Podcasts about Hokkaido University

Despite decades of overfishing, Southeast Asia's fishing ecosystem has remained consistently healthy, according to a new study out of Hokkaido University in Japan. Get all the details on today's "What's Right with the World".

Question - "How does Jhana meditation simplify experience to facilitate insight and cognitive flexibility?" John Vervaeke is joined by Mark Miller, Rick Repetti, to explore the intersection of predictive processing, relevance realization, and embodied cognition in contemplative practices. They introduce PhD candidate Jonas Mago, who discusses his research on Jhana meditation and its impact on cognitive flexibility and insight. The conversation touches on contrasting Jhana practices with charismatic Christian traditions such as speaking in tongues. They also explore how Jhana states temporarily reduce the complexity of perception, allowing practitioners to observe the construction and deconstruction of their experiential models. The neuroscientific evidence provided, such as changes in brain responses during these states, adds depth to this exploration, illustrating how such simplification can lead to profound insights. Mark Miller, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, holds a senior research fellowship at Monash University's Center for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies in Australia, with affiliations at the University of Toronto and Hokkaido University in Japan. His work, which dives into the interplay between human thought, technology's impact on well-being, and human-computer interaction, is at the forefront of integrating cognitive neuroscience with philosophical inquiry. Rick Repetti is Professor of Philosophy at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, USA. He is the author of The Counterfactual Theory of Free Will (2010), as well as several articles on Buddhism, meditation, free will, and philosophy of religion. Jonas Mago is a cognitive neuroscientist and wellbeing aficionado, deeply invested in understanding the cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms underlying human flourishing. His research explores contemplative practices designed to cultivate wholesome states of mind—spanning meditation, prayer, collective cultural rituals, and psychedelic therapies. I approach these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating cognitive science, neurobiology, computational modeling, and phenomenology to investigate mechanisms of self-regulation and transformation. He is currently pursuing my doctoral studies in Neuroscience at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Michael Lifshitz, with co-supervision from Prof. Dr. Karl Friston. His academic journey includes a master's degree in Mind, Language, and Embodied Cognition from the University of Edinburgh (UK) and undergraduate studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Maastricht (Netherlands). Connect with a community dedicated to self-discovery and purpose, and gain deeper insights by joining our Patreon.   Notes:  (0:00) Introduction to the Lectern. This is the beginning of The Predictive Processing Series (0:30) Mark Miller, Rick Repetti, and Jonas Mago joins John Vervaeke  (1:30) Predictive Processing and Meditation (4:00) Inside Jhanas Meditation (10:00) Phenomenology and Cognitive Functions of Jhanas (11:30) “Is Jhanas essential for the path of awakening?” (13:00) Predictive Coding and Cognitive Models (18:00) Jhana meditation and the transient nature of predictive models (25:00) Analysis of the risks and benefits associated with Jhana practice (30:00) EEG Studies on Jhana Practitioners (37:00) Jhana versus Pure Consciousness (45:00) High Arousal Contemplative States: Jhana and Christian prayer (54:00) The Importance of Context in Contemplative Practices (1:05:00) Final Words   ---  The Vervaeke Foundation is committed to advancing the scientific pursuit of wisdom and creating a significant impact on the world. Become a part of our mission.   Join Awaken to Meaning to explore practices that enhance your virtues and foster deeper connections with reality and relationships.   John Vervaeke: Website | Twitter | YouTube | Patreon     Ideas, People, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Predictive Processing Epistemic Vulnerability Metacognition Absorption States fMRI Studies Sangha EEG Studies Relevance Realization Embodied Cognition Jhana Meditation Thomas Metzinger Michael Lifshitz Alton Ram Dass Buddha Tanya Luhrmann Shaila Catherine Metzinger, T. (2021). The Elephant and the Blind: Insights into pure consciousness experiences. Lerman, T. (2012). When God Talks Back: A study on evangelical experiences of speaking in tongues.   Quotes:   “What we're trying in, in meditation is starting to model our predictive hierarchy of the brain opaque. So to notice that experience ultimately is not something that's, that's kind of a real grasp on reality, that all we have is this imprint of reality on our experiential or generative modeling, through this, this predictive hierarchy.”   "The interplay between micro and macro perspectives mirrors the flexibility we aim for in meditation and science."   "Epistemic vulnerability can be a doorway to growth if properly framed—or a risk without it." Mark Miller: Website | X | Podcast | YouTube Rick Repetti: Website | X | Facebook Jonas Mago: Website | X |  —   Thank you for Listening!

包括連携協定を締結したラピダスの小池淳義社長と北海道大学の宝金清博学長、５日、札幌市次世代半導体の国産化を目指すラピダスと北海道大学は５日、半導体産業を通じた技術力向上や人材育成を推進するため包括連携協定を結んだ。 Japanese chipmaker Rapidus Corp. said Wednesday that it will set up a facility at Hokkaido University to assess and analyze next-generation semiconductors.

Japanese chipmaker Rapidus Corp. said Wednesday that it will set up a facility at Hokkaido University to assess and analyze next-generation semiconductors.

In this Space Café Radio Geopolitics, SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Prof Kazuto Suzuki about Japan's SLIM mission, which landed on the moon successfully. They discuss the purpose and challenges of the mission, as well as the geopolitical implications and future plans for Japan's involvement in lunar exploration.Kazuto Suzuki is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Director of the Institute of Geoeconomics at the International House of Japan.  He has worked in the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique in Paris, France, as an assistant researcher and as Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba from 2000 to 2008 and served as Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020.  He served as an expert in the Panel of Experts for the Iranian Sanction Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015.  He currently serves many advisory committees of the government of Japan, inter alia, the National Space Policy Committee of the Cabinet Office, the Government of Japan, and the President of Japan Association of International Security and Trade.  His research focuses on the conjunction of science/technology and international relations, subjects including space policy, non-proliferation, export control, and sanctions.  His recent work includes Space and International Politics (2011, in Japanese, awarded Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), Policy Logics and Institutions of European Space Collaboration (2003), and many others.Space Café Radio brings you talks, interviews, and reports from the team of SpaceWatchers while out on the road. Each episode has a specific topic, unique content, and a personal touch. Enjoy the show, and let us know your thoughts at radio@spacewatch.globalYou can find us on: Spotify and Apple Podcast!Please visit us at SpaceWatch.Global, subscribe to our newsletters. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter!

In this episode of Voices with Vervaeke, philosopher and cognitive scientist Mark Miller joins John Vervaeke and Rick Repetti for a fascinating discussion on the connections between philosophy, science, and contemplative practice. Mark provides insight into his work as a 'synthetic philosopher', integrating diverse fields like neuroscience and Buddhism to create theoretical frameworks for understanding the mind and contemplation. The conversation explores whether there can or should be a 'philosophy of meditation', and how science and philosophy might contribute to human flourishing and contemplative development. Mark shares rich examples of how computational models and cognitive science can elucidate contemplative skills and states, providing nuance to traditional teachings. He emphasizes the importance of balance between insight practices and compassion cultivation on the contemplative path.   Mark Miller, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, holds a senior research fellowship at Monash University's Center for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies in Australia, with affiliations at the University of Toronto and Hokkaido University in Japan. His work, which delves into the interplay between human thought, technology's impact on well-being, and human-computer interaction, is at the forefront of integrating cognitive neuroscience with philosophical inquiry.   Glossary of Terms   Predictive Processing: A cognitive science theory that suggests the brain continuously makes predictions about the environment based on past experiences. Synthetic Philosophy: An interdisciplinary approach that integrates insights from various fields to develop comprehensive frameworks for understanding complex phenomena. Contemplative Science: A field of study that investigates the effects of meditation and contemplative practices on the mind and well-being.   John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke   X: https://twitter.com/vervaeke_john   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VervaekeJohn/   Rick Repetti: Website: https://www.rickrepetti.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickrepetti/  X: https://twitter.com/rickrepetti  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philosophicalpractitioner/   Mark Miller: The Contemplative Science Podcast: https://www.thecontemplativescientists.com/ Website: https://www.markdmiller.live/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaYjSup-Hp3V9P6MGt2zPuA X: https://twitter.com/predictivelife Join our new Patreon https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke   The Vervaeke Foundation - https://vervaekefoundation.org/   Awaken to Meaning - https://awakentomeaning.com/   Books, Articles, and Publications   Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation - Rick Repetti  https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Handbook-Philosophy-Meditation-Repetti/dp/036764746X Why I Am Not a Buddhist - Evan Thompson https://www.amazon.com/Why-I-Am-Not-Buddhist/dp/0300264674   Quotes   “Meditation is philosophy. It's not about relaxing, and it's certainly not about just creating weird psychedelic states so that we can blow our minds and talk about it. Meditation is a way of knowing ourselves, knowing our situation, and then flourishing through that special knowing.” - Mark Miller [00:16:42]   "Don't under appreciate the value of love for your training. If you're listening to this, and you're contemplative, and you're tuning in now to help your practice, don't overlook it. It's valuable at the beginning, in the middle, in the end - like even a small amount of loving kindness and kindness practice now is going to make all the difference." - Mark Miller [00:56:00]   Chapters   [00:00:00] Introduction  [00:06:00] - Mark Miller's Journey in Contemplative Science [00:14:00] - Meditation's Role in Philosophy and Contemplation [00:17:00] - Synthetic Philosophy and Contemplative Science [00:23:00] -  Bridging Science, Philosophy and Contemplative Practice  [00:30:00]  - Blending Philosophy and Cognitive Science in Contemplative Practice  [00:47:00] -  Exploring Deep Belief Structures and Skillful Engagement [00:55:00] - Concluding Thoughts  

This week on the podcast, Chris interviews Eric K. Ku, an Associated Professor at Hokkaido University. Multilingual Matters Contacts: haswell247@gmail.com, LostInCitations@gmail.com

Ebola is a highly contagious and often deadly virus and has been a persistent threat to several countries in Africa.In this episode, Africa Science Focus spoke to researchers at the University of Zambia and Hokkaido University, Japan, who designed a kit which can detect the Ebola virus within minutes. Katendi Changula, infectious disease researcher at the University of Zambia, explained how this test can be a game-changer, while Ayato Takada, professor at the International Institute for Zoonosis Control, Hokkaido University, Japan, explains how the kits were developed.And Joseph Ndebe, researcher at the School of Veterinary Medicine, disease control department, at the University of Zambia, sheds light on the challenges faced in deploying the test kits.We also hear from Sheila Makiala, who works at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She spoke to us about how the tests play a pivotal role in the effective management of Ebola outbreaks in the DRC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This project was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator. The fund is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. This piece was produced by SciDev.Net's Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.Do you have any comments, questions or feedback about our podcast episodes? Let us know at podcast@scidev.net

In 2020, Finland's sauna culture was added to the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Sauna culture is an integral part of the lives of the majority of the Finnish population. Interestingly, the Finnish style of sauna-going has inspired quite a few individuals in Japan to travel to Finland to learn more about sauna as a lifestyle. It seems that there is active interest in investigating foreign bathing habits in Japan. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Eetu-Antti Hartikainen, a Finnish research student at Hokkaido University to understand the sauna boom and the localization of sauna culture in Japan. Eetu-Antti also shares his research of how Japanese sauna enthusiasts form some commonly shared values to differentiate themselves from others. However, sauna enthusiasts are very diverse as a group, which is seen in the contrasting opinions and assumptions concerning how sauna space should be utilized for enjoyment. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies' website, Youtube, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 2020, Finland's sauna culture was added to the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Sauna culture is an integral part of the lives of the majority of the Finnish population. Interestingly, the Finnish style of sauna-going has inspired quite a few individuals in Japan to travel to Finland to learn more about sauna as a lifestyle. It seems that there is active interest in investigating foreign bathing habits in Japan. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Eetu-Antti Hartikainen, a Finnish research student at Hokkaido University to understand the sauna boom and the localization of sauna culture in Japan. Eetu-Antti also shares his research of how Japanese sauna enthusiasts form some commonly shared values to differentiate themselves from others. However, sauna enthusiasts are very diverse as a group, which is seen in the contrasting opinions and assumptions concerning how sauna space should be utilized for enjoyment. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies' website, Youtube, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

In 2020, Finland's sauna culture was added to the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Sauna culture is an integral part of the lives of the majority of the Finnish population. Interestingly, the Finnish style of sauna-going has inspired quite a few individuals in Japan to travel to Finland to learn more about sauna as a lifestyle. It seems that there is active interest in investigating foreign bathing habits in Japan. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Eetu-Antti Hartikainen, a Finnish research student at Hokkaido University to understand the sauna boom and the localization of sauna culture in Japan. Eetu-Antti also shares his research of how Japanese sauna enthusiasts form some commonly shared values to differentiate themselves from others. However, sauna enthusiasts are very diverse as a group, which is seen in the contrasting opinions and assumptions concerning how sauna space should be utilized for enjoyment. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies' website, Youtube, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

In 2020, Finland's sauna culture was added to the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Sauna culture is an integral part of the lives of the majority of the Finnish population. Interestingly, the Finnish style of sauna-going has inspired quite a few individuals in Japan to travel to Finland to learn more about sauna as a lifestyle. It seems that there is active interest in investigating foreign bathing habits in Japan. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Eetu-Antti Hartikainen, a Finnish research student at Hokkaido University to understand the sauna boom and the localization of sauna culture in Japan. Eetu-Antti also shares his research of how Japanese sauna enthusiasts form some commonly shared values to differentiate themselves from others. However, sauna enthusiasts are very diverse as a group, which is seen in the contrasting opinions and assumptions concerning how sauna space should be utilized for enjoyment. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on University of Helsinki Chinese Studies' website, Youtube, and her personal Twitter. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo. We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

In this episode we listen to a discussion on Asian-Nordic collaboration in the Arctic.The speakers are:Aileen Aseron Espiritu, Researcher & Network leader, The Arctic University of NorwayJacob Isbosethsen, Head of Representation in Beijing, Government of GreenlandKristín Ingvarsdóttir, Assistant Professor, University of IcelandMarc Lanteigne, Associate Professor, UiT The Arctic University of NorwayWrenn Yennie Lindgren, Senior Research Fellow, NUPI, The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs; Associate Research Fellow, UI, The Swedish Institute of International AffairsThe discussions are moderated by Juha Saunavaara, Associate Professor, Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan.This event originally took place at the 2023 Arctic Circle Japan Forum and was organized by: the University of Iceland 

In this episode we listen to leading academics discuss a Japanese research project for bridging science to society, called Project of Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II. The speakers are:Hiroyuki Enomoto, Professor, ArCS II Directions, National Institute of Polar ResearchYuka Oishi, Lecturer, Kobe UniversityNaomi Harada, Professor, Tokyo UniversityFujio Ohnishi, Associate Professor, Arctic Research Center/Hokkaido UniversityComments on the discussions are provided by:Hajo Eicken, International Arctic Research Center/UAFPaul Arthur Berkman, President, Science Diplomacy Center™; Senior Fellow, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)This event originally took place at the 2023 Arctic Circle Japan Forum and was organized by: the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II project; NIPR; JAMESTEC; and Hokkaido University.

In this episode we listen to a panel on economic opportunities in the Arctic, with emphasis on the Asian perspective.The Panelists are:Mead Treadwell, Chair, US Arctic Research Commission, in 2006-2010; Lt. Governor of Alaska, 2010-2014; Chairman/CEO, Qilak LNG; Board Member, Pt Capital.Natsuhiko OTSUKA, Professor, Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University, JapanShoko NIREKI, Chairman, Icelandic Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ICCJ)The Panel is followed by a Q&A with the audience and is chaired by Mads Frederiksen, Executive Director of the Arctic Economic Council.This event originally took place at the 2023 Arctic Circle Japan Forum.

Sapporo, Japón, estoy frente al equipo del Instituto para el Avance de la Sostenibilidad (Institute for the Advancement of Sustainability - en inglés) de Hokkaido University. El objetivo, compartir nuestras estrategias para fomentar la educación ambiental en las universidades (Foto 1). El idioma, inglés como lengua franca. La pregunta, ¿qué significa administrar la naturaleza y cuál es su relación con la sostenibilidad? Me alegro de compartir mis reflexiones para responder a tal pregunta. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/unclickporelplaneta/support

Hamza is a driven individual with a passion for behavioural neurobiology. Currently pursuing a Master's degree at Hokkaido University in Japan, he is dedicated to the study of how the brain and behaviour intersect.In addition to his academic pursuits, Humza is also an accomplished musician, having played the electric guitar for 8 years and singing for the past 3 years. Though his voice wasn't initially impressive, his dedication to improvement paid off, and he now enjoys singing and karaoke in his free time.Outside of music and academia, Humza is also the founder of Biography Bits, a website dedicated to providing quick and easy access to life-changing biographical information. As an extreme workaholic, Humza spends long hours creating new content for his website and collaborating with study partners online.Despite his busy schedule, Humza also enjoys sharing his love of music on social media. His Instagram account, @hamzara2a, features over 400 posts showcasing his guitar and singing skills in a variety of genres, from rock and metal to classical and gipsy jazz. Overall, Humza is a driven and passionate individual with a deep commitment to learning and personal growth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

The second half of the nineteenth century is correctly known to have culminated in the emergence of the gold standard as the first truly international monetary regime. The processes leading up to this remarkable feat are, however, far less documented or understood. Economic historians have only recently started digging into the causes behind the 'fall of silver' that preceded the scramble for gold. It is nowadays clear that its effects were felt worldwide. Not in the least, silver depreciation severely affected East-West trade. It was, among other factors, behind the bankruptcy of several powerful institutions as the Oriental Bank Corporation. Yet at the same time, it cemented the position of other banks, some of which exist until this very day (HSBC, Standard Chartered). What did these banks know that others did not? In Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870-1913 (Oxford UP, 2020), Michael Schiltz explains that the 1870s and 1880s witnessed furious experiments with new financial products and, equally important, strategies for hedging exchange rate risk. Drawing on archives that have never been used before, the book throws new light on an important episode of nineteenth century world history. At the same time, it illuminates lesser known aspects of the first gold standard period. It draws attention to the existence of 'carry trades' between European money markets and the lesser liquid Asian periphery; and describes the creation of financial contracts with the sole aim of enabling commodity finance among Asian mercantile centers. Michael Schiltz is associate professor at Hokkaido University. His has published widely on the financial history of modern Japan, including his first book The Money Doctors from Japan – Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the ‘Yen Bloc' (Harvard University Press, 2012). Ghassan Moazzin is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He works on the economic and business history of 19th and 20th century China, with a particular focus on the history of foreign banking, international finance and electricity in modern China. His first book, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Chris Kavanagh is a post-doctoral researcher in cognitive anthropology at the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Currently he is based in in Japan where he conducts research in collaboration with Masaki Yuki's Culture, Social Ecology, and Psychology Lab at Hokkaido University. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behavior, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria. He is also co-host the podcast Decoding the Gurus.Support the show

In this episode of the National Security Podcast, eminent Russian foreign policy scholar Professor Akihiro Iwashita joins Professor Rory Medcalf in conversation.How does the history of conflict between Japan and Russia affect relations today? How has the Russian invasion of Ukraine impacted their relationship? And what strategic challenges does the China-Russia relationship present for Japan and the Indo-Pacific? In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Professor Akihiro Iwashita – an expert in Russian foreign policy towards China and Japan – joins Professor Rory Medcalf in conversation. They discuss Japan's relationship with China and Russia and broader strategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Akihiro Iwashita is a Professor at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center at Hokkaido University.Professor Rory Medcalf AM is Head of ANU National Security College. His professional experience spans more than three decades across diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks, journalism and academia.We'd love to hear from you! Send in your questions, comments, and suggestions to NatSecPod@anu.edu.au. You can tweet us @NSC_ANU and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. The National Security Podcast is available on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Joe Watkins has been studying archeology for over 50 years. He's a Senior Consultant at Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants, in Tucson, Arizona & visiting Professor at the Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education at Hokkaido University in Japan. He is also a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He was the 2nd native person to be president of the society for American archaeology & serves as a mediator between anthropological disciplines and Indigenous groups. In this episode, he discusses why Native Americans & Archaeologists butt heads, what drew him to archaeology despite social pressure to avoid it & his take on why Native history isn't taught in high schools.If you liked this episode, you'll also like episode 114: HOW DO I KNOW IF I'M INDIGENOUS? MAN DISCOVERS HE'S NATIVE ROYALTYGuest:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1598745697/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_5YHXT56W8R4YTC3GKJDFHost:  https://www.meredithforreal.com/  | https://www.instagram.com/meredithforreal/  | meredith@meredithforreal.com | https://www.youtube.com/meredithforreal  | https://www.facebook.com/meredithforrealthecuriousintrovertSponsors: https://uwf.edu/university-advancement/departments/historic-trust/ | https://www.ensec.net/

''My mother was always saying "I am raising you not for myself, but for the world.'"I chat to Simone Mattar Altoe - ESG Corporate Benchmarking Manager, sustainability lecturer, mother of two and a black belt in Shorinji Kempo to boot.Simone Mattar Altoe is an old and very dear friend of mine that I met almost 20 years ago when I first moved to Amsterdam. Simone has a marketing and business studies background from Brazil; she then went home to do her PhD on sustainable agriculture at Hokkaido University in Japan.After moving to Amsterdam, Simone worked as a marketing consultant for brands, such as Unilever and BP. She had consultant roles on sustainability in various firms, and later set up her own ESG consultancy company. She also worked as a lecturer in the University of Amsterdam, where she taught the business and sustainability course for exchange students.Most recently, Simone has been working as a corporate solutions manager, providing analytical environmental, social, and governance (ESG) research ratings and data to corporations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What's in store for twitter, now that Elon Musk's offer has been accepted by the Twitter board? Bill and Gareth discuss. Is video chat tech still listening when you're muted? Video conferencing technology might still be listening to your voice even when you are on mute. A new study shows that a number of video meeting apps were recording audio even when the user had switched off their microphone. The researchers analysed the code behind the apps and found that all of the apps in the test were gathering raw audio when they were on mute – and that one of them was sending that information over the internet at the same rate, whether the user was muted or not. They even identified what someone was doing 82% of the time e.g cooking, typing. Professor Kassem Fawaz, one of the authors of the study, explains more. World first – swarming molecular robots working together Scientists from Hokkaido University in Japan have for the first time shown that molecular robots are five times more effective at transporting cargo when working as a swarm compared to working alone. Inspired by insects, like ants, honey bees and even fish and birds, they have created microscopic molecular robots that use microtubules propelled by proteins and DNA. Dr Mousumi Akter explains how they work together so successfully and the possible applications which include intensive drug delivery to a specific location or collection of micro-contaminants in the environment. How to encourage more women into game design Many women enjoy playing video games – but why are so few of them involved in designing them? Our gaming correspondent Leigh Milner has been meeting those at the top of the business, who are doing something to widen access to its creative side. The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson. Studio Manager: Giles Aspen Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz (Photo: Woman having a video meeting on her laptop. Credit: Witthaya Prasongsin/Getty Images)

With the unconscionable Russian invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin, we will be focusing the next several episodes on Ukraine. These episodes will aim to provide our global listeners, who are seeking to inform themselves truthfully about the war, with background, context, analyses, and historical appreciation of this country and why the world absolutely must care and must combat Putin's revisionist and disinformationist campaigns. On this episode, the first of our Ukraine-focused series, returning guest Dr. David Marples, professor of history at the University of Alberta, graciously joins us to help unpack, if not understand, Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine by providing a basic yet thorough overview of the conflict's history. Visit slavxradio.com/ukraine for a list of trusted organizations addressing this humanitarian crisis. ABOUT THE GUEST https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSKREOSquxhEyxP99KQnxCve9JXmnnFMOeYzQ&usqp=CAU Dr. David R. Marples is a former President of The North American Association for Belarusian Studies (2010–15) and was formerly Director of the Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2004–14), University of Alberta. In 2014 he was a Visiting Professor at the Slavic and Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan. At the University of Alberta he is a recipient of the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research (2003) and the University Cup (2008), the university's highest award. He is regarded as one of the leading Western authorities on the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe (social and political aspects), Lukashenko's regime in Belarus, and contemporary Ukraine. Follow him on Twitter @drmarples for more insights. PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on March 3rd, 2022 via Zoom. If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the program, please email slavxradio@utexas.edu and we will be in touch! https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/slavic/_files/images/banners/ukraine-statement.png The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies condemns the Russian Federation's military invasion of Ukraine. We stand in support of the people of Ukraine who are fighting for their lives and sovereignty in the face of the unjustified invasion by Russian military forces. CREDITS Associate Producer/Host: Lera Toropin (@earlportion) Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig (@cullanwithana) Assistant Producer: Zach Johnson Assistant Producer: Misha Simanovskyy (@MSimanovskyy) Assistant Producer: Sergio Glajar Assistant Producer: Taylor Ham Recording, Editing, and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel & Charlie Harper Music Producer: Charlie Harper (Connect: facebook.com/charlie.harper.1485 Instagram: @charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Special Episode Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Charlie Harper, Ketsa, Polkavant) Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (Connect: facebook.com/mdanielgeraci) DISCLAIMER: Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin. https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/9/9a59b135-7876-4254-b600-3839b3aa3ab1/P1EKcswq.png Special Guest: David R. Marples.

We are in the Ainu Mosir -- a quiet ground of the Ainu, that is, human beings. The Ainu had lived in the northern part of the Japanese archipelago long before the Japanese moved there. What if main livelihoods are suddenly forbidden? What if using the mother tongue isn't allowed? What if one day you found out that these things or even worse had happened to your family ancestors? Currently in Japan, there are people of Ainu descent. Some of them see themselves as an Ainu person. Some of them are trying to search for their identity. Some others are not comfortable talking about it. You may have heard of such stories. But beyond that, what do you know about the Ainu? Perhaps you've seen their embroidery and wood carving crafts? Or maybe you can recognise their music and traditional dancing? How about their cultural values and beliefs? Do you know anything about these? Being aware of these would enable you to see Japan from another angle, which should be a great help if you are visiting Hokkaido or even travelling in Japan. So today, we are joined by Professor of Hokkaido University Jeffry Gayman to discuss all the things about the Ainu. Currently based in Hokkaido, he has been studying and researching the Ainu for almost two decades, especially in the field of indigenous and intercultural education as well as promotion of indigenous rights. Beyond academic research, he has supervised a Japanese-English bilingual book The Spirit of Huci: Four Seasons of an Ainu Woman. More information about Jeffry Gayman and his work can be found in the following site: https://researchmap.jp/483 ----------------- A SPECIAL offer for you! You will be getting a 50 percent or more discount from a monthly membership fee in 2022 if you sign up for the dojo community today! The Japan Experts dojo community is a place for you to get access to bonus podcast, behind the scene videos, and other additional content, for less than the money you pay for a single cup of coffee! So, save the money today and invest it into your learning! I can promise you that you will gain so much knowledge on how to explore, appreciate and understand Japan and so I look forward to meeting you inside the dojo community! More details are available here: patreon.com/japanexperts ------------------ Love listening to Japan Experts? Follow us on social media!! Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/japanexperts Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/jpexperts Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/japan.experts/ YouTube: bit.ly/JpExperts

Want to learn how to support Indigenous communities? How about the proper pronunciation of "Long Island" at Dartmouth? Join us as we talk with D98's own Dr. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman. This renowned Quechua scholar focuses her efforts on respectful, creative and beautiful educational design as critical intervention. She's been published in more journals and books than we could count, and she's presented at conferences from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. Currently, Dr. Huaman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development at the University of Minnesota, College of Education and Human Development. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Huaman's work or just say hi, you can find her here: https://www.sumidahuaman.com/ or here: https://www.cehd.umn.edu/olpd/people/eshuaman/. And a reminder that we're always on the lookout for new guests, so please give a shout if you're interested in appearing on the podcast or if you want to nominate another '98. Reunion is coming in 20 months; these podcasts will give you fodder for discussion on the Green!

The ills of social media are becoming more apparent by the day. Mark Miller, assistant professor at the Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience at Hokkaido University, looks inside to find another. Mark Miller is a philosopher of cognition. His research explores what recent advances in neuroscience can tell us about human happiness […]

In 2012 my lawyer extraordinaire guest became the youngest female mayor ever in Japan. This is no small feat and even more so in Japan where at the time only 3% of mayors were women. Naomi Koshi shares her tenacity to accomplish goals that improve people's lives. Whether they are the citizens of the city she served as mayor or in the work she now does on Smart Cities as a partner at Miura & Partners. In this episode, we also discuss the timely topic of diversity on corporate boards and how Naomi is now turning her skills to increase female managers in businesses and promote more women to be elected to these boards. A value packed episode as well as a chance to get to know the woman who is a catalyst for making real changes in Japan. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and we'd love it if you would leave us a message here! In this episode you'll hear: What happened when Naomi didn't pass the Japanese Bar exam Her “mic drop” moment that inspired her to run for mayor of Otsu City How she instigated a change that helped women in Otsu City and is an inspiration to other cities in Japan The words that have guided her to her new challenge of supporting more women to be board members of Japanese corporations and become female managers Her favourite author and other fun facts About Naomi Naomi Koshi is a lawyer, an entrepreneur and former two-term mayor of Otsu City, the capital of Japan's Shiga Prefecture. From 2002 to 2011, Naomi practiced corporate law at Nishimura & Asahi in Tokyo and Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. From 2010 to 2011, Naomi was a Visiting Fellow at the Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia Business School in New York, researching comparative corporate governance matters. In 2012, Naomi was elected mayor of Otsu City, a prefectural capital with over 340,000 residents. Naomi won reelection in 2016, serving a total of eight years until her second term ended in 2020. Naomi was the youngest female mayor elected in Japan's history at that time, winning office at a time when only 3% of mayors in Japan were women (another fabulous woman has recently become the youngest female mayor in Japan) . As mayor, Naomi fought to expand opportunities for Japanese women. In light of the homemaker role traditionally thrust upon Japanese mothers, and observed first hand by Naomi in her own family unit, Naomi successfully expanded Otsu's childcare system, thus making it easier for many Japanese women to return to the workforce. Naomi is admitted to practice law in Japan, New York and California and is now a partner at the Tokyo based firm of Miura & Partners. Naomi focuses her legal practice on cross-border M&A and start-ups, including Smart City projects. In 2021, Naomi Co-Founded OnBoard K.K., a company specializing in diversifying Japanese corporate boards. Naomi serves as CEO of the company. Naomi also serves as an outside director of V-Cube, Inc. Naomi was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2015 and was named an OECD Champion Mayor for Inclusive Growth. She holds multiple degrees from Hokkaido University, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. Connect with Naomi Miura & Partners https://www.miura-partners.com/en/lawyers/00049/ OnBoard K.K. https://onboardkk.com/en/

Kazuto Suzuki is Vice Dean and Professor of International Politics at Public Policy School of Hokkaido University, Japan. His full profile is available here - https://www.journals.elsevier.com/space-policy/editorial-board/kazuto-suzukiWhite paper on Indian supplier landscape: “Driving innovation in the Indian space sector using digital technologies”Discover how Dassault Systèmes can help New Space companies achieve fast, sustainable innovation: The New Frontier of Satellite Technology 3D Perspective on New Space, new horizonsSupport the NewSpace India podcast by becoming a Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/newspaceindiaWant to keep in touch with the NewSpace India community? Do join us on Discordhttps://discord.gg/WRJ8Yagb8TFor comments/suggestions, write to curator@newspaceindia.com ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Bits - Tuesday, 16 March 2021The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee in Federal Parliament has recommended Australia's controversial new Online Safety Bill be passed. The committee held a single public hearing and handed down its recommendation after two weeks. 370 public submissions were made regarding the draft legislation, only 135 of which have been made public to date. Opponents, including Google, Twitter and Electronic Frontiers Australia, feel the legislation gives broad discretionary powers to the eSafety Commissioner to demand material be removed from access within Australia.Google has announced an update to the end of its unlimited photo storage offering for Pixel phone owners. An impending change after June 1st this year will see all Google Photos users need to pay for storage beyond a base 15GB limit, with past photos stored within the previous unlimited deals not counting within that limit. An update from the Google Photos team has announced that users still on Pixel 2 through 5 model handsets will continue to be granted unlimited storage. And a reminder to think about your photo and video storage plans if you're not on one of those phones and you use Google Photos.Global chip shortages caused by pandemic delays in global supply chains have reached the auto industry, with General Motors announcing the company will release some of its pick-up trucks without fuel management modules. The decision means less fuel efficiency and more carbon emissions from these 5.3-litre V8 powered vehicles. The company had earlier reduced production of some large vehicle models due to chip availability restraints but is now opting for the unenvironmental approach.As the world ramps up vaccine rollouts, an internal study at Facebook has revealed the company has seen that anti-vaccination posts on the social network that do not break any existing roles may be causing "substantial" harm. The Washington Post reports that a small number of groups is responsible for spreading misinformation that could be increasing vaccine hesitancy. The Post also says that the research found connections to the deeply debunked QAnon conspiracy. Facebook is now linking all posts related to COVID-19 to authoritative information sources.Audio social platform Clubhouse has said it will no longer require access to a user's phone contacts in order to join the network. To date, if a user has wants to invite friends to the service they must share their entire contact list with the service. The change will allow people to directly invite specific friends by inputting their phone number. Clubhouse will also soon add a feature to let a user delete their contacts from Clubhouse's records.In space news, Reuters reports the Japanese space agency JAXA is currently holding a set of micro-satellites built in cooperation with Myanmar on board the International Space Station. The $15M 50-kilogram camera-satellites were jointly designed by Japan's Hokkaido University and Myanmar Aerospace Engineering University to monitor agriculture and fisheries, but Japan is now delaying deployment while it considers concerns over potential appropriation by military forces since the coup in Myanmar at the beginning of February. Should the launch go ahead, an official from Hokkaido University told Reuters the university would control all data collected with no independent access for Myanmar authorities.A team from the University of Arizona has proposed a Lunar Ark to protect the genetic material of all 6.7 million known plants, animals and fungi. The plan would send cryogenically preserved materials to be stored in a special gene bank on the moon and stored in the lava-formed tunnel structures that already exist there. The proposal includes plans for how the gene bank would be built and the requirement of over 250 rocket launches to transport everything... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pek Lum, co-founder, and CEO of Auransa believes that a lot fewer drugs would fail in Phase 2 clinical trials if they were tested on patients predisposed to respond. The problem is finding the sub-populations of likely high-responders in advance and matching them up with promising drug compounds. That’s Auransa's specialty.The Palo Alto, CA-based drug discovery startup, formerly known as Capella Biosciences, has a pipeline of novel compounds for treating cancer and other conditions identified through machine learning analysis of genomic data and other kinds of data. It’s closest to the clinical trial stage with a DNA-binding drug for liver cancer (AU-409) and is also working on drugs for prostate cancer and for protecting the heart against chemotherapy drugs. The company says it discovered AU-409 as part of a broad evaluation of data sets on a range of close to 30 diseases. The company’s discovery process uses a platform called the SMarTR Engine that uses hypothesis-free machine learning to identify druggable targets and compounds as well as likely high-responder patients. Lum  calls it “interrogating gene expression profiles to identify patient sub-populations.” The company believes this approach can identify unexpected connections between diverse molecular pathways to disease, and that it will lead to progress in drug development for intractable conditions with poorly understood biology, including cancer and autoimmune, metabolic, infectious, and neurological diseases.Lum co-founded Auransa with Viwat Visuthikraisee in 2014 and is the chief architect behind its technology. Before Auransa, she was VP of Product, VP of Solutions, and Chief Data Scientist at Ayasdi (now SymphonyAyasdiAI), a Stanford spinout known for building hypothesis-free machine learning models to detect patterns in business data. Before that, she spent 10 years as a scientific director at Rosetta Inpharmatics, a microarray and genomics company that was acquired by Merck. She has bachelor's and master's of science degrees in biochemistry from Hokkaido University in Japan and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Washington, where she studied yeast genetics.Please rate and review MoneyBall Medicine on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:• Launch the “Podcasts” app on your device. If you can’t find this app, swipe all the way to the left on your home screen until you’re on the Search page. 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Thanks!TRANSCRIPTHarry Glorikian: I’m Harry Glorikian, and this is MoneyBall Medicine, the interview podcast where we meet researchers, entrepreneurs, and physicians who are using the power of data to improve patient health and make healthcare delivery more efficient. You can think of each episode as a new chapter in the never-ending audio version of my 2017 book, MoneyBall Medicine: Thriving in the New Data-Driven Healthcare Market. If you like the show, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review at Apple Podcasts.For every drug candidate that makes it all the way through the three phases of clinical trials to win FDA approval, there are about 20 others that fail along the way. Phase 2, where drug makers have to prove that a new drug is safer or more effective than existing treatments, is where a lot of drugs falter.But often, it’s not because the drugs don’t work. Sometimes it’s just because they weren’t tested on the right patients. Meaning, the people in the treatment group didn’t happen have the right genes or gene expression profiles to respond. If you could find enough patients who were likely high-responders and try your new drug just on them, your chances of approval might go way up. The tough part is identifying those subpopulations in advance and matching them up with promising drug compounds.That’s where a company like Auransa comes in. It’s a Palo Alto startup that has built an AI platform called the SMarTR Engine. The engine uses public datasets on gene expression to identify subtypes of molecular diseases and predict what kinds of compounds might work against specific subtypes. Auransa used the engine to discover a drug for liver cancer that’s about to enter clinical trials. And it’s licensing out other drugs it discovered for prostate cancer and for protecting the heart against the effects of cancer chemotherapy.Some of the ideas baked into the SMarTR Engine come from a sub-field of artificial intelligence called hypothesis-free machine learning. And joining us this week to explain exactly what that means is our guest Pek Lum. She’s a biochemist and molecular biologist who worked at the microarray maker Rosetta Inpharmatics and the software company Ayasdi before founding Auransa in 2014. And she says one of the real revolutions in drug development is that almost every disease can be divided up into molecular subtypes that can best be treated using targeted drugs.Harry Glorikian: Pek, welcome to the show.Pek Lum: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.Harry Glorikian: You know, I always try to ask this opening question when I start the show to give the listeners a good idea of of what your company does. But you guys are in in drug discovery. What tell us how people understand what is the basic approach that you guys have. And I'll get into the special sauce later. But what do you guys do in the drug discovery space?Pek Lum: No, that's a really great question in the sense that when we first started in about five years ago, we... I've always been in the drug discovery field in the sense that I worked for over 20 years ago at that time in a company called Rosetta Inpharmatics, which is really pushing the cutting edge of thinking about using molecular data. Right. And to solve the mysteries of biology. And I was extremely lucky to be one of the core members in when we were very small. And then that really kind of put me in the sense put me in the stage where I could think about more than just one gene. Right. Because the technology was just kind of getting really kind of I would say not rolling forward, like propelling forward, with microarrays.Harry Glorikian: Yes.Pek Lum: So I was part of the whole movement and it was really amazing to be kind of like, you know, in the show as it runs, so to speak. And so and then Merck bought us after we went public and worked for Merck and Co. for another eight years, really learning how technology, how we should apply technology, how we can apply technology, molecular data, RNA data, DNA data to a drug discovery pipeline. And really kind of figured out that there are many things that the pharmaceutical world does very well, but there are many things that it also fails in and that how can we do it better? So I've always been in the mindset of, when starting Auransa with my co-founder, How do we do it better? And not only just do it better, but do it very differently so that we can address the most, I would say critical problems. So Auransa is really a company started by us to address the problem of why drugs actually fail a lot when we go into a Phase II efficacy trial. Right. Is not like the drug is bad or toxic. And most of the time is you can find enough responders to make your clinical trial a success.Pek Lum: And that cause, I guess, drugs actually made to maybe against one target. You don't really think about the biology that much at the beginning or the biology responders. So Auransa was really created to think about first, the heterogeneity of the disease and the heterogeneity of patient response. So we start from looking at molecular data of the disease from the get go. We take RNA, is really the RNA world is coming back with the vaccines.Harry Glorikian: Right.Pek Lum: And the RNA has always been fascinating because it tells you about the activity of the cell, of a normal cell versus a disease cell. So we use RNA transcriptomes right, transcriptomics to study the biology and the heterogeneity. So our algorithms, there are many algorithms, one of the first algorithms of the engine is really to look at the biology of heterogeneity, whether we can subdivide a disease into more homogeneous categories before doing anything.Harry Glorikian: Right. Yeah, I remember when, because when I was at Applied Biosystems, I remember Applied Biosystems, Affymetrix and then Stephen Friend starting this and like, you know, it was all starting back then. And I want to say we sort of had an idea of what we were doing, but compared to now, it's like, wow, how naive we were back then compared to how much this whole space has evolved. And it's interesting you mention, you know, RNA and its activity because in a couple of weeks, I'm actually going to be talking to a spatial genomics company so that you get a better idea from a visual standpoint of which cells are actually activating and which aren't.Harry Glorikian: But so, you've got an interesting professional career, and I say that because you were working at a big data analytics company for a while that was utilizing an approach that was hypothesis-free machine learning, where the machine was sort of identifying unique or aspects that you should be paying attention to. Maybe that it was seeing that instead of you going in there saying, let's just look over here, you could see what the machine was seeing for you. How much can you tell us a little bit about that experience? And then how did that influence what you're doing now? Because I have to believe that they superimpose at some level.Pek Lum: Right. I think, you know, ever since my first job at Rosetta and then my subsequent jobs really kind of culminated into this into this tech, as you see today. Right. All this experience and certainly experience while being a founding member of a small team at that time of Ayasdi, which is the software company, has been also an eye-opening experience for me because we were trying to create, using a very old mathematical idea called topology, or TDA, really start to figure out whether there's maybe there's some things that can't be learned. Right. And so typical machine learning methods need a training set or a test. But there are just some things where you don't really know what the ground truth is. So how do you do that? So that's the idea of like I say, the hypothesis-free approach. And the approach that that that the tech company, the software company that we built is really around the idea that not everything can be learned. But you can actually adapt some very interesting ideas around a hypothesis-free approach and then use it in a machine learning AI framework. So I definitely have been influenced by that thinking, you know, as I as we built the software.Harry Glorikian: Right.Pek Lum: And also, when we were Rosetta, we were generating in parallel, data on thousands of genes. And often at that time we were called, "Oh, you're just going fishing," you know, but fishing is not a bad idea because you don't really know which part of the ocean you need to go to catch your Blue Marlin, for example, right?Harry Glorikian: Yeah, no, no, absolutely.Pek Lum: Fish a little bit, not the whole ocean, but, you know, to get some, I would say, boundaries. Right. So in that sense, to me, a hypothesis-free approach gives you the boundaries where you can look. So, you know, so the experience, definitely the idea that you can use methods or thinking, algorithms, that could help you in a field where you do not know the ground truth. Like patient heterogeneity, I would say nobody really can pinpoint and say, OK, I can say that, oh, this is THE subtype, these are THE markers. And therefore, I'm going to go after this. And there are many. I guess, for example, you can think of a Herceptin as a great example, right, but when you first started, you know, it was like, wow, OK, you're going to go after a target. And then the idea of really kind of subtyping breast cancer, you know, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago. Right. And we're still learning about, you know, in a patient heterogeneity and we're just beginning to scratch the surface. So for Auransa, we wanted to use a method very much like the thinking that and the idea that we had, you know, when we were when I was at Ayasdi, is that you could search with some parameters, you know, a very complex space without needing to say, this is my hypothesis. This is that one gene, because we all know that if you have a target, you know ... to have to respond you need the target. But if you have the target, it doesn't mean you're going to respond. Because things below the target or above the target are much more complex than that.Harry Glorikian: Correct. And I always feel that there's, you know, I always call them low hanging fruit. Like the first one is, OK, well, it's either luck or skill, but I got to one level. But then you start to see people that are not responding. So that means something else is going on and there's subtypes. Right. So it's funny how we always also call it "rare diseases" in these smaller population. I'm pretty convinced that at some point everything is going to be a rare disease. Right. Because of the subtypes that we're going to start to see. I mean, even we're seeing in a neurological now, or Alzheimer's. There's subtypes of Alzheimer’s. No! Really? Shocking. Amazing to me that there's subtypes. Right. We've been dealing with this for ages. And I do believe that these technologies are so good at highlighting something where a human might not have seen it, might not have understood it. You know, I was I was interviewing actually I just posted it today on imaging and agriculture. And they were saying that sometimes the machine sees things that we don't fully understand how it sees it, but it sees it and points it out, which allows us now to dig into it and be able to sort of identify what that unique feature is that the machine has pulled out. I'm not sure I want drug discovery and drugs being based on something we don't fully understand, but the machine highlighting something for us that then we can go dig into, I think is an interesting greenfield space that that we need to explore more.Pek Lum: Right. I think you're absolutely right. You know, when we first started Auransa, that was the idea that we had. And then my co-founder and I thought, what if we find like hundreds of subtypes? We're never going to be able to make a drug again a hundred subtypes. So let's hope we find a small enough number of buckets that we can say this is approximately what it looks like, to be able to be practical to find drugs against those subtypes. So when we talk about subtypes, we are talking about you're absolutely right, it's like a leaf on a tree and that we have to cut it off at one point. Enough that things that, OK, this is homogeneous enough that actually makes sense out of it. And that's where the engine, that's what the engine does. Basically, it takes data, very, very complex data, things that we could never figure that out ourselves and say this approximately five, six buckets. So we've actually not found hundreds of subtypes, otherwise we probably would not have started Auransan, because it would have been impossible. But instead, we find n of one, but maybe a five to seven subtypes at most. That is enough for us to say, the machine says, OK, it is homogeneous enough, go for this. So that's kind of where we are, where we start at Auransa. And I think that's an important concept because people often thought about precision medicine as being, oh, I'm going to make a medicine for you and you only. But actually you could learn from, say, breast cancer, and that's approximately people with estrogen-receptor-positive tumors. And then you will likely respond to a drug like Tamoxifen. And even though we know that the response rate is only about, I think maybe 30, 40 percent. Right. But that's really good. At least at this poibt. So that's where we how we think about the engine as a shining light on a homogeneous enough population that we can actually make a drug against that.Harry Glorikian: Yeah. So that sort of leads us into you have this technology that you've termed SMarTR, S-M-A-R-T-R engine. Right. What does that stand for?Pek Lum: You know, that's my one of my rare occasion where I put my marketing hat on. I don't like marketing all. And we so and you notice the Mar is big-M, little-a-r. So S is for Subpopulation. Markers. Targets. And Redefining. Because I needed it to be Smartr.Harry Glorikian: Ok, ok. So and when you like when you've described this in the papers that I've looked at it, it's a machine learning mathematical statistical approaches, highly automated and totally runs in the cloud. So can you give us a little more color on the sort of the highly automated, and why is that so important?Pek Lum: Right. It's important because it comes from my own experience of working with, like, amazingly talented implementations and data scientist at the at Merck or I know how it goes where biologists will often ask them for something and they would run their magic and they'd give us an Excel sheet or a PowerPoint. Right. It's always a one-off one of those and one of that because you know, biologists are kind of one-off. So the idea of of us building this engine is not just equipping it with algorithms. So first of all, we don't have one algorithm, a hammer looking for a nail. We have a problem to solve. The problem is how to find novel drugs, drugs that people have never thought about, for patient populations that will respond.Pek Lum: So with that in mind, we built a pipeline of algorithms that starting from thinking about heterogeneity, to understanding preclinical models that reflect the biology of human subtypes, to predicting drugs and targets for those, and getting biomarkers for the patients when we go to the clinic. And we have different algorithms for each step of the pathway. So instead of having my team do a one-off thing, we know that if we don't do good software engineering it's going to be problematic because first it's going to take a really long time. This will be kind of higgledy piggledy in Excel sheets and we might be able to solve one thing. But to do this as a platform and as a pipeline builder, it would be impossible without good engineering practices. So we wanted to put this in, like I say, in a framework where everything is connected, so where it gets to run faster and faster through better algorithms, through better software engineering. And this really kind of came from my experience to at Ayasdi, a software engineering, a software firm. And also my co-founder who is a physicist and a software engineer, that we need to have good software practices. So what we did was we built first. We don't want any servers. Everything is done on AWS and is done in modules. So we create algorithms for each part of the pipeline, of the in silico pipeline. And then we have in such a way that when we take data in, when we ingest data, that we also automate it, and then by the time it ingest data and it spits out, I would say, what subtypes of disease, what biomarkers could be used in the clinic, what targets are interesting to you, what compounds from our digital library of compounds may be effective for that. Everything is more or less connected and could be done up in the cloud and now it finishes in about 24 hours.Harry Glorikian: When do humans look at it to say hmmm, makes sense. Or maybe we need to tweak the model a little. Right. Because it's not making sense. When does that happen?Pek Lum: So we, it happens at several steps. So within our engine we actually have benchmarks in there that we run periodically. You know, for example we have about about eight to ten data sets that we have for breast cancer, thousands of patient tumors. And we know approximately that it should be discovering, and it has discovered ER+ flavored subtypes, ERBB2, HER2+ subtypes, triple negative subtypes. So that is kind of like the rails that we put into our engine as well to make sure that when we actually do tweak an algorithm, it still has its wheels. But what we do is at this point, we generate out all the in-between data, but it's kept on the cloud. And once it's up, when it outputs the the list of things, the biologists actually, I would say the biologists with a knack for computation, we look at it and I myself look at it. I love to do data analysis in my spare time when I'm not doing CEO stuff. And we can see that we will look at once it's done that it also allows you...Ok, so this is an interesting one. The engine on the cloud outputs all of this. And right now, let's say my CSO, who is not a computational person, or me, or whoever really would be kind of a big pain to kind of go up and install the stuff and look at the things, some things you can't see. So what we did as a company is to build another kind of software, which is the visualization software on top of that.Pek Lum: So we have on our other end a visualization software that we call Polo because it's exploring that basically connects everything the SMarTR engine has done into something that's visualizable. It has a URL, we go to it and let's say, for example, my CSO wants to know, OK, the last one you did on head and neck cancer, you know, how many subtypes did you find? What is the biology, what's the pathway? And it could do all of that by him just going then looking at things. Or he can actually type in his favorite gene and then see what the favorite gene actually is predicted for how it behaves across over 30 diseases, and you can do that all at his fingertips, so we have that part of the engine as well, which is not the engine. We call it Polo, which is our visualization platform.Harry Glorikian: Right. It's funny because one of the first times I interviewed Berg Pharma and they were talking about their system, I was like, if you put on a pair of VR glasses, could you see the interconnectivity and be able to look in a spatial.... I was on another planet at the time, but it was a lot of fun sort of thinking about how you could visualize how these things interact to make it easy. Because human beings I mean, you see a picture. Somehow we're able to process a picture a lot faster than all this individual data. I think it... I just slow down. I rather look at a visual if it's possible.Pek Lum: It is so important because, you know, even though the engine is extremely powerful now, takes it 24 hours to finish from data input to kind of spitting out this information that we need. Visualization and also like the interpretation and just kind of making sure kind of like the human intelligence. Can I keep an eye on things. The visualization platform is so, so important. That's why I feel like that we did the right thing in making and taking time, putting a bit of resources to make this visualization platform for our preclinical team who actually then needs to look at it and go, OK, these are the drugs that are that are predicted by the engine. Can we actually have an analog of it or does it have development legs? Does it make sense? Does the biology makes sense. And so now we're basically connected everything. So you can click on a, you can find a drug in a database and it will pop up, you know, the structure and then it will tell you, hey, this one has a furan ring. So maybe you might want to be careful about that. This one has a reactive oxygen moiety. You might want to be careful about that. As we grew the visualization platform, we got feedback from the users. So we put more and more things in there, such that now it has a little visualization module that you can go to. And if you ever want to know something, I can just, I don't have to email my data scientist at 1:00 am in the morning saying, hey, can you send me that Excel sheet that has that that particular thing on it that I want to know from two weeks ago? I can just go to Auransa's Polo, right? As long as I have wi-fi. Right. And be able to be self-sufficient and look at things and then ask them questions if things look weird or, you know, talk to my CEO and say, hey, look at this. This is actually pretty interesting. And this one gets accessed by anybody in Auransa as long as you have Wi-Fi.Harry Glorikian: So so it's software development and drug development at the same time. Right. It's interesting because I always think to myself, if we ever, like, went back and thought about how to redo pharma, you'd probably tear apart the existing big pharma. Other than maybe the marketing group, right, marketing and sales group, you tear apart the rest of it and build it completely differently from the ground up? It was funny, I was talking to someone yesterday at a financial firm, a good friend of mine, and it's her new job and she's like, my job is to fully automate the back to the back end and the middle and go from 200 people down to 30 people because we're fully automating it. I'm like, well, that sounds really cool. I'm not really thrilled about losing the other 170 people. But with today's technology, you can make some of these processes much more automated and efficient. So where do you get your data sets that you feed your programs?Pek Lum: Yeah, let me tell you this. We are asked this a lot of times. And just kind of coming back again for my background as an RNA person. Right. One thing that I think NIH and CBI did really well over 20 years ago is to say, guys, now we no longer doing a one gene thing. We have microarrays and we're going to have sequencing. There's going to be a ton of data. We need to start a national database. Right. And it will enable, for anybody that publishes, to put the data into a coherent place. And even with big projects like TCGA, they need things that could be accessed. Right. So I think it is really cool that we have this kind of, I would say, repository. That unfortunately is not used by a lot of people because, you know, everything goes in. That's a ton of heterogeneity. So when we first started the company, before we even started the company, we thought about, OK, where is it that we can get data? We could spend billions of dollars generating data on cells, pristine data, but then it would never represent what's in the clinical trials without what's out there in the human the human world, which is the wild, wild west. Right. Heterogeneity is abundant. So we thought, aha, a repository like, you know, like GEO, the Gene Expression Omnibus, right, and ANBO or TCGA allows this kind of heterogeneity to come in and allows us the opportunity to actually use the algorithms which actually have algorithms that we look for. We actually use to look for heterogeneity and put them into homogeneity. These kind of data sets. So we love the public data sets. So because it's free, is generated by a ton of money. It is just sitting there and it's got heterogeneity like nobody's business. Like you could find a cohort of patients that came from India, a cohort of patients that came from North Carolina, and group of patients that came from Singapore and from different places in the US and different platforms. So because the algorithms at first that studied heterogeneity is actually, I would say, platform independent, platform agnostic, we don't use things that are done 20 years ago. They were done yesterday. And what we do is we look at each one of them individually and then we look for recurrent biological signals. So that's the idea behind looking for true signals, because people always say, you go fishing, you may be getting junk out. Right?Pek Lum: So let's say, for example, we go to, the engine points to a spot in the sea, in the ocean, and five people go, then you're always fishing out the same thing, the Blue Marlin, then you know that there is something there. So what we do is we take each data set, runs it through an engine and say these are the subtypes that I find. It does the same thing again in another data set and say these are the things that I find. And then it looks for recurrence signals, which is if you are a artifact that came from this one lab over here, or some kind of something that is unique to this other code over there, you can never find it to be recurrent. And that's a very weird, systematic bias, you know, so so because of that, we are able to then very quickly, I would say, get the wheat and throw away the chaff. Right. And basically by just looking by the engine, looking at looking for recurring signals. So public data sets is like a a treasure trove for Auransa because we can use it.Harry Glorikian: So you guys use your engine to I think you identified something unexpected, a correlation between plant-derived flavonoid compound and the heart. I think it was, you found that it helps mitigate toxic effects in a chemotherapy drug, you know. Can you say more about how the system figured that out, because that sounds not necessarily like a brand-new opportunity, but identifying something that works in a different way than what we thought originally.Pek Lum: Right, exactly. So in our digital library, let me explain a little bit about that. We have collected probably close to half a million gene expression profiles. So it's all RNA gene expression based, representing about 22,000 unique compounds. And these are things that we might generate ourselves or they are in the public domain. So any compound that has seen a live cell is fair game to our algorithms. So basically you put a compound, could be Merck's compound, could be a tool compound, could be a natural compound, could be a compound from somewhere. And it's put on a cell and gene expression was captured. And those are the profiles or the signatures that we gather. And then the idea is that, because remember, we have this part of the engine where we say we're going to take the biology and study it and then we're going to match it or we're going to look for compounds or targets. When you knock it down, who's gene expression actually goes the opposite way of the the disease. Now, this is a concept that is not new, right. In the sense that over 20 years ago, I think Rosetta probably was one of the first companies that say, look, if you have a compound that affects the living cell and it affects biology in a way that is the opposite of your disease, it's a good thing. Right thing. So that's the concept. But, you know, the idea then is to do this in such a way that you don't have to test thousands of compounds.Harry Glorikian: Right.Pek Lum: That is accurate enough for you to test a handful. And that's what we do. And by putting the heterogeneity concept together with this is something extremely novel and extremely important for the engine. And so with this kind of toxicity is actually an interesting story. We have a bunch of friends who are spun off a company from Stanford and they were building cardiomyocytes from IPS cells to print stem cells. And they wanted to do work with us, saying that why do we work together on a cool project? We were just starting out together and we thought about this project where it is a highly unmet medical need, even though chemotherapy works extremely well. Anthracyclines, it actually takes heart, takes a toll. There is toxicity and is it's a known fact. And there's only one drug in the market and a very old drug in the market today. And there is not much attention paid to this very critical aspect. So we thought we can marry the engine. At that time were starting up with oncology. We still we still are in oncology, and they were in cardiomyocytes. So we decided to tackle this extremely difficult biology where we say, what is a how does chemotherapy affect heart cells and what does the toxicity look like? So the engine took all kinds of data sets, heart failure data sets, its key stroke and cells that's been treated with anthracyclines. So a ton of data and look for homogeneity and signals of the of the toxicity.Pek Lum: So this is a little bit different from the disease biology, but it is studying toxicity. And we then ask the engine to find compounds that we have in our digital library, that says that what is the, I would say the biology of these compounds when they hit a living cell that goes the opposite way of the toxicity. And that's how we found, actually we gave the company probably about seven, I forget, maybe seven to 10 compounds to test. The one thing that's really great about our engine is that you don't have to test thousands of compounds and it's not a screen because you screened it in silico. And then it would choose a small number of compounds, usually not usually fewer than 30. And then we able to test and get at least a handful of those that are worth looking into and have what they call development legs. So this I would say this IPSC cardiomyocyte system is actually quite complex. You can imagine that to screen a drug that protects against, say, doxorubicin is going to be a pretty complicated screen that can probably very, very hard to do in a high throughput screen because you have to hit it with docs and then you have to hit it with the compounds you want to test and see whether it protects against a readout that is quite complex, like the beating heart.Pek Lum: And so we give them about, I think, seven to 10 and actually four of them came out to be positive. Pretty amazing. Out of the four, one of them, the engine, noticed that it belonged to a family of other compounds that looked like it. So so that was really another hint for the the developers to say, oh, the developers I mean, drug developers to say, this is interesting. So we tested then a whole bunch of compounds that look like it. And then one of them became the lead compound that we actually licensed to a a pharma company in China to develop it for the Chinese market first. We still have the worldwide rights to that. So that's how we tackled toxicity. And I think you might have read about another project with Genentech, actually, Roche. We have a poster together. And that is also the same idea, that if you can do that for cardio tox, perhaps you can do it for other kinds of toxicity. And one of them is actually GI tox, which is a very common toxicity. Some of them are rate limiting, you might have to pull a drug from clinical trials because there's too much GI tox or it could be rate limiting to that. So we are tackling the idea that you can use to use machine, our engine, to create drugs for an adjuvant for a disease, a life-saving drug that otherwise could not be used properly, for example. So that's kind of one way that we have to use the engine just starting from this little project that we did with the spin out, basically.Pek Lum: So basically, you're sort of, the engine is going in two directions. One is to identify new things, but one is to, I dare say, repurpose something for something that wasn't expected or wasn't known.Pek Lum: That is right. Because it doesn't really know. It doesn't read papers and know is it's a repurposed drug or something. You just put in it basically, you know, the gene expression profiles or patterns of all kinds of drugs. And then from there, as a company, we decided on two things. We want to be practical, right. And then we want to find novel things, things that, and it doesn't matter where that comes from, as long as the drug could be used to do something novel or something that nobody has ever thought of or it could help save lives, we go for it. However, you know, we could find something. We were lucky to find something like this flavanol that has never been in humans before. So it still qualifies as an NCE, actually, and because it's just a natural compound. So so in that sense, I would say maybe is not repurposing, but it's repositioning. I don't know from it being a natural compound to being something maybe useful for heart protection. Pek Lum: Now for our liver cancer compound, it is a total, totally brand-new compound. The initial compound that the engine found is actually a very, very old drug. But it was just a completely different thing and definitely not suitable for cancer patients the way it is delivered.Harry Glorikian: This is the AU 409?Pek Lum: Correct? Entirely new entity. New composition of matter. But the engine gave us the first lead, the first hit, and told us that we analyzed over a thousand liver tumors and probably over a thousand normal controls, found actually three subtypes, two of them the main subtypes and very interesting biology. And the engine predicted this compound that it thinks will work on both big subtypes. We thought this is interesting. But we look at the compound. You know, it's been in humans. It's been used. It's an old drug. But it could never be given to a cancer patient. And so and so our team, our preclinical development team basically took that and say, can we actually make this into a cancer drug? So we evaluated that and thought, yes, we can. So we can basically, we analogged it. It becomes a new chemical. Now it's water-soluble. We want to be given as a pill once a day for liver cancer patients. So so that's how we kind of, as each of the drug programs move forward, we make a decision, the humans make a decision, after the leadds us to that and say can we make it into a drug that can be given to patients?Harry Glorikian: So where does that program stand now? I mean, where is it in its process or its in its lifecycle?Pek Lum: Yeah, it's actually we are GMP manufacturing right now. It's already gone through a pre-IND meeting, so it's very exciting for us and it's got a superior toxicity profile. We think it's very well tolerated, let's put it that way. It could be very well tolerated. And it's it's at the the stage where we are in the GMP manufacturing phase, thinking about how to make that product and so on.Harry Glorikian: So that that begs the question of do you see the company as a standalone pharma company? Do you see it as a drug discovery partner that that works with somebody else? I'm you know, it's interesting because I've talked to other groups and they start out one place and then they they migrate someplace else. Right. Because they want the bigger opportunities. And so I'm wondering where you guys are.Pek Lum: Yeah, we've always wanted to be, I say we describe ourselves as a technology company, deep tech company with the killer app. And the killer app is drug discovery and development especially. And we've always thought about our company as a platform company, and we were never shy about partnering with others from the get go. So with our O18 our team, which is a cardioprotection drug, we out-licensed that really early, and it's found a home and now is being developed. And then we moved on to our liver cancer product, which we brought a little bit further. Now it's in GMP manufacturing. And we're actually looking for partners for that. And we have a prostate cancer compound in lead optimization that will probably pan out as well. So we see ourselves as being partners. Either we co-develop, or we out-license it and maybe one day, hopefully not too far in the future, we might bring one or two of our favorite ones into later stage clinical trials. But we are not shy about partnering at different stages. So we are going to be opportunistic because we really have a lot to offer. And also one thing that we've been talking to other partners, entrepreneurs, is that using our engine to form actually other companies, to really make sure the engine gets used and properly leveraged for other things that Auransa may not do because we just can't do everything.Harry Glorikian: No, that's impossible. And the conversation I have with entrepreneurs all the time, yes, I know you can do it all, but can we just pick one thing and get it across the finish line? And it also dramatically changes valuation, being able to get what I have people that tell me, you know, one of these days I have to see one of these A.I. systems get something out. And I always tell them, like, if you wait that long, you'll be too late.Harry Glorikian: So here's an interesting question, though. And jumping back to almost the beginning. The company was named Capella. And you change the name to Auransa.Pek Lum: That's right.Harry Glorikian: And so what's the story behind that? Gosh, you know.Harry Glorikian: When somebody woke up one morning and said, I don't like that name.Pek Lum: It's actually pretty funny. So we so we like to go to the Palo Alto foothills and watch the stars with the kids. And then one day we saw Capella. From afar, you look at it, it's actually one star. You look at closer, it's two stars. Then closer, it's four stars. It's pretty remarkable. And I thought, OK, we should name it Capella Biosciences. Thinking we are the only ones on the planet that are named. So we got Capella Biosciences and then probably, we never actually had a website yet. So we were just kind of chugging along early days and then we realized that there was a Capella Bioscience across the pond in the U.K. We said what? How can somebody be named Capella Bioscience without an S? So I actually called up the company and said, “Hey, we are like your twin across the pond. We're doing something a little different, actually completely different. But you are Capella Bioscience and I am Capella Biosciences. What should we do?” And they're like, “Well, we like the name.” We're like, “Well, we like it too.” So we kind of waited for a while. And but in the meantime, I started to think about a new name in case we need to change it. And then we realized that one day we were trying to buy a table, one of those cool tables that you can use as a ping pong table that also doubles as a as a conference room table. So we called up this New York City company and they said, oh, yeah, when are you going to launch the rockets into space. We're like what? So apparently, there's a Capella Space.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, OK.Pek Lum: Well, that's the last straw, because we get people tweeting about using our Twitter handle for something else. And so it's just a mess. So we've been thinking about this other name, and I thought this is a good name. Au means gold. And ansa is actually Latin for opportunity, which we found out. So we're like oh, golden opportunity. Golden answer. That kind of fits into the platform idea. Auransa sounds feminine. I like it. I'm female CEO. And I can get auransa.com. Nobody has Auransa. So that is how Auransa came to be.Harry Glorikian: Well, you got to love the…I love the Latin dictionary when I'm going through there and when I'm looking for names for a company, I've done that a number of times, so. Well, I can only wish you incredible success in your journey and what you're doing, it's such a fascinating area. I mean, I always have this dream that one day everybody is going to share all this data and we're going to move even faster. But I'm not holding my breath on that one when it comes to private companies. But it was great to talk to you. And I hope that we can continue the conversation in the future and watch the watch the progression of the company.Pek Lum: Thank you, Harry. This has been really fun.Harry Glorikian: That’s it for this week’s show. We’ve made more than 50 episodes of MoneyBall Medicine, and you can find all of them at glorikian.com under the tab “Podcast.” You can follow me on Twitter at hglorikian. If you like the show, please do us a favor and leave a rating and review at Apple Podcasts. Thanks, and we’ll be back soon with our next interview.  

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Christopher Kavanagh is an associate professor in the College of Contemporary Psychology at Rikkyo University and a researcher in cognitive anthropology at the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA) at the University of Oxford. Currently he is based in Japan where he conducts research in collaboration with Masaki Yuki's Culture, Social Ecology, and Psychology Lab in Hokkaido University. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behavior, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria. He is co-host of the Decoding the Gurus podcast. In this episode, we talk about some topics in the cognitive science of religion, and WEIRD psychology. We start by defining religion, and talk a bit about its evolutionary and cultural foundations. We discuss how religion is practiced, and distinguish between orthopraxic and orthodoxic religions. We mention modes theory, and the best ways of studying religious rituals. We focus specifically on high-arousal rituals. We discuss minimally counterintuitive ideas. We talk about how relational mobility can explain certain aspects of religion. We address how people practice religion in Japan, and its supposed atheistic nature. Finally, we discuss WEIRD psychology, and the problem with distinguishing between individualist and collectivist societies. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, PER HELGE LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, HERBERT GINTIS, RUTGER VOS, RICARDO VLADIMIRO, BO WINEGARD, CRAIG HEALY, OLAF ALEX, PHILIP KURIAN, JONATHAN VISSER, ANJAN KATTA, JAKOB KLINKBY, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, PAULINA BARREN, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ARTHUR KOH, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, MAX BEILBY, COLIN HOLBROOK, SUSAN PINKER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, PABLO SANTURBANO, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, JORGE ESPINHA, CORY CLARK, MARK BLYTH, ROBERTO INGUANZO, MIKKEL STORMYR, ERIC NEURMANN, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, BERNARD HUGUENEY, ALEXANDER DANNBAUER, OMARI HICKSON, PHYLICIA STEVENS, FERGAL CUSSEN, YEVHEN BODRENKO, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, DON ROSS, JOÃO ALVES DA SILVA, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, OZLEM BULUT, NATHAN NGUYEN, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, J.W., JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, IDAN SOLON, ROMAIN ROCH, DMITRY GRIGORYEV, TOM ROTH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, MIRAN B, NICOLE BARBARO, AND ADAM HUNT! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, IAN GILLIGAN, SERGIU CODREANU, LUIS CAYETANO, TOM VANEGDOM, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, VEGA GIDEY, AND NIRUBAN BALACHANDRAN! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MICHAL RUSIECKI, ROSEY, JAMES PRATT, AND MATTHEW LAVENDER!

Enrico Bonadio is a reader in Intellectual Property Law at The City Law School in London. He holds law degrees from the University of Florence (Ph.D.) and the University of Pisa (LLB), and is Associate Editor and Intellectual Property Correspondent of the European Journal of Risk Regulation as well as a member of the Editorial Board of NUART Journal. His current research agenda focuses on copyright protection of unconventional forms of expression, including graffiti and street art. Enrico has recently co-edited the book “Non-Conventional Copyright – Do New and Non-Traditional Works Deserve Protection?” (together with Nicola Lucchi, Elgar 2018); and edited the “Cambridge Handbook of Copyright in Street Art and Graffiti” (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Enrico is also researching on IP protection of AI and robotics: he is part of a consortium that has been awarded funding by the EU as part of Horizon2020 to assess the area of interactive robots in society (INBOTS project). He also recently authored a report on Standard Essential Patents and the Internet of Things (commissioned by the European Parliament). Enrico has been awarded grant funding for other projects, including substantial grants from the ESRC, HEIF, the UK Global Challenges Research Fund, and the Australian Research Council. He has also done academic work on academic innovation, geographical indications in the global market, digital copyright and free speech, exhaustion of IP rights and parallel imports, morality, and IP, patentability of human embryonic stem cells and patents, and food safety. He co-edited a book entitled “Beyond Plain Packaging – The New Intellectual Property of Health” (together with Alberto Alemanno, Elgar, 2016). In 2013 he received the ECTA Award for the Best Paper in Trademark Law (plain packaging of tobacco products under European intellectual property law). He also published a book on TRIPS Agreement and genetic resources (Jovene, 2008). Enrico is Visiting Professor at Université Catholique de Lyon and visiting lecturer at the WIPO LLMs in Turin (Italy), Ankara (Turkey), and Shanghai (China). He has been Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne (2013), CUNY Law School (New York, 2016), University of Tel Aviv (2018 and 2019) as well as Hokkaido University (2019), and Keio University (2019) in Japan. Enrico has been delivering classes and talks in more than 100 universities and institutions around the world (including John Marshall Law School in Chicago, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Windsor in Canada, University of La Havana) and frequently appears in the media as an IP expert. His research has been covered by CNN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, BBC, The Times, Independent and The Conversation, amongst other media outlets. He is a Solicitor qualified to practice in England and Wales as well as in Italy. Enrico practiced as IP attorney for several years in top-tier international law firms. He also regularly joins training and technical assistance missions organized by WIPO. He is a member of ATRIP (International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property), BLACA (British Literary and Artistic Copyright Association), and The Law Society of England and Wales.

We're back to Belarus with this episode, but this time we take an in-depth look at the still-thrumming situation from the dictator's perspective with one of the foremost experts on the region, Dr. David Marples. Dr. Marples talks about the potential end of the dictator while rounding out the context for the current revolution, allowing us to see just how and why Alexander Lukashenko came into power. Follow Dr. Marples on Twitter @drmarples. ABOUT THE GUEST https://visegradinsight.eu/app/uploads/2019/04/Dm2-300x199.jpg Dr. David R. Marples is a former President of The North American Association for Belarusian Studies and was formerly Director of the Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. In 2014 he was a Visiting Professor at the Slavic and Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan. At the University of Alberta he is a recipient of the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research (2003) and the University Cup (2008), the university's highest award. He is regarded as one of the leading Western authorities on the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe (social and political aspects), Lukashenko's regime in Belarus, and contemporary Ukraine. In 2014 he published Our Glorious Past': Lukashenka's Belarus and the Great Patriotic War', the product of an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2017, he published 'Ukraine in Conflict' with E-International Relations Publishing. In 2020, he co-edited a book with Aya Fujiwara entitled Hiroshima-75: Nuclear Issues in Global Contexts," published by Ibidem-Verlag, and the result of a conference at the University of Alberta. As a historian Marples has written extensively on Eastern European history of the 20th Century including such major historical events as the Russian Revolution 1917-1920, Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933, Stalinism, and fall of the Soviet Union. NOTE: This episode was recorded on September 21st, 2020 via Zoom. CREDITS Co-Host/Co-Producer: Tom Rehnquist (Connect: Twitter @RehnquistTom) Co-Host/Co-Producer: Matthew Orr (Connect: facebook.com/orrrmatthew) Associate Producer: Lera Toropin Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig Assistant Producer: Samantha Farmer Assistant Producer: Milena D-K Assistant Producer/Administrator: Kathryn Yegorov-Crate Recording, Editing, and Sound Design: Michelle Daniel Additional Editing: Jada Geraci Music Producer: Charlie Harper (Connect: facebook.com/charlie.harper.1485 Instagram: @charlieharpermusic) www.charlieharpermusic.com (Main Theme by Charlie Harper and additional background music by Charlie Harper and Michelle Daniel, Ketsa, Eme Hache, and Ion Romania) Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (Connect: facebook.com/mdanielgeraci Instagram: @michelledaniel86) www.msdaniel.com DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the show or the University of Texas at Austin. Special Guest: David R. Marples.

Show Notes This week, we review and analyze Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (機動戦士ガンダムΖΖ) episode 2 - "The Boy From Shangri La"/シャングリラの少年 - discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on some aspects of the Japanese economy on 1986: laborforce participation by youth and women, educational attainment, tanshinfunin, migrant labor, and... orange imports. Plus - another Japanese poem. - Chart of youth unemployment rate in Japan, 1970-2020. - Youth employment rate in Japan, 1979-1986. - Wikipedia page on the Japanese education system. - Wikipedia page on Japan in the 1980s. - Paper on labor force participation from the Bank of Japan Review. - Study on how tanshinfunin fathers affect children’s socioemotional development, from Hokkaido University. - Wikipedia page about migrant labor. - Page about migrant workers in Japan, from the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Information Center (based in Osaka). - Discussion and definition of the “natural” unemployment rate. - Paper on “Migrant Workers in the Post-War History of Japan” by Yasuo Kuwahara of Dokkyo University. - Paper on “Development of Immigration Policy in Japan” by Atsushi Kondo of Kyushu Sangyo University. - Unesco Institute for Statistic page (source for 1980 upper-secondary school completion rate). - “Education in Japan: Past and Present” (source for enrollment rates in upper-secondary school in 1980). - Text used for information on internal migration in Japan: Ishikawa, Yoshitaka. “Internal Migration in Japan.” Internal Migration in the Countries of Asia: a Cross-National Comparison, by Martin Bell, Springer, 2020, pp. 113-136. - Industry overview of the Japanese fruit-imports market (with historical background). - 1987 article from the South Florida Sun Sentinel about Japan lifting import quotas on American oranges in 1988 (I misspoke in the episode and said 1998). - Paper from the USDA’s Economic Research Service, “The Japanese Market for Oranges.” - 1983 paper from the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, “Japan’s Quantitative Restrictions on the Importation of Agricultural Products.” - About the decline of the orange market in Japan since 1990s. - Paper on decline in orange consumption since mid-1990s: Mori, Hiroshi & Clason, Dennis L. & Ishibashi, Kimiko & Gorman, William D. & Dyck, John H., 2009. "Declining Orange Consumption in Japan: Generational Changes or Something Else?," Economic Research Report 55836, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. - Online reference for the poem used in Saegusa's memorial, taken from the Hyakkunin Isshu poetry collection (百人一首), by Semimaru (蝉丸), a Heian era poet and musician. Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. You can learn more about Lenapehoking, the Lenape people, and ongoing efforts to honor the relationship between the land and indigenous peoples by visiting the websites of the Delaware Tribe and the Manhattan-based Lenape Center. Listeners in the Americas and Oceania can learn more about the indigenous people of your area at https://native-land.ca/. We would like to thank The Lenape Center for guiding us in creating this living land acknowledgment. You can subscribe to Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, visit our website GundamPodcast.com, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, or email your questions, comments, and complaints to gundampodcast@gmail.com. Mobile Suit Breakdown wouldn't exist without the support of our fans and Patrons! You can join our Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, extra out-takes, behind-the-scenes photos and video, MSB gear, and much more! The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licenses. The recap music for Season 3 is New York City (instrumental) by spinningmerkaba, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.. All music used in the podcast has been edited to fit the text. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, Sotsu Agency, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise, Bandai, Sotsu, or any of their subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to gundampodcast@gmail.com Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

In this episode (Ep. 9) - Helping Hans, We talk about our week as usual and bring on our very first guest, James “Helping Hans” Whiteside. James is a pro gamer from the UK who primarily focuses on Strategy Games, specifically Company of Heroes 2. He went to Hokkaido University for a few years where he met Jamie. He talks about how he got into gaming, streaming and the gaming industry. He also gives a few tips for streamers who are just starting out as he’s always down for lending “Helping Hans.” He also talks about life in Japan while he was living here and shares a little about what he liked and didn’t like while living in Japan. Please check out James "Helping Hans" Whiteside's Twitch and YouTube channels and help support him in his journey as a pro gamer!! Twitch: https://twitch.tv/helpinghans YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HelpingHansCoH

Land borders in East Asia have played just as big a role in the region's social transformations as their more recently debated maritime counterparts, and the boundary between China and Korea offers particularly telling insight into how society, identity and geopolitics have shifted over time. Nianshen Song's Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) examines a tumultuous period in the history of this vital northeast Asian border, showing how it took shape before and during the era of Japanese empire. Drawing on a vast trove of multilingual archives in China, Japan, Korea and elsewhere, the book both transports us into the local worlds which overlapped along the Tumen a century ago, and reveals how interactions among them were central to wider questions of sovereignty, borders, memory and ‘modern' senses of Chinese, Korean and Japanese nationhood which endure to the present day. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Land borders in East Asia have played just as big a role in the region's social transformations as their more recently debated maritime counterparts, and the boundary between China and Korea offers particularly telling insight into how society, identity and geopolitics have shifted over time. Nianshen Song's Making Borders in Modern East Asia: The Tumen River Demarcation, 1881-1919 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) examines a tumultuous period in the history of this vital northeast Asian border, showing how it took shape before and during the era of Japanese empire. Drawing on a vast trove of multilingual archives in China, Japan, Korea and elsewhere, the book both transports us into the local worlds which overlapped along the Tumen a century ago, and reveals how interactions among them were central to wider questions of sovereignty, borders, memory and ‘modern' senses of Chinese, Korean and Japanese nationhood which endure to the present day. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

Discussions of China's 21st-century ‘rise' often focus on the country's dazzling megacities and the dizzying pace of urbanization which has propelled their development over the past 30 years. But how and why all these cities have grown in the ways and the places that they have is not always an easy question to answer in a place as large and diverse as China. This is why Kyle Jaros' China's Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development (Princeton University Press, 2019), a book which examines the urban developmental trajectories of several lesser- and better-known parts of China, is so valuable. Focusing on the how competing local claims, national priorities and economic conditions shape urbanization processes across the country, Jaros argues that provincial-level planning offers the key to understanding how preferred sites for development – ‘winners in space' as he calls them – emerge. From provinces which focus all their energy in a single provincial capital to those whose efforts appear more evenly spread, we get a rich sense here of how megacities and urban clusters take shape and of the often-opaque operations of the Communist Party on multiple levels. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With China's northwestern and southern edges justifiably being sources of global attention at present, Martin Fromm's Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China (Cambridge University Press, 2019) has much light to shed on how the country's ruling Communist Party refashioned its relationship with its frontiers at an earlier point in history. Examining a trove of documents produced mostly in the 1980s in the country's far northeastern Heilongjiang province, Fromm reveals the processes, policies and personal stories undergirding the new understandings of China which emerged after the death of Mao Zedong. As the nation emerged from the catastrophic policy failures and ideological excesses of the Mao years, the Party deftly encouraged ordinary people to narrate their experiences of the tumultuous recent history of the region in new ways and according to new historical frames. Their stories, collected in documents known as wenshi ziliao, reappraised the Russian and Japanese roles in the northeast's past, its indigenous residents and the history of Han migration in ways which, in Fromm's telling, are highly revealing of the narratives by which the Party sought to maintain its role as a governing power. If Hong Kong and Xinjiang today show that the Reform era, whose dawn this book expertly documents, is now transitioning to something else, then the understanding we gain from this book of how the Chinese Communist Party acted an earlier time of crisis could not be more pertinent. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

If today's geopolitical fragmentation and the complexities of a ‘multipolar' world order have led some to reminisce about the apparent stability of the Cold War era's two ‘camps', it should be remembered that things were of course never so straightforward. As Jeremy Friedman shows in Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, the 1960s-1980s Sino-Soviet Split(UNC Press, 2018) generated a much more fractious and divided global situation than today's nostalgia would imply. Taking ideology seriously as a component of socialist foreign policy, Friedman's new and compelling analysis shows how deep Moscow and Beijing's disagreements ran, and argues that the division was based at heart on two quite different revolutionary agendas. Drawing on archives all over the world in multiple languages, Shadow Cold War traces the origins of these agendas in revolutionary experience in each of Russia and China, and reveals how these continued to manifest themselves as Soviet and Chinese interests competed in the developing world in the latter half of the twentieth century. With China in particular now a major player in many of the locations discussed here, this book should be indispensable reading for anyone seeking clarity about how we got to where we are today. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If today's geopolitical fragmentation and the complexities of a ‘multipolar' world order have led some to reminisce about the apparent stability of the Cold War era's two ‘camps', it should be remembered that things were of course never so straightforward. As Jeremy Friedman shows in Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, the 1960s-1980s Sino-Soviet Split(UNC Press, 2018) generated a much more fractious and divided global situation than today's nostalgia would imply. Taking ideology seriously as a component of socialist foreign policy, Friedman's new and compelling analysis shows how deep Moscow and Beijing's disagreements ran, and argues that the division was based at heart on two quite different revolutionary agendas. Drawing on archives all over the world in multiple languages, Shadow Cold War traces the origins of these agendas in revolutionary experience in each of Russia and China, and reveals how these continued to manifest themselves as Soviet and Chinese interests competed in the developing world in the latter half of the twentieth century. With China in particular now a major player in many of the locations discussed here, this book should be indispensable reading for anyone seeking clarity about how we got to where we are today. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

The fact that Korea's experience of Japanese imperialism plays a role in present-day Japan-Korea relations is no secret to anyone. Questions of guilt, responsibility and atonement continue to bubble below, and occasionally break through, the surface of ties between two countries which otherwise have much in common culturally and in terms of interests. Addressing many of these complexities, Christina Yi's Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea (Columbia University Press, 2018) adds greatly to our understanding of imperial experience and its personal, linguistic and political legacies. In this ‘discursive history of modern Japanese-language literature from Korea and Japan' (xvi), Yi forges a narrative which is itself expressive of colonialism's tangled and irresolvable traces. Led nimbly back and forth between the Japanese metropole and the colonies and postcolonies, we enter deep into the worlds of writers considered both 'Korean' and 'Japanese' based in both past and present incarnations of 'Korea' and 'Japan.' If it is difficult to pin any single identity - other than shared use of Japanese language - on these figures and their works, then this very fact is an invitation to broaden our understanding of Japanophone literature beyond today's troublesome nation states. As Yi makes poignantly clear, issues of identity and voice are still shaped by imperial experience even long after the formal end of empire in 1945. Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.