research - The Environment Report

Science Funding in a Tanking Economy (Part One)

An EPA scientist testing online sensors for water distribution systems (Photo courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget)

The recession is hitting more than banks and homes these days. State budget cuts and no increases from the federal government are straining research labs and scientists. Adam Allington reports the effects might not be as obvious or immediate as the house foreclosures and the credit crisis, the effect on science jobs and innovation might be just as bad:

Transcript

At first glance there’s not much in Dale Dorsett’s lab beyond the usual – you know, grad students in white lab coats, centrifuges, test tubes.

Even though his lab is relatively small, his costs are not.

He takes me toward a locked room in the back of the lab containing a single microscope.

“It’s a laser scanning confocal microscope, which is essential for part of our work. That cost – $350,000 – now you know why we keep it locked.”

Dale is a molecular biologist at St. Louis University. He studies a genetic disorder that affects about one in ten-thousand humans.

Well, that is, when he can.

These days Dorsett says he spends more of his time filling out grant applications than he does on his research.

And he’s not the only one in this pickle. Winning grants for research is getting tough.

“The problem becomes when it gets so competitive that even really deserving projects, or very productive scientists who are doing really good work can’t get funded and that’s the situation we’re in right now.”

Funding from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation has been slipping for years. It’s a big problem.

It used to be about 30% of grant applications were successful. Now, that success rate has slipped into the teens.

And even those researchers who do get funded say grant preference is often given to projects that produce immediate results – which just isn’t the way most science works.

“I’m conservative because otherwise the lab would go under.”

Kristen Kroll runs a lab studying stem cells at Washington University.

“I would love to be more aggressive about what we go after, which connections we try to make to other models. I think I’ve curbed what we could be doing to a point where what we are doing is sustainable in the current funding climate.”

Kroll says there is such a back log of quality grant applications on file at the NIH and NSF, grant reviewers aren’t even separating wheat from chaff any more they’re separating wheat from wheat. So a lot of good research just doesn’t happen.

And in a world economy the U.S. isn’t the only player in the market for innovation. Other countries could gain an advantage in science.

James McCarter is the Chief Scientist for Divergence, a St. Louis-based biotech company.

“The emergence of India and China, in addition to Japan and Korea and Europe. There are sizeable countries out there now that are serious in these spaces and are making serious investments and have the talent.”

Now,you might be thinking, won’t that big stimulus package send wave of cash into the coffers of government research agencies – problem solved right?

Not so much. While a billion dollar shot in arm might be welcome news for some labs, many advisors worry that the long-term effect might actually exacerbate the funding crisis.

John Russell is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Washington University. He says, a big pile of cash all at once does nothing for ongoing research that can take years to complete.

“One of the concerns about a big bubble is that if it’s just a bubble is that it takes five years to train somebody so it needs to be more spread out I think to be effective.”

Russell warns universities considering a building and spending spree to plan carefully, so current projects don’t reach beyond future budget realities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Adam Allington.

Stimulus Package to Boost Research?

The stimulus money is a one-time thing, which concerns some researchers (Photo courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)

The government’s stimulus package is pouring billions of dollars into research for health, energy, and basic science. Rebecca Williams reports the new money will be helpful, but it’s not clear whether it’ll last:

Transcript

There’s 10 billion dollars for health care research, 3 billion for other science funding, and that’s just the beginning.

Sam Rankin says it’s a positive change. He chairs the Coalition for National Science Funding.

“This administration and the current Speaker of the House have been very adamant about how important science is and that they want to fund science because they realize it’s an economic driver.”

There’s a catch. The stimulus money is a one-time thing.

But this week, President Barack Obama indicated his budget will mean steady money for health care and energy technology.

“We will invest 15 billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.”

That makes scientists hopeful, but we won’t know the details of the budget until sometime in April.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Science Jobs Scarce (Part Two)

(Photo courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)

It’s the best of times and the worst of times to start a science career in the
United States. Researchers today have access to tools and techniques that
have accelerated the pace of discovery to new highs. But as record numbers
of PhD’s graduate, many young scientists are finding a job market that is not
ready to absorb them. Adam Allington traces the supply and demand for
young scientists in a faltering economy:

Transcript

Briana Gross is in her second year of a post-doctoral fellowship at
Washington University, she’s studying genetic adaptations of wild rice.

She’s been applying for college faculty jobs for the past two years. This
year she says she’s gone all-out.

“I’ve applied for I think 36-38 jobs, 3-4 of those positions have been cancelled
completely due to hiring freezes. I’ve had two interviews.”

These days there’s a glut of qualified talent. Between too many doctoral
grads and cutbacks, it’s tough to find a position.

One recent job interview did little to bolster Gross’s confidence for the
future.

“While I was waiting to meet with the dean, one of the financial administrators came buy
and kind of joked about how I couldn’t possibly be interviewing for a position because
there was no money available to hire anyone at the university. So, if that’s happening
this year, next year is going to be really rough.”

So, how’d we end up with too many scientists for the jobs out there? Well,
the answer goes back to an event scientists simply call “the doubling.”

In 1998, President Clinton doubled budget for the National Institutes of
Health, which had the effect of drawing in all kinds of new talent and
investment for science and research.

The problem came later when that funding went flat – precisely at the same
time all those new PhD’s were entering the job market.

“You know, its like you push a bunch of people into the pipeline and then there’s been
chocking off of the U.S. pipeline.”

Kristen Kroll is a professor of developmental biology at Washington
University; she employs two post-docs in her lab.

“What we’ve done is we’ve convinced a whole generation of U.S. post-docs and graduate
students not to go into academic science.”

Young PhD’s see the uphill battle for jobs and scarce grant money and
wonder if its worth the struggle.

And it’s not just post-docs who are feeling the pressure these days—junior
faculty are spending more of their time in the lecture hall and less time in the
lab.

David Duvernell teaches biology at Southern Illinois University at
Edwardsville.

“We try to maintain an active research program at SIUE, at the same time we’re teaching
our 2 or 3 courses a semester.”

Duvernell says SIUE enrollment in freshman-level biology courses has
nearly doubled, but state support has not.

“And where the students are losing out is that then we have less time to spend in research
labs, where we train students individually and give them an experience that will
ultimately make them employable and competitive for graduate and professional
programs.”

University administrators point that historically only about 30% of all post-
docs land a faculty job, with the rest going into the private sector. Except
these the private sector is shedding jobs even faster than the universities.

Jared Strasburg is a 4th-year post-doc from Indiana University. He says if he
hasn’t found a faculty job by August, he’ll have to consider something else.

“Academia is long hours, it’s a lot of work, But, I never felt like if I put in those hours
and worked really hard that I wouldn’t be capable of getting a position and getting
funding necessary to do the work that I was interested in. Needless to say now that
proposition looks a lot more tenuous.”

In recent years some universities have taken steps to curb the number of
graduating PhD’s.

But as the number of unemployed post-graduates rises, some say the whole
system for training scientists needs to be updated to jive with the modern
economy.

As fewer and fewer scientists actually work in universities, some say more
focus needs to be placed on careers outside of academia.

For The Environment Report, I’m Adam Allington.

Interview: Energy Innovation

European consumers have been quicker to adopt new technologies, like hybrids and efficient diesel cars. Energy Discovery -Innovation Institutes might change that. (Photo by Michael Pereckas, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:

Transcript

Gary Was: Energy is a very complex topic. It’s a social issue as much as it is a
technological issue. In addition to the technological challenges of coming up with
new energy sources and proving energy efficiency, we also have a lot of social issues
involved as well. The business sector is heavily involved. Economics is a big issue.
Social behavior and social preferences are big factors in our energy use patterns and
our habits.

Lester Graham: Give me an example of that.

Was: Well, one example is plug-in hybrid electrics. There’s a lot of questions to
how these plug-in hybrids are going to function, and whether they’ll be successful. A
lot of that depends upon people’s preferences. The idea of plugging in, when you
can plug in, how long you have to plug in, how complicated or how difficult it is –
can make a big difference. We’ve seen examples of that with diesel. In Europe, half
the cars are diesel powered. We have the same technology here. There are no diesel
powered cars here. It’s a social issue, not a technological issue.

Graham: Steven Chu, the new Energy Secretary, has spent a good deal of his career
in research. What do you expect his reaction will be to your suggestion of tying
together this energy research?

Was: I think it will be quite positive. Dr. Chu has a background both in the
academic setting as well as in the National Laboratories, and I think he appreciates
well the capabilities of each institution. The meat of this whole proposal, and of this
whole concept, is that the National Laboratories alone, or universities alone, or
industry alone – the three principal research institutions in the US – really aren’t
prepared to handle a challenge of this breadth, and depth, and complexity. And that
we need a new paradigm. We need a new way to be able to take basic science,
accelerate it into development, and push it through technology, transfer it to the
private sector. None of these institutions alone can do that really highly successfully.

Graham: What is this going to do require? Is this government money to get this
launched? Is this going to be another scientific layer of bureaucracy when we get
finished? How do you handle this to make sure it’s effective?

Was: One of the problems we have with energy in the country is that, overall,
regardless of these institutes, this institute concept, its terribly underfunded – in terms
of its comparison to the impact on the economy. The energy business is a 1.5 trillion
dollar business in the US. It’s comparable to healthcare. In healthcare, there is
approximately ten times the amount of federal funds going into research than there is
in energy. So in comparison to the impacts on our lives, it’s underfunded by almost
a factor of ten.

Graham: If we’re to invest in these kinds of institutes, and invest in more research
into energy and how we use it, what kind of return might we see on our tax dollars
that we shovel over to you guys?

Was: Well, that’s a very good question. These discovery institutes, these will be
regionally situated, and each one might be on the order of 200 million dollars a year
funding, and so the entire price tag would be maybe 5 billion dollars. So what do
you get for 5 billion dollars? We expect that the transformation will be much more
rapid, it will be with fewer false starts, and left turns, or dead ends, and it will be
much more efficient than we’re able to do right now. Right now, the system is such
that technology advancements tend to sort of diffuse through society in an uncharted
and undirected way. The objective here is to sharpen that diffusion so that we can
pull these technologies out, translate them into useful products much more quickly.

Graham: Gary Was is the director of the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University
of Michigan. Thanks for coming in.

Was: Thanks very much.

More Money for Plug-In Hybrid Research

A laboratory researcher examines a lithium-ion battery that may be put in a hybrid car in the future (Photo courtesy of the Department of Energy)

The federal government and US carmakers are spending more

money on battery research for plug-in hybrid vehicles. That’s because

existing battery technology is limited. But some of the grant winners

say success won’t come easily. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The federal government and US carmakers are spending more

money on battery research for plug-in hybrid vehicles. That’s because

existing battery technology is limited. But some of the grant winners

say success won’t come easily. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

The US Advanced Battery Consortium is made up of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.
Together with money from the Department of Energy, the consortium is handing out millions of
dollars to develop batteries for Hybrid vehicles.

Johnson Controls and a partner will develop lithium-ion batteries for plug-in hybrids.

Michael Andrew is a spokesman for Johnson Controls. He says his company has a lot of work to
do to make a battery that will go forty miles between charges.

“You’ve got to hit volume targets, weight targets, power targets, energy targets, cost targets. For
the 40 mile range application, that’s gonna be a tremendous challenge for us.”

The battery and car makers say it might take even more government support to help the US auto
industry shift away from gasoline-powered cars.

Critics say the companies should have focused sooner on fuel efficiency.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Songbirds’ Numbers Flying South

A Nashville Warbler - one of the birds that Matt Etterson heard during this bird count in Canada (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

Transcript

The jumping off point for this trip is a tiny airport with a grass runway in
northern Minnesota, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

We fly for 15 minutes, over trees and swamps as far as the eye can see. Down
below we get a glimpse of a moose. And, later, a pair of rare trumpeter swans
in their nest.

The helicopter sets down in what’s known as a floating bog. Its runners are
sitting in six inches of water.

We jump out in knee-high boots and rain jackets, and douse with DEET to try
to keep the mosquitoes away.

I’m following Heidi Seeland, a graduate student who seems to know her way
around a bog.

We’re in knee-deep water. Then it’s thigh-deep Pretty soon it’s waist-deep. I try
to step on a clump of sphagnum moss. But it sinks. It holds onto my boot, and
I’m sitting in water.

Heidi helps me up, and we catch up with the others.

They fan out on different points of the compass. I follow Matt Etterson. He’s an
ornithologist, a bird expert. We slog through the bog for nearly half an hour.
Etterson is aiming for a piece of higher ground, where the trees are a little
taller, better for nesting.

Suddenly he stops. He’s found the spot he was looking for. He sets his watch
for 10 minutes and pulls out a notebook.

Etterson cocks his head this way and that, jotting the names of the birds he can
hear, and the time he hears them. He doesn’t pay any attention to the mosquito
biting the back of his neck. He just listens and takes notes.

“We had a couple of hermit thrush — that’s the singing to the north of us. A
veery called a couple of times to the west of us. A Nashville warbler, and a
couple of western palm warblers, and that was about it. It was pretty quiet
otherwise,” Etterson said.

We trudge through the muck for another 20 or 30 minutes and he repeats the
process.

It’s two hours later, and the three researchers meet at the helicopter landing spot
and compare notes. They’re excited about Etterson’s veery and Nashville
warbler. The others heard a Connecticut warbler and a Lincoln’s sparrow.

They would have been really happy if they’d heard a golden-winged warbler.
It’s one of the most threatened of bird species. The number of golden-winged
warblers has declined by some 80% during the last 50 years.

Today’s trip is an experiment to see how well it works to count birds in remote
places, using a helicopter.

It’ll take five years to finish the bird count here. Then, in 10 or 20 years, they’ll
do it all over again, to see how the birds are faring.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Teacher Brings Adventures to the Classroom

Fourth-grade teacher Robin Frisch-Gleason on a research trip to Antarctica (Photo courtesy of Robin Frisch-Gleason)
Fourth-grade teacher Robin Frisch-Gleason on a research trip to Antarctica (Photo courtesy of Robin Frisch-Gleason)
Fourth-grade teacher Robin Frisch-Gleason on a research trip to Antarctica (Photo courtesy of Robin Frisch-Gleason)

Kids can watch all kinds of TV shows, movies,
and DVDs about science and nature. But it’s not the
same as talking to a researcher who’s actually been
to remote places in the world. Kyle Norris reports
when that researcher is your fourth-grade teacher it
makes everything very real:

Transcript

Okay, so guess where we are.

“Good morning, Slausson School. Good morning.”

It’s a school assembly.

So the woman talking is Robin Frisch-Gleason. She’s a fourth grade teacher. And before
that she was a geologist. And she loves polar regions. She says she loves their vastness
and their emptiness.

A couple months ago she went to Antarctica to study the rocks. And to learn more about
how to teach kids about polar regions.

Now that’s she’s back, she does stuff like this assembly, and tells kids about her trip.
This is her explaining how geologists drill the ice and then pull-up core samples of rock.

“I explain it by saying think about putting a straw in milkshake. You put a straw down.
The very top of the milkshake is the top of the seafloor. And then you press down, maybe
to bottom of cup, and when you cover the straw with your finger and pull it back up, you
have a core of milkshake. And that’s just like we take up a core of rock.”

She says the rocks are like a book, and they tell a story about the past. The scientists in
Antarctica are actually reading the rocks. And they’re trying to find out if the ice melted
when the climate got warmer in the past. So that they can predict what will happen to the
ice as the climate continues to warm in the future.

Robin Frisch-Gleason wants to kids to know that polar regions are vulnerable to climate change.

“And they should be aware of it, and as they grow up it should influence their decisions, their
voting, their career choices, and their own personal behaviors.”

But ultimately she wants to make learning fun. And like alive. Back in her fourth-grade
classroom, the kids do a lot of hands-on activities.

(clapping)

Like imitating the way penguins communicate through penguin calls. But in this case, by
clapping their hands in a certain pattern, and trying to find other kids who have their
same pattern.

In another activity, they wear different types of insulated gloves – like a glove lined with
cotton, or a glove lined with fat – and they stick it into icy water, to see which is warmer.

“It’s fun to stick your hand in things. It’s hands-on like he said, it’s fun doing hands-on
stuff, it’s fun trying out different things. And it’s fun because you’re really trying to
experiment on stuff. You’re experimenting with science and it’s really fun at the same
time.”

Plus the kids say that it’s cool having a teacher go to Antarctica and come back and teach
everybody all these cool things. They say it’s even given them some street-cred amongst other kids at
other schools.

Here’s 4th grader Cole Magoon:

“And it’s kind of like have a famous person be your teacher.”

The kids say that doing fun, hands-on activities actually makes them want to pay more
attention. And this kind of learning not only sparks their critical thinking and problem-
solving skills, but it’s also a great way to get kids psyched about science and math. And
learning from a person who’s actually been in the field seems to amplify all this.

And it gets kids thinking about the world they live in, and the world they’ll have to take
care of.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Report: Epa Limiting Info Access

A government watchdog group says the Environmental
Protection Agency might be limiting the public’s access to
information. Rebecca Williams reports that could hurt future
research on health and safety:

Transcript

The EPA has been closing several of its research libraries. The agency
started doing that two years ago to save money. The libraries have
information on chemical safety, Superfund sites, and all kinds of other
health and safety data.

The Government Accountability Office says the EPA cut corners… and acted
too quickly.

The GAO reports the EPA closed the libraries without consulting outside
experts.

The report says the EPA closed its Chemical Library without notifying EPA
staff or the public. EPA scientists used the library to review industry
requests before new chemicals could be put on the market.

Congress has directed the EPA to re-open the libraries. The EPA hasn’t
reopened them yet. But the agency says it’s reviewing its library plans.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Saving the Orcas

Mother-calf pair of "Type C" orcas in the Ross Sea. (Photo by Robert Pitman, NOAA)

For many people orca whales are very
familiar. Think Shamu. We’ve even given the wild
killer whales of the Pacific Northwest individual
names. But there’s still a lot we don’t know, like
where the whales go and what they eat. Now that they’re
listed as endangered, those have become important
questions. Liam Moriarty accompanied a research
crew trying to get answers:

Transcript

Killer whales are sloppy eaters, so one way to study their diet is to
scoop up the leftover crumbs. Robin Baird says another way is to
study what comes out the other end.

“And so we basically follow behind the whales and pick up whatever
they leave behind, so either bits of fish if they’re actually catching
prey, or fecal material which we can use to look at what they’re
feeding on using genetic analysis.”

Baird is a biologist with Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington.

(outboard motorboat sounds up)

On this morning, Baird, biologist Brad Hanson, and several other
researchers are piled into a 19-foot inflatable boat. We’re heading out
from Friday Harbor, north of Seattle to look for whales. We head
toward the Canadian border, keeping our eyes peeled. A while later,
we locate a group of more than a dozen whales.

(boat slows down)

Now comes the tricky part. The game plan is to pick an animal to
follow, and hope it leaves a specimen in its wake.

Baird: “We’ll come along side this one, get an ID then we’ll start a
flukeprint on her.”

Whales are surfacing and diving all around us.

(whale exhalation)

Researchers call out sightings, directions and distances …

“Multiple targets. Two animals. (How far?) 100 meters.”

Robin Baird maneuvers the boat into the wake of a passing whale.

“Oh, fish in mouth! Eleven’s got … the male’s got a fish in mouth!”

Researcher Greg Shorr stands in a pulpit at the bow of the boat with
a long handled pool net, looking intently into the water for the telltale
glitter of fish scales.

“OK, dip!”

He dips the net and comes up with a few scales and bits of tissue.

(whale breath)

Soon we’re tracking other orcas.

Hanson: “Chase! Underwater chase, 12 o’clock! Another target up,
125 behind us at 5 o’clock … might be chasing something … Yep!
Definitely chasing something! Two animals back there, three
animals!”

We spend over an hour tailing whales and dipping pool nets that
mostly come up empty.
(whale breath)

Getting this up-close and personal with the whales would get anyone
who doesn’t have a federal research permit ticketed for whale
harassment … But this kind of work is one important way to get
information that could help save the orcas from extinction.
Eventually, the whales move on. We make the long trip back.

(boat motors up, fades)

(brewpub noise)

That evening, in a dockside brewpub, Brad Hanson and Robin Baird
reflect on the day’s work; twelve hours on often-choppy seas. Baird
says that’s what it takes to get close to the whales.

“If we want to be able to really understand what they’re doing, we
have to be able to see the fine details of their behavior. And the only
way we’re going to se those fine details is if we’re actually close
enough to see whether a whale has a fish in its mouth when it comes
up to the surface.”

Hanson says that approach is paying off.

“Some 30 years we’ve known all these individual animals and people
have spent a lot of time looking at them, but we are seeing things in
the last couple of years that other people have not seen.”

For instance, orcas sometimes play with their food or share prey with
each other. Analysis of fecal samples has pinpointed what kinds of
fish the whales eat, and when. Observations like these have given
researchers a better picture of how the animals interact with their
habitat. And that fills in a few more pieces of the puzzle they hope will
lead to recovery for the Pacific Northwest’s endangered killer
whales.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Phthalate Chemicals Found in Infants

Infants are widely exposed to a class of chemicals that might be harmful to their
reproductive systems. That’s according to new research published today/this week
(Monday, February 4th, 2008) in the journal Pediatrics. Mark Brush reports – the
chemicals are known as phthalates:

Transcript

Phthalates are everywhere. They’re used to make plastics softer. And they’re used in
perfumes, shampoos, and lotions to help the product absorb into your skin.

Researchers at the University of Washington found that infants had higher concentrations of phthalates in their urine if their mothers used baby lotions, shampoos and powders.
Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana led the study. She says it can be hard to avoid phthalates:

“In terms of personal care products and cosmetics, we don’t know. The products are not
labeled to contain phthalates in them, and so it’s very, very difficult to kind of counsel
families about what to do.”

Sathyanarayana says more study is needed to determine human health effects. Animal
studies have shown that the chemicals can change hormone levels, leading to
reproductive problems in males.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Tag: research

Science Funding in a Tanking Economy (Part One)

Transcript

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Stimulus Package to Boost Research?

Transcript

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Science Jobs Scarce (Part Two)

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Interview: Energy Innovation

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More Money for Plug-In Hybrid Research

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Songbirds’ Numbers Flying South

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Teacher Brings Adventures to the Classroom

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Report: Epa Limiting Info Access

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Saving the Orcas

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Phthalate Chemicals Found in Infants

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