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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿

@notjustdna.bsky.social
4K followers 886 following 17K posts

Scientist and science writer from New Zealand. BioinfoTools on Twitter. Traveller. Cycle touring. More later - I really need to get to that eh? 😄

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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 7m
📚 #NZ #pukapuka Upcoming book ⬇️
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Science Media Centre NZ @smcnz.bsky.social · 3h
Antarctica’s unexplored threat – Expert Reaction
sciencemediacentre.co.nz
Antarctica's unexplored threat - Expert Reaction
A region of Antarctica with enough ice to raise sea levels by up to four metres is the least explored section of the continent, according to a research team including an NZ scientist. The Wilkes…
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CaffeineIsLife @caffeineislife.bsky.social · 6h
I'd hope that a single dose instead of 2 dose series, may encourage some people to get it who otherwise may not. Recent studies have been showing fairly consistently that the protection lasts a long time. It's been 12 yrs since Gardasil 9's release, i'm hopeful we'll see good results at 20yrs.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 8h
#NZpol ‘NZ hit with landmark EU trade complaint, Trade Minister rejects claim – Dutch environmental group “is lodging the first complaint of its kind through the European Commission.”
rnz.co.nz
NZ accused of breaking climate change promise with EU, but Todd McClay rejects claim
A Dutch environmental group claims New Zealand has broken its climate change promises in the free trade agreement with the EU and is lodging the first complaint of its kind through the European Commis...
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 8h
#NZpol “The last general practitioner of a clinic for 4500 patients in Horowhenua has resigned.” “there was an "intense environment of burnout".” Story from yesterday: www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/...
rnz.co.nz
Last remaining GP at Horowhenua's Taitoko Health clinic resigns
The last general practitioner of a clinic for 4500 patients in Horowhenua has resigned.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🦠 Newly discovered virus sickening cattle in Western Europe – transmitted by midges – closely related to a virus infecting cattle in Africa – not for the first time, likely to stay in Europe – diseases globalising Nice write-up by @kakape.bsky.social in Science: www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Newly discovered virus is sickening cattle in Western Europe
The pathogen, which reduces milk production, is the latest midge-transmitted virus affecting ruminants to reach the continent
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 9h
#NZ Maybe we should do this as wrong answers only?
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 21h
🍎📱 Bah, humbug! 😄 For an anniversary phone, they could have made a mini, or at least something smaller than the clumsy giant things.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 21h
🍎📱 Bah, humbug! 😄 For an anniversary phone, they could have made a mini, or at least something smaller than the clumsy giant things.
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René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH, FCPP @epiren.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Rabies vaccines have changed enormously since Pasteur’s first treatment. This post follows the scientists who helped make them safer and easier to use, including Dr. Stanley Plotkin. historyofvaccines.org/blog/how-mod...
historyofvaccines.org
How the Modern Rabies Vaccine Came to Be
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 21h
#Christchurch #NZ The city council has released a new interactive map showing climate change risks across the city. Note, “The assessment is not intended to assess individual properties or make decisions about particular locations.” You can view the map here: ccc.govt.nz/environment/...
Example of map view. Blue coloured regions are flooding risk. You can see the large areas of flooding risk in the red zone areas to the east of the city (mostly now without houses).
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Russell Brown @publicaddress.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Comment from a Facebook friend: "They only build roads so they can kick cans down them."
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Science Media Centre NZ @smcnz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Ukraine’s national science academy hit by Russian drones – Expert Reaction
sciencemediacentre.co.nz
Ukraine's national science academy hit by Russian drones - Expert Reaction
A Russian drone has hit the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv today, killing at least one person. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko says three others were wounded in the attack. The SMC asked…
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
NZ should move on. There are no genes from other species in these bananas. These bananas have three genes involved in browning disabled, to reduce food waste. By one estimate, “more than 60% of exported banana currently go to waste before reaching consumers”.
theguardian.com
Gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown could hit UK supermarkets
Scientific breakthrough could reduce food waste and make it easier to add the fruit to prepackaged food
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#Christchurch #NZ The tsunami zones are changing and sirens being removed, in a move to a single zone and mobile phone alerts. – I didn’t have a problem with the sirens, but I could never make out what was being said afterwards. www.newsline.ccc.govt.nz/news/story/t...
newsline.ccc.govt.nz
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nobel Prizes next week already. Another year gone. *Sigh* Perhaps this one will change over the next while with Trump & associates impact on science there, “Almost 54% of all Nobel prizes were awarded to people in North America.” How to win a Nobel Prize ⬇️ And, yeah, it (still) helps to be male 😐
nature.com
How to win a Nobel prize: what kind of scientist scoops medals?
What subjects have past winners studied? What age were they when they won? Where do they live? Nature crunched the data on every science prizewinner to find out.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 22h
#NZpol Simeon Brown is declaring, “#BREAKING The Advertising Standards Authority has confirmed Labour and their mates want to impose 9 new taxes onto kiwis.” Except that no-one can see the future, and the ASA said *Nat’s* *opinion* of what *might be* was fine.
asa.co.nz
26/206 NZ National Party Billboard
Complaint number: 26/206Advertiser: NZ National PartyAdvertisement: NZ National Party, BillboardDate of meeting: 25 September 2026Outcome: Not Upheld Summary of the Complaints Board decision By maj…
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 23h
'AI' “Existing consumer and enterprise AI services may generate as much as $1.8 trillion of that sum, leaving $4.2 trillion in new revenue that needs to be created, the consulting firm said […]”
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 23h
#NZ What’s Bezos doing in Auckland? (Overheard on 1News.)
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Some autism associated with birth infections – TORCH infections—toxoplasmosis, other infections, rubella, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus—are associated with 3x more autism diagnoses – only accounts for only a small proportion of autism; these infections are rare – vaccines may prevent these
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🦠 Newly discovered virus sickening cattle in Western Europe – transmitted by midges – closely related to a virus infecting cattle in Africa – not for the first time, likely to stay in Europe – diseases globalising Nice write-up by @kakape.bsky.social in Science: www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Newly discovered virus is sickening cattle in Western Europe
The pathogen, which reduces milk production, is the latest midge-transmitted virus affecting ruminants to reach the continent
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Pedro Beltrao @pedrobeltrao.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
There are many low hanging fruit possibilities for creating improved but not verified AI versions of existing bioinformatics models to predict X. They are practically useful but verification is the bottleneck. Shall we make them available with warnings while we verify?
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ugh. “I think what sticks in my craw about this the most is the fact that Meta has ensured that you do not get the option to opt out. No matter who you are, Meta has found a way to harvest your data.” Still a bit curious how Muse gets past what protections set by Apple that ought to be in place.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#NZpol Saw this excellent quote-reply to Simeon Brown’s latest attack on Labour. Worth sharing.
David Peez @RebelEkonomista

"The truck driver in Pakuranga helps pay off a lawyer's loan." No, Simeon. He doesn't. Not a cent.

When the government lends a student money, it creates the dollars and credits their account. No tradie's tax was collected and posted to a law degree. When the graduate repays, those dollars are deleted, drained back out like tax. They don't land in the truck driver's pocket either.

So nobody foots the bill. The worker and the graduate aren't on opposite sides of a ledger. Setting them against each other is the trick, and it runs on the same myth as "add it to the tab", that the government is a household counting coins. It issues the currency. The real limits are real resources and inflation, not a truck driver's tax bill.

"Someone always pays." Sure. Just never the person you keep pointing at.

Read more: http://therebeleconomist.substack.com
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nobel Prizes next week already. Another year gone. *Sigh* Perhaps this one will change over the next while with Trump & associates impact on science there, “Almost 54% of all Nobel prizes were awarded to people in North America.” How to win a Nobel Prize ⬇️ And, yeah, it (still) helps to be male 😐
nature.com
How to win a Nobel prize: what kind of scientist scoops medals?
What subjects have past winners studied? What age were they when they won? Where do they live? Nature crunched the data on every science prizewinner to find out.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
NZ should move on. There are no genes from other species in these bananas. These bananas have three genes involved in browning disabled, to reduce food waste. By one estimate, “more than 60% of exported banana currently go to waste before reaching consumers”.
theguardian.com
Gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown could hit UK supermarkets
Scientific breakthrough could reduce food waste and make it easier to add the fruit to prepackaged food
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#Christchurch #NZ The tsunami zones are changing and sirens being removed, in a move to a single zone and mobile phone alerts. – I didn’t have a problem with the sirens, but I could never make out what was being said afterwards. www.newsline.ccc.govt.nz/news/story/t...
newsline.ccc.govt.nz
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#NZpol 🤔 (Not _that_ surprised, TBH.)
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Now attacking science institutes, and hospitals 😢
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
NZ should move on. There are no genes from other species in these bananas. These bananas have three greens involved in browning disabled, to reduce food waste.
theguardian.com
Gene-edited bananas that don’t go brown could hit UK supermarkets
Scientific breakthrough could reduce food waste and make it easier to add the fruit to prepackaged food
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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026
This is quite cool. My university is the first organisation in the world to force Microsoft to allow us to turn off copilot summaries in Word 365, after a backlash against it from staff (including, very vocally, me). That cannot have been easy for our heroic IT people so hats very much off to them!
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
She does it so well – worth watching
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🦠 H5N1, aka bird flu Mink farming for a while now been recognised as a major pandemic risk. This sort of thing ⬇️ is why.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#NZpol It’s one aspect that has been bugging me, too, esp. from what I see with NZ First (see 5/8, onwards) on X & Facebook. (I don’t do formal analysis like this, so my impressions are anecdotal, but I’ve followed anti-vaccine, etc., issues for a long time.)
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It’s a nice example of the sort of ‘incidental’ association or effect that is often made use of in biological research -
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Merged frames off 1970s imaging technology… That’s a long time before consumer digital cameras.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
'AI' – a nice way of putting it briefly ⬇️
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
There are top universities the world over. With Trump and associates playing games, including on their universities, I’d head elsewhere for now. That’s hard on universities and staff there, but I don’t feel I can encourage aspiring students to head there until their political climate improves.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#NZpol Another political poll on TV, with all but one shift from the last poll <3%, and so *you cannot call them*. The most you can say is "indistinguishable from no change". ⇒ the whole "new parliament" they present compared to the last poll is a complete farce
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Grant @syncingsinking.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is just to say I have solved the open questions that were in your paper and which you were probably saving for your phd students Forgive me they were delicious so incentive-laden and followed so readily once your postdoc's drafts mysteriously found their way into my training data
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#NZ research, CRISPR If you’re looking for the research paper, the direct link is: www.nature.com/articles/s41... (I’m guessing the DOI link is held up for a few days, as sometimes happens.)
nature.com
Defining the essential genome of diverse phages with phage Tn-seq - Nature Microbiology
Phage Tn-seq uses Tn5 transposon mutagenesis with anti-CRISPR-based selection and deep sequencing as a method to generate unbiased, genome-wide mutations across diverse phages
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#NZpol From the post* this reads like something from the 'Natural Health Alliance' that NZ First is linked with – the same people behind NZ First’s recent pseudoscience-oriented "health" policy, and likely a player in NZ First’s repealing of the Therapeutic Products Act. (*The article is paywalled)
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You’d think it’d be more like everyone faced with the possibility of dementia (as always, assuming evidence for the preventative effect stacked up). I wonder if there’s an unawareness of dementia aspect here, as well as a 'fear of vaccines' aspect.
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Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Tangentially, @jermp.bsky.social also points out @recombconf.bsky.social is listed as B tier in CORE portal.core.edu.au/conf-ranks/?.... This is something that we should figure out how to address. RECOMB is a premiere conference in comp bio, & it is highly selective. It is `A` tier without question.
portal.core.edu.au
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
🚴 Love to see #Christchurch #NZ return to this – I believe this was once true in earlier days. Old photos of central Christchurch feature bicycles all over the streets.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
📚 Upcoming book ⬇️ Discount offer looks to be UK-only.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#NZpol IIRC Ayesha Verrall said on 1News the increase represented about 0.5% of the total – tiny I also recall someone posting that there has been a slight increase in NZ’s population over this time. Population numbers are one factor nurse numbers need to match. (Reflecting demand.) (cont’d)
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
#NZpol Someone being an arse again… 😖 Anything at all to win votes. Just this week I’ve seen sermon-like speeches, presumably trying to appeal to some with Christian religious beliefs. Anti-vaccine inquiry pledges for the anti-vaccine crowd. Now anti-treaty tilts, I guess for the racists?
NZ First post on X: 

Under NZFIRST:

The treaty grievance industry will END.
The Waitangi tribunal will be ABOLISHED in the first 100 days. 🇳🇿
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
⚽️ Brief match write-up of last night’s win over China 😀 www.rnz.co.nz/news/sport/1...
rnz.co.nz
All Whites outclass China in first win since March
The All Whites have beaten hosts China 3-0 in Chongqing to break a winless drought and notch their first clean sheet in 15 months.
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
⚽️ So… NZ 2 - 0 China so far 35 minutes played.
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