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ERCbravenewword

@ercbravenewword.bsky.social
210 followers 319 following 62 posts

Exploring how new words convey novel meanings in ERC Consolidator project #BraveNewWord🧠Unveiling language and cognition insights🔍Join our research journey! bravenewword.unimib.it

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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Is “dokstine” a word? What about “plungable”? 🤔 These kinds of decisions can reveal a lot about how we read and understand words. We just published the English Pseudoword Lexicon Project (EPLeP), a new open database on this involving 1,416 participants, ~13,500 non-lexical items and ~4,400 words. 🧵
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
We are hiring! New PhD position starting later this year. The call will open soon: write us for more information! bravenewword.unimib.it/prospective-...
bravenewword.unimib.it
Opening Positions - BraveNewWord
A phd position will be available in the context of the project, starting in Autumn 2026.Send an email to marco.marelli@unimib.it for inquiries, information and expressions of interest.
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
PiF 2026 in Pavia was a success. Co-organized with the University of Pavia, the event featured 38 talks and nearly 60 posters. The BraveNewWord team was glad to contribute across the sessions. Thanks to all for a fruitful scientific exchange. sites.google.com/view/pifpavi...
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Truly enjoyed hosting @bottinilab.bsky.social and his team for our joint lab meeting. A fantastic three-day exchange where everyone shared their research and explored new ideas together. Here is Roberto Bottini’s seminar on cognitive maps: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3iv...
youtube.com
Mapping the Mind: How Cognitive Maps Guide Mental Action | Roberto Bottini | BraveNewWord | Unimib
YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
How do cognitive maps guide our actions in both spatial and conceptual worlds? Seminar by Roberto Bottini (CIMeC, UniTrento) on hippocampal–entorhinal systems and conceptual navigation. 🗓️ Wed, April 15 | 3:30 PM 📍 Bicocca (U6 - Sala Lauree) 🌐 Online: meet.google.com/yne-wucy-uju
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Last Seminar on YoutTube🎥 Prof. Jamie Reilly's seminar "A Left/Right Cortical Hemispheric Dissociation between Local vs. Global Semantic Processing During Auditory Narrative Comprehension" is now on YouTube. Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoW3...
youtube.com
Left vs. Right Brain: Local & Global Semantic Processing | Jamie Reilly | Milan | Unimib
YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Do human ratings and LLMs inform the same underlying latent structure of semantic transparency? And does the multidimensionality of transparency hold for Chinese compounds? Chen J., Chersoni E., Marelli M., Huang C. 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @jing1chen2yes.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The Multidimensional Nature of Semantic Transparency in a Cross‐Linguistic Perspective: Evidence From Human Intuitions, Computational Estimates, and Processing Data for Chinese Compounds
Semantic transparency is a key construct for understanding how complex words are represented and processed, yet it has been conceptualized and operationalized in diverse ways across studies. In this ...
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
How do our brain hemispheres divide the labor of narrative comprehension? Seminar by Prof. Jamie Reilly (Temple University, @reilly-coglab.com) on local vs. global semantic processing. 🗓️ Monday, March 9 | 2:00 PM 📍 Milano-Bicocca (U6 - Sala Lauree) 🌐 Join online: meet.google.com/wkc-tyiv-zdx
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
New study in JML @Marco_Marelli @mariakna.bsky.social, @kathyrastle.bsky.social How does morphological knowledge serve as a powerful heuristic for vocabulary growth and reading efficiency? How do readers navigate noisy text to learn the meanings of affixes? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Morphemes in the wild: Modelling affix learning from the noisy landscape of natural text
Morphological knowledge serves as a powerful heuristic for vocabulary growth and contributes significantly to the speed and efficiency of reading. Whi…
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Our seminar archive is available online for those interested in the latest research on language and cognition. The latest upload features Prof. Giovanni Cassani (Tilburg University), discussing how humans and LLMs interpret novel words in context. www.youtube.com/channel/UClH...
youtube.com
Mbs Vector Space Lab
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Join us for our next seminar featuring Prof. Giovanni Cassani (Tilburg Uni). We will explore how humans and LLMs interpret novel words in context. 🗓️ Today, Jan 19, 2:00 PM CET 📍 Bicocca (U6 - Sala Lauree) 🌐 Join online: meet.google.com/suf-ybti-oop
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
How does the brain handle semantic composition? Our new Cerebral Cortex paper shows the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA45) does it automatically, even when task-irrelevant. We used fMRI + computational models. Congrats Marco Ciapparelli, Marco Marelli & team! doi.org/10.1093/cerc...
academic.oup.com
Compositionality in the semantic network: a model-driven representational similarity analysis
Abstract. Semantic composition allows us to construct complex meanings (e.g., “dog house”, “house dog”) from simpler constituents (“dog”, “house”). Neuroim
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Dirk Wulff @dirkwulff.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
🚨 New publication: How to improve conceptual clarity in psychological science? Thrilled to see this article with @ruimata.bsky.social out. We discuss how LLMs can be leveraged to map, clarify, and generate psychological measures and constructs. Open access article: doi.org/10.1177/0963...
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
A fascinating read in @theguardian.com on the psycholinguistics of swearing! Did you know Germans averaged 53 taboo words, while Brits e Spaniards listed only 16? Great to see the work of our colleague Simone Sulpizio & Jon Andoni Duñabeitia highlighted! 👏 www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
theguardian.com
Italian blasphemy and German ingenuity: how swear words differ around the world
Once swearwords were dismissed as a sign of low intelligence, now researchers argue the ‘power’ of taboo words has been overlooked
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Join us for our next seminar! We're excited to host Hsieh Cheng-Yu (University of London) He'll discuss "Making sense from the parts: What Chinese compounds tell us about reading," exploring how we process ambiguity & meaning consistency 🗓️ 27th Oct ⏰ 2PM (CET)📍UniMiB 💻 meet.google.com/zvk-owhv-tfw
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Marco Ciapparelli @marcociapparelli.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
I'm sharing a Colab notebook on using large language models for cognitive science! GitHub repo: github.com/MarcoCiappar... It's geared toward psychologists & linguists and covers extracting embeddings, predictability measures, comparing models across languages & modalities (vision). see examples 🧵
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Gemma Boleda @gboleda.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
New paper! 🚨 I argue that LLMs represent a synthesis between distributed and symbolic approaches to language, because, when exposed to language, they develop highly symbolic representations and processing mechanisms in addition to distributed ones. arxiv.org/abs/2502.11856
Sigmoid function. Non-linearities in neural network allow it to behave in distributed and near-symbolic fashions.
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Great week at #ESLP2025 in Aix-en-Provence! Huge congrats to our colleagues for their excellent talks on computational models, sound symbolism, and multimodal cognition. Proud of the team and the stimulating discussions!
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Caterina Villani @caterinavillani.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
📣The chapter "𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆: 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀" w/@mariannabolog.bsky.social is now online & forthcoming in the #ElsevierEncyclopedia of Language & Linguistics 🔍 Theoretical overview, quantification tools, and behavioral evidence on specificity. 👉 Read: urly.it/31c4nm @abstractionerc.bsky.social
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Valentina Pescuma @valentinapescuma.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
The dataset includes over 240K fixations and 150K word-level metrics, with saccade, fixation, and (word) interest area reports. Preprint osf.io/preprints/os..., data osf.io/hx2sj/. Work conducted with @davidecrepaldi.bsky.social and Maria Ktori. (2/2)
osf.io
OSF
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Dirk Wulff @dirkwulff.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
How can we reduce conceptual clutter in the psychological sciences? @ruimata.bsky.social and I propose a solution based on a fine-tuned 🤖 LLM (bit.ly/mpnet-pers) and test it for 🎭 personality psychology. The paper is finally out in @natrevpsych.bsky.social: go.nature.com/4bEaaja
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
For those who couldn't attend, the recording of Abhilasha Kumar's seminar on exploring form-meaning interactions in novel word learning and memory search is now available on our YouTube channel!! Watch the full presentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJTs...
youtube.com
Abhilasha Kumar, Beyond Arbitrariness: How a Word's Shape Influences Learning and Memory
YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab
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Marco Ciapparelli @marcociapparelli.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Happy to share that our work on semantic composition is out now -- open access -- in Cerebral Cortex! With Marco Marelli (@ercbravenewword.bsky.social), @wwgraves.bsky.social & @carloreve.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1093/cerc...
doi.org
Compositionality in the semantic network: a model-driven representational similarity analysis
Abstract. Semantic composition allows us to construct complex meanings (e.g., “dog house”, “house dog”) from simpler constituents (“dog”, “house”). Neuroim
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Great presentation by @fabiomarson.bsky.social last Saturday at #AMLAP2025! He shared his latest research using EEG to study how we integrate novel semantic representations, “linguistic chimeras”, from context. Congratulations on a fascinating talk!
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
For those who couldn't attend, the recording of Prof. Harald Baayen's seminar on morphological productivity and the Discriminative Lexicon Model is now available on our YouTube channel. Watch the full presentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN7G...
youtube.com
The Computational Approach to Morphological Productivity | Harald Baayen at Bicocca
YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
New seminar announcement! Exploring form-meaning interactions in novel word learning and memory search Abhilasha Kumar (Assistant Professor, Bowdoin College) A fantastic opportunity to delve into how we learn new words and retrieve them from memory. 💻 Join remotely: meet.google.com/pay-qcpv-sbf
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
📢 Upcoming Seminar! A computational approach to morphological productivity using the Discriminative Lexicon Model Professor Harald Baayen (University of Tübingen, Germany) 🗓️ September 8, 2025 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM 📍 UniMiB, Room U6-01C, Milan 🔗 Join remotely: meet.google.com/dkj-kzmw-vzt
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Qihong (Q) Lu @qlu.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
I’d like to share some slides and code for a “Memory Model 101 workshop” I gave recently, which has some minimal examples to illustrate the Rumelhart network & catastrophic interference :) slides: shorturl.at/q2iKq code (with colab support!): github.com/qihongl/demo...
hidden state representation during training
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
🎉We're thrilled to welcome Jing Chen, PhD to our team! She investigates how meanings are encoded and evolve, combining linguistic and computational approaches. Her work spans diachronic modeling of lexical change in Mandarin and semantic transparency in LLMs. 🔗 research.polyu.edu.hk/en/publicati...
research.polyu.edu.hk
ChiWUG: A Graph-based Evaluation Dataset for Chinese Lexical Semantic Change Detection
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
📢 New paper out! We show that auditory iconicity is not marginal in English: word sounds often resemble real-world sounds. Using neural networks and sound similarity measures, we crack the myth of arbitrariness. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.3... @andreadevarda.bsky.social
link.springer.com
Cracking arbitrariness: A data-driven study of auditory iconicity in spoken English - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Auditory iconic words display a phonological profile that imitates their referents’ sounds. Traditionally, those words are thought to constitute a minor portion of the auditory lexicon. In this articl...
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Marco Ciapparelli @marcociapparelli.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
1/n Happy to share a new paper with Calogero Zarbo & Marco Marelli! How well do LLMs represent the implicit meaning of familiar and novel compounds? How do they compare with simpler distributional semantics models (DSMs; i.e., word embeddings)? doi.org/10.1111/cogs...
doi.org
Conceptual Combination in Large Language Models: Uncovering Implicit Relational Interpretations in Compound Words With Contextualized Word Embeddings
Large language models (LLMs) have been proposed as candidate models of human semantics, and as such, they must be able to account for conceptual combination. This work explores the ability of two LLM...
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Cheng-Yu Hsieh @cyhsieh.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
1st post here! Excited to share this work with Marelli & @kathyrastle.bsky.social. We've found readers "routinely" combine constituent meanings for Chinese compound meaning, despite variability in constituent meaning and word structure, even when they're not asked to. See threads👇 for more details:
doi.org
Compositional processing in the recognition of Chinese compounds: Behavioural and computational studies - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Recent research has shown that the compositional meaning of a compound is routinely constructed by combining meanings of constituents. However, this body of research has focused primarily on Germanic ...
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
📢 Upcoming Seminar Words are weird? On the role of lexical ambiguity in language 🗣 Gemma Boleda (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain) Why is language so ambiguous? Discover how ambiguity balances cognitive simplicity and communicative complexity through large-scale studies. 📍 UniMiB, Room U6-01C, Milan
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
⚠️ New Study Alert ⚠️ Humans can falsely recognize meaningless pseudowords when they resemble studied words. 🧠✨ This research shows that our brains detect hidden patterns, even without prior knowledge, leading to false memories. 🔗 Read more: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
researchgate.net
(PDF) False memories from nowhere: humans falsely recognize words that are not attested in their vocabulary
PDF | Semantic knowledge plays an active role in many well-known false memory phenomena, including those emerging from the Deese–Roediger–McDermott... | Find, read and cite all the research you need o...
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
📢 Upcoming Seminar The Power of Words: The contribution of co-occurrence regularities of word use to the development of semantic organization 🗣 Olivera Savic (BCBL) How do children grasp deeper word connections beyond simple meanings? Discover how word co-occurrence shapes semantic development
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 11/02/2025
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Is Ockham’s razor losing its edge? New perspectives on the principle of model parsimony.” Explore the article here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... For more trending articles, visit ow.ly/Me2U50SkLRZ.
Double descent of prediction error. Degree-one, degree-three, degree-twenty, and degree-one-thousand polynomial regression fits (magenta; from Left to Right) to data generated from a degree-three polynomial function (green). Low prediction error is achieved by both degree-three and degree-one-thousand models.
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Our @RBonandrini was bestowed a "Giovani talenti" award for his studies on word processing. Congrats Rolando for this achievement! x.com/unimib/status/187004648594726…
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 05/09/2024
🎤 Just presented at #AMLaP2024! "Be the wapple of my eye: Predicting the sensorimotor pattern of novel words from language-based representations" by @giulialoca_, Simona Amenta & @MarelliMar. 📈 The presentation was very well received. Thanks for the incredible feedback!
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 30/08/2024
Can a word like "quocky" actually hold meaning, even if it’s not in the dictionary? 🚀 Our Lab's new paper shows people might be better at defining these made-up words than you'd think, highlighting the surprising flexibility of language. #AI #Linguistics #LanguageModels​.👇👇
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 29/07/2024
New BraveNewWord paper! x.com/CognitionJourn/status/1817927…
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 08/07/2024
New seminar by @ERCbravenewword on July 15th at 2:00 PM! Link to join: meet.google.com/hyr-habw-vnj
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 08/07/2024
Over the past weekend at the International Word Processing Conference, we presented our findings on how adults process novel words, integrating psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. @ERCbravenewword (@MarelliMar, @RBonandrini, Iva Saban, @fabio_marson, @giulialoca_)
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 01/07/2024
Verb endings affect our mental timeline (past/right-hand, future/left-hand) with both tensed verbs and pseudo-verbs. Subtle cues shape temporal perception automatically, showing sublexical strings carry crucial semantic info in spatial-temporal associations. #CognitiveScience 👇
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 18/06/2024
Is semantic knowledge automatically extracted from nonwords? Do individual differences in language experience affect sensitivity to semantics? We analyzed data from 300k participants to answer these questions. On 6th July @fabio_marson will talk about these topics in WoProc2024.
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 28/05/2024
The human mind doesn't operate within specific domains. @marcel_binz discusses how a unified model of the human mind can be developed using a large language model, unlocking new hypotheses on human information processing. Thursday, June 20 · 2:00 PM (Rome) Link in the comments
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
New addition to the lab!
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 25/03/2024
Come work with us! x.com/MarelliMar/status/17722204535…
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 10/01/2024
🗓️ Join us for our very first seminar! 16 January 2024, at 3:00 PM (GMT), @victor_kuperman from McMaster University discusses 'Personal Narratives by Older Adults Before & Throughout the Pandemic.' 🗣️#CoSoWELL #PsychologyEvent 👇👇 meet.google.com/iwd-fdcu-tvb
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ERCbravenewword @ercbravenewword.bsky.social · 09/11/2023
🚀 Exciting research alert! Exploring how we acquire new words and meanings in the ERC-funded project #BraveNewWord. As adults, we acquire new meanings daily, but how does language reliably help us do so? 🤔 #CognitiveResearch #Psycholinguistic 🧠💡
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