A New Center for 'Computational Thinking'
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (03/26/07) Roth, Mark
Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University on Monday announced the creation
of the Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking, which
will focus on promoting the importance of computers for innovation in
nearly any field. Annual "mindswaps" will be held at the center, where
scientists will gather to share research and develop ideas on how to
address emerging issues. The meetings will lead to "probes," which will
combine experts in diverse fields to take on specific issues. The center
will also focus on showing students and teachers the value of a computer
science education, beginning with a summer camp this year called "Computer
Science for All." "The future of all sciences and engineering rests on the
power of computing," says CMU computer science department head Jeanette
Wing. She cites the "shotgun" algorithm, which allowed the sequencing of
the human genome, as evidence of scientific achievement that would not be
possible without computing. Wing hopes that parents will begin to realize
the importance of computing and show their children that "you can go into
computing and do anything ... My bias is that you would have an advantage
over others," she explains. "Because of my argument that computers are
going to become pervasive, if you go into medical school or business school
or law school, you will have an edge over your friends if you've been a
computer science major."
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Tougher Standards Could End E-Voting
Inside Bay Area (CA) (03/28/07) Hoffman, Ian
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has announced new voting
standards that could result in the end of e-voting in the state. The state
will now demand the ability to use "red teams" of computer experts to try
hacking into every voting machine and scrutinize every line of the
machines' software code. Election officials say that with the primary
election set for February 2008, it is unlikely the machines could be
repaired in time if they fail these reviews. Bowen's decision was praised
by several e-voting experts. Johns Hopkins' Avi Rubin says, "Debra Bowen
is holding up voting machines to the standards they deserve," and
VerifiedVoting.org founder David Dill says, "It's much to be preferred over
our current see-no-evil approach. In every other case of red team attacks
on voting machines and examination of their software code, experts have
found major security problems." For three years California has had, but
not enforced, laws requiring paper ballots that the blind can verify using
audio playback, and that voting machines be "reasonably secured against
untraceable vote tampering" and DoS attacks. "The criteria are clearly
designed to eliminate DRE voting in California," said Carnegie Mellon
University computer scientist Michael Shamos. "An army of computer
scientists will come forward to testify that computer programs cannot be
verified to be secure against undetectable vote tampering and therefore
they all will have to be decertified." Bowen's plans include
decertification or withdrawal of state approval if the systems do not meet
the standards. Florida and New Mexico have already gone back to paper
ballots for elections.
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Controversy Swirls Around Changes in GPLv3
eWeek (03/27/07) Galli, Patrick
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) will release the third discussion draft
on the GNU General Public License on March 28, amid questions of whether
the license will be doomed by the attempt to prevent loopholes like the one
Microsoft and Novell were able to exploit to form an alliance. According
to GPLv3, "If any entity that distributes the software arranges to protect
a particular group from patents regarding that software, it must protect
everyone," says open source expert Bruce Perens. However, Linux-Watch
editor Steven Vaughan-Nichols says that "getting clauses into GPLv3 that
will block similar deals from happening in the future, while avoiding
cutting legitimate software patents uses off at the knees, is going to be
almost impossible." However, the FSF does not see "any legitimate use for
software patents," and this philosophy is consistent with GPLv2, explains
Perens. He expects large patent holders to use GPLv3 so far as they can
retain a reasonable number of patents. Novell could continue using GPLv2
patents, but could go no further as the rest of the free software world
moves forward. For GPL to "freeze on one version would act to erode its
protections over time," says Perens. The Association for Competing
Technology says GPLv3 will make it very difficult for Microsoft and Novell
to use the license, and that it would not allow them to provide customers
with the certainty they are asking for regarding intellectual property.
Perens points out that the Linux community should not assume that GPLv3
would prohibit the Linux kernel from running on systems that use DRM, or
that the license will require manufacturers to give up intellectual
property. Perens expects the Linux kernel to go to GPLv3 in the next
couple of years, but even if it does not he expects the license to have a
major effect.
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World Scholar to Run New UTSA Cyber-Security
Institute
University of Texas at San Antonio (03/27/07) Gabler, David
The University of Texas at San Antonio is creating a cyber security
research institute, and information assurance and security expert Ravi S.
Sandhu will serve as its founding executive director and chief scientist.
Sandhu, chief scientist and co-founder of security solutions provider
TriCipher, will leave George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and join
UTSA as the Lutcher Brown Chair in Computer Science June 1. The UTSA
Institute for Cyber Security Research (ICSR) will look to commercialize its
research into solutions that will help protect the key cyber infrastructure
of the nation. Sandhu is an ACM fellow, and was the founding
editor-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Information and System Security.
An author of more than 160 research papers on information security, Sandhu
has contributed tremendously in the area of role-based access control and
his work is found in the standards of the National Institute of Standards
and Technology-American National Standards Institute and the upcoming
International Organization for Standardization model. UTSA is using a $3.5
million grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to help create ICSR
and hire Sandhu.
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Q&A: IBM Seeks to Make Streaming Media Accessible to
Visually Impaired
Computerworld (03/26/07) Weiss, Todd R.
IBM researcher Chieko Asakawa, who is blind herself, recently discussed
IBM's work in making multimedia content accessible for the blind. She
explains that if accessibility is not maintained as the Internet grows and
changes, a "digital gap" will form between the sighted and the blind. The
tool her team has developed recognizes multimedia buttons that would
normally require a mouse click, and imposes them onto a unified shortcut
key used to run video and animation. External metadata is adapted "on the
fly" to make pages accessible, explains Asakawa. "Once a user opens a Web
page, the browser automatically analyzes multimedia objects inside the
page, then the browser [establishes] a connection to each multimedia
object." The tool, which currently has adaptors for Flash and Windows
Media Player, also creates a text-based interface from manually created
XML, which can be read aloud to a blind user. Content owners or authors
would have to create these audio descriptions, although they could be added
after the content is posted. Users can control the volume and speed of the
description of what is happening in a video and the video's soundtrack.
Asakawa says the tool allows her to use multimedia content that was
previously inaccessible to her. The team eventually plans to make the tool
compatible with other media players, and it will soon undergo usability
tests before being open sourced.
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NJIT Team to Study Creativity in Studio-Based
Learning
New Jersey Institute of Technology (03/26/07) Weinstein, Sheryl
A New Jersey Institute of Technology study will test the ability of the
traditional studio design model of learning to enhance computer science
education. NJIT has successfully implemented this studio method in design
programs for architecture and biomedicine. "This project allows us to
study the effect of casual interactions and ubiquitous computing on
creativity and innovation in interdisciplinary design studios," explains
research leader Wassim Jabi. "We will also test the hypothesis that
creativity and innovation can be enhanced through interdisciplinary work
and that a ubiquitous computing environment can aid human-computer
interactions." Jabi believes that combining digital, physical, and social
environments into a unified "socio-computing learning space" will enhance
student's creativity. The research will focus on the ability of students
to solve real-world problems using a design-thinking approach. "Our goal
is to define a novel educational model that can be replicated nationally,"
says Jabi. "This model will ensure that our students � are able to
leverage collaborative technologies that work face-to-face and remotely."
The research team will create guidelines to provide evidence of the
studio-based method's effectiveness, or lack thereof. The architecture
program currently uses an interactive computer system for real-time sharing
and annotation of presentations, the ability to manipulate shared 3D
virtual models, real-time videoconferencing, and evaluations by remote
"jurors."
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Researchers Talk Cyber Security at Conference
Dartmouth News (03/27/07) Coburn, Michael
Dartmouth hosted a conference last week of more than 60 researchers from
12 different countries, who discussed the necessity of protecting the
world's computer systems from cyber-terrorism. Given the growing
interconnectivity of the computers that support transportation, banking,
and other systems, cyber-terrorism could have a tremendous impact on
security and the global economy. Oil and gas infrastructure was a major
topic of discussion at the conference. "The way it works is the oil and
gas are controlled through process control systems," said I3P research
director Eric Goetz. "They would reduce temperature and flow of the
pipeline and could open and close valves. What's happened in the last five
to 10 years is that these systems are run off of Windows system and are
connected to the Internet. The connectivity creates real vulnerability."
Potentially exploitable gaps in infrastructure security must be identified,
according to keynote speaker and I3P research director Charles Palmer, but
researchers must also develop solutions that can be realistically executed.
"We can provide technology but the failure of the industry and research is
that what we offer people is so complicated to get secure it's impossible
to use," Palmer said. "People are the critical infrastructure we need to
protect. We need to build systems that are secure and usable for what my
sister calls 'normal people' or we're just doomed."
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3-D Vision Stretches From Medicine to Space
Boston Globe (03/26/07) Berger, J.M.
A modified version of the medical imaging tool 3D Slicer is enabling
astronomers to explore images from space. Harvard's Initiative in
Innovative Computing released the visualization technology last week, which
is based on the computer program surgeons use to zoom in, rotate, and move
around the terrain as they inspect an image of the body. Alyssa Goodman,
director of the computing initiative and professor of astronomy at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, used the software to explore a
nebula in the Perseus constellation, and she was able to find nearly two
times as many jets of gas coming from young stars and see more features
from the region of space. "In our field, we don't know what these things
look like," says Goodman. "So it's amazing when you can see something you
could never see." The idea to modify 3D Slicer came from medical
technology specialist Michael Halle a few years ago after the MIT-trained
computer scientist attended a conference on visualization technology and
heard Goodman call for the modeling of multidimensional astronomical
data.
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Intel Modifies Wi-Fi to Add Mileage
CNet (03/27/07) Kanellos, Michael
Intel Research Berkeley recently demonstrated a Wi-Fi system that can send
a wireless signal over 60 miles. Eric Brewer, director of the Intel-owned
lab, which cooperates on research projects with UC Berkeley, says "It is
regular Wi-Fi hardware but with modified software." The system uses
standard, although slightly modified, access points, but the antennas used
to deliver the signal use new directional technology. The technology is
being developed for use in countries with poor communications
infrastructures. One such antennae in a remote village, for example, could
receive a signal and send it through various towers to fiber links, which
would provide villagers with an Internet connection. The village antenna
could also extend the reach of the Wi-Fi signal to neighboring villages.
The Wi-Fi antennas would cost about $700, compared with WiMax towers that
cost about $15,000 to $20,000, and since Wi-Fi spectrum is not regulated by
local telecoms it could be used without government permission. Some
emerging nations, such as Pakistan, are experimenting with using both Wi-Fi
and WiMax; and Intel will conduct a trial of its technology in Uganda later
this year. The long-range Wi-Fi system is programmed to send signals only
from one tower to another rather than in a 360-degree circle. The signal
is "steered" using an electrical signal, which means it can connect towers,
even if they are put in the ground slightly crooked, or a physical object
comes between the towers. Some protocols and procedures of conventional
Wi-Fi are done away with by this system, such as "handshaking" and
collision detection.
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Despite Upgrades, Security Experts Fear $100
Laptops
InfoWorld (03/25/07) Hines, Matt
At this year's SchmooCon show, computer experts discussed the possible
impact of the One Laptop Per Child Program, specifically regarding its
security capabilities. The XO-1 laptop, the latest model to be created,
includes security features such as embedded technology that allows improved
encryption and a Linux-based operating system that cannot be changed.
Users are able to download any application they want, but the system will
not run those that exhibit virus-like behavior. The security architecture,
known as BitFrost, runs each program in a semi-virtual environment, so as
to keep applications from interacting with each other maliciously.
"Security vendors would say don't let the kids run anything you haven't
signed, but that says nothing about the corrupting of approved applications
or attacking the rest of the system; and since we want kids to have
complete control of the computers, that's not an option," explains OLPC
security director Ivan Krstic. "Instead of protecting from executing
untrusted code, we protect while running unwanted code, and keep it from
doing bad things to the system." However, efforts to let users access the
laptop's foundational operations, such as a button that shows a program's
source code, could allow the machines to be made into a 10-million-node
botnet operation, warns Booz Allen Hamilton consultant Sean Coyne.
"Through changing it, people can nullify all the security concerns that
have been taken, and throw away the good work that's been done," he says.
Foreign governments could use the laptops to distribute propaganda or track
people's movements. Many are concerned that the project was too quick in
assuming the educational effect of handing laptops to children, and has
ignored important security concerns.
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The New Face of Emoticons
Technology Review (03/27/07) Graham, Rowe
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed Face Alive
Icons, software that can manipulate the picture of someone's face to show a
range of emotions, allowing Internet users to show pictures of themselves
rather than using cartoon "emoticons." Once a person has uploaded a
picture of themselves with a neutral expression, they can warp the facial
features by typing in common text symbols such as ":)" to display happiness
and have the new image appear on a recipient's screen. Sending such images
has been thought of before, "But the traditional approach is just to send
the image itself," says Face Alive creator Xin Li. "The problem is, the
size will be too big, particularly for low-bandwidth applications like PDAs
and cell phones." With Face Alive, a recipient device stores a
decomposition of the original image, which can be put together as needed.
To create the software, Li developed computational models for each type of
expression using a learning program that analyzes the expressions stored in
a database to identify features unique to each one. After uploading a
picture onto a computer, a user would click on several key areas of the
face in order to identify them for the computer. These parts of the face
make up the profile that is stored on recipients' computers, so all that
needs to be sent is the command for a given expression. A limitless number
of expressions can be sent without taking up additional space.
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Robots With Rhythm Could Rock Your World
New Scientist (03/22/07) Biever, Celeste
A soft-rubber robot named Keepon is demonstrating that robots with the
ability to pick up and move along with a rhythm are better suited for human
interaction. Keepon has neither arms nor legs, but contains motors, wires,
and a mechanical device known as a gimbal that allows the robot to nod,
twist, bob, or shake along with a beat picked out from a piece of music.
Carnegie Mellon University's Marek Michalowski says the usefulness of such
technology extends beyond dancing and music. "Rhythm and synchrony are the
foundations of social interactions," Michalowski says. "So I think that
for us to comfortably interact with a robot, it needs to be capable of
that." Psychological evidence shows that people are more receptive of
robots that can synchronize their movements to a human's voice. "In the
future, you are going to be talking to some robot and just the ability of
the robot to nod to what you are saying will make it easier to interact,"
Michalowski adds. Keepon uses Max/MSP software, often used to synchronize
screen savers to music, that allows him to react to voices. Whereas Sony's
Qrio robot is preprogrammed to perform a dance routine, Keepon can actively
recognize rhythm and respond to visual cues, thanks to two cameras in his
"eyes." At the annual NICT open house in Japan, children were noticed to
be more willing to dance along with a robot that is moving in time with
music, rather than moving randomly. "This tells us there is something
happening here," says Michalowski. "The robot's rhythmic ability is having
some effect on the interaction." The researchers plan to eventually add
arms and legs and to develop Keepon's ability to detect rhythms in human
speech.
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U.S.-Based Servers Host Majority of Malicious Code, Study
Finds
Computerworld (03/26/07) Vijayan, Jaikumar
The majority of malicious code is hosted on U.S.-based servers, according
to an analysis of more than 10 million URLs collected from live end-user
traffic in Britain, using security vendor Finjan's content inspection
engines. Finjan CTO Yuval Ben-Itzhak said about 80 percent of malicious
code comes from servers hosted in the United States. The other countries
hosting the most significant amount of malicious code are the United
Kingdom, with 10 percent, followed by Canada, Germany, and Italy.
Ben-Itzhak said the findings dispel the myth that the majority of malicious
code is hosted in countries with underdeveloped e-crime laws. The reason
for this malware hosting trend may be that free Web hosting servers are
more readily available in North America and Europe, making it more
cost-effective for cybercriminals to host malicious code on servers in
those countries. In many cases, malicious code appears to have been hosted
on servers with legitimate content that was compromised by hackers.
Malicious code is also more commonly found on sites visited by business
users and consumers, such as travel and financial sites, whereas previously
malicious code was most commonly found on sites with questionable content,
such as pornographic sites. Botnets and Trojans are the most widely
distributed programs, according to the Finjan report.
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Hackers, Designers Talk Tech's Future at ETech
CNet (03/26/07) Olsen, Stephanie
The O'Reilly ETech Conference will bring together more than 1,000
technologists to discuss emerging technology, and will focus on how new
applications and gadgets change the world. "We're featuring individuals
who are innovating in slight changes in the use of technology," said
program chair Rael Dornfest. "A lot of what we will see in the next year
or two are these ongoing plate tectonics, rather than massive sea change in
technology. Therein lies the magic." One such example was AttenTV, an
application that provides Internet users with a streaming record of another
users' clicks, which is currently available for Mac users only. "As you
spend more time online, your clickstream increasingly represents who you
are and what you are interested in," says the AttenTV Web site. "AttenTV
turns one person's clickstream data into another person's entertainment."
ETech is also focusing on the perspective shifts resulting from the new use
of old technology. "Little innovations that make a big difference are more
interesting than some of the big product announcements," said Dornfest.
Topics of discussion at this year's conference will include how to develop
Web 2.0 applications that ensure individuals' privacy, how collaborative,
reality-based games take on social issues, and how high-end computer
graphics will increasingly play into our lives.
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Q&A: Stanford Applies a Clean Slate to the
Internet
Network World (03/26/07) Vol. 24, No. 12, P. 14; Greene, Tim
Stanford University's Clean Slate Design for the Internet is examining the
ways the Internet would be built from scratch if it were to be completely
erased, in order to gain insight into how it can be improved in the future.
In an interview, project leader and Stanford associate professor Nick
McKeown says a key starting point is a network that is economically
sustainable. He says network operators are not making a profit from public
Internet service, because cost is being driven down due to the fact that
the marginal cost of adding a customer is zero. Eventually, all those who
have not paid for the infrastructure could go out of business, leaving a
monopoly, a possibility that he says may need to be accepted and worked
with. To ensure trust in the network, McKeown suggests replacing Ethernet
switches with those that contain only a flow table, to link users with data
sent and inhibit the ability of viruses to spread. If a packet is received
and is not in the flow table, it could be sent to a centralized controller,
which makes the routing decision based on a predetermined policy.
Concerning mobile devices, the group is still trying to decide on a
starting point. To boost performance, McKeown suggests that packets
processed by routers be processed in a more aggregate way, so optical
switches could be used. Since boundary routers know where packets should
go, the big routers that boundary routers sit near could be replaced with a
small optical switch, so "edge routers could set up an [optical] circuit
across the Internet to another edge router to which they have a lot of
traffic to send," he says. Switching to optical routers would alleviate
the power problem currently facing router companies. Although the core of
the Internet could be scaled up to meet future demands, McKeown does not
believe that such an idea is very realistic. McKeown says the group is
still trying to decide on a starting point for mobile devices.
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FCC Begins Net Neutrality Inquiry
InternetNews.com (03/23/07) Mark, Roy
The FCC has unanimously voted to open a Notice of Inquiry to determine
whether or not telecom companies' plans to charge content providers based
on bandwidth usage would threaten the open nature of the Internet.
"Although we are not aware of any current blocking situations, the
Commission remains vigilant in protecting consumers' access to content on
the Internet," said FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin. The inquiry will look
into how service providers are managing their Internet traffic and whether
or not the FCC should distinguish between content providers that charge
users for access and those that do not. "Gathering this information will
allow us to better monitor this market and determine the extent to which
providers are acting consistently with our Internet Policy Statement,"
Martin said. In 2005, the FCC stated that Internet users had basic rights
to access content; run applications and services; connect devices to the
network; and to expect competition among network, application, content, and
service providers. However, discriminatory practices by broadband
providers are not prohibited by this announcement, and the Commission has
classified cable modem, DSL, broadband over power lines, and wireless
Internet as information systems, meaning they cannot be regulated beyond
the 2005 user rights measure. Some are concerned that the NOI will be
forgotten and service providers will move forward with their plans to
charge for prioritized delivery. A poll by the Consumer's Union and the
Consumer Federation showed that two-thirds of Internet users surveyed were
concerned about the ability of service providers to block or prioritize
access.
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Games Theory
Science News (03/17/07) Vol. 171, No. 11, P. 170; Peterson, Ivars
Researchers are attempting to address big computational challenges such as
refining online search, locating objects in images, filtering content,
language translation, and the development of common sense, through online
gaming. "People around the world spend billions of hours playing computer
games," notes Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Luis von Ahn.
"We can channel all this time and energy into useful work to solve
large-scale computational problems and collect the data necessary to make
computers more intelligent." One example is the ESP Game developed by von
Ahn, in which two players come up with words to describe an image, and are
awarded points when the words match; in this way, images can be creatively
labeled to facilitate easier Web searching. Players are encouraged to
choose more creative, less obvious descriptive terms by being restricted
from using certain words. Training computers to determine the location of
an image of an object is the goal behind Phetch, another game of von Ahn's
in which players search for images that fit certain descriptions in a
scavenger hunt scheme. One player or narrator types out a description of
an image chosen from a database at random, and then several other players
or seekers find the image by using a built-in browser; points are awarded
to the narrator every time a search is carried out successfully, while the
first seeker to find the image gets points and assumes the role of narrator
for the next image. Von Ahn's latest game, Verbosity, is founded on the
concept of building a database of common-sense facts through gameplay. In
Verbosity, one player is given a word and presents hints about the word to
another player in the form of sentences with blanks where words should go.
Von Ahn says all his games have a time limit because he wants participants
to play faster and thus generate more data.
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Minds of Their Own
National Journal (03/24/07) Vol. 39, No. 12, P. 38; Munro, Neil
Some technologists are concerned that increasingly intelligent computers
will eventually surpass humanity and achieve self-awareness, leading to the
sinister possibility that conscious machines could subjugate and perhaps
even destroy mankind. "AI systems could pose a more direct threat to human
autonomy, freedom, and even survival," stated Google research director
Peter Norvig in his book, "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach." In
theory it is possible for humans to give computers the speed to run the
software necessary for describing patterns and common sense, but then
computers face the barrier of experiential learning. Some technologists
are focusing their energies into overcoming this barrier by devising and
applying novel software or exotic hardware; the motivation for this pursuit
is the tremendous wealth a learning computer could generate as well as the
intellectual achievement such a breakthrough would represent. The
development of AI systems has become a priority for the federal government,
mainly to reduce battlefield casualties and shore up the defenses and
efficiency of military computer systems. The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency insists that the new computing systems whose creation it is
spurring "will not have the self-awareness, desire to survive, and ambition
exhibited by humans and other biological organisms." Inventor and author
Ray Kurzweil forecasts that people will gradually link their brains to
high-tech devices and become increasingly reliant on implants, while
nonhuman intelligences will eventually gain legal rights even before they
are formally recognized by governments. Technology experts say the best
hope for humanity's survival and coexistence with intelligent computers is
a "soft takeoff" in which machines evolve at a slow enough pace so that
people and their governments have sufficient time to adapt rules and
expectations to keep abreast of technological changes and possibly create
methods to guarantee intelligent machines' continued benevolence even as
they exceed human intelligence through self-augmentation.
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