Search results for ""Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes""

A contemporary reminder of the importance of the carpenter and wood in Japanese architecture. When Japanese architecture is mentioned today, images of temples or pagodas generally come to mind. Others may think of more contemporary works: massive modular walls of rough concrete poured in place and bearing imprints of their formwork in the manner of Ando Tadao, the lighter structures of Ito Toyo and Sejima Kazuyo, or the finely wrought facades of Kuma Kengo. A generational chasm and, rather surprisingly, even a historical one seems to have opened up between the emblematic images of traditional Japanese architecture, in which wood is the material of choice, and more current and innovative work, in which its use has been reduced. Even though the carpenter has long been the lead builder, contemporary architectural culture appears to have forgotten this reservoir of construction experience accumulated over centuries. The Carpenter and the Architect expertly corrects this outdated notion.

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A groundbreaking work resulting from the collaboration between the three major Swiss architectural archives and the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel. Concrete in Switzerland is a historical assessment of the most controversial building material of our time: concrete. The book addresses a number of issues of global relevance from a particular vantage point: reinforced concrete construction in Switzerland. Through contributions by internationally renowned researchers, Concrete in Switzerland analyzes a series of moments in the Swiss history of reinforced concrete, from the initial phase of its introduction in the country to the most refined applications in architecture and engineering. Groundbreaking and thorough, Concrete in Switzerland explores the history and application of a contentious material.

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Realtime is an investigation into China’s digital and urban infrastructure, practices, and imaginary spaces. It attempts to capture the pace, scale, and depth of China’s complex and changing reality. Realtime is a collection of original accounts, analyses, stories, articles, artworks, pictures, maps, illustrations, and materials collected by researchers and practitioners from various fields of design, geography, architecture, anthropology, economics, and art.

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The definitive guide on non-destructive testing. Non-Destructive Testing and Testability of Materials and Structures encompasses a wide range of methods for inspecting an object without modifying it. Analysis must be unambiguous, particularly in sensitive industrial sectors such as nuclear and aeronautics. This book provides an exhaustive presentation of the parameters for carrying out this sort of evaluation, the conditions under which it can occur, and the characteristics of potential defects. Additionally, it explores the physical principles, technology, and current methods of non-destructive testing (NDT), both common and specific. This manual also describes methods for identifying factors that can deteriorate measurements and distort analysis. In this way, it introduces and defines the concepts of structural noise and environmental parameters. The book also proposes solutions to these challenges, notably based on progress made in phenomena modeling and inversion methods. Finally, it deals with information post-processing (both of signals and images) and presents a new approach called Recommandations de Conception basées sur des règles de Contrôle Non-Destructif (RC-CND). Aimed at both experienced professionals and students of NDT, this book will constitute a precious and lasting reference.

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In 1919, after five years of brutal conflict, World War I ended. And while the living soldiers returned home, the dead stayed where they had fallen, in war graves throughout Europe. This book takes readers to many of the graveyards that serve as the final resting places of British soldiers who died during World War I. British cemeteries, we discover, are gardens, and many of them were designed by the greatest British architects of the time, such as Edwin Lutyens or Charles Holden, and their architectural quality is exceptional. Gardens of War invites us to discover these unique places by approaching them in two ways. First, we see them as a project, building our understanding from archival documents and the testimonies of the actors involved in this vast undertaking, including politicians, diplomats, and, above all, architects. But we are also invited to discover them as visitors who travel along the roads that connect them, restoring our impressions through sketches, photos, and drawings, as closely as possible to the sensitive and emotional experience of actually being there.

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An analysis of dormitories as an architectural type. Concepts of type and typology are not specific to architecture. Rather they represent an interdisciplinary approach to ordering knowledge and gaining insight. In the field of architecture, the study of types and typology offers a didactic perspective that allows us to see the complex network of interconnections between theory and practice as an inseparable material and social construct. This book is the result of a research project focused on dormitories as an architectural type, conducted at Laboratory EAST. Through a structured analysis, it unveils how architecture has offered solutions to the challenges of creating buildings designed for sleeping collectively.

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Successful leaders tend to have one thing in common: They are experts in social interaction. They express themselves clearly and effectively, understand their colleagues, and adapt to all situations. A leader needs to not only be able to inspire, motivate, and convince those around them, but also listen, be attentive, and adapt to their coworkers. It is by combining these skills that the authors of this book have come up with the Leaderspritz: an interpersonal leadership cocktail. Written by experts in the field of leadership education in universities and corporations, Leaderspritz is based exclusively on scientific research. Whether a person is currently in a leadership position or about to become a leader, this accessible, interactive reference, which is rich in empirical results, anecdotes, scientific theories, and practical tools, will allow them to improve their skills and successfully carry out their responsibilities.

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The first comprehensive book explaining the backbone for digital construction methods: the Industry Foundation Classes schema. Interoperable data schemas are the prerequisite to advancing the use of digital methods in the architectural engineering and construction industry. However, the predominant Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are complex and have been focused on the representation of buildings only. With the extension for infrastructures, Interoperability aims to provide a comprehensive explanation of the IFC structure as well as its application to infrastructure assets. Finally, buildingSMART specifications are presented and contextualized for their use in digital workflows.

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The central hypothesis behind the book concerns the capacity of urban as well as territorial design, of the "project" in the sense of design activity on multiple scales, to produce knowledge. The volume discusses research conducted with design tools and operations, crossing physical and conceptual territories, related to a set of direct design explorations, and to the concept of "research by design." This idea of the project contains, manipulates and produces concepts and forms of concrete action in space, involving interpretation, abstraction and – at times – generalization. It describes and reveals processes of individualization, recognizes situations and allows possibilities to emerge. The project images the future and takes its impact on thinking about the city as the basis for the production of an original form of knowledge. Reflection on the epistemological statutes of the design project, in the wake of the crisis of expert knowledge and in a period of progressive marginalization and simplification of the practice of the architect and of the urban designer, is now fundamental for the rethinking of design’s social role, and to formulate a fresh, new, critical vision of the world.

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A study of the forces that shape postcolonial landscapes and built environments. Archival power, silences, and absences profoundly shape and structure postcolonial landscapes, spaces, and urban environments by controlling bodies, histories, and interactions. This book explores how to dismantle these imperial entanglements by developing an interdisciplinary dialogue that brings together history, memory politics, critical theory, and archival practice along with the built environment, landscape, urban studies, architecture, and the arts. Unearthing Traces catalyzes critical discussions that not only challenge the objectivity and dismantle the neutrality surrounding current archival practices and archival institutions but also question what constitutes the archive itself. The book unearths potential histories and minor narratives buried by the imperial production of pasts and silences. It provides a critical resource for scholars, architects, artists, activists, and archivists who want to engage with landscapes and built environments using a critical and postcolonial perspective.

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For as long as there have been buildings, architecture has been a major subject of public discussion, considered and argued about not just by architects or residents, but also by critics, theoreticians, historians, and writers. This book offers an overview of these discussions in the Western world by means of four thematic trajectories, focused on housing, society, history, and art. Each of these four chronological paths starts in the nineteenth century, traverses the twentieth century, and ends as closely as possible to the contemporary moment. The stepping stones that Christophe Van Gerreway uses are historical documents—texts, books, essays, and articles—that are analyzed, interpreted, criticized, and compared. The aim of the book is to show that architecture remains a vital subject matter for anyone interested in our contemporary world and its recent history. Reading, inquiring, and thinking are essential for making substantiated choices, and, Van Gerreway shows, architecture can be a useful starting point.

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Solidification is one of the oldest processes for producing complex shapes for applications ranging from art to industry, and remains as one of the most important commercial processes for many materials. Since the 1980s, numerous fundamental developments in the understanding of solidification processes and microstructure formation have come from both analytical theories and the application of computational techniques using commonly available powerful computers. This book integrates these developments in a comprehensive volume that also presents and places them in the context of more classical theories. This second edition highlights the key concepts within each chapter to help guide the reader through the most important aspects of the topics. The figures are now in color, in order to improve the visualization of phenomena and concepts. Recent important developments in the field since the first edition was published have also been added. The three-part text is aimed at graduate and professional engineers. The first part, Fundamentals and Macroscale Phenomena, presents the thermodynamics of solutions and then builds on that subject to motivate and describe equilibrium phase diagrams. Transport phenomena are discussed next, focusing on the issues of most importance to liquid-solid phase transformations, then moving on to describing in detail both analytical and numerical approaches to solving such problems. The second part, Microstructure, employs these fundamental concepts for the treatment of nucleation, dendritic growth, microsegregation, eutectic and peritectic solidification, and microstructure competition. This part concludes with a chapter describing the coupling of macro- and microscopic phenomena in microstructure development. The third and final part describes various types of Defects that may occur, with emphasis on porosity, hot tearing and macrosegregation, presented using the modeling tools and microstructure descriptions developed earlier.

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During his long career, Pier Luigi Nervi has explored the potential of concrete through the cast-in place and the prefabrication of elements in reinforced concrete or in ferro-cement, the material he invented and patented during the war. All of his best known works, such as the Berta Stadium, the hangars built in Orivieto, Orbetello and Torre del Lago Puccini, the Halls of the Turin Exposition Center, the Unesco buildings, the Little Sport Palace and the Papal Audience Hall represent an important chapter in the history of architecture, structure and construction of the twentieth century. The passion of Nervi for the manufacturing process of the concrete and formworks is examined in a systematic manner within the volume. The authors illustrate the creative process put in place by Nervi through the examination of documents never even studied in other essays, unpublished designs, drawings, specifications, photographs of the yards and correspondence with colleagues and collaborators.

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Lipidomics forms part of the field of metabolomics, which in turn follows on from genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, in a top-down manner. It is the study of hydrophobic molecules called lipids; however, lipid molecular species are so numerous that investigators tend to subdivide global lipidomics into targeted lipidomic approaches. This book focuses on structural and mediator lipidomics, with a particular emphasis on their functional aspects. This includes lipids deserving of special interest for their structures (especially as parts of cell membranes or plasma lipoprotein particles) and lipids known for their biological activities, which mediate the action of cell agonists (for example, hormones, growth factors, etc.). The oxygenated metabolites of the major functional w6 and w3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in mammals, in particular arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acids, are presented, with special attention paid to their structure-function relationships. These metabolites are very active, and their biological relevance was recognized early on with a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1982. Finally, general principles for the high performance analysis and characterization of lipid species are also presented. The book has been written for undergraduate students and scientists interested in the field of lipids. Clinicians will also be able to find useful information, due to the numerous references to pathophysiology.

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Through sheer determination and courage, Kahn has researched the nature of concrete in the form of precast, cast in place or blocks. Each of his renowned works in exposed concrete, such as the Yale Art Gallery, the Richards Laboratories, the Bath House, the Salk Institute, the National Assembly, the Kimbell Museum, the Exeter Library and the Yale Center for British Art, is itself an important chapter in the history of architecture for the exploration into concrete’s formal expression, beyond the lesson of Le Corbusier. Kahn’s obsession on concrete fabrication processes, on the formwork and the mix-design, is systematically examined in two volumes. The authors illustrate Kahn’s vision with documents that have never been revealed in other essays, drawing heavily from original sketches, plans, specifications, worksite photographs, and correspondences with collaborators, engineers, technicians and contractors. The first volume Exposed Concrete and Hollow Stones focuses on the first ten-year period of Kahn research on concrete. Moving through the many construction systems experienced by Kahn, from the discovery of exposed concrete in the form of béton brut at the Yale Art Gallery, to the precast and poured-in-place techniques, to the values of joint, growth and ornament, the essay culminates in the reconstruction of the artistic and technical characteristics of two great worksite, the Richards Laboratories and the First Unitarian Church and School. The second volume, Towards the Zero Degree of Concrete, covers the following fourteen years and leads the reader along Kahn’s path to the true 'nature of concrete', focusing on his main techniques and poetic discoveries such as the 'liquid stone' of the Salk Institute, the 'smooth finish' at Bryn Mawr and the concept of 'monolithic' at the Yale Center for British Art.

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An up-to-date book about art through the lens of neuroscience and psychology. In Creativity & Art, Andreas and Barbara Steck use an interdisciplinary approach to discuss creative processes from a neuroscientific and psychoanalytic perspective. By referring to the current knowledge of brain sciences, the authors explore the understanding of the neural bases innate to the creation of art. Beginning with historical aspects of aesthetic experience and creation in ancient and modern times, the authors go on to present numerous artists in various fields, with an emphasis on how their subjective lived experiences are expressed and reflected in their artwork. Finally, the Stecks describe the building blocks of creativity in early childhood development discuss the psychoanalytic understanding of human aesthetic experience and creativity. Insightful and thought-provoking, Creativity & Art examines art through the lens of neuroscience and psychology.

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To mark its fiftieth anniversary, the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) gave free rein to three photographers, who were asked to capture the essence of the school and its future direction. Catherine Leutenegger’s work delivered many detailed portraits of science, blurring the lines between the images she created and those that she discovered and made her own. Bogdan Konopka, meanwhile, stripped EPFL’s buildings down to their still-life form. And Olivier Christinat brought places to life by roaming the grounds and discreetly immersing himself in the society of campus. All three offer distinct perspectives on a unique institution, one that has seen its influence spread far and wide during its first half century of existence.

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A thorough and interdisciplinary look at the many aspects of wood construction over the past three hundred years. The IBOIS Notebooks offer a societal, ecological, cultural, and political look at wood construction. Through the work and critical analyses of authors from various disciplines, these notebooks reveal the structuring, sometimes contradictory, and often underestimated role of timber construction in the architectural evolution of the last three centuries. This biannual editorial project, led by Christophe Catsaros, philosopher, journalist, and architecture critic, and Yves Weinand, architect-engineer and director of the Wood Construction Laboratory (IBOIS) at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), draws the outlines of an original and transdisciplinary account. Going beyond the established distinction between the humanities and applied sciences, the notebooks offer alternative relationships for innovative wood construction. Behind this original and cross-disciplinary panorama—where researchers, builders, and historians question the potential of a material—is the ambition of a radical change, as evidenced both by the research and the achievements of the EPFL’s Wood Construction Laboratory.

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The creator of buildings that stand out as surrealistic marvels amid the skylines of America, Europe, and Asia, Rem Koolhaas, along with his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), is justly considered as one of the leaders of contemporary architecture. This book, the first critical monograph on the work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA, does more than just describe projects and buildings: It places Koolhaas’s career in a cultural context that allows the reader to better understand the creative process of modern architecture. The works considered are presented in chronological and thematic order, thus retracing the career of Koolhaas from his student days to his neo-avant-garde experimentation at the end of the 1970s and finishing with his most recent works in Porto, Seoul, and Beijing. The individual projects are analyzed from conception to construction, paying particular attention to the conceptual and technical reasons for choices of materials and configuration. Overall, the book addresses the theoretical formulations of Koolhaas, offering a reflection on the fundamental principles of the contemporary architectural project.

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A book that brings awareness to preservation in architecture. This third TSAM volume presents content from teaching courses that have been developed at the EPFL for fifteen years. The aim is to promote preservation as a discipline, one of the main branches in the emerging field of socioecological transition. This book also demonstrates how the educational potential of preservation can be harnessed, uniting many social and scientific disciplines, the history of architecture and architects, materiality and its constructed expression, the theory of architecture and design, and the examination—both abstract and concrete—of what surrounds us in every sense, from the teaspoon to the territory. In short, what a minority of responsible architects has always concerned itself with: a silent and sometimes fragile architecture. These qualities should enable preservation to reform and reconstruct a new design process for architecture, which will in turn lead to a new kind of practice.

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This book reveals the origin, definition, and evolution of New Brutalism in architecture. The New Brutalism movement in architecture addressed a new way of understanding the urban dimension in the post-war period, and in particular the role of the architect in an insecure society. But the original definition was manipulated, diluted, and fragmented as the concept spread from Europe to the United States, Japan, and South America. New Brutalism follows its contributions on a global scale, as it challenged the ambivalent collaboration between critics and architects and opened a controversial debate over a new “international style.” Disruptive, revolutionary, and at times even Dadaist, New Brutalism steered the cultural trajectory of the Modern Movement. A corrective to the many myths and misinterpretations of the style, this book reasserts the foundations of New Brutalism and offers a close examination of its international influence and variations.

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A whimsical examination of math in the Middle Ages. This book brings together many unusual and entertaining examples of Medieval mathematical exercises. Medieval treatises on arithmetic and algebra frequently include along with the usual commercial and daily life applications, mathematical games, and recreational problems. The latter, while still on the subject of trade or daily life, involve conditions that are quite unrealistic if not totally absurd. As this book demonstrates, the authors of these problem sets hoped to show that mathematics could both be fun and useful.

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A clear and enriching examination of the basic design and dimensioning principles that govern dam engineering. Dams are one of the largest and most complex civil engineering projects and have always been an important element in development and economic prosperity. Their major role is to store water supplies to meet the vital and energy needs of the populations, to protect people and landscapes from the destructive effects of water, and to serve as a recourse in the event of water shortages.Dams clearly articulates the basic design and dimensioning principles that govern dam engineering. It also details a three-pillar safety concept, the different types of concrete and embankment dams as well as their impact on the environment, foundation design, and monitoring and maintenance. The material is enriched with numerous examples that reflect the internationally recognized competence of Swiss engineering in dam design. Clear and thorough, Dams enriches readers’ understanding of dam engineering.

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This book describes for the first time ever, the rise of the modern art of building with concrete in the different German territories stretching from Friesland to Pomerania and southwards from Bavaria to Baden during the first three quarters of the 19th century. Based on careful analyses of historic documents and literature, the book traces an engaging history of master builders, engineers, architects, theoreticians, chemists and inventors tracking the evolution of different building techniques, materials, studies and experiments concerning concrete. It analyses German master builders’ consideration for classical building culture and for contemporaneous constructions observed in neighbouring countries. This narration starts at the turn of the 19th century with early scientific studies on cement, examples of rudimentary concrete used as filling material in small hydraulic foundations and attempts at producing mortar-based artificial stones and moulded objects. The account then follows the progression of cement and the abilities of master builders who worked with concrete until crucial evolutionary stages were reached in the 1870s. Early scientific theories about the chemical reactions in the production and hardening of cement were developed; concrete was finally used to build huge underwater foundations as well as entire houses; the production of mortar-based artificial stones and moulded objects became a significant manufacturing branch; the first standards for the production and sale of Portland cement were defined and officially implemented.

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Building Cultures Valparaiso takes a critical look at how pedagogy, practice and poetry are brought together at one of the most influential schools of architecture of the past 50 years: the School of Architecture and Design of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso in Chile. The editors have brought together research on the origins of the school, on the role that poetry plays in teaching and practice, and on the school’s larger historical place in the context of a global out-break of radical architectural teaching in the late 1960’s. Contributors come from both within and outside of the school and include Beatriz Colomina, David Jolly Monge and Gerald Wildgruber. In addition to original research, Building Cultures Valparaiso includes a collection of student drawings from the early years of the Valparaiso School’s Open City, a 270 hectare stretch of land along the Pacific Ocean that serves as a laboratory for living and working together. These drawings provide an insight into how the philosophy of the school translates into the making of architecture. Through its exploration of the Valparaiso School’s radical approach to teaching and making, Building Cultures Valparaiso serves as a guide for all those interested in an experimental vision of architecture.

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The most significant research conducted on concrete architecture in the United States from 1940 to 1970. The affirmation of reinforced concrete and the kinds of space generated by its structures is one of the most fascinating and revolutionary chapters in the history of twentieth-century architecture and engineering. This richly illustrated, three-volume essay offers the first complete overview of all the most significant research conducted in concrete in the United States from 1940 to 1970. It includes the greatest architects of the time, from Frank Lloyd Wright to I.M. Pei, Louis Kahn, Emery Roth & Sons, and others. The analysis of the works presented on the pages of the three books reconstructs the most important inventions in the use of concrete, whether reinforced or not, prefabricated or cast in place, used in the form of skeleton, walls, columns, blocks, or panels. The book also includes a chapter on a new kind of ornament, permitted by special plastic products applied to formwork, and other chapters dedicated to the different processing techniques used to obtain various surface textures. It enters the complex theoretical universe of truths and lies, upon which the greatest architects have debated through the manipulation of concrete. Finally, it guides readers up to the decline of the creative force of structures. A New Era of American Architectural Concrete not only offers the first exhaustive history of an architectural technique that was decisive in the United States, but also a new vision of twentieth-century American architecture.

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The first book on Le Corbusiers’s iconic apartment-studio. Le Corbusier’s apartment-studio is an iconic object of the twentieth century, combining the indisputable material values of the building with the intangible “sense of place” of an architect’s home. Le Corbusier, who lived there from 1934 until his death in 1965, treated it as a permanent construction site—a unique place of spatial, plastic, and constructional experimentation. The phases of change at the apartment-studio are layered over each other, and thus the apartment’s “many lives” create major philosophical problems for conservation. The “stratigraphy” itself, hard to unscramble yet full of meaning, is key to the apartment’s importance. This first book on the apartment-studio, richly illustrated with largely unpublished visual material, presents research undertaken by the Laboratory of Techniques and Preservation of Modern Architecture (TSAM) for the Fondation Le Corbusier during preparatory investigations for the program of restoration. Lavish and thorough, Many Lives of Apartment-Studio Le Corbusier is an exploration of an iconic space.

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A unique book about one of the most famous buildings in Switzerland. The Rolex Learning Center at EPFL Lausanne opened in 2010. Designed by Pritzker Prize laureates SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) from Japan, it soon became one of the more well-known buildings of recent times. In this book, akin to an architectural novella, Christophe Van Gerrewey tells the variegated story of this piece of architecture—from many points of view, with some unexpected twists, and accompanied by unusual images. Through Higher Knowledge, the Rolex Learning Center emerges not only as a remarkable architectural achievement, but also as a building that contains knowledge, and that can speak to us in different ways.

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