Dear students, today we are going to perform restriction-length polymorphism experiment, commonly known as RFLP. Firstly, this experiment was discovered by the Alec Jeffries in 1984. This RFLP is used for the analysis of unique patterns of DNA fragments which are genetically different create different between different organisms and animals. Due to these genetically differences, we can detect these animals and organisms differently. These differences which are patterned which are present in DNA are called VNTR or Variable Number of Tendon Repeats. The genetic polymorphisms are inherited from parents to the offspring and there are some differences between every each and organisms. Due to these differences, RFLP exploits these differences and differentiate between species and even different persons. First we will discuss about the principle of RFLP. There are some certain enzymes which are called restriction enzymes which cut the DNA molecules from different sites. These different sites are called as Recognition sites. There are many restriction enzymes, most commonly used restriction enzymes and their Recognition sites are there. There are some enzymes and these are their Recognition sites. EQUR1 it can cut the DNA from C-T-T-A-A and the other example is HINT3 which is and it cuts from the T-T-C-G-A and the third example is B-A-M-H1. It cuts from the C-C-T-A-G. These are the Recognition sites or Recognition patterns where these enzymes recognize these sites and cut the DNA from these sites and this is the principle of RFLP. For this we require DNA, some restriction enzymes, some buffers and other things. For the DNA extraction you can watch the DNA extraction videos from the video portal and after the DNA extraction we will need some enzymes, their buffer, some water and reaction mixture. Now we will prepare the reaction mixture for the preparation of RFLP experiment. We need DNA restriction enzyme and restriction buffer and water for the restriction mixture. As you can see we need DNA, we require one microgram of DNA and normally we have 50 to 100 nanogram DNA per microliter and if our DNA is 50 nanogram per microliter then we will require 20 microliter for the DNA. And there is 10x buffer which is provided with the restriction enzymes and we require only 5 microliter of 1x buffer. We will dilute the buffer and add the buffer as a 1x and then we require restriction enzymes, normally we require 10 units of restriction enzyme which is equal to 1 microliter. For the different restriction enzymes, the restriction units and the volume of the restriction enzyme is used differently. And we will have a total reaction mixture of 50 microliter and if we add 20 microliter of DNA, 5 microliter of 1x buffer and restriction, restriction enzyme 1 microliter and we will take final volume up to and we will add at water up to 50 microliter and the final reaction volume will be 50 microliter for us. And after that the preparation of mixture we will add, we will put it into for incubation. The incubation time and temperature is different for different enzymes. Normally it varies from 1 hour to 24 hours. We are using eco R1 and we will put it for 1 hour and the temperature is required that there are specific temperature for specific enzymes at that temperature the enzymes react most fast and accurately. And normally we put it at 37 centigrade for the reaction time. If the temperature is different it will be mentioned on the restriction enzyme. Now we will perform these reactions. We have different things with us. We have two types of DNA with us and this is our reaction buffer and this is our restriction enzyme. We will prepare it in app, in app and off tubes. Now we will prepare our reaction mixture for the reaction mixture we need DNA restriction enzyme, water and reaction buffer. Here is our DNA. We will take two samples, one sample and other sample and this is our buffer and this is our restriction enzyme. There will, you should take care of restriction enzyme. This is a fridge item, you just take it from the fridge and after that simultaneously put it back. Don't, don't vertex the enzymes and don't vertex the reaction mixture. We will put these reaction mixture in our PCR tubes. We have two DNA, two types of DNA then we will require two different tubes for the reaction. These are our reaction tubes PCR tube, PCR tube 1 and PCR tube 2. One for the DNA sample 1 and second for the DNA sample 2. Firstly we will add H2O water in our reaction tubes. So we need 20 microlitre of DNA, 5 microlitre of buffer and 1 microlitre of enzyme. This is total 26 microlitre and we will add 25 microlitre of water and I am taking yellow pipette and I adjust it on 24 microlitre. As you can see, as you can see this is 24, we will take 24 microlitre of water in two tubes. After that we will take DNA buffer, 5 microlitre, set it on 5 microlitre, this is our buffer. While transferring these buffer, take care, do not mix these solutions. We will add our DNA, this is our DNA 1, 20 microlitre of DNA 1 will be added, this is 24, adding the DNA, vertex and short spin it. Now we will vertex our DNA samples and short spin them. There is one precaution, do not ever vertex our enzymes because enzyme is a protein and then if you will give it a shock on vertex it may not be very useful after that. Going to vertex these samples with short spin, while putting in the short spin put your tubes in opposite directions. Now we will take our DNA number 1 and we will put it in our tube number 1. Now we are going to put it in tube number 1, there is water and buffer in it and we will mix it slightly with the pipet. Mixing will be done with the pipet ink, we will not mix it on the vertex and after that we will just short spin it. Now we will put our DNA number 2 in tube number 2, we have water, buffer and DNA in our tubes now. Now we will add restriction enzyme at the last stage. This is our restriction enzyme and only 1 microlitre of restriction enzyme is required. I will set the pipet on 1 microlitre, now you can see it is on 1 microlitre. I will add restriction enzyme, I will go to the bottom of the tube, slightly mix it and then I will pour this into the tube. For the new tube I will take new tip, I will add 1 microlitre of restriction enzyme and put it in second tube I will go into the bottom and will mix thoroughly with the pipet ink. Now our reaction mixture is ready, we will not vertex it, we will mix it by simple tapping and we will short spin it because some reaction mixture may be along with the walls of the tubes, with the short spin these mixture which is along the walls will be settled down. Now our samples are ready to be placed at a 37 centigrade for 1 hour. For temperature setting you can use water bath, you can use thermal cycler or you can use any other device with the temperature in which you can set temperature at 37 centigrade. Normally these tubes are PCI tubes and we put it in the thermal cycler. Now I will start the thermal cycler and place my tubes in the thermal cycler. And we will put our restriction mixture which is restriction enzyme our DNA sample and buffer and water, the final volume is 50 microlitre, machine is taking it's time and we will put it in the machine at 37 centigrade for 1 hour. After that we will do gel electrophoresis to see our results from where this restriction enzyme has cut the DNA. There will be different recognition sites in different DNA's and if there is one restriction site the DNA is cut into 2 pieces, if there are 2 restriction sites the DNA will be cut into 3 pieces, if there are 4 restriction sites then it will be cut into 5 pieces. Now this is ready, you can go to the browse method or new method, you can make a new program for it but I have already designed a program for it, you can see with the name of RFLP. I will open my program, there is only one step in it, one step for 37 centigrade for 60 minutes, now I will put my samples into thermal cycler, just open it, there is a 96 well plate but we are going to put only 2 samples into the thermal cycler, you can put these samples into any cell, we will close our machine and then we will start the program, there is a run option, our reaction volume is 50 microlitre and our program name is RFLP and we will just start new run, the reaction has started now, it will take 60 minutes to complete the reaction and in these 60 minutes restriction enzyme will act on the DNA and will recognize the recognition sites and will cut it into different pieces depending upon the species or individual of that DNA, on the differences of these recognition sites present in the DNA, we can recognize the DNA from which species or which animal or interspecies it is related to, our reaction is completed after 60 minutes and our samples are stored automatically at 4 centigrade by the thermal cycler, our reaction is completed here, now we will take out our tubes and we will do gel electrophoresis, I will just stop the reaction, there is run report, so I will take out my samples, for the gel electrophoresis please see the gel electrophoresis practical, our experiment for RFLP has been done now, you have seen the results and at the end we are just discussed some applications of RFLP and some disadvantages, RFLP is used in the diagnosis of different diseases like cystic fibrosis and it is used to compare different sources of DNAs, if we get a DNA from cat or animal and another sample of DNA and we will take the DNA from for example from human, we can detect the difference between these two DNAs with the RFLP, because in human there are different recognition sites and in cat or animal there are different number of recognition sites, so the enzyme will cut it into different number of fragments, due to this difference we can detect the source of the DNA, the RFLP is used for genetic mapping, because different enzymes cut different types of animal different types of DNA into different fragments, depending upon the size of these different fragments we can prepare genetic maps for different animals and organisms and at the end we are going to discuss disadvantages, some of the disadvantages of the RFLP, the RFLP is now an obsolete technique because it is it takes too much time and there are many steps in the RFLP, but new techniques like PCR you can get results in few hours for these different techniques so that was all from the RFLP, thank you.


Well, today we are talking about solar power solutions. This is the Private Property Podcast, I'm Tumi, let's get lit. Our guest today is a professional who focuses on designing strategies and for business units as well as products for customer segments in line with the customer's knees as well as the market trends. She's a product portfolio manager at Apsa Home Loans. Let's give a warm welcome to none other than Poshia Letape. Poshia, good evening and thank you so much for joining us. Good evening to me and thank you so much for having us this evening. Good evening to the Private Property Family and good evening to Zifei as well. Thank you. Today's second guest finds himself in a position that supports his vision of ensuring a better future for all. He's the head of renewable energy, retail and business banking for the Apsa Group. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Vishay Ravipal. Vishay, thank you so much for joining us as well. Thank you and good evening to me and the viewers joining in today. I really do feel that this is quite a pertinent and relevant topic for us to be discussing, especially what we all experience with the recent low-shedding as well as for those that are not aware, as of the 1st of June we've now municipalities have basically implemented their tariff increases. So thanks and I'm looking forward to the discussion. Now looking forward to jump straight into it and provide solutions for the Private Property Family watching tonight. So let's jump in and talk. Why is solar considered one of the easiest ways to begin your journey of greening a home? Vishay, I'll start with you. So we are seeing increased utilization and acceptance of solar energy technologies. I mean, with the ease of installation, the decreasing cost of this technology and, you know, along with technology advancements, as well as supportive reforms that we've seen as a country. Consumers are increasingly moving toward becoming prosumers. A terminology I use for someone who is both a producer as well as a consumer of electricity. Apart from that is solar energy is free as it comes from the sun and it can be used to power your home. The solar PV energy and systems use radiation to generate electricity. And Africa has an abundant source of this resource. Even on Claudia days, I mean, if you had to look at the radiation map of the country on Claudia days, we have more energy than anywhere else in countries such as that of Japan or Germany, who are the leaders when it comes to adopting these technologies. Just showing you how much of free energy we have in our country. Sure. No, thank you so much for that. And Portia, you know, with all that Vishal has said, a lot of people still believe that solar is unaffordable. Is this true? And if not, how can one take advantage of using solar? Thank you so much for this question, Jimmy. And I think you can also add on to this.  We use the term of great quite simply until you actually get to see the cost of going off grid. We have seen that the price of solar has reduced over the years. Obviously, because of demand in the market, right? You see a lot of movement at global around people being conscious of having to come at risk to wanting to go off grid and use alternative energy sources. So because of the demand, we've actually seen the price of solar decrease and allow the state to also add on to that. Yeah, correct. And I think just to touch on what you just mentioned, Portia, you're quite correct. You know, over the last decade, we've seen the price of these technologies decrease quite nicely. But despite this reduction, you know, the initial cost of a PV system are relatively high when compared to non renewable energy sources such as diesel generators and coal powered station fuel. I mean, fossil fuel generator electricity. However, unlike non renewable energy sources, PV has no fuel cost, no operational cost and very low maintenance cost. And it should therefore be considered as a long term investment. I mean, when you look at the cost of energy, which is defined as a rent per kilowatt from a PV system, it's it's dependent on the size of the system and the total cost that is, you know, including capital costs and operational maintenance. And but this must be viewed over the system's lifespan. So typically larger PV systems offer lower energy costs because of the, you know, when you have to compare to that of smaller systems due to the lower installation costs. But the financial feasibility of PV systems will depend on the cost of energy that the PV system offer over its lifespan. And it is being lower than the energy cost that one would incur from consuming from either Escom or your local municipality over the same time period. And while also taking into account the expected annual tariff increases. I mean, just to shed a light there, we've seen an average over the last decade of close to 10.5% increase year on year. Even this just year, you know, Escom was asking for close to 25% of the tariff increase. I mean, we know that they want a court case but against Mercer to claw back for those years of lower tariff increases. And that amounted to close to 69 billion which will they will have to recover from the consumer. So taking all of that into consideration and obviously doing the sums. So the PV over its lifespan of its duration of operation works out to be much cheaper than what we currently pay. Not sure. Quite insightful. And I'm sure anybody who's looking at, you know, adopting solar energy or using it is probably thinking, rethinking that decision.  Can one get financing for solar? And if not, are there other available channels for them to secure finance if they want to implement it? Absolutely. And I think, you know, a lot of us have seen the quotations, you know, that we get from various solar installers. And the first thing that you ask yourself is, where am I going to get the money to pay for the solar solution? You know, at some point we will discuss the different options that are available to customers in terms of solar. However, depending on how much you need from a finance perspective, you can look at various products that the banks offer, right? So for someone who already has an existing home loan and the home loan has been with the bank for quite a while, they've had this property for quite a while, we know that property appreciates in value. So you may find that you do have equity in your property. We discussed this, I think, in one of our podcasts, you know, what equity actually means. So you could actually approach your bank and apply for a further advance or a re-advance. So a further advance basically means that you are registering another bond against the property based on the increased value of the property. And a re-advance is the difference between your spending balance at the time and your original loan amount. And the bank will actually extend these funds to you in cash, right, so that you can pay towards the solar solution. We do also have unsecured lending products like your credit card or your personal loan, if you feel that you don't want to access equity in your property or, let's say, you don't want to use a home loan product to finance the solar solution. And then, I think, ultimately, if you do want to start basing towards your solar solution, you can, right? If you don't want to be paying any interest charges towards any financing options. I think, lastly, one of the products that consumers don't generally know exist is when you switch your home loan from one bank to another and you have access to your property, you can actually apply to switch your home loan and access to access to your property as well to pay for the finance of your solution. Thank you so much for that. Fisha Elit, Naupocha has given us the money. She's given us the green light to say, you can now do this to your home. What are the solar options that are available to homeowners? And, you know, the different solutions that are available in the market now, where does one start? Yeah, so I guess this is a very important point, right? Yeah, especially when customers need to educate themselves around the various types of solutions. For example, I mean, if you need to survive low trading and you don't have a large amount to invest that is into solar, but we've got Porsche there to assist, you may consider an uninterrupted power supply, which is referred to as an inverter in some instances. And this solution basically won't save you electricity and it doesn't use solar energy, though, but the electricity from the grid or from where your utility provider is stored into a battery and that is then used in the in the instances of power outages. Alternatively, you can consider a hybrid solution and that is basically a solar panel that are included as part of the solution, which includes battery energy storage. And this energy is then used to power you or provide you with electricity during power outages. This option is basically the most common one as it helps you to reduce your energy cost as well as becoming resilient to that of low trading. Alternatively, we see solutions such as off grids and these are larger solar systems and are required in terms of backup for an hour or longer durations from an hour perspective. And these systems basically are integrated with alternatives such as a generator, but obviously there are steps that you need to take when you are going off grid to ensure that you remain powered during those times of low trading. For instance, you need to take steps for your home in terms of making it a bit more green. Such as using LED lighting to reduce your consumption, changing your electric stoves to that of gas and changing your geysers to either solar geysers. And in that case, you reduce the amount of your solar component, which then becomes a bit more easier and palatable in terms of having that solution adopted from a CAPEX perspective. It's always advisable, though, to contact a credible installer to conduct a side visit and to conduct an energy audit to determine your unique household needs. And they can recommend a solution that suits your needs. And some installers can basically recommend a bigger inverter that allows you to upgrade your system over time. And that's the beauty part about these solutions is that they are modular and they can increase in size depending on what your budget allows you for. No, thank you so much for that, Vishal. I'll jump into quickly to a question that we received on social media. Shaqon Kaorelo is asking, is renewable energy is renewable energy generation regulated? And if yes, what is the threshold? He has a second question or a follow up rather that says, can community schemes also up to go off the grid completely? And what would the average demand for a scheme be? I know this is a couple of questions in one, but can we try to tackle them to say how can they approach it? Excellent. So I think I'll take this one because it's technical and it will align to what I address on a day to day basis. So when we talk residential and, you know, we talk about the size of the system, this is a regulated environment. So it's regulated by municipalities and it's the Energy Regulation Act. Together with that of what NERSA, which is our National Energy Regulator, that sets out in terms of how does these installations need to abide to ensure that it's legal? And we call it an SSEG, which is Small Scale Embedded Generation. And those are rules and regulations that are set out by the municipality, as well as SCOM having their own application and rules that need to be followed. But generally for a household, it's dependent on the size of your circuit breaker. For instance, if you have a 60 amp circuit breaker, you are limited to the size of the system that you would be installing. And I think that amounts to about 60 to 75 percent of your breaker size. When it comes to larger clients who, and I mean talking to your scheme that you just mentioned. So depending on the substation and the transformer that's supplying that area with electricity, you can only go up to a maximum of 75 percent of the size of that transformer. And that's the limitation that is set out. For those schemes to install, and we see a lot of what we call independent power producers, they basically install these systems and they sell power, which is called power purchase agreements, either to the municipality or to the off-check itself, which could be the individual from a residential perspective. So there is those options that are available. And we found quite a bit of that, especially in my space, where it's the larger size projects and we do fund them. And we've seen that they're gaining quite a good traction, especially from a community perspective because they have land that's available where they install these solar farms and then sell off this electricity to the consumer who runs up the same network at a much cheaper rate at close to 25 percent less than what they would be procuring from their utility provider. So, yes, those options are available and those are the limitations, unfortunately, that we see from a regulation perspective. Sure. Now, thank you so much for that very informative. Let's just then talk, rounding our conversation up tonight, how much maintenance is required with solar? You know, what are the future costs and maybe even maybe an affordability scenario that we can put out on the table. And I would like both of you to chip in here because of the technicality, but also with the finances, I'm very aware that, you know, a lot of people go into this and they don't know how much it's going to cost. So, let's say I've already gotten in advance on my loan, I've added my second one, but I need more money. What happens in the case? Do I have to go to an extra source? And even with that, are there specific things that are needed with the maintenance, Vishay? So, you can both tackle that one, please. Pusha, let me start with you. I think I'll allow Vishay to start because I think from a technical perspective, she's best suited to answer. I'll add on to at the end. Thank you. Definitely, Vishay. I'll touch a bit on the financing side. So, obviously, if we financed you for your system and you are considering to increase the size, we will definitely look at it. You know, we basically look at it because each client has his own profile and his own requirements. And we model these and we have the tools available to do so from a bank perspective to see what the savings is and what the benefit is going to be onto the client. Obviously, giving us the comfort, knowing that the client is paying towards an asset which can generate in excess of 20 years of electricity and is paying towards an asset that's going to make him basically sustainable, but also hedge against that of tariff increases, making his budget a bit more easier to manage and to basically pay off the loan that is required. When it comes to the maintenance side, you know, rooftop and fixed ground mark systems require minimal maintenance, especially associated to the cost other than the occasional cleaning that is required. So most PV modules on the market today also comes in with a warranty in excess of 20 years, both from a performance as well as a product warranty, meaning that the power output will not go below 80% of its rated power over that 25, 20 to 25 years. And this obviously varies depending on the product choice that is being considered. However, on the components such as your inverters, that generally comes with a five to seven year warranty and we're seeing the market change now to a 10 year warranty. And coming back to the cleaning which is the maintenance required, we are seeing some good development in terms of technology whereby some of these modules now come with self-cleaning glass that is basically a lamination that is on those panels, which then self-cleans itself when there's rain. So it's actually, when you look at it from a maintenance perspective, it's actually very low from a cost perspective. Okay. Thank you so much for that. And if I may add as well, I think, you know, in the context of finance as well, consumers need to also think about the benefits that they're getting from installing solar, right? So for argument's sake, you decide to take up a further advance. You do know that you will be paying interest charges towards that further advance and there will be an installment that you need to pay. Generally, a lot of solar installers are able to illustrate to you what the saving will be. So if you are paying, let's say, a thousand rents a month on electricity, but with solar installation done in your property, you're likely to cost to reduce to 300 rents a month and you're only paying the 500 rents towards the finance from the banks, right? That saving is actually what you should start to look at, you know, on a monthly basis. And then over time, when you've actually paid up the finance that you took up from the banks to finance the solar solution, you actually see that you've actually started saving a lot of money. You know, I may not be able to just basis, you know, because we are on the other part of, but I think calculators are available to assist that customer in understanding the investment and the return as well. Thanks to me. No, thank you so much for that. And thank you, Vishay, as well as you too, Portia, for joining us tonight and sharing so much light in terms of solar power and, you know, renewable energies that one can use. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Have a good evening. It's only a pleasure. And, you know, you're more than welcome and those views to reach out if you ever need advice. That's what we, that's the role we play. Okay. Thank you so much. Have a great evening. Thank you. Same to you. Bye. Well, that was an enlightening interview that we just had there on solar power. But before we leave here are some solar power highlights with five fast facts. You can save money on your electricity bill by going off the grid. Even though it can be pricey to set up, the return on investment is well worth it. Solar power is one of the cleanest and most sustainable energy sources. It doesn't rely on fossil fuels or any of their nasty byproducts. The earth receives approximately 174 power watts of solar radiation every single day. And around 30% of the solar radiation that strikes the earth is absorbed by its upper atmosphere and reflected into space. The remaining amount is absorbed by clouds, oceans, as well as the land. Off-grid solar systems can store power during the day for use at night or on cloudy days. Grid-connected solar system also allow you to use solar during the day. Solar panels and LED lights are constructed in the same manner. When exposed to bright lights, the LED produces a small amount of power and solar panels light up when fed the proper amount of current similar to LED lights. If you're still interested in learning more then you are at the right place but that is about it for tonight. Thank you so much once again for showing us love on Facebook. We really, really appreciate it. And the winner for tonight's 500 grand cash prize is Drumroll, please. SmooseesawSMK, thank you so much for engaging with us on the timeline and we really, really appreciate it on the comment section rather. Thank you so much. We will see you tomorrow at 7 p.m. From myself to me and the private property podcast family have a good one.


Good morning, so I am on neighbor the head of the mobile solutions team HQ and today I'm going to present about about some recent pictures That were integrated into the next version of the model app that is going to be released in a few weeks version 4.3 So those were the main spring goes The most relevant thing is that It started the QA QA process and it is growing pretty well We are still not sure if we will be able to complete the release Two weeks we hope so um apart from that we integrated Atomic to our apps portal not the two but Functionality to allow admins to enable this functionality in the mobile app Because the matto monolithic is an integrated integration with matomo. It's not that we are hosting a matto monolithic instance But we are integrated with institutions organizations Matomo instances so they can track users interactions in the mobile application apart from that We are still working in them in these deprecation that happen And what we are basically trained to do is to fix the web version we use for development of the mobile application Because some of the technology that we were using is being deprecated and we need to find a work around to make it work This is quite technical, but this is affecting uh plugin developers or uh People that are trying to create custom styles for the mobile application and they need to use the web version we use So this is sort of a priority for us. It's not blocking the release But we need to fix this as soon as possible um Finally it was planned to start working on some support to system reports in the workplace app Uh But we delayed these so to avoid blocking the release of the mobile app and then we will start Working on these or reprioritizing these after the release of the app is completed Finally, there were some unplanned uh work Uh, but we thought that was uh, really important to fix this because it's solving one of the main issues problems our users are Facing that is basically the some user friction the first time they open the app They don't know what to put in the site address field because a lot of users. They don't know what site address or site url Um, so in the next slide, I'm going to show a bit of if you can move To the next one area, please Uh, and click the play button So this is basically what we did and it's only supported for now in android devices that is Um, basically that you know that there is Get the mobile app link at the bottom of the page if you didn't install previously the mobile application You'll see this this link and if you click it in it, you are currently going to this uh page That is a promotional page Where you can Click the button to install the app from google play in case you are installing from uh google play We will Store the url So once the app opens again, uh, you will be automatically really actively we use the A functionality that is called the google play referrer and as I said, this is Going to reduce a lot of user friction and help with the onboarding onboarding of new users because they will Just need to put their credentials No need to copy the or know what's a site address Our plan is also to support these For ios devices iphone ipad Soon it will find a way to make it Um compliance we compliant with uh apple privacy policies


I'm Brad Magnus. I live in Huron, South Dakota and we're on our ranch which is 13 miles south of St. Lawrence, South Dakota. The ranch history is, well it started back with my grandfather, the first piece of ground that he owned. My dad added to that. I bought my first piece of ground in 1979 and we've added to the ranch since then. When I bought that first piece of ground we hired a retired soil conservation service guy by the name of Elder Mueller and he came out here and taught me how to identify grasses, telling me the difference between warm season and cool season grasses. Taught me that all plants strive to reproduce and taught us about rotational grazing. He helped us a lot. I thought I knew about grass. I didn't know nothing and be honest with you. We don't farm or anything. We had a bunch of warm season grasses that we used to harvest for seed that the CRP thing disintegrated so we put harvesting them for seed so we put up our own hay. All our cows just get fed grass hay all we want. We're in a drought this year so we're seeing that this year that guys are weaning calves early selling cows because you're out of grass. Now thankfully we got some rain a little bit ago that kind of pumped the brakes a little bit but we're still in a pretty serious drought that you're going to see a lot, a lot, a lot of cattle come through that are sold just because it's too stinking dry and everybody's out of feed. Now we like we've always got the safety valve so we run in our yearlings on grass and we've never come to the point we've gotten really close but we haven't come to the point yet where if we're out of grass we can just pull a trigger and dump the yearlings and then that frees up however many more acres to graze cows because the last thing you ever want to sell is cows. There's two things you don't sell cows in land. We pretty much try to calf in May and June because we have a livestock auction market and we're busy there in the spring of the year and this place is 42 miles away from home and so we need those cows to be able to calf on their own and I don't have a big barn so if a storm comes up in the spring I don't have a place to get all the cattle in. Because we calf so late I guess I'm feeding those cows up till and while they're calving in the month of April, in the month of May.  We do rotationally graze but not just for the sake of rotating but with the object in mind that we want to utilize cool season grasses which we have a predominance of and rest the warm season grasses so that they don't get exclusively grazed out by continuous grazing. We're in southern Han County in South Dakota which is part of the Prairie Pothole region and we took advantage of the US Fish and Wildlife Service program to put an easement on our wetlands and our grasslands so that they won't be broken and be preserved for grazing because I'm in the cattle business for the future. And as a result of not wanting to drain every pothole to plant corn we've seen an increase in wildlife not just the ones that you hunt but the ones that you listen to too. I mean it's quiet out here when you just take time to hear nature. The wetlands are teeming with wildlife and there are all kinds of advantages to having that wildlife around because they utilize the prairie as well. I was always impressed with the Magnus family and their operation, their stewardship, grassland stewardship and also their ability to operate through dry cycles and wet in the prairies and balance their operation with nature. We don't manage for profit, we manage for stewardship and have learned that if you're good stewards that is profitable. So rather than chasing the last dime that that acre can produce we want to restore that land to the best condition that it should be in and by doing so you get more grazing out of it as a benefit. If I'm going to be a good steward to the land I also need to be a good steward to my family and I want to give them the opportunity that I had which is working with my dad. I haven't gone to work a day in my life. I just enjoy, I don't need to take a vacation. Some people do but I enjoy what we do so much that I don't need to get away. I just have fun.


Item Number – SCP-109 Object Class – Euclid Special Containment Procedures – SCP-109 is currently located in non-critical storage Unit 7 and requires no active monitoring. It should not be removed from the unit except to be transported to a research facility, and then only by personnel with Level 3 security clearance or higher. When replacing SCP-109, personnel should ensure that it is firmly closed and that it is placed on the molded pedestal in the upright position. Description – SCP-109 is a standard issue United States Army canteen circa 1899, made of a tin alloy, and fitted with a heavy cotton cover and a black leather strap. When opened, the item is seen to be nearly full of water. A seemingly unlimited amount of water can be removed from the container without changing the water level or the item's mass, which remains a constant 3.16 kilograms. Probes of the interior of the container reported an estimated volume of 2.8 liters and a shape consistent with the outside. The water in SCP-109 is of a slightly blue-gray tint, with concentrations of 20 ppm of tin and 170 ppm of other electrolytes. The water remains at a constant temperature of 19 degrees Celsius, but can be heated or cooled when moved to another container. Addendum 109-1 Upon the item's delivery to Site-19, it was given the Object Class of SAFE. As tests were conducted on the item, uncertainty surrounding test results prompted General Warrant to upgrade the Object Class to Euclid. Addendum 109-2 Recently, a request was filed and granted by Dr. Warrant for permission to water an okra plant growing in his office with SCP-109. Experts should be notified that said doctor uses SCP-109 for this purpose for a small time every Friday. Addendum 109-3 It has come to my attention that new Class D personnel are often dared to empty the bottle. Guards are reminded that they are to discourage such activity and inform them that SCP-109 is bottomless. Chanting chug repeatedly is considered unprofessional. Addendum 109-4 Due to the range of tests conducted on SCP-109, this section has been provided to present test results in chronological order. Dates have been withheld for confidentiality. Test-1 Subjects imbibed water from SCP-109 reported that it was very refreshing and, despite the metal content, very tasty. Urine samples from subjects were normal. Test-2 Follow-up tests to test-1 had subjects dehydrate themselves for one full day before imbibing water from SCP-109. Test remains unfinished as subjects were unable to provide urine samples. Test-3 Subject bathed in water from SCP-109. Subject reported increased energy and a much improved complexion following the bath. Test-4 Streptococcus bacteria cultured in water from SCP-109 thrived and multiplied quickly. Water from SCP-109 administered to subjects suffering from streptococcal infection killed nearly all bacteria and produced a full recovery within 24 hours. Test-5 Blood substitute created using water from SCP-109, given in transfusion to pedestrian hit by a drunk driver. Subjects showed no maligned symptoms from the transfusion and made a full recovery. Subject's physical therapy concluded six weeks early. Test-6 Water from SCP-109 administered to various plant organisms, all of which remained very healthy and showed no maligned symptoms. One proposition for a test which has been discussed for some time has been one involving a combination of SCP-109 and SCP-402. Due to the risk of losing one or both items or creating a hazardous situation, this test has never been conducted. Lesson complete. If you missed the previous orientation, go watch SCP-108, Extradimensional Nasal Cavity, right now. Or for the complete course, watch this playlist.


G'day. In the last session we looked at how policies were constructed in MOSMOD of functions, which in turn contain parameters, and that the parameters and functions enabled one to simulate policies. In this session we're going to put that knowledge to use and work out how to add a new system to MOSMOD, how to implement a change to an existing policy in MOSMOD, and how to add a new policy to MOSMOD. First of all, adding a new system. Why might we add a new system? Well, primarily we might want to add a new system to include a new policy year. You'll remember from last session a system is, in a sense, a column within the EuroMOD interface, and the only one presently within MOSMOD is a system for the year 2015. So during the course of this year we'll be inserting a system for 2016 and indeed a system for 2017. But the other important reason for adding a new system and the one which we'll be using for this session is for implementing a reform scenario. Now it's good modelling practice to add a new system rather than amend policies in an existing system in order to perform a reform. This ensures that the parameters of the existing policy are preserved as a record for that particular time point. You don't contaminate the existing system and also you have something to compare it with. So a new system is initially always a copy of an existing system and we call that existing system the base system and it's initially an exact copy of the base system except for the name of the output file and is configured to run with the same data sets as the base system. Now there are two ways of adding a new system and I'll show you those on the model in a minute but the two ways are to go to the country tools tab and press the add system button and that will throw up a dialogue which will ask you to name the new system and the other way is to right click on the header of the existing system. Again you then have to choose a name for the system. Now I'll show you that now on the model itself. So let's go to the model that you're familiar with. This is the existing system. Let's go to country tools. First of all go to add system. Then you have to first of all select the base system, click on OK and then give it a name and we'll put the base system name plus underscore reform. It's a good convention, OK. An in-pops reform system was an exact copy of the base system. I'm going to delete that system. We use the delete system button to do that. The reason I'm going to delete it is because I want to show you the other way. So let's delete it and say OK, we are sure yes and so we're back to where we were. This time let's just click on the top, right click and go to copy paste system and then all it asks you is for a new system name because it's copying that base system so it doesn't have to ask you which system you want to copy. Type in the name same again and there you have it. I'm going to leave that there because we will use it as we go through and then we'll go back to the presentation. OK and here's the new system added to the workspace as I just showed you. It's also added to the list of systems and databases which you can also access through country tools. OK, what kind of policy changes might you want to do? You might want to change an existing policy like for example amend a means test threshold or cash transfer amount. That's very simple and straightforward. There is a means test threshold in both the direct and basic social support programs. You could amend that. You might want to remove the means test. That might be a bit more tricky particularly if you've got to substitute it by something else or add an amount for meeting a particular criteria. Finally you might want to vary the means test by particular characteristics and that can be quite complicated or complex. You might also want to add or remove eligibility criteria for social benefits like for example remove one of the eligibility criteria for direct social support program. That can be simple or complex but is often quite straightforward. The other thing you might want to do is add a new policy such as a social benefit and we're going to do both of these things in this session. First of all let's change an existing policy. The policy that I'd like to do some changes to is one of the more straightforward policies and that's simplified tax, the turnover tax. At present the simplified tax is paid at 3% in respect to small traders whose annual turnover is less than 2.5 million metacars per annum and it's 3% of the turnover. Now what we're going to do is increase the threshold to 3 million metacars per year and increase the rate of tax to 4% and then convert all the figures into constants. And again I will do this for real in a minute. So the steps. First of all we copy the latest system and name it MZ underscore 2015 underscore reform. We've already done that. And then the next thing to do is to introduce the thresholds, the new threshold that is 3 million metacars per annum and the new rate of tax 4% expressed as 0.04 as constants. And to do that you go to the constant underscore MZ policy, the def const function and right click to add two new parameters as placeholders. You could actually put the def const function within the policy itself and some people prefer to do that rather than have a long const def policy at the beginning. It's entirely optional. Then you need to rename the placeholders to TTN underscore threshold and TTN underscore rate which have now been inserted within your constant definition policy. I've just called them TTN underscore threshold and rate because that makes them meaningful. All constants have to be preceded by the dollar symbol. And then we need to place values in the reform system. 3 million hash y per annum for the threshold and 0.04 for the rate. So let's now flip back to the model itself and do that. So let's get constant definition. There it is. Now right click and I'll have slides to remind you of this in a moment. Show add parameter form, click placeholder because that's what we want to add and we want two of them. So we put two and then we click add. They will be popped down. You saw that probably in the model itself that we have to close the parameter box. Then simply give each of these a name. Dollar TTN underscore threshold was the one we were going to do first and then dollar TTN underscore rate. We're going to do second. The threshold was going to become 3 million so let's put that there. Then hash y because that's annual and then this is not annual so 0.04 will do.  What is this? It's the simplified, the other one is the rate. So I copy that actually because it's quicker than typing it out in full and then just edit that to say rate and that's now done. We can close the constant definitions. Back to the presentation now and then I've got slides to remind us of that. So first of all the right click on the def const with the show add parameter form at the very bottom highlighted and then we've got the two placeholders selected in the add parameter form. Then obviously you click add and then close and that gives you the two placeholders which you then edit to give the names that you're interested in. TTN underscore threshold, TTN underscore rate and the new amount 3 million hash y. Okay, next steps we first of all then go to the TTN underscore MZ policy and go to the Ben-Calc function. It's the only function there is. Enter the new constant for the threshold TTN underscore threshold in comp-cond where 2.5 million hash y was previously and then enter the rate constant, TTN underscore rate in the comp-tu where 0.03 was previously. And now let's actually go to the model and do that. It's time we're going to open the TTN policy and the Ben-Calc and what we've got to do here is alter the threshold and do that by highlighting it and delete and then start the thing $ and you'll see as soon as you start to type the constant name a whole load of potential constants are revealed. You know it is TTN and you can see TTN threshold. If we just highlight that, TTN threshold is in there. And we can do the same for the rate. You can put $TTN and then the rate we can click on in the list. And that's it. That's now done. I'll go back to the presentation and there it is, a copy of that we've just done. Okay, and that's it. That's a straightforward example of modifying an existing policy. Obviously that can get more complex and part of the exercises that we'll be doing are tackling some of the more complex examples. But those are the basic ways you do it. Those are the tools. Okay, so now let's go to the concept of adding a new policy. And we'll do a straightforward one here. We're going to add a universal child benefit. Again, you start by copying the latest system. We'll use the one that we've already copied and name it mz-underscore-2015-underscore-reform as before. Then next, you have to choose where on the spine the new policy should be located. Remember we talked about the spine earlier. You must actually pick the right point. Just in case there are any conditions that require early policies to have been simulated first. So let's just choose a place on the spine for it to be located. And then next we right-click on the policy before the one you want to introduce and then select add policy after. You're given a range of different policies to choose. We want to choose a benefit policy. Okay, so we do that. Then we need to select the functions. First of all, let's name the policy bch-underscore-mz. Why that? Because bch is benefit for children, bch. And that's what the output variable will be called. Next, right-click on the new policy name and select a function. So for this example, the function bencalp will be used. Although you could have used a combination of ellige and aerothop. Again, I'll refer you back to the last session where we talked about how bencalp is effectively a combination of ellige and aerothop. And then finally something which I almost invariably failed to do is to turn both the policy and the function on. So this will show you where add function bencalp. And then finally, obviously, is to implement the function. We're implementing a function which is...  So first of all, we have to define what we mean by children. And here in this model, we've assumed it's children under the age of 15. It could be anything. And then the amount payable will be the amount we've introduced as a constant, which we should do. It's been quite important to introduce bch amount as a constant. And then introduce a new output variable using variable tools, if necessary, of bch underscore s simulated child benefit. It's actually one of the standard ones that you'll find already in the variables tool. Sometimes you may find ones that aren't in the list of error mod variables and you'll have to add them. And then you may have to also add bch underscore s to the output policy as necessary. So why don't we just do all of those things and then take it from there. So we're going to the model. Let's close up that. The first thing we're going to do is to select a place on the spine where to put this. Let's put it after the basic SSP. So we right click on basic SSP and then add policy after and we're going to add a benefit policy. We're going to give it the name bch underscore mz, naming it for the output variable. And there it is. In it goes, not applicable, not applicable all the way through. We can actually give it a name, universal benefit. Now we've got to have a function. It's got no functions at the moment. We're going to right click and then add function and the function we're going to add is bencalc. And there you go. Bencalc is added. Now we can first of all add in the condition and the conditions remember have to be in curly brackets. So curly brackets, DAG, what was it? I think we said that we were going to have it as less than or equal to 15. Just to say, it may be that there are some minus numbers in your data set. I don't think there are in MozMod, but if there were, just to make absolutely sure you should have put always, better practice really, DAG greater than or equal to zero, DAG less than equal to 15. That will capture the naught year olds, i.e. the babies of a few months, but won't allow any minus characters through, where sometimes minus ages are put in where the age is not known. Just an explanation for that. And then the amount, we're going to call the constant dollar BCH underscore amount. I haven't introduced it yet, so it didn't produce that drop-down list, though we should introduce it strictly. Often best to do it before. We'll do it in a second. And then the output variable is BCH underscore s. See, it pops up as a known variable. And this is at the individual level, because we're testing each individual, so we set it at individual level. Okay, so the remaining thing to do is to add yet another constant. So we show add parameter form at another placeholder, and add it close, and that puts that down here. And then we can put dollar BCH underscore amount. I think that's what I called it. And then we can decide on the amount, and I'll leave it to you to decide on that amount, but it might be a thousand metacals per month. Just give it a meaningful comment. Okay, now completed that. Let's go back now to the presentation. Here we go. And then after you make the changes, save changes to the model, and you can highlight differences between the base and the derived system if you switch on a particular switch within the model itself, so that you can clearly see alongside it where changes have been made. The reform system is run in the same way as other systems, and will output the same variables unless a change is made to the output policy. So I think that's really it for this session. The activity will be, first of all, to replicate both the changes to an existing policy that we did in respect to simplified tax, but also to introduce a new universal child benefit. And then we'll go on to look at more examples that you can do as exercises. Okay, that's it from me for this. Thank you very much.


Why the narcissist is never there for you. The narcissist is never there for you because they lack empathy. They lack the ability to understand and share your feelings which is why it will seem like they just don't care which is why you will feel emotionally weak whenever you are around them. If you need emotional strength you need to find somewhere else to get it because they're not going to be there for you. You may want their emotional support but they're not going to give it to you because they don't have enough to go around which is why they may often seem detached when you need them to care for you. They will go off and do something else. They will play on their phone because they don't want to deal with it. They don't want to deal with your emotions. They don't know how to love and care for you because they were never taught how to do that and you cannot raise someone who is already an adult if they don't have empathy now. They're never going to have it. It's too late. They're not going to care if you're upset about something or if you need their emotional support. It will just irritate and annoy them and it will eventually anger you.  You're not being treated with a love and respect that you deserve but they don't have enough empathy to give to you. They barely have enough for themselves so when you're upset about something they're not going to be there for you. They're not going to share your feelings. They're not going to give you sympathy or support. They're not even going to try to understand you. You will have to get that empathy from somewhere else because even if they do give you what little empathy they have they will expect something from you in return. There's always a double standard with the narcissist. They won't show any care or concern for you but they will expect you to do that for them. They will expect you to immediately stop what you were doing and attend to them. They will expect a lot from you but you can't expect the same treatment from them because they won't do the same thing for you. You may be very kind and generous but before you do things for the narcissist you need to ask yourself if they would do the same thing for you. Would they take the time to understand you? Would they help you to feel better? They probably wouldn't but you keep doing it for them because you think they're going to change. You think they're going to learn from your actions. You think they're going to see the error of their ways but they won't. You cannot teach a narcissist how to care for you. They don't care about you. They will only do something if it benefits them. They won't do it for you so you need to take that kindness and generosity that you're giving to the narcissist and give it to yourself because they're not going to reciprocate. They're not going to give anything back to you in return. They're not going to replenish your emotional energy so you're going to end up emotionally starved which is why it is so important for you to recognize that they do not understand your emotions. Before it gets to that point you need to recognize that your emotions irritate and annoy them. They don't want to deal with that. They can only express their emotions through sexual acts. That's their idea of comforting you and even then it's still all about them so don't expect empathy from the narcissist. Don't expect them to be there for you. Thank you for watching. I hope this video varies a bit with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. If you would like to donate my PayPal link is in the video description. Coach the inquiries. You can email me at coach.naks.fivert.uk. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.


So I'd like to thank Oric Pagel for the introduction and chairing this talk. And I would like to also thank Vincent Tournier for inviting me here to speak at SOAS for the Buddhist Forum. It's a great honor to be part of this vaunted series. This evening I'll speak about a previous birth, or what I'm calling rebirth narratives, in Buddhist texts and art of Gandhara and the northwestern borderlands of South Asia, which is displayed here on the map. Gandhara can be contextualized within a larger frame of the Indo-Iranian frontiers between the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau. I'd like to refer to a recent workshop on the geography of Gandhara and art at Oxford's Classical Art Research Center last month, where the discussion of what is meant by Gandhara proper, greater Gandhara, and connections with neighboring regions, such as Taksala and the Punjab across the Indus River, the Swat Valley, the Upper Indus Region, which I'll be discussing in the seminar on Saturday, as well as areas across the Hindu Kush in ancient Bactria where we're discussed extensively. And I think those talks are available now on a podcast on the Classical Art Research Center's website. The study of Buddhist narratives, which is my proper topic today in literary and visual cultures, has generated a considerable interest due to the great treasuries of stories across Buddhist traditions. The depths and broad extent of the ocean of Buddhist stories continue to be navigated, although scholars entering the waters of this ocean sometimes risk danger of drowning our shipwreck, like the merchant sailors in a famous episode of the Simhila Sartavaha of Adana. This story was the focus of a storytelling event, which was organized at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto after the last International Association of Buddhist Studies conferences there. Raths for crossing these potentially turbulent waters are supplied by recent work on Pali and Sanskrit texts, including translations published by Naomi Appleton and Sarah Shaw, Alice Collette, and Andy Rotman, with scholars such as John Strong, Rekha Onuma, and many others providing the kind of navigational tools for interpretation of the literary depths. Works by Todd Lewis on noir versions of Buddhist narratives, such as the version you see depicted here in this noir scroll and also by contributors to a recent volume edited by Stephen Collins on readings of the Vesantara Jataka demonstrate that many of these stories are still very much alive in contemporary Buddhist cultures. Ties between rebirth narratives, epigraphy, and art are evident very early at Barhut with second and first century BC Brahmi inscriptions with labels of Jatakas and also in recently published materials from a Satavahana Buddhist shrine at Kanaganahali in Karnataka, which Christian Lutsanets has made available with excellent images on his website. Dieter Schlingloff's detailed studies of narrative wall paintings at Ajanta, as well as important contributions by Vidya Dehejiya and Maritio Tadei help to understand various modes and styles of narration in Indian Buddhist art. Alfred Fusche, who is called the grandfather of Gandharan studies by Vladimir's Walf in his catalog of the Gandhara sculpture in the British Museum, also had a keen interest in Buddhist Jatakas and text and art throughout his long career as an art historian in the first half of the 20th century. Fusche and other scholars interested in Gandharan Buddhist visual culture and iconography, as well as the archaeologists who explored the material culture of many excavated sites in Gandhara, in Northwestern Pakistan, and Afghanistan, relied primarily on Pali and Sanskrit texts for literary frameworks to guide their interpretations of the narrative imagery and materials from the archaeological excavations. Now, as many of you know, Gandharan art tends to emphasize the present life story of Shakyamuni Buddha. But in this presentation, I'll discuss an important exception to that generalization by focusing on an encounter with the previous Dipankara in a past life story. Since Fusche's time, discoveries of early Buddhist manuscripts from Gandhara written in the Gandhari language, that is what Harold Bailey called the Northwest Procret Vernacular, which is almost exclusively written in the Karoshti script and used in inscriptions, coin legends, and administrative documents from Nia and other sites in the Taran basin, have opened new access to the regional literary culture in periods overlapping with the peak phases of Gandharan artistic production in the first few centuries CE. So before the British Library acquired a collection of 29 birch bark scrolls in the mid-1990s, only a single incomplete scroll of a Gandhari version of the Dharmapada from Kothan, which was discovered in 1892 and definitively edited by John Brough in 1962, provided evidence for a suspected corpus of Gandharan Buddhist literature. This emerging corpus of Gandharan Buddhist texts has become greatly enlarged within the last 25 years with additional collections listed here becoming available for scholarly study. And here I'd like to refer to a recent book published by my former supervisor Richard Solomon at the University of Washington on the Buddhist literature of ancient Gandhara, an introduction with selected translations, which just appeared from wisdom press last month. In that book, he gives samples of the various contents and genres attested in Gandhari manuscripts. These texts within the Gandhari manuscripts exhibit various levels of originality, innovation, or fidelity to Indian Buddhist parallels, and many of them lack direct literary parallels in Sanskrit, Pali, and other Buddhist languages. In this presentation, I'm focusing particularly on genres of rebirth narratives. And here I'm using the term rebirth narratives in a qualified sense that are labeled as avadanas and purvayogas in the British Library collection. OK. These two genres of avadanas and purvayogas were written by two scribal storytellers who composed original summaries of around 57 avadanas and purvayogas. So these summary stories, in many ways, just preserve the basic details with terse explanations of the names, the titles, and the place where the story happens. Their handwriting can be distinguished from the handwriting of the primary text of the British Library scrolls. So the primary text, in this case, was written by a scribe in using a thicker hand and was basically for a Kothirikagama type sutras, which were edited by Mark Allen, who is a previous speaker in the series this year. And you can see here at a certain point a scribe writing in a larger flowing hand takes over and begins to write these summary stories of avadanas in the leftover space on the bottom of the scroll, on the recto, and then flips the scroll over and continues to write on the verso. So these avadanas scavenge leftover space on these scrolls after the primary text had been written. And as Timothy Lenz has observed in his editions of poor avayogas and avadanas published in the Gandharan Buddhist text series, stories of linkages to previous births, that is to say the poor avayogas, explicitly connect the past and present lives of the figures, while the avadanas tend to focus only on the present lives without necessarily a reference to a past life. And there are only a few exceptions in which the avadanas are karmic tales with explanations of how current conditions resulted from past actions. So ripening of karma is not the overriding theme or concern of the vast majority of the avadana narratives, which, as Lenz has pointed out, do not conform to what he calls the standard avadana package. That is to say, other Buddhist literary compilations of both avadanas and jataka's jataka birth stories. So there's a lot of overlap between these genre terms. And one point I'd like to make is that this term poor avayoga, as Tim Lenz has pointed out, is not exclusive to the British Library Gandhari manuscripts. And the other main point I'd like to emphasize again is that the avadana stories in these manuscripts, in contrast to the avadanas in Sanskrit literature that many of you are familiar with, as well as the jataka's, tend not to be concerned with karma vipaka from a story of the past, the atitavastu, in Sanskrit. And so in other words, they represent probably an early phase of the narrative development of these genres, which are differentiated in these manuscripts, which belong to a time with a terminus postquem in the first century CE. So many of these summary stories do not have direct literary parallels, unlike most of the primary texts in the British Library Collection, except for commentaries and scholastic literature, which like the avadanas in poor vayogas do not have the direct literary correspondences. And they only include the skeletal information with formulae calling for the rest of the story to be expanded in detail. This formulae for expansion reflects connections between the written summaries and processes, probably of oral expansion in the storytelling tradition. Stories about well-known characters from the time of the historical Buddha, Arashoka, tend to be more identifiable with other versions in Buddhist literature that have been imported or transplanted from the Buddhist heartland in ancient Magadha and Kosala. On the other hand, Gandhari avadanas and poor vayogas localized in the Northwestern geographical, political, and cultural context represent what might be called a homegrown strand of regionally distinctive narratives. These homegrown avadanas and poor vayogas belonging to first century Gandhari context are more difficult to link with previously known narratives but display a great regional diversity of the early Buddhist storytelling tradition. So to give an example, I'll briefly discuss this story with references to the four Mahasravakas or the four Mahasravakas. And this story is the eighth avadana in a series of nine stories written that started on the bottom of the recto of the text with the four Ekotarigagama-type sutras as the primary text and then continues to the end of the verso to a point where you can see that it becomes very fragmentary, especially towards the right margin of the text. So the reconstruction of the recto by Mark Allen in his edition in the Gandharan Buddhist text series allows us to ascertain the placement of these fragments on the verso. A significant amount of writing has been lost, as you can see here, particularly towards the bottom of the scroll and many points in the interpretation remain uncertain. So I'm just presenting it here in case you're able to help me out a little bit with some ideas. But I think also I'm presenting it because I want to give you some ideas of the challenge that's involved in interpreting these very fragmentary terse original stories. Now in this story, which I've given to you here in a kind of tentative in progress translation, we can see that there's a reference to the name of Ajata Shatru. And that's clearly preserved in the introductory formula and indicates that this avadana is set in ancient Magadha either during or shortly after the time of the historical Buddha. Now what's interesting about this story is that an enigmatic character named Yola Arutiga is introduced just after the name of Ajata Shatru. And that's what's highlighted here in this box. So this name, Yola Arutiga, is probably of Iranian derivation and suggests local innovation and deliberate anachronism in the composition of the narrative. Perhaps in an effort to link Shaka figures with Ajata Shatru and the four Mahasravakas, who are listed towards the bottom of the scroll as Shari Putra with Mogulana kind of supplied Mahakashapa and Aniruddha right before the formula for the expansion of the story. So the point I'd like you to take away here is that scribes and artisans employed different strategies to localize, incorporate, and appropriate diverse regional characters, groups, and settings. These summaries suggest a pattern in which local and regional associations with contemporary first century figures and settings in the milieu of the Northwestern borderlands are lost or diminished in the course of narrative transmission as doctrinal themes gain greater emphasis. This is a point that I presented at the last IABS meeting in Toronto. These story summaries written by scribal specialists belong to a stage of development when genre distinctions and characteristic structures were still very much in flux. The fragmentary condition of the Birchbark materials and the difficulty of identifying even partial literary parallels or versions makes interpreting the content of many of these stories an ongoing challenge, as you can see here. So in order to develop a better understanding of the broad range of previous birth stories that were circulating not only in Gandharan literary context, but also in visual media in the early centuries of the Common Era, I coordinated a collaborative research project, which Oric referred to in his introduction. And this project was a collaboration with Timothy Lenz, who I've been co-editing the remaining stories in the British Library collection with over the last many years, and also an art historian affiliated with the Royal Ontario Museum named David Jangoord. This project on Buddhist rebirth narratives in literary and visual cultures of Gandharan was funded by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation for Buddhist Studies through the American Council of Learned Societies. And this funding supported a global survey of Gandharan Jadaka images in museums, archives, and other collections, which David Jangoord supervised. We found in this survey over 170 images of identifiable Jadakas in Gandharan art. I've given you a list of around 14 or 15 of those stories. The list sometimes changes. But one thing to understand about the list is that this repertoire is dominated by images of the Deepankara's encounter with the Bodhisattva, which I'm going to be talking about shortly. But before talking about that major episode, which dominates the repertoire with between 120 and 130 images out of the 170 we were able to find, I'd like to just point out that we were able to make a couple of new identifications. Those new identifications are highlighted here as the Nalapana Jadaka, the story in which the leader of the monkeys brings his troop down to a well and notices that there are footprints all around the well and bones. And so he tells the other monkeys not to go down and drink out of the well with their mouths, but to use straws. And that's what's depicted here, and because the well is inhabited by Arakshasa. We also know this story from Kanaganahali, from Kizal outside of Kucha in Central Asia. But the Gandharan depiction is a bit different, because instead of looking as if from above at Kanaganahali and in Kizal, the viewer sees the scene horizontally. Another story is that of the Naga, or the young elephant, who was raised by an ascetic. But then as the elephant grows up, he comes back to destroy the ascetic's hut. And that we were able to find in a couple of different Gandharan images, including this one from the archives of the Museum Nacional Orientale in Rome. So the point I'd like to emphasize is that from this survey of Jadakas, or so-called Jadakas identified in Gandharan art, we have a unique situation where we have not only very early texts, but also images of overlapping genres of rebirth stories from one cultural region, from Gandhara, from around the first century to third or so century CE, when these Gandharan images or Gandharan sculptures were produced. So the other point I'd like to emphasize is that our project really adopted a holistic approach for a comprehensive understanding of narrative transmission in written and visual media of Gandhara. Now, this approach is necessary because when we compare this list of previous birth narratives in Gandharan art with the avadanas and purviyogas summarized in Gandhari manuscripts, only one of these stories, that is to say, the well-known story of Vishwantara, are in Pali Vishwantara, is summarized in a Gandhari series of purviyogas edited and translated by Timothy Lanz here. And so you have some of the images from the Peshawar museum of the Gandharan sculptures. And then you have the literary version, which again gives you an example of the very terse nature of these avadana and purviyogas summaries. So this point of overlap, of singular overlap, demonstrates the need to utilize various types of sources to clarify which stories were drawn from a larger pool of orally transmitted stories in Gandhara. So it's also necessary or helpful, I would say, to incorporate the outside testimony of Chinese pilgrims' accounts from a somewhat later period after the fifth century. These records of Chinese visitors to Gandhara and the Northwest testified a pattern of distribution and localization of rebirth narratives in the ritual landscapes of Gandhara and the Northwest, which came to be regarded as a second holy land, as Fushe terms it. Koichi Shinohara developed a typology for translocating narratives of previous Buddhas and births of the Bodhisattva in Gandhara in order to construct sacred places outside the greater mahogany homeland of Shakyamuni. And this is part of a three-fold typology, along with narratives about conversions of autochthonous naga and yaksha deities and also narratives about movable objects used by the Buddha, such as the contact relic, his Paribogika Datu, of the Begging Bull, which was Koichi Shinohara's specific focus on this article on the story of the Buddha's Begging Bull imagining biography and sacred places. So what I'd like to do now today in the time that I have remaining is to take stock of the significance of previous birth stories by offering hypotheses about the selective emphasis and elaboration in Gandhara and written and visual media. And I'll be making three points. The first point, or the first hypothesis, is that macrohistorical narratives proposing karmic links between past and present births of the Buddha in place where the Buddha was previously barned, seen, and heard in the terrain of Gandhara and neighboring regions. Thus, rebirth narratives integrate Northwestern regional places and figures, including contemporary first century characters in Gandhari, Avedanas, and Purviyogas into the life stories and genealogies of the Buddha and previous Buddhas. The second point I'd like to make is that narrative models shaped and contributed to the development of Buddhist religious aspirational and devotional practices, including making vows, pranidanas, to realize goals of Buddhahood by embarking on the bodhisattva path. These stories certainly also encourage ethical action, such as by providing an impetus for patrons to make donations. But the use of narratives as didactic tools to promote the material interest of the monastic community to lay audiences was only part of their function. The third point I'll make is that rebirth narratives as well as other narrative genres, which were embedded or localized at regional shrines, facilitated Buddhist transmission beyond the Northwestern borderlands. If aspirations to embark on the path of becoming the Buddha could be realized there in this frontier region of the Northwest, it could happen anywhere, even much further away from Shakyamuni's homeland beyond the frontiers of South Asia. So I'll be applying these three hypotheses to two major examples. The examples of the Siddhasana story, which is the version of the bodhisattva's name in the Gandharipurva Yoga, as well as to Dipankara's encounter with figures named as Megha in the Mahavasthus, Dipankara Vastu, Sumati in the Divyavadana, in the Dharmaruchi Avadana, and as Sumeda in the Pali Nidhana Katha. So first, though, before coming back to the Siddhasana Purva Yoga, I'll talk about the Dipankara episode. So this story is one in which a young ascetic encountered the previous Buddha Dipankara. And when he encountered the previous Buddha Dipankara, he made offerings of flowers, of padmas, which he attained from a kind of flower girl, and then bowed down so that the Buddha Dipankara did not have to walk through the mud that was created by a tempest. And so a big part of the story is that at this point, the young ascetic, Megha or Sumati or Pali Sumeda, makes a vow, a pranidhana, to become a Buddha. And then that's paired with a prediction, a vyakarana, by the Buddha Dipankara that that will, in fact, happen over the course of many births. So what's particular about this Dipankara, this story of encounter with the previous Buddha Dipankara, is that we do not find it summarized in extant Gandhari, avadhanas, and poor viyogas, at least in the British Library collection, despite its dominance of the visual repertoire of Gandharan rebirth narratives. However, Dipankara is listed as the first of the previous Buddhas in a Gandhari version of the Bahubutaka Sutra in a scroll in the US Library of Congress being edited by Richard Solomon. Now, Vincent Tournier has drawn attention to this Gandhari version as the earliest evidence, the text and evidence of the kind of sub-classification of Bahubutaka Sutras incorporated into the Mahavastu and other Buddhist texts. The episode of the Bodhisattva encountering Dipankara, although not included in the Pali Jataka collection, that's to say it's in the Nidhana Kata instead, can be considered a rebirth narrative in the broad sense. Although it's not technically a Jataka, according to the Pali classification, and scholars like Dieter Schlingloff do not classify it as a really classify it more with the life story of Shakyamuni Buddha so that the term Dipankara Jataka tends to be restricted to the conventions of Gandharan art history more than anything else. Now, in Gandharan art, the encounter with Dipankara very often prefaces the events of Shakyamuni's present life story, making its position in the iconographic program of Gandharan stupas quite extraordinary. So in other words, even though you can't see it here, when you do look at stupas with many different life events depicted around the drum, oftentimes that series starts with Dipankara's encounter, or the encounter with Dipankara. Like you see here in these images from the British Museum right next door. So depending on how the narrative scenes in false gables are counted, the Dipankara encounter is among the top five narratives in Gandharan art, just after the birth, the departure, and the Mahaparinirvana of the Buddha Shakyamuni. So it easily exceeds the number of depictions of other pivotal events, including the awakening under the Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya and the first teaching in the deer park at Sarnath, as well as other pivotal events in Shakyamuni's Hagueography. So in terms of my first point about how the Dipankara episode relates to macrohistorical connections between the Buddhas and present lives, it's clear that the genealogy of previous Buddhas and the extended life story of the Bodhisattva essentially begins with this encounter with Dipankara, which is localized by Chinese pilgrims, including Fashen in the early fifth century, in Nagarajara. Nagarajara, as you can see from the map, is located in the Kabul River Valley, just upstream from Gandhara proper, and on the way to the Hindu Kush passes that you see here on the map. Now the second point about what the Dipankara's prediction of future Buddhahood contributes to the development of Buddhist practice, I would follow Vincent Tornier in pointing out that Megha's aspirational vow, his Pranidhana, and Dipankara's Vyakarana, his prediction, sets the pattern for aspiring to Buddhahood in the interlinked biographies of other previous Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Finally, why is embedding or emplacing the encounter with Dipankara important for the transmission of Buddhism beyond Gandhara? I would say that this localization of Megha's meeting with Dipankara and aspiring to Buddhahood, which might be considered within a range of Buddhological developments in the early century CE related to the generation of the thought of awakening, necessary for pursuing the Bodhisattva path in a Gandharan environment, demonstrates that one can set forth on this path anywhere, that undertaking this vow does not necessarily entail meeting the historical Buddha Shakyamuni in the heartland of ancient Magadha. Since the genealogy of previous Buddhas in past eras was expanded and incorporated the future Buddha Maitreya, the franchise for making Pranidhana vows to aspire to Buddhahood, is consequently also expanded backwards and forwards in time and outwards from Shakyamuni Buddha's homeland in ancient Magadha and Kosala. So as I've already noted, the story of the prince who gives everything away, known in the Gandhari Purvayoga summary as Sudashna in Sanskrit as Vishwantara and in Pali as Vesantara, is the only story summarized in the BL Gandhari series of Purvayogas and also depicted in Gandharan art. So here I've shown images in the British Museum from the site of Jamalgarhi in the Peshawar Basin. Now here I should qualify that it's the second story in the series of Purvayogas edited by lens, but it's not explicitly labeled as a Purvayoga. And the protagonist's name, Sudashna, or Sudasha, with a kind of diacritic over the top of the retroflex asha, which would correspond to retroflex n, like in terms of when we transcribe the name Vishnu, it's with a similar character. It doesn't correspond to the Pali or Sanskrit forms of Vishwantara or Vesantara. So as discussed by lens, the difference in the name, Sudasha, aligns the Gandhari summary more closely with Sogdian and other Central Asian versions, as well as with the Chinese transcriptions of the character's name in earlier translations, thus serving as a key piece of mounting evidence to confirm the Gandhari hypothesis that Gandhari was the underlying language of the initial phases of Chinese translation. So the sequences of the Vishwantara or Sudashna story in Gandharan sculptures from Jamalgarhi and perhaps also from Sherri Balul in the Peshawar Museum place this narrative a very distant second, along with sculptures of the Shyama Jataka after the Deepankara episode in Gandharan art. So according to our survey of Gandharan Jataka's, both the Sudashna story of giving everything away, including the royal elephant, the children, the chariot and even his wife, as well as the Shyama Jataka, which I'll discuss very briefly, both have about 10 or 12 different images, whereas if we compare that to the Deepankara story with over 120, it's very small, they're not represented quite as well. So in terms of asking questions about how the Sudashna story fits into a kind of macro historical perception of karmic links between the Buddha's past and present lives, in the well-known Pali Jataka collection, Vesantara is the Bodhisattva's penultimate birth before Siddhartha as elaborated in the final and longest Jataka in the Mahanapata of the Theravada or Mahavehara tradition. It's still the most widely known narrative in Southeast Asia and while it's not possible to extrapolate from the Pali collection or from contemporary Southeast Asia to Gandhara, this story may have served as a bookend, as suggested by lens, to the Deepankara episode as a conclusion to the extended previous birth stories before Shakyamuni. Now as far as what the Sudashna story contributes to the development of Buddhist aspirational and devotional practices in Gandhara, it is the paramount example of selfless donation but limiting its interpretation to a functional explanation of ethical principles is insufficient. If it is a literary, a Buddhist literary and visual epic as proposed by Richard Gombrich and Margaret Cohn in their translation of the Pali version which is depicted and labeled in multiple panels at Kanaganahali and in expanded visual format such as Sanchi and Ajanta, it's not so surprising to find the narrative in Gandhara media. According to Chinese accounts but not of Vaishan but of later Chinese visitors, this narrative is also localized at shrines around Palusha which remains kind of uncertain as to its exact location. Elizabeth Errington proposed locating it around Sherry Balol but Fushe and others who follow him have instead proposed to identify the events in the story with landscape features around Shabasgarhi where we find a set of Shokin major rock edicts at the foot of the Karamar spur of hills. Now why is embedding the story of the prince who gives everything away important for transmission within and beyond Gandhara? So consolidation of Buddhist sacred geography in Gandhara between the visits of Vaishan and Chuanzong overlaps with the growth of monasteries and shrines in the Peshawar basin. The localization of famous episodes of this narrative attracted local and long distance pilgrims just as episodes associated with the exiles of the epic heroes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata stimulated the growth of Hindu pilgrimage to regions beyond the Ganga Yomena Doab in Northern India. Gandhara and Buddhists were not the only ones to play this game as Fushe and Lamat dismissed the process of generating sacred geography. But their agency in claiming their own place as a home for the Buddha's previous births was obviously successful and did not prevent other regions beyond South Asia from staking their own claims. Okay, so since my time is short, I'm going to jump to my conclusions instead of talking about the Shyama and Ekashringha Jatakas which were also located in kind of the ritualized topography of the mountain passes separating the Peshawar basin from the Swat Valley. And for discussions of the Shibi Jataka and also the Viagra Jataka which are not only depicted in fragments of Gandharan art but also in petroglyphs from the upper Indus region at sites like Chalas Bridge and Shatiyal, you'll have to come to the seminar on Saturday. Okay, so in terms of giving some conclusions to my talk I'd like to review the hypotheses about selective emphases and elaboration of previous birth narratives in Gandharan texts, images and landscapes. The integration of Buddhist macro-historical paths into Gandharan and adjacent regional contexts was a way to domesticate rebirth narratives by making homes or dwellings for previous Buddhas and previous births as the Bodhisattva in settings in the Northwestern borderlands. So here I'm drawing upon this model of literary domestication of Avadhanas and Jatakas proposed by Todd Lewis for Noir Buddhists in the Kathmandu Valley. And I'm also drawing upon this idea of a theory of religion developed by Thomas Tweed which he called Crossing and Dwelling in which there's basically an impetus to situate religions in both time and place and also for religions to move beyond their original times and places to other regions. The second hypothesis about rebirth narratives as models of and far Buddhist religious practices of aspiration and devotion, those, that kind of hypothesis is most strongly supported by Megas or Sumatis or Sumedas encounter with the previous Buddha, Dipankara and also by the Sudashna Purvayoga. Secondary story compilations of Gandhari, Avadhanas and Purvayogas belong to a transition from oral storytelling to formalization of standard Avadhana packages when perhaps these doctrinal emphases were not quite so clearly pronounced. The placement of Jataka sequences in Gandharan sculptures on staircases to paths for circumambulating stupas along the production of Pata can be related to the idea of realizing aspirations of the Bodhisattva career through a series of births by taking steps on the path to that kind of aspirational level. Embedding or emplacement of rebirth narratives in Gandharan landscapes facilitated Buddhist mobility and transmission in multiple directions. The localization of these stories crisscrossed between ancient Magadha and Gandhara, between Gandhara and Bhaktriya along Khushay's Vyal route and between Gandhara, Taxiliswat, Central Asia and China just like the two-way traffic of missionaries from the Northwest and Chinese pilgrims who followed the routes where many of these episodes from these stories were commemorated. Thank you.