Tim Oakes: Forthcoming book culminates a four-year project on the technopolitics of nuclear power in Asia

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:23:00 +0000

Tim Oakes: Forthcoming book culminates a four-year project on the technopolitics of nuclear power in Asia Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 14:23

Between 2021 and 2024, working in collaboration with the Center for Asian Studies, Tim Oakes hosted a series of four workshops on nuclear power development and disaster in Asia. The workshops were funded by a generous grant from the Albert Smith Nuclear Age Fund. The first, held in commemoration of the 10year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan, explored how people in Japan have lived with the aftermath of this disaster. The second focused on China’s efforts to expand its nuclear power industry and export its nuclear technology. The third examined the broader political and cultural configurations of the nuclear realm from an Asian perspective, while a fourth workshop brought together most of the participants of all three previous workshops for a final extended discussion on what we might learn from the different aspects of nuclear power development and disaster in Asia.

Residents in Pingtung County, Taiwan, protest against a referendum on whether to reactivate the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant. July, 2025. Source: Taiwan Central News Agency: https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202507030010.

While the issues swirling around nuclear power are often portrayed in purely technical terms, the workshops sought to demonstrate that nothing is ever ‘just technical’. The project’s sociotechnical perspective sought to recognize that nuclear power enrolls people, as individuals and as groups, into a particular and peculiar set of relationships with technology. Those relationships blur the boundaries between science and society, and between technology and culture, in unique and compelling ways. How do people – in their everyday lives – understand and practice their relationship to radiation? How do they calculate different kinds of risk? How do they come to be involved in the measurement of radiation and the science of predicting its health-related effects? What have been the unexpected political outcomes of people’s encounters with nuclear technology? How do we define responsibility when considering the risks and benefits of nuclear energy? How have cultural practices been shaped by people’s relationship with the technologies and infrastructures of nuclear power, or with the technological interventions brought about by the disaster? These are just some of the questions workshop participants grappled with.

Residents in Lianyungang, China, protest government plans to build a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. August, 2016. Source: South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2001726/nuclear-plant-scheme-halted-eastern-china-after.

Along with CU Boulder Anthropologist Kate Goldfarb, Oakes is co-editing a collection of papers from the workshops in a volume to be published in 2026 by the �Թ�� of Toronto Press. Living in Nuclear Asia: Sociotechnical perspectives on nuclear power development, risk, and vulnerability will, in the broadest sense, address what it means to survive in the nuclear age in Asia. Collectively, the chapters in the book ask: what do we learn by paying attention to Asian experiences of ‘nuclearity’? Nuclear power is typically written about from the policy perspectives of proliferation, containment, and security. This is especially the case regarding work on nuclear development in Asia. Living in Nuclear Asia marks a departure from this trend, emphasizing instead nuclear technologies themselves, including nuclear power infrastructures, and the socio-cultural, economic, and political relations that swirl around them.

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Morteza Karimzadeh: New AI Methods Are Reshaping How Geographers Model Air Pollution and Wildfire Smoke

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:20:09 +0000

Morteza Karimzadeh: New AI Methods Are Reshaping How Geographers Model Air Pollution and Wildfire Smoke Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 14:20

As wildfire seasons intensify and air pollution continues to threaten public health, geographers are turning to new generations of artificial intelligence models to understand how environmental hazards unfold across space. Geography Professor Morteza Karimzadeh, PhD student Zhongying Wang, and collaborator Dr. James Crooks of National Jewish Health are developing next-generation models that combine satellite data, atmospheric information, and AI-driven “place signatures” to better estimate air pollution across the United States.

Their latest publication accepted in GIScience and Remote Sensing focuses on PM₂.₅, a harmful form of air pollution linked to asthma, cardiovascular disease, and premature mortality. Traditional approaches rely on networks of ground-based monitors and satellite-derived aerosol data, but both leave important gaps. Many communities, especially in rural regions or areas affected by sudden wildfire smoke, lack reliable monitoring. Pollution also varies dramatically from one neighborhood to the next. This creates both scientific and equity challenges.

To address these gaps, the team built a deep learning model that synthesizes 21 days of satellite observations, meteorological variables, wildfire smoke information, and other environmental data to estimate daily PM₂.₅ at high spatial resolution. The model is designed to follow how pollution evolves over time, capturing the dynamics of major smoke events and seasonal changes. But their latest innovation adds something novel to the discipline: geospatial foundation models, including “location encoders” such as GeoCLIP, incorporated in a practical way for dynamic air pollution estimation. These models learn from millions of ground-level photographs—urban streetscapes, forests, industrial landscapes, suburban neighborhoods—to produce rich, 512-dimensional embeddings that describe the visual and contextual character of places. When incorporated into the air-quality system, these learned representations provide information about land use, vegetation, density, and built environments that traditional datasets often miss.

“Location encoders give our models a deeper understanding of what a place is like,” says Karimzadeh. “They capture signals that satellites alone can’t see—traffic corridors, industrial zones, tree cover—and that helps us estimate pollution more accurately, especially in places with few monitors.”

The impact is clear in case studies like the 2021 Dixie Fire, when thick smoke blanketed large portions of the western U.S. Models enhanced with location embeddings captured not only the concentration of PM₂.₅ but also the full spatial extent of the smoke plume with greater precision and coherence than satellite-only approaches.

For Wang, who leads much of the model development, has been pursuing this goal of building models that generalize well and provide reliable information even where monitoring is sparse.

In the future, the team aims to incorporate additional sensors and imagery into their models, and explore seasonal and long-term place representations. Their research reflects a broader paradigm in geography and environmental science: using AI not to replace traditional observation methods, but to complement and strengthen them.

Figure from the published paper: Estimated PM2.5 during the 2021 Dixie Fire (Northern California) produced by the baseline model (without geographic features) and the GeoCLIP-enhanced model. Each row corresponds to a different day during peak wildfire activity. Columns (a) and (b) show baseline results, while columns (c) and (d) present GeoCLIP-enhanced estimates at both CONUS and regional scales. The GeoCLIP model yields more intense and spatially coherent smoke plumes and additionally identifies elevated PM2.5 levels over northern Minnesota on July 21, reflecting long-range smoke transport from simultaneous western U.S. and Canadian wildfires.

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Jessica Finlay Publishes New Popular Science Book: The Microbiome Master Key

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:14:20 +0000

Jessica Finlay Publishes New Popular Science Book: The Microbiome Master Key Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 14:14

Assistant Professor Jessica Finlay and her co-author father Dr. Brett Finlay published The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality. In this popular science book, they explore how microbial communities everywhere in and around us impact your brain health, sleep, immune system, metabolism, and more. The work bridges Jessica’s expertise in geographies of aging with microbial science to demonstrate how social, spatial, and environmental factors connect to invisible ecosystems within and on our bodies. It also weaves personal narratives—including stories of cross-generational scientific collaboration—into the science, making complex research accessible through family, science, and place.

/asmagazine/2025/09/15/when-microbiome-family-matter

https://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/summer-2025/the-microbiome-master-key/

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AGU Fellow: Jennifer Balch

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:10:37 +0000

AGU Fellow: Jennifer Balch Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 14:10

CIRES Communications Team

AGU, the world's largest Earth and space science association, celebrates individuals and teams through its annual Honors and Recognition program for their accomplishments in research, education, science communication, and outreach.

CIRES Fellow Jennifer Balch was named a 2025 AGU Fellow. Balch is the director of CU Boulder’s Environmental Data Science Innovation & Impact Lab (ESIIL) and a professor of Geography. Balch’s research aims to understand the patterns and processes that underlie disturbance and ecosystem recovery, particularly how people are shifting fire regimes and the consequences. Balch has received international recognition for her work on wildfires. As an AGU Fellow, Balch will offer expertise on wildfire science, advising government agencies and other organizations outside the sciences upon request.

Balch joins a distinguished group of scientists, leaders, and communicators recognized by AGU for advancing science. Each honoree reflects AGU's vision for a thriving, sustainable and equitable future supported by scientific discovery, innovation and action.

Honorees will be recognized at AGU25, which will convene in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 15-19, 2025. Reflecting the theme “Where Science Connects Us” at AGU25, the Honors Reception will recognize groundbreaking achievements that illustrate science's continual advancement, inspiring the AGU community with their stories and successes.

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ESIIL’s Third Annual Innovation Summit: Catalyzing Collaboration for Environmental Solutions

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:04:16 +0000

ESIIL’s Third Annual Innovation Summit: Catalyzing Collaboration for Environmental Solutions Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 14:04

Rachel Lieber , Community Engagement Specialist at ESIIL

The Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Lab (ESIIL), a next-generation NSF synthesis center directed by Geography Professor Jennifer Balch, hosted its third annual Innovation Summit this September, bringing together over 100 researchers, data analysts, environmental professionals, and thought leaders to tackle questions around environmental tipping points and transformations. The Summit featured ESIIL’s flexible and interactive “unconference” format, which encourages collaboration and innovation. Participants self-organized into groups around topics that sparked their interest, co-creating innovative approaches through spontaneous interaction and cross-disciplinary teamwork. Over two and a half days, this dynamic process resulted in the formation of twelve working groups.

In preparation for the event, participants joined a virtual “Science Jam” to brainstorm research questions, datasets, and potential products. The ESIIL team then crafted the in-person agenda around the most promising ideas that emerged. To ensure all attendees were ready to dive into data-driven exploration, ESIIL also offered two virtual technical training sessions on big data and cyberinfrastructure providing participants with access to cutting-edge analytical tools for exploring environmental tipping points.

Equipped with technical skills, inspiring ideas, and potential collaborations, attendees gathered at CU Boulder for two and a half days of intentional innovation. Summit goals included exploring big data to understand environmental tipping points, promoting ethical open-science practices, championing responsible AI use, and strengthening collaboration across disciplines and career stages.

The Summit opened with a blessing from Phil Two Eagle, long-time ESIIL collaborator and member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who reminded participants of their interconnectedness with one another and the Earth. Jennifer Balch then delivered a call to action, emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives in advancing solutions to complex environmental challenges, especially in times of uncertainty.

ESIIL’s facilitation team, Divergent Science (back for a second year with ESIIL), facilitated the group formation process, guiding participants through structured exercises that helped them refine ideas, connect around shared interests, and define their desired outcomes. Once teams formed, they received the tools they needed to get to work: a collaborative workspace, access to shared GitHub repositories, CyVerse resources, and on-call troubleshooting support from the ESIIL team.

Over the course of the Summit, teams evolved their projects from defining hypotheses on Day 1, to diving into data analysis using ESIIL’s OASIS data library on Day 2, to preparing final presentations on Day 3. Topics included:

How the order, duration, frequency, and intensity of disturbances influence forest regime shifts
Mapping thresholds that distinguish abrupt ecosystem changes from gradual transitions
Understanding how interacting stressors reshape aquatic food-webs and affect ecosystem stability
Identifying linked disturbances and effective management interventions
Improving data interoperability and harmonization across environmental datasets

All project materials and team repositories are available here: ESIIL Innovation Summit 2025 Group Repos.

The Summit concluded with group presentations and concrete commitments to ongoing collaboration. Many teams plan to submit manuscripts to ESIIL’s special issue in Environmental Data Science on “Solution-Based Data Science for Environmental Challenges,” while others will apply for ESIIL working group funding to continue their efforts over the next two years.

Each year, ESIIL’s Innovation Summit helps grow a global community of environmental data scientists equipped with the skills and tools to leverage big data for real-world environmental solutions. This cutting-edge work takes “all hands on deck” and collaborating across diverse perspectives, disciplines, and areas of expertise requires skills that must be taught, shared, and practiced. The ESIIL Innovation Summit strives to actively cultivate these skills and provide a space where intentional innovation can flourish.

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Federico Andrade Rivas Joins the Geography Department as Assistant Professor

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:54:51 +0000

Federico Andrade Rivas Joins the Geography Department as Assistant Professor Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:54

My path to becoming an Assistant Professor at the Geography department started in Colombia, where I studied environmental engineering and anthropology. After working in a malaria surveillance and climate change adaptation project with nomadic Indigenous populations in the Amazon, I realized that my passion was to understand the complex determinants of human health disparities. Thus, I decided to pursue a Master of Public Health at the �Թ�� of Cape Town, excited to learn from “South-South” collaborations on chemical contamination issues. The drive to understand human health as deeply intertwined with the natural environment led me to join emergent approaches to human health, such as planetary health, and to pursue a PhD at the �Թ�� of British Columbia. In Canada, I had the privilege to collaborate in “North-South” partnerships on pollution and globalized food systems, as well as work in solidarity with First Nations and Inuit on the nutritional benefits and contamination issues of traditional food systems.

Currently, my scholarship sits at the intersection of human well-being and the integrity of ecosystems that support life on Earth. I focus on applying a creative combination of geospatial, quantitative, and qualitative research methods to assess contamination issues at global, national, and local scales. I do this while elucidating connections between pollution threats to other planetary health challenges and drivers of health disparities, such as environmental change. I strive to conduct relevant and meaningful research that is genuinely interdisciplinary, collaborative, and focused on solutions and communities’ aspirations beyond solely evaluating damage.

When I am not conducting research or teaching, you can find me rock climbing, brewing coffee, or sharing time with my family.

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Ellen Considine Joining the Department of Geography and CIRES

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:52:11 +0000

Ellen Considine Joining the Department of Geography and CIRES Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:52

In August 2025, Ellen Considine started as an Assistant Professor of Geography and a Fellow of CIRES (the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences). She is also a faculty affiliate of the new Public Health program at CU Boulder.

Ellen’s research focuses on the application of innovative data science methods to address environmental health challenges, both to evaluate the status quo and to design data-driven monitoring and intervention strategies to promote public health and equity. Recent examples of her work include investigating the air quality impacts of nation-level plastic waste policies (via the mechanism of open burning) using a combination of remotely sensed data and causal inference methods, and developing a framework with which reinforcement learning (a branch of AI) can be used to optimize issuance of heat alerts for public health.

She received her PhD in Biostatistics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Previously, as an undergraduate at CU Boulder (BS in applied math, minors in geography and economics), Ellen worked in Earth Lab, mentored by Colleen Reid. In October 2025, Ellen was welcomed back to Earth Lab and gave a research talk – recording available.

In both Fall 2025 and Spring 2026, Ellen is teaching GEOG 3023: Statistics & Geographic Data.

CIRES also published an article, welcoming Ellen to our faculty!

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PhD candidate Millie Spencer featured in Denver Gazette article on Colorado Glaciers

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:49:14 +0000

PhD candidate Millie Spencer featured in Denver Gazette article on Colorado Glaciers Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:49

Science communication has long been a passion of mine, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to share a bit of my work, my perspective on glacier retreat and its environmental and sociocultural impacts with Seth at the Denver Gazette. While we as hydrologists so often focus on the scientific impacts on glacier melt—be it streamflow reduction, habitat loss, sea level rise, or increasing temperatures—glacier disappearance can also impact a community's sense of place and identity. It was a pleasure to chat with Seth and share what I've learned about how those of us living downstream of glaciers are shaped by these stoic features on our landscape. Whether on family hikes or ski days in basins carved by long-gone glaciers or simply driving west from SEEC on Colorado Ave. and looking up at Arapaho glacier, part of our identity as Colorado residents is shaped by our proximity to ice of past and present. As I shared with Seth, there's a sense of grief and nostalgia that comes from knowing that glaciers we have the pleasure of visiting will soon disappear, and that future generations will only know the mark they left on our landscapes and memories.

Spencer (center) with fellow Geography PhD student Sydney Carr (left) after conducting drone flights over Arapaho glacier last summer.

Read the article here: https://www.denvergazette.com/2025/09/28/the-legacy-and-loss-of-colorados-once-mighty-glaciers/

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Anshul Rai Sharma: Navigating Housing Precarity in Bengaluru: Insights from Fieldwork

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:38:01 +0000

Anshul Rai Sharma: Navigating Housing Precarity in Bengaluru: Insights from Fieldwork Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:38

Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the Department of Geography advised by Yaffa Truelove. His research follows how people navigate precarious housing conditions in one of India's fastest-growing cities, Bengaluru.

Supported by the John Pitlick Fieldwork Grant, he conducted preliminary fieldwork in informal settlements and state-led resettlement sites of the city. His days were spent moving between resettlement colonies, informal settlements and city municipality offices, speaking with residents, activists, and bureaucrats.

What emerged is a complex landscape of housing, where stability exists on a spectrum, some households have ownership documents, others hold possession certificates, while many navigate daily life with no formal claims to their homes. This gradation of security shapes everything, from stable access to water to electricity connections, from children's school enrollment to families' long-term aspirations.

In a resettlement colony on Bengaluru's periphery, where concrete apartment blocks house displaced communities (Figure 1), residents shared how unstable water and electricity affected their lives, along with lack of ownership documents to their allotted housing units.

Figure 1: Among the resettlement sites of Bengaluru, with unstable water and electricity.

Young people in these settlements became key interlocutors (Figure 2), offering perspectives on how housing precarity, and its attendant exclusions, shapes everyday life, aspirations and educational and professional trajectories.

Figure 2: Interacting with young people in the settlements, sharing about research.

During festival celebrations (Figure 3), the vibrancy of community life stood out, in contrast to material deprivations, a reminder that these spaces are homes, not just research sites. This is a critical part of Anshul’s research, to present the informal settlements as living, agentive spaces as opposed to being passive victims of urbanisation. These gatherings, full of laughter and song, offered glimpses into the affective and creative dimensions of urban life that are often missed in ‘urban survival’ narratives.

Figure 3: Celebrating festivities in the settlements.

A key moment in the summer was his involvement in the “Bengaluru Waterscapes” workshop (Figure 4), a collaborative effort by local organizations and researchers to address the city’s mounting water crises. These discussions were important in understanding of how environmental stress intersects with questions of housing and social justice.

Figure 4: Workshop on Bengaluru's waterscapes, led by MOD for city organizations to find solutions to water issues in the city's informal settlements.

Emerging from these experiences is a nuanced understanding of Bengaluru’s expansive housing crisis. It is also a social crisis, since settlements are not static or homogenous, they exist on a spectrum of recognition which shaped by caste and religion. Caste, in particular, remains a decisive force in determining who can claim land, who receives services, and who remains excluded from the geography of the “world-class” city. Some of these emerging issues, and calls to address them were featured in Bengaluru’s local new outlet: https://citizenmatters.in/housing-electricity-sulikunte-residents-eviction-ejipura-neglect/

Anshul’s forthcoming research will build on these preliminary findings, combining ethnography, archival work, and collaborative documentation to understand the crisis of housing and social justice in India’s IT Hub city of Bengaluru.

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Alumni Spotlight: Suzanne Till (PhD ’00)

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:36:16 +0000

Alumni Spotlight: Suzanne Till (PhD ’00) Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:36

Intake pipe for Colorado River water. The Colorado River provides 70% of water supplies to most of the CA 48th District.

Suzanne Till (Michel), PhD ’00, has built a career at the intersection of geography, public service, and water governance—and is now breaking new ground in elected office in Southern California.

In 2020, Suzanne was elected to the Padre Dam Municipal Water District Board of Directors (Division 2), becoming both the first woman and the first water-resources geographer to serve on the board. She was re-elected in 2024. Padre Dam provides water and wastewater services to 125,000 residents in East San Diego County, and Suzanne’s leadership comes at a pivotal moment as the region advances major water infrastructure initiatives.

Her election in 2020 even sparked a debate about her professional identity: Suzanne’s opponent challenged her ballot designation as a water resources geographer, arguing that such a field did not exist. Working with her PhD advisor, Professor James Wescoat, she successfully defeated the challenge—affirming both the legitimacy and importance of geographic expertise in water management.

Today, Suzanne serves on the board as Padre Dam undertakes one of its most ambitious projects: the East County Advanced Water Purification Project, the first facility of its kind in San Diego County. The project will produce a new, local, drought-proof water supply for the region.

In addition to her elected role, Suzanne continues to teach college-level geography to high school students, bringing her CU Boulder training in water resources geography and climate change directly into the classroom. “I use my geography and climate training every day as an elected official,” she says. “I’m so happy I completed my PhD at CU.”

Her career exemplifies a growing trend in which geographers play central roles in public governance, climate adaptation, and water-resource decision-making. Suzanne’s work is a powerful reminder that geographic expertise is not only academically rigorous—it’s essential to solving real-world environmental challenges.

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Newsletter

Tim Oakes: Forthcoming book culminates a four-year project on the technopolitics of nuclear power in Asia

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Morteza Karimzadeh: New AI Methods Are Reshaping How Geographers Model Air Pollution and Wildfire Smoke

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Jessica Finlay Publishes New Popular Science Book: The Microbiome Master Key

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AGU Fellow: Jennifer Balch

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ESIIL’s Third Annual Innovation Summit: Catalyzing Collaboration for Environmental Solutions

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Federico Andrade Rivas Joins the Geography Department as Assistant Professor

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Ellen Considine Joining the Department of Geography and CIRES

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PhD candidate Millie Spencer featured in Denver Gazette article on Colorado Glaciers

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Anshul Rai Sharma: Navigating Housing Precarity in Bengaluru: Insights from Fieldwork

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Alumni Spotlight: Suzanne Till (PhD ’00)

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