How do artificial kidneys work?



Toxic wastes produced by the breakdown of food in the body are normally removed by the kidneys. The kidneys also regulate the body’s fluid and salt content. If they go wrong, the poisonous wastes accumulate in the blood and fluid builds up, which eventually causes uremia, a disease which kills thousands of people each year.



Kidneys can sometimes fail without warning, but more common is ‘chronic kidney failure’, in which the kidneys deteriorate gradually. The only ways of dealing with kidney failure are either to transplant a healthy kidney or to remove the waste products artificially.



Waste removal is done by dialysis machine which acts as an artificial kidney, filtering the wastes out of the blood. The process is often performed at home by patients trained to use the machine. One method, haemopdialysis, involves inserting two needles into the patient’s arm or leg – one in an artery, the other in a vein. Each needle is connected by a piece of tubing to the dialysis machine.



Blood flows the patient’s artery into the machine where it is mixed with a drug called heparin to stop it from clotting. It is then passed through a semipermeable coiled Cellophane tube, which is immersed in a warm chemical bath. The perforations in the Cellophane are large enough for the small molecules of waste to filter through them, but the blood cells, which are larger, remain inside the tube. Once the waste products have been filtered out, the cleansed blood is mixed with an agent which counteracts the heparin and is pumped back into the patient through the needle in the vein.



Three sessions a week



Someone who requires this mechanical form of waste removal has to undergo three eight-hour sessions a week, connected to the machine.



Another filtering system, called peritoneal dialysis, does not require the machinery used in haemodialysis. The peritoneum is a large protective sac of flexible tissue, surrounding the abdominal organs. These organs have a plentiful blood supply, and being close to them the peritoneum is well situated to act as a filter for unwanted molecules.



In peritoneal dialysis, the patient has a small piece of tubing inserted through the abdominal wall into his or her peritoneum. A special liquid known as dialysing fluid is then poured into the abdominal cavity via the tube. The fluid attracts the waste products from the blood in the abdominal organs, and is then sucked out. The whole process takes up to 12 hours, and is performed two or four times a week.



The type of dialysis that patients revive depends on a number of factors, including age, the availability of machines, and their ability to insert needles into themselves. In some countries, the cost of machines is also a consideration.



 



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What is Salman Rushdie famous for?



With his white beard, pointed nose and large glasses, Salman Rushdie cuts a stem, intimidating figure. Neither his television appearances for his inventions give away any sign of pressure or fear. It’s hard to imagine that for over 10 years, the author was living under the shadow of a fatwa, a death sentence, and was on the hit list of the terrorist group, Al-Qaeda.



Writing satires which blends fiction with reality, Rushdie has often been thrown into the midst of controversies. But the novelist’s work speaks for itself. With his new book, Quichotte shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction, here’s a look at his amazing literacy journey.



Early life



When Rushdie was just 10, he wrote his first story. It was a dozen pages long, and its protagonist was a boy who lived in Bombay and found the beginning of a rainbow, as broad and wide as a staircase. Though Rushdie never managed to finish this story, he went on to write 12 critically acclaimed novels, children’s books, essays and a whole lot more.



Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay in a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent. His mother was a teacher, while his father worked as a lawyer and a businessman. Rushdie attended the Cathedral and John Connon School, a repute school in Mumbai, where he impressed his classmates and teachers with his exemplary vocabulary and flair for writing. When he was offered a scholarship by the prestigious Balliol College, Oxford, Rushdie turned it down, choosing to attend Cambridge University, his father’s alma mater instead.



Advertising success



Before becoming a full-time writer, Rushdie tried his hand at acting and production, but without success. He took up a job with an advertising firm in London. His slogan Aero chocolate bars “irresistible” earned him praise from the advertising industry. However Rushdie wanted to focus on writing and so he quit his job to write a novel. The endeavor failed and he went back to writing advertising copy.



Library recognition



It was with his second book midnight’s children in 1981 that his writing career took off. Written in the magic realism style, the book follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born on the same historic occasion. Midnight’s children won the Booker prize. In 1993, the book won the Booker of bookers which was a special award given on the 25th anniversary of the price. Nearly 15 years later, Rushdie was also awarded the Best of the Booker’s, which mark the 40th birthday of the Booker in 2008. But his fourth book, Satanic verses, embroiled him in a controversy which almost cost him his life



Life threatened



The book was banned in 13 countries, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In 1989, this spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Radio Tehran for Rushdie’s execution. Violence and riots erupted around the world, people burnt copies of the book and took out rallies. There were even several failed assassination attempts on his life, forcing Rushdie to live under police protection for 10 years with the help of the British government.



Writing for children



Even while he was in hiding, Rushdie didn’t stop writing. He forayed into the realm of children’s literature with his book Haroun and the Sea of stories in 1990. He dedicated the book to his elder son Zafar, who was 10 then. The book is believed to be autobiographical, a representation of his thoughts and feelings when he was in hiding. In 2010 he wrote another children’s book, Luka and Fire of life for his younger son, Milan. Both books revolve around a family headed by a storyteller Rashid Khalifa, living in the city of Alif Bat: a city so sad that it has forgotten its own name.



Free at last



Finally in 1998, Iran partially lifted the fatwa against Rushdie. He declared that he would stop living in hiding and was granted a visa to finally visit India in 1999. Despite this, it was reported in 2006 that the fatwa cannot be withdrawn fully as Khoemeini, who had issued it was dead.



Magic realism and satire



Rushdie is known for his magic realism style of writing. Magic realism is a literacy technique in which the story take place in the real world, but it has a magical element. Other authors who use this technique include Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Orhan Pamuk. Rushdie’s works are also heavily satirical. Satire is a form of writing which ridiculous and criticises a government or an institution.



 



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What makes Anthony Horowitz special?



Whether it is Arthur Conan Doyle’s clever, superhuman Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s fussy Belgian Hercule Poirot, or the uber cool James Bond, a good murder mystery or spy novel leaves us on the edge of our seats. And what happens if the spy is a 14-year-old, working with the British Secret Service M16? Anyone who has read the Alex Rider series will tell you that it is just double the fun.



But how much do you know about its author Anthony Horowitz?



British screenwriter and children’s author Horowitz solves crimes from a tiny shed in his garden. The author of the bestselling series weaves an intriguing mystery with his pen and then looks for clues and red herrings that will help readers identify the culprit. His shed is filled with all kinds of knick-knacks, including a bust of Tintin, to inspire his writing, and once he gets started, Horowitz can complete writing a novel in less than three months!



Early pick



Horowitz was an underachiever in school. Instead, he found solace in books and telling stories. He spent hours reading in his father’s library and entertaining his classmates by narrating the stories he read. By the time Horowitz turned eight he had found his calling. He began writing his own stories and knew he wanted to become a writer when he grew up. He even asked his father to gift him a typewriter for his eighth birthday. At 13, his mother introduced him to the stories of Frankenstein and Dracula. She gifted him a skull for his birthday, and Horowitz still looks at it every now and then. It motivates him to keep writing.



Though he graduated from the University of York with a lower second class degree in English literature, Horowitz tasted success early on. He was 22 when his first book, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower, a humorous adventure for children, was published in 1979. It was later issued as Enter Frederick K Bower. In 1981, his second novel, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet, was published and he moved to Paris to write his third book.



Alex Rider



The Alex Rider series was born out of Horowitz’s love for the sophisticated British spy, James Bond. Growing up Horowitz eagerly followed all the Bond books and films. After becoming a successful writer, Horowitz wondered whether he could reinvent the Bond films from the perspective of a 14-year-old. Since the publication of the first Alex Rider novel Stormbreaker in 2000, the series has become a huge hit. It has been translated into about 40 languages.



Other works



Over the years Horowitz has written 50-plus novels, besides Poirot and Midsomer Murders, detective series for television. He was commissioned by the Conan Doyle Estate to write new novel featuring the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. And the result: The House of Silk (2011) and Moriatry (2014). He has also written two official James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018) following a commission by the Ian Fleming Estate. Horowitz’s latest novels The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death features himself as a writer following Hawthorne, a sharp, brooding detective as he sets about solving crimes.



Pet peeves



From going underground at Wimbledon for Skeleton Key and potholing in Yorkshire for The Sentence is Death to driving a crane for Point Blanc, Horowitz meticulously researches every last detail for his books. For his novel Snakehead, he spent time at an oil rig in Aberdeen; explored Bangkok and the Outback in Australia. He even picked up kickboxing in Thailand.



One of Horowitz’s greatest fears, strangely enough, is dropping dead in the middle of a novel. He’s so afraid of this that he actually leaves behind detailed notes about how to finish the book when he starts writing a new novel, because he can’t imagine anyone unravelling the mystery without his help.



After writing 50 novels, there’s still a lot more to come from this polymath.



And we can’t wait to read more about the adventures of Alex Rider!



 



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Who wrote under a male pen name Currer Bell?



If you have read the classic Jane Eyre, which is about a feisty and strong-willed governess, you may be familiar with the name Charlotte Bronte. The author along with her sisters, Emily and Anne, was one of the most important literacy voices of the 19th Century. Last month, the Bronte Society acquired a rare, match-sized book written by Charlotte at the age of 14. One of six “little books” it was created by the author for the tiny toy soldiers, she and her siblings loved playing with.



Early life



Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell lived with their vicar father in Haworth, West Yorkshire in England. A young Charlotte had to come to terms with death and loss from an early age as she had lost her mother when she was five and later, her two elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth to tuberculosis. After the death of her two siblings Charlotte took on the role of the elder sister.



School was a nightmare for Charlotte. The Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge had a harsh environment, and Charlotte had several bad experiences there. It served as an inspiration for the dark and cold Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre.



A world of their own



Living in a small, remote village, Charlotte and her siblings had only each other for company. But a wooden village and a few toy soldiers were enough to unlock their imagination. They invented entire worlds created entire towns – like ‘the Great Glasstown Confederacy’ – filled with peasants and nobles, where an adventure was always afoot!



Charlotte wrote tiny books recording the detailed histories and adventures of these fictional worlds. The second issue of one such book, called The Young Men’s Magazine, was recently bought by the Bronte Society for a sum of 600,000. The miniature book will be displayed at the Parsonage Museum, built in the Brontes’ old home in Haworth.



As Charlotte and her siblings grew older, their imagination became more colourful. During dinner time, all the siblings would chat about possible storylines and flesh out characters. The adventures made way for romances, secret heroes and scheming villains. Some of these stories, including that of the Duke of Zamorna and the lovely Mina Laury from the imaginary kingdom of Angria, written by Charlotte were later published by Penguin as the Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.



Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell



Charlotte often worked as a teacher and governess, but did not enjoy it. She went on to study in Brussels at the Peonsionnat Heger, a school for young ladies, where she fell in love with her teacher. However, he did not reciprocate her feelings and Charlotte was heartbroken.



She found solace in writing. Charlotte and her siblings penned several novels and poems using male pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Currer Bell was Charlotte, Emily was Ellis and Anne was Acton. Charlotte even used this pseudonym while writing her most successful novel Jane Eyre. She did not want to reveal her identity as she feared that readers will not take a female author seriously. A famous poet had even told her once that “literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.”



Though her first novel The Professor was rejected nine times, her second book Jane Eyre was published to huge acclaim in 1847.



However, her siblings didn’t live long enough to see her succeed. All three of them succumbed to tuberculosis between 1848 and 1849. Without her siblings with whom she had shared a close bond, Charlotte felt lost and alone.



Years later she married her father’s friend Arthur Bell Nicholls. They lived together at the Parsonage for a few months before her death. Bronte died at the age of 38 on March 31, 1855.



 



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Who wrote Anne of Green Gables?



When Lucy Maud Manotgomery wrote her first novel in 1905, it was rejected by almost all publishers she showed it to. Upset, she locked away the manuscript in a hat box. A couple of years later, when she tried to get her book published again, she succeeded. That novel was none other than Anne of Green Gables, which went on to become a children’s classic, recommended for students around the world even today.



This coming-of-age story – about the adventures of a redheaded girl set in the small town of Prince Edward Island – became one of the most popular books of Canada, being translated into about 30 different languages and adapted into several films and television series.



And it all started with a little bit of imagination.



Growing up, author Lucy Maud Montgomery had two imaginary friends, Katie Maurice and Lucy Gray. Katie and Lucy ‘lived’ in an imaginary room behind the bookcase in her grandparents’ house, where she spent her childhood. They were her constant companions and comforted her when she was scared and alone. They also did something more: they sharpened her imagination and fostered her creativity.



Keeping the secret



Montgomery’s father left her in the custody of her grandparents after her mother’s death. When she was nine, Montgomery began writing poetry and keeping a journal. Her poem On Cape LeForce was published by a local newspaper, the Patriot. But her family was not supportive of her writing as they considered it to be a waste of time, especially for a woman. But Montgomery did not give up, instead she continued writing in secret at night by sneaking in candles to her room. When she grew up, she even started working at a post office run by her family so that she could clandestinely send out her work to publishers.



A matter of luck



After graduating from college, Montgomery started working as a teacher. Though she did not enjoy it much, teaching gave her extra time to write. She penned hundreds of poems and short stories, but they continued to be rejected by Canadian, British, and American magazines. Finally, she was able to publish her first novel Anne of Green Gables in 1905, which marked the beginning of Montgomery’s successful career as a novelist.



Anne Shirley



Mirroring the author herself, Montgomery’s heroine, Anne Shirley, is an eternal optimist and an unrepentant romantic. Anne fights against all odds to find love, acceptance and her pace in the world. Montgomery’s beautiful descriptions of her hometown peppered with Victorian green-gabled farmhouses as well as its people, immortalised the tiny province of Prince Edward Island. Each year, hundreds of Montgomery’s fans visit the island to see the place she loved so much.



Legacy



After the Anne series, she wrote a number of successful novels and stories. For her literacy contribution, she became the first Canadian woman to be made a member of the British Royal Society of Arts and was also appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She died on April 24, 1942. Like Anne, Montgomery was a woman much ahead of her time!



 



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Who is the author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid?



Growing up is hard enough, but being a middle child can make it all the more difficult. Elder siblings tend to pick on you, while the younger ones can get away with anything. No one knows it better than author Jeff Kinney, whose words-and-cartoons exploration of the trials of a middle school misfit, written in the form of a journal, has been a colossal success.



Drawing from life



Born in Maryland in the United States, Kinney was caught between four siblings – elder brother Rodrick, his sister, and his younger brother, Patrick. Needless to say, multiple scuffles and fights were an unavoidable part of his childhood. Later, drawing on to these memories helped him create the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.



But did you know Kinney didn’t grow up wanting to be a children’s author? In fact, his dream was to become a newspaper cartoonist, but he wasn’t able to get his comic strips published. So, he spent eight years writing the first book in the series.



Right from childhood, Kinney loved to draw, but he wasn’t very good at it. So he developed his own drawing style – with stick figures and bug-eyed characters. Using his surroundings as an inspiration, he created comics strips about the life around him. One such comic strip was Igdoof, which Kinney ran in his college newspaper at the University of Maryland. However, his work looked too juvenile and so he never received any efforts from big newspapers.



A love for computers



Besides drawing, Kinney was equally fond of computers. When his parents bought their first computer, Kinney was so interested in it that he even learned to write his own computer programmes. It was hard for his parents to keep him away from his new hobby. His computer skills helped him land a job after college.



Kinney started working as a content creator for a children’s website. After receiving multiple rejection letters for his comic strip, Kinney published his first book online in daily installments on funbrain.com, which offers free educational games for kids. Within a year, he had 12 million readers. To date, the online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has more than 80 million visits, and is typically read by more than 70,000 kids a day.



He continues to pioneer new Internet content as the full-time design director of Poptropica, which he helped set up in 2007. The website uses educational games to create a love for reading among children.



An author’s dream



In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball, the Heffleys embark on major home improvements thanks to a surprise windfall. Kinney, who recently opened a bookstore in Massachusetts, draws from his own experience to regale us with a humorous tale of a family tackling renovations and all the problems that come with it from rotten wood and toxic mould to sinister creatures. As a child, Kinney spent a lot of time in bookshops. That’s why they hold a special place in his heart. When the local bookshop in his hometown went out of business, Kinney felt a sense of irreparable loss. So now years later, after establishing himself as a successful author, he decided to open a bookshop in his adopted hometown of Plainville, Massachusetts. He called it ‘An Unlikely Story’.



 



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Which is the oldest person who receive The Nobel Prize in Chemistry?



Age is just a number and no one can prove it better than John Bannister Goodenough. Chances are that most of us never heard of this 97-year-old scientist before he became the oldest Nobel laureate, but his invention has became an irreplaceable part of our lives.



Goodenough, a professor at the University of Texas, came up with lithium cobalt oxide, a key material that led to doubling the potential of the lithium-ion battery, widely used in mobile phones, laptops and electric cars.



Early life



Growing up in Connecticut, near Yale University, where his father was a professor of the History of Religion, Goodenough learned to enjoy the quiet countryside and nature. Exploring the neighbourhood on his childhood catching butterflies and trapping rodents-especially woodchucks, a species of large squirrels.



Along with his siblings, Goodenough attended a boarding school in Massachusetts. The future Nobel laureate had a hard time mastering reading and writing; eventually he earned a place at the respected Yale University. After trying out a smorgasbord of courses including liberal arts, he turned his focus on mathematics.



The college fee was $900 per annum and Goodenough’s father could contribute a mere $35. So Goodenough started tutoring students from wealthy homes to be able to pay the rest of the fee.



Adventures in meteorology



Halfway through his education,. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, a U.S. Navy base near Hawaii. Goodenough volunteered to join the Army as a meteorologists on the advice of his maths professor. Stationed in the Azores archipelago off the coast of Portugal, he helped predict the best time to move troops and planes.



While in the Army, Goodenough took a liking to Physics. So after the war ended, he pursued his further education in his subject. Since he was a returning officer, the Army supported his higher studies, and Goodenough joined the University of Chicago, which was doing pioneering work in the field.



The Physics department at the university was headed by none other than the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, who created the world’s first nuclear reactor. A tough taskmaster, Fermi set the bar high for his students with a qualifying exam of 32 hours, stretched over eight hours a day for four days. The exam was so tough that Goodenough could get through only on his second attempt.



Battery-powered



Goodenough was offered a position at MIT’s Lincoln Lab, which was a research centre for the U.S. Department of Defense. He developed technology for national security applications. After decades of work on electric and magnetic properties of solids, he moved to another prestigious academic institution, the University of Oxford in England, as the head of the inorganic chemistry lab.



The next few years would become the most defining of his career. Goodenough immersed himself in battery research and came up with lithium cobalt oxide, a material that could be sustainably and safely used in lithium-ion batteries. Stanley Whittingham, one of the three awardees of the 2019 Nobel Chemistry Prize, had developed the first-ever functional lithium battery in the 1970s, but it ran the risk of exploding. The discoveries of Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, who was the part of the trio to share the Nobel, helped in making the battery safer and viable for use.



While the lithium-ion batteries became a commercial success, Goodenough did not make any money out of it. He did not patent the battery technology and signed over the royalty rights to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, a U.K. government lab near Oxford. After being tipped for the Nobel Prize for many years, Goodenough finally received the honour on October 9, 2019. When the prize was announced, he was in London to receive the prestigious Copley medal at the Royal Society of London. He slept through the announcement of the Nobel and learned of his win from a fellow scientist.



97 and going strong



Goodenough, who is now just three years shy of 100, goes to the office, his lab, every day. He is vehemently opposed to retirement and never wishes to hang up his boots. Well, that’s Goodenough for us!



 



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Who is the architect of Indian nuclear programme?



The Bhabha of India’s nuclear plans



Whether it is used for defence or development, there’s no denying the importance of nuclear energy. Though India is not part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the country has made significant strides in nuclear science – it is now equipped with 22 nuclear reactors in seven power plants. And it is all thanks to the efforts of people like Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, who is known as the father of India’ s nuclear programme.



Early life



Bhabha was born in Mumbai on October 30, 1909. A close relative of Dorabji Tata, a key figure in the development of the Tata Group. Bhabha’s family persuaded him to pursue mechanical engineering and join the Tata Iron and Steel Company in Jamshedpur. But Bhabha discovered his true calling was physics.



He conveyed his change of heart in an insightful letter to his family, which reflects his passion for the subject. ‘The business or job of engineer is not the thing for me. It is totally foreign to my nature and radically opposed to my temperament and opinions. Physics is my line. I shall do great things here,” he wrote.



He studied in Cambridge, where he was internationally recognized for his work with cosmic rays. Bhabha was working in the famed Cavendish Laboratory where many discoveries of the time were taking place.



World War II



Bhabha returned to India for a short vacation, where World War II broke out. Instead of going back to England, he decided to stay on in India. He joined the Noble Laureate C.V. Raman’s laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore.



Bhabha strongly believed that India had to develop its nuclear capabilities so as to emerge as a power to reckon with. He said the country had to develop an atom bomb if it needed to defend itself. He convinced India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to start a nuclear programme and became the founding chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948.



Powering development



Bhabha formulated India’s three-stage nuclear power programme in 1954, which is even followed today, to secure the country’s long-term energy independence. The programme was developed around India’s limited uranium and thorium reserves found in the coastal regions of South India.



Bhabha was appointed the President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1955. He served as the member of the Indian Cabinet’s Scientific Advisory Committee.



Promoting nuclear research



Besides strengthening India’s nuclear programme, Bhabha also helped promote research in fundamental sciences and mathematics. Along with JRD Tata, Bhabha established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on the campus of IISc. It was later shifted to Mumbai, and gained international recognition in the fields of cosmic ray physics, theoretical physics and mathematics. Bhabha built a new laboratory dedicated to technology development for the atomic energy programme. It was called Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, in 1954, and later renamed Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) after his demise.



Death and legacy



Both TIFR and BARC served as the cornerstones of India’s development of nuclear weapons, which Bhabha supervised as a director. Following rising tensions after the Sino-India war, Bhabha boasted of India’s nuclear capabilities in a famous speech on All India Radio in 1965. He said if he had the green signal, India could make a nuclear bomb in 18 months. Three months later, on January 24, 1996, he died in a plane crash when Air India Flight 101 flew into Mont Blanc in France. He was on his way to Vienna to attend a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency. While conspiracy theories about Bhabha’s death still abound, India on this day lost one of its finest nuclear scientists at the prime of his career.



Brush strokes



Not just science, Bhabha was equally fond of music and art. His superb drawing skills won him many awards at the annual exhibitions of the Bombay Art Society. Even today, his paintings along with other priceless collections of art are on display at the TIFR and BARC campuses, making them unique among scientific institutions in the world.



 



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