February's Sci-shimi: Chestnuts, Chloroplasts, and Conferences, Oh My!

Welcome to Sci-shimi, my monthly roundup of  great science online! Like a delicious, fresh platter of sashimi, these tasty links are meant to be shared —???????? ! 

This month’s mind-blowing science moment: Meet the woman who developed a way to run 30 blood tests with a single drop.

Best long-read: Resurrecting a forest, in which Carl Zimmer explains how genetic tinkering may help bring back the American chestnut, complete with a time-lapse video:

Best non-science long-read: The dark power of fraternities by Caitlin Flanagan (with the best opening paragraph of all time).

Extra-special shout out to Danielle Lee, butt-kicking science blogger, who was chosen this month as one of the White House’s Champions of Change. Danielle, you rock so hard it’s giving me whiplash!

“That in spite of what we have learned, we can persist in being knowingly and brutally cruel—as inhumane and unfeeling as we once regarded all other animals to be.” Powerful words from Virginia Morell on the Taiji dolphin slaughter.

Who is the best thrower in the animal kingdom? The why—not the who—might surprise you, says Jason Goldman.

Talk about changing for the one you love—lemurs in love smell alike.

Vultures don’t follow dead animals; they wait where animals die, explains Allie Wilkinson.

Stunning photos show the inner workings of fish.

What is a plant without its chloroplasts?

Tiny robots, based on insects, that ARE THE SIZE OF INSECTS.

What does lava look like before it erupts from a volcano? Erik Klemetti explains.

Fish that climb rocks with their mouths.

The real Batman—what a bat skeleton looks like in our size.

The most beautiful animal you’ve never seen, by Rebecca Helm.

Andrew Revkin sums up California’s water troubles, and what is in store for the thirsty state.

So much for The Secret—the powerlessness of positive thinking.

Ferris Jabr delves into the giant minds of elephants.

A golden eagle takes down a deer. Seriously.

Ed Yong explains the mystery behind a graveyard of ancient whales.

Super Mario = quantum physics!

“Suns and beaches doesn’t sound like the stuff of nightmares. But the patient said that these dreams were, in fact, unspeakably horrible.”

Feb was a month of conferences: AAAS, Ocean Sciences, and ScienceOnline Together. Be sure to catch up on the twitter hashtags by clicking the links!

*This* is why I love #scio14. Talk art to me, music, theoretical physics, fame. Tell me why all my assumptions are wrong, tell me. Thank you

— LizNeeley (@LizNeeley) February 28, 2014

Bored kids are turning to twitter to amuse themselves. What does this say about the state of our education system

Cane toads prove they can take the heat, or lack thereof.

Love and hate—kinda the same thing, really.

Kyle Hill explains why the Walking Dead zombies have venom, not a virus

Horrifying image of animal research circulates the interwebs—except that it’s not a picture of animal research at all.

What would Miley Cyrus do (if she was into marine science)? #OceanMiley

Turns out, it’s pretty easy to put Miley on most stock oceanographic photos. Here she is deploying a CTD. pic.twitter.com/hZiA0ispPn

— Kim Martini (@rejectedbanana) February 15, 2014

What is dark energy? Matthew Francis explains.

Flying snakes (minus the plane)

Waste heat is free energy—energy crisis solved?

Academic scandal: more than 120 computer-generated papers have made their way onto the pages of respected journals.

How accurate is the movie Pompeii? Actually, not as far-fetched as you’d think.

Plastic ingestion in sea birds is worse than we thought.

A map that shows how historical human populations mixed.

How do mole get around? They swim through the ground.

Have something to add? Tweet me link suggestions with the hashtag #scishimi!

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Crimea as Seen in Satellite Images

A Google Earth image of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. (Source: Google Earth)

As I’m putting this post together, Ukraine has put its military on high alert, and Russian troops along with other forces have surrounded a number of Ukrainian military bases on the Crimean Peninsula — home to Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet.

Just a week after the end of the Sochi Olympics, the Russians have invaded Ukraine, and so there is now a risk of war in Europe. Hard to believe.

This isn’t a typical kind of topic for ImaGeo, but I thought I’d approach it by providing some remote sensing imagery of the region, and particularly Sevastopol, which has obvious military importance to the Russians, who have a long-term lease from Ukraine on their naval base there.

In the image above, you can see multiple ships docked in the harbor — many of them Russian naval vessels. How strong is the force there?

Here’s how Mark Galeotti, author of “Russian Security and Paramilitary Forces Since 1991,” and a professor at New York University, answered this question in a Q&A with the Washington Post:

Q. How strong is Russia’s Black Sea Fleet?

A. As a war-fighting force, it’s not particularly impressive. Its main vessel was basically built to fight other ships and so is only useful in fighting a naval war. It’s got the Moskva, an aging guided-missile cruiser; a large anti-submarine warfare cruiser — very dated; a destroyer and two frigates, which are more versatile; landing ships; and a diesel attack submarine. It’s not a particularly powerful force. The Italian navy alone could easily destroy it.

The port city of Sevastopol is seen here in a photograph taken on Expedition 20 of the International Space Station in 2009. (Source: NASA)

The city of Sevastopol spreads out along the deep indentation on the Black Sea coast seen in this photograph shot by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. From this perspective, its utility as a naval base seems pretty clear.

The entire Crimean Peninsula is seen in this image acquired by NASA’s Terra satellite on June 10, 2013. (Source: NASA)

This isn’t the first time that Crimea has been invaded by foreign forces. Far, far from it. It belonged to both the Greek and Roman empires many centuries ago. At that time it was known as Taurica.

And that’s just the start of it. As a good backgrounder in the Washington Post puts it:

These weren’t the only outside forces that dominated Crimea, and at other points in its past it has been invaded or ruled by Gothic tribes, the Kievan Rus’ state, the Byzantium empire and the Mongols, among many others. From the mid-1400s it existed as the Crimean Khanate, a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, during which time it became the center of a roaring slave trade.

The Crimean War left the peninsula in control of Russia in the mid-1800s. After the Russian Revolution, it became an autonomous region of the Soviet Union (with a very brief interlude as an autonomous state). The Nazis occupied the peninsula during WWII, and Sevastopol was nearly destroyed during fighting there.

The Red Army pushed the Nazis out in 1944 — and the Soviets proceeded to deport the region’s Tartars to Central Asia. Many died along the way. The Tartars were allowed to return after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, there is no love lost between them and the ethnic Russians on the peninsula, who make up more than 50 percent of the population now.

A Google Earth view of Crimea’s broad geographical context. (Source: Google Earth)

Lastly, this broad view gives a sense of Crimea’s strategic importance. For the Russians, the base at Sevastopol is one of just three that provide access to the world’s oceans. The others are in the Murmansk region on the Barents Sea, and Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

Let’s hope the current situation doesn’t spin out of control. There’s been enough blood spilled in this part of the world.

Here are some other articles worth reading on this developing situation:

“Among More Signs of Russian Force in Crimea, Delight Mixes With Dismay,” New York Times.

“Putin’s Playbook: The Strategy Behind Russia’s Takeover of Crimea,” The Atlantic.

View the original article here

Nerds and Words: Week 9

I have dug through the Internet this week and uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.

I have marked my favorite links with a 8. Enjoy.

Science to Read, Watch

The blind have more nightmares, and it gets more interesting from there

8 A whale graveyard where dozens of ancient giants met their end by something almost microscopic

Sock for the heart, and you’re to blame. You give science a good name

The fruit fly’s refusal to be monogamous tells us something about how intelligence evolved

When your friend is down, lend a helping trunk, elephants do

Giant scary birds were giant, scary, but probably not mammal-munchers

8 A wasp with a zombifying stinger able to sense its way through a cockroach brain in under a minute

The jewel wasp is the preeminent cockraoch brain surgeon

What does Smaug have in common with a beetle? More than you may think

Robots of a rotor synchronize their motors

“We are simultaneously on the precipice of several different cliffs.”

8 What’s better than talking science? Talking science with geeky 11-year olds! Listen here

Spiders can hear human activity and learn to work around it

“When we look into the eyes of an elephant, we should recognize an intellectual equal”

8 We bleed 500,000 horseshoe crabs a year for medical services we absolutely cannot get anywhere else

Why we should eat more (delicious) bugs to save the world

Watch the world’s fastest wire-bending machine forever

We have found a bacterium that kills Zebra mussels

A simple task that shows how important the scientific method is: Can You Solve This?

I honestly didn’t know how LEDs worked until Minute Physics explained it with electron spas and parties

8 Could A Skyrim Shout Ever Knock Someone Over?

Arachnophobes imagine spiders as bigger and closer than they really are (but they really are everywhere)

The rock that hit the moon had more energy than is released in the fission of 1 gram of U-235

“The Secret” assumes an extreme emotion is always good. It’s wrong: The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking

8 Why don’t we get outraged over the nonsense sold at Whole Foods?

Alan Alda wants to make scientists better communicators by making them actors, but really just more “human”

Visualizing 100,000 asteroids at once is of course beautiful

Have you thought of the invasive species crawling around beneath your feet?

The natural selection of oblong egg shape in seabirds, in one GIF

The Cassini spacecraft crosses Saturn’s ring plane, inadvertently photographs the best scifi book cover ever

Extreme Nerdery

8 GLaDOS makes an appearance in a NASA science explainer video

If you make your golf ball-powered rocket just right, you can score ALL the hole-in-ones

A True Detective infographic that is obsessive, speculative, and awesome, just like the show

There is a protist in a termite gut that is named Cthulhu

8 If everyone in The Hobbit was a lady. Fantastic

Incoming transmission Captain…

Eventually, Godzilla will be so big that no kaiju could take it down

8 My new favorite instrument can play the Super Mario theme better than anything

Kramer was right about the Ukraine in Risk

It had to happen: A robot that could destroy your Flappy Bird high-score

Sciencey GIFs and Images

8 Still little more chilling than nuclear testing in black and white

Chinese pest eradication poster, Ding Hao (1958)

A murmation of beautiful murmation photos

Set alcohol vapors alight and you get a gorgeous cross between a brain and a developing blastula

You saw the Moon and Saturn together, now see the GIF of the Moon eating Saturn

8 Besides brilliant science communication and funny comics, xkcd also makes actually useful infographics

Following only what’s in the games…prepare yourself…people ARE Pokemon

You guys, 3D WELDING

A GIF from MARS

8 A moist owlet

Pop Culture Happenings

8 Finally, some footage of Li Hongbo’s amazing paper sculptures

It’s exactly what we were worried about: Bill Nye Debate Sparked Funding ‘Miracle’

A History of Clickbait: The First 100 Years

Hyping Your Conspiracy Theory In 5 Easy Steps

8 A ticker tape of real-time porn search terms (very NSFW, very interesting)

Huh. Those “Do Drugs” pencils were real, and only changed after a kid noticed

Who Said It: Ted Nugent or Eric Cartman?

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Smoking Could Alter Teens' Brain Structure

It’s common knowledge that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health, but young people are still choosing to light up more than any other demographic in the United States. Researchers now have evidence that a specific part of the brain varies between smokers and nonsmokers. The researchers say it could be that smoking is causing these changes, even in teenagers who have smoked for a relatively short period of time.

Prior research has shown brain differences between adult smokers and nonsmokers, but few studies focused on the youngest demographic of smokers whose brains are still undergoing development. The new findings indicate that a small part of a brain region called the insula is thinner in young people who smoke.

The insula is a part of the cerebral cortex, and it is involved in shaping our consciousness and emotions. The insula also houses a high concentration of nicotine receptors and plays a critical role in generating the craving to smoke. The study’s lead researcher Edythe London said they focused on this particular part of the brain because previous studies in adults and mice showed its size and volume were affected by smoking.

To test differences in the insula of young smokers, London and her colleagues used structural MRI to compare the brains of 18 smokers and 24 nonsmokers between the ages of 16 and 21. The average age smokers started the habit was 15, and they averaged six to seven cigarettes a day.

The brain scans showed that thickness of the insula, on average, was not substantially different between the groups. However, the thickness of a smaller part of the insular region, the right insula, was negatively related to cigarette dependence. Individuals who had smoked for longer, or had stronger urges to smoke, had a thinner right insula. The team published their findings this week in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

“It looks like, even in these very young kids, there is a link between the structure of the insula and the extent to which they smoke and become dependent,” London said in a Neuropsychopharmacology podcast. “It was shocking. We are beginning to get a story of the functional neuroanatomy of smoking.”

Although the study illustrated a difference in brain structure of young smokers and nonsmokers, it did not establish whether smoking caused the variations. It could be that people with differently structured insulas are more likely to take up smoking for an unknown reason. However, the results pave the way for future studies to determine the actual cause and effect.

“Ideally one would start the study in 12-year-olds who haven’t begun to smoke; follow them out after they begin to smoke; and see if in fact the smaller insula thickness was a predictor of a predilection to become a smoker,” London explained in the podcast.

On the other hand, if London’s team finds proof that smoking causes thinning of the right insula, it would provide further evidence of the detrimental health effects of picking up the habit at a young age. 

Photo credit: Dora Zett/Shutterstock

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Baby Brain Scans Predict Later Cognitive Development?

The shape of a newborn baby’s brain can predict its later cognitive development, according to a new study from New York neuroscientists Marisa Spann and colleagues.

Here’s the paper: Morphological features of the neonatal brain support development of subsequent cognitive, language, and motor abilities

Now, while the word ‘phrenology‘ gets banded around a lot these days by people who don’t like neuroscience, this study actually sort of fits that description – except instead of ‘bumps on skulls’ it was more ‘bumps on brains’. The authors scanned 48 babies (within 6 weeks of birth) using MRI to obtain an image of brain structure; they then analyzed the shape of each brain using a deformation-based morphology approach.

This revealed areas on each brain that were bigger or smaller than the average newborn brain:

The outputs were a set of local ‘indentations’ and ‘protrusions’… or, one might say, troughs and bumps? Anyway, after being scanned, the babies were followed up for two years and tested every 6 months to measure their developmental functioning in the domains of motor, language, and cognitive skills (using the Bayley-III scale.)

There were significant correlations between brain shape and later development, however interestingly, most of these were negative correlations – that is, infants with a thinner cerebral cortex in each particular area did better:

Here for example you can see results for the cognitive domain at ages 6, 12, 18 and 24 months. There are correlations in many areas, mostly negative (purple blobs), with the exception of some positive (yellow) correlations in the occipital cortex but these areas only predicted performance at 6 months.

So it would seem that in general, ‘less is more’ for many parts of the newborn brain. Which is interesting because in a previous study, as the authors write,

At birth, head circumference as a proxy for brain volume was the strongest (positive) predictor of intelligence at 4 years (Gale et al 2006).

Spann et al don’t seem to have analyzed whole-brain volume, but why would regional cortical thickness be a negative predictor of development? They suggest that it might be a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race type deal:

Slower or more protracted maturation of the brain or brain subregions, that are otherwise growing rapidly specifically in the neonatal period, may support the development and emergence of improved motor, language, and cognitive abilities in later infancy.

However… the sample size wasn’t huge. Although they scanned 48 babies, only 37 had usable MRI data (for the other 11, quality was too poor). And of those, they were only able to get developmental assessments on n=33 at age 6 months, falling to n=18 by 24 months. A decently sized study at the outset, it had become a decidedly small one by the end.

And I do worry (as I always seem to these days) about head movement. It’s hard enough to get adults to lie still in an MRI scanner. With babies it’s all but impossible which is why the authors used the special motion-resistant T2 PROPELLER sequence. However, they still had to throw out about a quarter of their scans, perhaps for excessive motion.

Could the scans they included have been degraded by movement, perhaps correlated with baby temperament and later behaviour, and could this have confounded the deformation-based morphology? Spann et al say that “the similarity transformation of an infant brain to a template is robust to the presence of noise in the imaging data” but it would have been nice to see some quantitative checks of that assumption.

Spann, M., Bansal, R., Rosen, T., & Peterson, B. (2014). Morphological features of the neonatal brain support development of subsequent cognitive, language, and motor abilities Human Brain Mapping DOI: 10.1002/hbm.22487

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Deadly 'Snowboob' Envelops Southern Ontario

Check out this incredible photo of the snow squall just north of Toronto taken from the CTV Toronto chopper pic.twitter.com/z37h7mJ5Go

— CTV Toronto (@CTVToronto) February 27, 2014

I was planning to pack it up early today until I saw this amazing Twitpic on Mashable.

Perhaps you’ve heard of haboobs, intense dust and sand storms that can reach 10,000 feet high. Not uncommon in Phoenix during the monsoon season there, they look like a giant brown wall as they approach. But have you ever imagined a ‘snowboob’?

It turns out that snow squalls can take on the same appearance as haboobs. The wall of snow in the image above enveloped Toronto and other parts of Southern Ontario yesterday (Feb. 27).

Here’s another view:

This captures the giant #snowboob squall in Toronto (via CP24) https://t.co/dOcvbA8P0Z

— Brian Ries (@moneyries) February 27, 2014

Unfortunately, the giant snow squall caused mayhem for drivers across southern Ontario. Near Barrie, Ontario, north of Toronto, the sudden white-out conditions resulted in a 96-car pileup. And at least one death has been blamed on the wall of snow — to the west in Sarnia. You can find more details at The Toronto Star.

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The Most Depressing Things <em>True Detective</em> Says About The Self Are True

We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self. A secretion of sensory experience and feeling. Programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when, in fact, nobody is anybody.

Rust Cohle has tumbled down a deep, dark philosophical hole and wants us to follow him. In HBO’s episodic crime drama True Detective, Cohle—played masterfully by Matthew McConaughey—accentuates his homicide investigations with disturbing existential rumination. Listening to Cohle lecture on the futile nature of human life or the cosmic indifference of the universe is emotionally arresting to say the least. His “corrosive” soul is the fulcrum for the supernatural element in True Detective, a nihilistic car wreck to stare at each week.

But Cohle is more than just dark when he speaks about human nature, he is right.

When Cohle says that we are “programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody,” he’s not just trying to ruin partner Marty Hart’s “silent reflection periods,” he is bringing up some of the biggest questions in the scientific exploration of human consciousness. Is the mind separate from the body? Who is in control? What makes the mind? Some research suggests that fully understanding consciousness involves biting the bullet that Cohle loads in the gun: our sense of self is programmed, a construct, an illusion.

Ask most people if mind and body are one and they will say no. This is referred to as “naïve dualism.” The people who think the body and mind are separate—more specifically the physical brain and the mind—are not naïve or stupid themselves, so to speak, but rather we are born thinking this way without consideration. When we look in the mirror, for example, we instinctively comment on our physical appearance separate from the mind. “You” haven’t aged but your body looks older. When you trip on the sidewalk you might say your legs gave out, but it wasn’t your fault. We feel as though we drive our bodies like a vessel our minds inhabit. But these feelings are still considered naïve because of what we now know about the brain.

James Bridges/Michele K. Short/HBO

When we knew nothing of where the mind sprang from, it was understandable to think ourselves something of a puppet master. We are born (and cultured) with a sense of self located somewhere behind the eyes, in between the temples. Ultimately, our intuitive sense of self is like our pre-programmed intuitive sense of physics—useful in most situations, but not very accurate when we ask bigger questions.

With support from countless experiments and a number of intersecting fields, science is now certain mind and brain are one. More succinctly, “The mind is what the brain does.” If you—the you that harbors your personality, your will, your conscious thought—were truly separate from the physical brain, then brain damage or surgery could never change who you were. But it does. In theory, a surgeon could remove or alter a part of your brain and you would become an entirely different person (the case of Phineas Gage being the classic example). We’ve seen it enough times to know that our naïve dualism lives up to the designation. You are your brain. Dualism is no longer a scientifically tenable position. It may be a philosophical one, but Cohle has something to say about that too.

The dark truth Rust Cohle is alluding to is this: Who you are is entirely dependent on the physical brain, “this meat,” as Cohle puts it. And this meat makes mistakes about reality all the time.

Illusions are the easiest (and maybe the least depressing) way to see that our brains make mistakes. A famous optical illusion like this one makes it pretty clear that something is off. No matter how many times you try to see it, only by changing the conditions does something flip in your brain to say, “These blocks are the same color.”

Your brain is a prediction and modeling machine. There is simply too much information coming into our senses at any one time not to take advantage of some shortcuts. In the block example, your brain is assuming that the blocks are a different color because of their apparent lighting and 3D orientation. It makes a guess and that’s what you perceive.

Another example you’re going to hate me for: Your nose is always in your field of vision. The only reason why you don’t notice it all the time is that your brain is effectively editing it out like some green screen effect. Not only does the brain edit out reality, it fills it in. For example, you have two fairly substantial blind spots in your vision that you never notice. Only when you do a test like this do they “appear.” Otherwise, you would never see two large black spots in your vision. The brain is making predictions about the world and modeling what would be in those blind spots if the world were consistent within them. It’s a weird concept—the world we perceive is only our brain’s best simulation of what is beyond our eyes, ears, and noses. It gets even weirder than that.

In The Self Illusion, psychologist Bruce Hood lays out the case for how the brain’s models extend all the way to the self. Life seems rich and continuous and coherent to us, but thanks to the numerous illusions that fool us we know that’s not true. Because of how our vision works, for example, we are functionally blind between the times our eyes dart from one focal point to another, but we never notice. (Just try to see your eyes moving in a mirror.) Hood claims this blindness adds up to hours each day, but it’s never a part of our conscious experience. Those kinds of insights lead to a disturbing conclusion—the brain also models the self.

The “you” that rationalizes and chooses and deliberates is simply a way for the brain to navigate the world. Having a sense of a self that apparently controls the body from behind the eyes is an efficient way to deal with other sentient creatures, and evolved along with our intelligence, or so psychologists like Hood suggest. This conclusion doesn’t necessarily have to come from a scientific perspective either. In Buddhist philosophy, the term “anatta” refers to Rust’s contention of the “not-self” or the self illusion. If you simply pay attention to the nature of perception—what you feel and how—eventually you will notice that the sensation of a singular sense of self melts away. Of course, that kind of meditation does not work for everyone, and does not prove there is no “you.” Maybe shrinking your mirror down to the size of a quarter will help.

Think about the brain’s self modeling like The Matrix. In that film, humans are kept alive and thinking by electrical inputs wired straight into their brains. The humans in turn create a sense of self and experience from these inputs alone. But their sensory experience is completely illusory, and they’d never know it. Is that really any different from how we experience the world? Isn’t the self just a jumbled of sensory input that is stitched together like some rag doll that looks terrible up close? Now that’s thinking like Rust Cohle.

Rust Cohle by p1xer on deviantART

Matthew McConaughey’s character in True Detective could go down in TV history as the world’s biggest bummer—a pessimist walking into extinction. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Knowing that the mind is not separate from the brain, that our senses can be fooled, that our sense of self can break down if we simply pay attention to the here and now, Rust Cohle is right—we are a multitude of unconscious processes cobbled together in a locked room and labeled “You”.

People… I have seen the finale of thousands of lives man. Young, old, each one was so sure of their realness. That their sensory experience constituted a unique individual. Purpose, meaning. So certain that they were more than a biological puppet. Truth wills out, everybody sees once the strings are cut off all down.

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If you haven’t seen True Detective, this will give you a good sense of the fantastic (and depressing) acting you are missing (video contains spoilers):

And check out the incredible fan art!

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Human consciousness is nowhere close to figured out, and there is no way I could cover every argument about the self here. For more, check out these videos and books:

The Self Illusion: How Your Brain Creates You—A talk by psychologist Bruce Hood

Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self—By Jennifer Ouellette

The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity—By Bruce Hood

Image Credits:
Rust Cohle by p1xer on deviantART
James Bridges/Michele K. Short/HBO

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