A near record 167 teachers are candidates for Minnesota Teacher of the Year. The 167 candidates are the third most in the 54 year history of the award and the most since 1981. This year's program will name the 54th Minnesota Teacher of the Year, celebrating the tradition of excellence in teaching in Minnesota. Candidates include Pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade and adult basic education teachers from public or private schools. Several of this year's candidates come from the Lakeland viewing area, including Angie Hurtig from Bertha Hewitt Public Schools, Eric Carlson of Kelleyer Public Schools, Randy Thompson from Monaga Public School District 821, Mary Jo Schaefer representing Pierce Public Schools, Sue Vottenstahl of Rozo Community Schools, Lois Lewis of South Kuchaching Rainy River District, Jim Snyder is also from the South Kuchaching Rainy River District, Holly Becker from Wadena Deer Creek Schools and Katrina Reeves representing War Road Public Schools. The 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year will be announced on Sunday, May 6th. Over the coming weeks, a 25 member panel of community leaders will name a group of semi-finalists and then later a group of finalists. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


This lecture is part of an online mathematics course on group theory and will be mostly about the structure of finitely generated abelian groups. So in previous lectures we've done groups of order up to 15 so the next thing to look at is order 16 and as we will see next lecture there are a rather a lot of groups of order 16 and we're just going to look at the abelian groups of order 16 and let's write down the abelian groups we can think of of order 16 well there's z modulo 16z and then we can take products like z modulo 8z times z modulo 2z, z modulo 4z times z modulo 4z, z modulo 4z times z modulo 2z times z modulo 2z and z modulo 2z times z modulo 2z times z modulo 2z times z modulo 2z times z modulo 2z. So these are the obvious abelian groups of order 16 and the question is are there any others and if we think about the abelian groups we've had earlier in the course they can all be written as products of cyclic groups for example the groups we had in the previous lecture z over nz star all turn out to be products of cyclic groups so it's not true that every abelian group is a product of cyclic groups for instance the the rational numbers q so these are the rationals under the group operation of addition is not a product or sum of cyclic groups which is fairly easy to check so it's certainly not true that every abelian group is a product of cyclic groups however and we have the following theorem every finite abelian group is a product of cyclic groups of prime power we can even take them to be a of prime power order so they're cyclic groups the form z over p to the n well it turns out that the proof of this works just as well if we instead of using finite groups we talk about finitely generated groups so a set of elements generates a group if a group if every element of the group can be written as as products of elements in this set well if we allow finitely generated groups then we have to allow not only cyclic group z over p to the nz but we also have to allow the group z see any cyclic group of order z over kz for some integer k can be written as a product of groups of prime power order but if if we're allowing infinite groups we also have to allow z so what we're going to do is to show how to prove this there's actually a more general result which we won't prove but is proof that the proof is almost the same as this which says that any finitely generated module over a Euclidean ring is a sum of cyclic modules so this ring is r the cyclic module is going to be r over a times r okay i'm not going to explain what a module over a ring is because we're not actually going to use this result but the case we're doing is where if you take the ring r to be the ring of integers then a final then a module over the integers is just the same as an abelian group so this result just says that a finite abelian group is a sum of cyclic groups anyway the main property of the integers we use is the following one if we've got integers a and b with b greater than zero we can divide a by b getting a quotient and a remainder with the remainder being less than b so this is so q is the quotient if we divide a by b and we get a quotient of q and we have a remainder left over and that the key point is that the remainder has to be less than the number we divided by a Euclidean ring is one which has a similar division with remainder where the absolute value may not be the absolute value on the integers will be something else like say the degree of a polynomial or something like that so this is the property we're going to use now what we do is we take some generators for the abelian group so let's take some generators g1 opt to gk and we're going to write the group additively because it's abelian and we look at some relations between these generators so relations between generators are just some group operation on these generators that produces zero so the relations might be somewhere like n11 g1 plus n12 g2 plus plus n1 k gk equals zero so this would be a typical relation it says that some multiple of g1 plus some multiple of g2 and so on is zero so all these numbers n i j are going to be integers and then we might have another relation n12 g2 plus n22 g2 plus n2 k gk equals zero n13 g what's that actually but g1 g1 and so on n14 g1 and so on so we write down lots of relations you can even write down an infinite number of relations if you like the point is we should write down enough relations to force to force the group generated by these to be the abelian group we're interested in we can always arrange this by writing down every possible relation between the generators of our group which will give us an infinite number but as i said that's that will actually be harmless in the following proof so we've we've we've we write down enough relations to specify our group and now we're going to manipulate these relations and get them into a nicer form it's rather tiresome writing all these relations out so instead of writing out all the g's and the n's we just write down a matrix n11 n12 up to n1 k n21 and so on up to n2 k so on so this is a possibly infinite matrix and we're going to think what can we do to the matrix without changing the group so operations on this matrix so first of all we can add multiple that's an integer multiple of one column to another and the reason is that if we've got generators g and h so if the generators contain g and h and other things then we can change to g and g plus n times h for any n in the integers because if if these two and some other elements generate the group then obviously these two and vice versa and the effect on the relations will be to some do some operation to the to the columns containing g and h you'll either add or subtract n times one of these columns for the other i'm not going to tell you which because i i almost certainly get it the wrong way around if i tried secondly we can add a multiple of one row to another and this is again fairly obvious because if r1 and r2 are relations then r1 and r2 plus nr1 are equivalent relations so if we know r1 and r2 are zero then we know that these two are zero and if we know that these two are zero then we know that those two are zero so we can do all the usual row and column operations on matrices without affecting the group without affecting our abelian group and now what we do is we do these row and column operations to make the top left entry n11 as small as possible when we say as small as possible we mean that the absolute value of n11 should be as small as possible but greater than zero so we've now got n11, n12 and so on and n21 and so on now we can subtract now it's multiples of the first row and column from the others to make all entries n12, n13 and so on and n21, n22 and sorry n31 and so on equal to zero now we can do this because n12 must be a multiple of n11 if it wasn't we could subtract multiples of n11 from n12 in order to get a remainder that was smaller than n11 and then we could switch um we could just switch the columns by rearranging the generators and find a smaller number positive number n11 so n11 divides all these and therefore we can just clear them out by subtracting the first column from all the other columns and the first row from all the other rows so we get n11, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, n22, n23 and so on so we can turn our matrix of generators and relations into this form and now we can just repeat this so we forget about the first row and the first column and just repeat the same same thing on this smaller matrix here and what we end up with is something that looks like this we've got n11, n22, n33, up to nkk and all the other entries are zero then we can throw away all rows of the form 000, 000, 000 because a relation that telling you that zero is equal to zero is not really terribly useful and you may as well discard it so what have we got we've got our group has generators g1, octa, gk and relations n11, g1 equals zero, n22, g2 equals zero and so on and this is just the same as saying so the group is isomorphic to z over n11z so this is going to be generated by g1 times z over n22z generated by g2 and so on and now we can just sort of finish up by replacing z over nz is isomorphic to z over p1 to the n1z times z over p2 to the n2z and so on where n is equal to p1 to the n1 p2 to the n2 and so on so we can assume that all these groups are actually cyclic of prime power order except that n might be zero so z over zero z is just isomorphic to z so any finitely generated abelian group can be written as products of cyclic groups of prime power order and products of z and of course if the group is finite we don't get this case we just get groups of prime power order so um well this is quite nice on the other hand it means there's not really it's kind of difficult to think of anything interesting to say about finite abelian groups because they're all known and have such an easy structure um you can also ask is the when are two finite abelian groups isomorphic so I suppose g is isomorphic to z over p1 to the n1z times z over p to the n p2 to the n2z and so on we can ask are p1 n1 p2 n2 and so on determined well obviously they're not because you can just change the order so let's say determined up to order and if we don't insist that these are prime powers then this obviously isn't true because z over 6z is isomorphic to z over 2z times z over 3z so we've got to be a bit careful that we're not getting a complication like this turning up and the answer is yes um for example we can see this as follows um if we've got z over p1 to the n1z times z to the p1 the n2z and sometimes p1z over p1 the n3z and so on so the number of times p1 to the something occurs is determined and the reason it's determined is determined by the number of elements of order p p1 in g you can see the number of elements of order p1 plus 1 is is going to be p for this factor times p for this factor times p for this factor so we know how many times some power of p1 occurs and similarly um the number of elements of order p squared then determines the number of times we get p to the 2 plus something in the denominator if we know the if we know the number of times some power of p occurs in the denominator and we know the number of elements of order p squared by thinking about it but you'll see you can figure out the number of times we get one of these denominators with the n i at least two and by continuing like that you can figure out the exponents of all prime powers in the group so the group is uniquely determined by these prime powers um so we can now determine the number of groups of order p to the n so how many abelian groups of order p to the n are there well if we write n is equal to a plus b plus c and sum with a greater than or equal to b greater than or c greater than zero then we get a group um z over p to the a times z over p to the b times z over p to the c and so on and this gives a one-to-one correspondence between abelian groups of order p to the n and ways of writing n like this so the number of groups is equal to the number of partitions of n so the partitions of n are just the solutions of n equals a plus b plus c with a greater than or equal to b greater than or equal to c and sum greater than zero just the number of ways of writing n as the sum of positive integers where we ignore um order um so we can look at the first few cases of this so let's write out the number n and look at the number of partitions of it so if n is zero there's just one partition if you think about it because nought is actually an empty sum of integers n equals one there's one partition which is just one two we get two two or one plus one three we get three three two plus one one plus one plus one four we get five three oops four three plus one two plus two two plus one plus one and one plus one plus one plus one and you see these corresponded to the groups of order 16 we had z over two to the four z z over two cubed z times z over two z and so on for five we get seven which is getting five four plus one three plus two three plus one plus one two plus two plus one two plus one plus one plus one one plus one plus one plus one plus one one two three four five six seven and um it's obvious how this goes on it's getting a bit boring writing these out so i'm not going to go any further um the number of partitions of an integer is a um rather remarkable functions heavily studied in number theory but this is a group theory not a number theory course so i won't say much more about it um i just finished by mentioning that there is a very close correspondence between the theorem that says that every finite abelian group is a product of groups of the form z over p to the n z and the following theorem it says every matrix over the complex numbers has a georg normal form so you remember georg normal form means you write it as a whole lot of blocks down the diagonal where each block has an eigen value and one's up there so there might be a lambda there and a lambda i guess these should be different eigen values but anyway so you remember georg normal form of a matrix has blocks down the diagonal and each block has the eigen value down the diagonal and one's just above it and at first glance this theorem seems to have nothing to do with the structure of abelian groups but in fact they're almost the same theorem so this theorem works for modules over z that means abelian groups acted on by z which is just the same as abelian groups for this you look at um modules over the ring of polynomials over the complex numbers well what is a module over the ring of polynomials over the complex numbers well a module means an abelian group acted on by this in a nice way so a module is just a vector space with a linear transformation so saying it's actually on by c means it's a vector space over a c and saying it's also actually on by c of x means it must have a linear transformation which is just the action of x now we said that finite abelian groups are sums of cyclic ones z over p to the n z where z is prime and if you uh the corresponding theorem for modules over polynomials just says that every module is a sum of modules of the following form you take c of x over p to the n times c of x where p is now an irreducible polynomial so an irreducible polynomial in the ring of polynomials are just like primes in the ring of integers well the irreducible polynomials over the complex numbers are just of the form x minus alpha for alpha a complex number and if you work out what these modules are they're just vector spaces with a linear transformation such that x minus alpha to the n equals one and it's not very difficult to show that if you do that you can find a basis which looks like alpha alpha alpha one one one one where there are n rows so the Jordan decomposition of a complex matrix is almost exactly the same as writing a finite abelian group as a product of cyclic groups you can the proof of these two theorems is almost identical you just change the ring from the integers to the ring of polynomials um so next lecture we will discuss the non-abelian groups of order 16 without actually classifying them because as we will see there's so many of them that


Today I'm going to teach my students about measurement, measurable characteristics. I'm going to use 10 cubes, these are called cubes. These cubes are from the biggest cube to the smallest cube. Normally I would ask my students to take the cubes of the shelf and place it on the ground next to me. This will give them a sense of touch, tactile feeling. They can touch the cube and investigate it so that therefore they will take it off the shelf. I'm going to teach my students, we have 10 cubes here, the biggest cube and the smallest cube. I am also going to point out to them the contrast. This is our biggest cube and this is our smallest cube. You see friends, the biggest cube and the smallest cube. This is a light cube because it's smaller. This is a heavy cube because it's bigger. So my students understand the barrick senses of the cube that is heavy in weight. We are going to now grade our cubes from the biggest to the smallest.  I am going to look for the next big cube from the set, so which is my next big cube? This is my next big cube. I'm sure at this point you're wondering why I'm not having a running commentary on what I'm doing. Those children they'd love to watch instead of listening to me. Their interest is to watch what I'm doing. So I'm grading from the largest to the smallest and of course this is my smallest cube. I'm also going to tell my students that there is one centimeter between each of my cubes by using my littlest cube to do the measurement. So this is how my students get an idea of grading the largest to the smallest cube. I hope you learned something from this presentation, how we grade from the largest to the smallest.


like the love of the Heavenly Father and he wants to do nothing more than to lavish and to pour out his love upon you. And we love you too. We're so glad that you're joining us on Hope Today. I'm here with Tom and here with Angela. And Angela, tell us about this conversation because we are going to be talking about love. Yes, we are, Sid. I have a question for you. Are you living a life of fear, dissatisfaction or insignificance despite your efforts to do all the right things? Chances are emotional scars have left a taint on the lens through which you see and experience the world through her own journey of massive success and epic failure. Today's guest, Weiwei Chang, is going to give us an eye exam. Help us identify some lenses that just may be keeping us from the fullest expression of joy and peace. And she's going to help us to correct the prescription that we're seeing through to live a life of contentment and freedom. You guys, I think that this lens of love conversation is so important because a lot of times we don't even realize that we're looking through the world with broken glasses on. I mean, it is so true how we see our situation, how we see the people around us, how we see God, how we see God is so influenced by that, you know, kind of worldly fog that's out there. You know, just even speaking about like just the lens of love, like just at the Presence Conference, as last night just really reminds me, they were talking about the sight, having the sight that Jesus gives us. And even there was like a word about like, you know, when Jesus is really powerful, like, you know, spit in the man with the put of the mud on the eye and touch the ground. Do you know that when the reason he spit was to put the DNA of himself into us to have that lens? So I'm like super excited. Yeah, like, yeah, Reverend Rodriguez, like Samuel Rodriguez, like shared that point last night. And so I just think this is so apropos, so on point of what God is speaking and wants to help us understand. We got to change our vision. We got to have the right perspective to see how he sees. We know we say we walk by faith and not by sight, but it is truly so important that we have his perspective so we can walk and navigate the day. Well, you know, that whole thing about seeing through a glass, darkly, you know, or a mirror. Actually, we see kind of darkly right now in Pittsburgh. We have a picture of our, this is our parking lot. You can see the sun up there barely. But this is all this isn't really fog so much as kind of like fogs mixed with smoke coming down from Canada. So be careful out there. They say it's gone beyond like a red if you're in the Pittsburgh area, it's gone beyond a red warning day to purple. It's like really hazardous.  I was a mini out there biking and and actually we could feel it. We could actually feel it in in our lungs, kind of like like a little bit belabored breathing by the time we were done. So be careful out there. And some of you that are seeing us in other parts of the country probably haven't experienced this yet. But in the northeast, it's it's tough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even when you're saying that, Tom, I don't think it's by happenstance that we're talking about the lens of love today. And part of our nation, you know, our eastern coast are and California are experiencing this dense fog. And it really impacts how you not only see but how you breathe, how you take in life. And I think today, even as we talk with way way, we're going to begin to recognize that just like this fog, we're experiencing here this smoke. It doesn't just impact how we see things or how we treat people, but it gets into the deepest parts of who we are. And it impacts how we experience life, joy, peace and goodness. So true. And it's it's it's a it's something that like you said, it's a it's a clearly a demonstration of what it's like when we don't see things clearly. I do want to say that a little bit later in the program, we're going to have a special trailer. You're going to want to stay with us about our Gettysburg special wonderful program. And it's called Gettysburg Stories of Faith. We're going to have a special trailer about that. So exciting. Well, listen, today's guest started out in early life with a determined drive to achieve greatness. At just 15 years of age, she became independent from her parents in an effort to pursue an education that would lend itself to a better life. Wei Wei Chang found herself riding success after success until she didn't. Coach, speaker and author of The Lens of Love, a fresh perspective on increasing intimacy with God, enhancing relationships and discovering contentment. Wei Wei Chang joins us from Arizona. Welcome to hope today, Wei Wei. It's good to be here. It's such honor to be here. We are so glad to have you here. And just to start out our interview so that those who are watching can be a little more familiar with you.  Yes, I grew up in China as ACS. I came to United States to earn a PhD in economics and pursue American dream. But little did I know the first fulfillment American dream was to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior only one week after I arrived in the United States. So my life was changed forever since then. Oh, Wei Wei, I love that that was a part of the American dream that the Lord had in his heart for you, unbeknownst to you. Well, Wei Wei, you share in your book a little bit of your success. I mean, you had phenomenal success working in corporate America, climbing that ladder. Until something interesting happened to you, would you share with us a little bit of that story and how that moment changed what was happening in your life for then and ultimately for forever? Yes. One of the Amazon review for my book wrote, I have never met a person who earned a PhD in economics and up writing a book about intimacy with God. It sounds impossible, but only God can do that. So in 2007, I was into my job as a vice president for a fortune 500 company over a year. I thought I was doing good. You know, I had a regular one on one with my boss who flew in from New York. And I know that one on one to change my life forever, turn my world upside down. This is when he said to me, I, you cannot report to me anymore. Instead, you have to report to somebody locally with a lower level position, which means I was just demoted. And my world was turning. I couldn't believe it. You know, the motion to most people, maybe a lot of people is like, no big deal.  But to someone who came from China, we are a performance driven country. And the emotion means total failure. Emotion means shame. You know, Chinese, I think culture wise is very shame based culture. So I went home, I locked myself inside my house. And I feel I couldn't see anybody. And I decided to do several things. Pretty radically. I checked into a prayer center here in Arizona. And I start reading Bible ask God a question I've never asked before.  How come I have been serving you for 15 years? How come I have never been satisfied? And the third thing I asked God was, you know, I'm going to try, I'm going to stop doing everything that I know in serving God. See if he still loves me. See if he's still blessed, because my theology that time was conditional love. If I serve God, he'll bless you. But the emotion didn't sound like a blessing. So I said, I'm going to try to stop everything. See if he still loves me. And another thing I did is that I started to visit a different church, because I was free from all the obligation in my own local church. So I'm going to visit a different church, which the church will allow the Holy Spirit to fully operate. And I just go there and I worship and pour my heart my tears out. That's where my journey of healing by my journey of intimacy with God started. So that, yeah, that was the emotion that changed my life. I love that during that demotion, it pushed you into the arms of Jesus.  Would you share with us a little bit Weiwei of how when you started to press in into that space of what that looked like, and how did he uncover that you were kind of not in the depths of where he wanted you? Yes. And I really started searching God.  So as I waiting on God, you know, one of the songs as waiting the worship music was playing, one of the sounds is I surrender all. You know, I've seen that sound so many times. It didn't really read just to me to my soul and spirit. But that day, when I was seeing the sound, but everything become alive. I realized, Lord, I have not surrendered all to you, because a lot of things was under my control. I started to weep. And I start to repent. And so during the break, and I was sharing my experience of emotion with a fellow attendee, I think he was a pastor. I share my loss, my, my sadness about this loss of emotion. And he said, I know exactly what your problem is.  And he said, I know exactly what you have, you have made your titles and positions at a corporate world, your God, and you have idolized your titles and positions. That was something completely unexpected to me. And I didn't have a clear concept idolatry, because I feel like I'm believing God, I serve God. And I don't have idol God is God is my God. I don't have idol. But when you are idolized something outside God, when you're in it, you cannot recognize it.  It's kind of like Apostle Paul. He believed he was serving God. He was so firm and zealous. Yet, he was blind. It was revealed when he encountered the light of Jesus, he was blind. Wayway, I think that's so true and critical for us to recognize that we may be looking through fractured lenses or skewed and tainted lenses without even being aware of it. Would you take a moment for us and just share with us the seven different lenses you speak to in your book that we may be able to begin to recognize just by your mention of them and what they are in our life. Yeah, there's lots of lenses in my book identified along my intimate journey with God. Number one was the lens of idolatry, of course. Number two was the lens of pride. Pride comes when we have a man side of achievement mindset. Actually, when I started to write a book, I wanted to write about performance. I said, why am I on this rails, right race rails? I'll stop and keep achieving because I didn't find my significance. I got to do more, achieve more, accomplish more. So I was very prideful that I earned my PhD at age 24. So I was the youngest in my graduate school that I earned a PhD. And so achievement is through our own effort that we become a prideful. Another way of getting prideful is acquiring knowledge, of course. So lens of pride was biggie for me. That was only shown only after the emotion was happening. When something taken away, the position or title taken away, you recognize, oh, wow. I was weeping. I was weeping the loss of it. Then I realized that the pride and idolatry was my lenses blocking me. Other lens that I struggle with a lot is lens of fear. And that has something to do with generational traits. In my book, I shared my grandma lost six babies, Mr. or Mrs. carriage. There's a fear of death, fear of loss, life. So carry on in my life as well. I said there's not only physical DNA passed around from generation to generation, but also spiritual DNA passed around from generation to generation. Until the time that we recognize we repent and we can break it off. There's a hope in Christ, even though we have this generational trait. Other lenses that I struggle with, the lens of hatred, it sounds very, very silly or hatred, but it started with judgment, being judgmental, being bitter, being offended. And so it leads to hatred. It leads to killings through words, but then more severe killings through weapons. So hatred, we see that a lot more nowadays in our society because the freedom of internet, freedom, social media, things pass on so fast that people are easily offended and the words are spoken, you know, hurting and cutting. So lens of hatred is more prevalent now than the time that when I was younger. So lens of hatred. Another lens that I struggle so much as also generational is called the lens of injustice. You know my grandfather had a business was taken away by the authority. He had no way to make a living and he was very, very poor. He has growing kids and sometimes he has to probably go sell his blood, make some living to have food in the house. So there's a really injustice down to us, kind of sense of injustice. You see the world through lens of injustice. You complain.  So when the emotional happened to me, I had a huge sense of injustice. You know that was down to me that I carried on that as well. Over time, God allowed me to purify my lens seeing this whole event of the emotion as a blessing. Completely turn it around from injustice to a blessing. So those are the some of the lenses that I struggled. There's many, many lenses in the book that you can read in detail. Yes, they need to get that book because even as you just mentioned the names of them, I think that a lot of us can use those titles to begin to search our heart. Well, you talk about switching those lenses with the lens of love and just way, way very quickly if you could share with us how intimacy is the key to that. Yeah, the lens of love is, I call it lens of love because the original lenses when God created us, when God created the world he said everything he sees was very, very good. So, but now at a fall we have seeing, we have this judgment, right? This is good, this is not good, this is good, this is bad. So, at a creation of time the lens was hope, love, and faith. But at a fall the lens we acquire become hopeless, fearful, and hatred.  So, the old-home Christian journey is going back from this tenty lens is going back to lens of love which is how God sees everything. So, when we align our vision with God, see God as who he is, see ourselves as God sees us, see others as God sees them, I call that lens of love. Weiwei, thank you so much, such a powerful book. We appreciate your ministry and we pray blessings over you. Thank you for joining us today. So beautiful, so beautiful. Just even thinking like one thing when she was just going through the different lenses of just like going through what we deal with the one thing that I just want to encourage you and God just like spoke in my spirit and put in my spirit reminded me when she was talking about idolatry, about pride, all of those things is just like I'm gonna say this really quickly that God spoke to me is like right now that we are in a new Hebrew month called the month of Tammuz. And Tammuz is when that you know Moses was on the top, getting the Ten Commandments, God was speaking to them and the Israelites they're in they're going towards the promise line and they made a golden calf, they blinded, they put on a different lens even though this is the God that part of the Red Sea, even though this is the God that gave the manna for heaven, they had on these different lenses and I think it is so important in this season that in this Hebrew month that it's so important that God wants us to examine our hearts, examine ourselves so we know what is blocking us from fully seeing God, fully seeing the promises, fully accessing who he has called us to be. So that was such a beautiful and poignant point that she made during her conversation. I think it's such a key thing to see God as he is. He takes away, he begins to take away the clouds, take away the blinders, take away those things that have distorted our view of him and put all these other things, all these other lenses on us, very important conversation, very important process in our lives. Well our nation went through a time of very wrong attitudes towards one another. It was called the Civil War and we have a special about the God stories in the Civil War reaching kind of its crescendo at the Battle of Gettysburg. Watch this. At the far end of the Union Line on the southern side of Little Round Top stood Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He was not your typical soldier. A professor from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, he spoke nine different languages and taught religion and rhetoric. When war broke out he felt called to serve the Union, frustrated at his colleague's lack of enthusiasm for what he saw as a just cause. He wrote the Governor of Maine saying, I fear this war will not cease until men of the north are willing to leave good positions and sacrifice the dearest personal interests to rescue our country from desolation. What he lacked in military experience he made up for in dedication. By July 2nd 1863 he had become Colonel of the 20th Maine Regiment. Chamberlain was instructed to hold the end of the Union Line to the last on the south side of Little Round Top as Confederate troops led by Colonel William Oates from the 15th Alabama Regiment charged the hill again and again. The Alabamans had already marched 20 miles that day and been unable to find water to refill their canteens. With nothing to lose Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge down the hill. By all accounts the men already figured out what they were going to do so the order was not really an order order but when he ordered up the charge everybody lined up they all charged down the hill and their momentum running into the Confederates they were spent the most of them gave up or turned around and ran back out of the way so he saves the day. This charge was successful beyond all my hopes. We took twice as many prisoners as we had men in our ranks. The results of this movement beyond question was the saving of Round Top itself. Well that uh the stories of faith the stories of God in the Gettysburg battle uh well that special will air this weekend the times were there July 1st at 11 Sunday July 2nd at 11 30 a.m. and July 4th at 1 30 p.m. and 8 30 p.m. I got a little story this stick right here I when I was there when we had that that tour guide there who does a spiritual tour of the battle of Gettysburg I asked him about the trees because there's these huge trees near the the cemetery there I said were they there then he said these trees weren't I mean it was 160 years ago but there are trees they call them witness trees that were there during the battle and they're still there a lot of them when one of them falls down they treat it with a lot of respect and they make walking sticks out of it and canes and different things just kind of uh so that people can have a piece of that history and my kids got me one and there's an inscription on this it says battle of Gettysburg long streets witness tree and then there's a number there's only a limited number of them made so this is uh something my kids gave me it's like a little piece of that battle but it's important for us to remember there is a god purpose and a god story he can bring even out of the worst battle sydney he can bring his purposes yeah even just like talking about you know with like Gettysburg and a war that we have to be understanding that there is a war that between the kingdom of light the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of darkness and every day we need to just get into the presence of the lord we need to sit before the father and make sure we are not operating out of that kingdom and make sure that we are walking in the spirit of the god in the spirit of the holy spirit so we just encourage you today that today i just really sense it's like when we're talking about looking through the lens of love we're talking we're seeing about history and with Gettysburg that let us make sure that we know that we have a heavenly father who is avanai savayat the lord of the angel armies that is warring that is fighting our battles but it is so important for us to partner with heaven to agree with what the word says in the bible in scriptures and the promises he spoke over life that is where true power is when we stand on that angel yes you know when you said about the war i love that because a lot of the war that we see it may not be external and it may not be with batons or weapons that are carnal but that it is an internal war and even not with our brother or our sister but within ourselves and wei wei cheng brought a beautiful point to us that when we look through a different lens just as you were saying sydney it changes our inner most world so today we just challenge you do you carry a tainted lens do you feel hatred or injustice do you feel like there is an idol maybe that you set up and that's what the priority of your life is we ask you just like way we did go to the father find intimacy with him that you may be fully seen and experience his goodness in your life yeah and god is taking this program this moment to kind of redirect you to him okay redirect your focus to him he wants to reveal himself to you today and he will do it as you seek him have a great day in him on tomorrow's hope today ever wonder where god is and if he hears our prayers author and evangelist ray comfort shares how you can have confidence that god hears your prayers by revealing several keys to entering his holy presence and receiving his blessings that's tomorrow on hope today cornerstone television t-shirt where'd you get it i am so glad that you asked you know this is an exclusive offer for the month of june for you to receive this one-of-a-kind ctvn t-shirt you can support and support your favorite christian tells the network this summer when you go to barbecues hanging out with family and having tons of fun oh man that is so much fun and speaking of cornerstone television i love their programming especially that hope today show yes we love hope today in all the programs and you know with your best gift request your cornerstone television network t-shirt when you give this month we have sizes from extra small to six xl it is a hundred percent cotton it is quality and we want you to have this on you today that's why we have one for everyone and you get to represent the station you love with your own logo t-shirt you'll enjoy this wearable reminder that hope happens here as together we spread the love of jesus every day you know we cannot do it without you when you give you help us to impact pittsburgh and beyond reaching those of all nations and generations because we know people need to know the hope and the love of jesus like never before so why don't you give us a call at<PHONE_NUMBER> and request your very own cornerstone tv t-shirt that's right you can also give online at ctvn.org slash donate we would love to see you out in public somewhere wearing this t-shirt maybe we'll 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In this presentation, we'll take a look at multiple choice questions related to budgeting, going through the questions, and then practicing test-taking skills with them. First question, reports costs of merchandise to be purchased, A, merchandise purchases budget, B, inventory budget, C, sales budget, D, cash disbursement budget, E, capital expenditures budget. Let's go through this again using the process of elimination. Reports costs of merchandise to be purchased, A, merchandise purchases budget. Sounds awfully reasonable, I'll keep that one for now. B says the inventory budget, that sounds kind of reasonable, like because we're purchasing stuff, merchandise inventory, so I'll keep that. C says sales budget, and that would be us selling stuff, not purchasing stuff, so I don't think that's it, C or D says.


Hey good afternoon everybody in Hawaii. Good day to our viewers around the world. This is Steve Zercher. I'm the host of a webcast to run on ThinkTech Hawaii called Looking to the East. So we take a look at various issues related to Japan and Asia. A couple of weeks ago on our show we looked at baseball in Japan with a couple of journalists that are working on that and now we're going to address a much more serious issue having to do with the state of mental health in Japan. So that's the topic for our show today. And we're very fortunate to have a colleague and friend of mine Dr. Reggie Paul with us today. Reggie is a practicing clinical psychotherapist in private practice. He's also been a teacher and instructor of cross-cultural psychology over the years here in Japan. He even taught for three years in Thailand at Assumption University. If you have not heard of that school it's one of the best schools in Thailand. So Reggie has a very interesting background in psychotherapy both in private practice and also in instructing the topic as well. So Reggie, good morning to you here in Japan. Thank you so much for joining my show so early in the morning. I really appreciate it. Good morning. Yeah, so what prompted this show topic in my mind? It's part of it's my own personal experience and teaching over the last year. So my sense is and when I talk to my colleagues that are teaching is that the stress and anxiety levels of students at the Kansai Gaidae and other places I'm actually teaching of course at the University of Hawaii right now. And I kind of get a similar sense from the students that because of the pandemic the anxiety levels have been going up and the demand for mental health services are going up. So that's what prompted this in my mind. But let's start Reggie with looking at the state of mental health in Japan. I always I remember when I was a student at Kansai Gaidae there was a session, a hospital for mental people and it looked basically like a prison. I would ride my bike past it every day and I realized this is a while ago that Japanese people when they look at mental health issues they kind of tend to want to pretend like it doesn't exist. So I think Japan's come a long way from them. But Reggie, what would be your assessment of how mental health is perceived in this country and how it's addressed? Well the basic thing that I would start with is that mental health is something that's part of daily life. It is everywhere.  You talk with friends and or whatever family members however and you know the kind of normal ways that people do it everywhere. You go to a psychiatrist or you go to an institution and clinical psychotherapy the kind of work that I do is not popular and there's a big stigma with it. So there's an example of this is when I first started I was I didn't know about Japanese attitudes towards counseling, mental health. A client of mine told her boss that she was seeing me and after that her boss was just a steady stream of comments like oh you don't understand that? Well that's because you're mental that she had to deal with. And this is the attitude basically that this kind of in between ground that I work in is between people have problems but their regular social network is not enough but they're not they're people in daily life that are dealing with daily life problems like the pandemic. It doesn't mean that they need to be institutionalized or it doesn't mean that they need medication. So this is this is where the this is where the big stigma and the gap is in Japanese mental health. Have you thought as to why that is you know in many as Americans living in Japan we see some of our social trends echoed in this country along different lines and so forth but it seems like the the awareness or the acceptance of mental health is a part of your overall general well-being in the United States has not really translated into this country as of many other aspects of not just American culture but foreign culture that we see every day here. So why do you think there's been this resistance or reluctance on this particular topic? Well it's as in one of all kinds of things like this it has to do with cultural values and cultural attitudes. There's a lot of factors I mean one one factor I think is that the private self here inner self is is very much considered how do I say it's personal and it's private and people don't talk about it they don't share it even even in regular daily life and family life and so on. You notice that I look out the window at my neighbors and the windows are all this kind of frosted glass windows and this is very common that they have this kind of you know this division between the inner and the outer and this is this is just one attitude. I think another thing is that when you do have problems the way they deal with it is not in in Japanese society is not so much in terms of interpersonal dialogue is not the way that things work around here. Things get you are told what to do it works on a basis of this the function of the of society it works in a hierarchical basis rather than an equality basis as in the US and so people are told what to do the educational system is based on rote learning it's not based on a dialogue between the teacher and the student um so and if an example of this is the Japanese word honsei which means self-reflection but it's self-reflection but the way they do this kind of self-reflection honsei is a particular kind it's when you it's used when you've made a mistake you've done something bad you go off and you reflect by yourself and then you make a report back to the teacher or the boss as it happened to me one time um when I slept through uh I was sent to an appointment out somewhere and I slept through on the train I slept through my stop on the train and I woke up way down the line so I had to go back I was late for the appointment and afterwards the company asked me to write a honsei letter a honsei bun in Japanese which means a self-reflection letter on how I was going to improve my behavior and make sure that this didn't happen again in the future so it's it's individual it doesn't happen in dialogue that's the point I see doesn't happen and so you have this the culture is that when you a lot of the treatments that they have for people now that they developed they they've become very good in japan on dealing with emergencies in their own way you know suicide depression but but the kind of anxiety issues and stuff but the kind of ways that they deal with it are one thing is you might call it the rescuer and this is a traditional kind of therapy in japan but you stay like if you have depression the government has allowed companies to or mandated companies in some cases to give people time off when they have depression and you know three months six months is not uncommon right for a person to get leave from the job but what do they do during the six months they don't do counseling they just take a rest and then when they've recovered their feeling then they go back to the job and they're back into the same situation they were in and nothing's changed so this is a kind of this is kind of the this is this is the cultural way of doing dealing with these kinds of things yeah wow you know we we both teach about culture each in our own domain and I even though I've been doing it for so many years it's just I'm always amazed how deep culture influences behavior what you what you just described to me if we had a mental health professional listening to this from the United States or some other Europe or South America they would go that's ridiculous how can someone fix himself or herself by just self-reflection just take a break and come back to these exact same conditions clearly the problem will repeat again but anyway within the Japanese context that's the solution that's been created and wow I'll say there are other there are other aspects too you know the idea of maturity in Japan the idea of maturity in Japan is based on the idea of being able to um how do I say deal with the situation gracefully without it's basically enduring without causing problems this is the idea of this is a the ideal of maturity so um there's a Japanese word race which means kind of cool hearted or cool headed you don't let your emotions get to you right and uh so this is so instead of like dialogue right you have these kinds of the you kind of deal with it on yourself and you try to you know you end up with these values of like acceptance of the problem acceptance of the situation not causing waves not causing the idea of not causing problems for other people these are all uh these kinds of attitudes are what's are inter it's all interwoven in these kinds of ways it's kind of ironic Reggie isn't it that uh this sense of community and not not placing a burden on others which Japanese people are taught from day one basically and it's built into the language as well um places this burden on the individual it is really really deep you know so it's a sense of community but really when it comes to this people are forced to kind of make do on their own one time a friend of mine was talking about how he was talking with a Japanese man a friend a Japanese friend of his and his friend said I think Japan is very proud of the fact that Japan is a harm harmonious culture and his response was it's not harmony it's coercion that's the that's the difference you know that's the difference between the when people on the way say go along with the established order there's very much a sense in Japan that you can't you can't change the established order is just a given you know sort of like an existential given in life you can't change it you just have to so this is one of the explanations for why Hiki Komori which is the the idea of being a shut-in you people retreat from the world when they have problems right yeah I didn't think to dress as as an issue but that's certainly an aspect of Japanese mental health which is a severe challenge and actually the government is trying to directly face that and we we have we have a colleague whose daughter went through this and eventually died of starvation it's quite sad well I know yeah I've heard anyway Richie let me let me has you've been here in Japan a long time as I have it sounds like things aren't changing all that much from when I was looking at the psychology hospital and the situation today but we do have Naomi Osaka just recently who is revered in this country as you know a very famous and successful tennis player who withdrew from a recent tennis tournament for mental health reasons and of course that was unbelievable news do you think that those types of things would maybe on the edges change the perception about how people deal with these problems because she to her credit was very open about it I'm sure there have been tennis players or other professionals in the past that have had similar issues but they didn't bring it up publicly and then recently there was an American athlete at the Olympics who also withdrew from events because of mental health so there's a Japanese-American and then an American that are doing this do you think that this will have a positive impact in terms of how people perceive mental health and then it'll become gradually gradually it's a slow process it's a slow process okay so all right so we have to be patient on that if we expect that to grow well as I said I said they're very good with the they have centers now for domestic violence they've all these governing initiatives to that's a big reason why part of the reason why the suicide rate has declined since 2003 in Japan until recently depression is being treated now there are ways that they're doing it but they're still kind of doing it in their own way which is only natural okay yeah that that brings up that's a nice segue to my next question Reggie and that's the recent rise in the suicide rate in Japan the government for many years has been attempting to try and bring that number down and they have been successful as you pointed out but unfortunately as we were talking before the show starting in July that number now is going up so the number for 2020 was a rise in the suicide rate of 3.7 percent as I mentioned earlier I teaching my students you can feel a sense of anxiety in them the things they write about the things they talk about and oftentimes they just disappear from my class and sometimes they'll tell me that they need to take this mental vacation that you were talking about they're they're actually doing the same thing have you noticed that in your practice are you more busy now than you were perhaps a year or two years ago I am definitely more busy it's definitely the the impact well it's part of the reason it's a lot of it's connected to the pandemic but part of the reason that I'm busier is because of the rise in mental health issues connected to the other part of the reason is because of the acceptance and the use of these kinds of things like zoom and internet technology it's much more common now and so people in it makes it more accessible and particularly in Japan where there might not be a therapist next door as they might easily defined in the US people are more spread out and so because of the the use of tele therapy that's which is also connected to the pandemic because it's been so much so many things have gone online so that's part of the reason to your as a practicing psychotherapist your reach is increased because patients can contact you through zoom and do you find that zoom sessions are as effective as normal face to face they're effective it's it's I still prefer in person you know there's there's the nonverbal and you know these the kind of the the visceral feeling of being in the same room together and and these kinds of things I think it's still preferable but I tele therapy is is effective there's and there's been plenty of research that demonstrates this okay and getting back to the suicide rates you had told me before we started the show that the biggest increase there is with young people you said under the age of 18 that has been the segment that has unfortunately grown the most do you also attribute that to the pandemic even for these younger people that's part of the part of it is the is the pandemic yes it's the the the pressures that have have increased on the students particularly in Japan and the people that have had the hardest time with the pandemic are the people that are on the how do we say the edges of society like children you know students are not part of the I mean they're part of the society it's not like they're on the edges of society but in terms of the power structure of society they're on the edge and the so the rates that have gone up in Japan have been with the difficulties have been the percentage of people who've had the most difficulties are with young people women both in terms of housewives because they're at home or their husbands are at home so the domestic violence rates have gone up because they're spending more time together and with frustration with greater frustrations and the social isolation factors are not being able to meet with people as easily as before and and also the other part of of women that is affected is the women who are single mothers or single adults and they tend to have a higher percentage of part-time workers women who are workers same with the young the the younger people people under 40 have had a hard time there's been what I read like 40 percent of people under 40 haven't been able to find a full-time job and so they end up with these hard-time jobs and they're the first person to get laid off and their difficulties so this is affected single mothers and single women adults and also in general the younger people and then the students so those are the people the groups of people that have been affected by the pandemic the most and also the of course the elderly people because of the social isolation factor wow it's a complex and challenging issue I think yeah it makes sense to me as a management professor coming from the kind of the business or econ side of things that if you put pressure on single working women or other families that are not getting by or students who have graduated as you said who cannot find full-time jobs most of my students at concai guide they lost all of their part-time jobs because basically the restaurants closed that's majority of them work in some kind of food service so that put economic pressure on them in addition to the social pressure and isolation it's it's a tough situation it is a tough situation yeah so Reggie one other thing I wanted to address you were focused on cross-cultural psychology as I recall your your thesis was on that right that's right and you practice that yourself have you also this growth in your activity is it coming from uh mixed marriages are they those couples also experiencing greater stress they are experiencing greater stress so they're not they're not outside of this then there I guess everybody's experiencing greater stress that's right that's right I don't I don't think it's a particular it's just it's the same kind of basically as I mentioned before with the domestic violence rates going up because of couples different reasons having stress either financial in terms of losing the job or being at home together more because the one person is working at at home now on the internet instead of going into the office um those are the those are the two of the main situations that have affected couples so yeah I think historically the divorce rate for mixed ethnic or mixed nationality couples in Japan is higher although that may be influenced by the military because lots of marriages occur out of that and the the divorce rate there is quite high but I don't know is that correct Reggie that's my my perception you agree with that what I was told by once by the people at the American Embassy when I had a meeting in Osaka at the American Embassy they said the divorce rate in Japan with with mixed marriages it's it's higher than the Japanese rate but lower than the American race okay so it kind of meets right in the middle okay but that when when you have that situation in your private practice as you were talking about earlier the psychological approach to mental health is so different across the Japanese culture and foreign cultures I guess we're both familiar with American cultures how do you navigate that when you recognize it you can say one thing and it will be understood this way by the American partner and a different way by the Japanese partner or this way for the Italian partner and this way for the Korean partner if you have those kinds of mixed couples as well I mean psychotherapy is so difficult to do I just can't imagine how you do that when you have two different cultures in the mix it's like it's like adding a whole another variable into the mix of things that you have just because you've got two people yeah interacting so it adds a whole another level of complexity to an already complex situation and part of what happens with cultural stuff is that people aren't aware of it people don't think about it so much I mean some things are obvious and people pick up on it but a lot of other things so one of the things that I do when I'm working with couples is when I hear something it has a cultural connection I point it out and so it's basically the phrase that I use with people is that the basic approach to cross-cultural understanding and cross-cultural difficulties is the first thing you need to do is to separate observation and interpretation people tend to observe and interpret things together that's the normal way of functioning and but when you have a cross-cultural situation the possibility of cultural things going on that you don't understand you first need to observe what's going on get information and then decide what to do with it just interpret it and so on so it's basically education but it affects things like communication styles are one way that it definitely cultural influence that people are tend to be unaware of affection how to communicate affection to other people is very is very cultural problem solving is also has cultural influences when there are problems that happen how do you deal with the problems and stress just general stress how you deal with stress is very cultural for so for example as I mentioned before the Japanese tend to deal with stress by enduring and trying to this this is the value but that's not the way that a lot of people deal with stress and so so these are these are kind of things that I work with when I'm you know working not an easy job Reggie that's what makes it on I see yeah and you can do so much good I think as well hey we're running out of time Reggie the time flew by so quickly if anybody is interested in contacting you regarding your practice or some of the research that you're doing on cross-cultural psychology what would be the best way to do that you just go to my website which is www.regiepaul.net sorry so it's uh and my name is Pete my Reggie my first name and my last name PAWLE and on the website there's a contact information uh button and they can contact me through that okay Reggie thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your insight into this very very interesting issue so yeah so the viewers I'll see you again down the road we'll address another issue relating to Japan or Asia so thank you so much for tuning in appreciate it if you have comments about the show uh please provide them to think tech kawaii really appreciate it so we'll see you again thanks thanks again Reggie bye bye


Thank you very much and good morning's pleasure to be here. I assume at this point about a third of you are sleepy or going to sleep, okay? Probably a third of you are texting other people, okay? And probably a third of you are either having sexual fantasies or waiting for lunch, okay? So my job is to try to get at least two-thirds of you on the same page I am and see if we can find some interest. So I want to make two bold predictions. One of them I'm going to make now and one of them I'm going to make at the end of the talk, okay? And if I put this down and you can't hear me, tell me to raise it up, okay? So my first bold prediction is at the next ancestral health meetings that at least one day of the meeting will be completely devoted to mitochondria, okay? Mitochondrial biogenics, bio-energenics, dietary supplements for mitochondria, how do you make ATP, generate ATP, what's the role of mitochondria in aging? You could go on and on, you could really have a whole three days on mitochondria. So prediction is it's really important. My job here today is to turn all of you into mitochondriacs. So when you come back next year, you'll be addicted to mitochondria and you'll want to do great things with that. So with that sort of background at the end of the talk, I'll give you one more bold prediction about what we can do in the course of a year to make mitochondria really important in our lives. Okay, so I'm going to start and do a little pass through the history of the universe, talk about the present and what we can do about the future. I'm going to name a lot of things. I tend to think of things in biochemical terms. So there'll be a lot of strange names, PGC1 Alpha, NF1, NF2, UCP3, CERT1, things like that. I don't think it's so important that you know exactly what they do, but you should remember their names because as we go through the next couple of years, they'll become more and more interesting, more and more popular, things that you'll want to know in terms of what we do. So just as a full disclosure, yes, I did dance for New York City Ballet. I forgot to mention that. That's not important. I am a scientist by training. I'm a pharmacologist by a chemist studied medicine all in one place at the University of Virginia. For years, my profession was making drugs, the evil empire to some of you. I would say to you that drugs do save lives, and that's important, especially if you're on the life saving end of that. However, drugs rarely if ever treat disease, and this is something that we discovered quite late in the 1990s. We had enough information about functional genomics as post molecular biology, post genomics into functional genomics. We learned enough to know that we did not know enough to ever treat any individual chronic disease with a single magic bullet. Therefore, we're up against this challenge that drugs don't actually work very well. So is there an alternative to long-term health and longevity? Well, we think so. That's why we're here, and it doesn't have anything to do with making a drug, but it really has to do with don't get sick. If you don't get sick, you'll obviously be healthy. The healthcare system will love you, and you'll love yourself and you'll live a long time. So is there a way to avoid getting sick? And what do we think might be some of the important things? Well, I would say the first-line therapy in your life should be exercise. Exercise is the key to health. You should all exercise as much as you possibly can. You should never let it be secondary to anything else. And we'll make this case, particularly in the case of mitochondria, why exercise is so absolutely important to mitochondrial health and well-being. So exercise is number one. Number two is diet. Now, we're here. We're all believers in the paleo diet. I would submit to you that any diet works if the biochemistry of your body is right. So that means there's one thing you could measure. You'd want to measure hemoglobin A1C. Anything above 5.5, your pre-diabetic or diabetic, anything below, you're considered healthy. I would argue you should be down as low as you possibly can. You should be down at five if you can get down to five.   It'll take care of your fasting glucose levels. Take care of your fasting insulin levels. Just do that. So the importance of diet is the diet needs to meet the biochemical principles of health. And there's always a place for supplements. Exercise first, diet second. Choose a diet that keeps your A1C levels down. Take supplements that work. This is a big deal because most supplements don't work. They don't work because the ingredients are not in sufficient quantities to make something work. There are homeopathic elements in there. That means on a dose-response curve, effective dose for effect, they're below zero. It means whatever is in there is not helping you. You need to at least be at the ED50, hopefully the ED100, and I'll pull me at ED120 to take care of polymorphisms and human variability. It's very, very important when you think about this that you have to have a supplement system that works for you and brings pharmacologic strength to a product. Therefore, you can actually get health benefits from it. Now, why am I talking about all this stuff? Because all of these things impact how mitochondria work for us. I'm going to submit that mitochondrias are actually the key to wellness and longevity. They provide us life functions. They also prove the death functions. This is what makes them so interesting. Got that right? Here we go. This is not a political statement. This is a statement about how our cells came together that life actually did not take over the globe by combat but by networking. If you think of your own body, you have all these organs and organ systems and cells and endocrine systems and they must all cooperate with each other. If they don't cooperate with each other, then we don't function right. So it's an interesting quote that I think we could apply to our daily lives. Now, I want to go back to the beginning of time. Yesterday there was a talk on mitochondria so I'm going to skip over some of the early stuff. I'm going to do that more in summary by Tim Gershmer. What we know is mitochondrion 1.8 billion years ago lived all by themselves. They were probably highly unusual cells because if they really do what they do today, they must have been the most amazing cells alive. We talk about them being captured by another cell but maybe they captured the other cell because they certainly had more energy and power to do that. Basically, they were primitive cells. They were free functioning. They were called prokaryotes. Somehow, in some sort of magic, amazing step, probably by random accidental effects, they barged into another cell, somehow got engulfed into it and became a part of somebody else's cell. This imparted to the other cell a huge amount of energy generation. That was the beginning of where we got it. It flashed forward another 600 million years. It had multicellular cells. From there, it's all history. That's how we came into being. They were derived from proteobacteria. These bacteria, some of them are still alive today. The process was called symbiosis or endosymbiosis. When we get down to the bottom line, it's humans who are composite of human genetics and mitochondrial genetics and probably other bacterial genetics which we haven't fully well defined as well as what we refer to as the extracellular microbiome. Now, what's the case to prove that? I just said that mitochondria were free-living spirits and then they became symbiotes. The rationale for thinking that has to be based on something that we can hold true. Mitochondria are very similar to bacteria. They have porans which are transport proteins. These are only found on the outer membrane of mitochondria and they're only found in bacteria. These two types of creatures have one thing in common. Another very important component is something called cardiolipin and it's found in the inner mitochondrial membrane and it's also found in bacterial cell membranes. Cardiolipin is a very important element we're going to come back to and talk about later. In terms of DNA, our DNA is helical. We're all aware of that. Mitochondrial DNA is circular. Very different. And the chromosomes in our human nucleus actually contain genes that were originally only in mitochondria. So there was a gene transfer conservation of knowledge. You didn't need it in two places. The mitochondria decided to give it to the nucleus so it became a part of the nucleus in the cell. They lost that thing. The last thing is mitochondria really do still have this independent spirit, if you will. They have a double membrane. So they're kind of isolated from other things in the cell so they're a lot more interesting than a Golgi body or a ribosome or an ion channel because they do some really interesting things and we're going to talk a little bit more about those. So this is how it works. Genes that were redundant were transferred to the host nucleus. So now the little mitochondria and the mighty mitochondria only has 37 genes left in most of those code for proteins. Now, this, I think, I find this fascinating to me. So when we go through, an anthropologist looks at skeletons around the world and we determine that Homo erectus, people who stood upright or creatures that stood upright, evolved and became prevalent all over the world about two million years ago. However, we're not related to them and it's kind of odd why they would all die off.  Apparently they all died off. So our actual ancestors came into being somewhere around 150 to 200,000 years ago and we know that because we all carried the genetic footprint of their mitochondria and that all came through the female egg, not the male sperm. So one is able to follow the genetic drift all over the world from East Africa all over the world and we can actually find subpopulations. So why is this possible is because if the mitochondrion had had a major mutation then the mitochondrion wouldn't work and we would all died off. So only tiny mutations were allowed so that the energy generation of the system could remain in place. So it's a very interesting way to know that we can follow our lives through all of that. So interesting the female Homo sapiens that we are members of carry the females carry the mitochondrial DNA. That's and we can follow that throughout the entire world and so only subtle mutations were allowed. That allows us to follow where things are. So the bottom line here is ladies you rock right. You made the energy that we use and interestingly the female egg destroys eats the male mitochondrion. Sort of a mean thought that's the way it works. Okay so let's talk about the two major functions of mitochondria. The one that we think the most about is it's an ATP generator. You add a little bit of oxygen. You add a little bit of sugar, salt, proteins, fats and the next thing you know you have ATP. So ATP is a cells version of E equals MC squared. So the energy of the biological system is energy equals ATP. Now why is that important and what makes adenosine triphosphate? That's what ATP stands for. What's the big deal about this? Why this molecule not other molecules? It's not so much that it's an energy giver. It's a phosphate giver. So phosphate giving through a high energy bond is really energy giving because our whole cellular system works on a phosphorylation defosphorylation system. That means enzymes are in an inactive state or less active. They're phosphorylated and they become more active. Ion channels work the same way. Everything in our body is phosphatase, meaning phosphates removed inactivated or phosphorylated through kinases, meaning activation. And all of that goes through the ATP system. So we're going to talk more about that because that's really important. The other thing that mitochondria undo which is really sort of key to aging and to cell death and apoptosis is mitochondria also induce cell death. And there's a pathway where they do that. So the mitochondria are very, very responsible for both providing the energy for life and destroying the cell and destroying life. So these two things quoted by Voltaire with great power comes great responsibility. Ironman also made the same quote and I'm sure if mitochondria Eve could speak she would say the same thing. Okay, so let's talk about aging and then we'll get back to the mitochondria. So aging is an interesting process that basically our genetics is designed for procreation, not for aging. We do not have aging healthy genes that are out there. Our job in life is to make more of us not live forever. So our bodies are not designed to live forever but they should be and they can be. So it's very important to understand that distinction. Now in addition to that there are all the other things that really are oxidation induced death. And the things that are kind of fun to think about here is things that you can't avoid. They're like the wear and tear of the body over a lifetime would be the accumulation of random environmental unchecked mutations. Yes, this happens. This can be through internal oxidations. It can be from cosmic rays. It can be from a lot of different things. Result of oxidative damage followed by non-functional enzymes and an overreactive immune system. This is a common thing that we call pro-inflammatory signals. So oxidation today can occur on the cell surface. It produces an immune response. This immune system overreacts, destroys the cells and that's what inflammation is all about. Inflammation leads ultimately to bad karma and death. Okay, so not a good thing. Now the result, the other sort of interesting hypothesis is the telomere tail. The DNA has a tail and the tail is called a telomere.  You get to a certain place in life and the cell decides times up, starts a poptotic sequence and dies. Okay, so this is sort of like the, is this the end of it? Is this how we have to go? It's one theory, yes, but there are other theories which would counter that. Another long approach here is a loss of stem cell repair mechanisms. So as you go through life, you can think about some of your older family members, Uncle Joe last year, he was a picture of health, didn't see him for a year, went back and oh my god, Uncle Joe has aged like not one year, but like 100 years. Uncle Joe has finished. So what happened? Uncle Joe ran out of stem cells. So the stem cells are those little progenitor cells.  As long as you have those guys, you can actually repair your body, your heart, your liver, almost every system in your body can be repaired. So this is really an important way we maintain our lives is through stem cell repair. Now, the one that I want to talk about is apoptosis induced induction by deteriorating mitochondria. And this happens when mitochondria release cytochrome C from the inner mitochondrial membrane and back to the cytosol. Now, functionally, I should say from my own experience, going back almost 40 years, I did a clerkship with Professor Robert Haynes, who was one of the original mitochondriacs. And so in those days, this was pre-molecular biology. So we were really physiology and biochemists and pharmacologists. We didn't know a lot about anything beyond that point of view. But we began to study mitochondria in different situations. We'd give them change their energy source. We'd change their oxygen number. We'd do all those things. And what you could see is, and we do this in animals and we do it in cellular systems, what you'd see is when a mitochondria gets sick, it becomes round. A healthy mitochondria is almost rectangular. It takes energy to be rectangular. The easiest state of less energy is roundness. So when a mitochondria rounds up, it's sick. So when you look at disease states, you look at ischemic myocardium as an example. When you take a punch biopsy of a heart, you will find multiple ischemic mitochondria because they're rounded. They're non-functional. And that rounding process is where cytochrome C has left the state of redox cycle that makes mitochondria make ATP. It's left the mitochondria and where did it go? It went back into the cytoplasm. So that's a really important thing, but we didn't understand why at that time. But what happens when that happens, you'll see, I'll tell you about the calcium hypothesis of disease in a minute. What happens is this begins the apoptonic sequence. And if you just think about from the time one is 20 and you have your very active cells have a lot of mitochondria, that'd be like your liver, muscle cells, heart cells. They're packed with mitochondria because anything that's working hard needs a lot of energy and therefore there's more mitochondria. But any of us who are over 60, that's just me and one or two other people in here, I have half the mitochondria that I had when I was 20. And that said, that means I can only make a certain amount of energy. I only have two choices here. I can somehow find a way to have my mitochondria work better, biogenesis, or work better, or make more of them. So I have two choices here. But at this point, my ATP theoretical capacity to make something is one half. So cytochrome C, let's go back to here. So this is an essential component of the electron transport chain. So the way mitochondria make energy is through oxidative phosphorylation. It's a reduction oxidase called a redox system. The faster that cycles, the greater the rate of turn of that, the greater the amount of ATP that can be made per minute per second. It's really the most important aspect of the system. So cytochrome C undergoes oxidation and reduction, and it's very important in the whole process. It's also a very highly conserved protein. It's similar across all species. That means mitochondria in all species kind of work the same way. It makes sense because they are bacteria and they got into other things. They didn't just make humans and made everything under the sun, so to speak. So it's very conserved. It binds the cardiolipin, remember I mentioned cardiolipin before, which is in the inner mitochondrial membrane. So this is how it binds there, it stays there, it works there. Now reactive oxygen species, better known to me as free radicals, these are unpaired electrons which are highly active and will insert themselves into anything and destroy anything or become a part of it. These reactive species oxidize cardiolipin and then cardiolipin breaks out from the mitochondria and it goes into the cytoplasm. Now cytochrome C has its own pharmacology. So it induces calcium release from inside the cell where calcium can be stored and this causes a massive increase in calcium from outside and inside the cell. So as the calcium levels rise, this activates a series of proteolytic steps called CAP-PACE. CAP-PACE is 9 and 3 in particular. That's so important to know the numbers except to understand the process. Gytochrome C comes out, calcium goes up, proteolytic enzymes become active and they digest the cell. So when that happens, the cell gets destroyed. Now this whole process obviously destroys the mitochondria and destroys the cell. So you have one less cell, you have less mitochondria and this seems to be the general path towards aging and towards cell death. Now there are certain things that change this and some of the elements I'll talk about have two functions. In this case, nitric oxide inhibits the reduction of cytochrome C and it actually leads to further oxidation and leads to cell your death. Now we think of anion nitric oxide as our friend. It comes off of arginine, other groups. It's a vasodilator, it's Viagra, it's all those things. So it's a good thing except right here. Now later on I'm going to tell you nitric oxide is really a good thing because it increases biogenesis. So some of the elements we'll talk about do two things. One part that causes the mitochondria to die. The other side they actually cause rebirth. So there's not a clear answer in all places. Another thing I hopefully next year will be talking about is BCL2. This controls the movement of the cytochrome C from the inner mitochondria into the side of the cell through a large pore called a MAC channel. So this is a point of intervention. This is sort of the summary of that. Oxidized cytochrome C leaves the mitochondria via the MAC ion channel and induces capase activation and cell death. BCL2 to be determined next year. Okay, BCL2 is the one element here that prevents that. So if you prevent oxidation, we'll save the mitochondria. If you prevent oxidation in general, you tend to save the mitochondria. Now let's get into some physical forces about what things can we do that we are doing all the time to help preserve our lives and our mitochondria. Endurance exercise, calorie restriction, cold exposure, stress functions, inflammatory stress, ketosis, inflammatory stress, oxidative stress. All these things actually end up increasing PGC1-alpha, okay? Nitric oxide does that. That's good. CERT1 is a one missing here. Deacetylates PGC1-alpha. Why that's important is PGC1-alpha is the one element of the mitochondria and why that's important is PGC1-alpha is hanging out in the cytoplasm. It's got to go inside the nucleus. It's a co-activator for DNA transcription. And when it gets inside the nucleus as a deacetylated form, then it can cause the mitochondria to increase their genes, double their genes, and it can actually, from the nuclear point of view, provide all the symbiosis parts back to the mitochondria so that the mitochondria now has all the elements for biosynthesis. All of these things are kind of linked together. Their common link is PGC1-alpha. Anything that controls the up-regulation of PGC1-alpha controls the energy cell, controls the mitochondria, controls the ATP function. Okay, so there are other ways to do this. Reactive oxygen species induces both biogenesis and apoptosis. The PG1 signal right here is a whole host of other interesting things to talk about. These are next year topics, because one or more of these will be much more important. Nuclear respiratory factors 1 and 2, UPC. All these things ultimately lead to the overexpression of PG1-alpha, and this is a necessary and sufficient condition to increase mitochondrial content. This and this alone. There are other activators like AMP-activated protein kinase. This is an energy sensor. When ATP runs down, AMP runs up, because ATP is three phosphates, AMP is one. When you get down to one phosphate and the ratio changes, this activates the system since we need more energy. So this is an activator and drives the whole system. AMP kinase also decreases with age. This is another point where if we can prevent that AMP kinase loss, we will increase mitochondrial function. So it's a point where things can get done. It's a mitochondrial AMP activator. Okay, and this whole process of AMP decreases with age. Here, nitric oxide is a positive, because it causes the activation. So this is a biogenesis factor that's good. Now, you can think about this. Can you do anything about this in terms of drugs? Probably not. There is one interesting type of process. These things are called thiozolidine diones. These are insulin sensitizers. It means less insulin reduces the right amount of response. So insulin destroys mitochondria through another mechanism called the AKT pathway. But if you use less insulin, it becomes a positive factor. Okay? So I'm going to move along a little more quickly here. So now, let's talk about natural products. This is more along the lines of what we like. So there are six natural products here. And co-emzyme Q10, alphalipoic acid, percitin, and PQQ are all basically functioning as antioxidants. Okay? What's interesting about these is some of these tend to be targeted more to the mitochondrion. So they're more mitochondrion-specific antioxidants. So these are really interesting ideas. Coenzyme Q10 increases redox flux. That's a good thing. They're more ATP, but it is a quinone, and therefore it's an antioxidant. PQQ is a quinone, and it's an antioxidant. Cercitin is an antioxidant that is regarded as an anti-inflammatory, but it's an anti-inflammatory because it's really an antioxidant. Okay? So these are things that are sort of high-end things. You have 30 seconds. Okay? So I have to move right along and finish this. So how do we make half the mitochondria work more efficiently? Limiting substrates, anti-oxidation reduction cycle. Good. We need to have another process here. We can't rely upon fission or fusion. These are not nuclear things. These are biological things, but these are not ways to get there. So the other process, we'll address that next year. And so ending up here, what's going on here? Most people feel energy deprived, and it's because they have a problem. Okay? They have a psychological problem, and they have an ATP problem as well. And as you get older, you have even greater problems. So older people are truly energy deprived. Energy is ATP. And chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, heart failure, cognition, memory are all ATP-generated things. This is the bottom line. As energy goes down, depth and disease goes up. So last slide. What can we do about this? I think next year, there's enough information coming out from many, many sources that we'll be really addressing. How can we use dietary supplements, natural factors, all the other things that we can do for our lifestyle change. And we'll be at a point where we can enhance our ATP generation and live longer. Thank you. I've seen good studies, as far as I can tell, showing that physiologic levels of fructose consumption are associated with lower ATP levels specifically in the liver, and maybe other tissues as well where liver fructose is metabolized. Well, fructose is an unusual subject because it also has an effect on insulin sensitization. So it's very, very complex. But to ask, to answer the question differently, if you think of congestive heart failure, and you actually do a punch by the eye, so you have a human heart, ventricular muscle, you will find the ATP levels are way down, and the heart is very weak. So from a functional point of view, ejection fractions down, all of those things. So actually, an interesting study was done by Dr. Steve Sinatra, no relationship to Frank. And he's a cardiologist, and he began to explore the view of what could he do to extend New York Heart Class IV patients who are really patients with ejection fractions below 20, therefore very sick. And what he found is coenzyme Q10 alone would increase life expectancy or extend life. He also added ribose. He also added carnitine, and this combination of things allowed the cell to make more ATP, and therefore it recovered a lot of its functions. People lived a longer time. And kind of a follow-up question if there's no one else here. I don't mean to be just a quick one here. Along the hypothesis that a lot of the problem with ATP depletion is kind of... Or is ATP depletion analogous to hypoxia and reperfusion? And we know that reperfusion events often is when you get a lot of oxidative damage in tissues. Sure. Well, reperfusion, reentry reperfusion is a result when you open, for example, the heart, coronary occlusion. And so there you have two things going on. Massive free radicals, therefore, all of that sort of follow-on damage. But you need to reperfuse. You have to have oxygen, as well as substrates, to make ATP. So anything that's oxygen-deprived can't make ATP. Don't have fats can't make ATP. So yes, it all connects. Okay. Thank you very much. Questions. Have you heard of nicotinamide riboside supplements? And what do you think of those? And then also, while we wait a year to hear your advice on what we can do next year, what would you say the top three things... I think I heard you say exercise, but the top three things we can do to extend our mitochondrial health. Okay. Yes, I have heard the first one. Nicotinamide riboside. There's a literature on that, and it's promising. Still trying to understand how it works. But basically, that was the one I left off, the five mOzone nicotinic riboside, because I didn't have time, and it's a whole new story. But yes, I think it's interesting. You should follow that carefully. It might be useful. Okay. Second part was what should we do in waiting for the real answer next year? Okay. Okay. Well, you know, I suggest two things. One, I do favor a low-carb, low-carbohydrate diet because high-carb, high-carbohydrate diet causes insulin overshoot. So we always talk about the bad aspects of insulin overshoot. The things that are really bad that are still not talked about is insulin overshoot activates AKT and PI3 kinase, that causes mitochondrial demise. Okay. So low insulin levels are good. So how do you get low insulin levels if you don't eat high-carbohydrates? So it's close to a ketosis-type diet the better. Keep the fat running in through the mitochondria. You can facilitate fat transfer with carnitine, something like that. Co-Q10 is good, but you have to take a lot of it. It's pretty expensive. Watch out for supplements because they don't really put enough in there to make it useful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.