This study proposes a new methodology for accurately quantifying surface water extent in wetlands using Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar, SAR, data. The researchers used a combination of existing data sets, such as the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, SRTM, Water Body Data Set, SWBD, and a newly developed Composite Dynamic Surface Water Extent, CDSWE, class probability map to generate more accurate surface water extent maps than previously possible. The researchers found that this methodology was able to reduce both emission and commission errors in the prairie pothole region site by up to 10%. This suggests that including prior water masks that reflect the dynamics in surface water extent can be beneficial for the accurate mapping of water bodies using SAR data. This article was authored by Wenli Huang, Ben De Vries, Chen Kuan Huang, and others.


Good morning. Good morning. Welcome back to why in the morning on your number one is station y254 channel Remember if it's Tuesday the hashtag to use is hashtag entrepreneurship Tuesday My name is Michelle Ashira. You can follow me across all my social media handles that is at Michelle Ashira in this particular session we dive into an interesting interview So be looking at consumer choice awards Africa 2022 what it entails How did he come by and I am joined by the founder and CEO Diana Simon laser. Hi, darling I am doing well. Can you be so nice to say that in Swahili? Yes Yes Can we take this opportunity to briefly tell us who Diana Simon laser is and also brief background? Yes Diana Simon laser is a Tanzanian young woman who holds a bachelor degree in human resource management, but so Different opportunity in life apart from being employed but being self-employed to towards a field of in the of entertainment in creating consumer choice awards, which is a platform that Will talk about but then Diana is a is also a social lady apart from being a founder in the direct in the director Diana is Social person who has Loves life and everything and Diana is also a sister and a friend to those who surround her Yeah, if I even get to do to get to watch you do yeah, and mothers pertaining CC a 2022 I'd like to briefly get to understand that before you get in you got into self-employment What was Diana doing and at what particular junk change in your life that you decided that I'm just gonna Get into this journey Yeah of entrepreneurship Okay, so I graduated my University of 2017 So immediately when you graduate usually you now start looking out for opportunities, right? Yes, so I was looking out for opportunities But immediately as I graduated I was working for my parents because they ran a tour operating company So I was I was working for them But it was not Career satisfactory because now it's like you just you have not done anything. That's an extra mile for your career So I tried to get employed to another company. That's not from home, but it didn't work well Then after that I tried to do other things. I tried to be a makeup artist I opened a makeup studio and I was doing brides and then it went well But not so well, but then that's what at the at the cause of that. That's when I I Found myself birthing consumer choice. So my point is in in life There are some times you might find yourself trying things and you are not making it in those areas or fields It's because that's not where you are supposed to be So maybe I was trying to get employed and I was not is all is not working out well for me Because that's not where I was supposed to be I was supposed to not get employed to come and start my own thing And and maybe employ other people. So that's it So I was I was a self-interpreter. I only worked for employment for a very short time I was only employed for maybe six months. That's maximum Then after that I became a total entrepreneur. So from makeup artists 2019 I September I founded consumer choice awards. Yeah, you know from where you sit it's quite different from where you started Because now you're looking back and saying I was not meant to be there. Yeah I was meant to be here because now you realize yourself and you the self-awareness from that context Kindly take me a lot allow me to take you back to the point where by Diana is working for a true and travel company that belongs to the palm as she feels Not there, you know, not yet and moving on to another company and not doing makeup cosmetics and yeah, and that and What what made you push yourself to the point about you are trying new things instead? And also with your background, but you were not comfortable to the point where you settled You were trying out new things and being open opening the the door of discovery. What pushed you to that particular point? I think it's because I've always been a dreamer. I have had it.  I was that girl when we have school competitions of maybe Say what do you call this? Debates I'll be the one to represent the school So I've always been a girl for the platforms, but apart from that I also participated in Miss Tanzania back in the days So I was also a pageant when I never won miss Tanzania, but I won the zone so the zonos area So I was all I always saw myself as a big as a big woman But I just never knew on what angle I always I've always been a person for self-drive I've always loved having a strong career. I've always loved having Having a tough Career that can support me financially I've always had the notion of being and a self-independent woman so it's that that it's that drive that That dream that made me never stop. So when I'm with my parents, I'm never I'm not independent I live under under them like this is what you get. This is what you do when I'm doing makeup I was not getting enough profit. So it's not It's not it's not financially fulfilling you get so I have a dream I need to I need to travel the world. I need to do this. So I when I look at this I'm seeing myself. Okay, I'm not gonna get there. So let me look for another way So that's when this one came around and looking at your family setup. Yeah, I had the most or who has the most influence Who are the most influenced when you're starting off in this particular journey of self-discovery? Okay, so my mom has always been a career woman as well My mom is a very hard-working woman But now when it comes on to the side of being who inspired me most I feel like it's it's my mom to some part is my mom But most part is myself because I was the one who's looking at the future me because sometimes by the time When I was starting this they were all like Not sure what are you saying because when I was telling them the plan they were like, what are you saying?  Why would you want to? You know these people have been into the industry for about 20 plus years I came across that because now when I founded in 2019 the funny part is I Started I started with a very humble beginning So like whenever I approached people I appears that humble person who has nothing Not from the looks not the from from the nothing that will make you feel like this is a CEO for this big project So people would be like who are you to a word like this? But I was I kept telling them the vision is the idea is not me awarding the bags The idea is not me awarding the telecoms. They are what the idea is me creating a platform that these Companies get awarded by the consumer the end user. So I'm not awarding I'm just creating a platform You know, so it was really tough at least for the first for first second year, but When God gives you something as again, we go back to that. He makes a way on it. All right Yeah, all right, then you'll agree with me It's one thing to have a vision to have an idea and then getting on ground to implement it It's another thing you need capital you need the finances to actually steer gear the whole idea All the whole day. How did you go about that? Yeah, let's take me through you have the idea now, right? You'll be awarding at different business enterprises From a point of view where the consumers are actually choosing who is the winner second runners up and how it flows Take me through you have the idea now now the process of implementing it How long did it take and what are some of the challenges that you learned along the way? Okay, so I'll give all the credit back to God, okay Though the world doesn't only believes in science, but I also believe there is God because now the way consumer choice awards came to me it came in a very divine way because I Only I started it in September 2019 and then in December 2019 we held the first award So it's only a period of three months. Okay for a person with no capital I started with no capital, but then let's say my capital is my car Okay, because I had a car immediately after graduating my parents like gave me as a present So in fact, I didn't buy my because they gave me money because I was in another city They gave me money to buy the car So I didn't buy exactly the amount that they gave me I saved some amount to to run the program But it was a very small amount to say you could run the program But I was able to at least move put some fuel move from here to there. So that was my first capital My second capital was the human resource the people around me So because now at least I think my bachelor degree in HR had a role in it because I was able to utilize the people around me And make it happen because around me.  Okay, let's do this So I was working with people part-time was I can't I can't pay you so you sell the dream So people like are working in the other companies but on the part-time they're helping me So some saw the vision in it. So they were like, okay, we'll stick to this. Some did not some were like, no No, I can't do this. So in that you must meet with both kind of people But the ones who say who don't believe in the dreams are the ones who push you to make sure that you will do it To just come and prove to them that this was possible. Okay, so and then that was the second capital Then the third capital was getting sponsors getting partners to to come in and facilitate the event So at first my I tried to approach companies to give me money But then it was not possible for the fact that it was late. That was September most companies had closed their budgets But then secondly, it's my first year. I don't even know how to draft a proposal In fact, I even why I wanted I did the two trials. I just went to two companies the first the guy just took my My proposal and just did this like like this is this is nothing.  Yes, it's trash But then to me that guy may pushed me to become who I am today because he made me go back and rethink on my proposal How I need to do it better, right? So now I closed the chapter of looking for funds now. I had to look for vendors to support See we are doing a word that cover event planners for the first time Event planners like I have there is a company in Tanzania one. It's one of the biggest event planner. I went to them. They're like Look We've been on the business for more than 20 years.  So now I have a partner who will cover on the side of deco Okay, so that if the first 2019 consumer choice awards, it was divinely covered Photographers were appearing. We will do the coverage. No one has ever considered awarding photographers you get Everyone like designers were we were addressed by designers like no one has ever seen us designers. So we will Give you the plight would give you the support. So I got the support from the vendors And that was how the first consumer choice awards was successful now immediately We did that we had a platform to come now show the partners So in the next year is when we started getting sponsorship our first sponsor was a We get we got our first financial sponsor now on the second year. That was that was Abzabak Then after that it's now all history. Oh, yeah, so you took a step of faith. We took a step of faith Fantastic and I'll look let me take you back because you know, we young people when you we are venturing into Spaces of web, but we feel you have ideas and we want to implement them and just dive on the dive off the ship And ship and just see what happens when you met the gentleman who you know crashed Trashed your whole proposal. Yeah, which I believe you took time to draft and all that Why did you why didn't you feel like maybe this because the I'm sure there are naysayers of the whole idea and everything Why didn't you like go back and say maybe they are right? Maybe I should just go back to employment and do what I've been doing the most of my years The amazing thing about when she was a choice Immediately the moment the vision came into my mind. It was so real It was it was so real for me to ever doubt it So anytime I come across someone who doubt it and tell them no because he believed in you so I believed in it Because imagine there's a friend of my mom who is also is a very wealthy man has companies in Russia So I contacted the person as well and told him I'm this so-and-so's daughter Can you support my program what he told me told me young lady stop nonsense? Get yourself a good job like your mom You know get yourself a serious career this kind of life you're choosing He crushed me like trash you get But it didn't break to me like I I don't know how and why to some point whenever I met the naysayers It's like it was just going through this year and then outside through this through the other year so I Think it's because the idea was so real the picture the vision was so real I saw it I knew it You get so it was so hard for anyone to tell me something else because I'm seeing the road So it goes back to the point that when you have a clear vision You will when you see someone starting something and then they don't proceed with it because they don't have the clear vision But if someone has a clear vision, there's no obstacle to it because you see the end The the beginning does matters nothing because you see tomorrow. Yeah Now take us through a love in international agency. What does what what what exactly does the agency do? And is this particular agency that you know bath the consumer choice Africa? Awards to Africa words. Yeah, so love in is the company that Managed and operates consumer choice awards So they were both born at the same time because now when I say I want to start consumer choice I had to register love in also registered consumer choice But consumer choice is like a product. It's like a brand because consumer choice is a is a program It's an event, right? But love in can do other things love in can do PR consultancy. Love in can do my marketing consultancy It can do other events But then among the products of love in we have the main product was now when you're even in companies when they produce The product they have the main products and they have the sub-products, right? So consumer choice is the main product of love in international agency So you offer services from public relations events everything you can come under one roof. Yes, okay We do public relations consultancy will do marketing consultancy, but as in for now We had stopped we had put a pose on that because it was now Bringing a conflict of interest in a way. You are doing PR consultancy for a company who is a nominee at the consumer choice So at least at the end of the day consumer choice. What is now? Creating a certain kind of conflict of interest to the clients that you're supposed to offer PR services to was if I'm your PR I should tell you how to do to do your campaigns for the award So I should make sure you're winning the award nature now. How am I your PR? Oh, I'm the organizer for this award So we are now stopped on that angle But then also for the fact that consumer choice was we still say we're in a startup level We're on a fourth year right fourth at least to five years. It's still startup So it needs so much focus and because our vision is not only to become a word You know, it's not just an event that's take takes place in a year. It's a program. It's a big thing We are creating it as an institution that inside it. It will have other big things So now because we are running it as a program rather rather event or an award It works as a company itself consumer choice awards So now our focus for these five years is to make sure it Tabulizes that we are able to launch other programs in the future that this one is stable It has its market. It has its grounds set clearly. Okay, Diana So who is eligible to participate on this particular event or what event? No on the question which is what it's everyone when you said consumers We are all consumers of certain goods goods certain services So we are all eligible to participate in terms of nominating who Hope who who is to be nominated who who participates in the award is a decision that can be made by everyone But also who wins the award is a decision that can be made by everyone. That's why they After nomination we shall go to the voting period where like the public is now informed to vote Okay, and also when it comes to the side of Participants it depends on the categories that we said so now As so long as a company or a business falls and our criterias They are eligible to participate. Oh, and what are these criterias? So it depends for instance. It's a bank We usually set for instance. It's a bank. We are looking at maybe Most preferred bank at digital service digital banking services Say in Eastern Africa. So any bank that does dig it has digital banking services in Eastern Africa is eligible to participate But not in Western Africa. You cannot find that bank in that category, right? So same applies to let's say if we say medical insurance company of the year in Africa So we look at a company that covers medical insurance all over Africa. Those are the criterias Yeah, fantastic and someone for someone who's watching this and they they run a particular business and they've been to Into the industry or the industry for a long period of time and they believe that Or they deserve an opportunity to be nominated and even win an award How do they go about the the process of registration and also? The aspect of nomination so now for 2022 the nominations launch in June Okay, through our website. That's www.cc awards Africa dot co dot tz So when you go to that website, there's a section that's called nominations So when you go to the nomination, there's categories now you look at what category you follow you fall under say maybe I am I'm a makeup artist. Okay I'll just go to the categories and I'll see The category be beauty and entrepreneurship then inside the beauty and entrepreneurship I'd find makeup artist and that's where I can fill my form and get nominated myself or ask people to nominate me Same when it comes to voting will have a section for voting where we have applauded all the names and all the categories But also when someone stays updated on our social media, that's our Instagram that sees it's CC awards Africa so when someone Keeps track of our Instagram. They're able to see the categories because usually when you launch the nomination We post the categories on the Instagram. So we we elaborate them So now someone is able to know okay according to my nature of business. I should fall under this category All right. Yeah, I mean a space whereby human resource Is very important and let's look at networking networking. Yeah. Oh, how do you cut across to a pointer by you build? Network which is of great worth to you and your business For someone who's watching this conversation Who is an entrepreneur and they they always struggle with that? How important is it and how they can make up that challenge? You know in business networking is everything because They would actually they would say the the the biggest capital you have is your network. Okay So what I I would really advise or what I usually do is to keep track Okay, keep track for instance We have a program that after the awards we collect feedbacks from the winners. We do interviews That's a way of maintaining the network. Okay, so whenever you do business Always have a way to maintain your chain of consumers.  You can keep track by Following up. How is it working on your face?  Maldives, Maldives. Yes. Cichels. Cichels, Maldives, wherever. You keep track with me wherever I am. Are you enjoying the Maldives? Yeah, are you liking this? So During that course we become friends Relationship or and then we when I'm back like, you know So now if I have friends who want to travel who would I recommend them to? Of course you recommend them to me because you are in my you are already in my chain of network so I feel like Maintaining the network is very important because through one person. They are ten other people you can get behind Yeah, there you have it maintain relationships keep them still just selling a product And ending the relationship. Yeah, that's that's very crucial and important and also the aspect of referral as well I think that's a key point. Yes. All right. Let's look at now. Here comes the Choice consumer choice awards You know brought into life in 2019 then a COVID hits in 2020. How did how did that affect the business for you guys? Well 2020 was supposed to be a tough year for us was supposed But as I said, I believe in God. Yes. So when God gives you something he makes a way So miraculously he made a way When things were going down to us, it's when things went up Companies were not spending but fortunately or unfortunately love their companies who were also spending That's why I told you in 2020 you got our first sponsor. Yes, you get that was at Saban now To us it was like it I don't know it was supposed to be the opposites. Maybe company says we are cutting budgets and everything So we didn't we didn't feel it exactly to that point because we were growing If say we had already ten years in the industry And then we had big partners already and then they maybe they dropped out that was when would have felt the pain But we are coming from an angle where we did not have at all So we had one so to us it was no complaint. Yes. Yes. Yeah. All right and looking back through this journey Do you have any regrets or do you wish you would start it earlier? No, I don't have regrets. I'll tell you why Any mistake I've made is what is a stepping stone to me becoming better And there is no perfect journey of perfection. I don't believe in perfection. I Embrace my journey whenever I fell down. I embrace it because it's a part of me standing up Okay, so whatever we've made mistakes a lot every and I'm glad that the people who work with us they bear with us Though we don't relax in the fact that they bear with us whenever we make a mistake We go back and crack our heads. What do we do next to make sure that we don't do the same mistakes? Okay, so Any mistake I've made in it's what makes me keep perfect So if you look even even if you take a track of our for a first event second best third event, you'll see the elevation Okay, so those mistakes are lessons that better does all right. Good to hear that good to hear that, you know for any Business person who's running any business and they start something They literally see the business as their child because you have to you know You work 24 seven days, you know You're always on the move and just seeking out the the vision and actually looking forward in terms of future and all that So for me, I would like to ask you like in terms of You starting the company and holding down the vision. I would like to find out. How do you build your capacity?  Do you have any mentors and all that? Oh, yes, we do Like I said yearly we grow for instance on our first year. We had one mentor But then now we have a board Have a board of almost seven people and all these seven people are brilliant people in the country You know like the key thinkers and as we grow now I've gone Africa No, that means I'll start having international mentors not only Tanzania mentors, right? so I Keep opening that door for learning every day Because it's very is it's as much important for me to learn From people because now I have idea with what I'm doing, right? But then I'll also in a way encounter someone who has idea in managing finances I need to know how to manage finances right because I'm doing it. I'm managing a company So it's good for me to learn from this person I'll meet a person who knows diplomacy because then of a day this this work needs diplomacy political diplomacy because we work with the Government I need to learn from that person So I have these figures of which I learn from as we grow every year I increase them in numbers Fantastic, but a couple of challenges that you have and a gone and to learn through them through the whole process Well the pressure Because when you're doing a very big thing it becomes pressure. It's very pressuring Especially for the past three years because now it's a startup and I'm the only one who really has the vision So like I fit in every department you go to the production. I'm the head of production You're every hat I'm everywhere. So now it gets to a point that the work overlords me There is a time and we need to post on Instagram, but then also We need news going on the newspapers at the same time we need TV adverts to be running at the same time you need it here at Y to do an interview You get my point Yes, so it gets that to a point that I am overloaded, but now I'm solving that challenge in a way that I'm creating I'm creating supervisors who represent me in all this in all this sub sub sub all let's say department Just to to make sure that this load that I've been working with for the past three years Now changes because I said I want this to become an institution that it runs by itself Whether I'm there or not they still runs. Yes, so now that's the that's the work I have for these two years to create a ground that even when I'm not here is still running I like to find out the culture what sort of culture do you push to your employees that they buy the same vision that you have That if they meet a client on your behalf That we will see that there's no difference if I met maybe let's say Ram is working with you if I meet Ram I'll see the same Enthusiasts in the same fire that I'll meet Diana. What sort of culture are you pushing in the company? I'll say typical corporate because our clients are corporates Okay, when you say consumer choice consumers are not corporate they can be anyone, right? Yes, and then when you say it was also we have was now we have Two subdivisions in the category in their words. We have the corporate Subdivision right we have the sure and bank circles, but also we have the entrepreneurship categories that these ones they don't They're not necessarily that corporate, right? So we are that but then our biggest clients are the corporates That's the truth We deal with everyone, but at the end of the day the funders are the corporates So those are the big the backbones of the program. So because of that our culture is Corporate so that's what I train them to become more corporate the way they receive emails They receive calls the way they they introduce themselves in meetings I maintain that for like because we have a we have the main team and support team You find that I give them uniform because I want you to appear like when you appear somewhere The someone knows this is going she much as a wise you represent the company So I really I'm really strict on that angle from the personality to the presentation To the way clients are handled. I trained it and that's I still have a work to do But I know in the next two three years, it would be exactly how I want wonderful fantastic fantastic So what should people expect when it comes to the consumer choice award 2022? Actually, I think they should expect the best Because as I said, we keep growing bigger and getting better. So last year it was big It was a glamorous event. We had people from Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya attend their award, right? So we expect this year is going to be more. So I'm telling the Kenyans out there to like Make sure you participate. You nominate yourself. You nominate your companies. You nominate your businesses Participate because it's this is going to be the center of Africa Because she much as a word is going to be the center of Africa It's going to be a summit that connects business personalities from all over the continent Yes, one of the what will the event happen and where will it happen because You were based in tz. So but I know yet we are in a spectrum of on an African Lane, so I would like to know where the event will happen So currently it's still holding in Dar es Slam Tanzania But the fact that we made it Africa gives us an open door in the near future If we ever want to start rotating in the way in places where we hold it In the future we look at that but currently we're still based in Dar es Slam Tanzania Yeah, and it will take place in november this year Yeah, what so for anyone who wants to reach out to you For any further conversation or they're interested to just engage with you on a personal level How can they reach on social media and keep the conversation going and your cameras camera department? Okay, so you can follow up or follow us on instagram. It's cc. Awards Africa It's just cc. Awards Africa when you follow us there. You can always DM Our team is always there to like respond. You can send emails We will respond and get to you There you have it. I hope I will be invited with them because I want to slay on the red carpet Yeah, sure you should you should come We like to have different people from from different parts of Africa. So yeah, I'm inviting you officially Oh my goodness. Can I be the host of the most during the event, please? Um, yeah, sure. There you have it ladies and gentlemen. We're going international Yeah, we're going international Thank you Dela for creating time to be with us and taking us through what consumer chase awards Is all about and how it was bad and to where we are right now and how the future looks like and the business aspect of it Yes, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Michelle. So that is the Anna Simon laser who is the founder and ceo of the consumer choice awards and we are looking forward to Definitely consumer choice awards 2022 So keep the conversation going at y254 channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle At Shira is where you can find me across all my social and be right back and so much right here on entrepreneurship tuesday


I don't know if you can set this up. We're going to switch gears to the other segment of the eye. Thank you. I'm going to change shift gears a little bit about some of the basic science research that I've done here in the Morana Center for the last several years. Retinal geography is a topic that I've been working on the day that I interviewed in the lab that I ended up doing my PhD in. My background originally was in astrophysics, mathematics and physics, I moved in and worked as a programmer in geospatial imaging, basically satellite imaging and things like that. So when I came into the Morana Eye Center and started studying the retina, I essentially was very interested in taking some of those sort of modes of research and applying them to biological systems and developing technologies to do that. What I'm going to show you right now is a little bit about some of the motivations for why we would want to study that. So first off, I'm going to talk about what I mean when I use the term retinal geography. There are some other terms that get thrown around in the basic science community to essentially mean the same thing. I'm going to talk a little bit about how the evolution of the vertebrate retina has set us up about the problems associated with some of the strengths and weaknesses of the geography of the retinal. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about my current work studying retinal geography and how it relates to human diseases. So geography means by itself essentially making pictures of the Earth. What the term has come to mean subsequently is about the relative arrangement of features within a structure. The term geography has come to have a more general meaning of essentially understanding the geometry and orientation of different structures within an entity. So when I say retinal geography, what I'm largely talking about is how the retinal features and structures differ in the center versus the periphery. At least that's the primary organization we're interested in in humans. In a number of other species, the interesting geographic axes aren't really central to peripheral. But in humans, that's the primary one that we look at. The eye has evolved at least twice that we know of, possibly three times. The first eye evolved during the Canberra half a billion years ago, and our compound eyes, where the light-sensitive portion of the eye is on the outside of the globe, and every discrete region of photosensitive material has its own image-forming lens on top of it. This has a couple advantages. It's really robust, so the fly can have a significant chunk of its eye damaged, and that doesn't damage the image-forming lens in the other portions of the eye. So it can sustain injuries and still retain a lot of function. The downside is that it's very space and efficient, because it's constantly reproducing the image-forming lens for every new photo-sensitive region. It ends up with a lot of lenses. It ends up with a higher burden of lens material, and so it's very space and efficient. It doesn't really show up on any animals larger than these invertebrate arthropods, but it does still persist in these animals to this day. The other type of eye evolved essentially completely independently. We refer to it as the camera. Camera eyes are shared by all jawed vertebrates, and probably evolved about 100 million years later, still sort of post-cambrian explosion, where we have a single lens that produces the image for all of the photosensitive regions of the eye at the same time. So this has an efficiency benefit in that we're able to only build a single lens. We're able to duplicate the lens over the whole surface. And it also allows for higher resolution. The reason it allows for higher resolution is because with a single lens, we can now cram all of our photo-sensitive photoreceptors into extremely high densities on the image that's being produced by that lens. So it converts to us some significant advantages. It is, however, basically an inside-out version of the compound eye. So with the compound eye, the interior surface of the convex surface of the sphere, the camera eye places the photosensitive regions on the concave, the interior surface of the sphere, and that carries certain problems that we're going to talk about. Just an interesting side note. These little guys, the hagfish, was a very interesting discovery that explained a lot to us about the evolution of camera eyes. Basically thought that the process evolved as an outgrowth of the pineal gland. Light-sensitive tissue from the pineal gland moved towards the surface of the animal where the surface ectoderm became translucent to allow light to pass through. It's thought that this is useful for a pineal gland because the pineal gland is involved in regulating circadian rhythms. So there's a significant advantage associated to knowing where the light is and when the light is. But as that surface became a little more clear, specializations of the surface ectoderm have the formation of a lens, which takes us from something which in the hagfish is thought to really only confer a sensation of light levels and possibly light direction, but no image-forming vision to something all the way up to a human that can form an image based upon that same process. This has been a very interesting saga that's been hotly debated for the last 100 years and has been one of the central topics that has been used as basically an argument against the evolution theory.  And so... And of this entire half a billion years of evolution, I'd like to point out just for perspective, human beings have existed for 200 years. So when you're looking through this lit lamp, you're looking more at a dinosaur than you are a human in a lot of ways. Some of the consequences of the way our camera eye evolved basically boiled down to that convex surface versus the concave surface problem. Our retina is essentially upside down. So our photoreceptors are at the far, far posterior edge of our retina. And the light that forms the image on our photoreceptors has to pass through the entire retina and all of its hardware and associated structures before hitting the photoreceptors. And that's obviously a problematic design because you want the image to be in focus. You don't want it to be... You don't want the photons as they pass through the retina to be diffracted and scattered because that's going to defocus the image. But the light still has to pass through blood vessels and it has to pass through the entire processing neural retina before it gets to our photoreceptors. So a lot of very specific biological adaptations have had to take place to allow that to happen without defocusing the image. Overall, a couple important things for what we're going to talk about. We do have two blood supplies for the retina in a camera eye. The first blood supply that we're the most familiar with in ophthalmology because we see it all the time is the retinal vasculature where the central artery comes up with the optic nerve and then fans out on the interior surface of the retina and penetrates just a little bit into the retina, not all the way. The second vascular bed is the coroid vascular vascular which turns into the coriocapolaris. That underlies the retinal pigmented epithelium at the backside. They don't come all the way to each other. The centering sensory retina, so the photoreceptors predominantly, don't have blood vessels near them. They basically receive bidirectional diffusion from both sides of oxygen and nutrients, both from the coriocapolaris and from the retinal vasculature. This becomes pretty important when we look at the human retina. So in the human retina, we have predominantly cones in our fovea. So on this bottom axis, what retinal geographers refer to as retinal eccentricity. So when we say zero degrees eccentricity, we're talking about the fovea. When we say 60 some odd degrees eccentricity, we're talking about the auricirata and I don't know why this graph goes to negative 80 because your retina certainly doesn't. But we have predominantly cones in the fovea and rods are actually physically excluded. The rods however then very quickly reach their peak density just outside and then the overall photoreceptor density decreases as you move out towards the periphery. So you very quickly get into a rod-dominated region. It's important I think at this point to point out that we basically use our rods. Most of the evolutionary history of our retina, especially of the neural retina and the processing pathways through the ganglion cell, the american cell, bipolar cell layers, is set up to process rod-based vision and we essentially don't use any of it anymore. Even when you're lost in the woods at night, you're still using a predominantly cone-based vision. Human beings are terrible at what we call scotopic vision, which is rod-based vision. We're almost exclusively photopic animals and so rods in some way are not particularly useful for most of our vision. One of the most interesting and also most problematic adaptations, in order to cram all of these photoreceptors in to this central region... Yeah. No, a lot of it has to do with the recycling, the shared recycling of pigments between the rods and the cones through the RPE. And in fact retinitis pigmentosa, for example, even though the disease predominantly affects rods, it's actually the effect on cones that causes the... It's sort of the side effect on cones that causes the more significant amount of visual impairment. So things that affect our rods affect our cones, but we very rarely are in a rod-based visual world anymore, especially in modern society. We probably evolutionarily had periods of our time where we used a combination of rod and cone-based vision, but it's actually really interesting. The neural retina, the vast majority of the circuitry in your neural retina is there for rod-based vision. It's not there for cone-based vision, and we don't use the vast majority of it anymore. In fact, in humans compared to other animals, it really doesn't work very well anymore either. In order to make room for all of these cones, we've had to make certain adaptations, and the primary one is that the fovea has been excluded of retinal vasculature. So the only vasculature that's left in the fovea is actually that coroidal vasculature from the posterior surface, and this becomes really important. So a few retinal diseases that have known geographies. Retinitis pigmentosa. So RP is a disease, it's a lot of diseases, that are typically characterized by genetic mutations and part of the phototransduction cascade in rod photoreceptors. But most of your visual loss happens by what we call bystander destruction of cones. The rods die. The immune system comes in to clean up the rod debris in the process the cones get destroyed and you lose your scotopic and photopic vision. Glaucoma because of the structure of the lamina crebrosa where the axons of the ganglion cells path through a physical constriction point, that allows us to have, excuse me, so in RP that's why we lose our vision from the periphery out so we lose it where the rods are located. In glaucoma the reason we lose entire chunks, entire contiguous wedges of the visual field is because of the structure of the lamina crebrosa. So these are good examples of diseases where we have a good understanding of what geography looks the way it does in these diseases. Macular degeneration and its associated subtypes we don't have a good model of. This was the problem that I was presented with when I started in my lab that I found the most interesting and this is what I really wanted to study. I was very curious as to what it was about the anatomy and physiology of the macula caused it to degenerate relative to the other regions. I was more interested in studying the geographic aspects of it than the molecular aspects that I dedicated my PhD time to. I developed what we ended up naming the RET space analysis system that's going to be distributed here by the Moran Eye Center. The basic idea is that it allows you to measure and profile, generate geographic profiles of essentially any molecular anatomic or pathologic feature of a post-mortem human retina that you want to and then build mathematical models and descriptions of how those work and I'm going to show you some examples of those. I take a strip of retina so these donor eyes come from the lines I make. I take a strip of retina from the optic nerve head through the phobia and out to the auricirata. This ends up being a strip about two centimeters long. It's processed in an electron microscopy fashion, broken into little chunks, assembled into little blocks section that ultra-thin 200 nanometer sections and imaged simultaneously with about 15 different immunohistochemical markers. All on sections that are so thin that they pass through the same cell about 50 times. So you can then take those images and co-register them on top of each other and effectively generate a 15-channel two-dimensional image as opposed to confocal microscopy where you're lucky to get three. We can generate 15-channel molecular imagery that spans the entire eccentricity range of the nasal visual field, the temporal retina, which is your predominantly binocular vision. So each retina ends up generating somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 300 gigabytes of imagery. So an entire hard drive filled up with the imagery from a single strip of one retina. What I'm going to do now is basically skip four years ahead and just show you the pre-pictures that the system spits out at the other end. So these are some profiles of a series of different donor retinas and what I'm going to show you is basically a series where the blue line is always the 74-year-old with known macular degeneration ranging up through the red, which is a late 70s female who had severe wet macular degeneration. What I'm going to show you is basically a series of different measurements. So each one of these graphs is going to go from the optic nerve head here at about negative 15 degrees eccentricity up to the aura serata, the neighborhood of 60 or 70 degrees eccentricity passing through hopefully the macular. As you can see here, I really hit the phobia with the green slice. The blue one, I missed it all together. I missed the phobia because I don't get the cone spike. And in the red and orange ones, I came pretty close to the phobia. The true phobia centralis is less than a millimeter across. It's kind of hard to hit. I can tell people that when I'm pointing out that I missed it. You can see here in the photoreceptor density that I didn't miss by much in the blue one. I've kind of grazed that foveal pit. You can see this is total photoreceptor density. But in these others, in the green and orange ones, you can see what we more classically expect to see, where we get a significant dip in photoreceptor densities here. And interestingly, photoreceptor is completely gone in my severe AMD patient. This is totally obliterated retina. That very quickly, however, returns to pretty much normal photoreceptor densities. As soon as you get to about 20 degrees off axis. Nobody ever really characterized what Brooks Membrane's thickness did as a function of eccentricity. So that was one of the first things I did. And we found something that we weren't expecting. We have, nobody, what people had done previously is they looked here and here and just taken two measurements from each eye. Nobody ever really looked at it this way before. And so it was always thought that actually Brooks Membrane was thicker in the macula than it was in surrounding structures in some way just because here is higher than here. But it turns out that the thickness of Brooks Membrane actually represents a depression in some ways relative to the surrounding retina at plus and minus about 15 degrees. And if you'll notice the patients that have wet macular degeneration have the thinnest of Brooks Membrane's. Which is, since the blood vessels in wet macular degeneration have to penetrate this layer. This shows the RPE thickness indicate where neovascularizations have taken place. We've also interestingly found a lot of cool pathologies going on in the far periphery of the retina where nobody'd ever looked before that actually mirror a lot of what we're seeing going on in the macula. You can see we have pretty normal RPE thicknesses in all of our patients here until we get to this late wet macular degeneration where the RPE is completely destroyed and we're missing a whole bunch of our RPE there. And the Coriocapolaris density then also in that same patient is dramatically decreased. There's been a lot of argument in the RPE Coriocapolaris world about macular degeneration which is the chicken and which is the egg here. The RPE produces the VEGF that supports the Coriocapolaris Coriocapolaris brings in the oxygen and the sugar that feeds the RPE. And so it's kind of difficult to say who would die first in this process. Though I think our work and the work of some other labs in California are now starting to support the idea that the Coriocapolaris dies second. It's not a vascular disease of the Coriocapolaris that kills the RPE. It's the atrophy of the RPE that takes away the vascular endothelial growth factor and in turn leads to the atrophy of the Coriocapolaris and I think we can finally put that to rest with this technology. This is a picture, I can explain to you how I generated it later. What you're looking at here is basically a massive confluent drusen that has separated. The drusen itself has been removed by my processing basically the de-placidization process but you can see the shadow of what the drusen was. Here's your RPE photoreceptors and you can see by the thickness of the neural retina that we're in the fovea. And in this section we found something really curious. So this red line shows the displacement of the RPE above Brooks membrane and the blue dots show the concentrations of glutathione and the overlying cones. Glutathione is the most important buffer of your redox potential inside any kind of neuron and really inside most cells. Some cells use citrate but glutathione is overwhelmingly your most powerful intracellular antioxidant. And it's dramatically elevated in the cones on top of this lesion. So it's a little curious because cones can't make glutathione. They lack glutathione synthetase. They lack a lot of things actually. Pretty much the RPE is there to babysit photoreceptors and do all of the various metabolic functions that they lack. But it's still very curious where did this glutathione come from because these cells can't make it. So I started looking and profiling the glutathione concentrations of neighboring cells and lo and behold it turns out they're strictly lacking. So we thought maybe the RPE cells in the presence of this injury found some mechanism to transport their glutathione up to the photoreceptors. That would at least provide a mechanism to explain this but nobody's ever reported that before. Quick PubMed search found that in point of fact photoreceptors or excuse me retinal pigment epithelial cells have been known and characterized several times to have bidirectional glutathione transport capacities. It is an adaptive or protective mechanism in the retina before but it's now because of this observation something we're pursuing in the laboratory is a potential mechanism through which the disease progression could be slowed. Future work of course I always want more data. My current processing involves only me working on stuff and it takes approximately one to two months to process a single human retina. What I am working on at the moment and I'm working on a little bit this fall is helping better computer assisted annotation of my images to increase my throughput. Of course hiring a bunch of undergrads would be very helpful as well but that requires a lot of money that I don't have. I call that undergrad assisted annotation and then I could potentially theoretically just based on technological limitations I can get this down to a weak retina. I'm also building a website to distribute the code which is all open source collaborating with some of the other schools and also want to be able to distribute the data in a sort of Google maps kind of way where individuals would be able to zoom in and out of these data sets and be able to visualize different functions of the retina. I'd just like to thank everybody in the Maranais the neuroscience program and everyone in my lab. I'll take any questions. So basically that's where the time consuming part is. We go through, the glutathione antibody and so we have a stain across the entire retina of the glutathione and then that section is imaged at the full resolution of light microscopy basically. And so we go through and you can actually identify either computationally or manually every single cell in the entire retina. And then you can analyze quantitatively the amount of the signal of the glutathione inside that individual cell. So each of those dots that I was showing you is actually a corrected value for the approximate molecular concentration of glutathione inside individual, so each one of these is an individual cone outer segment. And so that's why the database that's generated all this information is gigantic, which is really what I really wanted in the first place. All I ever really wanted was the database so I could sit there and write mathematical stuff to dig through it and mine the database and find cool stuff. It took me four years to generate the database and then I got to have fun for only six months of mining the database before they made me go back to medical school. Thank you.


Welcome traders to another tutorial of me Patrick and I want to draw your attention to the dollar CAD on the daily timeframe being in this downtrend which is a nice five wave sequence and we're now in the initial phases of the corrective move. We're sitting at the 23.6% retracement of the decline and so I'm looking for pullback to test this support zone 124. Initially looking for bullish diversifies that long positions targeting the equality objective versus this one structure here on 27.31 and if the move starts to develop then we look for the bigger upside objective equality objective 129.46 and 132 is the 38.2% retracement a natural target for correction. As always trader's planetary, trader's plan and manager risk.


From Korea, to Germany. From Alaska, to Puerto Rico. All over the world, the men and women of your army are on the alert to defend our nation, you, the American people, against aggression. This is The Big Picture. Welcome to The Big Picture, presented by your United States Army. I'm Captain Carl Zimmerman. Today, The Big Picture takes you behind the scenes of West Point, the United States Military Academy. A name that's synonymous with your country's history, your country's military achievements. And later, you'll hear from the Ranking Cadet of the Corps, Cadet First Captain Gordon Carpenter. And now, an important part of The Big Picture, West Point. On the west shore of the Hudson River, a short distance north of New York City, stands a world-famous institution, an institution dedicated to the defense of freedom. West Point, the United States Military Academy. Much of our country's military achievement can be traced back to these rugged highlands, justifying a belief held by George Washington. For it was Washington who selected this as a site for a military academy, and repeatedly urged Congress to establish such an institution. Congressional action came at last in 1802. The system of academic construction that has made West Point outstanding, both as an educational institution, and a military academy, was introduced in 1817 by Colonel Savanus Thayer, known as the father of the military academy. This song expresses the deep-rooted sentiment of the 2,400 young men who make up the United States Corps of Cadets. What is the mission behind that sentiment? In many ways, West Point is like other educational institutions, but it differs in one particular respect. It trains young men for a life of military service. This is the academy's mission. And when a West Pointer graduates, he gets a Bachelor of Science degree and receives his commission as a second lieutenant in the regular army or the regular Air Force. Postgraduate education leads to higher command positions or technical specialties, or even to important diplomatic assignments in a world that is pressingly in need of leadership. The raw material for this leadership comes each year from a familiar source, the American community. Each year, young men who would enter West Point from civilian life normally seek an appointment from their congressman or senators. Other appointments go to enlisted men of the regular armed forces, the National Guard and the Reserves. Here comes some of that raw material for leadership. It is the first weekday in July. Their mental and physical exams over, they arrive about 750 strong. The path that leads to an academic and military education, men of all creeds and religions, and from all walks of life. New cadets have their first meeting with upperclassmen. It's their introduction to life at West Point. And for one year, they will be known by the dubious nickname of Mr. Ducro or Mr. Dumjohn, or just a plebe. And so begins a four-year period of learning and training. The New Cadets' Day is a busy one. Three things he learns almost immediately. Military bearing, precision, and courtesy. These three things help give the New Cadet a code of military ethics, a code based on loyalty, discipline, respect, and pride. The essential qualities of leadership. Those first few days. Long hours, full hours. Right now, a full schedule prepares the plebe for that West Point life. The first clothing issue puts civilian life far behind. Cadet gray is a symbol of cadet pride. Pride for the privilege of wearing the uniform of the United States Military Academy. Now, on to battle monument. It's toward the end of the plebe's first day. Uniformed and drilled to march in military formation, they go to be welcomed to the Academy by the Commandant. The brief ceremony ends with the Oath of Allegiance, the oath to support the Constitution of the United States. As night closes in, the New Cadet welcomes just two things. The sound of taps and an army bed. Five minutes to dress and fall in for Reveley. After breakfast, New Cadets turn out for training and indoctrination. The plebe's first hike into the field means that the period of indoctrination is nearly over, and so is his first West Point summer, not without a few mementos. Now that mental spade work begins, and life for the most part in that first year will revolve around books and blackboard. For West Point gives the Cadet a well-rounded college course. English, including the world's literature on the effective use of the English language. The social sciences, including history, economics, and mathematics. Small sections, such as we see here in this mathematics class, are especially designed to give every Cadet a maximum opportunity for individual attention. Each Cadet recites practically every time he attends class, whether it be in mathematics, English, or in any of the other academic subjects. One of the handy teaching methods used at West Point, a device that permits the instructor to lecture and illustrate while facing his audience, where a class in map reading exchanges glances with an old river, the Hudson, a river that knew the point as a revolutionary fortress. Each Cadet takes a foreign language for today's global strategy requires a knowledge of lands and their peoples. The faculty, chosen from the combined services, is carefully selected to cover the ever-broadening demands of academic as well as military education. These men have had postgraduate work in civilian colleges and universities. In other words, they are well-rounded educators who will turn out well-rounded Cadets. At mealtimes, the destination is Washington Hall, where the Cadet gains back the pounds he lost during last summer's hike, and the food is topped in wholesomeness. The entire Corps of Cadets is served in 30 minutes. This tremendous feat of catering is performed by a large number of chefs in an up-to-date, immaculate kitchen. As to all students comes a time for study. The Cadet studies, either in his own room in Barracks or in the historic West Point Library. But life at West Point isn't all study and hard work. There's time for a hobby, such as the well-equipped amateur radio station or the chess club, or if you want something with more action, model railroading. Yes, there's time to study, time for hobbies. Time for the boodlers for a chocolate maltador. What do you have? Time for talk, sports, politics, grades, girls. Then there's the pointer for those interested in journalism. This is the bi-weekly magazine written and published by Cadets. And the Howitzer, published each year by the graduating class. Cadets are conditioned mentally, as well as physically. Indeed, West Point sports do more than build up healthy bodies. They develop qualities of fair play and teamwork, a double must of leadership. Twice a week, Cadets take part in an extensive intramural program of sports. Each cadet must play on a team, unless he's already on an intercollegiate squad. Members of these squads play in competition and contribute to West Point victories and trophies. Before you know it, it's June, bringing the graduation parade in honor of the graduating class. For the plebs, it means recognition, recognition by upperclassmen. This is the first really big day for Mr. Ducro and Mr. Dumjohn. Now they shed those dubious names, plus the designation plebe. Now they are yearlings. They have arrived. Before these yearlings get going on their second year at West Point, they have their first furlough at home. A few weeks of the family sedan, and then, it's a truck at Camp Buckner, West Point's training camp near the academy. And for the rest of the summer, we have tactics and technique, adding practice to theory on the range with flamethrowers, in tank warfare, house to house fighting. But summer camp isn't all work. This comes under the heading of off-duty hours at Camp Buckner, when boy meets girl. Off-duty or on-duty, the West Pointer is largely his own disciplinarian. Here we see one phase of the academy's famed honor system in operation, an honor system supervised only by cadets, all in keeping with the development of leadership, for leaders must have strength of character. A cadet's word is his bond, at all times. Any absence during duty hours is noted by the cadet on his absence card. His reason is accepted without question. As for overall administration, discipline and military training, West Point has a staff of outstanding tactical officers, noted in most cases as combat leaders. Want to know what's going on at West Point? Just ask the hostess. She's the confidant and chaperone for all social activities. The hostess is always around when you need her. And when you don't need her, well, you don't. Trophy Point is always a pleasant spot for a walk. Or Mikey Stadium, named in honor of the captain of the first West Point football team. Come football season, and every one of the 28,000 seats is filled. Speaking about football, the big game is the one in Philadelphia, the game between Army and Navy. This is one of the times when the whole corps of cadets, including Mr. Dumjohn, travels with the team. Here too, we can see the spirit of West Point, the spirit of initiative, teamwork, leadership. And leadership is the key note to the academy's training. The seeds of that leadership are sown in all West Point cadets. For instance, in the study of the psychology of leadership, here a cadet has built his own teaching aid, a caricature study of how not to give out awards. The object is to show the importance of an intelligent distribution of awards for meritorious service. It's all part of a four-year course in human behavior and the techniques of training and handling men. Leadership in cadets is further developed by having upperclassmen serve as instructors, by having upperclassmen serve as coaches in intramural sports activities, by having upperclassmen plan special ceremonies for visiting dignitaries. Yes, leadership. It comes with training and faith. Faith as exemplified by these words of the cadet prayer. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong. The West Point course is well balanced between the humanities and technical subjects. Here we see a class in social science dealing with the problem in international relations. This subject is further explored by the annual student conference on U.S. foreign affairs. In the technical field, West Point's laboratories contain some of the finest equipment in the world, all geared to give the cadet a fine scientific background. Military instruction continues throughout the four years, claiming two hours of the cadet's time each week during the academic period. Nine months of each year are devoted to academic instruction. The bulk of the cadet's military training comes during the summer, when college students are normally on vacation. Summer training includes trips to military installations, like Fort Benning, Georgia, to study the latest in modern warfare. In this case, airborne infantry tactics. Or White Sands, New Mexico. Or a cadet's eye view of rockets and guided missiles. Or the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Center for the most modern developments in artillery and other ordnance equipment. Or the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to see the latest developments in air warfare. Then there is Operation Kamid, joint amphibious landing operation by cadets and midshipmen at the Navy's amphibious training base in Virginia. Kamid, CA for cadet, M-I-D for midshipmen. Well, it looks as if the long haul is nearly over. When first classmen receive their rings, it means that graduation is just around the corner. A few months more, and June week, the week of graduation. June week brings out the alumni, and the oldest living grad present places a wreath at the foot of Colonel Thayer's monument. Other old grads, many retired, return to the point to pay tribute. June week brings the superintendent's reception for members of the graduating class and their families. This is it. Packing for keeps. Finally, the graduation parade. The last parade with the Corps of Cadets. Members of the graduating class take their place in the reviewing line. Underclassmen pass in review for the graduating class. On the morning following the parade comes graduation, the long awaited moment when each cadet receives his diploma, a Bachelor of Science degree, and commission as second lieutenant to train, to study, to learn, to pave the way for a lifetime of service and responsibility as tomorrow's leaders of tomorrow's Army and Air Force. This, then, is the cadet's mission at the United States Military Academy. This is West Point. This academic and military life of your academy. Cadet First Captain Gordon Carpenter of Silver City, New Mexico, Ranking Cadet in the Corps can tell you what it's like. Well, Mr. Carpenter, why did you decide to go to West Point? I believe we can call it a childhood ambition. Ever since I was very small, I wanted to go to the academy. Later, I got in the Army, found out I liked the life and the opportunity came along. How did you get your appointment? It was an Army competitive appointment. Now, is anyone in military service eligible to apply for one of these competitive appointments? They certainly are, yes. Provided a man has one year's service, he can meet the mental and physical requirements, and upon recommendation of his commanding officer, he can compete for entrance to the academy. Well, what are some of the other methods of applying for an appointment? By far, the most common method is either a senatorial or congressional appointment. However, each year, there are a number of cadets admitted through competition in the reserves in the National Guard, as well as sons of deceased veterans, and a few presidential appointments. Well, now you're going to be a graduate in June, right? I hope so. Well, looking back on the past few years, what do you think is the keynote to West Point training? I believe that all the training there, sir, is pointed toward the development of the cadets character. It gives each one a basis for a really successful military career. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter, for bringing a personal view of West Point to the big picture. Next week on our program, we'll show you the Army Reserve Team, the organized reserve, the National Guard, and the ROTC. This is Captain Carl Zimmerman inviting you to be with us then.