being integrated or is Integrated with the side kit learn library, which is the python machine learning library and what it does is take The basic testing your you split the data into training and testing and then it runs it through different algorithms and figures out Which one works and which one doesn't work? So if you're interested in that finding the best one that works a tool like that would work But if you're interested in just diving in and trying something just dive in and try something It will probably work and if it doesn't you then you can try something else You can also tune what you want Tune the algorithm that you use on what you want I mean we wanted the genetic programming one because we wanted a smooth prediction surface an equation as opposed to something that was More difficult to read The hope was eventually we could use that smooth prediction surface to a smooth predictor to do non-linear dynamics associated with it To deal with the equation in an analytical way. So that's why we gravitated to that But i'm happy to provide more advice, but that's my five I think that that's a Okay, so the question was um, if you have a data set that has like the run-up that has three input Parameters that you're using when do you know that you you might just want to add an extra variable to make the prediction better That's a great question. We're limited right now by people Linking an additional variable to the run-up data set But we're currently working to to add near shore morphology to it or we end wave directional spread to it So I think you're right as soon as you add that everything should start to collapse a little bit for sure Great. Thanks Evan


So the first thing I really want to do and like this is my own little startup file So I already made some adjustments to the workspaces and brushes and The theme also like I like to just customize my theme in like some various ways So I have my general workspace over here, which generally has like a little more like a relatively big 3d viewport and nice and big outliner because At some points, I just when I generally work on production files The outliner turns to 10 tends to become pretty big so there's going to be a lot of objects and collections and The deeper your outliner will be the better. So by default I think there's just an outliner right over here, which is just way too small for the purposes I need and then over here There's a little time line over here, which I can scale down or up and then just Change the editor as well. I'm also like throughout my modeling process I'm going to have like some custom menus and pie menus So for example, I made like a little pie menu over here to just like switch between my most used editors So I can immediately go from the timeline to the dope sheet or Any other one so I can go to the info editor and just have a look over here This is just my personal setup to speed up my process a bit more So instead of just going into this menu and switching between editors slowly I can just do it immediately and seamlessly What's first so pretty much the first thing I want to do is I have this already the sphere over here, which is nice but I Want to block out the character so get a General sense of the proportions and the three-dimensional shapes before going further into detail after that, I will go Likely detail the model as far as possible in terms of the models So I can get like essentially we get everything we want out of the 3d design and Then after that there will be a cleanup session where I'm just going to go over it I'm probably not going to sculpt the character because it's really just such simplified shapes that there's no real need to go into Sculpt mode and use dynamic topology and the remesh on all that stuff. It's really kind of overkill We don't need that fine control over the shapes We can I can mostly just box model it and then use sculpt mode for various small little tasks and tools But still I like to differentiate the the modeling process into like the the initial sculpt like the blocking and then the sculpting and Then having that detached from the actual Production model so even though we're going to box model everything. It's still going to be the sculpt so later on We can just go in and clean up the model do some topology tweaks redirect some loops here and there Anything that will be most optimal for the animation for getting any deformations we need But during the sculpting step It's really just about getting the shapes and all the details in there anything that we want to have in the 3d model so and that was just like a little run down on like what I want to like how I would approach this I Also can recommend definitely to save regularly and with multiple files And have like auto save on like I have a blender set up so that it like auto saves every like two or three minutes So I never really lose any progress if it crashes Which might as well do because I'm using like in development version of 2.83 to get To essentially test all the latest features, but also be at the mercy of all the crashes and bugs so We can already start making a new collection over here I already set up like a main first collection over here called settler and then in that collection We have this little it's essentially the default cube, but I just subdivided it three times and turned it into a sphere So that's a way better default cube for most of the projects that I start up with And then I have another collection over here, which is just called helpers. It's usually just excluded Disabled rather like the terminology changed a bit over the over time So it's disabling a collection and in that collection. We really just have this a little Empty over here. Let me actually check over here if I can turn on screencast keys. That'd be amazing Yes, I can So you can at least see What I'm doing over here. Can I move it a little bit to the side? That would be great And I actually I'm just gonna keep it here because otherwise it's gonna clip into the tool bar at some point Awesome Also one thing you might notice I already set up like a little pie menu over here to change The different UI elements of the editors. So I don't have to press T and N anymore I just have it set pressed. I have just have it set to N So essentially whatever I'm doing. I can just disable any of these UI elements Just with one key, which is kind of useful. It's still relatively new. I just set it up But I might not keep it. Let's see how annoying this actually is to get used to But yeah, I'll just keep the oh god I just keep the screencast keys over here on the side. Apparently the the add-on is not working that well anymore Anyway We have the little helpers over here with a Empty in the center. This is great if you want to use like mirror modifiers and you always want to have them centered So I'm just I just usually have one of these in my files And then I can just create another collection over here and it just called this reference and What I'm going to do over here now is I'm just gonna Have my little file browser over here and I can just drag and drop the turnaround into it It's not working Here we go So now we have this guy over here You can just scale this up With a nice little reference empties we have these little widgets over here on the side to resize and and Adjust the the empties, but you can also turn them off. It's usually what what I do I like to just use the so here in the gizmos tab you can just Disable all of them any any one of them that you don't need for me. It's usually all of them They're just kind of in the way unfortunately But yeah, at least the transform gizmos kind of useful so I can just hit Yeah, alt g to reset the transforms the The location at least so that it's in the center and I'm noticing that the it's actually kind of offset Let me just fix that So is this relative? Yes, it's relative. So just point minus point five and Minus point five and it's going to be centered actually Let me have this at zero because we want to have the The origin of the world to be the ground level. So this is going to be definitely easier to handle so let's just Place the sphere already where we kind of want it So this is the front view. So I'm just gonna move this over to the side Can I actually? Ah, yes transparency, this is nice so I can toggle this on and then I at least get to see the grid This will help a lot for just like Centering this guy Yep, so this is ref front And then I can just duplicate this I can set the pivot point to the 3d cursor. So we can just rotate this 90 degrees Other direction from the top and then go to the right and move this all the way over here Actually another thing that I might point out at this point. I right now I'm still using like my own Experimental key map where I changed all of the usual modal operators to the tools. So don't like the Just for context because Otherwise it might be a bit confusing why suddenly the the tools are actually constantly swapping around So that's actually how I'm modeling this right now So yeah, now I can look from the right and the front and this is nicely aligned It doesn't actually matter how deep you place this into. It's just important that the height is the same I like to kind of like align it like over here with the feet and the body So this is nicely centered. So but you could also just align it with the face I guess at this point. It doesn't really matter. We can shift around stuff later on again anyway And yeah, I can just look at this again and Just rotating this 180 degrees and actually there's this nice little feature in here probably Actually, let me check I have an experiment much with these guys over here So, yes, we can define which fate which side is visible from these reference empties So we could by default. It's on both So if you look at them from both sides, they're going to be visible You can also change. I guess the depth. I guess this is when you have multiple Empties on top of each other. It's like some sort of depth drawing method So this is not something we need to bother about right now But the side is important. So we can set it to front and then if we then only the front side of the empty Which is pointing backwards right now is going to be drawn It's going to be visible in the viewport. So if you look at it from the front, we're not gonna see it so now I can just like go back out of local view and We won't see this one. This one can also be set to front. This one can be set to front. So now Yeah, so now we only see the reference that we actually need So, yeah, this is the thing I was I was I guess it is yes, so Yeah, it will need to choose between one of them if you're facing towards one of them more than the other So if you use the depth toggles, you can set one of them to be to have essentially priority to be in front So that's nice, but the way it works by default is sketch is actually for fully in it. Okay so yeah, this is Essentially almost good to go we can set this one to be over here from the back Perfect we can still adjust these later on but I'm just gonna widen the outline over here a little bit If you look at the outline actually most visibility toggles are disabled by default because these are the ones that you only really need to use most of the time it's the eye toggle to toggle viewport visibility and this also works with Shortcuts like age and old age and all that stuff and then there is the little check mark Which lets you disable an entire locate an entire collection and this collection then can't just be unhidden with Hmm with H or old age. So this is just completely disabled. You won't be able to see it So these two types of visibility toggles are actually kind of nice Actually, it made one moment Just disconnected my mouse from charging Okay, but the one we want to enable here right now as well is the select ability what I want is I Want to have the reference collection To be set as unselectable So now if we select in the viewport it will only select the The objects in the settler collection or anything that is not in any collection right now So that's kind of nice. So we don't accidentally constantly select the reference empties so yeah You can already see the The turntable is a bit off, but that's fine So now it's really about going in And blocking out all of these different shapes Okay, let's actually go over this just a moment more before we go into the modeling One thing I forgot to do is actually rename these guys. So this should be Side I hope it is yes, and this is the back Bam And then another thing I just noticed is that we could do it like the way of drawing these little reference empties We could do it with the side option over here, but there's also a little check mark over here called display only access aligned So it will we can just select all three of these guys And hold alt and then click the check mark and it will then check mark that thing for all of them So that's like a little hidden shortcut. This should be made way more obvious But you could also use right click and then Copy to select it and it will do the same thing So now Yes Now what this option does is it's going to display these only If the axis is perfectly aligned with the empty So if we just rotate slightly outside of that axis, it's just going to immediately disappear So if we view it from the back, we're going to see this Empty from the side this one and the front this one And this is just purely based on the The rotation of these empties. So it's yeah, it's just going to take the y axis as Basically the front facing one Yeah, and that's essentially it right now


I have a distinct pleasure folks to announce on behalf of Premier Christy Clark and this government that we're going to have two new programs here that are going to be the core of this university. It's in some ways the maturity of the university as well. To have two new engineering degrees, first of all, it's an engineering degree in wood innovation. And that's going to be a driver in terms of economics, in terms of getting the right engineering, the right structures to use wood first BC. And the second one is a degree, is a master's in science and in wood research. Well, it's a very major announcement. We see it as an expansion of our engineering program here at UNBC, as we have environmental engineering already in partnership with UBC. But it's particularly important because it is a 100% UNBC program that really accommodates two things. One is a graduate level degree in engineering and the other is a research-based, thesis research-based program that'll be a master's of applied science around the faculty members that we will recruit for this program. So it's very significant. It's been something that our community has been interested in seeing happen for some time, so it's fantastic news for the university. And as we know, we want to make sure that we're building with wood in British Columbia and across the country. We need to make sure that people have the expertise and training they need to be able to do that. So we can't be happier. This is the first program of its kind in British Columbia and across the country. So once again, another first for the University of Northern British Columbia and an opportunity to train people in the use of wood, something that we think is essential.


What do biologists do with the information gathered during wildlife population surveys? Wildlife surveys can be used for everything from environmental impact assessment for industrial permitting to measuring the effectiveness of regulations to identifying areas of habitat protection. Each survey also helps us continue to refine and improve our survey methods. But the primary use of the survey data is to inform harvest management of hunted wildlife species. Wildlife is managed on the principle of conservation first, then meeting the sustenance and ceremonial rights of First Nations and then licensed hunting opportunities. Data from surveys enables us to make science-based management decisions to ensure that hunting remains sustainable. We're particularly interested in overall population trends over time. Repeating surveys in the same areas over multiple years can tell us if an animal's population is stable or increasing or can alert us to declines that require further investigation. One key factor that we track is the number or ratio of males per hundred females. If there are too few males relative to females, not all the females will be bred and there will be fewer males available to fulfill their ecological role and for hunters to harvest. For most, we try to maintain a minimum of 30 bulls to 100 cows in areas with higher density populations and 50 bulls to 100 cows for low density populations. For caribou, a ratio of at least 35 bulls to 100 cows is considered sustainable. Because bulls and cows are part of this ratio, we manage for changes in survival to either group can alter the ratio. High rates of female mortality from hunting or other causes can have a negative impact on the sustainability of the population. Another crucial ratio we track is the number of young surviving to reproductive age. This cow-to-calf ratio can give us an idea of how well a population is replenishing itself. Remember, a stable or growing population is what we're after here. These science-based methods help us determine a sustainable, allowable hunt and the regulations require to achieve that goal. By the same token, we can learn that some populations cannot sustain any hunting at all. Because each area is unique and has different challenges, there's no one-size-fits-all management strategy. Therefore, management decisions tend to be made on a regional basis, informed by provincial direction, such as the Provincial Framework for Moose Management in BC. For biologists, policy makers, first nations and hunters, wildlife surveys remain our best tool for understanding the ebb and flow of wildlife populations and ensuring a sustainable harvest for generations to come. If you'd like to access survey reports, please follow the link in the description below.


Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another episode of the private property home shopper show today We're doing something different. We are in Santon at none other than one of the most exclusive high-rises within the CBD And that is Santon sky so follow me as we take you through this 9.8 million penthouse apartment