For Nomadland, writer-director Chlo Zhao adapted Jessica Bruders 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century into a screenplay, got Frances McDormand to star in the movie, and hasnt looked back since.

The film, the third in the Beijing-born Zhaos trilogy of a sort on the state of the American West after 2015s Songs My Brother Taught Me and 2017s The Rider, has been among the most honored so far this movie-awards season. The streak started with a rare double: snagging the Golden Lion at Venice and the Audience Award at Toronto two Oscar-bellwether wins. It since has picked up Best Picture, Actress and Screenplay wins from various key critics groups, was named to the Top 10 films list at AFI and scored nominations in all three categories in the past week alone from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.

Nominations also include from the USC Scripters, which recognize both the adapted screenplay and the original work. It was Bruder who set off in an old van to follow along with workampers, the Great Recession-driven low-cost labor pool of mostly transient older Americans who hit the road in RVs, vans and travel trailers as migrant workers. She discovered along the way their resiliency, and how their sense of hope is fully intact.

Zhao built the story on Fern (McDormand), who packs her van after losing almost everything and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. David Strathairn co-stars along with real-life nomads Linda May (who accompanied Bruder for her book) and Swankie.

As Deadlines Todd McCarthy wrote in his review of the film, which McDormand and Peter Spears produced after acquiring rights to the book: [Nomadland is] an observant, simple, contemplative work, one uninterested in manufacturing melodrama or hyped-up incident, but rewarding for its illumination of Americans who represent societal afterthoughts, mostly older working people left behind in backwaters and on the sidelines with no prospects at all.

After a December qualifying run, Nomadland opens wide February 19 via Searchlight Pictures, whose track record of Oscar success includes Best Picture wins for Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Birdman and The Shape of Water.

Check out Zhaos screenplay below:

Read the rest here:

Nomadland: Read The Screenplay For Chlo Zhaos Meditation On The American West - Deadline

Yoga, reiki and other forms of Eastern therapy methods have deep roots in China, Japan, India and other parts of Asia, with philosophies and schools of thought often stretching back thousands of years.

But these methods of treating body, mind and soul with a variety of physical and mental exercises or, in the case of reiki, using the bodys energy to heal itself have found their way into the Western world in the past 100 years or so.

Jeff Wright is a yoga teacher from Platteville, Wis., who has been teaching in the tri-states since 1985. He said that even almost 100 years later, yoga wasnt trending all that much.

It was a different kind of thing back then, he said. It wasnt as popular as it is now.

Wright began studying meditation with a professor at University of Minnesota in the late 1960s. He pursued the art of meditation for many years and thought the physical practice of yoga would be a good addition to his routine.

I thought it would really help to learn yoga and keep practicing it if I taught, he said. If you teach something, youre motivated to learn more about it. Its been 50 years that Ive been interested.

According to The Good Body, a website that collects research and case studies on health, the number of people practicing yoga has tripled in the past eight years. Those people arent just looking for spiritual enlightenment. The top reasons cited include relief from stress, anxiety and depression and a desire to improve energy, memory and focus.

However, in addition to the physical, moving practice of yoga, Wright also has a passion for stillness something he has been cultivating for more than 20 years.

Ive really simplified what I do and what I think helps people the most, he said. With COVID, Ive stopped teaching physical yoga. Im really focusing on stillness practice. Its just being still and letting the brain do what its going to do.

Wright emphasized that, like any good habit, its important to practice daily, even though we might not always want to do it.

Its like sleep in that way, he said. We need a reintegration of our minds but in a wakeful way. A lot of stuff goes into the brain, and its not always pleasant, so we dont always look forward to it.

Wright meets with two stillness groups per week, one at Rountree Gallery in Platteville and one at Body & Soul Wellness Center and Spa in Dubuque.

He also believes the act of being still is a perfect practice for what he calls formal public sitting (FPS).

FPS is based on two premises: One is that sitting, relaxed and wakeful for at least 20 minutes a day, unguided, allows us our natural mental health, he said. The second is that when doing this practice around others, they feel inspired by your stability and may join you as well. When many practice together, there is peace.

The core elements of yoga, particularly the act of stillness, is really very natural, Wright said.

You see animals in nature doing this all the time, sitting still for periods of time, he said. Its really a very natural thing for all beings to do. Its a turn-off for a lot of people that think that its something so exotic.

In fact, Wright said the process is not at all intimidating but simple. Theres nothing to learn, and the whole group is in and out in an hour.

We sit for 15 minutes, then we walk and loosen up a bit, then sit for another 15 minutes, then do it again, he said. Then, we chat for about 10 minutes, and then were on our way.

While Wright admitted the demographic for yoga has been middle class White, he would like to see diversity in his stillness groups.

Ive had so few minorities, he said. Id love to see a broader spectrum of people. This isnt a big, splashy idea, but its so useful. I just think there are so many other people who are missing these benefits.

Wright said sitting still doesnt have to mean doing nothing. In fact, he encourages those who need to keep busy to do whatever they want to do.

You have to give yourself time to get to those intuitive insights in your mind, he said. That may mean reading or spacing out in front of the TV. Its doing whatever works for you.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, such self-care and wellness practices have seen an uptick.

Rachel Harwood, owner of Perfect Zen in Dubuque, has been a reiki master for more than a decade. Reiki is a form of energy healing and can be used for both physical and emotional healing.

When people ask me what reiki is, I try to get them to understand that their body is full of energy, and we carry those through all of our experiences, she said. When you get an emotional response in your body, thats an indication that you have fully processed it. If you dont feel any tension or emotion, thats an indication that youve fully processed it, that youve moved past it.

Harwood uses a variety of methods in her practice, including sound massage and sound meditation, using singing bowls and tuning forks to pick up imbalances with discrepancies in sound.

I can hear it, and my client can hear it, she said.

While meditation focuses on breath and mind visualization, sound meditation brings the focus to atonal sounds using singing bowls, chimes or bells.

Body & Soul and Center of I Am in Dubuque boast similar offerings.

The sound tools help to entrain the vibration of cells and help them vibrate back to where they should be, Harwood said. Its an amazing way to balance the nervous system. When were in a state of stress, our body isnt in a place where it can rest or heal.

Harwood emphasized that our bodies are designed to heal themselves.

Were accepting of the Western model of medicine having things done to us and taking medicine, and that will fix you, she said. But we have much more power over our bodies than we realize. We have more control than we give ourselves credit for.

Brittany Wagner is a nurse from Ridgeway, Wis., who works at Upland Hills Hospital in Dodgeville, Wis. She has been a client of Harwoods for several years.

Ive been going to Rachel for more holistic therapies such as reiki and sound healings, she said. Theyve all been a great complement to my mental and spiritual health, especially while working in the pandemic.

Wagner also practices clarity breathing with Harwood, a method of breath work that can help access the subconscious.

It can take you to a million different places, Harwood said. It can be great for people who arent afraid to go there.

Wagner said the breath work she has done has greatly improved her personal and professional lives.

Its brought me a sense of balance and stillness, she said. Its in that stillness that I am able to reset and find some mental clarity and stress reduction.

Wagner said the work she has done with Harwood has made her feel more grounded as a nurse, wife and mother. It also gave her the confidence to step out of her comfort zone and be part of a medical mission in Guatemala.

I never would have had the confidence to do it if it werent for the medical and spiritual training Ive had over the years, she said.

Harwood also teaches yoga to school children at Challenge to Change in Dubuque. Teaching these methods of relaxation and stress reduction to young children has been rewarding for her. Harwood said Challenge to Change yoga programs are in more than 200 schools this year, compared to just 14 a few years ago.

We teach them mudras, which is a way of holding their hands or fingers to show how theyre feeling, she said. Youll see kids walking around the school holding their hands in these mudras. They are recognizing that this is something they need, and theyre connecting with that intention.

Harwood would love to see everybody learn yoga at a young age and thinks it could positively impact the course of their lives.

I believe that we all have access to connect with our inner knowing. Why wouldnt you want to know how to better understand how to connect to yourself? she said. Yoga is about tuning in and realizing what youre feeling. Theres a lot we can learn, and a lot that we can do if we pay attention early enough.

Originally posted here:

The art of sitting still: Tri-state residents embrace meditation practices amid pandemic - telegraphherald.com

As we inch/hurtle toward a year of living with COVID-19 and its attending horrors, those of us not wrapped in the gentle insulation of exactly the right medication (prescribed or otherwise) might be struggling a bit. Who would have thought, other than informed epidemiologists shouting themselves hoarse, that this would have lasted longer than that sack of dry beans you panic bought and never cooked because, honestly, even in lockdown, soaking overnight is planning too far ahead in an uncertain world. And then they said takeout was safe, so forget it.

But here we are! Nearly a year later with many of us "hitting the pandemic wall," tired of COVID-19. Aside from the mental health crisis wrought by a staggering death toll, the possibility of contracting the virus and crushing financial pressure, it's the little things. We're tired of masks when we should be doubling them up to guard against a more contagious mutant strain. We're over Zoom cocktails, the flat, diet version of once bubbly conversations, and itching for the forbidden luxury of crowding around bars and dance floors with strangers.

And yet, like on those long-lost nights out, there's always one of us who isn't tired, that one friend who does not want to take the ride home because, "You guys, it's not even that late," and THIS IS HER SONG. That friend is COVID-19 and her song is our collective exhaustion. She has come back from the ladies' room with pupils the size of saucers and you just cannot reason with her.

So here are some meditations to help you calm your anxiety, re-energize and push through the pandemic fatigue wall and straight into what will likely be another one and another one, like dominoes resetting themselves on a Mbius strip forever. Kidding! I hope.

Meditation for Standing in Line

Ground your feet on the orange social distancing floor decal and begin with a deep breath deep enough to smell the fabric of your mask but not so deep that you might be inhaling the potential viral load of someone ignoring their own very bright decal. Exhale gently through your nose, releasing your breath and your frustration at their inability to eyeball 6 freaking feet after 11 months. Visualize the mask of the person ahead of you magically lifting, lifting, up, up over their nose. (If you're a cashier faced with hundreds of people on your shift, try this same visualization without the deep breathing. Without any breathing at all, actually.)

Meditation for Social Media Posts of Gatherings

It's easy enough to recover from the jump-scare of seeing a packed group photo from the Before Times but the shock of a fresh shot of a dozen unmasked Facebook or Instagram friends side-hugging at a party can linger. (Sweet baby Jesus, is that a charcuterie board they're picking at with their fingers?) Start by bringing your awareness to the tips of your fingers, where they hover over the keyboard. Move up through your hands and wrists, on and on until you reach your frontal lobe, where a string of angry comments is piling up like cartoon ticker tape. Imagine that string of negative thoughts and expletives drifting away on the surface of a lake like the one where you would have scattered your uncle's ashes if you'd been able to hold a funeral and ... nope. Nope. This is too heavy a lift for the millennia-old practice of meditation this is a job for kitten videos. Like 45 minutes of them. Share some with someone you know who's keeping it locked down. Try that one with the lawyer who can't turn off the filter that makes him a kitten send that one.

Meditation for the Overwhelming Urge to "Refuse to Live in Fear"

Right, of course, nobody wants to cower before the specter of death! If it's your time, it's your time! But since we're talking about a highly contagious virus very few people are as yet vaccinated against, let's channel that natural desire for personal freedom in a way that won't, say, kill me. Close your eyes and picture yourself on a mountain trail at dusk. Feel the earth, the grass, the bucket of chicken in your lap. Imagine the smell of the chicken wafting into the brush. Imagine the sound of curious wildlife approaching. A squirrel? A mountain lion? A bear? Who knows? Embrace the whims of fate without me.

Meditation for Resisting Rationalizing Dumb Shit

There will come a moment when you are tempted to flout the safety rules and recommendations maybe by cheap airfare, maybe by what everyone else seems to be doing, maybe by the quasi-psychedelic effects of eating beans you didn't cook long enough and also may have spoiled. Spike the urge to hit a house party, an underground gig or the buffet at a wedding by closing your eyes, picturing 1980s Moonstruck Cher and slapping yourself full-force across the face.

It's a global goddamn pandemic. Stay home.

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the Journal's arts and features editor. Reach her at 442-1400, extension 320, or Jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @JFumikoCahill.

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Meditations for Hitting the Pandemic Wall | Seriously? - North Coast Journal

The Meditation Market research report is latest addition by Data Bridge Market Research offers in-depth analysis of the industry size, share, major segments, and different geographic regions, forecast for the next seven years, key market players, and premium industry trends. It also focuses on the key drivers, restraints, opportunities and industry challenges.A comprehensive report gives details about historic data, present market trends, future product environment, marketing strategies, technological innovation, upcoming technologies, emerging trends or opportunities, and the technical progress in the related industry. The report endows with market potential for each geographical region based on the growth rate, macroeconomic parameters, consumer buying patterns, their preferences for particular product and market demand and supply scenarios. Meditation market report studies rising opportunities in the market and related influencing factors which are valuable for the businesses. It is an essential document for every market enthusiast, policymaker, investor, and market player.

Meditation marketis expected to gain market growth in the forecast period of 2020 to 2027. Data Bridge Market Research analyses the market to account to USD 9.0 billion by 2027 growing at a CAGR of 10.40% in the above-mentioned forecast period. The growing awareness amongst the individual and world population about the hidden power of meditation and its unconventional outcomes for the health benefits to lead a healthy life is driving the market growth exponentially in the forecast period of 2020 to 2027.

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By Mental Disorder (Mood Disorders, Anxiety Disorders)

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Meditation Market Overview: Market Segment, Market Size, Sales and Growth, Price by Type

Global Meditation Market Introduction: Market Share, Price, Base Distribution, Sales Area, Product by Company and Meditation Market Competitive Situation and Trends

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Meditation Market Forecast: Sales, Revenue, Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2028) and Forecast by Regions, by Type, by Application

Continued

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Meditation market competitive landscape provides details by competitor. Details included are company overview, company financials, revenue generated, market potential, investment in research and development, new market initiatives, global presence, production sites and facilities, production capacities, company strengths and weaknesses, product launch, product width and breadth, application dominance. The above data points provided are only related to the companies focus related to meditation market.

The major players covered in the meditation market report are Simply Better Apps, Smiling Mind, Inner Explorer, Inc., Committee for Children., Stop, Breathe & Think PBC, Breethe. Life , Simple Habit, Inc., Calm. HEADSPACE INC, MINDSET Brain Gym Toronto Inc, Inscape among other domestic and global players. Market share data is available for Global, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America separately. DBMR analyst understands competitive strengths and provides competitive analysis for each competitor separately.

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Global Meditation Market Scope and Market Size

Meditation market is segmented of the basis of products, disorders, meditation type, and information sources. The growth amongst these segments will help you analyse meagre growth segments in the industries, and provide the users with valuable market overview and market insights to help them in making strategic decisions for identification of core market applications.

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Meditation Market 2021 | Covid-19 Impact Analysis and Industry Forecast Report Till 2027 | Simply Better Apps, Smiling Mind, Inner Explorer KSU | The...

A MEDITATION centre in Northwich is running a workshop to help people struggling with these difficult times.

Odiyana Kadampa Meditation Centre is running an online half-day workshop next month looking at how to begin developing deep inner peace.

Julie Forrest, education programme coordinator for the centre, said: We live in difficult times. If we look back on the past few years we have had the threat of terrorist attacks, floods, Brexit, COVID-19 and now a combination of all these things.

One of the biggest things we face is uncertainty. We cant guarantee anything anymore.

But while this sounds bleak, Julie and the team at the centre say there are steps people can take to improve things, which will be the focus of the workshop at 10am on Saturday, March 27.

She said: At present, we try to protect ourselves from stress and anxiety with entertainments. Unfortunately, these entertainments dont improve our mental resilience or our ability to deal with stress. They just provide a timely distraction or a little relief. Also, with these lockdowns, many of these distractions are not available.

What we really need is something that gives us this relief, makes our mind stronger and more able to deal with difficulties, and that cannot be taken away from us by lockdown restrictions.

If we train in inner peace and gradually deepen this peace over time we will develop this mental resilience as this peace becomes more and more stable changing external conditions will start to have less power to knock us off balance until finally we will be able to remain peaceful even in the most challenging situations.

This is what Buddha taught 2,600 years ago. It was relevant then and is even more relevant now in this modern world.

The workshop costs 10 to attend and can be booked by visiting http://www.meditationincheshire.org

Link:

Find peace in troubled times with Northwich meditation centre - Northwich Guardian

Approaching any biopic, an actor prepares with a marriage of research and imagination, LaKeith Stanfield told me the other day.

Judas and the Black Messiah, now playing in some theaters and on HBO Max, tells a true Chicago story, and it doesnt take much viewer imagination to realize the dramatic possibilities. By late 1969, Illinois Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton (played by Daniel Kaluuya) posed a significant threat in the eyes of J. Edgar Hoovers FBI. Now well-documented, the bureaus counterintelligence program targeted Hampton and the Panthers.

Working with FBI agent Roy M. Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), a teenager facing jail time, William ONeal (Stanfield), struck a soul-selling deal with the bureau. Working undercover, ONeal infiltrated the Chicago-based Panther organization and eventually became security captain. He then fed information about the Panthers activities to his FBI contact, providing a detailed sketch of the first-floor apartment of Hamptons two-flat at 2337 W. Monroe St.

Hampton shared the flat with, among others, his partner and fellow Panther Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback). On orders from the FBI and Cook County States Attorney Edward Hanrahan, 14 plainclothes Chicago police officers conducted what the local press characterized as a raid for illegal firearms. The early December 1969 gun battle, as the Tribune called it at the time, was in fact a coordinated assassination, with a single bullet fired by one of the Panthers in retaliation.

Filmed in Cleveland in 2019, Judas demanded serious investigation on behalf of its excellent ensemble, in which even smaller roles, such as a Panther party member played by onetime DePaul University Theatre School student Ashton Sanders, spring fully to life.

I talked to four of the actors in separate Zoom interviews recently.

Stanfield (who plays ONeal): A lot of my characters operations were clandestine. The main thing I had to go on was ONeals interview for the documentary Eyes on the Prize. I got my hands on the unedited version, so I got to see what was going on in between some of the takes things he would do, how he would shift in his seat, a certain air of nervousness. At one point he says he felt bad about some of the things he did. And once I saw that conflict within him, and saw he had a deeper understanding of some of the things hed done, I wanted to take that to the forefront.

Story continues

Fishback (who plays Johnson): Near the beginning, my character mentions shes a poet and asks Fred if he likes poetry. That gave me an idea of her having a journal and a pen she carries around. Fishback, a writer as well as a performer, wrote some poems in character, as Johnson, and director King used them in the film. Now known as Akua Njeri, Johnson was pregnant at the time of Hamptons assassination. Njeri and Fred Hampton Jr., aka Chairman Fred Jr., advised the project and were frequent visitors to the set.

Prior to filming Kaluuya, Fishback and four others met with Njeri and Fred Hampton Jr. in Chicago for a seven-hour late-night summit.

We were all sitting around this table, Fishback says, and Chairman Fred says, I want to go around and hear why every single one of you wants to do this movie. It was a privilege to meet the family that way, and to tell our stories. Daniel said something about approaching the role as a vessel, and Mama Akua said, Well, what does that actually mean? Later, she asked me about (acting), and I said, Well, I like to allow a spirit to kind of flow through me when I take on a role and she said, Well, what if my spirit doesnt mesh with your spirit? Sizing me up, you know. She reminded me of my grandma in that way. At the end of the night I gave her a hug and I said, I hope you know my heart. And she said, I do. I just had to give you a hard time.

Sanders: Researching the slain Panther party member Jimmy Palmer, the only thing I was able to find, really, was his death certificate. So I had to find the world he lived in, working with with our director (Shaka King) and Ryan (Coogler, who produced). I compare Jimmy to a crocodile. Always has his guard up for himself, and for Fred. Hes a protector. An interesting character for sure.

Five years ago Sanders dropped out of DePaul to move back to Los Angeles after filming a key role in Barry Jenkinss Moonlight, which won the top Oscar that year. Its been a wild ride since then. To pursue it, and do it, its been a blessing to be a part of these important projects.

This one, he says, cant help but bring a lot of raw feelings to the surface. Although the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings happened after we made the film, it all feels relevant. The world then, the world now its very connected. And its really upsetting to think about. Were just trying to fight for our livelihood, and for our lives, as Black Americans.

Plemons: Four, five days into filming, LaKeith handed me a book that delved into Mitchell and ONeals relationship. It started to skew my perception of Mitchell in a way that seemed like it might not be helpful. I dont know if he was quite as conflicted as he is in the film. Shaka and I talked about that. For the function of the character in the movie, though, (Mitchell) needed to be someone whose primary goal was to do the right thing. And the script was written so well.

Most of Plemons scenes consisted of two-person encounters with ONeal. Im a huge fan of LaKeiths work. When I showed up in Cleveland, we shot all our scenes in the steakhouse. We didnt talk hardly at all when we werent rehearsing or actually filming. Then, finally, we went out one weekend and actually talked. It was such an interesting power struggle to play, back and forth.

Stanfield: It was tough making this one. Definitely the toughest Ive done. Having members of Hamptons family on set, he says, provided a safety net of authenticity, even if many things in the story changed as a result. Chairman Fred Jr. and Mama Akua would talk to the director, and all of a sudden wed find the structure of some scenes shifting. Many scenes, as is usual in moviemaking, didnt make the final cut, including one of ONeal, already having infiltrated the Panthers, encountering a group of police officers. In that scene, ONeal punched out one of the officers in an attempt to show his loyalty to Hampton.

A lot of people assume ONeal was super-close to Chairman Fred, and Fred Jr. said he wouldnt have gotten that close because Chairman Fred wouldnt have trusted him. He did have a position in the party, but he wasnt his personal bodyguard and therefore that display didnt seem to match up with what was likely the truth. Out it went.

ONeals tortured circumstance, with his guilt eating away at his conscience, was not an easy headspace to inhabit, Stanfield says. One thing I realized after doing Judas is that mental health is important. The way you prepare for a role like that is important. You want to do the best you can, so you go into it 110 percent. But you dont always take the proper steps to make sure your mind is in a good space. With that role, I definitely shouldve done some exercises some meditation, and some therapy in order to prepare. And now, moving forward, I will.

___

Judas and the Black Messiah is now playing in theaters, where coronavirus restrictions allow. It premiered Friday simultaneously on HBO Max, where it will stream through March 14.

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LaKeith Stanfield on 'Judas and the Black Messiah': I should've done some meditation, and some therapy, to prepare for something like this' - Yahoo...

The expectation is that in 2021, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies will continue to become more mainstream. Businesses that havent traditionally viewed themselves as candidates for AI applications will embrace these technologies.

A great story of machine learning being used in an industry that is not known for its technology investments is the story of Makoto Koike. Using Googles TensorFlow, Makoto initially developed a cucumber sorting system using pictures that he took of the cucumbers. With that small step, a machine learning cucumber sorting system was born.

Getting started with AI and machine learning is becoming increasingly accessible for organizations of all sizes. Technology-as-a-service companies including Microsoft, AWS and Google all have offerings that will get most organizations started on their AI and machine learning journeys. These technologies can be used to automate and streamline manual business processes that have historically been resource-intensive.

An article on forbes.com claims that, as business leaders continue to refine their processes to support the new normal of the Covid-19 pandemic, they should be considering where these technologies might help reduce manual, resource-intensive or paper-based processes. Any manual process should be fair game for review for automation possibilities.

Photo source: Dreamstime.com

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Using AI and Machine Learning will increase in horti industry - hortidaily.com

For the past few years, JPMorgan has been busy building out its machine learning capability underDaryush Laqab, its San Francisco-based head of AI platform product management, who was hired from Google in 2019. Last time we looked, the bank seemed to be paying salaries of $160-$170k to new joiners onLaqab's team.

If that sounds appealing, you might want to watch the video below so that you know what you're getting into. Recorded at the AWS re:Invent conferencein December, it's only just made it to you YouTube. The video is flagged as a day in the life of JPMorgan's machine learning data scientists, butLaqab arguably does a better of job of highlighting some of the constraints data professionals at allbanks have to work under.

"There are some barriers to smooth data science at JPMorgan," he explains - a bank is not the same as a large technology firm.

For example, data scientists at JPMorgan have to check data is authorized for use, saysLaqab: "They need to go to a process to log that use and make surethat they have the adequate approvals for that intent in terms of use."

They also have to deal with the legacy infrastructureissue: "We are a large organization, we have a lot of legacy infrastructure," says Laqab. "Like any other legacy infrastructure, it is built over time,it is patched over time. These are tightly integrated,so moving part or all of that infrastructure to public cloud,replacing rule base engines with AI/ML based engines.All of that takes time and brings inertia to the innovation."

JPMorgan's size and complexity is another source of inertia as multiple business lines in multiple regulated entities in different regulated environments need to be considered. "Making sure that those regulatory obligationsare taken care of, again, slows down data science at times," saysLaqab.

And then there are more specific regulations such as those concerning model governance. At JPMorgan, a machine learning model can't go straight into a production environment."It needs to go through a model review and a model governance process," says Laqab. "- To make sure we have another set of eyes that looksat how that model was created, how that model was developed..." And then there are software governance issues too.

Despite all these hindrances, JPMorgan has already productionized AI models and built an 'Omni AI ecosystem,'which Laqab heads,to help employees to identify and ingest minimum viable data so that they canbuild models faster. Laqab saysthe bank saved $150m in expenses in 2019 as a result. JPMorgan's AI researchers are now working on everything fromFAQ bots and chat bots, to NLP search models for the bank'sown content, pattern recognition in equities markets and email processing. - The breadth of work on offer is considerable. "We play in every market that is out there," saysLaqab,

The bank has also learned that the best way to structure its AI team is to split people into data scientists who train and create models and machine learning engineers who operationalize models, saysLaqab. - Before you apply, you might want to consider which you'd rather be.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

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The head of JPMorgan's machine learning platform explained what it's like to work there - eFinancialCareers

This article is part ofAI education, a series of posts that review and explore educational content on data science and machine learning. (In partnership withPaperspace)

Teaching yourself deep learning is a long and arduous process. You need a strong background in linear algebra and calculus, good Python programming skills, and a solid grasp of data science, machine learning, and data engineering. Even then, it can take more than a year of study and practice before you reach the point where you can start applying deep learning to real-world problems and possibly land a job as a deep learning engineer.

Knowing where to start, however, can help a lot in softening the learning curve. If I had to learn deep learning with Python all over again, I would start with Grokking Deep Learning, written by Andrew Trask. Most books on deep learning require a basic knowledge of machine learning concepts and algorithms. Trasks book teaches you the fundamentals of deep learning without any prerequisites aside from basic math and programming skills.

The book wont make you a deep learning wizard (and it doesnt make such claims), but it will set you on a path that will make it much easier to learn from more advanced books and courses.

Most deep learning books are based on one of several popular Python libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Keras. In contrast, Grokking Deep Learning teaches you deep learning by building everything from scratch, line by line.

You start with developing a single artificial neuron, the most basic element of deep learning. Trask takes you through the basics of linear transformations, the main computation done by an artificial neuron. You then implement the artificial neuron in plain Python code, without using any special libraries.

This is not the most efficient way to do deep learning, because Python has many libraries that take advantage of your computers graphics card and parallel processing power of your CPU to speed up computations. But writing everything in vanilla Python is excellent for learning the ins and outs of deep learning.

In Grokking Deep Learning, your first artificial neuron will take a single input, multiply it by a random weight, and make a prediction. Youll then measure the prediction error and apply gradient descent to tune the neurons weight in the right direction. With a single neuron, single input, and single output, understanding and implementing the concept becomes very easy. Youll gradually add more complexity to your models, using multiple input dimensions, predicting multiple outputs, applying batch learning, adjusting learning rates, and more.

And youll implement every new concept by gradually adding and changing bits of Python code youve written in previous chapters, gradually creating a roster of functions for making predictions, calculating errors, applying corrections, and more. As you move from scalar to vector computations, youll shift from vanilla Python operations to Numpy, a library that is especially good at parallel computing and is very popular among the machine learning and deep learning community.

With the basic building blocks of artificial neurons under your belt, youll start creating deep neural networks, which is basically what you get when you stack several layers of artificial neurons on top of each other.

As you create deep neural networks, youll learn about activation functions and apply them to break the linearity of the stacked layers and create classification outputs. Again, youll implement everything yourself with the help of Numpy functions. Youll also learn to compute gradients and propagate errors through layers to spread corrections across different neurons.

As you get more comfortable with the basics of deep learning, youll get to learn and implement more advanced concepts. The book features some popular regularization techniques such as early stopping and dropout. Youll also get to craft your own version of convolutional neural networks (CNN) and recurrent neural networks (RNN).

By the end of the book, youll pack everything into a complete Python deep learning library, creating your own class hierarchy of layers, activation functions, and neural network architectures (youll need object-oriented programming skills for this part). If youve already worked with other Python libraries such as Keras and PyTorch, youll find the final architecture to be quite familiar. If you havent, youll have a much easier time getting comfortable with those libraries in the future.

And throughout the book, Trask reminds you that practice makes perfect; he encourages you to code your own neural networks by heart without copy-pasting anything.

Not everything about Grokking Deep Learning is perfect. In a previous post, I said that one of the main things that defines a good book is the code repository. And in this area, Trask could have done a much better job.

The GitHub repository of Grokking Deep Learning is rich with Jupyter Notebook files for every chapter. Jupyter Notebook is an excellent tool for learning Python machine learning and deep learning. However, the strength of Jupyter is in breaking down code into several small cells that you can execute and test independently. Some of Grokking Deep Learnings notebooks are composed of very large cells with big chunks of uncommented code.

This becomes especially problematic in the later chapters, where the code becomes longer and more complex, and finding your way in the notebooks becomes very tedious. As a matter of principle, the code for educational material should be broken down into small cells and contain comments in key areas.

Also, Trask has written the code in Python 2.7. While he has made sure that the code also works smoothly in Python 3, it contains old coding techniques that have become deprecated among Python developers (such as using the for i in range(len(array)) paradigm to iterate over an array).

Trask has done a great job of putting together a book that can serve both newbies and experienced Python deep learning developers who want to fill the gaps in their knowledge.

But as Tywin Lannister says (and every engineer will agree), Theres a tool for every task, and a task for every tool. Deep learning isnt a magic wand that can solve every AI problem. In fact, for many problems, simpler machine learning algorithms such as linear regression and decision trees will perform as well as deep learning, while for others, rule-based techniques such as regular expressions and a couple of if-else clauses will outperform both.

The point is, youll need a full arsenal of tools and techniques to solve AI problems. Hopefully, Grokking Deep Learning will help get you started on the path to acquiring those tools.

Where do you go from here? I would certainly suggest picking up an in-depth book on Python deep learning such as Deep Learning With PyTorch or Deep Learning With Python. You should also deepen your knowledge of other machine learning algorithms and techniques. Two of my favorite books are Hands-on Machine Learning and Python Machine Learning.

You can also pick up a lot of knowledge browsing machine learning and deep learning forums such as the r/MachineLearning and r/deeplearning subreddits, the AI and deep learning Facebook group, or by following AI researchers on Twitter.

The AI universe is vast and quickly expanding, and there is a lot to learn. If this is your first book on deep learning, then this is the beginning of an amazing journey.

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It is common for patients with psychosis or depression to experience symptoms of both conditions which has meant that traditionally, mental health diagnoses have been given for a primary illness with secondary symptoms of the other.

Making an accurate diagnosis often poses difficulties to mental health clinicians and diagnoses often do not accurately reflect the complexity of individual experience or neurobiology. For example, a patient being diagnosed with psychosis will often have depression regarded as a secondary condition, with more focus on the psychosis symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions; this has implications on treatment decisions for patients.

A team at the University of Birminghams Institute for Mental Health and Centre for Human Brain Health, along with researchers at the European Union-funded PRONIA consortium, explored the possibility of using machine learning to create extremely accurate models of pure forms of both illnesses and using these models to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of a cohort of patients with mixed symptoms. The results of this study have been published in Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Paris Alexandros Lalousis, lead author, explains that the majority of patients have co-morbidities, so people with psychosis also have depressive symptoms and vice versa That presents a big challenge for clinicians in terms of diagnosing and then delivering treatments that are designed for patients without co-morbidity. Its not that patients are misdiagnosed, but the current diagnostic categories we have do not accurately reflect the clinical and neurobiological reality.

The researchers analysed questionnaire responses and detailed clinical interviews, as well as data from structural magnetic resonance imaging from a cohort of 300 patients taking part in the study. From this group of patients, they identified small subgroups of patients, who could be classified as suffering either from psychosis without any symptoms of depression, or from depression without any psychotic symptoms.

With the goal of developing a precise disease profile for each patient and testing it against their diagnosis to see how accurate it was, the research team was able to identify machine learning models of pure depression, and pure psychosis by using the collected data. They were then able to use machine learning methods to apply these models to patients with symptoms of both illnesses.

The team discovered that patients with depression as a primary illness were more likely to have accurate mental health diagnoses, whereas patients with psychosis with depression had symptoms which most frequently leaned towards the depression dimension. This may suggest that depression plays a greater part in the illness than had previously been thought.

Lalousis added: There is a pressing need for better treatments for psychosis and depression, conditions which constitute a major mental health challenge worldwide. Our study highlights the need for clinicians to understand better the complex neurobiology of these conditions, and the role of co-morbid symptoms; in particular considering carefully the role that depression is playing in the illness.

In this study we have shown how using sophisticated machine learning algorithms, which take into account clinical, neurocognitive, and neurobiological factors can aid our understanding of the complexity of mental illness. In the future, we think machine learning could become a critical tool for accurate diagnosis. We have a real opportunity to develop data-driven diagnostic methods this is an area in which mental health is keeping pace with physical health and its really important that we keep up that momentum.

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Mental health diagnoses and the role of machine learning - Health Europa