New Materials for Making "Spintronic" Devices

L to R: Alexei Tsvelik, Dmitri Kharzeev, Igor Zaliznyak

An interdisciplinary group of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has devised methods to make a new class of electronic devices based on a property of electrons known as "spin," rather than merely their electric charge. This approach, dubbed spintronics, could open the way to increasing dramatically the productivity of electronic devices operating at the nanoscale - on the order of billionths of a meter. The Brookhaven researchers have filed a U.S. provisional patent application for their invention, which is now available for licensing.

"This development can open the way for the use of spintronics in practical room temperature devices, an exciting prospect," said DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach. "The interplay between outstanding facilities and laboratory scientists is a root cause for this achievement, and a direct consequence of the collaborative transformational research that takes place in our DOE laboratories."

In the field of electronics, devices based on manipulating electronic charges have been rapidly shrinking and, therefore, getting more efficient, ever since they were first developed in the middle of the last century. "But progress in miniaturization and increasing efficiency is approaching a fundamental technological limit imposed by the atomic structure of matter," said physicist Igor Zaliznyak, lead author on the Brookhaven Lab patent application. Once you've made circuits that approach the size of a few atoms or a single atom, you simply cannot make them any smaller.........

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Fuel from fiber

"Put a tree in your tank." Fuel companies aren't touting that slogan. At least not yet.

But thanks to research done in part by Bruce Dale, Michigan State University professor of chemical engineering and materials science, making fuels from poplar trees and corn stalks is becoming more efficient and cost-effective.

Dale is internationally known for his 30 years of research on making ethanol from plant biomass the stems, leaves, stalks and trunks of plants and trees commonly discarded as waste after a crop is harvested. He's developed a patented pretreatment process for biomass, ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX), which makes the breakdown of cellulose the most difficult part of making ethanol from plant biomass more efficient.

Dale and other members of the Biomass Refining Consortium for Applied Fundamentals and Innovation will discuss AFEX and other biomass pretreatment technologies during a presentation today at BIO2007, the annual international convention of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. The consortium is a group of researchers studying biomass refining.

"In time, we can expect to completely replace gasoline and diesel with cellulose-derived biofuels that are cheaper, better for the environment and much better for national security than petroleum-derived fuels," Dale said.........

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New Technology Stores Solar Energy

With the hunt for alternative energy sources coupled with technological innovations, wood no longer remains just a structural component, or a decorative trim or paneling. It can now be transformed into energy storage.

This is exactl2007 Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge awathe Enertia Building System has done. Its technology has turned a piece of wood into a thermal battery!

The wood house becomes a solar energy storing device, and once properly configured and sited it can heat and cool itnew technology is especially applicable to solid wood homes, so, more wood means more effective heating and cooling system of the house.

The solid GluelaEnertia Building Systems maximize the energy-storing potential of the wood homes.

These energy efficient homes are environment-friendly as well, as they sequester carbon in their massive wood walls. To add to reducing carbon emissions the key source of greenhouse gas — these new automated, natural heating and cooling system reduces carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

With the world up with arms to battle global warming, this breakthrough invention surely has a global potential.

To read more on the tvisit here....

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An Alternative To Video Surveillance

Surveillance systems take on a new look with a technology developed by scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Laser-Based Item Monitoring System balances the need for high-resolution monitoring and personal safety with respect for confidentiality and personal privacy. This is particularly important today with heightened emphasis on security and privacy and is possible because the system does not use video.

"Our system is specifically designed to address surveillance requirements in places where video would be unacceptable because of the presence of proprietary information or other privacy concerns," said Pete Chiaro, a member of the Engineering Science & Technology Division.

Using low-cost reflective tags placed on objects, LBIMS maps the precise location of high-value items. The laser can scan a number of points per second and can detect small changes - less than a centimeter - in the reflected signal, meaning tampering can be immediately detected.

The precision of the system is made possible by a high-resolution two-axis laser scanner capable of looking at a 60-degree field of view in 0.0005-degree increments, dividing the field of view into more than 10 billion individual pointing locations. A camera with comparable resolution over the same field of view would require a 10,000-megapixel detector.........

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Aluminum Alloy to Extract Fuel Cell-powering Hydrogen from Water

The increasing need to curb global warming at the earliest is broadening the horizon of fuel cell usages each day, as an alternative to the carbon dioxide-emitting energy sources the key element lading to climate change.

Cuing with the need to replace gasoline and cap greenhouse gas emissions, an engineer has coa new method of extracting hydrogen from water for running fuel cells.

The Purdue University engineer has used an aluminum alloy to do the extraction job. This innovative technique can efficiently extract hydrogen from water to run not just fuel cells but also internal combustion engines.

Thus, it is an easy and effective alternative solution to gasoline use. With water added to the aluminum and a metal called gallium-based alloys pellets, hydrogen is generated spontaneously. Interestingly, this produced hydrogen can directly be fed to an engine.

Once successfully commercialized, the new technology can be a potential replacement of gasoline use. Ah! With it, you can go eco-friendly mowing your lawn using it in the mowerImage

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New technology slow to hit U.S. shores

I an article from Variety below because some of you are interested in newer technologies.

A cell phone with an HD screen that tricks your brain into thinking it's watching a 48-inch letterbox plasma TV. Cell phones with rollout screens. A broadcast network devoted entirely to mobile programming.

These technologies and others have already hit the streets, or will soon, in Europe and Asia. But in America, they may as well be science fiction.... The U.S. continues to lag in implementing new cellular and digital technologies. And while there are signs that gap may be closing, it's done little to shed the impression that this is a nation of Luddites.

The reasons for this technological jet lag are both cultural and practical.

For one, emerging markets that have no ingrained infrastructure in place (and fewer compatibility issues between companies) ....

There is one glaring technological bright spot for the U.S.: hi-def. Voom HD Networks general manager Greg Moyer observes that U.S. prominence in hi-def is a direct result of national policy.

I include a picture of this gizmo that looks interesting. It belongs to Dutch company Polymer Vision who unveiled the Readius in 2005, but cell phones with rollout screens have eluded the U.S. market to date.

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Antenna Calibrations Extended to 60-110 GHz

NIST engineer Katherine MacReynolds prepares a new NIST "tabletop" range for characterizing high-performance antennas, such as horn antennas (small gold pyramids) operating at 94 Gigahertz. The surrounding blue foam cones absorb electromagnetic fields to reduce scattering from nearby objects, thereby improving measurement accuracy.
Credit: © 2006 Geoffrey Wheeler

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a new "tabletop" sized facility to improve characterization of antennas operating in the 60 to 110 gigahertz (GHz) frequency range. This extended frequency capability serves needs for advanced civilian and military communication and radar systems.

A number of electronic systems are moving to higher frequencies to attain higher channel capacity, better spatial resolution and other advantages. The new measurement facility will help accelerate development of technologies such as automobile collision-prevention radars, which operate at 94 GHz and require antennas small enough to be integrated into car bumpers. Improved NIST antenna calibration capability also helps to assure the accuracy of a number of systems. "NIST is the start of the measurement traceability chain," says Perry Wilson, leader of the Radio Frequency Fields Group. "For instance, we calibrate the probes used by aerospace companies to calibrate instruments launched on satellites and other critical systems. Weather satellites are an example; improvements in antenna accuracy mean better data for weather models, resulting in better weather predictions".

The new facility continues NIST's history of innovation in antenna measurements, building on the "extrapolated gain" technique developed several decades ago. The original extrapolation range and techniques made it practical for scientists to accurately compute an antenna's far-field characteristics based on near-field measurements. By making the range compact, costs are significantly reduced. In addition, the extrapolation technique uses over-sampling and averaging techniques to minimize the effects of scattering and range imperfections.........

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How to Rip and Tear a Fluid

Credit: J. Gladden, A. Belmonte (Penn State)

In a simple experiment on a mixture of water, surfactant (soap), and an organic salt, two scientists working in the Pritchard Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at Penn State have shown that a rigid object like a knife passes through the mixture at slow speeds as if it were a liquid, but rips it up as if it were a rubbery solid when the knife moves rapidly. The mixture they study shares properties of a number of everyday materials -- like toothpaste, saliva, blood, and cell cytoplasm -- which do not fall into the standard textbook cases of solid, liquid, or gas. Instead, these "viscoelastic" materials can have the viscous behavior of a fluid or the elastic behavior of a solid, depending on the situation. The results of these experiments, which are reported in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Letters and are featured on its cover, provide new insights into how such materials switch over from being solid-like to being liquid-like.

"As a child will swish its finger through an unknown liquid to find out what it is, we built an experiment to pull a cylinder through this viscoelastic material, to learn how it responds," explains Andrew Belmonte, associate professor of mathematics at Penn State and a member of the research team. Their study revealed experimentally, for the first time, the response of a viscoelastic material to increasingly extreme conditions of flow. "We observed that flow happens at slow speeds, cutting happens at intermediate speeds, and tearing happens at the highest speeds," says Joseph R. Gladden, a co-author of the research paper, who collaborated on the study while he was a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State. The scientists also observed that the viscoelastic material heals in the wake of the tear, as a torn solid would not, and recovers completely after several hours. "Surprisingly, the strength of the material when it acts like a solid is essentially the same as its surface tension as a liquid. This fact reconnects our understanding of these materials between the extremes of flow and fracture," said Belmonte.........

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Helping carbon nanotubes get into shape

Caption: A carbon nanotube bundle before (left) and after (right) densification.
Credit: Rensselaer/Liu

Troy, N.Y. -- Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method of compacting carbon nanotubes into dense bundles. These tightly packed bundles are efficient conductors and could one day replace copper as the primary interconnects used on computer chips and even hasten the transition to next-generation 3-D stacked chips.

Theoretical studies show that carbon nanotubes, if packed closely enough together, should be able to outperform copper as an electrical conductor. But because of the way carbon nanotubes are grown in sparse nanoscale forests where carbon molecules compete for growth-inducing catalysts researchers have been unable to successfully grow tightly packed bundles.

James Jiam-Qiang Lu, associate professor of physics and electrical engineering at Rensselaer, together with his research associate Zhengchun Liu, decided to investigate how to densify carbon nanotube bundles after they are already grown. He detailed the results of the post-growth densification project on June 6 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC) in Burlingame, Calif.

Lus team discovered that by immersing vertically grown carbon nanotube bundles into a liquid organic solvent and allowing them to dry, the nanotubes pull close together into a dense bundle. Lu attributes the densification process to capillary coalescence, which is the same physical principle that allows moisture to move up a piece of tissue paper that is dipped into water.........

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New tool for spectroscopy

Image courtesy of gmp.ch

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed two new calibration tools to help correct and validate the performance of analytic instruments that identify substances based on fluorescence.

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the development and use of fluorescence-based analytic techniques. Scientists can detect, measure and identify unknown substancespotentially including chemical and biological weaponsusing spectroscopic techniques. In fluorescence spectroscopy, researchers send a beam of light at a certain wavelength into a sample, exciting electrons in particular analytes or fluorescent labels, which then emit light at longer wavelengths with measurable energy levels. This resulting spectral signature, recorded by a fluorescence spectrometer, is distinct for different fluorescent compounds. A number of of these assays are being used in areasincluding clinical diagnostics, environmental monitoring and drug developmentwhere regulatory requirements are strict and may require standards for instrument qualification and method validation.

To meet these needs, NIST has developed two ready-to-use, fluorescent glass Standard Reference Materials (SRMs), about the size of a pack of a gum, whose certified values can be used to correct fluorescence emission spectra for relative intensity. SRM 2940 (Orange emission) has certified values for emission wavelengths from 500 to 800 nanometers when excited with light at 412 nm; SRM 2941 (Green emission) has certified values for emission wavelengths from 450 to 650 nm when excited with light at 427 nm.........

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Nanoscale Details of Photolithography Process

Schematic of the photolithography process shows the formation of a gradient extending from the photoresist material to be removed (center) into the unexposed portions of the resist on the sides. NIST measurements document the residual swelling fraction caused by the developer that can contribute to roughness in the final developed image.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made the first direct measurements of the infinitesimal expansion and collapse of thin polymer films used in the manufacture of advanced semiconductor devices. It's a matter of only a couple of nanometers, but it can be enough to affect the performance of next-generation chip manufacturing. The NIST measurements, detailed in a new paper,* offer a new insight into the complex chemistry that enables the mass production of powerful new integrated circuits.

The smallest critical features in memory or processor chips include transistor "gates." In today's most advanced chips, gate length is about 45 nanometers, and the industry is aiming for 32-nanometer gates. To build the nearly one billion transistors in modern microprocessors, manufacturers use photolithography, the high-tech, nanoscale version of printing technology. The semiconductor wafer is coated with a thin film of photoresist, a polymer-based formulation, and exposed with a desired pattern using masks and short wavelength light (193 nm). The light changes the solubility of the exposed portions of the resist, and a developer fluid is used to wash the resist away, leaving the pattern which is used for further processing.

Exactly what happens at the interface between the exposed and unexposed photoresist has become an important issue for the design of 32-nanometer processes. Most of the exposed areas of the photoresist swell slightly and dissolve away when washed with the developer. However this swelling can induce the polymer formulation to separate (like oil and water) and alter the unexposed portions of the resist at the edges of the pattern, roughening the edge. For a 32-nanometer feature, manufacturers want to hold this roughness to at most about two or three nanometers.........

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Proton Camera

Lab researchers, working with Teledyne Imaging Sensors, have built the world's fastest camera, and it has just won an R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine as one of the 100 most technologically significant products of 2007.

Made from two bonded microelectronic chips, the "Camera on a Chip" can capture 2.8 million frames per second. A normal motion picture camera captures 24 frames per second.

The camera produces movies of ultra-short (sub-microsecond) processes, mostly induced by powerful high explosives. These processes are studied using a remarkable imaging technique known as proton radiography, in which high-energy protons pass through an explosives-driven object to a screen, where they produce a blue "shadowgraph," essentially a two-dimensional representation of the object.

The camera takes pictures of the shadowgraphs in as little as 50 billionths of a second per frame, freezing images of the object's high-speed motions and storing up to three of them "on-chip" at one time. Several cameras can be used together to make a movie of tens of frames or more.

With very high sensitivity in both the visible and near-visible frequencies, the camera can also be used for a number of other applications, including studies of internal-combustion engines, vehicle-impact tests, and armor-penetration experiments; laser-beam identification of minerals on Mars; and location of fast-moving targets in space.........

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Transparent toaster

I know there are fancy toasters out there, but essentially most toasters work in the same way, whether you paid $10 for your little machine or $300. You set the timer, put the slice of bread in, and it pops out when done. If it''s not quite toasty enough, you put it back in. If it''s burned and inedible, you throw it out and start over with a new piece of bread.

But here''s a concept product that not only takes the guess work out of toasting, but also turns something common into a bit of visual interest for your kitchen. The Transparent Toaster toasts your bread or pastry (using "heating glass technology," whatever that is) in plain view so you can watch it to be sure it comes out just right

Via Ananova (but no information about the designer or prospects for making this into a commercial product). This tiip comes from Emily.

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Groundbreaking Technology in Spam Prevention

As per Ferris Research, spam can cost over $500 per user a year. Even with spam filters in place, they claim it still costs $140 per user a year. It also results in lost productivity and higher IT costs. InformationWeek is offering an interesting white paper detailing a groundbreaking new anti-spam technology used in the Abaca Email Protection Gateway. The new approach involves analyzing the relationship between sender and receiver and claims it can block 99 percent of incoming spam. Check it out for yourself here and leave a comment letting us know what you think.

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Skewered Pumpkins

We encounter valves every day, whether in the water faucet, the carburetor in our car, or our bicycle tire tube. Valves are also present in the world of nanotechnology. A team of scientists headed by J. Fraser Stoddart and Jeffrey I. Zink at the University of California, Los Angeles, has now developed a new nanovalve. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, the researchers reveal what is special about it: In contrast to previous versions, which only function in organic solvents, this valve operates in an aqueous environment and under physiological conditions-prerequisites for any application as a gate for nanoscopic drug-transport agents, which need to set their cargo free at the right place and time.

In order for pharmaceuticals to affect only the target diseased organ, suitable nanopackaging is mandatory to bring the drug to the target area and release it only there. One example of a good nanoscopic packaging agent is a tiny sphere of porous silica. Its pores can be filled with the drug and closed with tiny controllable valves.

The researchers attached stem-shaped molecules onto the surface of the porous spheres and filled the pores with guest molecules. At neutral to acidic pH values, they stacked cucurbituril molecules onto these "stems". Cucurbituril is a fat, ring-shaped molecule reminiscent of a pumpkin that has both ends hollowed out. The resulting supramolecular structure, which resembles a skewered pumpkin and is known to chemists as a pseudorotaxane, blocks the pores, so that the guest molecules cannot exit. The nanovalve is closed.........

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Fake Diamonds Help Jet Engines Take The Heat

Ohio State University engineers are in the process of developing a technology to coat jet engine turbine blades with zirconium dioxide -- usually called zirconia, the stuff of synthetic diamonds -- to combat high-temperature corrosion.

The zirconia chemically converts sand and other corrosive particles that build up on the blade into a new, protective outer coating. In effect, the surface of the engine blade constantly renews itself.

Ultimately, the technology could enable manufacturers to use new kinds of heat-resistant materials in engine blades, so that engines will be able to run hotter and more efficiently.

Nitin Padture, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, said that he had military aircraft in mind when he began the project. He was then a professor at the University of Connecticut.

"In the desert, sand is sucked into the engines during takeoffs and landings, and then you have dust storms," he said. "But even commercial aircraft and power turbines encounter small bits of sand or other particles, and those particles damage turbine blades".

Jet engines operate at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, and blades in the most advanced engines are coated with a thin layer of temperature-resistant, thermally-insulating ceramic to protect the metal blades. The coating -- referred to as a thermal-barrier coating -- is designed like an accordion to expand and contract with the metal.........

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Origami Space Flight

Japanese scientists and origami masters hope to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth. It''s no joke. A prototype passed a durability test in a wind tunnel this month, Japan''s space agency adopted it Wednesday for feasibility studies, and a well-known astronaut is interested in participating.

In the picture above, a 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide Space Shuttle-shaped paper plane is seen in a wind tunnel before a durability test at a Tokyo University laboratory.

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Waterman Award to UCLA's 'Mozart of Math'

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proud to announce that 32-year-old Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles, will receive its 2008 Alan T. Waterman Award. Called a "supreme problem-solver," and named one of "the Brilliant 10" researchers by Popular Science (October 2006), Tao's extraordinary work, much of which has been funded by NSF through the years, has had a tremendous impact across several mathematical areas. He will receive the award at a black tie dinner program at the U.S. Department of State on May 6.

The annual Waterman award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF. Candidates may not be more than 35 years old, or seven years beyond receiving a doctorate, and must stand out for their individual achievements. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $500,000 over a 3-year period for scientific research or advanced study in their field.

Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. His genius at mathematics began early in life. He started to learn calculus when he was 7 years old, at which age he began high school; by the age of 9 he was already very good at university-level calculus. By the age of 11, he was thriving in international mathematics competitions. Tao was 20 when he earned his doctorate from Princeton University, and he joined UCLA's faculty that year. UCLA promoted him to full professor at age 24. Tao now holds UCLA's James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Science. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member).........

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Oncology Diagnostics By AviaraDx

Innovations on cancer diagnostics are what AviaraDx, Inc. brought to the market.


© AviaraDx, Inc.


Two new oncology tests have been launched for the classification of metastatic cancer and identification of patients with estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer who are at high risk of recurrence and also those unlikely to respond favorably to standard adjuvant endocrine therapy.

The said tests are the following:

AviaraDx, Inc.

Assists physicians in diagnosing metastatic cancer types based on a 92-gene expression assay that is capable of classifying 39 tumor types as well as 64 cancer subtypes. The results help clinicians quickly identify the primary tumor site and avoid unnecessary repetitive imaging and immunohistological procedures in attempting to establish the cancer origin. Successful cancer classification is critical for physicians to select the appropriate treatment regimen.

AviaraDx, Inc.

Assists physicians in determining the optimal treatment for patients with ER positive, node-negative breast cancer by using two newly developed gene-based biomarkers to evaluate the risk of recurrence and probable response to endocrine therapy. The test is the first tool designed to identify the 10 to 20% of ER positive breast cancers that will relapse within five to 10 years when treated with standard endocrine therapy, enabling oncologists to recommend more aggressive regimens to help improve clinical outcomes.

Here's the good news though: The tests (based on proprietary AviaraDx molecular technologies) are New York state-approved and available through the company's CAP-certified CLIA laboratory. [Both can utilize small formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples easily available from imaging-guided needle biopsies.]

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'Sticky nanotubes' hold key to future technologies

Nanotube attached to a "microcantilever"

Scientists at Purdue University are the first to precisely measure the forces mandatory to peel tiny nanotubes off of other materials, opening up the possibility of creating standards for nano-manufacturing and harnessing a gecko's ability to walk up walls.

So-called "peel tests" are used extensively in manufacturing. Knowing how much force is needed to pull a material off of another material is essential for manufacturing, but no tests exist for nanoscale structures, said Arvind Raman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.

Scientists are trying to learn about the physics behind the "stiction," or how the tiny structures stick to other materials, to manufacture everything from nanoelectronics to composite materials, "nanotweezers" to medical devices using nanotubes, nanowires and biopolymers such as DNA and proteins, he said.

Flexible carbon nanotubes stick to surfaces differently than larger structures because of attractive forces between individual atoms called van der Waals forces.

"Operating in a nanoscale environment is sort of like having flypaper everywhere because of the attraction of van der Waals forces," Raman said. "These forces are very relevant on this size scale because a nanometer is about 10 atoms wide".........

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