proteins are essential for life on the planet. They're tiny biological machines that perform important functions in our bodies, things like repair, digestion, production of energy, bolstering our immunity and so on. I find it hard to believe that the amazing array of proteins we see in nature makes up just a small fraction of all possible proteins. I'm here to meet a team who are striving to give nature a bit of a helping hand. Hello, I'm Esme, nice to meet you. I'm Karlie, nice to meet you. I'm Chris, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you guys. So tell me about this place, what are we doing here? So we're standing in the Edinburgh Genome Foundry and this is where we make the DNA instructions that we use to make our custom proteins and then we go upstairs to the EPPF and we express that we actually make those proteins and characterize them and understand how they behave. Incredible. Now this might sound like a bit of a silly question but what's a protein made of? No, that's not a silly question at all. Proteins are chemicals, long molecules that are made of building blocks called amino acids and this is an amino acid here, this is a representation of it and there's 20 different amino acids with different chemical variants here. In nature, or you can do this chemically as well, you can link together, thank you Karlie, you can link together these amino acid building blocks to make long protein molecules and on average proteins have about 200 to 300 building blocks inside them and so if you think about that, with 20 different options at each of these positions, even if you had 100 building block protein, that's 20 to the power of 100 possible combinations and that's 10 with 130 zeros after it, this is an absolutely staggering amount of possible proteins and only a tiny, tiny little fraction of those have been explored in nature despite the amazing complexity of biological systems. That's a huge number, so are you saying that nature's been a bit lazy when it comes to making proteins? Evolution is definitely a much better optimization algorithm than it is a sort of innovation engine, so it's much easier to make existing proteins better than it is to make totally new proteins but we don't have the same types of restrictions that evolution has, so we can make giant leaps instead of small steps. How hard is it to make a new protein? Well if you think of a protein as a tiny molecular machine that's trying to carry out a function that is incredibly important to model the physics that goes on in this, without considering the physics it'll be like a toddler trying to build a really tall stack of Lego blocks without considering stability. The frustrating thing about this is that many of the experiments will result in nothing, they will just come down crashing. Well I've heard you've got a demonstration that might clear this all up for me. Absolutely yeah, do you want to come and see? Let's go. So I'm seeing a lot of people in coloured tops but what actually are we doing here? So we're going to do a protein folding simulation but we're going to do it with people rather than molecules. Interesting so shall we see it in action? Yes let's go. Okay so what we're going to do now is we're going to make the polypeptide, could we have the end terminus up at the front? So what Chris is doing here is he's trying to mimic a computer simulation. Each person here is going to be pretending to be an amino acid which is a component of a protein and as you can see they're lined up with either left or right hand out and in a minute what we're going to do is ask them to play the simulation out and they're going to try to find other amino acids to either move towards or move away from. That's it this is the way this compact no no we've got a broken chain there we go there we go we've got a solid bridge we've got one solid bridge right we can rearrange can we rearrange? Oh can we break you up temporarily? Yes right compact compact everybody together right here right and then compact yes this is it we've got a stable right and stop this is great. What have we just seen here? So we ran our simulation and then the polypeptide chain the protein folded up into a compact three-dimensional structure or two-dimensional in this case. It seemed very chaotic is this a good structure? So yeah absolutely I think this is a really nice a representation of what happens on a molecular level you know when the forces that fold up the protein they make the chain wiggle and jiggle until it gets and it folds and unfolds and goes back until it gets to this energetically stable state and this is what we've got here basically hopefully you can see that we have all of the black amino acids in the middle these are hydrophobic they don't like water so they want to be hidden out from this environment here and we've got all of the blue and red and white which like water all on the outside and you can see that the blue and red have found each other and paired up so this is a good structure. What this simulation shows you is how a protein falls but one of the problems that we're excited by is the inverse problem where you give us the shape this shape for example to design a vaccine for a virus and then ask the question what sequence of colors should we line up in order to end up here all right thanks very much amino acids well that did seem quite difficult in the end absolutely so hopefully the demonstration showed you that it's difficult to design a sequence of building blocks that will make a protein that forms into a compact structure repeatably and this is really this difficult problem is the reason that Carti can I collaborate between the School of Informatics and the School of Biological Sciences to make new computer algorithms that we can use to make proteins that go beyond nature computer algorithms are very effective at detecting patterns and what Chris and I are trying to do is try to teach these algorithms to detect patterns that result in consistent successes or perhaps even failures now Carti I heard that you actually worked at Disney before you returned to a life of academia was it a similar skill set you used there well that was magic of a different kind about 10 years ago the animation and special effects industries rely heavily on approximate physics model but what's really cool about the work that Chris and I are doing together is that this goes beyond entertainment we're trying to solve problems maybe even speed nature up so you're speeding up nature with the help of technology now is this just science for the sake of science or is it science that can actually help us one day it's going to help humanity there's no doubt about that natural proteins are incredibly important we use them broadly already in all sorts of areas but we can design new proteins that go beyond nature then we can start to solve problems in medicine and agriculture related to sustainability in the environment and it's starting to happen now we really are at the beginning of a revolution when it comes to protein design well thank you so much for chatting to me guys and there you have it nature has so many proteins left undiscovered and experts are using AI to try and discover them and hopefully these discoveries will help us all out someday I'm so excited to see how this science progresses in the future back to you guys at the Royal Society


U.S. senators urge Biden to stop arming Israel. A group of Democrats in the U.S. Senate has called on President Joe Biden to stop providing weapons to Israel until it lifts restrictions on Washington's humanitarian assistance to Gaza, according to a New York Times report. The Senate approved an emergency national security aid bill last month that would send an additional $14.1 billion in military aid to Israel, including $10 billion for offensive weapons for the country's war against Hamas. The New York Times cited a letter by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and seven Democrats who urged that by continuing to arm Israel Biden was violating the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, which stipulates that no assistance should be provided to any country that restricts directly or indirectly the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance. We urge you to make it clear to the Netanyahu government that failure to immediately and dramatically expand humanitarian access and facilitate safe aid deliveries throughout Gaza will lead to serious consequences, as specified under existing U.S. law, the group reportedly wrote. Sanders separately told the New York Times, I hope the President understands that a growing number of members of Congress and the American people in general are sick and tired of seeing the destruction of the people of Gaza and the creation of mass starvation. Biden announced last week in his State of the Union speech that U.S. forces will build a temporary dock on the Gaza shoreline to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale. The decision to open a sea route for aid into Gaza had come amid Israeli obstruction of road deliveries and growing warnings of a widespread famine among 2.3 million Palestinians. Putin may intensify mobilization to attack other countries after elections, Ukrainian intelligence. The head of the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, has reported the possibility of increased mobilization of Russians after the presidential elections in the Russian Federation states President Volodymyr Zelensky, chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, Budanov also delivered a separate report. Political issues were raised, first of all, Russia's military plans, not only against our country but also against other nations, Zelensky states. According to the President, the world's common task is the necessity to defeat this sick Putin's fantasy that he supposedly has time to continue the war. Perhaps he will intensify mobilization after imitation of elections now in March. However, we must further limit the mobilization of resources and finances, tightening the remnants of Russia's ties with the world even more severely. And everyone who values the lives of their people must do this. Every leader. I'm grateful to everyone who helps, the President added. In Russia, the presidential elections will last for 3 days, from March 15 to 17, 2024. On December the 8th, 2023, the Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin officially announced his intention to be re-elected. As reported by Reuters in this case, Putin will be able to remain in power at least until 2030. Moreover, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, has already stated that Putin is being re-elected with a result of 90% of the votes. Also, the Kremlin hopes that 30% of the residents of the temporarily occupied territories will voluntarily participate in the elections of the president of the Russian Federation. It's time to discuss sending Western troops to Ukraine, Lithuanian MFA. Now is the right time to discuss the possibility of sending troops from Western countries to help Ukraine, says Gabrielus Lanzbergis, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania in an interview with Quest France. He was asked to comment on the fact that French President Emmanuel Macron's statement about the possible sending of Western troops to Ukraine has sparked serious debates. Now is the time for discussion. The beginning of the conversation destroys the self-imposed red lines, Lanzbergis replied. He emphasized that none of the capitals is too far from Kiev for the army of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Some of us may feel safe being far away. But the geographic fact is this. The Ukrainian front line can be compared to the distance between Vilnius and London. If the Ukrainians no longer defended this line, imagine how it could end. This concerns all of us, the foreign minister added. At the end of February this year, French President Emmanuel Macron did not rule out sending Western troops to help Ukraine. However, he clarified that there is no consensus on this issue. Russian President Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Paris' activity in trying to put together a coalition of those who are ready to send troops to Ukraine is a direct line to escalating tension. Of course, in general, the expansion of the discussion and the persistent activity of Paris in attempts to put together a coalition of countries that declare a hypothetical readiness to send certain contingents, of course, is nothing more than a direct line to escalate tension. This is a very dangerous line, very dangerous. And of course, it could potentially have very undesirable consequences, he said.


They're very fortunate to have the Hardy-Fruits Project Manager from the Carrington Research Extension Center, Kathy Wieterholt. And Kathy's going to tell us about all the fascinating research she does on so many different types of fruits. So let's welcome Kathy to the forum. Thank you. Good evening. Tom kind of stole my April Fool's joke. I was going to say, guess what? It's spring of April Fool's. On Sunday evening before the storm, I went out and I looked at the orchard. And the only snow was in between the grapes. It was kind of mound right in the middle of the trellis. And now, well, it's all over. And the snow's about twice as deep. So we have about 10 inches in Carrington, so a little more than the Fargo area here. So there's some nice dress. There's some nice dress. Well, as Tom said, I'm the fruit project manager at Carrington. And we'll talk about our cold climate fruits there. They're kind of neat, I think. Some you may know about, some you may not know about. And well, let's just get started here. Which way do I go here? Where's my computer? There? There. Hey, it's not moving. And it did just when I practiced. Here, how about this? It is not moving dives. Well, we'll do a little background in the meantime. So you know, I don't have a horticulture background. I'm actually a food microbiologist. I studied bacteriology. OK, what do I need to do here? OK, it was just sleeping. And anyway, when I moved to North Dakota here, and I've been doing microbiology and genetics for a long time, and then I've always had an interest in horticulture. I studied the books on plant ID when I was a kid. And I knew a lot of the scientific names of plants. And I took classes when I was in college. Just on my own botany and zoology and horticulture. I took a horticulture in my fifth year of college. And I didn't even know about horticulture. And now I do. And you know, I thought about changing my major. But I thought, no way, no way. I've already been in school for long. And then I went on to grad school in factuality. So I just had the opportunity when I came here to Carrington. And I have really loved every minute of it. And you shouldn't tell the research center, but I would do it even if I wasn't paid. And that's saying something is really fun. So let's look at the slide here. This is kind of the soil types of North Dakota. And Carrington is in this drift per region. It's this big, brown area. It takes up a lot of North Dakota. Really nice soils. In general, really nice soils. And a lot of our research has been applied to a lot of places in North Dakota. And certainly, the water conditions across the state. So this is a little overview of our orchard. It's six acres in total. But we share it with Woody Plant Research. Dr. Todd West is out there. And part of that is Dr. Herman doing all of their Woody Plant Research. And we've got just a lot of cool stuff out there. So we have a deer fence. That was kind of the square line around there. We have a deer fence to keep them out. And that really helps. We have a lot of them. So this is our research project. We don't just head for the front of it. We actually have research goals. In the beginning, we just wanted to identify different plants that would grow up there. We started with apples, plums, grapes, and Juneberries. Those were kind of selected before I even started. And I have to say, the project was the brainchild of our director, Blaine Schott. He really is interested in fruit. And he could just tell us from going and meeting around the state, going to the very first wine and grapes meeting at Carrington, that people wanted to know more about fruits than they were getting information for. So he said, we should do this here at Carrington. And then he ordered some of the first plants. And they hired me. And we got started on it. And I kind of ran with it. I planted that first stuff. And then that winter. And I have to say how poor we were, or at least for my project, because we're just funded internally. I worked for my own home that winter. I just went over to the internet and looked for stuff. I wanted to find things that were household, that were hearty, of course, in North Dakota, that grew really easily. We wouldn't have to spray them a lot. So there were a lot of things around the country and around the world that we aren't growing here in North Dakota that we could be growing. And so we will talk about these things tonight. We take notes of all these plants. In the spring, just see if anything has winter damage. And then throughout the year, if it has any kind of diseases. And then we harvest all the fruit, pick it. We weigh it. We weigh individual berries to check out that size. And then the fall goes along. Wait, wait, summer. Start measuring. And we look for vigor, which is, and we include height and width and any diseases and insects bothering the plants. So we do take a lot of notes on the plants. And it pretty much takes me until around January, sometime, to get all those notes entered in the computer and writing reports and stuff. So there's a lot of info there. So the other part of our project is to deliver information to the public. And I have to say, I'm pretty impressed when I look at the numbers. We didn't really start doing talks like this or presentations. Until about 2010, we started in 2006. And then 2007, we applied to a lot of other plants. And then about 2010 is when we started doing presentations and having field days. And since then, I believe my numbers are around 3,100 people that I've had contact with in the state and a little bit out of state, but mainly in the state. So we're pretty proud of that. We're pretty proud of all the work we've done with that. This is a list of all the fruits that we have. We have 14 different kinds of fruits. And when I say 14, we have cherry shrubs and cherry trees. So I count that as two. They do write them a little differently. And then we also have like half-daps and honeyberries. Kind of the same, actually different species. And their terms are kind of used interchangeably, depending on who you talk to. So let's get into the really cool fruits that we have here. I kind of condensed this down. We have 20 minutes. And then we're going to take questions. So if you've heard me talk before or you just have questions about any kind of disease or production issues that I don't talk about, just ask that. So I'll be really happy to answer that. The first truth we have here are pictures of black, red, and white currants. I'll talk a little bit about the red and white currants. You know, they're really popular in other countries. They're tart. If you like a tart fruit, you will like these. People eat them as just like a snack in the northern countries of like Norway or Sweden, maybe in Russia, things like that. They're really kind of a snack for people. They'll be on at somebody's table when you visit them at their house. Well, I don't know if we like those so much here in America. They're really too tart for me. They really kind of make my teeth hurt a little bit. But they make fabulous jelly and they make really fabulous wine. You know, I had some berries for two years and I didn't know what to do with them. And I gave them to our local winemaker and I said, just try these, all right? And then he brought me a bottle at Christmas and I took it home to my family and I tried it. Oh my gosh, it's red. It's delicious. It's really juicy. I really can't speak highly enough of it. It was really delicious. I actually had a second winemaker make wine from the currents and his wine is just as good. So I'm really looking forward to this, to seeing more red current wine. And then our third current is black currants. They're the most economically important across the world. You know, like I said, they don't really know about them here in the US, but back in like the early 1900s, we had about 10,000 acres. And I just, I've said this before and I still haven't looked it up. I remember 10,000 acres. And I don't know if that was from New York State or if that was from the US, but there were 10,000 acres of black currant somewhere in the US in the early 1900s. And they were all been moved by an eradication program. There's a disease called white pine blister rust and it came in from, actually it's from Asia, it migrated to Europe and then we actually brought in white pine seedlings to the US when we had to replant all those timber trees in the East, you know, we didn't have nurseries here in the US. So we brought in little trees from Germany and those trees had white pine blister rust on them. And so then it spread and it has to travel between the black currants and the white pines. And, you know, we get it here in Carrington and we have, I would say zero white pine trees in our area, but, you know, it travels on the wind. It can come into the current from 350 miles away. So kind of crazy, but it only travels a few hundred feet to the pine trees. So you can plant resistant varieties, there are several, more than several resistant varieties of currants that are resistant to this disease. And then it won't spread to the white pine trees. So I think they're really something you should try to grow. They're kind of funky in that the leaves and the branches have like a cat pee smell to them. You know, I hear everybody's looking at me, but that's just the leaves and the branches is not the berries. The berries taste like pine.  But that shouldn't, that shouldn't slow you down either because actually that's kind of a fresh flavor. And when you make a jelly out of them, if you make a wine on the core, anything, that flavor is gone and they are just so rich and so juicy. And I'm telling you, you have to try to believe them. Raw, you know, I love them raw, but it is something you would have to get used to. I really think because it's sweet, it's tart and it's piney. And it's not cat pee, that's just a bonus on the plants. But the berries themselves are very delicious and just thinking about them, I'm wanting some. So, you know, they're pretty cool and they're really high in nutrients. They are really, really high. So, well, let's go on here because I'm running out of time so I'm not chattering about my plants. Hasgaps and high berries. We have these at the research center. They are native to more than areas around the world. They're native in Canada, they're native in Russia. They are native in Japan. So, they're also very helpful. They have extra skin and like, there's actually two berries together with a third skin that covers them. And a lot of these nutrients are right in the skin. So, that's really cool. They are zone two hardy. So, flowers when they're blooming early in the spring can withstand about 19 degrees Fahrenheit. So, if it gets kind of cold, they'll be all right. And then, what else? They're juicy, they're delicious. They're really, really good. And they, our soil is just fine for them. They can take clay, they can take pH eight. So, no problem. I would definitely try to grow these in North Dakota. A little hard to find, I would call your greenhouse and your local greenhouse or nursery and ask about them because I'm sure a lot of them have been hearing about them from me, probably. So, I hope they actually asked about them. But if not, there's information. I also have some sources on the handouts that I have. There's a source for these honeyberries. So, the one thing about them that is a slight problem is you have to net them. The birds think these are the best things ever and you will have to net them or you won't get a crop. That little bird in that picture was only about eight feet away from me and he didn't care, he really wanted those berries. So, we have these cherries. We have the Canadian hardy shrub cherries or dwarf hardy cherries. They're just a shrub, they're not a tree. They get about seven feet tall, maybe five feet wide, something like that. And you can, you know, improve the size in that and it can make them more open if you need to. This last year was, we planted in 2007 and it was the 2013 season. When I planted them, there was just a little six and this year we had 30 pounds, on average, 30 pounds of fruit per plant on the Carmine Jewels. So, they're just loaded and they're wonderful. There's several kinds available here in the US but in Canada, there's like six kinds. So, we're hoping to get more here in the US. That would be really nice. They're red all the way through so they're a little more helpful than a typical cherry. I mean, these are tart cherries, they're pie cherries but actually they have a lot of sugar. They can be actually sweeter than a sweet cherry. It's just that they have more acid. So, they're high in vitamin C and they will always be kind of tart but some of these are very, very good and nice for fresh eating. So, that's the cherries, june berries. We have five varieties of june berries and we have a hundred plants total. The varieties we have are from Canada. We have smoking, honey, smoking honeywood. Those are kind of older, I call them. Little more vegetal, little more chewy. When you eat them, then we have these big juicy varieties. We have patient, we have martin and we have JB 30 and they are really nice. They really are juicy. They're like a large blueberry. I mean, you can see the picture there. They're very nice and one thing with june berries, I think I included this on the slide here because they are native to North Dakota is they have native diseases. They're in the family, they're in the ACA along with apples and they can get a lot of diseases. I don't know if this is true or not but in Canada, I've been told you cannot grow them organically, you know. They get, see your apple rust pretty readily but we have not had much of a problem. You can see in this picture, let's see if this works here. I have to do it here but will it work on here? Oh, I can use my pointer perhaps. Yeah.  It's another fungal disease that gets on the plants and then those pictures, the picture of the flower down below.  So there's a lot of things going on with these plants. So, you know, you may need to apply some pesticides early on but I've been able to control this in your organic matter with organic pesticides so I feel pretty good about that and if you need more information, I would actually say just to email me or call me later because, you know, there's a lot of stuff to talk about in there but, you know, as far as growing these is for a you pick or something, I think jingles may be the way to go because there are a few around the state and they sell out every year and they command very nice prices for these. So I really think a jingler orchard might be some very nice plant to have as a you pick and then add some of these other fruits in too because, you know, if people try them, I think they're really gonna like them. We may not know about these fruits but if you try them, you're going to like them and you might be surprised. So, aronia, here is our aronia and, you know, I think aronia is a bit of a conundrum because it produces like crazy but the fruit doesn't really taste that good. It's just kind of neat, it's kind of vegetable, it's really tannic, it has a lot of tannins which means that when you eat them, they're really gonna dry your mouth out and I have, you know, I can't waste the berry and when the bird, when we're picking the fruit and the birds have maybe tried one, they just try one and they break the skin. I'll eat them. And I think maybe a dozen of these things. And then I have to go for a drink of water because they are stuck in my throat, they really dried out your tissues that much but, you know, they say you should freeze them before using them and cooking also helps. I've read that putting them with a dairy product, like if you put them with yogurt or ice cream or something like that, that will help remove that tannin because the casing binds to the tannin. The casing is approaching in the milk but that binds to the tannin. But definitely freezing them. I made some banana bread with them frozen and I thought, well, this isn't gonna work out but it was wonderful. I actually would serve it to you. It was very, very good. So, you know, they're growing Aronia like crazy. There are some big plantings, like even 10 acres in Nebraska and Iowa. There's some Wisconsin, probably some in Minnesota. There are, I don't know, between three and five plantings of maybe a couple thousand here in North Dakota. So, people are interested in them.  So, yeah, they're pretty interesting little guys. All right, here's our apples and plums. The side of our apples and plums. We have five kinds of apples and five kinds of plums.  Try to reduce that and I haven't sprayed for them. So, some years you get more problems than others. They say chickens.  They'll shake them off the tree and the chickens will eat them. So, I don't have any chickens but maybe I'll pay them a few crows. I don't know. We do, I said we have five kinds of apples and the starred ones are hazen, honeycris and zestar and those have been really wonderful for us. I've been kind of down on hazen in the past because it gets kind of mushy and soft. Like, if you pick it and let it sit on your desk for two days the ground inside is mushy, it's terrible.  Well, I still last at least one month in good quality and then I'll start to go down but they're just a good, you know what I'm gonna say? They're a good average apple. They will bear pretty much every year. They make a nice pie, I've made crisps with them. They're good to eat. They're not spectacular but they are a good apple that produces every year. So, and then honeycris, we have had such good luck. We had about 400 pounds on the six trees we had this year and I really thinned them. First we pruned and then when they're just like little dimes, we pick off all but one fruit from the cluster and then about a week later maybe two weeks, I don't know about two weeks but a week or so later when they've gotten to like an inch when you can really see them and I've gone back through and picked off some of those really to reduce the number on the tree and still there was a lot of apples when we did that. I think we should maybe reduce maybe six inches per apple next year or four inches or something like that just to make sure but you know, by doing that you can maybe get your apples to produce every year but every other year. It's possible for some varieties, not possible for others. And then the last one I really recommend is Zepstar. It's an early apple. It is juicy, it's crispy, it's tender, it's really good like a Macintosh on steroids because you've had a good Macintosh, a really good one. So these Zepstar are really delicious. So that may be the end of my talk. Oh, there's a picture. There's an ideally pruned apple tree in your home orchard. Really clean out the inside of your tree and Tom actually came and helped me this year. When he counted anything, he told me to take down the height of these standard trees and I said, you'll come and like hold my hand because hold my throat or something. I just wanted to see how much damage I could really do to them. We can do a lot and then they look great. So yeah, open up your tree and really get them out there so it'll be good. And that tree was partly picked already when I took the picture. Don't think there's not any fruit on there. So all right, the end of my presentation, 20 minutes and 41 seconds here, this is good. Here's a picture of my little timer. This is a picture from the fall of our orchard. It is very beautiful. And those beautiful yellow leaves on the Juneberries at the end of the spring and we can very thought showing its ugly head in the fall. So all right, if there's any questions, I'll take them. Thank you. We have some questions already. First of all, about Juneberries. Person's heard, you shouldn't grow Juneberries if you get seeders or junipers nearby. Does that make sense to you? We shouldn't grow, should I repeat this or no, we're fine. Okay, okay. You know, you will see, I believe you will see the rust if you have junipers nearby. I don't know if the seeders are really part of it but for sure the junipers are. I only thought it was seeder alpha rust and I recently read that it's actually the junipers that do it. Perhaps a red seeder, it's really a juniper, I know. So that might be it. But you probably should be cautious. You're probably gonna see it. Right, okay. How about aronia, aka choked berry? Does it have seeds or pits? Aronia does have seeds, they're little apples. Aronia is, if you look at it, it's a little apple, like a delicious apple. It's got a big shoulder and then it's got kind of a small bottom and it's got that apple scar that you can totally recognize as an apple, you know, or in the rosé-ca family. So yeah, they have little seeds, just like an apple. Now, are there varieties of aronia that are non-edible? Other varieties, and these are, there are some red ones but I think the red may even be edible but I think there are some that are not edible. The ones that are going for fruit for eating like this they're actually a cross between mountain ash and aronia, Melana Cargo, which is from the US and they just found this out in the last year. They did genetic testing. So the wild aronia is here in the North America. I believe they're still edible but they're gonna be smaller and not as nice as these ones that are bred more for the fruit production. Yeah, you know, why would you want a non-edible type? I'm gonna just let the birds eat them when they're starving in January. I think they're not non-edible for the birds. They may just be too panic and horrible to us. No, even when they're hungry enough, like now. Okay, here's another question on apples. Can a zestar pollinate a honey crisp? I'll say yes if they bloom at the same time. I have to say I'm not really sure but if you live in town and there's crab apples anywhere in the neighborhood, a crab apple will pollinate your apple. That's the best pollinator, best pollinizer that there is but you just have to see if they bloom at the same time. Do you have any recommendations on who's theory cultivars? All right, I didn't talk about them. What we have some, I would recommend King Maki's Wedge. I would say it's the most playful and it's from the most disease resistant for us. So it's a very good variety. Okay, how about elderberries? What varieties are you considering and which ones do not work? Ah, our elderberries. You know what? The name varieties didn't work. The John, the York, the Adams and the Nova. They are the name varieties that are said to be the hurriest. None of them have ripened in Carrington. They kind of will get a red-black at the most but they just won't ripen fully. I have heard from people across the state that the ones they've gotten from soil conservation ripened just fine here in North Dakota. So I've asked people to send me little roots of the, you know, you can dig down in the soil where our stem goes in and you'll see like part of the root. If you could say, if you've got one that grows really well, produces a lot of berries, I would like to hear from you and I would like a piece of that plant. All we need is like five inches of root and maybe a little bit of stem so leaves can start growing and that's all it takes to start an elderberry. So. Okay, good. Here, how about raspberries?  Ah, but this person already eats some. Ah, but evidently they survived. Any comments on it?   It's a new fruit fly here in the United States for about the last five, seven years and it has just showed up in North Dakota. It was actually, I wasn't confirmed but it was in North Dakota in 2012. I had a little damage on our cherry plants and then in 2013 we had a lot of damage and I sent in fruit and I sent in a fly that I caught and it was identified here at the lab and it was by the wing of soffa love. This rotten little fruit fly it lays its eggs in fruit that is just starting to ripen. It's a color starting to change to its ripe color and then it lays its eggs in there. So by the time it's actually ripe the fruit is spoiled or the worm is growing in there. So especially in raspberries, they love raspberries and a group from the horticulture group is putting together a fact sheet from North Dakota and it will list pesticides that you can use in North Dakota in your home garden and I hate to say this but it's true because I hate to think about it, not say it but I hate to think about it but to control these fruit flies anywhere a fruit is grown where the fruit fly is that fruit will make you be sprayed every seven days, every seven days with a pesticide. And a lot of them are pyrethroid products. Organically you can use something called n-trux which is a spinosin and then you can use which is things Monterey Bay or Monterey Garden, something I can't remember the whole name of it but it has to be a spinosin and then you can also use pyganic which is the organic pyrethrin form. That pyganic is only good for like two days because it breaks down in sunlight, it just doesn't have any residual. So organically you are really challenged to keep these berries free from insects. So know that any place this fruit is grown where there are fruit flies, your fruit is being sprayed on a regular basis because you would not get a crop without that. So it's just something to think about. So raspberry and cherries for sure we know they love them here in North Dakota but they love many things. Is there a way to monitor for them or to trap them to see if they've found your planting? There is a way to monitor and what people are kind of using are like the one quart clear deli containers. You poke a few holes, oh sorry, there's no camera. You poke a few holes around it and you can find this online and I think this is cited in the statute that's coming out. You poke a few holes in it and you can even use apple cider vinegar. I got the best trapping when I dropped a few cherries into my apple cider vinegar. This is of course after the fact. And then there's another way they say it's the best is to use water, sugar and yeast and that will really attract these female fruit flies. And you put a little sticky card in there you can buy them on Amazon, that's where I got mine. Other plant will garden, your garden catalogs will have these little yellow sticky traps and you can see if their fruit flies sticks to them or you can just have the liquid and they'll fly down in the liquid and put a drop of soap in there to boost the tension and they say every week you should, at least once a week, but perhaps more, you should pour this out into a strainer or look at your sticky card and see if there are fruit flies on there and the time you ask is when you find one fruit fly. Cause you might guess the right term right, you find one and then there's a hundred million. So you start spraying when you find one fruit fly. So this is pretty depressing. You should have heard our heart call when we confirmed this here. We were all pretty down in the dumps. Kathy was weeping openly, that was very sad. If I was making, for Daniel who here in North Dakota cause it's our great winters and you know how many people are growing fruit so there's not a lot of pest pressure. So. Kathy let's be more optimistic change of topic here. How about we got a budget conscious gardener here. Do you need more than one half cap plant for production or is one good enough? Half cap, you do need more than one. You'll need at least two and you'll want more than two because they taste so good. They really do. Yeah, they're kind of like apple trees. You need two different varieties to pollinate each other and whoever you buy it from should be able to sell you the correct pollinizer. Kathy do you have tours of your fruit reachers center at Carrington? And if so, when? Of course we have tours. Our big tour is the field day in July. It's the second, I believe the second Tuesday in July. It's the 15th this year. Make sure that's right. I'm a challenger but it's a Tuesday. This year, very exciting. I haven't actually announced this in a press release but so you are the first ones to know. Dr. Bob Boyd is coming to our field day. He is the plant breeder from University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon and he's super famous. He helped release those cherries, those hardy cherries and the hash gaps. There's over two million hash gaps now planted up in Canada, probably a couple million pounds of cherry thing harvested every year. Like three fruit organizations have started because of his work. He's really influential. He's the northernmost and really only breeder of cold hardy fruit in North America. So he's doing a lot of good work. So pretty exciting. You should come see him. Okay, we will. How about Cathy, keep talking about organic pesticides but we don't know where to get them. You know what, the best source I can tell you and I guess I should say it's not an endorsement but it's where I look for them. If Johnny select seeds or Johnny seeds, they got a table in there, it can tell you the pest, it can tell you the pest size they like best and they try to go with no toxicity or organic products. So that would be a place to start. It would be a really good place to start Johnny's seeds. How about blueberries, do you have any recommendations on growing blueberries? I do, I do. You should move to Minnesota. Our weather is fine for blueberries but they hate our soil. Blueberries like a pH, a soil pH of four and a half to five. Our soil pH is eight, seven and a half to eight. No matter what you do, that plant will always be sad because the needs are not being satisfied. And I mean, you can try to change the pH but every spring when the water's table comes up and stuff, the water's just moving horizontally, it's gonna bring high pH water into your blueberries. The only thing you could do is a container or a raised bed and then when you water you would acidify your water a little bit and you would have special medium there in that bed, you know, something with peat moss and maybe sand, I'm not sure on the whole formulation but they do grow in sandy soils in northern Wisconsin. So and they love acidity, so peat moss, so. Right, forget blueberries.  Don't even think about it. You can use that in place. How about plum cultivars? Do you have a couple favorite plum cultivars? Plums, you know, I think, I can't remember. I think pipe stone. Wait, let me go backwards. It's probably sleeping, but pambana. Pambana was one we've had a couple trees that have just been loaded and they've been very nice. The pambana pipe stone and Juanita are very good tasting plums. The toca is the best tasting one but ours is just like three quarters of an inch to an inch, it's really tiny. But again, we just have really spotty production. If I was to plant a new palm tree, I might try the new one from Dr. Brian Smith in the Falls, Wisconsin, and that is the black ice plum. I've heard good things about it but I haven't grown it myself. We're the tri, I think. You know, you need two cultivars to make it work. I mean, very good. That's how anizer may be a wild plum. Is a Saskatoon berry the same as a Juneberry? Yeah, Saskatoons and Juneberries, same thing. Sorry, okay, we'll keep talking now. You know, I know Regents, so a couple of our Regents is available from catalogs but that is kind of marginal and I don't think you'll be very happy with it as compared to some of these Canadian varieties. Okay, Cathy, how about, which apple tree was the one you pruned hard to get it to produce every year? Which apple tree? Well, all of them but Hazen just does produce every year. We prune it nicely. I would say I don't prune hard like a real orchard does. I normally really cut the tips of the branches back and stuff. I don't do that. But just try to prune for openness. My best advice is go for upward and outward. So something like this is upward and outward. You want to get rid of all kinds of low stuff but all apples will just be, apple trees will be happier if you prune. I just wrote something about this but you know, if you prune out a lot of the extra growth you're also reducing the crop load when you do that and you're running in more light. The apples you get will be bigger and they'll be fewer. So hopefully your tree will ripen them a little faster and then when you pick them and relieve that crop from the tree, your tree will just be a little more ready when winter really comes. It'll have a little more energy to try to produce a good crop next year. So. Okay, we're gonna have some rapid fire questions here. All right. Will a snow crab work as a pollinator for an apple? Yes. We need a boomerang at the same time. Yeah. What's your favorite Juneberry variety for North Dakota? Give us a couple. The three that we have that are really like our teesins which sounds like these things but it's teesins like Thomas, teesins, Martin, KB30 and I've heard good things about V8 or Northline. Jesse, how come you're talking about blackberries tonight? What's going on? Blackberries. Do you have a high tunnel? If you have a high tunnel, you could probably get them to ripen. I'm not totally sure but when you see them in catalogs, they say zone five, zone six. They are not really hardy here in our parts of North Dakota and they take a long time to ripen. So I think if you've had a high tunnel, you might even try the Primer Cane varieties. There's Prime Jim and Prime Jan and I think one more but I would actually try those or a formless variety if you had a high tunnel. Extra growing degree days. It's got three honeycrisp trees. Will they pollinate each other? No, not very well.  If someone's got a crab apple tree, that'll do it. Right. How about, oh, when I was a kid, we used to have wild growing. We called them blackberries but they had the consistency of Juneberries. They grew on the edge of the garden on small bushes. Do you know what they were? No. So on the bushes, did they have... Right back, did they have... Blackberries, right? Blackberries. Did they have thorns? Yeah, they had thorns on them. How about a black raspberry? It could be a black raspberry and with cotton, they grew wild and I do have some here that I planted a variety called Jewel.  So you need to look out for them. This person says blackberries will grow in the wild of North Dakota. Go for it. They grew in the wild in Wisconsin too but we never were able to grow them, those pain varieties in our garden. Maybe they should take some cuttings of them and send them to Kathy at Carington. I don't want me. We'll name the variety. I'm not going to wrong for anything. Okay, here we'll just do one more question. How about apricots or pears? And the varieties? Yeah, you know, I'm not familiar with the apricots and people do ask me about them and I think if you're a little farthest south maybe they might do a little better. You know, they say you might get a crop one, three, five years so we don't have them. You know, people are working. There's the Northern fruit explorers, North American fruit explorers, NAFACs. They're very interesting and they have an apricot group that's active and they're trying to put the apricots on hardier cleats roots to try to get them to bloom a little later and maybe be hardier so they're working on that. And what was the other one, pears. You know what, I'm interested in pears and I keep thinking I'm going to get some but I haven't. I've heard the varieties that do well are the summer crisps and is it luscious? Yeah, there's, is it Parker? The Uri golden spice, right. Those golden spice summer crisps, Uri, they're the ones for sure that do better here in North Dakota. I would say maybe we could try from St. Lawrence Nursery and they have something they say are extra hardy and they claim their zone four but that's a different zone four than North Dakota. So, I don't want to win. That's right. Okay, we want to thank you, thank you Kathy for your presentation. I know we didn't get to all everybody's questions but we will have an overtime session at 8.30 and we'll do our best to get to your questions at that time. So we're going to take a five minute break everybody and then we're going to start learning about diseases. Okay, later.


The moment Daniel is a senior researcher at the Centre for Security Studies at ETH in Zurich, which, as we were discussing, is an extremely highly regarded and very well-funded Swiss Institute, and he works there on national defence policies in Europe, EU military cooperation and NATO. Daniel also writes a monthly column for Carnegie's Europe Strategic Europe blog, and indeed, the clarity of Daniel's writings in regard to military and security matters is really exemplary. He previously worked at a number of institutes in Europe and the US, including the Foundation for International Relations, known as Frida, and in Brussels and Madrid. The European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris, which is also located as well in Brussels, and the Centre for European Reform in London, the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defence University in Washington and the Aspen Institute in Berlin. So he has a very broad spread and background for his studies. He's going to talk to us today about France and the future of European defence. It's clearly a pivotal week to talk about this subject, and France, of course, is pivotal in the European Union. The implications of the French presidential election for French defence policy and, indeed, for European security and defence policy will be absolutely crucial. The candidates have varying views on defence, on the amounts to be spent. Two of the candidates want to withdraw France from NATO. Will France maintain its ambition with global reach? What are the challenges for the internal security of France with regard to military operations? It will be the only nuclear power left in the EU after Brexit. Daniel, we await your thoughts on all of these issues. Again, welcome you and the floor is yours. Well, thank you very much, Mary. Of course, it's both an honour and a pleasure to be back at the IIEA. It's always lovely to be home. It's also very exciting, I think, to talk about France. Also on a personal level for me, I should say, you mentioned that I worked at the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris. And I had five very happy years there. And when I'm asked about what was it like being an Irishman living in France, I'm reminded of words that are attributed to Samuel Beckett. Now, I don't know if Beckett really said this or not. But allegedly, when he was asked a similar question, he said, Lleolon ne ma mèr, ne la France ne ma maitres. Ireland is my mother, but France is my mistress. And I think that's how a lot of people feel as Irish people living in France. It was a great, great experience. But I think it's exciting to talk about, in general, European defence, not least because of the Brexit decision in the UK last year and the potential effects of that because of the election of Donald Trump as president in the United States. And it's particularly exciting to talk about French defence policy. Not only because of the presidential elections, we have the first round this Sunday and the various candidates of different positions on French defence policy, but also because I would argue France has probably had the most interesting national defence policy in Europe in recent years. It's been a very exciting time for French defence policy for reasons I will go into in a minute. But France is certainly crucial for the future of European defence. And whether one thinks of that on a simple cooperation perspective or whether it's through NATO, whether it's through the EU or whatever, France is definitely crucial for the future of European defence. I think it's also worth bearing in mind that France will, of course, be the strongest military power in the EU after Brexit. But we shouldn't forget that France has a very long tradition, unlike most European countries, how should I put this, of very independent strategic thinking. And in some ways, this goes back to the 1956 Suez crisis. There are other aspects to it. But if you think about the lessons that Britain and France took from the 56 Suez crisis, the lesson that Britain took was to stay as close to the United States as possible and ideally try and be Athenians advising the Romans, Athenians advising the Roman Empire. The French took an attitude more like Spartans defying the Persian Empire and decided that they should not rely on the United States. They should not have to rely on the United States for their security and defence. And partly because of that crisis, they later invested in their own independent nuclear weapons programme and, of course, left the NATO military command, which they then rejoined under President Sackwazee in 2009. But my point being that France has long had a very, very independent culture, strategic culture, compared with other European countries. And not just the UK. If you read the German security white paper of last year, there's a sentence in it that makes it very clear that Germany says that only with the United States can Europe be defended. The French may see that quite differently. And indeed have been, in some ways you could argue, a very much a Trumpian kind of ally in that they've been willing to not just spend a lot on defence, they've been willing to do a lot, and they've argued that Europeans should be much more autonomous, which seems to be some of the things that President Trump wants from Europeans. But that's something I'll come back to later. I think another aspect of French strategic culture, which is very, very important, it's an obvious point, but it's worth restating. France is a nuclear armed member, permanent member of the UN Security Council, and unlike most European countries, has a special sense of responsibility for global security, like the UK does as well, of course. This is unlike most of the Europeans. Most of the Europeans don't think as deeply about East Asian security, for example, as France does, and that makes it quite different. And of course what makes the presidential election very interesting is that the next French president, as the current president does, will wield tremendous influence, and will have tremendous say, tremendous power over French defence policy. That person will inherit the second largest European defence budget in NATO, just over 40 billion for this year. The next president may produce a new white paper outlining what France wishes to do, what its geostrategic priorities are and so on for the next five years. And I would argue that while I don't want to go into too much into... Of course, the next president will also have the power to deploy robust military force without immediate recourse to parliament, as is the case in a lot of other European countries again, if you think of Germany or if you think of Ireland for that matter, where the French president has a lot more leeway compared to other heads of government on defence policy, on using military force. Now, as I say, I don't want to go into too much detail on the candidates themselves, I'll weave in a few of their positions as appropriate, but of course we can discuss the individual programme, I think, in the Q&A a bit more if people want to do that. I think it's more interesting, frankly, to talk about the kind of structural challenges that the next president, whoever it is, will inherit, and how France may end up positioning itself internationally based on the geostrategic, political, and indeed more practical operational budgetary and so on, challenges that the next president will face. So that brings me on to, how can I put this, the geostrategic and political context. Now, in 2013, President Hollande produced a new white book on French security and defence, which despite cuts to the defence budget, of course everybody at that time was cutting their defence budget because of the economic crisis, despite cuts to the French defence budget and cuts in personnel numbers, it maintained a fairly considerable level of strategic ambition, an operational ambition by European standards. The first priority, of course, is to protect French territory, and the second priority was to contribute and protect European and North Atlantic security. But interestingly, a threat from Russia was not discussed in the 2013 document. Now, obviously, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, there has been a lot of debate in France about how to cope with the challenge from Russia with Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. And I think to the surprise of some outsiders, President Hollande has kept a very firm line on Russia. He cancelled the sale, for example, of mistral amphibious assault ships to Russia. France has contributed to Baltic air policing, to Black Sea maritime policing, sending troops now to the UK-led NATO battalion in Estonia, and is part of the Normandy format that has been negotiating with Russia, the Minsk-2 agreements, and so on. But President Hollande has kept a very firm line against Russian aggression and on contributing to NATO's defence. Now, in the 2013 White Paper, beyond Europe, the geostrategic priorities were narrowed down. Hollande's version narrowed down the geostrategic priorities from Sarkozy's 2008 version. Sarkozy's 2008 White Paper had a very ambitious idea that France should worry about an enormous arc of instability, a kind of a giant ozone hole in global security stretching from Africa through the Indian Ocean into Central Asia. And this was the space that France should be mainly concerned about. Well, Hollande narrowed that down to really focus on the Gulf, the Levant, North Africa, and the Sahel. So a narrower band, the south of Europe. So, after French national defence, or protecting French national territory, NATO defence came a narrower band of North Africa, Sahel, Gulf, and the Levant. But, of course, it did. The next priority was still the Indian Ocean, and it did underline the paper the potential for strategic trouble in East Asia and Southeast Asia. So it did want to emphasise that while France was narrowing its priorities geostrategically, it still wanted to keep a global outlook. This idea of France keeping a global outlook is very important, because France, essentially, in a nutshell, the phrase was in the 2013 paper, wants to be a European power with global reach. Now, there are not many other European governments that would aim to have global reach, militarily, in an effective sense, and not just because France has territories in the Pacific and indeed in Latin America, if you think of French Polynesia or you think of Guyana, French Guyana, but also because of France's role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. And indeed, Le Drian, the defence minister, despite all the problems and challenges to European security and to French security from Russia and tourism and so on, a year ago he suggested that EU governments should be sending military ships to the South China Sea to patrol the open waterways there, to ensure that those waterways stay open for our trade. Not many EU governments, certainly Germany, wouldn't propose an operation like that. And that's, again, what makes France rather unique in a European context. Now, in saying all of that, France wants to be a European power with global reach, but, of course, since the terrorist attacks during 2015 onwards, the primary focus of any government is protecting national territory. And it seems to me that, and it's worth bearing in mind that France has had an ongoing state of emergency since those 2015 terrorist attacks. And indeed, this will carry on now until the 15th of July, the day after Bastille Day this year, so it includes the upcoming presidential elections. And it's the longest domestic state of emergency since the Algerian War in the 1950s and 1960s.  Now, a war on terror, a war on terrorists, to most Europeans, I think, sounds rather like the George W. Bush administration, or indeed some of the language, indeed the President Trump has used. He's also very bellicose towards ISIS. So this is rather unusual. France has essentially been on a war footing domestically to some degree. Now there are, of course, French politicians and experts like François Isbourg from the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris who are very critical of this war-like approach, arguing that it's one thing to bomb ISIS in Raqqa or Mosul in Syria and Iraq, and it's an entirely different thing to fight a war on French citizens in Saint-Denis, for instance. But certainly I think one of the major choices the next French president will have to make is do they continue with this domestic state of emergency? Do they keep that ongoing? Do they continue using bellicose language? Because it also has an impact on defence policy because some 13,000 French soldiers, French Armed Forces personnel, are deployed domestically at the moment to protect sensitive targets across France.  So this is having a real impact on French defence policy domestically and in the broad sense. And as a result of that, but not only because of terrorism, there is widespread political support to increase French defence spending. Now, French defence spending, just over 40 billion euro, as I said, it's about 1.8% of GDP according to NATO figures. And three of the main presidential candidates, Fian, Hamon and Macron, would like to raise it to at least 2% by 2025, more or less 2022-2025, while Marine Le Pen would like to raise it to an impressive 3%, which is, of course, any defence nerd's dream. But, of course, whether she would be able to do that is another thing. But just to put it in contrast, the average for the European members of NATO is just under 1.5%. But in general, there is widespread support to increase French defence spending. And this again is a little bit of a difference between the French debate and most of the European countries. Very few French politicians run very few serious French politicians run on a political programme to reduce defence spending or scrap France's nuclear weapons programme, which takes up a big chunk of the defence budget. And that's something I'll come back to in a minute. If you compare it, for example, members of the British Labour Party who often say, you know, we should scrap Trident in the UK because it takes up too much money, it's obsolete and so on, very few politicians in France make that kind of argument. It's a very, very different debate in that respect. Now, I mentioned already, you know, all these commitments domestically have put an added strain on French defence resources. The intensified bombing of ISIS in Iraq and Syria as well. The Charlegaul aircraft carrier was sent to the Gulf, for example, to help out with that. But that's not the only thing France has been focused on. It is contributing, as I said, to NATO's defence of efforts in Eastern Europe. But it's also been the most active European member of NATO in recent years, if you think about co-leading the intervention in Libya in 2011, and the various national interventions in the Côte d'Ivoire, in Mali, in the Central African Republic, and the ongoing operation in Mali and across the Sahel, what they call Operation Barcan, where there's about 4,000 soldiers stationed. And all in all, if you add up all the operational commitments of the French Armed Forces at the moment, these are figures from March, both domestically and internationally, France has over 30,000 deployed, personnel deployed at the moment. Now, the UK has roughly 20,000, Germany has roughly 5,000 or less, just to put it in perspective. And of course, there is a big debate and the French Chief of Staff very unusually in December, wrote an op-ed saying that this can't go on. You know, it's not just the tempo of operational commitments, it's the combination. And of course, if there are more surprises or more shocks or more crises that France has to intervene in, and as I say, it's often intervening alone in places like Mali or without much help from others, something's got to give. Because also, many of the capabilities, for example, it wasn't planned that they would be used at this level of intensity, whether it's armored cars or transport planes or whatever it may be. And many of them now are coming back with much higher attrition rates than was planned. Now, there is a plan to relieve the armed forces from their domestic duties. President Hollande wants to set up what he calls a national guard, a mix of police, gondomory, army reserve, which is also being increased, which would help a lot because also, is it the best use of the armed forces to have them deployed domestically? Not necessarily. And of course, the French defense budget has been rising and will stay at 1.8% of GDP until at least 2019. And as I mentioned, the presidential candidates, most of them want to increase it further. And to maintain France's current level of strategic ambition and current operational commitments, it will have to increase further. It's as simple as that. The problem is, the presidential candidates have not been maybe entirely honest about how difficult it may be to greatly increase the defense budget further. Because as you know, we in the Eurozone have rules about budget deficits. And while I think the average deficit, and there are economists in the room that can correct me on this, I think the average deficit in the Eurozone in 2015 was around 2.1%. But in 2016, the French budget deficit was around 3.5%, which is fairly high. And you can imagine what Wolfgang Scheuble thinks of that in Berlin. The European Commission has warned many times now that the next French president will have to implement austerity, which is part of the reasoning behind Fion's very tough economic thatcherite programme, if it really wants to meet these targets of the 3% deficit, as we have it in the Eurozone rules. And indeed, the French-owned national auditor, the Côte d'Comp, has regularly castigated the French government for exaggerating its ability to meet these targets. So there is a real question there about how to square that circle, that problem of making very difficult political choices. If you're going to spend more on defence, then you're going to be spending less on something else. And what's that going to be? Is it going to be health? Is it going to be education? Is it going to be transport? So I'm not sure the candidates have fully cracked that budgetary nut. Now, in saying that one side point, what France has been spending its budget on is interesting because even though it's not a very large budget by American standards, there's a very interesting analysis by the Rhan Corporation where they look at how France spends its budget and it's cut the numbers of the big ticket items like transport planes, fighter jets, frigates, ships in general and invested a lot more in information like, for example, satellites and drones and that sort of thing and special forces. So more mobility, more agility, more precision and being able to hit hard quickly and robustly. And I think it was Michael Sherkin from the Rhan Corporation. He described the French War as substituting quality for quantity and fighting smart and making the most of what you've got, which is not always the case in other European countries. But within the confines of the defence budget, get away now from the more general problem of the government's budget deficit, but within the defence budget itself, there are two big decisions the next president might have to make. One is to continue investing in the nuclear weapons programme, the force to frappe. Now, there's general agreement that that should be maintained. The issue is that it currently consumes around 11% of the French defence budget, which is almost double the percentage that the UK spends of its defence budget on nuclear weapons technology because the UK uses American technology or has access to American technology. The French version, because it's completely sovereign and independent, is more expensive as a percentage of the defence budget. And that is projected by the experts in Paris to potentially double over the next 20 years. So it could be eating up nearly 20% of the French defence budget within 20 years. So there's a big question there. Yes, the system will need to be upgraded if you want it maintained, but how will it be paid for? And it will consume a lot. That means spending less on other things. The second question is, there is an emerging debate in France. France already has a Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, which is actually currently being refitted. And there is an emerging debate in France should France have a second aircraft carrier. As you know, the UK will have two new aircraft carriers online from about 2020 onwards. And there had even been the idea when France and Britain signed the Lancaster House treaties in 2010 of sharing an aircraft carrier. That was later scrapped of sharing the costs and sharing the use of it. But again, the problem is if you want to invest because it would be very useful to have access to a second carrier to ensure that you always have that option. And indeed not just for France, but for Europeans as a whole. And the UK has not had access to that capability for almost a decade now. But the problem is, again, it would consume a huge portion of the defence budget. And the British aircraft carriers that are coming online from 2020 onwards, they're going to cost over $3 billion each. So there are some big choices there for the next president. And this brings me to the interesting bit, I suppose, or maybe the most relevant bit for us all, which is the international partnerships or the international relationship choices that the next French president may have to make. Now, since the British decision to leave the EU, there's been an awful lot of noise about strengthening EU military cooperation. And France and Germany will lead us all into a bright new EU military future. And I hope that will be the case. And in fairness, Berlin and Paris have made a lot of very sensible proposals. Le Drian and Ursula von der Leyen, the German Defence Minister, have made a lot of very sensible proposals on sharing the costs of more capabilities, of getting better at deploying more quickly, getting better at reacting more quickly to crises, all that sort of thing. And that's fine. And they're deepening their own bilateral military cooperation as well. Interestingly, they're buying American transport aircraft, for example, that they'll use and base together, which is quite interesting in itself. However, I'm a bit sceptical that this Franco-German energy, this post-Brexit Franco-German energy in EU military cooperation, will actually produce, how can I put this, a substantially more active EU military policies or set of EU military policies. Because in the end, yes, they agree on a lot of simple things regarding yes, it would be nice to put in sharing more capability. But they do have very different strategic cultures when it comes to deploying military force, for example. Germany will only act in coalition with others. France is prepared to act alone, if needed, as in Mali in 2013. Germany generally, and Germany, of course, prefers to act through multilateral institutions in general, although it is part of the ad hoc coalition against Daesh. And France is more in the habit, shall I say, of initiating robust military operations. Germany is not on the habit yet of initiating robust military operations. But it's not just on their different strategic cultures towards the use of force is the issue. I also would argue that very different visions towards the future of EU military cooperation, of where it should end up, of what the finality of EU military cooperation should be. And I think Brexit will reveal these differences more and more, as more is expected of them. Because while it's common for German politicians to argue that we need a European army to put it very crudly, in France, I doubt any French president would ever call for a European army. But what more French would prefer is a strong Europe de la Défense, a strong intergovernmental military alliance, which France would lead, of course.  The French see the EU as a strategic option that can be used when the Americans do not want to cope with a crisis or put out a fire in and around Europe. But many German politicians give the impression, and I have this impression too, from the German security white paper last year, that frankly EU military cooperation is really part of the broader integration project. So the French want a stronger military policy, the Germans want to fence as part of the broader EU integration project. And that's a big difference in their cultures. Germans call for an army, the French want an alliance. So there are some very big differences there. And if you think, for example, if you think about the money question that I mentioned earlier in EU budget deficit rules and so on, Benoit Hamon, the socialist candidate, has proposed that all French defence spending should be excluded from budget deficit calculations. Now, again, Wolfgang Scheuble and others are not very keen on that. Francois Fillon, with a rather trumpish tone, has said that France should be compensated for its military operations in Africa because they contribute to European security. So, again, the debate in France, the perception in France is that France is doing all the heavy lifting on security and defence. Germany is not doing that much, given its size, and therefore Germany should have a bit more leeway on other questions, including regarding the eurozone and budget deficit rules, which I think is a very fascinating debate. So lots of process will be agreed in Brussels, but let's see what product comes out on questions involving money. But that brings me to Brexit, because, of course, the problem for France has been, it's been kind of swinging in between or stuck in the middle between a Germany reluctant to deploy a military force and the UK reluctant to act through the EU. Because despite Brexit, the French strategic culture will remain closest to the British and the French will want to, and the next French president, will likely want to continue working with the UK on military matters because UK, Anglo-French military cooperation, I think most French defence experts would agree, is much more militarily important for European security than anything that will happen through the EU. They don't have overly high expectations of cooperation, military cooperation, in the strict military value sense with Germany, they want much more with the UK. And indeed it was striking that after the awful terrorist attacks in March in London, the day after Emmanuel Macron, who was probably the most pro-EU candidate in the presidential elections, made it very clear I don't expect much from European defence. I'm very pro the EU developing military cooperation, but let's be honest, it'll take years. So I don't just want to cooperate with Germany, I also want to cooperate with the UK. And he made that very clear, and I'm not sure this has been entirely understood or picked up in Berlin. And les rien, the French defence minister, has been at pains to say that Lancaster House and Anglo-French cooperation based on the 2010 Lancaster House treaties should be Brexit proof as he would put it. Now, that's all well and good, but of course, Anglo-French bilateral cooperation may not be immune to politics. And let's be honest, none of us expect the Brexit negotiations to be easy. It could get quite nasty, dare I say, and particularly between Paris and London, especially when it comes to the future of finance and things like that and banking and so on. And there are precedents. Yes, France and Britain signed these bilateral treaties in 2010, but when President Hollande was elected in 2012, he downgraded politically Anglo-French military cooperation in favour of Germany, because he wanted to distinguish himself from the American sac-aux-y. He wanted to show that he was different, so he wanted to focus on Germany. Now, over time that changed, and les rien has been very keen to be very pragmatic, work with Germany, work with the UK, work with everybody. But for a period Hollande was downgrading and nothing much was happening on the bilateral front between Britain and France. Interestingly though, since Brexit, there has been an effort, for example, to deepen dependence on each other for missile technology. So les rien has pushed very hard to ensure, to try and ensure that Anglo-French bilateral cooperation will continue, will deepen, they're trying to produce, for example, a combined expeditionary force of 5,000. Hasn't been used yet, but they had a very large exercise about a year ago. So this is ongoing and arguably is much more militarily significant for European security than what's going on through the EU. But of course I mentioned the Suez crisis about 500 years ago at this stage, I suppose. But I mentioned the Suez crisis of 56 and the different lessons that Britain and France took, opposing lessons, where the ghosts of Suez have been rearing their head again, since Brexit. And even before Trump was elected in November last year, you know, Michael Fallon, the British Defence Secretary in September made a speech in Paris saying, you know, essentially everything now is about NATO. And you want to work with us, with the UK, and we want to work with you, France. But all of this ultimately has to be about NATO and on reinforcing NATO. And a month later, Francois Allon makes a speech again before Trump's election, saying that basically Europeans need to learn to defend themselves. They need to realise that Americans are no longer have the same idea of defence protection, will not always be there to defend them. And therefore, Europeans really should cooperate much more closely and become much more autonomous. So very much the Suez lessons. Britain stay close to the United States, France learn to not rely on the United States, learn to defend yourself and defend for yourself as much as possible. And there is a danger that Donald Trump, his election and his administration could exacerbate those emotions, if I can put it like that, especially if the Brexit negotiations get difficult. And as we know, President Trump at times has been very favourable towards Brexit. But if there was a sense that he was trying to reinforce the UK position somehow, the French and the Germans I don't think would react very well to that. And there would be a danger then that at the NATO table, you could end up having a kind of a Euro sphere, Anglo sphere divide. And I am old enough to remember the divisions between Britain and France over the Iraq war in 2003 and they were bitter. This would potentially be even worse. The difference being that Italy and Spain this time would be on the Franco-German side with the UK and the US on the other side. Let's see, that's just speculation, we can discuss that later. But finally, I just want to say something about President Trump, not so much about the future of NATO, but more on Franco-American military cooperation. Because I think what hasn't been noticed a lot is that actually not only has France been the most active European member of NATO militarily in recent years, but the Americans have been the most supportive NATO ally. They've been the ones providing transport planes and other logistical help in Mali, for example. Not just in 2013, but since then, until now. And of course, both France and President Trump share a very strong focus on defeating ISIS. So they have that in common as well. And more generally, depending on what the Trump administration does, and I don't know what the Trump administration is going to do. So this is speculation. But there's both an opportunity and a challenge for the next French president. The opportunity is, you know, if President Trump says that Europeans need to do more, and he says they do, and they need to spend more, and we need to be able to contribute more militarily to their own security and defence. Well, France, given its leading role already, given the fact that it will be the strongest military power that is a member of both the EU and NATO, this could reinforce France's leading role on European defence. The challenge may be, though, if that means taking on more of the military burden when France is already quite stretched, that will be very difficult for the next French president to take on, unless defence spending is increased dramatically. And as I said, that brings its own problems. Of course, we should bear in mind a lot will depend on what happens in the French presidential election. Three of the candidates are, how can I put this, NATO sceptic. Melanne Sean wants to actually leave NATO. Le Pen basilates between leaving the NATO military command and leaving the alliance altogether, and Fion, at the very least, one could say, is NATO sceptical. He's not very keen on NATO. He doesn't trust the Americans entirely. And interestingly, and it's no surprise, the same three are the most Russia friendly of the three presidential candidates, which is something else to consider, because they argue that Paris should have a more constructive, cooperative relationship with Moscow, not least because of their shared focus on ISIS as well. So, to sum up, basically, the next French president will be in a strong position on defence policy in some respects, because he or she will enjoy very strong, I think, widespread domestic political support to increase defence spending, which is, and by some degree, potentially, and to deploy robust military force if it's needed. However, if France really wants to remain a European power with global reach, there are going to be some very challenging budgetary, operational capability, and relationship choices too.


One of the questions I get most on the channel is what is the best desktop environment? And this is one of those questions that is really hard to answer or even give any answer to simply because there's not really a best Anything when it comes to Linux, what's best for you may not be best for me What may be best for me may not be best for you if that is something that you've heard before is because I've said it Many times on this channel Basically something that I should have on a t-shirt at this point choosing what works for you is going to take some effort and some Exploration you have to try these things and discover what works best for your workflow What makes you more efficient? What looks best for you like? customizing and Ricing if you use that term how it works with your keyboard and mouse whether you prefer keyboard shortcuts Or you want to move around with the mouse or how it displays your favorites how it changes wallpaper like all these Little things everything that goes into making a desktop environment Plays a role and whether or not you like it or not like in you may use budgie or something like that and discover that you Absolutely hate the Raven menu or whatever. It's called these days You know, maybe you don't like having a notification center that takes up entire part of the screen or You might try mate and realize that maybe they were on to something when they moved away from going home, too You know whatever you have no chance of discovering your likes and dislikes when it comes to a desktop environment If you don't try them you have to try everyone eventually you'll land on one that Either works for you very well out of the box or has the options that you need in order to make it work for you So for a lot of people really it comes down to Gnome or Katie.  I'm not saying perfect I mean the one that's meant for you, you know, you're meant to be together and you won't discover which desktop environment That is unless you actually try them all so when someone asked me this question I have a hard time answering But there are two desktop environments out there that I recommend a lot or have recommended a lot over the last Two years of doing this channel One of them is Katie plasma and I have a love hate affair with Katie plasma I think it is the most customizable desktop out there I don't think that can be argued like even a little bit It has the most options of anything Period if you are into the customization scene and you want to tweak literally every single portion of your Desktop environment Katie plasma is the only option for you like seriously it has options up the wahoola and You're there there are options there that you will never see actually so like you You can go searching for Options and just spend days going through that settings panel So if that's the type of experience that you want plasma is the direction you want to go But if you don't need that level of customization But you'd still like some the other desktop environment that I recommend a lot is XFCE now The reason why I think XFCE is so good is because it is very much a Little brother when it comes to Katie plasma and when I say that what I mean is that it has a lot of Customizability built into it out of the box similar to the way Katie plasma does but it doesn't go overboard like he doesn't have a ton of Settings that you may or may not ever use it has the basics and it does a really good job at those basics You can customize the panel you can customize the theme and so on you can do the things that you'd expect to do and a few extra things But nothing horrendously on top of that when it comes to like Overloading you with options now There are other things that XFC offers that I find really good So I like the panel management system that XFC has it's not a like a drag-and-drop type of system It's more of a list based system where you kind of place things where you want inside of a list And that's how it's arranged on the panel. I happen to like that way of doing things It's not modern by any means, but it works really well. Also when it comes to performance XFCE is a very lightweight desktop environment so you're not going to have to deal with any of the Bloat or excessive resource usage when you'd see something like an genome or even plasma sometimes, you know It's the very small desktop environment But at on top of that because it doesn't get updated nearly as often as plasma does you have a much more Stable experience things aren't going to change in XFC because let's just face it XFC hasn't changed in 20 years, you know that thing has looked basically the same forever and It's meant to stay the same It's meant to be the most stable desktop environment that you could possibly Find out there even something like mate mate is meant to look like genome to from yesteryear, right? It's supposed to look like that, but they've constantly updated that thing with new features It still looks the same but it has a whole bunch of new features that it's constantly getting and it's getting more modern as the time passes with XFC E well it does get new features from time to time and The technologies that are underlying it have increased over time as well The rate of development is so slow It just means that your experience with it is going to be very very stable now Obviously, this is a two-sided coin. You're not going to get a ton of new features You're not going to get the latest technology if you use XFC So when GTK 5 eventually comes out, you're not going to get it for a very very long time like a very Very long time. I'm not even sure where they are when it comes to GTK for they may not have it yet And if they do have it, it's just like at the beginning stages. So you're right, right? So that type of technology is if you want that kind of stuff XFC is not going to be where you're gonna want to be because the development pace is just really really slow And it's meant to be that way like yes, it's a small project. So it's by necessity really slow But also the users who enjoy XFC do not want bleeding edge stuff They want their desktop environment to just work all the time in the same way it has always worked and That's the charm of XFC now Like I said, it's not going to be for everyone when I recommend this thing I always put a little provides the one it like you may not like it like there are certain things like the settings panel being broken off into little pieces in in your Menu system that you might not really care for So there is a settings manager where all the settings are but but you'll also find all of the Little settings that are in that settings manager spread out in their own menu entries Inside of your menu system and that can lead to some confusion and also it's a little messy But you know they have menu editors or you could take that stuff out But it's not the way basically any other desktop environment actually does it now most desktop environments can Allow you to search for specific things inside the settings panel, but the settings panel is just one cohesive thing whereas XFC Sometimes feels like all the pieces of the settings manager are all in little pieces Like they're all individual apps and that's not again for everyone The panel management stuff isn't for everybody. It's the way they do it It's the way they've always done it and like I said, it's not modern But I like it and it just seems to work very well So XFC I would argue is one of the better desktop environments for people to try I think that if you are more into stability and low resource usage XFC is a fantastic desktop environment And if I were not a window manager user, I would use XFC as my main desktop environment now That's not to malign KD plasma because I still think plasma is fantastic. I think it's buggy But it can't not be buggy, right? They have too many features, right? That's just the way it is they add features too fast and When you do that, you're going to have Problems when it comes to stability. It's just the way it works now Obviously They can work on that and they do work on that the one thing about the plasma crew is that they're always fixing and tweaking stuff So if you have an issue chances are eventually it's going to get fixed and might introduce new estrus, but you know That's just kind of the nature of something that moves that fast if you are a more Slow paced individual and you're more interested in things that just stay the same Always XFC is a fantastic desktop environment. If that's the kind of thing you're looking for So that is it for this video just a little bit of a ramble over why I think XFC is so great But just to remind you what I said at the beginning. There is no best desktop environment There is nothing out there that I could say this one here is the best everyone should use it It's just that thing doesn't exist, right? Every desktop environment has its pros and cons even genom that I constantly harp on has some good points You know kd plasma has its good and bads budget good and bads XFC good and bads You know cinnamon good and bads you get the idea right over and over and over again I will continue to preach this that the best way to find out what's best for you is to try it And that's the only way that you're ever going to find what's best for you You cannot get the answer to what is the best desktop environment by asking someone else It's just it that's not the way it works. So that is it for this video If you have thoughts on this you can leave those in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you you can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cash just like all these fine people Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon youtube you guys are all absolutely amazing without you the channel Just would not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very very much for your support I really do appreciate it. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time You


Welcome back to Kids Fun Science. My name is Ken. Today's experiment is baking soda and vinegar lava lamp. Hi, welcome back to Kids Fun Science. Today I've got a really easy experiment. It is similar to the lava lamp that uses the oil, water, and food coloring in an aqua seltzer tablet. This is much cheaper and I actually found it from one of the people I follow on Instagram from Russia. And so she helped me. She's very generous and I got her information here and I also have it in the description. You got to check out her channel. But she used tea soda, which is compared to our baking soda here in the United States, which is just basically a sodium bicarbonate, right? So you could use that. You need the vegetable oil. You need a vinegar. Now she suggests using 9% vinegar and I'm going to try 5% vinegar because that's what I have. And then a glass to be able to put it in, optional food coloring, and some teaspoons, right? So to be able to dump it in. So what I'm going to do is set it up and then show you how the experiment works and then a couple different ways I've not played with it. What's great about this is she's right. It is a lot cheaper. I already have the vinegar and the oil and everything else. So it was a lot cheaper where the lava lamps, you have to go buy the Alka Salsa tablets, which are quite expensive at some point. So I hope you enjoy.  Then you're going to take your baking soda, which is your bicarbonated soda, and you're going to put three or four scoops in and you'll see the baking soda will go all the way to the bottom of the glass. So I took red food coloring, put it in my white vinegar, which is about 5%. And now we're going to start the experiment where we're going to scoop in about three to six scoops of the vinegar into the oil. Now you get to sit back and watch the chemical reaction. So the science behind this is oil is less dense than baking soda and vinegar. And that's why those two sing to the bottom. When the vinegar and acid and a baking soda, a bicarbonated soda, a base, they mix, they make a chemical reaction. One that we produce when we breathe out the same gas, a carbon dioxide. So those gas bubbles are what we're seeing come up when the vinegar and baking soda combine together. They make that gas and the gas bubbles go all the way to the top and then they release back down and the process continues. As it starts to slow down, the great thing about this is you could just start adding more vinegar to it and it will kick up the reaction and continue to do the same process over and over. So this time I started off with the blue vinegar and then I started adding some red to get that multiple effect going so you have a couple different colors, which I thought was pretty cool. You probably can do a whole bunch of different ones, but as it started to slow down, I just added some more of the blue and it continued to go. I hope you enjoyed this experiment. If you did, remember to click thumbs up and to subscribe. Thanks for watching!