We all want to eat the kinds of foods that make us feel better and live longer, but there's so much conflicting information out there. So many nutrition opinions. Welcome to the Nutrition Facts podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. It's my job to give you the information you need to make the healthiest choices possible. Today we discover how plant-based diets improve the performance of athletes and non-athletes alike. In my video about comparing vegetarian and vegan athletic performance, endurance, and strength, I discussed a 2020 study that found that vegan athletes, even though they were significantly older, had significantly superior aerobic capacity and endurance, lasting 25% longer on a time-to-exhaustion cycling test. The question is why? One potential mechanism that could explain the greater level of endurance performance in vegans may be a higher amount of carbohydrate intake, which could lead to better endurance performance through higher muscle glycogen storage. Other potential mechanisms that may explain the better endurance performance in vegans could be due to the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory profiles of their diet. Maybe it's even their hearts. Yet another study showing superior VO2 max in vegan athletes, meaning superior aerobic capacity. This time they also did echocardiograms, looking at their hearts in real time using ultrasound, and the lower relative wall thickness and better main ventricle systolic and diastolic function in the vegans are most likely positive findings. Now, wait a second. Given the higher VO2 max reached by the vegan athletes, maybe they were just better trained than the non-vegan athletes, and that's why their hearts looked like they were working better. However, the weekly training frequency and running distance were similar in both groups, suggesting benefits even with the same amount of training. So it's important to educate healthcare professionals so they don't try to discourage a vegan diet. It may even want to consider telling folks implementing an exercise training program to give it a try. But you don't know if it has the same kind of effects in non-athletes until you put it to the test. A vegetarian versus conventional calorie-restricted diet, the effect on physical fitness in response to aerobic exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes. Diabetics randomized to the same calorie restriction, the same exercise, but just vegetarian versus non-vegetarian. They provided all the meals so they could ensure compliance and closely monitor the exercise. VO2 max increased by 12% in the vegetarian group significantly better than in the non-vegetarian group who didn't significantly improve at all. Maximal performance increased by 21% in the vegetarian group. Again, significantly better than the non-vegetarian group who didn't significantly improve at all. In other words, the results indicated that more plant-based diets led more effectively to improvement in physical fitness than less plant-based diets after the same aerobic exercise program. It seems that those eating vegetarian were able to better burn-off carbohydrates compared to non-vegetarians and had better insulin sensitivity, both markers of improved metabolic flexibility, meaning the ability to switch back and forth between burning sugar and fat. Besides physiological mechanisms, there may also be psychological factors. They observed reduced hunger and reduced feelings of depression in the vegetarian group, which may have given them a more positive attitude towards exercise. Here's the psychological data. Those randomized eat vegetarian had a greater improvement in quality of life and mood. They felt less constrained, meaning the calorie restriction didn't seem as burdensome. They had less disinhibition, meaning less tendency to binge and overeat, along with maybe less feelings of hunger. Not to mention the superior effects of a vegetarian diet on body weight, glycemic control, blood lipids, insulin sensitivity, and oxidative stress. Wait, better body weight? I thought they were given the same number of calories. Yes, both diets were isochloric, the same calories, yet just eating meat free led to significantly more weight loss, about 6 pounds more, more waste loss, a slimmer waste, lower cholesterol, of course, and less superficial fat, meaning the external jiggly fat, and most importantly, significantly more visceral fat loss, the most metabolically dangerous deep belly fat. Same calories, yet more loss of body fat and, not surprisingly, better control of their diabetes, all in addition to leading more effectively to improvements in physical fitness. Did you know that long-term plant-based eating may improve exercise capacity and endurance? Here's the story. Few studies have investigated the impact of a plant-based diet on athletic performance, but the majority of the studies that have been done show differences in endurance, performance, or strength. So while plant-based diets do not seem to provide advantages or disadvantages on exercise performance, what plant-based diets can do is reduce the risk of chronic disease. A point I made in my video why all athletes should eat plant-based diets, because surprisingly, endurance athletes may have more advanced atherosclerosis and more heart muscle damage compared with sedentary individuals, so it's even more important they eat healthy. But due to the favorable impact on health, it could be assumed that performance would also be influenced by plant-based diets. Let's take a closer look at the available evidence. This is the most commonly cited review. Studies connecting vegetarian diets to improved health are well established. However, the evidence for this phenomenon to be transferred to improve physical performance in athletes is less clear, finding no difference, at least acutely, between a vegetarian-based diet and an omnivorous diet in muscular power, muscular strength, short burst, or endurance performance. The intervention studies in this review, however, only lasted days or weeks, so being a vegetarian for four days may not tip the balance, or even a few months. But see, that's a considerable limitation. These are people who had been eating meats, you know, their whole lives, and subsequently adopted vegetarian diet only for the duration of the study, rather than comparing participants who have adhered to a vegetarian diet long-term. This study compared exercise capacity of vegan, vegetarian, and meat-eating recreational runners and found similar maximum power output among all three groups, suggesting there's no significant difference in maximum exercise capacity, though that's at the same training frequency, time, and distance. Perhaps plant-based diets might enhance recovery and allow such athletes to train longer and harder? A number of studies have come out since this review was published in 2016. Let's take a look at the update. Well, this study compared the cardiorespiratory fitness and peak torque strength differences between vegetarian and omnivore endurance athletes. Most of the vegetarians were actually vegans and most for at least two years, and results from this study indicate that vegetarian endurance athletes' cardiorespiratory fitness was greater than that for their omnivorous counterparts. They had greater VO2 max, meaning greater maximal oxygen uptake, aerobic capacity as measured on a progressive, graded maximal treadmill test to exhaustion, though peak torque, peak strength, based on leg extensions, didn't differ between diet groups. Bottom line, these days suggest that vegetarians do not compromise performance outcomes and may facilitate aerobic capacity in athletes. In this 2020 study, all the plant-based participants were eating vegan for an average of four years, so they were essentially comparing those one years versus those who ate meat for 25 years. But after four years eating plants, you might expect to see some sort of difference. Yet, no significant differences were noted for upper and lower body muscle strength like in the last new study. Both groups of athletes were comparable for total body weight lean body mass, though age was significantly higher in vegans compared with omnivores, so that put them at a little disadvantage. Yet still, there it is again, a significantly better aerobic capacity. Then they had them pedaled until exhaustion, and the vegan group lasted about 25% longer, 12 minutes as opposed to 9 minutes. Is that just because their aerobic capacity is so high? No. Even after controlling for VO2 max levels, there was still a significant endurance advantage in the vegans. The researchers conclude that in the very least a strictly plant-based diet doesn't seem to be detrimental to endurance and muscle strength, and endurance max would be better in vegans, contrary to popular belief. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials which may be able to share it on social media to help inspire others. If you'd like to see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing page there you'll find all the detailed information and information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. My last two books were How to Survive a Pandemic and My How Not to Diet Cookbook. Get ready this year for the launch of How Not to Age, and of course all the proceeds for the sales of all my books goes directly to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a nonprofit science-based public service. We can sign up for free daily updates on the latest new nutrition research with bite-sized videos and articles uploaded nearly every day. Everything on the website is free. There are no ads, no corporate sponsorships, no kickbacks. It's strictly non-commercial, not selling anything. I just put it up as a public service as a labor of love as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition.


Bottom of the seventh inning, the Reys are up three to one and they have a runner on third base, but there's two outs. This breakdown is brought to you by DraftKings. Caballero's up the newest Re. It's his first year. It's his first couple games strike taken. Took that, looks down the third base coach. I don't know if the third base coach said, hey, let's try a bunt or he just decides on his own. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna prove that next time they should tell me to bunt here. Lays down a beautiful bunt. Turner's gotta make the quick throw, throws it away down the line. Caballero around second. He's heading all the way to third. Does he need to? No, does he want to? Yes, okay. He gives himself up, gets tagged out. The pitcher, Cabrera, was backing up the play and then starts running towards the base and I don't really know why. That doesn't, I don't see a need to run towards the base but he's just interested in what's happening. Wants to get a look. Caballero gives himself up, gets out and then Cabrera and then are kind of in each other's way. I think this is all incidental, like not on purpose but they bump and then he's like, whoa, whoa, hey, what's up, dude? And you can see that Caballero, when they bump, he goes to grab him. Like, hey, sorry man, we're just bumping into each other. I'll make sure you stay on your feet where Cabrera, the pitcher, instead, he's got his defenses and kind of like, stiffens up and gives a little bit of a push, just a little bit of a push with the glove. See that? The glove comes up to block and then right here, a little push at the end. Like a little jab and he doesn't like that.  I was holding you up. See? The guy in white, holding him up, dancing. The guy in blue, defensive, pushing him a little bit, you know? Ugh, I didn't like that he bunted. I don't like that I gave up runs. What? What are you selling? What are you saying? He's like, whoa, what's up, bro? You got a problem? Bam, there's my problem in your face. Oh man, William Scherzy looking just awful as he comes in. Let's take another look. Like they were just talking and apparently these two guys said that they were just saying what's up to each other. And then just a nice push to the face. Umpire's like, no, no, not that. Kabir just stares at him. Kabir's a little bit of a guy that's a nudge. He was doing nothing wrong here, I don't think. He was just wondering why, dude? His helmet comes flying off. He was just wondering like, what's up, man? Why'd you do that? And then his helmet, it's on the ground. He's gotta go find it. Oh man, look at this face. So the middle finger just gets in that cheek right away. Pretty deep. And then the glove on the other side just getting smushed like he's a little kid at like grandparents pinching his cheeks. Like, uh, and then give credit to him. He just kind of looks at him like, what? Dude, almost looks at him like, are you psycho? The Blue Jays take Cabrera aside and like, we gotta get out of here. Everyone else goes on the field so they can all discuss it. They're like, yeah, nothing really happened. Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, no, they didn't say anything. They just said, what's up? Cabrera gets some water because, you know, his outing's done. He's just gonna wait it out. Double cupping it, gotta appreciate that. Kabir's like, okay, whatever.  And they say, yeah, he should be ejected. So they eject him. And that was it. That was a lot of nothing over nothing but something. It's brought to you by DraftKings. Thank you, DraftKings for sponsoring the breakdown. Thank you guys for watching. Baseball's back and it's better than ever. Subscribe if you like these.


Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure for me and a privilege to have an opportunity to address a group of this kind. And I want to spend some time sharing with you some thoughts of mine that I have in recent times over the challenges that libertarians need to be facing. I think that all of us think about what would it take to make libertarianism gain greater acceptance. What are the battles that have to be fought in one? And of course there are different kinds of battles in different arenas and to some extent we pick for our own talents and interests lay and we tend to fight in that arena. Fortunately there are lots of different aspects to the battle for libertarianism. And I of course want to focus on what interests me most which is the psychological aspect. I'm not going to talk about the vested interests of politicians who resist change. We know all about that. We're not going to talk about the massive amount of misinformation and ignorance concerning the nature of capitalism in the mind of the average person. I want to just think with you aloud a bit and engage you perhaps in a dialogue a little later on tonight on what are some of the factors in human psychology that libertarianism has to contend with. A few years ago I wrote a book called Taking Responsibility. And in it the book chiefly is about the theme of self-responsibility and what a powerful force this can be for our own well-being when intelligently applied to the different areas of life from marriage to work to the social or political arena. And in one of the chapters I discussed how central is the whole concept of self-responsibility to the vision of capitalism. Capitalism is a social political system which is distinguished from all others in a number of ways but one of those ways is that it's uniquely geared to human self-esteem. It rests on the premise of self-ownership, of self-responsibility, of respect for the rights of all individuals and it stands against any attempt to confer benefits on some members of society by violating the rights of other members. So the good news is that it offers people tremendous freedom and tremendous opportunities. The bad news not in our eyes but in the eyes of many people is that it doesn't promise them a guaranteed risk-free universe. If you read many of the 19th century attacks on capitalism you see over and over again both from the religious quarters, the medievalist quarters, and the Marxist quarters the longing for a kind of a garden of Eden in which life will essentially be without risk. And in which your minimum subsistence, your material well-being will be essentially guaranteed and you will be protected against accidents and it will be a life that in exchange for renouncing or forfeiting freedom you will have the promise of great security. Now of course in our century in fact just in the last decade or so we've seen the collapse of that dream in the communist version. We've seen massive disenchantment with socialism but that does not mean that the dream of a risk-free universe is now behind us. I think that one of the toughest battles in conversations with people and trying to get people to understand the libertarian vision is to understand ourselves and to find a way to communicate that we take something for granted that many people do not. The libertarian mentality is a non entitlement mentality. The libertarian mentality presupposes a person's willingness to accept responsibility for his or her own existence. Now unfortunately there's a terrific amount of mileage to be derived from pandering to people's fear of self-responsibility and politicians pander to it all the time as we know. The welfare programs without exception began as strategies that were intended to remove dependency. In the initial formulations in the initial statements of the great society or the other programs of those times and since the theme was very strong to eliminate dependency. Now we know that no such result was achieved. We know that not only did the programs not eliminate dependency but that the dependency problem is much much worse than it was 40 years ago. The government really runs a very interesting kind of protection racket which is first they break your legs and then they charge you for medical services and they say look these people can't walk they need our help. And many of the programs of the last several decades have been profoundly corrosive of people's self- esteem and self-respect and we have created a nation with increasing numbers of people who have a dependency orientation and increasing numbers of people who really do think they are entitled to just about anything they think they need they feel a sense of entitlement toward and that is a really a profoundly corrupting idea and in fighting for libertarianism we have to be absolutely clear that this is one of the most important battlegrounds I remember being in the dinner party a month or two ago and I was with a group of people that I didn't know but I think were Democrats quite nice people and interested people people curious about libertarianism and they asked me about the whole issue of health care and what I thought about the number of people who were uninsured and how would libertarians address that problem and I said well before we get into discussing how I would see or how my fellow libertarians might see issues of that kind being addressed in a free society let's go to a deeper level is it your conviction that health care is a natural right and they looked non-plus because they were kind of intelligent decent people and they didn't quite feel comfortable saying yes now I know lots of I know I know lots of other people who would righteously say yes but I don't hang out with those so much you see and so I said and they said well and a right I said here is something that libertarianism stands for you can't have a natural right meaning an unearned right to something that has somebody else has to produce I said now however health care is after all a service a product that somebody has to bring it to existence and in our view you can't you can't have a a right to that just from the fact that you're born because look at the position that it puts for the people from whom you are to collect this right they become your serfs and I don't think any of you at this table I said with my usual diplomacy want to stand up for such a viewpoint and it was really a satisfying evening because they said could you send us some literature I phoned up my friends at the Cato Institute and I said listen I want everything you've got on the subject of health care in duplicate now pay for it now I want to by way of setting a frame let's talk a little bit about my work in a non-libertarian context and then I'll pick up the thread and bring it back I promise you to libertarianism I had an interesting invitation from a Hungarian businessman but to come to Budapest spend a week there talk to the Chamber of Commerce and talk to other business groups in Budapest about capitalism help them to understand what a free market society is and how it works help them to understand entrepreneurship help them to understand what are the challenges in transitioning from a command economy to a relatively freer economy and the gentleman the businessman who invited me he says above all Nathaniel what I want you to help them to understand is the idea of self-responsibility because it's so foreign to most people in our country between the religious authoritarianism that many of them grew up with and then with the communists being there a whole generation has grown up in a context where self-responsibility is not a very meaningful idea in the fact it wasn't a very meaningful idea pre-communist either and I think that that is why I don't write that much about politics but I do write a lot about self-responsibility that's one of my contributions and in thinking about what is going on in the world today I want to draw certain parallels I began my practice of doing psychotherapy and in recent years I also do corporate consulting and I've learned some very interesting things in the course of doing corporate consulting which bear upon our interests tonight but I want to tell you a little about this I don't know about you but most of you are younger than me so this understanding may have come to you more easily but I remember in the early 1980s trying to find out what in hell do people mean by an information economy now this is early 1980s I mean I hear people talking about the new importance of information the new importance of ideas and I kept saying well but weren't ideas and information important in industrial society so it took me some time to understand how profound is the change from an industrial economy to an information economy in which wealth is no longer land as in an agricultural economy it's no longer factories capital goods or even money as it was an industrial economy it's now knowledge innovation ideas and suddenly we're living in a world in which everybody's chief capital asset is what they carry between their ears and this has consequences and during the 1980s if you follow the business literature a lot of articles were written talking about the fact that workers now needed much higher levels of training and much higher levels of education obedience no longer was worth much in the point marketplace manual labor had a smaller and smaller and smaller market this was the age of the knowledge worker and knowledge workers needed continuous education and continuous training and as I was reading this I had a kind of an epiphany and I thought Jesus they're missing something very important it's perfectly true that people need new levels of training and education etc but it's also true that an information economy demands of people a higher level of psychological development than an industrial economy because in an industrial economy practically most of the jobs you get the training in a very few months and then you just apply it indefinitely into the future in an information economy with a sum total of human knowledge doubling roughly every six to ten years with new knowledge new scientific discoveries new technological breakthroughs happening and then accelerating rate where the rate of change itself is happening at a faster and faster and faster and faster speed ten seconds after you learn something that's on its way to obsolescence it's an entirely new kind of world which has got fantastic exciting opportunities if you're a thinking self-responsible human being but if you're not it's scary as hell now I believe that worldwide one of the reasons for this resurgence of religious fundamentalism and tribalism and racism is because people are scared they don't necessarily know why they're scared but they're scared there is a apprehension at some level that the world is changing changing very rapidly changing in a way that it's very hard for the average person to understand and the ground underneath most people's feet feel shaky even if they can't explain why they know that the old rules and the old games aren't matching current realities even if they can't explain any of it and I believe that there is a worldwide subterranean anxiety problem caused by this apprehension that we're in a time of escalating change without a clear picture of what it's all evolving toward now when you are living in a world of slow change it's not a great challenge to your confidence in your own mind or your own resourcefulness but the more rapid the rate of change the greater the challenge to your trust in your own resourcefulness in your own intelligence in your own mind and your own ability to make appropriate choices and decisions or to say it more simply the more rapid the rate of change the greater the challenge to your self-esteem we are living in an at the beginning of an information age economy which is going to require of people a higher level of self-esteem to be economically adaptive than was required of them earlier in our history knowing how to repeat motions that somebody else taught you it doesn't give you access to good jobs anymore I remember I was in a boarders bookstore in westwood Los Angeles when a book of mine came out called the art of living consciously and I was giving a talk trying to explain to people about how the world had changed and the great new challenges and why it demanded of us that we operate now at a higher level of consciousness than we had been required earlier and there was a woman in her fifties in the audience and during the question period she says I want to tell you that I am getting more and more upset the more you talk and I said would you care to tell us why and she said for 23 years I held a terrific job pay was good very easy simple tasks I could do it half asleep lots of time to get to gossip I swear to you very little expected people were nice but some company bought our company and fired everybody from the CEO down to me I wonder why anyway and she said this week coming up I've got to meet with two placement agencies I gotta go looking for a new job and I know I don't exactly know how I know but what you're talking about tonight Brandon is about that I know that never again am I gonna have that kind of a job I know that next employer is going to demand that I do much more thinking and be much more conscientious and focused using your word Brandon than I ever had to be before and I'm telling you quite frankly I don't like it I like the old way better I said good luck now what we want to realize is that what is true of an information economy is also true of laser for capitalism of a libertarian society and that is to say it requires a higher level by far of psychological maturity than a welfare state requires let alone a socialist society requires because if on the one hand it offers people tremendous opportunities it at the same time as I've said throws them on their own resources and unfortunately there is very little in our child during practices or our educational system that prepares young people either for the economic realities of an information age economy or for the opportunities of a free society children are raised today with an intent to be raised tend to have a deep entitlement mentality and that makes at the same time because we're more than the product of one particular influence we do see that the great many young people know something is totally wrong with their elders and they are often properly quite disinterested in politics because they kind of got it that the real fun in this world is happening somewhere else and I certainly think it's true is it's been reported many many times that if any one group that is most likely to be sympathetic to libertarianism is who is small businesses is new businesses is entrepreneurial businesses I know it was true or not but somebody insisted that if the last national elections were held exclusively on the internet Harry Brown would be president I think there is a natural match between the psychological traits required to be comfortable with the free society and the psychological traits required to be comfortable in an information age economy and that from that point of view I believe there are very hopeful forces at work in the world today which are going to be driving us in a libertarian direction I'm not going to summarize there's so much positive news that I'm sure other speakers will share with you this weekend from the whole phenomenon of increasing privatization to Jose Panera's success in now eight Latin American countries with a privatization of Social Security one former another even China is expressing an interest in the privatization of Social Security there are a lot of very exciting positive hopeful things that one could point to so I'm going to assume that you know that or you'll hear about it later this weekend and I'm not going to talk about that but what I want to talk about is our need to be very very clear and even compassionate when we're talking to people who don't share our views that we are offering something we are talking about something which to most people is incomprehensibly radical I have I'm in an interesting position I have a lot of friends who are Democrats and they're nice people and they love me and but they're mystified by me because you know they can't think of me in the terms that they usually would think of people with whom they politically disagree because they know me personally so and they'll often say how is that again that they know would you tell me that one more time and I can see they are really struggling the idea of a non-coercive society the idea of a volunteeristic society in which people would absolutely not have the right to impose their values on other people it's just like a fantasy it's like it's totally outside the intellectual range and these are very very smart people I am friendly with Democrats but not with them Democrats okay and so what we are up against as I see it is a challenge of helping people to understand that many of the tenants that the best parents would teach their children applied politically would lead straight to libertarianism now think about that suppose you said to a parent do you want your children to grow up being taking responsibility for their own choices and actions you bet I do do you want to raise children who will understand that in human relationships they gotta carry their own weight and earn their own way of course I do I don't want my kids to be bums do you want your children to grow up feeling that they ought to earn whatever it is they want out of life of course I do do want your children to grow up feeling the world owes them a living absolutely not do you want your children to grow up feeling that they're entitled to what other people have produced without any effort on their part of course not well if you think about those ideas and apply them consistently they will lead you they won't lead you to socialism they'll only lead you to libertarianism so one of the ways that I find it helpful to get people to at least understand what libertarianism about is building bridges between an arena where they do understand self-responsibility and showing how it applies in an area where they haven't thought about it applying you see nobody that I ever met is against self-responsibility totally we all have areas including us I guess where we are more self-responsible and probably other areas where we are less self-responsible I mean we could be for example a person can be a dynamo of self-responsibility in the office and come home at five o'clock and turn into an emotional five-year-old you may have heard of that phenomenon so everybody is in favor of self-responsibility in some respects and few people understand this application consistently I used to tell this story many years ago maybe you'll find it useful I think I wrote it originally in an article for the object of this newsletter but I've used it in talks a number of times since let's imagine that we were just starting out with the United States of America and everything was pretty much as it was except with one exception it was taken as a foregone conclusion that one of the proper responsibilities of the government was to provide people with shoes this was almost regarded as common sense because we certainly didn't want our citizens to walk around shoeless and then suppose some crazy radical would come along and he would say or she would say I don't think the government should provide shoes I think we should privatize the whole issue of shoes people would say are you crazy have you not no compassion do you want a world of poor people little children walking around barefoot what kind of a person are you because it would be totally outside their mental orbit now that was a mistake we didn't make and shoes shoes were left in the hands of shoe manufacturers and it's done a pretty good job we don't see a nation of half shoeless people we don't see children walking around New York and winter and bare feet I'm sorry what did you say oh well that's another story I'm thinking of writing a country and Western song entitled I'm hoping my husband will fall in love with another woman so I'll have more closet space it's kind of a catchy title don't you think back to the point the great contribution that I see in a libertarian part for the libertarian party is in opening up people's awareness that there is an alternative to the varieties of statism offered by our two major parties in other words helping and making a major contribution to making people aware there is such another there is another way to look at social problems there is another way to approach social organization one of the things before I came down to talk tonight I was reading your the draft of your platform and the thing one thing on it made me very happy to read and that was the line about the abolition of corporate welfare because one of the many things that appalls me about most republicans is what a on the one hand what a great opportunity they had a few years back and how miserably they betrayed it as they always seem to if you want to fight for libertarianism and you want people to take you seriously and not see you as the voice of quote big business and if you have any integrity at all you don't begin with feed food store food stamps you begin with corporate welfare you leave food stamps to last if you really mean business and you want people to understand that you really are a new voice and not just more same old same old now it's a great pleasure for me to talk with you but I have to tell you something I no longer much enjoy straight talks but what I really love this question periods so although I was planning to say great many other things I haven't said I'm going to give myself the pleasure of making a pause here and let's make the rest of the evening a dialogue and questions I promise you it'll be more enjoyable I thank you for your attention and please raise questions


By the way, the weather was perfect over the weekend to take man's best friend for a walk and many did that as part of the annual Bark for Life in Bemidji. Dogs of all breeds were at Paul Bunyan Park on Sunday along with their owners to take part in the fundraising event. Bark for Life combines two charitable organizations into one fundraising event that benefits both Relay for Life and Great River Rescue. The unique partnership has brought many new faces to both groups and has set an example for other communities as well. We combine forces and for the last three years we've been doing the project together and it's a great partnership. We've been working well together and bringing a lot of different people out for the project. So, yeah, it's worked out really well for both of us. For more information on how to contribute to both causes, you can visit their website at greatriverrescue.com. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


I want to share with you guys the prayer that was by far the hardest prayer I've ever prayed. It felt like the worst prayer afterwards, but in looking back it's the best prayer ever. And I probably would not have prayed this prayer knowing exactly how God was going to answer this prayer. When you pray for something, when you ask God for something, when you just plead to God, you really do so hoping that He'll do it the way you want to do it. That He'll solve the problem that'll fix the issue that it'll straighten the mess out that you cause.  And at my worst, when I just cause all these different problems, all these different things, these are problems my own making and there was no way out. And I'm struggling trying to figure out Lord God, I want to stop doing what I'm doing. I need to get out of this. And when I want to stop doing what I'm doing, I think that I should do this to fix the mess that I created. And what I do to fix the mess that I created only brings about more problems because what I do, my solution is also rooted in sin as well. And so I'll never forget this. One day I pulled over, as a matter of fact, this was actually behind our church. There was a group of trees and I pulled over. I drove over there to the back. There was a lot of grass and a lot of trees and I just pulled over there and I just cried and I prayed. Lord, fix this situation. Fix what's happening with my business. Fix what's happening with my ministry. Fix what's happening with my mind. And I'll never forget that prayer. I'll never forget that. And it took me a minute just to kind of get myself together. I drove off and little did I know everything was in the works. How he fixed it, Lord knows, was not the way I wanted it. But it reminds me of what David prayed. And this is kind of how my prayer was too. Remember the prayer in Psalm 51? He said, Have mercy upon me, O God. According to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your attended mercies. Now David is praying this prayer, knowing full well he's been found out. He knows what's happened that his sin has been recognized. And so look what he says. He says, Blot out my transgressions. So David is concerned about his sin, about his transgression. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions. Of course, that's the king. You need to acknowledge the fact that you have transgressed God. You have sin. Acknowledge that you cannot sugarcoat it. Whatever the issue is, God, would you fix this? And there's a problem right there. It would seem like at the time. He says, For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me.  That you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. And so God is going to judge. And that's what you want. You want God to judge you.  And then you want to walk according to his judgment. You want to be in lockstep with God. And so David prays this prayer. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in inward parts and in the hidden parts.  Here is the part that I really did not like. This is the part that didn't sit well with me. I prayed this prayer. I literally prayed this prayer not thinking what did I just pray because this word doesn't sound good. Just the thought of this word kind of terrified me. And then to see how it was enacted. Yeah. He said purge me with hyssop. I don't know what purge with hyssop looks like. I know what it feels like because certainly there was a purging going on. Purging, it doesn't sound like it feels good. It doesn't sound like it feels good. And guess what? Being purged of sin, being purged does not feel good. He said purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness that the bones you have broken may rejoice. And so that's my prayer. Now I didn't know that the bones that he had broken. I didn't know the extent to these bones being broken. I didn't know the full extent. I didn't know that it was going to cost me a lot. I mean cost me my cost me my house, cost me cars, cost me everything, cost me, almost cost my family, cost me my freedom, cost me a good name, cost me so many things. But what I received in return far outweighed the cost. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Creating me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast or some verse may say a right spirit within me. Notice what it says says, Do not cast me from your presence. Do not take away your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation.  Now in doing so, notice what David also puts in there at the very end of this. He says, Then I will teach transgressors your ways. Well the whole goal, and it's not always been my goal as well, but I wanted to be a vessel where people can hear and see the word of God. But unfortunately the way I was living, you couldn't see anything godly about what I was doing. There was nothing godly, though God was working in me, and I did not appreciate at the time how God was working in me. That was not what I was on, Lord. I didn't want you to do this. I want you to just fix the problem. Fix the problem so I can go back to doing the things the way I wanted to do them. But just from now on, God, can you make sure that what I do works? That's not how it's going to be. The Bible tells us that if you are his son, and this is a good news, if you actually are his son, what will happen? He will chastise you. He will discipline you. And no one at the moment, according to Hebrews 12, no one at the moment thinks that while he's going through it, it's a good thing. But you're crying out to him, Lord, am I there yet? No, you're not there yet. This was the worst prayer that I could have prayed. Not in a sense that didn't help me because it did. The worst prayer in terms of what he's going to take me through. You'd be surprised what you can go through and live. And he drugged me through it. And it's still taking me through a lot of things. But I can tell you this, though. Praying that prayer, if you're honest about Lord delivering you, Lord delivering me from the sin, the mess that I've created, he will do so. But he's not going to do it the way you want him to do it. And that's a good thing because the end result far outseeds what you thought was going to happen in the first place. And you're going to be in a place much different than where you were. But you can look back on it and use what happened. Use what you've gone through to benefit, not just you, not just to encourage you because it does help you for you to look back and see how far God has brought you. But you can also help someone else. And it gives you clarity to see that other people who are going through the same thing, they're not as messed up as you may think they may be. But if they are, you've seen how a messed up person, when they get right with God or God gets a hold of them and works in them, you can see how that messed up person can be made right. And so you can also be a light. You can be a guide to people who are just as messed up as you were. And you can have compassion and you can have them come along. This is what's going to happen. And you can bear with them. You can work with them. And so for me, at the time it was the worst prayer. God, would you fix this? All this that I'm doing, all I'm going to fix this, God, little did I know how he was going to fix it. As a matter of fact, if I had known how he was going to fix it, I probably would not have asked him to fix it like that. But it got so bad to the point where I was even contemplating, Lord, maybe the best thing for me is not to be alive. If something happened to me, at least the insurance money would cover everything and maybe everybody would be better off. But no, God has a better plan. And you can get that far down. Even Paul's say that they despair of life itself. It can get bad sometimes. You can wonder, Lord, why am I still here? Just take me out of this world. Even if what I'm going through is self-inflicted and my wounds were self-inflicted.  Amen.


Last Tuesday, 4th of April, the SDU and partnership with the Indian Society held their annual Hollyfest in Allhouse Campus. Students from all three DCU campuses took part in the event as tickets were available to purchase along with Hollyfest t-shirts and pain packets. A multitude of coloured paints were available for students taking part. The festival is celebrated every year in India and Nepal. It signifies the victory of good over evil, the arrival of spring, end of winter, and for many, a festive day to meet others that laugh and repair broken relationships. We asked the Indian Society what the festival meant to them and how it differed from celebrations in India. It's for the love, prosperity. An entire day is made in a very different way. It's very sober here. And it's very dirty. Oh really?   Must. Must. Must. Egg. Must. Egg. DCU TV.


Hello everybody. I am Vladimir Serbinenko and here is Maria and Daniel. And we would like to have a short presentation about Grubb. It will be mostly in the foremost news bulletin, what happened recently, what is our outlook and a couple of other things. So first thing is that for quite some time, I was the only active maintainer of Grubb. At first it was kind of okay because I was a student, took quite a lot of free time. But then when I started working, first my thesis then started working and it was difficult time management for a long time. We couldn't find anybody else who would want to become maintainer and simultaneous to have the skills for it. And now fortunately we have three people. So three additional people. First is Andrei, he couldn't come. Then we have Daniel. And we have Alex Bulmashev, who also couldn't come. Second thing, we have a 202 release going on now. We have already released the 202 to release candidate one. So now we accept only critical patches. We have a separate branch for new features. It's branch called Next, but it's really not a priority at this point to review new features. So if you send a patch for a new feature right now and we don't respond timely, it's not because we ignore you. It's because we prioritize getting the release done. And we expect to have the release at the end of February. And we are not aware of any release critical bugs in release candidate one. But we are all humans, so most likely there are bugs there. Most likely there are release critical bugs and we need help from you all to find them. So fire up your favorite machine, your favorite problematic machine and run it and report the bugs. And the 202 release candidate one is available as a turbo on that address. And additionally it's also available as a git tag in our repository. What we have new, we have now new supported platforms, especially ARM. For ARM in the last release we had nothing. Now we have three flavors. We have U-boot flavor, ARM EFI, 32-bit EFI. We have 64-bit EFI. There is work in progress for ARM core boot, it's not part of the release. It's a separate branch which probably will be merged not far from now but after the release. And we have sent Paravitualized guests, which is great from security point of view because this way file system parsing and kernel parsing, everything happens in unprivileged domain rather than doing it in privileged domain or trying to get the kernel somehow from unprivileged domain to privileged domain. Then we have new multi-boot two features. Daniel can speak more about them. Yeah, it's quite difficult because it's quite a long story and difficult. So I was working on Zen at the beginning and when EFI appeared on the scene on many machines YoungBuelic added EFI support for Zen but it was simply a simple P-application and configuration for Zen was passed in a special separate TXT file. So it means that it was quite difficult for developers to change configuration during boot and grab to allows you to edit configuration, just changes in the menu or something like that. So many, many people asked for support, direct support to have a chance load Zen from grab to. So I started working on that and I quickly realized that we need a new protocol which is currently called multi-boot two. Yeah, I know it happens. So I took a look at it. It was in grab available but unfortunately there were two important features missing. One thing was that multi-boot two was prepared for BIOS platforms. So it doesn't knew anything about EFI and also it wasn't able to pass EFI information EFI boot services function to operating system. So we needed to add special options to pass this information from EFI directly to the OS. Another thing which we met is related to allocation of memory on EFI platforms. Many platforms use low memory, very low memory regions to store runtime services, boot services and it means we cannot load, for example, Zen image in a given region because in Zen this region is strictly specified in the header. So we found out how to do that. We added support for self-rocketable images. Unfortunately we haven't time to add support for ELF relux yet but the framework which is there, ALOSAT. So currently the working example of this feature is available on ZenDevail MyLink list and I suppose that whole working solution will be available in ZenUpstream. So that's it. Thank you. And of course we have added plenty of fixes. And then a couple of future plans and ideas. We have already tested framework for GRUB that we use for every release but the problems that some of the tests require are root. They are basically FS tests. They create a file system using Linux and then try to read it using GRUB. We would like to make it work without root. Then we want to need to have some kind of automatic system which would regularly check GRUB3 so we can find bugs quicker. We work in kernel verification which will be the next slide. And of course it's community project. So it's driven by the contributors and this includes all of you, everybody who wants to participate. For kernel verification there is now a lot of push to have some kind of ways to verify that the kernel is what you expect it to be. There are different ways of doing it. They are all back by different political groups. They have different purposes and so on. And the problem that we have at least three different incompatible patch set already available. GPG signatures, TPM, and EFI Secure Boot via Shim. So the first one is already upstreamed but the second and the third one are just a patch on mailing list and they are not compatible between each other as far as I were. So the idea is that after the release at least I have a separate branch which adds a framework for verifiers and allows all the verifiers to peacefully coexist. And now Maria will speak more about group mascot. Hello everyone. I would like to introduce a new better version of group mascot. When I started to contribute to the project I realized that this well-known project has two logos already but no one knows it. And I discussed this with the maintainers and they agreed that we need something new and is noticable. So we decided to make some nice looking mascot. In my personal opinion animal mascots are the best solution because they are really noticable and eye catching. Of course everyone here I suppose knows the Linux Tux Penguin and he was a kind of inspiration for me. After the discussion with the maintainers we decided that the crab would be nice and I started drawing with this hand drawing. The main idea was the crab running, launching the balloon like operation system. There were some versions then we made it better in 2D then we tried to do it in 3D and that's the final version right now. But it's now in a better tasting stage. We found already a bug because many people suppose that's a grub OS and I see that we should do something with that. That's not a grub OS, it's a pure grub. I am a software engineer, I'm not a designer by my primary education. So if you have some suggestions or would like to add something feel free to contact me I'm not pretty sure should we do it in the developer grab developer mailing list or separately. So now just please send me a personal message. I would really appreciate your help and waiting for your suggestions. Also I would like to inform you that we are going to have a face-to-face meeting with maintainers. Today at 8 p.m. in Gem Hotel rooftop bar it's not totally about drinking it's more about discussing new features about grub development and so on. So if you would like to ask some questions say something about the grub, about the mask and so on feel free to join us. Of course everyone pays for himself or herself if no one will come there we will live at 9 p.m. And if you need some further information you can ask me as well. You can see here my email and you can ping me in handouts using this email. If you want to join just take a photo of it and we are waiting for you. Thanks a lot for your attention and we are waiting for questions. The question was how we support NVMe. This depends on the platform. First of all if you use EFI or BIOS and either of them already supports NVMe then grub will just use them. Grub does not currently have its own NVMe drivers. First we have some own ATA and SATA drivers but they are not used by default because they would conflict with BIOS or EFI. They are used by default on Corboot and on BIOS you can use your own drivers for grub but currently there is nothing for NVMe but it's basically patches are welcome and my experience shows that drivers for grub are actually much easier to ride than drivers for fully-fledged operating system. So right now we support it only if NVMe supports it. For touch screen it's not currently supported but we have all the underlined things that we need. We have USB support. We have the support for graphical menu. From there it would actually be pretty easy to write touch screen support. So if somebody wants to write it just drop me an email and I can give some guidance. Thank you very much Vladimir, Maria and David. Daniel.


Tonight, the Crow and County Board of Commissioners has approved the final budget and tax levy for 2018. For those that pay property taxes in Crow and County, there is a decrease of .09% in the property tax levy. This is the eighth year in a row that Crow and County has had a zero increase or decrease in the tax levy. The total levy is over $34 million, which accounts for 40% of all county revenue. As an organization, every member that is working here at Crow and County continues to look at ways that we can make this a better service, provide everything that the constituents need and keep it for the lowest amount of money for that constituent. Obviously we can't control values, but we can control how much we ask of every resident to pay. The Board voted unanimously in favor of the 2018 budget and levy. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


to talk about signature open quantum systems. My work was in collaboration with those listed below. So let me just sort of get into what we did. So the main objective of our work was to be able to find a dynamic model that was able to fit data that we were measuring off of D-Wave hardware. And in order to do this, we had to sort of come up with a few different key ingredients that would allow us to find something interesting that the dynamical model could give us that like a Boltzmann distribution, for example, would not give us. So these first key ingredients would be one, a new annealing schedule which we used, which was able to give us some relatively interesting results. Second, we did some comparisons of open and closed system simulations. After that, we introduced this sort of new idea of something that I'll call longitudinal field noise. And then lastly, we need to be able to compare this simulation against the hardware and see what we're able to get out. So I'll go ahead and start with the novel annealing schedule. So let me give a little bit of an introduction on how annealing on D-Wave works. So you have your Hamiltonian shown here where you have your initial transfers field given by these Sigma X terms. And then you have your final or target Hamiltonian on the right side given by these Sigma Z turns. And these are controlled by your annealing schedule functions, which in the case of the Landl D-Wave machine looks something like this. We also have this annealing parameter S, which effectively gives you the percentage of the anneal which you've completed. And lastly, we also need to consider the total annealing time of the system in our simulations. So let me just sort of give a little bit of a discussion of some of the limitations we have when trying to perform a measurement on D-Wave. So we're not actually able to interrupt the system. We have to perform a measurement when S is equal to one. And the way that the documentation recommends that we work around this is by doing something called quenching. And this is where as we continue our anneal, once we want to perform our measurement, we rapidly increase the rate of the anneal. And this has a few drawbacks because if you're working with a relatively small system size, something that you could actually simulate on a classical computer, you end up having such a large minimum gap that on the time scales that we considered with D-Wave, we were getting relatively difficult to differentiate results. So that led us to introduce a sort of new annealing schedule, which we call the H-Kill protocol. So this was our alternative attempt to quench the system effectively and sort of measure these dynamics partway through the anneal. So in order to do this, we used D-Wave's H-Gain schedule parameter, which allows us to vary the strength of the longitudinal field, allowing us to effectively kill the field partway through the anneal. The overall form of it looks like this and we're able to go very quickly, much faster than we're able to complete even the fastest anneal you're allowed on the hardware. So the big downside of this though, is that there is only an H-Gain schedule parameter. There is no J-Gain schedule parameter. So we have to consider independent qubits with no couplings. So this doesn't end up actually being a limitation though for the work that we're wanting to do here. And there is one last thing which I sort of wanna mention, which is this residual transverse field which ends up playing a big part later on. So that gives a little bit of an introduction to this novel annealing schedule that we introduced. So now I'm just going to very briefly cover the open and closed simulations that we performed, effectively just giving an outline of the equations that we were implementing. So for the closed system case, we were considering the Louisville von Neumann equation as shown here. It's effectively the same as the Schrodinger equation only in this case you're working with density matrices. And then for the open system case, we were considering the adiabatic master equation with independent ohmic heat baths. So the adiabatic master equation effectively has this Louisville von Neumann term and then a correction term which is dependent on these ohmic heat bath terms given by gamma, which have a certain bath coupling strength hidden within it. So that's what I mean when I'm saying that we're doing closed system and open system simulations specifically. So let me now get into this longitudinal field noise that I was talking about earlier. So this ended up being something that we found was able to be almost like a secret sauce that would let us reproduce results that we were seeing on the hardware. We don't necessarily have the best intuition for why it would be there, but basically we find that there seems to be some sort of what we decided would be Gaussian distributed noise that is constant in each simulation shot. So effectively what we would say is, okay, we have our Hamiltonian. Now we're going to modify it by a term which before we do the simulation, we sample from this Gaussian, scale it and then run our simulation. So that's what this longitudinal field noise is. It ends up being very important for reproducing the dynamics that we observe later on. And now with that, let me get into our experimental setup for running our hardware simulations or hardware experiments rather, which we compare against our simulations. So the experimental setup was that we applied this H gain kill protocol across various different values of S. In this case, for what I'm showing in this presentation, we did not consider S equal to 1.0, but the results do end up being consistent with those. Instead we consider the open range between zero and one. And then in order to make sure that our predictions are consistent, we vary the program field H in and we vary the annealing time given by tau. So when I say that we did simulations at low values of tau or low values of H in or medium to high, this is what I mean by that. And in this case, the annealing time is in terms of microseconds. So what do we actually observe when we run this on the hardware? In the low annealing time regime, we get this relatively flat curve. And as we increase H in and our annealing time, we get some various effects. So we basically noticed that there were three main stages to the results that we were observing on the hardware. There was this first stage where we were getting what appeared to be a lot of mixing with the environment. And then effectively a 0.5 measurement probability of the ground state. Then we had this sort of transitionary stage where the probability was approaching the third stage, which we call the saturation stage. So what do the open and closed system models without longitudinal field noise end up predicting if we try running simulations of something like this? And the answer is something very surprising actually. So in the closed system case, by introducing this H-kill, we are effectively having our block vector start rotating around that residual transverse field term that I mentioned earlier. So because of this, we end up getting these really rapid oscillations which we don't actually observe on the hardware. And this is to be expected because nothing is a completely closed system. But what's more surprising is that the open system simulations, we're not able to reproduce what we were observing on the hardware either. Basically the adiabatic master equation was predicting that due to the large time scale after we turned off the longitudinal field, we would effectively have this same oscillation but it would be dampened by the bath interaction. And then as we approached one for our H-kill point, we got gradually increasing probabilities. So what happens if we end up introducing this longitudinal field noise? And this is actually really quite surprising. In both cases, it produces S curves which look relatively similar to what we observe on the hardware. So we need to be able to fit what happens here. And I hope that this open system model is turning a few heads because this is really quite surprising that by introducing this longitudinal field noise, we're getting effectively an amplification of results which we don't even expect to see in the open system model. I'll give my best guess as to what's actually occurring later on in this talk. So let's start by trying to fit the closed system with longitudinal field noise. So when we try to do this for very low annealing times, we were actually able to get relatively consistent results with what we were observing on the hardware. But as we increased our total annealing time, what we ended up seeing was that the transition would not match what we were seeing. So this effectively ruled out both the closed system with and without longitudinal field noise because the longitudinal field noise was effectively adding a degree of freedom to our simulations. So there was no way that the closed system without longitudinal field noise could reproduce the results either. So this might be a little bit of a spoiler for my conclusion, but when we ran the adiabatic master equation with without longitudinal field noise, we were not able to reproduce anything that we observed on the hardware. So this is where I think I should start explaining why we're able to get this amplification, especially considering these high annealing time and high longitudinal field plots on the right side of this slide where we're effectively seeing what should be completely boring dynamics. So in this case, we're considering a 125 microsecond anneal. So between each of these S points that we considered, there is about a three microsecond time span. So we expect that to be long enough for the heat bath to effectively kill our dynamics. However, when we introduce the longitudinal field noise term, then we're able to actually get simulations which match up almost perfectly with what we were observing on the D wave hardware. There's a little bit of a discrepancy on some of the saturation values we were observing, but the transition stage is actually matching quite nicely. So our best guess as to why this actually works is because effectively as we're performing our anneal, we have our block vector pointing towards the one state and then we have the annealing schedule terms effectively dominating both the bath interaction and the longitudinal field noise. And then we introduce the H-kill protocol that removes the longitudinal field noise. However, pardon me, we remove the longitudinal field and the longitudinal field noise is now dominating the bath couplings. So we have this sort of biased vector which now that we introduce the noise, it's not getting as affected by the bath coupling because there's this other term which is ending up controlling the dynamics. And that's the best explanation we could come up with for why this is actually working. So with that, I think I'll go ahead and continue to my overall contributions and conclude. So in this work, we've proposed a new way of trying to quench a D wave system and finding a way in order to measure both the strength of the bath coupling and the longitudinal field noise term, which we consider. We also have demonstrated that it's necessary to include this longitudinal field noise term. And lastly, we've shown a difference for open and closed system dynamic models using only a single qubit. And with that, I'll open the floor for questions. Okay. Questions?