Good morning. Welcome to this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. Today, the commission will consider one agenda item, the final rule to amend 16 CFR Part 1031, also known as Commission Participation and Commission Employee Involvement in Voluntary Standards. We're going to follow our normal process and start with five minutes per commissioner for any questions that they might have of staff. And sitting before us, we have Mr. J. Howell, the Deputy Executive Director for Safety Operations and Ms. Mary House, an attorney in the Regulatory Affairs Division of the Office of the General Counsel. After the questions, then we'll turn to consideration and deliberation of the item in front of us. So I have no questions. Commissioner Adler. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no questions. Commissioner Robinson. I just have a couple questions. I first of all want to be sure I'm clear and I don't care which of you which of you answered this question, but in terms of how the request for a more involvement, whether it's voting or chairing a committee, it sounds implicitly like it can only come from the staff member who's serving on the committee. Is that how this is envisioned, or do we see the request possibly coming from another source or sources? Excuse me. Commissioner Robinson. It's staff's perspective that there's nothing in the proposed regulation that would prohibit a request coming from an outside party. Given the fact that there are many considerations that OEX needs to make before approving staff's participation, either in a leadership role or in a voting role, that should a request be received from the outside, there would be discussions with the relevant staff member who participates in that voluntary standards work and only upon agreement that there is a perceived value in us participating or voting as suggested by some outside party, then that request would then be triggered through the normal process by request from staff member up through OEX. Okay, and I guess I just take that one step further and go from the outside party to the inside party. Is it envisioned that people within the agency, whether they're commissioners, management, or even the executive director herself, could decide that this would be a good voluntary rules committee in which our people should either vote or chair? Certainly, you know, the various considerations that need to be made as to whether or not we believe there's value to the commission mission from either managing, leading, or voting in voluntary standards effort. Those suggestions can come from anywhere in the agency. Certainly, there are many different perspectives. I think collectively, if a decision is made that there is value and it advances the commission's mission, we would then run that back through the normal process that's defined in the proposed regulation. And Mr. Hall, could you comment just in whatever form you think is appropriate? But I'm very interested in some comments on the timing of when the decision would be made with respect to obviously, we don't decide that one of our people will chair a committee, but rather we decide that they're eligible or we decide that they will have the vote. Is that something that you envision as being made at the inception of the committee being formed? Or a rule being reopened? And part of the reason I'm asking this is I wonder if the timing wouldn't address some of the concerns that were voiced but in some of the comments about conflict of interest. Because obviously, if we're just deciding participation before there's even something on the table, that would take care of some of that. Yeah, I believe that one can imagine a scenario where the commission requested a standards development organization to form an effort to develop a voluntary standard and at that point should the decision be made that we would like to at least compete for the leadership position within the rules of that particular standards development organization, of course that's an elected position, we could then make it known that we have a candidate that is available, should they be selected to participate in that leadership role. That could take place should we initiate a voluntary standards effort or should we become aware that there is a soon to be open position in that leadership position. Once again, given all the considerations that are in the regulation for OEX to make, should those be made before that decision is made by the SDO, we could then make it known that we had a candidate that was available for that position. And would you envision the timing for us deciding if our staff member would have a vote being different from our staff member being eligible for leadership? I think the decision on whether or not that staff believes there's value to having a vote is, it's been envisioned as being at least initially triggered by the staff member with the most knowledge of what's going on within that voluntary standards effort. You know, whether that takes place early in the development process or later, I have to imagine that upon our decision to participate in a particular voluntary standard that is of great interest to the commission that that decision would be made sooner than later. I don't envision a lot of situations that we would wait until the SDO was prepared to vote on a particular ballot before we made that decision. I think we would want to want that to be known sooner than later. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson. Commissioner Birkel. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, let me thank you. Last week, we had an extremely informational briefing, and I want to thank the staff who were at the table. There were all kinds of staff at the table, but in particularly Rick and Patty Edwards and Mary House and Arthur Lee for really sharing their insights. Patty Pollitzer was there and a whole host of other people. But I do want to express my appreciation. Those briefings are extremely helpful and informative, and I know there are pain in the neck sometimes, but I do appreciate it, and I want to express my appreciation to Patricia, who put it all together. I have a couple of questions. I just wanted to follow up on some of Commissioner Robinson's questions. So I think that's a good point about what if a staff approached the Executive Director, and they are participating in that Standards Committee currently, but another staff member is, would there be any conversation or interaction with the person who's on that Standards Committee or participating in that Standards Committee before a decision was made to grant the second person eligible to vote or to take a leadership position? Given the extremely limited resources of the commission, it's highly unlikely that we would have a voting and a non-voting member on any particular voluntary standards activity. Certainly if a staff member has something to contribute to the development of a standard, whether or not they are actually the participating staff member on that particular committee, the participation and the recommendations that staff currently makes to voluntary standards organizations are seldom done alone, but in consultation with other technical staff, their peers, certainly the amount of expertise required to develop a performance standard is broad and oftentimes exceeds the expertise and the training of any one individual staff member. So certainly if a staff member felt that there was a need to vote, whether or not they needed to cast that vote or the current representative could take their input in formulating their vote, that might be the more appropriate way to handle that situation, but I can't envision many cases where we would actually have two staff members sitting on a voluntary standard committee in a voting and non-voting capacity with the exception of should we have someone in a leadership role, which is more of an administrative guide-the-process type role, we then envision the need to have a second staff member then participating as an active member of that development process and then either voting or non-voting as decided by the executive director. Thank you. And another follow-up question from Commissioner Robinson's line of questioning, as you were explaining to her interaction with these standard committees and the organizations, you were using the word we on several occasions and so I wanted to just clarify, is that an editorial we or is that there's any indication that you know, whether it's the executive director or leadership would interact with the standards committees or are you speaking for the staff person who would be interacting? It was probably more of an editorial we and reflecting the fact that seldom is a vote reflective of an individual's opinion but is much, much broader than that. It's not the position of OEX to direct the vote. That, as I said, is a vote of the participating staff member in consultation with his or her peers as to what the most appropriate vote is given the objective of the agency as a whole and our mission. Thank you. And one last question. Has any consideration been given about what standards committees we may think would be beneficial to have a leadership role? We have not at this point. I think that's a case-by-case analysis that needs to be done. We certainly have had some experience in, let's say, motivating certain voluntary standards efforts where it appears that activity has begun to drag somewhat. Those tend to be opportunities for commissioned staff to engage to move the process forward, perhaps in a more timely way. There may be other situations where, for example, we've had situations where the industry was new to the voluntary standards process and really didn't understand the process in general. There was no one within that industry group or advocate group that had the experience in leading the process forward. There could be value in staff taking that kind of leadership role just to provide the guidance to these new parties as to how to move the process forward and develop a standard. Thank you. And I apologize. I do have one more question because just can you speak to the 104s because that's really a different set of issues, I think, compared to all the rest of the voluntary standards. Has there been any contemplation about how we would handle 104s if they would be handled differently from any of the other committee participation? There has not. We have not sat down and taken a list of our current voluntary standards activity and made any decisions or done any review on those that we believe there may be value in us taking these leadership roles. I think once the commission makes their decision and provides direction in consultation with our new voluntary standards coordinator and staff, we will then make those calls at that point in time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Buerkle. Because we received a little bit of snow in the preceding days, Commissioner Mohorovic's flight was cancelled and he was not able to be here in person, but he is joining us by phone. Commissioner Mohorovic, do you have any questions? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have one having to do with, or one maybe a short series, but thank you very much first for accommodating me by phone giving the weather situation this week. My question is the following. One of the commenters pointed out an internal set of procedures regarding one particular SBO that the commenter felt might be in conflict, if in fact the CPSC does move forward and provides for the ability for staff to vote and or take a leadership position. But yes, I also recognize the fact that in comments from that very SBO, the SBO did not point out that that would be a problem with their internal rules. Could staff please evaluate on how that comment was considered and whether or not there was any potential follow-up with the SBO's internal procedures that were brought into question by a different third party commenter? I believe Commissioner Mohorovic is talking about section 19.2.5 of ASTMs. Regulations is governing ASTM technical committees, and that provision is actually part of ASTM's antitrust policies, basically. And what it states is that neither ASTM nor any committee, subcommittee or task group, shall make any effort to bring about the standardization of any product or service for the purpose or with the effect of preventing the manufacturer's sale of any product or service not conforming to a specified standard or artificially without legitimate business justification inflating the price at which a product or service may be offered for sale or sold. So this is really about preventing participants of the ASTM process from colluding to prevent the sale of the product to other industry members through the voluntary standards process. So they're not going to, they're saying you can't use the voluntary standards to prevent, to collude and prevent someone else from selling the product. Using a voluntary standard. It's for that purpose. It doesn't really impinge on the commission's separate authorities and rule-making procedures. So we didn't see it as having any merit or basis for, you know, preventing the rule or prohibiting the rule. Excellent. Thanks for the elaboration. Those are, that concludes my question, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic. Are there any further questions? No, we're good. Okay, so now we'll move to consideration of the package. Are there any amendments or motions to be made? Mr. Chairman, I have a motion. Commissioner Berkel. The text of this motion was circulated yesterday, so I think it's familiar to everyone and it's no surprise as to what my motion involves. But the gist of the motion is to require that the executive director report to the commission regarding the voting and leadership activities allowed by the final rule. And I want to just emphasize we're not looking for the specific vote staff member took. We're asking for whether or not, I don't want to say the word permission, but it is permission or the authority to participate and have the vote and also be in a leadership position. So that's what we're speaking to in the motion. The motion contemplates an initial report that would cover the first year of experience under the amended regulation. It would not be due until 14 months after the first authorization of voting or leadership activities by the staff. And so we, the beginning when the clock starts ticking would be after the first authorization is given so that the clock just doesn't run and there's no data and there's no information. The initial report would give the staff's assessment of the newly authorized activities. Has the ability to vote made any difference? And if so, how? If staff members have had the opportunity to lead a voluntary standard effort, has the opportunity paid off in ways that are useful to the commission? Has the undertaking of leadership activities meant that the commission has expended any additional resources? Is the experience different from the standard development organizations or different staff members? To encourage candor, I would suggest that it may be appropriate to classify this report for official use only. If our staff participation in these activities begins slowly, as I believe it should, there may not be enough experience to draw many conclusions after just one year. In that event, I would anticipate possibly asking for further assessment after another year of experience. After the initial report is submitted to the commission, the commission would be kept up to date on which staff members are authorized to vote or to participate in leadership activities. The logical vehicle for this activity would be in the, what we call the V-STAR report, the report on the voluntary standards activity that's supposed to be issued twice a year. And I will, you know, acknowledge that we have fallen back behind in issuing this lately, so I'm hopeful and optimistic that we will get this back on schedule as we move forward and include information on these topics. And then in these future reports, this motion is again intended not to require information about how the staff is voted, but only who is authorized to vote or who is going to assume leadership positions with respect to the various voluntary standards of interest to the commission. And I am pleased to say that on Friday, Nancy and I met with the executive director, Patricia, at length and discussed this, and the executive director is in support of this motion. Thank you, Commissioner Burke. Was there a second? I second. Thank you, Commissioner Adler. We'll turn to discussion now on the motion, and I'll start by just mentioning, did I hear that you would suggest it be officially for official use only? Yes, I think that that would encourage candor. Excuse me, Mr. Chair, does everyone have a copy of the motion in the audience? Do you want me to read the motion? Sure. I'll yield for you to go ahead and read the motion. I apologize. That's okay. I move that the executive director be directed to submit to the commission no later than 14 months after any staff member is authorized to vote or to assume a leadership position in accordance with 16 CFR Part 1031, a report setting forth the staff's assessment of the activities so authorized. The report shall summarize the staff's view as to the value of any voting and leadership activity occurring within the 12-month period covered by the report. The report shall describe the resources expended as a result of the voting and leadership activities during the same period. The report shall include any recommendations the staff may have regarding voting or leadership activities in light of their experience. After submission of the staff's report, the executive director is directed to include information about staff voting and leadership activities in each voluntary standard activities report. Thank you, Commissioner Buerkle. And so, picking up where I was, did you suggest you think it should be for official use only? I think it would be, I think more useful to the commission in terms of candor and staff's willingness to speak up as to what their experience was. So would you be open on the third line after it says 16 CFR Part 1031 in the comma and then it says A, inserting for official use only report? I would be fine with that. Okay. So I would suggest that as part of the motion. I have no further questions or comments on the motion. I do plan to support it. Commissioner Adler? I want to thank Commissioner Buerkle for doing something that I think is really important for the commission and that I think we do a very good job but we can always improve and that's to evaluate something once we've decided to take a step forward. The only issue I really have is I hope our executive director can remember to keep the clock running after we commence the voluntary standard activity. I will also add that generally with respect to having a report filed, I anticipate personally that we will rely on staff to chair committees or to act in a voting manner not very often and so it may be quite a while before we get enough information compiled to have this kind of evaluation but I think this is an excellent motion I plan to support it. Commissioner Robinson? I would also like to thank Commissioner Buerkle for this motion and I think it's a great idea and I echo Commissioner Adler's comments. Well I don't see how we're going to expend resources, additional resources if we have the voting right we certainly would be expending potentially significant resources if we actually chair to commit, if our staff chair to committee and I think evaluating the value of both of these is important and thank you and I support it. Thank you Commissioner Robbins. Commissioner Mohorovic? Thank you Mr. Chairman. I don't have any questions on the motion but appreciate the work by Commissioner Buerkle and I have no further questions. Good Commissioner Buerkle, any further comment? I know only that I would, first of all let me say I appreciate my colleagues support of the amendment and the motion excuse me and then just would include the Chairman's amendment to my motion with regards to for official use only. Thank you Commissioner Buerkle. Hearing no further discussion on the motion we'll now take a vote. Commissioner Adler how do you vote? I. Commissioner Robinson? I. Commissioner Buerkle? I. Commissioner Mohorovic? I. And I vote aye. The motion as amended has been adopted. Are there any further amendments or motions? Commissioner Mohorovic anything? Nothing Mr. Chairman, thank you. Okay now we'll turn to final passage or at least comments or any thoughts and we will have closing statements if necessary but any we'll go around and see if there's any further thoughts before we vote on the final package. Commissioner Adler? Nothing till closing comments and I don't have very many of those. Commissioner Robinson? Nothing until closing comments and I don't have many of those. Commissioner Buerkle? Nothing further. Commissioner Mohorovic? Nothing further Mr. Chairman. Okay we'll now turn to the final vote on the staff draft plan before the commission. Commissioner Adler how do you vote? I. Commissioner Robinson? I. Commissioner Buerkle? I. Commissioner Mohorovic? I. And I vote aye. The ayes are five, the nays are zero. The underlying package has been adopted. I will now turn to closing statements. I'm sorry the motion let me just clarify the vote for the general counsel says something the vote was on both passage and to publish in the federal register. Do I need to call it again or are we good? We're good. Okay so I wanted to clarify that. I only have a few comments to make. I want to thank first the staff for the work that went into this package. Rick McCallion from the office of hazard identification reduction. Mary House from the office of general counsel. Two staff members Mr. J. How from the executive director's office and then Dwayne Ray who is in the room somewhere I believe who had a key role in this back. Both serving also in the executive director's office but prior to that when he was the director of the office of hazard identification and reduction. This came out of a GAO report from 2012. I view it as a helpful step in the process. We are oriented by statute to defer to the voluntary standards process when it is both effective and it's substantially complied with on a day to day basis. There's probably maybe beyond the office of compliance. Nothing more that our staff can impact than what goes on on the voluntary standards across the board day in and day out. There's a tremendous amount of safety value that is derived from that work. And we enjoy the collaborative process that exists in that process. Both in terms of the consumer groups, the industry groups, a lot of academics and safety experts and of course our staff participate in that. And it is an important effort to try to advance safety. I do think as I mentioned these are relatively small changes. I think it was good for the commission to take a look at this regulation that we have on the books 1031 because it has been a while since it was amended. GAO did make what I believe to be helpful suggestions. We'll see how it plays out. But having the ability for our staff and certain instances on a case-by-case basis to try to move the process along, be helpful with either a leadership role or as necessary a vote I think will advance consumer safety and I'm eager to see how it plays out. And please that the commission is able to adopt this package. Thank you. Commissioner Adler. I thank you very much Mr. Chair and I want to thank the staff. I won't run through each of you name by name the way the chairman did but I echo and applaud his comments. And as the chairman points out this really did stem from a GAO report and it's a thoughtful report and I obviously have no problem with giving the staff the discretion in appropriate cases to act in an expanded way with respect to their authority. I do think voluntary standards are incredibly important at this agency and I'm delighted to see that our collaboration with the voluntary standards organizations in my judgment is as good as it's ever been and a lot of that has to do with the voluntary standards organizations and some of it has to do with CPSC. In fact, I think it is so critical if you reflect on the budget and the operating plan and these numbers are approximate. We have something on the order of 74, 75 voluntary standards proceedings in which we are involved. I'll contrast that with about 13, 14 or 15 mandatory standards activities and it tells you that there's a disproportionate amount of attention at least in terms of projects that the commission is giving to voluntary standards which I think is just fine if the process works well. I do think the process can be enhanced and improved which is why I am eager to see who the new voluntary standards coordinator is and I would like to make sure that that voluntary standards coordinator is well resourced and strongly supported by the commission. I think that's only to the good. The reason that I am a little bit cautious about this particular proposal is twofold. First of all, if you're talking about chairing a committee, as Mr. Howell was saying, the role in most of the voluntary standards proceedings for the chair of a committee is to be a facilitator, to be a broker. That's really not the role that I envision for CPSC staff. The role I envision for staff is that of experts, of that of trying to move the process forward and not necessarily juggling this demand versus that demand. I think we need to be more in the persuasion mode than in the impartial brokerage mode. With respect to the commission voting, I mean, if it really comes to having the commission vote making a difference, then I don't think we've succeeded in the voluntary standards proceeding because we should be in the proceeding every step of the way, providing expert data, providing support to the voluntary standards proceeding and making our case known. And I do think that our staff are so persuasive and so carry so much expertise that that's really what it takes. I don't think it takes a vote. That said, I'm entirely in favor of this proposal, as I say, because I see nothing wrong with adding an additional amount of discretion to the staff in those few appropriate cases. And again, I thank the staff for the excellent work and the excellent presentation. Thank you, Commissioner Adler. Commissioner Robinson. I couldn't possibly have understood before becoming commissioner how critically important the voluntary standards are to what we do here at the agency. And over the past two and a half years, I've certainly come to appreciate how much we rely on the voluntary standards committees to do our jobs. I've also come to appreciate how differently different standards bodies approach their duties in terms of jealously guarding the integrity of the process that results in a standard with their stamp of approval on it and how important the leadership of an individual committee is to its integrity. And I've come to appreciate how important our staffs active participation is to each of the committees on which we participate. I understand the CPFC staff has been explicitly prohibited for years from voting or leading voluntary standards committees and I'm delighted that we are taking this fresh look at our participation and the limits we've had on it. We certainly have had encouragements from a number of bodies. The OMB circular from 1998, A119, promoted federal agency participation in such bodies to ensure creation of standards that are usable by federal agencies and directed that, quote, agency representatives should participate actively and on an equal basis with other members of voluntary bodies, unquote. Congress and Public Law 104-113 in 1996 directed federal agencies to, quote, participate in voluntary consensus bodies in developing technical standards. And then as the Chair mentioned, of course, we had the GAO report that encouraged us to do this. Additionally, DOJ has opined that our participation at this level is not a conflict of interest and recently I and my staff and I believe other commissioners met with NIST and saw a chart of the involvement of other federal agencies and it's very clear that this is a government-wide effort to participate in the voluntary standards process. I'm satisfied that the recommended process by staff is something that takes care of the concerns that were raised by various comments. I am satisfied that the request that may come from a variety of sources inside and outside of the agency is the way to go and that the case-by-case evaluation of the request and the circumstances by the Executive Director before approval is the way to go. Requiring OEX approval for leadership positions or voting helps make sure that staff's involvement is consistent with the CPSC's resource needs and operating plans. And in terms of the comments raised about conflict of interest, I'm satisfied with OGC's assurances as to why such conflict does not exist. Voluntary standards are distinct from mandatory standards under the APA. Staff voting on a voluntary standard only reflects the staff's view. Only the commission may make a decision for the agency itself and keeping approvals at the Executive Director level helps keep the distinction between these two activities. I must note that after sitting through a meeting of a voluntary standards committee on which our staff was actively voicing disagreement with the direction of the committee, I certainly do not share the concern of one commenter that a manufacturer would never risk the ire of the CPSC by disagreeing. These committees have robust disagreements, which is exactly what we want these eight, these committees to have in order to formulate new rules. I would only disagree with commissioners Adler's comments about chairing the committee because I think from my and he, he has a great deal more experience with this, but from my experience of watching committees, the chair is very much the person who is in the place of moving something forward and delaying something can have as big of an effect as what actually comes out of the committee. So I think that the chairing of the committee can be very important in moving a standard forward. I would just like to say quickly to staff that I fully appreciate that taking a more active role on a standards committee, particularly taking a leadership position on a committee or a subcommittee, I appreciate as a large investment of time and effort and as is seeking clearance to do so, but I would very much encourage you to take initiative in requesting these responsibilities where appropriate. There are times that the CPSC's unique position compared to industry or consumer advocates is crucial for making sure a robust voluntary standard makes it through the often difficult and lengthy process of coming up with a voluntary standard. And I would only like to echo Commissioner Adler's comments about how excited I am about the hiring of the new voluntary standards coordinator who I'm hoping will be very proactively involved in monitoring and assisting the voluntary standards process so that we may maximize the benefits of standards committees to us doing our job to keep consumers safe. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson, Commissioner Buerkle. And by the way, thank you again for your motion and the time that you spent putting into this to make this a better process. Thank you, and if you all indulge me, I'll just enjoy this moment because it's rare when we get union, especially when you're in the minority. No, I'm just kidding. It's nothing but cordial. Let me first of all begin by thanking the staff for their work on the package again and for the briefing we had the other day. We do appreciate all your hard work. And I also want to thank all those who made this hearing possible today. Given the weather and the travel challenges and all of the schedule changes, this was no easy feat to accomplish. So I do say thank you to all of you. The voluntary standards process is really an excellent way for industry, our agency, and consumer advocates to work together to address technical product safety challenges and develop real life solutions to emerging safety issues. Every reputable business, I believe, wants its products to be safe and dependable. Voluntary standards development organizations are market-driven solutions developed by industry to address the complexity of the marketplace by introducing more efficient, reasoned, and cooperative mechanisms for developing safety standards. Congress, as was mentioned by my colleagues, recognizing the enormous strength of the value of the voluntary standard organizations and consensus standards, has expressed a strong preference for developing safety standards through voluntary standards process rather than rulemaking. Therefore, taking part in the voluntary standards process is one of CPSC's most important roles. I believe that the voluntary standards process helps to create a system that is fair and equitable. Standards development organizations allow for due process, for the balancing of various interest and ideas, for openness and for a consensus voting process. When this package came to us back in September of 2013, I was very new to the commission and really just learning about what the voluntary standards process was even about. But now two and a half years later, as you heard from my colleagues, I have a much deeper understanding and really an appreciation of the value of the standards process, the technical work and the time commitment by the SDO members in developing and maintaining quality standards. While I have voted today in favor of this proposal, I just want to express a couple of concerns that I have and just say that my vote doesn't come without some reservations. First, I question the need for the change in the staff of levels, excuse me, the staff levels of participation. The package did not come to us organically. It didn't come from the bottom up. It came from the top down through a GAO report. So one must ask, as I always do, what are we trying to fix? Doesn't appear that anything is broken. Another concern I have is that there could be confusion or conflict about how the staff's position relates to the commission's position. While staff actually votes on a voluntary standard, it is more important than ever to make it clear that their vote does not represent the views of any commissioner or the commission itself. This is not just boilerplate. This is crucial to everyone that they understand this. I believe that the potential for conflicts of interest is greatest in the case of voluntary standards for the durable nursery products, the 104s. The commission is required to adopt mandatory standards for these products and to consider the voluntary standards in doing so. So I urge the executive director to consider the complexity of that situation very carefully before authorizing any staff members to vote in that arena. Finally, is a concern with regards to leadership that my colleague, Commissioner Edler, mentioned. While I'm confident in our staff's ability to lead standards committees, I'm concerned that the leadership demands could pull staff away from their more important technical work on the voluntary standards. How will the agency resources be affected when staff is serving in these leadership roles? The motion I offered, which I do thank my colleagues for supporting, aims to address some of those concerns by requiring the executive director to provide this early report to us and report on all of the topics that were mentioned in the motion and in my introduction of the motion. There are many remaining questions, quite frankly, as to how the proposal will be implemented and the impact that it will have on the voluntary standards process as well as our agency. Removing the current prohibitions will allow the executive director to make thoughtful determinations as to when and where staff can contribute more to the process and their own reflections that will be conveyed to us will allow us to make more informed decisions about matters in the future. I'm really optimistic that increased opportunity for our staff to participate in this process could ultimately improve the voluntary standards process and enhance safety. I look forward to understanding how the executive director will determine protocol and the process for granting voting authority or leadership authority. And I do anticipate the weekly updates from leadership and staff. On a slightly different note, I do want to emphasize one point and that is this, as was mentioned, was the result of a GAO report. GAO in that report also emphasized another point and that was that the observation namely that the challenge of our meetings policy sometimes poses for the problems that it poses for the standard development process. This is not the first time this has been revealed to the commission that this policy creates burdens and challenges to collaboration and creative thinking. I hope we will heed the GAO's concern and look for ways to adjust our policy where it presents an obstacle to candidate exchanges and ultimately to the success of the process. In closing, our staff is of the highest caliber and is held in high esteem by both the industry and the standards organizations. And I think we saw that quite clearly in the comments received on this proposed rule. My support for today is really a vote of confidence for our staff, particularly the technical staff who are members of regularly engaged in the voluntary standards process. It is important that staff knows how critical their opinions are to this commission. And to that end, I think we need to know and understand all perspectives and not just one homogenous point of view. As we try to promote employee engagement, I hope that we will consider that allowing staff to honestly express their opinions, particularly the dissenting ones, matter not only to the decision makers but also to them. Again, I want to thank the chairman, my colleagues for their support and for all who made the hearing possible today. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Buerkle. Commissioner Moherovic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to also thank the staff putting together this package, which was very well done, as well as all who have contributed to making this hearing possible today and especially for accommodating my participation remotely. I would like to also thank Commissioner Buerkle for her efforts in forging force on middle ground with the motion that she put forward that I was very pleased to support, as well as thanking the commission for the unanimous vote behind that effort. I think it's another example of cooperative efforts at this commission, which I'm very much proud to be a part of. I'd like to take a little bit of a different angle in looking at what occurred today and take it as an opportunity to recognize that, in my opinion, this is another great example of the CPSC implementing a culture of retrospective review of our regulations and as established prior to this president, but especially during this administration, the emphasis on looking at our regulations on the books, identifying those that are outmoded or outdated and efficient in some way can be improved and for the agency to have the will and put forward the effort to make those changes. I think that it's part of a 21st century regulatory system that will protect public health and welfare while also promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation. And while I also recognize that this idea was prompted by the GAO, I think that is a particularly good example of the establishment of a culture of retrospective review or regulatory look back by the CPSC because I think what's part of that culture needs to be a recognition that ideas don't have to come only organically from within the agency on how we can change ourselves but perfectly effective and efficient retrospective review culture at the agency needs to importantly include ideas from the outside, whether it's from our sister or brother federal agencies or most importantly from the public as they have to interact with our regulations in a more significant way. So I very much believe in celebrating small victories. I want to put this particular action by the commission in a smaller life but within the scope of retrospective review I will count this as a victory in that capacity and I'll remain vigilant in terms of to the extent that I'm on the commission to see that this culture is embraced by the agency moving forward. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Commissioner Mohorovic and while we are sad not to have you with us today in person we know that the girls your girls are very happy that you're home that daddy's home this week so glad it worked out for you and they were able to join us. This concludes this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. Thank you.


The United States Department of Justice says eight Nigerians have been charged with conspiring to engage in internet scams and money laundering from Cape Town, South Africa. Acting U.S. Attorney General Rachel Honig said seven leaders of the Cape Town Zone of the New Black Movement of Africa, also known as Black Axe, and then eight men who conspired with the Black Axe leader were charged with multiple federal crimes relating to internet scams they perpetrated from South Africa. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Dr. Fallow here, and I'm getting ready to make a creation for $10.48. Let's make it. One large can of Denny Moore beef stew. $5.49. $0.99 worth of vegetables. One pie crust. $2.50. Roll out your pie dough. Place it in your pie dish. You're gonna need about $0.50 worth of danos. Maybe a little more. Mix that in. Add your stew. Get it evened out. Now for the secret that makes it all better. It's very thin dough, kind of like tissue paper. We're only going to use about $1 worth of this dough. Fall it up like this. And we stick it right there. And more firewood. We stick it, and stick it, and stick it. Paint it up with about $0.50 worth of butter. Now we go into our oven at 425. After 25 minutes. Tasty, kind of like I expected it to taste. But only one thing can fix it. Turn it to into a tin. Spicy danos.


My husband did it again, he went sourcing for me and he found some real beautiful brooches. I'm gonna be bringing them to what not tonight at 10, 15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Be sure to bookmark it and I've got some flowers. I know there's some made in Austria, some that they had written that on the card. I'm gonna try to get these off the cards for tonight but I may be just pulling them off the cards and selling them as we go. There are some real gems in here so I hope to see you tonight.


Thanks very much for this opportunity to be part of this conference with us and for most of the title of my paper is and even original development in Ghana as politics matter Now I was actually asking this question because if you look at the vast amount of literature on special inequality original inequality in developing countries in African countries It tends to be largely a political dominated by the literature on your classical economics arguments concerning the issues of geography the more influential and recent new economic Geography which was adopted by the World Development of 2009 and so forth So my interest is to show that that politics does indeed also matter in our understanding of this problem And how we can actually go about addressing the problem of special inequality in the African context Of this the way I intend to go about the arm the presentation I started with a brief background and motivation of the study the framework that guided my analysis that I introduced the case study on Ghana There is a question that I address how I went about addressing those questions the findings and a few concluding remarks and policy implications of If we look just I mean just cast our minds back just a few years back just from 2000 One can you that we've actually witnessed a Relative shift from what some of the summer Maxwell referred to us a new new poverty agenda in the early 2000s So what what we call today a new equity agenda? I mean what we entered it in the first century when they The overarching concern of the international community was about how to reduce absolute poverty in the world And there was very little concern about issues of inequality and equity. I mean a very typical example Is the Millennium Development Goals if you just look at the type of Goals that were spelled out today we see a significantly different kind of agenda For example, I mean we we see how issues of inclusion and equity are occupying a center stage in the ongoing discussions about What a post-2015 development agenda should look like Within this overall problem of increasing consent to the problem of inequality the spatial dimensions of inequality has been of Concern for a number of reasons one being that I mean already it is a very significant contributor to the overall inequality and Also, I mean and it's also rising in many developing countries according to this very recent evidence And this is a warning consent because I mean apart from the adverse implications of inequality in general for the poverty and Growth agenda the spatial dimensions of inequality can push in the mind social and political Stability and for South Africa this trend towards increasing the quality is quite puzzled. It's very surprising and this is what Branko Milano, I am Milano victory does that Africa should be a low inequality continent because African countries are poor and under culture based and also because land the main access is widely shaped So he goes on to hypothesize that the surprisingly high level of inequality in South Africa in African countries in general is Principally a political phenomena, but what exactly does this mean? This is the kind of hypothesis that I I'm interested in exploring my paper and I tried doing so taking advantage of some new emerging literature on the on the politics of development I'm summed up in the notion of political settlements and one critical voice I mean behind this literature is Mr. Khan of the University of London who defines and political settlements as an Interdependent combination of a structure of power and institutions at the level of the society that is mutually compatible and also sustainable in terms of economic and political viability political settlements analysis focuses largely on tricky elements powerful elites Interests and institutions and the fundamental question being raised and as far as this concept is concerned is how It's about how powerful elites use the power at their disposal in shaping adjusting and Roger adjusting institutions in a Manatex bed saves their interests and the implications of this for resource allocation the implications of this for policy formulation and implementation And their impact on development outcomes both at the national and sub-national level So as far as this literature is concerned if we ask the question as to why is facial inequalities persist their answer simply is that Lagging regions tend to continue to lag behind simply because or largely because they do not have the power to adjust institutions and policy in their own favor And It's not the only voice behind this kind of imagine literature I mean if we just compare the works of Douglas north in the 1990s to his most recent work on violence and social orders We see as I mean a passive shift I mean from from his notion of I mean the critical role of institutions to look more closely at the underlying configuration of power that shape the actual function of of of institutions themselves So I'm gonna say that there is an imagine consensus. I'm not suggesting that I mean this literature is homogeneous In fact, it is very far from homogeneous But there are a number of conversion points among the work of Mr. Khan dog dog last move and call it and we've just listened to the presentation of On the work of a smoglu and Robinson and in their work on why nations fail They I mean the important work of inclusive political institutions in shape in development outcomes One of the conversion points as far as the decision is for us to move our way at least slightly From the dominant notion of institutions matter And this was the notion that dominated the 1990s institutions matter if you want to develop get the institutions, right? What this literature suggests and that we should move beyond that mantra to looking more closely at the role of power and politics in Shaping how institutions actually function in other words We should move beyond the rules of the game looking more closely at the actual game within the rules In fact, the game never the game hardly for those that was as far as developing an African country since in particular Say and the suggestion they did for us to move beyond institutions because Which that can make the point that if powerfully groups are not getting an acceptable distribution of benefits from an institutional structure They will strive to change it and they do and they often do this either by adjusting formal state institutions in line with their interests Or by establishing informal arrangements that sidestep or undermine formal state Institutions the same line of thinking is very evident in the very influential work of Douglas North and colleagues on limited access for this in developing countries One of the conversion point is that this literature explains to how I mean as to ask how rent seeking and patrolling dominates the politics of Development of both African countries and in developing countries more brilliant So I'm interested in applying this type of literature or concept to explain the problem of special inequality in the con in the context of Ghana I mean I can't look which is divided into ten administrative regions The three regions missing up the upper west upper east and northern in Ghana are general referred to as north or northern Ghana Who has the rest of the seven administrative regions are categorized as part of southern Ghana And I find Ghana I mean I say a particular interesting case in exploring the political And opinions of special inequality for a number of reasons political or in terms of politics We are I'm sure each and every one of us have have had of the notion that Ghana is an immediate democratic developmental state a model for Africa and therefore the experiences of Ghana can offer important lessons for the African country I have the African continent as a whole Economically Ghana was with typical illustrious the African experience where the problem of rising special inequality have okay lied within the context of Impressive economic growth and poverty reduction at the national level Just a few statistics as to what I mean by enough self-divide the rate of economic growth in the north in Ghana during 1992 to 2006 according to the JLS's data was only 35 percent of the south and during the same period between 1992 and 2006 What are the number of four people decreased by some 2.5 million people in the south increased by some 0.9 million people in the north so that is the Let me just give you a few more examples of what I mean by enough self-divide or Ghana original inequality in Ghana This is giving us and this is an incidence of extreme poverty in Ghana according to the most recent JLS's data in 2006 Just look at the national average What we are seeing in this picture is that it is only the green northern region the northern upper is in upper west region that have incidences of extreme poverty higher than the national average and compared to a national average of only 18 point two percent of the national population being categorized as extremely four six point two percent of the population in great Accra we are seeing as much as 79% almost 80% of the population in the upper west region being categorized as extremely four so this is the kind of inequality that I'm looking at if you look at I mean data on pick up I mean pick up that income you see a similar I mean as I mean as exact trend Now particularly like you to take notice of these two upper east region upper west region the levels of poverty in these regions because I mean I'm going to explore a subsequent case that is focusing on these two regions So I would like you to keep a notice on that This is a more dramatic version of the north-south inequality I mean which is looking at that thing equality at the district a more disaggregated district level I mean this is the victim the 20 poorest and 20 most affluent districts in the south and what we are seeing here I mean I'm using the headcount poverty As an indicator we have the 20 poorest all in the north while the 20 most affluent I mean with very little levels of incidence of poverty being concentrated in the south So the question so this are the questions that I'm asking why are the four northern regions been excluded from guidance? It's an impressive important reduction This is an impressive group important reduction records and what rules do politics and power relations pay in understanding This problem and I try to do so By attempting to use the political settlements from work and this is the way I think I mean if you look at the literature It doesn't it is not about special income inequality the immediate political settlements concept It's not about special inequality, but I'm trying to use the ideas the dominant ideas and that concept to help Explain I mean to help us show how it can also help us understand the problem of special inequality in In the African country or in developing countries more broadly And I think we ought to do that we need to understand how political power is distributed in society and this can be measured I'm suggesting by the composition of ruling at its cabinet ministers deputy ministers Key bureaucratic positions in government and so on and so forth But it's also important not just to focus on quantity but also quality in fact there's a lot of immediate literature that shows that The inclusion of women in South Saharan African countries in political institutions has kind of increased Substantial but they are influence on the policy agenda remains very limited So the politics of development also distinguishes between what is referred to as the politics of representation from the politics of influence In fact the fact that you are represented doesn't mean that you have influence for example We cannot expect the president or the finance minister to have the same I mean if you have if you have a region they haven't the minister for finance and economic planet And another one having the deputy minister for say tourism you cannot count them as one each I mean they are definitely different in terms of how much power they have over how resources are allocated in society And this goes down to the concept of inner core Landman use the concept of inner core of political power to go beyond the quantities to look in more closely at the quality of representation It's also important to understand within a given context how politics and power relationships institutions policy formulation and implementation Outcomes as well as the distribution of public resources and how this can be related to the distribution of power In society more broadly. So what am I finding? And first of all, I try to understand the spatial distribution of political power in Ghana focusing on the 2000s And I gathered some data for some 114 names between 2001 to 2008 Those who represent who are in government are called the 10 administrative regions in Ghana And what we are seeing here basically is that clearly we can see that every single region has a representation At least even though they vary quite substantially but more importantly If we relate that data to the population shares of the various regions We see some significant discrepancies with some regions far more represented than others Those in the positive values are indicating that they were a lot more represented than their population shares Whilst those in the negatives mean that imply that I mean their level of representation were much lower than their share in the national population But this is a more important aspect of Of the work that I'm more interested in I went further to disaggregate that data into the different governmental positions Into cabinet, ministerial positions, deputies and what I gathered as the inner core of power Looking at the three northern regions, if we focus on deputies We see clearly that they were far more represented, I mean they were represented a lot more than their shares in the population And that's why we are seeing them, the positive figures there But if you look at the more influential positions in government, for example cabinet For example the inner core If you look at both the first terms, the first and second terms of that particular agenda power Looking at, you see the same pattern of kind of trend being a lot more represented quite strongly In amount deputies ministers but significantly underrepresented in the more influential positions in cabinet But what should we, why should we, I mean why should we bother ourselves with this What should we be concerned that We have a region being more represented in less influential positions And much less represented in the more influential positions in government And I think part of the answer lies in the type of political settlement in Ghana And the Moustakhan categories and different types of political settlements And Ghana falls between what is referred to as a competitive, clientelist political settlement This is a type of political settlement where both barrel politics is a huge reality This is about Ghana What that means practically, I mean this is an interview data from cabinet ministers You see when people have power, they not only appoint their people to strategic positions But when a decision is to be made and resources to be distributed They find a way of getting it more to their people When you are given the opportunity to make a decision and you are in the driver's seat People tend to benefit their people So you see it is the space that you have to operate That person creates opportunities for you I mean there are a lot of, quite a number of Ghanaians in this room And I'm sure they know the kind of politics that prevails in the Ghanaian context I try to, I mean to apply this literature, this overall framework And looking specifically at the particular case study Which is the minimum challenge account on agricultural modernization And this suggests some basic facts about the MCA in Ghana The amount involves some 547 million US dollars And this is in fact the largest bilateral grant in Ghana's political history The goal was to reduce poverty through economic growth led by agricultural transformation Through the implementation of three interrelated projects It is implemented in some 26 districts from the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Northern, Volta, Eastern and Central regions But who are the excluded regions? Four regions, and they include those highlighted in right And I'm sure you remember those are actually two communities About the poorest regions, the most impoverished, food insecure regions Where among those who are excluded from the distribution of the resources associated with The minimum challenge account The question I'm asking is why? And why should you have a project that seeks to reduce poverty through economic growth Through agricultural transformation and so on and so forth And yet you tend to exclude the most impoverished, the poorest The most, I mean the highly food insecure regions Where you have over 80 percent, 90 percent of the people In some cases being largely food insecure and so on and so forth If you look at the formal selection criteria according to the MCA official Current proposal document They did the selection on the basis of three factors Rural poverty, agricultural potential of the various districts And proven success in private sector investment These were the formal selection criteria of the district So my interest is to find out whether this formal criteria Can actually explain to us why these poorer regions were excluded So I look at, I mean I explore what I regarded as the politics of the beneficiary selection And the selection be justified on the basis of rural poverty Highly question, I mean nobody, that cannot be a sustainable claim at all The top three regions, the top two regions that are an upper waste Where the incidence of rural poverty as of 2000, 2000, 2003, 2004 Where incidence of rural poverty rated between 92 to 99 percent Where the various that were excluded from So you cannot sustain the claim that these beneficial districts were selected On the basis of levels of their, of their incidence of rural poverty The second is agricultural growth potential I mean this is a highly questionable claim as well Those regions, the three northern regions in general I regarded as the potential food baskets of Ghana I mean the food crops are likely produced And in the 1970s Ghana export, Ghana became self-sufficient in rice production And indeed exported rice to neighboring countries And where was this rice produced? It was in the north Over 80 percent of that rice was produced in the north Look at the political party manifested of the dominant two parties in Ghana And they refer to these various are the potential food baskets Of the count which cannot regard them are lacking the potential for And so this claim cannot also be sustained as far as my understanding is concerned Proven success in private sector investments, yes I mean if you look at parties of private sector investments The north is just nowhere to be found I mean much of the investments are, are, are located in the south But there are questions to be asked Because we know very well that private sector investments are encouraged generally by public sector investments in infrastructure You need to put in the roads You need to put in the schools and so on and so forth And yet if you look at expenditure data across a whole of the roads sector infrastructure and so on and so forth The, the government at the time launched what it called the press The President's Special Initiatives And these projects were meant to facilitate private sector investments In Ghana And yet these variants were again excluded from those kind of initiatives So if you tend to exclude certain regions from the ground That they do not have sufficient private sector investments And yet you have not in any case created the necessary condition For facilitating, for facilitating private sector investments in these same regions Then there is an issue there So as far as my understanding is concerned None of these formal selection criteria can explain to us Why these variants were excluded from the Millionaire Challenge account So what are my explanations? How do we understand these targeted errors? I think first and foremost the answer lies in the nature of the government coalition at the time And the North's expression generally from what I consider as the inner core of power If you look at the paper that is online I highlighted some kind of power play that went on in parliament How Northern political elites try to resist the expression of those regions How did they not succeed The kind of explanations that were rendered by the dominant Southern counterparts And so on and so forth And in an interview with one team member of the MCA He summarized the argument as I asked him why these regions were excluded And what was the role of the MCC The MCC stands for the Millionaire Challenge operation In the United States because this MCC itself was interested In high value agricultural crops So I was asking him whether it would play a role In explaining the exclusion of these regions And his answer was The problem wasn't MCC imposing its will on us Yes it definitely wanted a good business case They wanted an economically just file program But the real problem was Ghana The political leadership here The political world was lacking That was indeed the problem But why was the political world lacking My second explanation is about the interests of dominant ruling elites And I explained this largely in terms of the electoral influence Of the ruling coalition I mean if you look at voting patterns in Ghana These same regions have historically been opposition regions As far as the ruling party is concerned They don't vote for the party at all I mean in 1996-2000 elections The party at the time had no single parliamentary seat in those regions In other words those are the very regions that tend not to vote And I mean I had a lot of part A number of rotation from key political figures around the time Explaining how the role and the role of politics played Or electoral calculus of dominant elites played a role And explaining the exclusion of these There is one factor that I You probably wouldn't see in the paper I mean I cut some sections When I was trying to meet Rachel's well-limited pain But I was highlighted here And probably incorporated back into the paper at some point I think the whole thing cannot be explained by politics I found the role of ideas and ideologies to the critical I would just leave out this quotation But just focus on the case of Volta If we argue that the north or those regions were excluded Because they were not voting for the party You have an issue there Because the Volta region is indeed also regarded As the vote bank of the then opposition party And I tried to find out what happened And I found the role of ideas and ideologies The ideology of the ruling party Which saw the private sector as the engine of growth There were a whole lot of agricultural production initiatives Going on in the Volta region On which the government could build upon In the Volta region and so on and so forth And MCC's own interest in agricultural cross-culture Played a role and explained why the Volta region Became part of the MCA So these are some of the conclusions that I'm drawing That I have drawn in the paper That achieving inclusive growth And inclusive development more broadly Should not be seen purely as a technocratic exercise That requires good policies It is in fact as much as much due with policy As with politics And by politics I'm referring to inter-elite power relations In this concept We all know that developing countries Are characterized by clientless politics Patronage driven kind of politics And my argument basically is that within that context The political inclusivity The extent and nature of inclusion of marginalized groups Is critical to fostering their socio-economic inclusion In the wake of Francis Stewart on Horizontal Inequality Highlight these kind of arguments In a number of country contexts But there are some two important caveats One is that I mean as far as my minus is concerned It is not just about whether Lagging groups or marginalized groups are included Or not But it is more importantly about the terms And conditions of their inclusion How are they included Is a more critical question that we need To be thinking about The second caveat I think is Is the fact that The political inclusion of elites from marginalized groups Is not as sufficient And in fact in some cases It may not be a necessary condition For addressing the Americanality A lot also depends on the commitment and capacity Of both national and sub-national elites I will leave it here before Rachel sanctions me


Welcome to our first annual touch of truck down that was open to the public. We're down here at Soda City of the 1700 block on Main Street. What an incredible day filled with families and kids and big kids all playing on all the tools and toys that we have from our trucks to our bucket trucks to our excavators to garbage trucks to police robots. You name it, every department's here with all their funds and toys. So I hope next year you'll be able to join us. What a great day downtown. From what I hear from staff on the street and some of the other departments.


Hello, welcome everybody. My name is Dr Martin Fry and I'm a lecturer at UCL in medical electronics. Today I'm going to consider how we walk and also look at electrical stimulation to restore lost function. OK, so when we walk, we usually just do it without thinking about it. But if we do think about how we walk, then considering my right leg, I'm about to take a step. So I lift the heel off the ground. I then use the muscle on the front of the leg known as tibialis anterior.  I then swing the foot, place the heel on the ground and then I use that muscle again to place my toes. Usually we just do that without thinking about it. So in some conditions such as MS, that's multiple sclerosis and stroke, sometimes the nerves are damaged. And in particular the nerve going to that muscle tibialis anterior may be damaged such that the person isn't able to lift their toe during walking. So if they took a step in the usual manner, they're unable to lift their toes so they're in danger of tripping over their toes. This condition is known as foot drop or drop foot because when you lift the foot off the ground the foot drops. So various ways of alleviating this condition. Someone with foot drop may shuffle their feet so that they avoid tripping. Or they may have anorthosis, a right angled usually plastic bracket that goes down the back of the leg under the shoe to keep the foot at 90 degrees. So someone with anorthosis will probably swing their hips again to avoid tripping under their toes. There is an alternative technique called functional electrical stimulation that's been used for many years now to electrically stimulate tibialis anterior at the right point in the walking cycle, the gait cycle. So I will demonstrate. So I've brought along my director's chair. What I like about this is it has a narrow footprint so I reduce the danger of falling backwards. Tibialis anterior, here's one. I've got another one on the other leg. Something that you could try on yourselves. If you put your fingers over that muscle and lift your toes you will feel that muscle contracting. So clearly a function of that muscle is to lift your toes. Right, so I've brought along a pulse generator that we can use as an electrical stimulator. So I've also brought a piezoelectric transducer to act like a kind of light speaker so that initially we can hear the pulses. I like this device because it has two controls amplitude and rate or frequency. So if I switch on you hear the pulses. These pulses are about 200 microseconds in duration and we can vary the frequency from 1 Hz to about 150 Hz for this device. And we can vary the amplitude from 0 off right up to about 100 volts. So even though this device is powered by a 9 volt battery, on the output stage of the pulse generator there's a little step up transformer to step up 9 volt pulses to about 100 volt pulses. And we need up to 100 volts because in order for the muscle to contract there's a minimum threshold current that we have to pass through the muscle. So it's kind of an application of own-slow voltage with current times resistance. So for a particular resistance that we're passing current through if we need a minimum threshold current there's a minimum voltage that we need to apply. And that may well be up to 100 volts but hopefully I won't have to apply that. So I'm going to take some of these aerogel electrodes, place them at the top of the muscle and at the bottom. And then with this set of leads with two millimetre plugs and sockets I can connect the electrodes to the stimulator. Okay, and I'm just going to sit here really comfortable, relaxed, relaxing on my leg muscles whilst I switch on the stimulator. So watch my foot to see what happens. This is kind of like Luigi Galvani's experiment from way back. And in the 1790s Luigi Galvani found that he had pieces of zinc and copper and he applied them to dead frogs, legs, frogs, legs, twitched. So this is well over 200 years on a version of what Luigi Galvani did but no frogs required. So what's interesting, let's increase the frequency because you might not believe that it's the stimulator stimulating because I could sit here going twitch. That action is under my conscious control. Okay, let's try to demonstrate. Well, obviously I'm giving myself tiny electric shocks, sort of tingling feeling, but actually this particular device was actually first developed as a TENS machine. That's an acronym that stands for Transcutaneous, that just means across the skin, electrical nerve stimulation as a form of pain relief. So it's a curious thing. So if we switch on, this is stimulating at 1 hertz, it doesn't actually hurt. But if we increase, you got it, good, great, as you increase the frequency from 1 hertz. So that's 2, 4, 6, see how the twitching increases. That's 10 hertz. When we get to 15 hertz, the muscle is trembling, but when we get to 20 hertz, we've got a nice smooth foot lift. So if I switch off, my toes go down, and if I switch on, I lift the foot. If you lean on long enough, you'll get tired. Yeah, I will fatigue the muscle. In fact, footclops stimulators actually stimulate the nerve rather than the muscle directly on feet. They contract all the fibres in the muscle, so they have 100% of the treatment of fibres, and that's why the fatigue happens faster than it does in normal contraction, because we don't recruit all of our muscle fibres. So we don't really want to stimulate less than 20 hertz, that's not useful. But if we stimulate around 20 hertz, 25, not much faster, because we'll simply fatigue the muscle more quickly. So if we stimulate at that frequency, then we have a way of lifting our toe. We could do, we could control that stimulation by a push-button switch, so actually I'd like to have this around to different people. Right, so whenever you're ready, but in the meantime, I'm going to look at the photo of Professor of Sydney Russ, sorry, Professor of Sydney Russ, whilst you randomly push the button. And I'm not looking at you so that I don't get any cues or clues. Yes, Professor Sydney Russ, we believe, was the world's first hospital physicist 1913, so over 100 years ago. And all the photos on the wall are, in fact, the family history of the Heads of Department, of this Department of Medical Physics. Obviously, if someone with foot drop was supplied with stimulator electrodes, all these cables and a push-button, and we said, well, every time you want to take a step forward, put a push-button, and that's just too much to think about. So there are various techniques that have been developed to trigger the stimulator, correct? So one idea is to have a heel switch, or, in fact, this shoe insult has three switches, two at the toes inside and outside, and one at the heel. And you can pass this around and have a good look. This kind of switch is simply two perpendicular electrode arrays separated by those green plastic insulating strips. So when the weight of the body is on the sensors, the contacts are shorted out, so it's a simple arm-off switch. You can also use what I know as force sensitive resistors. So in this particular design, we have, and again you can pass this around and have a good look. In this particular design, you have interleaved electrodes sitting on a resistive ink base. And as the force increases on the sensor, so you measure a reduction in the resistance, hence the name, force sensitive resistor. So rather than just giving arm-off information, that can give a pressure profile. So rather than an insult with those switches, we could have force sensitive resistors to act as sensors. And in fact, we could have a whole array of force sensitive resistors if we wanted to map, produce a real-time video map of people, athletes walking, running. And I get other sports shoes manufacturers use those kind of techniques to optimise their shoe design. So, yeah, if we replace the push button switch with the force sensitive resistor, could it make its way back? Yeah, the little one, yeah, great. So if I plug in the force sensitive resistor, and at this time imagine that this is mounted on an insult that's been fitted into my shoe that I'm standing. So the weight of my body is on the sensor. So as soon as I lift my heel off the ground, the sensor detects the change in pressure, turns the stimulator on, stimulates the muscle, lifts the toe so I can swing the foot. And then when I place the heel on the ground, the pressure on the sensor turns the stimulator off. So a simple but quite elegant way of controlling the foot drop stimulator. Over the years there have been various research studies to look at how you may trigger the stimulator in other ways by perhaps detecting EMG, that's electromyo ground signals from other muscles in order to control the stimulation.


After Bakhmut, fighting in Avdivka and Marinka intensifies, the Russians advanced within the city of Marinka. Previously, the battles were ongoing in the center, but faced with resistance, the Russians concentrated their efforts on northern and southern flanks. On the Avdivka front, the occupiers are trying to capture the city of Avdivka. Hanomalia, Ukraine's deputy minister of defense, said it. The most intense battles are currently taking place on three fronts. Avdivka, Marinka, Bakhmut. Avdivka and Marinka are part of the Tavria front. This is the area of responsibility of General Tarnavsky. There are now fierce battles. The enemy aims to take control of the cities of Avdivka and Marinka. The enemy has concentrated their main efforts on the Avdivka front and is trying to capture the city. But our forces steadfastly hold the defense and control of Avdivka. In Marinka, the enemy advanced into the city. There were battles in the center, but our defense forces made it more difficult for the enemy. Faced with strong resistance in the city, the enemy directed their efforts on the flanks around the city in the north and south. According to Malia, the Russian forces suffer significant losses in these areas, both in manpower and equipment, but do not stop.