to Goddard, even if it isn't after a fire, and try to zap a few sources, a few outcrops in different places, and see if it is just one monolithic block, or it is something, as we will see, more varied. This is just a picture when I was there in winter, and it's all obsidian, so just have fun looking at this gigantic piece of obsidian, and it is crumbling a little bit, but it's still massive, and you can see that on the top there is some vegetation, and there is also fauna, wild animals. We move very briefly before showing you some raw data to the materials that I analyzed. There are about 699 pieces of obsidian in terms of artifacts from sites, both on obsidian cliff and around it. I had just two pieces of geological sources, that is materials that were not artifacts. As I said, the plan was to return and do really the proper geological survey, which didn't work yet. You can see that there is an extreme variety of shapes and forms and uses, and probably some are from workshops, some are definitely from settlements, some are from more complex sites, which were reused. You can see that I tried to track also some of the known obsidian evidence. I'm not doing a typological study, but at least I hope one day to be able to describe some of the stuff. Not all has been described, not all has been published. You can see here in this case, that is what looks like a small core as well. I tried to analyze as much as I could, and there is much more undoubtedly to be done, and also previous publications and also reports that the National Park Commission that should be integrated, and it will take some time. I move then to the first graph, that is probably what you were waiting for. This is actually a slide that I take from my past presentation, where I was suggesting this is a simple principal component. You can see that there is a scatter of pieces, and then what could have been two main groups in representing obsidian cliff. That was my preliminary analysis of what I could do, just trying to see if I could distinguish particularly the outliers. I wasn't particularly interested in obsidian cliff yet. We move to a more complex principal component, where I started doing some more work comparing different elements. I also included and excluded iron in this case. I think that it is slightly included, but obviously these big dots represent a number of materials. Don't think that 671 samples are clearly visible. You have these big dots that hide in reality generally smaller groups, but you can see obsidian cliff. You can see the big group there that we had seen in the previous slide that is now split in two, if not three. It is quite interesting because again, everybody assumes that obsidian cliff is a single monolithic piece. Nothing has been done around it. Because of this variance that you can see chemical variance, it is causing some problems in assigning the artifacts to actually one source or the other, because obsidian cliff has values that vary a lot. I hope with this research, once I can do the geological survey and gather some geological samples to be able to distinguish it better. For now, you can see that things look promising. There is more variability, more variance than supposed, and I hope also to be able to get some contextual data from some of the sites and so understand, for example, when some sites were used, not in terms of broad period, but hopefully also of a seasonality that would be useful, and particularly associating together sites that were connected to production and sites that were instead linked to some kind of consumption. As I said, obsidian cliff is essentially a quarry, but also it's a hunting ground and there is all the area surrounding it that is still beautiful, and it's still used by some Native American communities, for example, for hunting bison, and so it's still very active. I show you from the main group, I still at this point created like one, just to show some variability there. You can see some averages, minimum, maximum, and this just a tiny slice of the table, it would continue as you can imagine. It's just to show you a little bit what kind of data I have. I don't have a data, because obviously you should scroll, I can share eventually the headings, but it's not really important. The first column, as you can imagine, is just the basic elements, iron, and then the trace elements, and others are simply columns kind of doing analysis of specific elements. We can move to a smaller group, and here I don't have really averages or other things, because as I said, I'm still working to try to decide, I barely decided that I probably want to split, at least tentatively obsidian cliff, and these smaller groups that we have seen as a single dot, so there's just one representation, basically, what one dot would have been, and you can see here it's a group of a dozen essentially artifacts. So don't assume that there are like 50 pieces from obsidian cliff and a scatter of a few. We don't have for some really any kind of comparison, even in the literature. So some of these smaller groups, and I can go very briefly back possibly to this, some of these outliers can be recognized or attributed to some source within the park or just outside or even hideout, but some are still not quite as clear in the sense that they are in between possibly, and that is because nobody has done a proper geological survey of the park, and I would like with the knowledge of the people that are really to go and do and zap as many outcrops that they know as possible. And so let's really wrap up a little bit this presentation. I'm really sorry that I can show as new thing only really this idea of obsidian cliff being split and talk a little bit more about the plans. I was hoping that at least some of the geological survey would have been completed, and I could actually confirm this idea that obsidian cliff is not just one piece of obsidian that is homogeneous. I can't do that yet. We all know why. But it is quite intriguing, and it will be important also to assign the materials that are dug in different areas of the park and just outside the small number of outliers. I have identified Cougar Creek as one of the major sources outside obsidian cliff that is known in the literature, but I have to tell you that again I couldn't really get samples from there, and there is also geological samples, and there is also the issue that there are more outcrops pretty much everywhere in the park. And I'm finishing really with the last bit saying that obsidian cliff as you know is an important even national monument. It's not easy to access it. It will require a special permission, and I hope to do so as quickly as possible. I'm really concerned particularly with unknown or uncertain sources. Just looking and re-looking at the data show that there are some at least. We don't have any patterns at this point that is based on chronology or type of use. Those will also have to come, and that's pretty much what I hope to tell you next time. I can't say much more other than really thank particularly the National Park Service for their help and support, and hopefully I will be back telling you more. Thank you all. Thank you Andrea. We have some questions. Yes, I think I can stop this here. Is this part of a master's or PhD program research? No, I'm a research fellow, so no. Nothing to do with that. It's my own program basically. I hope to bring some students there. I was hoping to do that, but it has been really hard. And as I said, it's not a place you can just go data on holiday. You need a special permission to access the National Monument of Obsidian Cliff. And so it takes six months to get that permission. And when I was basically planning it in the fall of 2019, then I said, well, I will probably send it out for early spring. And so early fall of 2020, I will go there because obviously it's subject to a lot of snow. So you can go there in winter. And during summer, the National Park is busy with the tourists. So you have basically something like a month, two weeks in between and two weeks in between spring and fall when you can do this research. And I just didn't manage to do it. But it's just a petty project that I wanted to expand with students and bring them there and show them around a little bit Yellowstone that I love. But yes, it's a pity. It's a project pending. Well, I'm sure many of us here can sympathize with the pending project, nature of things. A lot of us anxious to get out into the field. Oh, yes. Did Michael Kellett come on? No, he or so. Well, that ends a little early for us before our poster sessions happen. Those can be started at any time. People are inclined to poster in one of the assigned breakout room. Just a reminder that you can move freely about any of those rooms. The presenter will share their screen just like what's been happening today with the PowerPoints. It'll just be a single slide. You can engage with them using audio or the chat function. Keep in mind that if you post a chat to everyone, those questions and comments will be archived along with the video and we can revisit those. If you post them privately to the author or authors, those will not be archived. And also you're free to use the links that Nico just provided in the chat window to comment now if you like or comment later. I know many of you, it's reaching the middle of the night, early AMs for people. So I appreciate all of you staying on as late as you are and out the day. I'm also using this opportunity to kind of have a little announcements. So keep in mind we'll start the meeting tomorrow at 8.30 so people have time to log in. Also too, we neglected to mention this morning that the International Association for Obsidian Studies will have their annual meeting Sunday at the lunch hour in its own breakout room if you want to attend that meeting. I know many of you are members of that now or returning members and we want to share our appreciation then. So I'll just leave this window here and we'll just wait for the posters to begin. Feel free to ask any questions of any prior presentations as we finish the day. Thank you.


Let go of your past associations and let present trust direct the way If you stay fully present and you let go of all past references and past associations if you let go of all concerns and worries about the future all future planning and You give it all over to the spirit the spirit will take you more and more into the gateway of the present moment Which is the gateway to eternity or to the kingdom of heaven it's like Dropping deeper and deeper and deeper into a place of perfect safety perfect care perfect security and How amazing this journey is to know that you can drop in and become so present that all that remains is God's divine presence


In the landmark Global Burden of Disease study, they compiled the top 20 causes of death and disability. Number one, on the list, was high blood pressure, two and three are smoke. The number four leading cause of loss of life and health was not eating enough fruit. Lack of exercise was number 10, then too much sodium, then not enough nuts and seeds, not enough whole grains, not enough vegetables. Number 18 was not getting enough long chain omega-3 fatty acids, like EPA and DHA, found in seafood due to their purported protective effect against heart disease. Even years ago, when this was published, however, they were already questioning the benefits of these fish fats as more and more randomized controlled trials put them to the test and they failed, culminating in the recent meta-analysis that I profiled previously that appeared to put the issue to rest. Cardiovascular protection isn't the only thing fish and fish oil consumption was hyped for, though. Omega-3s have also been touted to treat depression, but after taking into account all the negative results that went unpublished, there appears to be no benefit for major depression or for preventing suicide, as I explored previously in my video on fish consumption and suicide, but what about for the prevention of cognitive decline or dementia? The available randomized controlled trials show no benefit for cognitive function, for omega-3 supplementation in studies lasting from 6 months to 40 months among healthy older adults. It may sometimes even make things worse. Higher current fish consumption predicted worse cognitive performance and greater past fish consumption in childhood predicted slowed perceptual speed and reaction time. This may be due to neurotoxic contaminants in fish, such as mercury. We've known that the developing brain is particularly sensitive to the damaging effects of mercury, but maybe the aging brain is as well. This would explain results like this, where higher omega-3 levels were associated with high levels of cognitive impairment and dementia. More EPA found in the cognitively impaired and more DHA found in the demented, presumably because of pollutants like mercury and PCBs in seafood that have been related to cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. The same cognitive functions disrupted in adults, like attention, fine motor function, verbal memory, are similar to those previously reported in children exposed in the womb. And the adults exposed to mercury through fish consumption didn't just have like subtle EEG brainwave changes or something, but observable deficits in neurobehavioral performance measures. For example, poorer performance on tests of fine motor speed and dexterity, concentration, some aspects of verbal learning and memory were also disrupted by mercury exposure, and the greater the mercury levels, the worse they did. But look, this study was done downstream of a gold mining operation, a process that uses lots of mercury. Other such studies were done on people eating fish next to chemical plants or toxic spills or eating whale meat. What about a more mainstream population? In fact, an elite group of well-educated participants, really well-educated, most were corporate executives like CEOs, all living in Florida, and wealthy enough to afford so much seafood that at least 43% exceeded the EPA safety limit for mercury, and it had an effect. Excessive seafood intake, which they defined as like more than three or four servings per month of fish like tuna or snapper, elevates mercury levels and causes cognitive dysfunction. Not much, only about a 5% drop in cognitive performance, but a decrement that no one, let alone a health-conscious and achievement-oriented person, is likely to welcome. It's worth noting the irony of this situation, the fact that corporate executives who chose to over-consume seafood for health reasons instead sustained a drop in their executive functions as a result. Yet if a 4.8% drop in executive function due to excessive seafood intake occurs in highly functioning healthy adults with ample cognitive reserve, the major concern is whether similar mercury-level elevations in individuals already suffering from cognitive decline might result in substantially greater declines, particularly with cognitive decline dementia and seafood consumption on the rise.


Approximately 1.30 p.m. I was notified by my dispatch to come check the area of Giovanni's and Martin due to the fact there was heavy smoke rising from the building. Upon my arrival I observed that the smoke was coming out and it was black smoke, heavy smoke. I notified my dispatch to get the fire department in or out immediately to check the scene. Our fire department members made the entry and actually knocked the fire down and requested assistance from Maytown Fire Department for manpower and after they arrived they continued and just done a hot spots. The fire does seem suspicious and foul play is suspected and it's been handed over to the arson investigator with the Conduct State Police.