 All right, I think we're gonna get started. My name is Aaron Blaisdell. I'm a professor, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at UCLA. I'm gonna give some brief opening remarks to kind of kick this whole shindig off this morning. And what I wanna do is I wanna start by saying just a brief history of how AHS came to be and where we've come since we started. So back in 2009, I met Brent Pottinger who couldn't be here to this one event this year. And I guess getting a medical degree is kind of busy. But he was an aspiring medical student to be and I was an associate professor at UCLA and we got to get to know each other through the paleo and ancestral health movement that during those early years, the late 2008, 2009 period. And we attended an event at UCLA that was about physiology and new directions for physiology. And we were sitting there watching each talk and at the conclusion of each talk. And each talk was interesting because they were discussing latest research on physiology and human health and disease that all had implications for evolutionary mismatch, right? Which is the kernel idea from the paleo movement is that there's an evolutionary mismatch that is a source of many of our common afflictions, illnesses, chronic disease in our modern society. And so we're sitting there with that knowledge and seeing at the conclusion of every talk and now we have an idea of another target for a pharmaceutical intervention or a pharmacological intervention to be developed. And that's the status quo in academic and medical science. And we were thinking, man, if we just had a symposium of our own where at the end of each slide it's like, and here's what you can do to take matters in your own hand and take control of your own life. Not that everything's gonna be rosy but as a first line of trying to do something to help yourself, we thought that would be great. And that was the genesis of the idea of the ancestral health symposium. So we had our first symposium at UCLA in 2011. And so here we are five years later. We've had one every year except a little glitch prevented us from having it last year, which was supposed to be here, right? But do some scheduling things that were out of our control and we weren't able to do that but so we delayed it to this year but we are back and bolder than ever. I can't take credit for that one. And thanks. And so what I wanna say is that really what ancestral health is about is this idea of evolutionary mismatch and how we can look at our own lifestyle or our own modern life, how we feel, how we think, how we raise our kids, how we get food from and transport food, grow food, everything, every facet of our society, how we build social relationships and look at that through the lens of evolutionary mismatch with what do our bodies expect based on how they've been adapted by natural selection and that's not like a single easy answer. There's gonna be multiple scales and levels of analysis. There'll be different answers. And but that's the point is to start looking at our health from that perspective to bring evolutionary medicine into our own lives and into the practice and hopefully into the academic and science practitioner model as well. And that was the other idea about starting AHS was there was lots of talk in the blogosphere back then. All these ideas were floating around but at the time they were being shunned pretty much by the academic community. I had hit a lot of roadblocks talking to my colleagues about these ideas and a lot of it was considered woo-woo or it's just what's the point. And so we met a lot of resistance at the time and I think that I wanted to start this conference and the society as a way to bring academics in and show them and have them talk about their research but also see that there's a genuine interest out there in people wanting to address their own health issues through an understanding of evolutionary mismatch. And it looks like that the symposium's grown every year. I mean we were off to a little bit of a troubling start and early on with some of the contentious issues that we had like the notorious carb wars. But I think every child that's born goes through some stumbling blocks as they're developing and I think we're past the toddler stage even by this point. And I think that as you see the growth in the depth of the talks, the breadth of the topics that were present at this conference this year is just stunning and it's just gonna continue to grow as we continue to expand and view all aspects of the human condition, the world condition through this idea of evolutionary mismatch and human effect on the world. So with that in mind that's the spirit that I wanna start this conference today. So I wanna welcome you all here to AHS 16. Okay that was the rah-rah stuff. And in a moment I'm gonna hand it over to Amanda Oakley to talk a little bit about some of the logistics and then after that we're gonna kick off pretty much immediately with a little bit of a preview of all the posters. So if you're in the room stay in the room cause we're gonna keep rolling with that. But before we get to the poster previews just should go over some basics about how the conference is gonna run, what to expect. And what I'll tell you Amanda's gonna fill you in on other aspects of this but the thing I should say is that the way the talks are gonna run there are two rooms for the talks, this room and this is west and then east room which is just a few doors down. And there's gonna for those of you who are giving talks there's gonna be somebody standing sitting over here in front of you who's gonna have a sign or a series of signs and you have a 40 minute slot all the talks are the same length there are 40 minutes time slot, 30 minutes for your talk and the last 10 minutes for Q and A. So what they're gonna do is they're gonna start timing you from the time you start speaking and then at 25 minutes in when you have five minutes left for the talk part they're gonna flash the signs as five minutes. When you have one minute left into that 30 minutes they'll show a one minute sign and when your time is up for the 30 minute part they'll show you a sign that says stop. That doesn't mean you have to stop that means if you want to now bring your talk to a conclusion so you have nice 10 minutes to interact with the audience I've got to Q and A and we have microphones set up in the middle of the room for that we can do that. If you are on a roll and you're like forget it I'm just gonna eat into my Q and A time kind of finishing up what I'm gonna talk about that's your decision as a speaker you can do that. But what we're gonna do is when you're now because it's a 40 minute talk you've got to stop at the 30 minute point once it's 35 minutes and you really only have five minutes left till you have to leave the stage we're gonna again do the five minute and then when you're 39 minutes into the 40 minute talk we're gonna do the one minute and when it's 40 minutes we're gonna say stop and the chair's gonna get up and escort you off the stage. And in the kindest possible manner no big hooks don't worry but we know it's sometimes you get on a roll and it's hard to think about the time maintenance so we're there to help you with that. So I just wanted to make that announcement now to kind of explain how it is so even the audience members understand what we're doing up here and that everybody's being treated fairly in the same way to make sure that all the other talks speakers get their chance to give a full presentation. Okay and with that I will hand it over to Amanda. Okay hi everyone welcome we're really excited with a really really jam packed schedule this year. Can everyone hear me in the back? Yeah so I'm here with the non-ra-ra stuff just the quick housekeeping. So as Erin mentioned we have talks happening in both rooms at the same time. So you don't need to worry if you're unable to make it to one room or the other if there are two things happening at the same time. Everything's being recorded by RAV team and will be posted on YouTube. Possibly even the same day that the talks are happening but definitely within a couple of days. So you can take your time with our exhibitors or with friends or at lunch. AHS is as much about meeting people and building communities so if you choose not to attend the talks you can always catch them on YouTube after. So our poster presentations and book signings and exhibitors will all be taking place in the central ballroom so please go and visit them. The posters and book signings will be on Friday and Saturday. Movement sessions will be happening as well during the breaks so you can meet outside just outside of registrations for those. What else? Oh we have a completely digital schedule this year so you may have realized that we're not handing out anything at registration. We do have the link at registration so you can sign up for an account on the SCED website and get updates and a daily schedule sent to you if you choose. We did have one change already. Unfortunately Dr. Mark Barhana was not able to make it for his talk so you will notice that there is a gap in the schedule for his talk. There's Wi-Fi here so UCB Guest is our Wi-Fi. There's no log on you just click to join the network. There are fountains outside and bathrooms as well and a cafe downstairs for anyone who wants to go down and get coffee and tea. And any questions you can find us at registration. Volunteers are wearing green shirts so come and find us with anything we're happy to help and please put your phones on vibrate. So I'll hand it back to Erin and thanks a lot for joining us.