Should scientific studies be available for free?
Plan S is starting to take hold, but the cost is merely shifting even more to the researchers.
06 January, 2021
Credit: yurolaitsalbert / Adobe Stock
- Launched in 2018, cOAlition S is trying to make all of the world's state-backed scientific papers open-access.
- Prestigious publishers like Springer Nature and Elsevier have now adopted a Plan S option for researchers.
- While more studies will be available to read for free, some of the expense is being passed back to authors, which could limit research in the future.
<p>In 2018 <a href="https://www.coalition-s.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cOAlition S</a> launched an ambitious program: to make all of the world's state-backed scientific papers open-access. Their agenda, Plan S—the S stands for "shock"—is backed by over a dozen European research agencies and funders. </p><p>While the group has fallen short of achieving their stated agenda by 2021, they're certainly making strides. Just this week, 160 Elsevier journals, including renowned publications by Cell Press, are registered as "<a href="https://www.coalition-s.org/160-elsevier-journals-become-plan-s-aligned-transformative-journals/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Plan S aligned Transformative Journals</a>." This could be a good move by Elsevier, which has been <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/is-elsevier-really-for-science-or-just-for-profit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">severely criticized</a> in the past for price gouging practices—although critics cite increased researcher fees as a cause for alarm. </p><p>Unlike the 10-year-old Sci-Hub, which houses over 85 million research papers and regularly changes URLs to avoid the legal ramifications of providing access to paywalled studies, cOAlition S is changing the journal system from within. Their <a href="https://www.scienceeurope.org/our-priorities/open-access" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">10 principles</a> call for greater autonomy for researchers conducting scientific studies and having publication fees covered by universities, not researchers. The latter could prove pivotal, as publication budgets are often no match for journal fees. </p><p>In just three years, cOAlition S has gained the support of the World Health Organization, the European Commission, and research institutions and agencies in China, Sweden, France, Jordan, and the United States, including the Gates Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. While many journals initially opposed this agenda, a few have come around. Bureaucratic red tape and inflated prices have hamstrung science for decades. Plan S is not a perfect solution, but it's the closest we've seen. </p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5eb7732a29a1f312bd5d9b3e7dd11be4"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JpiOCxFxhUg?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Science's associate news editor Jeffrey Brainard <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/new-mandate-highlights-costs-benefits-making-all-scientific-articles-free-read" target="_blank">breaks down</a> how open access works for authors. Publishing studies is an essential part of a researcher's career, bringing with it the potential for career advancement, tenure, peer respect, and, occasionally, popular renown. But it comes at a cost. </p><p><em>Golden open access</em> is one model used by journals such as The Lancet Golden Health, which charges researchers up to $5,000 to make their studies open access. Nature publications now clock in at up to $11,600 and Cell charges $9,900, though the median fee for journals is $2,600.</p><p>Pay-to-play doesn't only exist in music. The more respect a journal carries, the higher the fee. </p><p>When Springer Nature, publisher of the reputable Nature journals, announced it was <a href="https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20201218a/full/" target="_blank">adopting a Plan S option</a> last month, the editorial team announced the $11,600 fee was mandatory for anyone requesting their articles be made open-access, regardless of their financial status. These journals are notoriously expensive: submitting an article for consideration costs roughly $2,700 with no guarantee of publication. One journal, Nature Physics, rejects 90 percent of submissions. </p><p>cOAlition S executive director Johan Rooryck <a href="https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20201218a/full/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">expressed happiness</a> that Springer Nature is now offering an open-access model but stated "that doesn't mean we have signed a blank check and are willing to pay any price for the articles appearing in those journals."</p><p>Springer Nature has <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/new-mandate-highlights-costs-benefits-making-all-scientific-articles-free-read" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">also adopted</a> a model more in alignment with Spotify: universities and research institutions pay a single fee to publish their authors. Some publishers offer a hybrid approach: some articles are free while others live behind a paywall. There are also embargo models, where authors can offer their papers to the public free of charge after a six-month or year-long waiting period. </p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTI2MDA2My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MDE1MTk5MX0.QbqKqYS48gb6lHjShNUtQTOm_j6MjyKhj8i3sUCbTWw/img.png?width=980" id="8aad2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="29465fea7914455ba7b1fb7b5df11cae" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2000" data-height="1036" />
<p class=""><br></p>Chart: Science
<p>The cost to publish remains prohibitive for some researchers, with certain journal prices for one article exceeding annual budgets. This has forced many researchers to confront an existential question: publish behind a paywall and wither in obscurity, or pay up and hope enough people read (and cite) your work.</p><p>While inflated journal prices have plagued the scientific community, Brainard notes that a purely open-access model could place even more of a burden on researchers. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"A complete shift to open access could lead publishers to boost publishing fees even further, to try to make up for lost subscription revenues[...] Although just over 30% of all papers published in 2019 were paid open access, subscriptions still accounted for more than 90% of publishers' revenues that year."</p><p>cOAlition S is advocating for increased transparency to push back on price gouging. Just as researchers must disclose funding and conflicts of interest, "Plan S requires publishers to disclose to funders the basis for their prices, including the cost of services such as proofreading, copy editing, and organizing peer review."</p><p>Although Brainard briefly mentions an increase in the number of non-researchers and institutions—laypeople—reading open-access journals, this topic is relevant to this conversation. America is suffering from a longstanding dearth of public science information, evidenced in the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-18/anti-vaxxers-team-up-alt-right-against-covid-19-vaccine" target="_blank">anti-vax fervor</a> that's growing in volume (<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/12/03/intent-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-rises-to-60-as-confidence-in-research-and-development-process-increases/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">if not in numbers</a>) since the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines. </p><p>Access to scientific studies won't solve all of our woes. But lack of transparency is a major reason why so many citizens have grown suspicious of pharmaceutical companies and public health agencies. An ability to read studies without having to pay exorbitant prices (to the layperson) would be an important step in public health and science education. </p><p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a>. His most recent book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p>
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The neoliberal era is ending. What comes next?
The next era in American history can look entirely different. It's up to us to choose.
30 November, 2020
- The timeline of America post-WWII can be divided into two eras, according to author and law professor Ganesh Sitaraman: the liberal era which ran through the 1970s, and the current neoliberal era which began in the early 1980s. The latter promised a "more free society," but what we got instead was more inequality, less opportunity, and greater market consolidation.
- "We've lived through a neoliberal era for the last 40 years, and that era is coming to an end," Sitaraman says, adding that the ideas and policies that defined the period are being challenged on various levels.
- What comes next depends on if we take a proactive and democratic approach to shaping the economy, or if we simply react to and "deal with" market outcomes.
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Why Amartya Sen remains the century’s great critic of capitalism
Societies aren't just engines of prosperity.
11 October, 2020
PRAKASH SINGH/AFP via Getty Images
Critiques of capitalism come in two varieties. First, there is the moral or spiritual critique.
<p> This critique rejects <em>Homo economicus</em> as the organising heuristic of human affairs. Human beings, it says, need more than material things to prosper. Calculating power is only a small part of what makes us who we are. Moral and spiritual relationships are first-order concerns. Material fixes such as a universal basic income will make no difference to societies in which the basic relationships are felt to be unjust. </p><p>Then there is the material critique of capitalism. The economists who lead discussions of inequality now are its leading exponents. <em>Homo economicus</em> is the right starting point for social thought. We are poor calculators and single-minded, failing to see our advantage in the rational distribution of prosperity across societies. Hence inequality, the wages of ungoverned growth. But we are calculators all the same, and what we need above all is material plenty, thus the focus on the redress of material inequality. From good material outcomes, the rest follows.</p><p>The first kind of argument for capitalism's reform seems recessive now. The material critique predominates. Ideas emerge in numbers and figures. Talk of non-material values in political economy is muted. The Christians and Marxists who once made the moral critique of capitalism their own are marginal. Utilitarianism grows ubiquitous and compulsory.</p><p>But then there is Amartya Sen.</p>
<p>Every major work on material inequality in the 21st century owes a debt to Sen. But his own writings treat material inequality as though the moral frameworks and social relationships that mediate economic exchanges matter. Famine is the nadir of material deprivation. But it seldom occurs – Sen argues – for lack of food. To understand why a people goes hungry, look not for catastrophic crop failure; look rather for malfunctions of the moral economy that moderates competing demands upon a scarce commodity. Material inequality of the most egregious kind is the problem here. But piecemeal modifications to the machinery of production and distribution will not solve it. The relationships between different members of the economy must be put right. Only then will there be enough to go around.</p><p>In Sen's work, the two critiques of capitalism cooperate. We move from moral concerns to material outcomes and back again with no sense of a threshold separating the two. Sen disentangles moral and material issues without favouring one or the other, keeping both in focus. The separation between the two critiques of capitalism is real, but transcending the divide is possible, and not only at some esoteric remove. Sen's is a singular mind, but his work has a widespread following, not least in provinces of modern life where the predominance of utilitarian thinking is most pronounced. In economics curricula and in the schools of public policy, in internationalist secretariats and in humanitarian NGOs, there too Sen has created a niche for thinking that crosses boundaries otherwise rigidly observed.</p><p>This was no feat of lonely genius or freakish charisma. It was an effort of ordinary human innovation, putting old ideas together in new combinations to tackle emerging problems. Formal training in economics, mathematics and moral philosophy supplied the tools Sen has used to construct his critical system. But the influence of Rabindranath Tagore sensitised Sen to the subtle interrelation between our moral lives and our material needs. And a profound historical sensibility has enabled him to see the sharp separation of the two domains as transient.</p>
<p>Tagore's school at Santiniketan in West Bengal was Sen's birthplace. Tagore's pedagogy emphasised articulate relations between a person's material and spiritual existences. Both were essential – biological necessity, self-creating freedom – but modern societies tended to confuse the proper relation between them. In Santiniketan, pupils played at unstructured exploration of the natural world between brief forays into the arts, learning to understand their sensory and spiritual selves as at once distinct and unified.</p><p>Sen left Santiniketan in the late 1940s as a young adult to study economics in Calcutta and Cambridge. The major contemporary controversy in economics was the theory of welfare, and debate was affected by Cold War contention between market- and state-based models of economic order. Sen's sympathies were social democratic but anti-authoritarian. Welfare economists of the 1930s and 1940s sought to split the difference, insisting that states could legitimate programmes of redistribution by appeal to rigid utilitarian principles: a pound in a poor man's pocket adds more to overall utility than the same pound in the rich man's pile. Here was the material critique of capitalism in its infancy, and here is Sen's response: <a href="http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Sen-1979_Equality-of-What.pdf" target="_blank">maximising utility is not everyone's abiding concern</a> – saying so and then making policy accordingly is a form of tyranny – and in any case using government to move money around in pursuit of some notional optimum is a flawed means to that end.</p><p>Economic rationality harbours a hidden politics whose implementation damaged the moral economies that groups of people built up to govern their own lives, frustrating the achievement of its stated aims. In commercial societies, individuals pursue economic ends within agreed social and moral frameworks. The social and moral frameworks are neither superfluous nor inhibiting. They are the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/development-as-freedom-9780192893307" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coefficients of durable growth</a>.</p>
<p>Moral economies are not neutral, given, unvarying or universal. They are contested and evolving. Each person is more than a cold calculator of rational utility. Societies aren't just engines of prosperity. The challenge is to make non-economic norms affecting market conduct legible, to bring the moral economies amid which market economies and administrative states function into focus. Thinking that bifurcates moral on the one hand and material on the other is inhibiting. But such thinking is not natural and inevitable, it is mutable and contingent – <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/03/26/capitalism-beyond-the-crisis/" target="_blank">learned and apt to be unlearned</a>.</p><p>Sen was not alone in seeing this. The American economist Kenneth Arrow was his most important interlocutor, connecting Sen in turn with the tradition of moral critique associated with R H Tawney and Karl Polanyi. Each was determined to re-integrate economics into frameworks of moral relationship and social choice. But Sen saw more clearly than any of them how this could be achieved. He realised that at earlier moments in modern political economy this separation of our moral lives from our material concerns had been inconceivable. Utilitarianism had blown in like a weather front around 1800, trailing extremes of moral fervour and calculating zeal in its wake. Sen sensed this climate of opinion changing, and set about cultivating ameliorative ideas and approaches eradicated by its onset once again.</p><p>There have been two critiques of capitalism, but there should be only one. Amartya Sen is the new century's first great critic of capitalism because he has made that clear.<img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/a1c8572d-6975-4c7d-a8f3-e666c5be0d6f.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Tim Rogan</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/why-amartya-sen-remains-the-centurys-great-critic-of-capitalism" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Personal finance: How to save, spend, and think rationally about money
Finances can be a stressor, regardless of tax bracket. Here are tips for making better money decisions.
23 September, 2020
- Whether you have a lot of money or a lot of debt, it matters how you handle your personal finances. A crucial step when it comes to saving is to reassess your relationship with money and to learn to adopt a broader, more logical point of view.
- In this video, social innovator and activist Vicki Robin, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, and author Bruce Feiler offer advice on achieving financial independence, learning to control your emotions, spending smarter, and teaching children about money.
- It all starts with education and understanding. The more you know about how money works, the better you will be at avoiding mistakes and the easier it will be to take control of your financial circumstances.
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Is this the end of the myth of American exceptionalism?
In his new book, "American Rule," Jared Yates Sexton hopes to overturn a centuries-long myth.
16 September, 2020
Photo: Mike Focus / Shutterstock
- In "American Rule," Jared Yates Sexton wants to eradicate the myth of American exceptionalism.
- Since its founding, Sexton writes that America has been constructed to protect the wealthy elite.
- In this interview, the writer suggests that facing up to our tragic history affords us an opportunity to build something new.
<p>Jared Yates Sexton wants to destroy the myth of American exceptionalism. The associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University began political reporting in 2015, just as the last presidential election began taking form. Covering this beat, he realized how little he knew about our nation's founding, the contours behind the straight line we're taught by default (and intention). So he decided to learn. The result is his exceptional new book, "American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People."</p><p>Think of American Rule as a modern companion to Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"—books that, if our public education system was honest with itself, would be required in high school curriculum. Education is not about comfort, and Sexton was certainly discomfited while researching America's origins. </p><p>One example of many: our democracy has been shaped completely by white identity politics couched in evangelical religious language. Trees depend on the mycelium field of the forest; this specific brand of Christianity is the fungus that has nurtured generations of conflicted messaging between what we claim to stand for and who we really are. As Sexton <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQJfxzLAik&t=2s" target="_blank">told me earlier this week</a>,</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This idea that America is ordained by some sort of Christian god or all-mighty being, or even if we're just carrying out the will of the Universe, that myth was used from the very beginning of this country to paper over a lot of terrible mistakes, terrible treatment, and manipulations that ran counter to our espoused principles. From the very beginning, this has been a weaponized mythology."</p><p>As a boy growing up in conservative southern Indiana, Sexton realized in adulthood that he'd been raised in the "Cult of the Shining City." Ronald Reagan's unforgettable mythos of America's infallible greatness is but one stop along the way of centuries of idealism hiding a genocidal past. </p><p>Obviously, not the history we're taught. Sexton says modern American evangelicalism is rooted in the Christianity of the Confederacy. Discussions about the Civil War tend to focus on generals. Even the current conversation about statues, while important, doesn't sufficiently peel back layers to expose the racism and xenophobia underneath—reparations would provide a better conversation.</p><p>Sexton continues: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"There's absolutely no reason we don't understand as Americans how the country was founded, except for the fact that we're hiding something unseemly that is used as the basis of control."</p>
Conspirituality 17: Interview with Jared Yates Sexton
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="15ef8bcd30b09c9541cc8d5d51d16893"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XpQJfxzLAik?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>America's leaders were suspicious of the public's intellect well before that war. The founding fathers created our particular system of democracy because they didn't trust common people. The protection and success of white, wealthy landowners has always been the focus, regardless of the generational veneer pained over the top. </p><p>At one point, Sexton had to leave his desk and walk around. The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/white-settlers-buried-truth-about-midwests-mysterious-mound-cities-180968246/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Moundbuilder Myth</a> made him shake his head in disbelief. This conspiracy theory promoted the idea that Native Americans were not sophisticated enough to build mound complexes in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys and throughout the Southeast, which must have meant Europeans were on the land well before indigenous people. This myth was so woven into the societal fabric that Andrew Jackson, who Sexton calls "a total genocidal madman," mentioned it during the State of the Union address. </p><p>This isn't the only flummoxing footnote. Americans are particularly primed for paranoia. As he says, "You cannot understand modern America without understanding conspiracy theories."</p><p>The recent horrors of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/09/15/pelosi-calls-for-investigation-into-claims-of-mass-hysterectomies-poor-covid-19-care-at-ice-detention-center/?fbclid=IwAR030JRc9pYvYwvgQMoeBDndZpSbqHkSw16Fn0YLPxwS1O-U2pvmA0DZCgk#4dc1d55e5f7c" target="_blank">hysterectomies performed without consent</a> (not a conspiracy theory) point to another long-standing stain on America's reputation: eugenics. British thinker Francis Galton's bastardization of his cousin Charles Darwin's idea of natural selection fell into favor throughout America. This biologically (and religiously) determined call for selective breeding laid the basis of Nazi Germany, though today few Americans recall how much we inspired Hitler's pogroms. </p><p>The problem, Sexton says, is that we constantly choose to deny or overlook past grievances, which keeps us primed to commit new ones. Germany fessed up to their horrors; so did South Africa. Not so America. Sexton cites Jimmy Carter's "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCOd-qWZB_g" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">malaise speech</a>," an oft-denounced address that was one of the most honest declarations by a U.S. president. Instead of living up to Carter's impassioned call to action, the public chose an actor that spent eight years coddling a nation's ego instead of holding up a mirror. </p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDM4NTQ0OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NjQ4ODcwMX0.AfjpHC3o7H50BA0t04_A5otr8nPbhA6O3htliWBuN0g/img.jpg?width=980" id="a760f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="427d2144e50437c8403674143de1d27d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="844" data-height="563" />
Jared Yates Sexton
<p>And so here we are, a failing empire foolishly gripping onto the myth of a time that we were supposedly great. In fact, Reagan asked us to make America great again; so did Bill Clinton. With this myth comes the proliferation of conspiracy theories, most notably QAnon, though dozens persist. And they all point back to the founding myth in some capacity.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If America is so special, how are we failing right now? Within the myth is the idea that we're being sabotaged from beyond and from within. Nationalistic conspiracy theories are what happens when a country's mythology starts to wane." </p><p>While critical, Sexton is not without optimism. Our failures shouldn't not erase the incredible progress we've made. Right now, however, that mirror Carter tried to wield is needed. Otherwise, we could be reliving the end of the Cold War. The dismantling of the Soviet Union destroyed Russian optimism, which the government used as a wedge to attain absolute power. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"After the Cold War, they became as a people and a culture incredibly depressed, and incredibly oppressed. It reached a point where they knew their leaders were lying to them. But it was met with a big shrug. Eventually that apathy and powerlessness breeds more apathy and powerlessness."</p><p>Which is where America stands today: skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety, as well as the blueprint for a new Civil War—a possibility Sexton calls a probability. Nothing new here: instead of collectively focusing our energy on the accumulation of wealth by the moneyed class, culture war issues and conspiracy theories keep us engaged in turf wars. </p><p>If you think it can't happen here, "American Rule" is a reminder that it has, and likely will. Sexton's advice: to achieve any sort of unity, we have to resist the urge to become apathetic. This isn't a red or blue issue. We're still neighbors, part of a community that stretches sea to shining sea, even if at the moment the seas are covered in smog. </p><p>And the road to healing begins with a recognition that we need to rid ourselves of the greatest myth in the history of the republic. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Once we disabuse ourselves of the myth of American exceptionalism, and we start looking at American history and say it's really problematic and inspirational at other times, it allows us to build something new."</p><p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://derekberes.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Substack</a>. His next book is</em> "<em>Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."</em></p>
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