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IN OCEANS DEEP.Courage, innovation and Adventure Beneath the Waves.
By Bill Streever, Hardback, 0.54 kg, 160mm x 240mm, 303 pages. Published 2019
In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating: full of mystery, danger, beauty, and inspiration. Bill Streever-a longtime deep-sea diver himself-has masterfully woven together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea.
In Oceans Deep celebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water: free divers able to reach 300 feet on a single breath; engineers and scientists who uncovered the secrets of decompression; teenagers who built their own diving gear from discarded boilers and garden hoses in the 1930s; saturation divers who lived under water for weeks at a time in the 1960s; and the trailblazing men who voluntarily breathed experimental gases at pressures sufficient to trigger insanity.
Tracing both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths, Streever's captivating journey includes seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, a workshop where luxury submersibles are built for billionaire clients, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents, revolutionizing access to the ocean.
In this far-flung trip to the wild, night-dark place of shipwrecks, trapped submariners, oil wells, innovative technologies, and people willing to risk their lives while challenging the deep, we discover all the adventures our seas have to offer-and why they are in such dire need of conservation.
$48.00 + Delivery
THE BOUNDLESS SEA. A Human History of the oceans
By David Abulafia. Hardback, 165mm x 240mm, 1048 pages, 1.41 kgs. Colour Photographs Published 2019.
A titanic history of the three great oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian - and of mankind's relationship with the sea from the first voyagers to the present day.
David Abulafia begins with the earliest of seafaring societies - the Polynesians of the Pacific, the possessors of intuitive navigational skills, long before the invention of the compass, who by the first century were trading between their far-flung islands. By the seventh century, trading routes stretched from the coasts of Arabia and Africa to southern China and Japan, bringing together the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific, linking together half the world through the international spice trade. In the Atlantic, centuries before the little kingdom of Portugal carved out its powerful, seaborne colonial empire, many peoples sought new lands across the sea - the Bretons, the Frisians and, most notably, the Vikings, now known to be the first Europeans to reach North America. As Portuguese supremacy dwindled in the late sixteenth century, the Spanish, the Dutch and then the British each successively ruled the waves.
Following merchants, explorers, pirates, cartographers and travellers in their quests for spices, gold, ivory, slaves, lands for settlement and knowledge of what lay beyond, the author has created an extraordinary narrative of humanity and the oceans.
Besides its grand narratives, The Boundless Sea explores the lesser known maritime enterprises of Denmark, Sweden, Oman, Sri Vijaya and many others.
And today, as plastic refuse covers thousands of square miles of the waters, and once exotic trading cities and outposts are replaced by vast, mechanized container ports, he asks - what next for our oceans and our world?
NZ$85.00 + delivery.
WATERS OF THE WORLDBy Sarah Dry. Softback, 155mm x 235mm, 332 pages, 0.47 kgs. Published 2019.
How did we come to have a global climate? What role do the complex interactions of ice, ocean, and atmosphere play in sustaining life on Planet Earth? And who are the scientists who figured all these intricate processes out?
Waters of the World is a tour through 150 years of the history of a significant but underappreciated idea: that the Earth has a global climate system made up of interconnected parts, constantly changing on all scales of both time and space. A prerequisite for the discovery of global warming and climate change, this idea was forged by scientists studying water in its myriad forms. This is their story.
Linking the history of the planet with the lives of those who studied it, Sarah Dry follows the remarkable scientists who ascended volcanic peaks to peer through an atmosphere’s worth of water vapour, cored mile-thick ice sheets to uncover the Earth’s ancient climate history, and flew inside storm clouds to understand how small changes in energy can produce both massive storms.
We now call this field climate science, and this book delivers a better understanding of our planet’s climate at a time when we need it the most.
NZ$42.00 + delivery.
SEEING FURTHER The Story of Science and the Royal Society.By Bill Bryson. Paperback, 130mm x 200mm, 464 pages, 0.44 kgs.Colour Photographs. Published 2019.
The story of science and the Royal Society, edited and introduced by Bill Bryson-with contributions.
On a damp weeknight in November, 350 years ago, a dozen or so men gathered at Gresham College in London. A twenty-eight year old – and not widely famous – Christopher Wren was giving a lecture on astronomy. As his audience listened to him speak, they decided that it would be a good idea to create a Society to promote the accumulation of useful knowledge. With that, the Royal Society was born.
Since its birth, the Royal Society has pioneered scientific exploration and discovery. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Locke, Alexander Fleming – all were fellows. Bill Bryson’s favourite fellow was Reverend Thomas Bayes, a brilliant mathematician who devised Bayes’ theorem. Its complexity meant that it had little practical use in Bayes’ own lifetime, but today his theorem is used for weather forecasting, astrophysics and stock market analysis. A milestone in mathematical history, it only exists because the Royal Society decided to preserve it – just in case.
The Royal Society continues to do today what it set out to do all those years ago. Its members have split the atom, discovered the double helix, the electron, the computer and the World Wide Web. Truly international in its outlook, it has created modern science.
Seeing Further celebrates its momentous history and achievements, bringing together the very best of science writing.
NZ$28.00 + delivery.
MISTRESS OF SCIENCEBy John & Rosalind Croucher. Hardback, 165mm x 240mm, 300 pages, 0.61 kgs. Published 2016.
The Story of the remarkable Janet Taylor, pioneer of sea navigation.
It is hard to imagine a more male-dominated field in the nineteenth century than sea navigation. This was the high-point of the British Empire and sea navigation drove it. Yet in the midst of this domain Janet Taylor emerged as a young woman able to match the best male minds in the field. She was one of the most remarkable scientists of the period, and yet until now her story has not been told.
A gifted mathematician, astronomer, author and instrument maker, she also possessed extraordinary skills as a teacher of navigation and businesswoman.
The fifth of eight children, Janet Taylor was born in 1804, in Wolsingham, County Durham. By the age of nine her outstanding intellectual abilities were already apparent and she was awarded a special scholarship by Queen Charlotte. She then continued her education in languages, science and mathematics. In so doing, she overcame her humble beginnings and became one of the most prominent figures in the nautical world.
The only woman in over 200 years to patent a nautical instrument, her journey led her to extraordinary heights and earned her the respect and admiration of her contemporaries. She excelled and maintained a position of leadership in her chosen profession for over thirty years, as well as raising a family of eight children and three stepchildren. A woman far ahead of her time, this is the story of Janet Taylor's modest beginning and her incredible rise to prominence.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
SOUNDINGSBy Hali Felt. Paperback. 0.31kg, 138mm x 210mm, 340 pages, Published 2012.
The Story of the remarkable Woman who mapped the ocean floor.
Her maps of the ocean floor have been called "one of the most remarkable achievements in modern cartography", yet no one knows her name
Soundings is the story of the enigmatic, unknown woman behind one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. Before Marie Tharp, geologist and gifted draftsperson, the whole world, including most of the scientific community, thought the ocean floor was a vast expanse of nothingness. In 1948, at age 28, Marie walked into the newly formed geophysical lab at Columbia University and practically demanded a job. The scientists at the lab were all male; the women who worked there were relegated to secretary or assistant. Through sheer willpower and obstinacy, Marie was given the job of interpreting the soundings (records of sonar pings measuring the ocean's depths) brought back from the ocean-going expeditions of her male colleagues. The marriage of artistry and science behind her analysis of this dry data gave birth to a major work: the first comprehensive map of the ocean floor, which laid the groundwork for proving the then-controversial theory of continental drift..
When combined, Marie's scientific knowledge, her eye for detail and her skill as an artist revealed not a vast empty plane, but an entire world of mountains and volcanoes, ridges and rifts, and a gateway to the past that allowed scientists the means to imagine how the continents and the oceans had been created over time.
Just as Marie dedicated more than twenty years of her professional life to what became the Lamont Geological Observatory, engaged in the task of mapping every ocean on Earth, she dedicated her personal life to her great friendship with her co-worker, Bruce Heezen. Partners in work and in many ways, partners in life, Marie and Bruce were devoted to one another as they rose to greater and greater prominence in the scientific community, only to be envied and finally dismissed by their beloved institute. They went on together, refining and perfecting their work and contributing not only to humanity’s vision of the ocean floor, but to the way subsequent generations would view the Earth as a whole.
Hali Felt brings to vivid life the story of the pioneering scientist whose work became the basis for the work of others scientists for generations to come.
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
NAVIGATIONAL INSTRUMENTS.
By Richard Dunn. paperback, 0.18kg, 150mm x 210mm, full colour illustrations. Published 2016.With over two-thirds of the globe covered by water, the ability to navigate safely and quickly across the oceans has been crucial throughout human history. From the sixteenth century onwards, as seafarers attempted longer and longer voyages in search of profit and new lands, the tools of navigation became ever more sophisticated. The development of instruments over the last 500 years has seen some revolutionary changes, spurred on by the threat of disaster at sea and the possibility of huge rewards from successful voyages.
As this book shows, the solution of the infamous longitude problem, the extraordinary impact f satellite positioning and other advances in navigation have successfully brought together seafarers, artisans and scientists in search of better ways of getting from A to B and back again.
NZ$20.00 + Delivery.
THE HISTORY OF NAVIGATION
By Dag Pike. Hardback. 0.70kg, 209 pages, 165mm x 240mm, black & white / Colour illustrations and Photos. Published 2018.Today travellers by land, sea and air take accurate navigation for granted but it was not always thus.
Dag Pike sets out to record the development of navigational techniques from the earliest time, five millenniums ago. As explorers started to venture offshore into the unknown they had to rely on the sun and stars for direction. From this pioneers turned to mathematics, astrolobes, sextants and increasing accurate clocks to measure latitude and later longitude. More recently major breakthroughs with electronic navigation, GPS and other satellite systems have revolutionised travel.
Focusing primarily but not exclusively on marine navigation, the author weaves a fascinating course through the successes and failures of mankind’s quest to explore his world.
This is a thoroughly entertaining and informative work.
NZ$70.00 + Delivery.
WE, THE NAVIGATORS, The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific. Second Edition
By David Lewis. Paperback. 0.64kg, 442 pages, 150mm x 230mm, black and white illustrations. Published 1994.This fascinating work describes the ancient art of land-finding in the Pacific. It tells how Polynesians used the stars, swell patterns, and phosphorescence caused by wave reflections from distant islands, wind, birds, clouds. This book is very readable and beautifully illustrated. In addition to navigational details, it explains why they sailed and how their craft were constructed.
NZ$70.00 + Delivery.
PINPOINTBy Greg Milner. Paperback, 130mm x 200mm, 323 pages, 0.25 kgs. Published 2016.
A big-think book which tells the riveting story of GPS (Global Positioning System) and how it is affecting our brains, our technology, and our culture.
Over the last fifty years, humanity has developed an extraordinary global utility which is omnipresent, universal, and available to all: the Global Positioning System (GPS). A network of twenty-four satellites and their monitoring stations on Earth, it makes possible almost all modern technology, from the smartphone in your pocket to the Mars rover. Neither the internet nor the cloud would work without it. And it is changing us in profound ways we've yet to come to terms with. While GPS has brought us breathtakingly accurate methods of timekeeping, navigation, and earthquake tracking, our overwhelming reliance on it is having unexpected consequences on our culture, and on ourselves.
GPS is reshaping our thinking about privacy and surveillance, and brings with it the growing danger of GPS terrorism. Neuroscientists have even found that using GPS for navigation may be affecting our cognitive maps - possibly rearranging the grey matter in our heads - leading to the increasingly common phenomenon 'Death by GPS', in which drivers blindly follow their devices into deserts, lakes, and impassable mountains.
Deeply researched, inventive and with fascinating insights into the way we think about our place in the world, Pinpoint reveals the way that the technologies we design to help us can end up shaping our lives. It is at once a grand history of science and a far-reaching book about contemporary culture.
Was NZ$25.00 + delivery.
Now NZ$10.00 + delivery.
THE BAREFOOT NAVIGATORBy Jack Lagan. Hardback, 140mm x 225mm, 284 pages, 0.61 kgs. This Edition Published 2017.
The Barefoot Navigator is an unusual and fascinating exploration of the skills of navigation employed by the ancients and transferrable
to the present day.
The first half of the book investigates the navigation capabilities of seafarers long before modern navigation
instruments or charts became available. For example, how did the Polynesians manage to populate an area of ocean larger than North America simply by analysing clouds, currents, wind direction, sun, stars and the flight patterns of ocean birds? And how did the Vikings routinely travel between Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia - huge
tracts of treacherous water?
The second part of the book analyses how the techniques of the ancients can be employed by 21st century seafarers to supplement today's navigational hardware - especially in survival situations.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
THE GLASS UNIVERSE - The hidden history of the women who took the measure of the starsBy Dava Sobel. Paperback, 0.27kgs, 200mm x 130mm, 324 pages, full colour and black & White illustrations. Published 2019 in this Edition.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations made via telescope by their male counterparts each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but by the 1880s the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed in this period—thanks in part to the early financial support of another woman, Mrs. Anna Draper, whose late husband pioneered the technique of stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight.
Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars, Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use, and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair.
Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of a group of remarkable women who, through their hard work and groundbreaking discoveries, disproved the commonly held belief that the gentler sex had little to contribute to human knowledge.
NZ$32.00 + delivery.
AND SOON I HEARD A ROARING WINDBy Bill Streever. Hardback, 0.54kgs, 160mm x 240mm, 308 pages, some black & White illustrations. Published 2016.
The gnashing teeth of an oncoming storm. Wind-launched missiles and wind-tossed airplanes. Sand dunes and the Dust Bowl, shipwrecks and wind-riding spiders, weather forecasting, wind power, windmills, and wars: on page after page of his brisk and fascinating new book, Bill Streever reveal’s wind’s real nature – an its history- shaping force.
Seeking a deep immersion in his subject, Streever will go to any extreme. So after a three-day course, this novice sailor set out on a vintage fifty-year-old sailboat named after don Quixote’s horse, and sailed east from Texas to Guatemala over forty-three days and a thousand miles. How better for Streever to explore and experience the winds that built empires, the storms that wrecked them, and the surprising history and science of moving air?
From history’s great violent storms to the impacts of weather on life and business, from wind’s energy to its power to give and destroy life, And soon I heard a Roaring Wind is a singular and thrilling read. With keen observations, scientific rigor, whimsy, and wit, Bill Streever vividly proves that wind is far more than a passing breeze.
Was NZ$55.00 + delivery.
Now NZ$35.00 + delivery.
SEXTANTBy David Barrie. Paperback, 123mm x 195mm, 347 pages, Colour, black and white photographs. Published 2015
This is the history and story of the instrument that changed the world. An eloquent elergy to celestial navigation.
David Barrie tells how and why the sextant was invented: how offshore navigators depended on it for their lives in wild and uncharted waters: and how it played a vital role in the stirring history of exploration.
Much of the Sextant is set amidst the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, where generations of explorers searched for the fabled Southern Continent and the North-West passage, eventually discovering Polynesia and charting the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Alaska. Stories of Captain Cook and the great French navigator La Perouse, (whose disappearance long remained a mystery), George Vancouver, Mathew Flinders and Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle. Great single-handed or open boat voyages feature with the heroic tales of Joshua Slocum, Captain Bligh and Ernest Shackleton.
Interwoven with the author's account of his own transatlantic voyage in a small yacht, Sextant is a heady mix of adventure, science, mathematics and derring-do. Infused with a sense of wonder and discovery,this is a tribute to the sea and sky, the ships and the sailors, and the difference this instrument made to the world. A marvellous book and a great read.
NZ$27.00 + delivery.
LONGITUDEBy Dava Sobel, Pbk, 110mm x 175mm, 184 pages.
Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest. The 'longitude problem' was the thorniest dilemma of the eighteenth century. Lacking the ability to measure longitude accurately, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea.
At the heart of Dava Sobel's fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and horology stands the figure of John Harrison, self taught Yorkshire clockmaker, and his forty-year obsession with building the perfect timekeeper. Battling against the establishment, Harrison stood alone in pursuit of his solution and the GBP20,000 reward offered by Parliament.
NZ$25.00 + Delivery
NAVIGATION THROUGH THE AGES.by Donald Launer. Paperback, 149mm X 226mm, 192 pages, monochrome photographs and drawings.
Sailors have been navigating the seas for thousands of years, and navigational technology has progressed exponentially during that time. This concise yet comprehensive volume from popular author Donald Launer begins with the impressive developments in navigation undertaken by early seafarers and follows the art and science of navigation through the ages to their culmination in the huge advances made by our contemporaries. Launer explores the navigational tools invented by each civilization and includes generous illustrations to help readers envision the tools used.
The topics covered are ;
Written in an accessible style, with no unexplained jargon or terminology Navigation Through the Ages will appeal especially to sailors and to anyone with an interst in the history of science and the exploration of our world.
NZ$46.00 + Delivery.
HOW TO DRAW A MAP.By Malcolm & Alexander Swanston. Hardback, 0.60kg, 160mm x 243mm, 280 pages, Line drawings. Published 2019.
A fascinating meditation on the centuries-old art of map-making, from the first astronomical maps to the sophisticated GPS guides of today.
Maps have influenced humanity in many unexpected ways: life, death, sexual reproduction, espionage, war and peace. How to Draw a Map traces the story of mapmaking – cartography – from the first scratchings on the cave wall to the detailed high-tech ‘navigator'.
This is the story of human conceptions, often misconceptions, of our world. It is also a very personal story about a mapmaker's journey through life – the exciting new perspectives and the occasional misadventures.
Father and son cartographers - Alexander and Malcolm Swanston, demonstrate the skill, creativity and care involved in the timeless art of creating maps – and what these artefacts reveal about the legion of mapmakers who went before us.
NZ$43.00 + delivery.
ON THE MAP.By Simon Garfield. Paperback, 0.43kg, 134mm x 200mm, 464 pages,Black and white photographs and line drawings. Published 2013.
From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to google maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenge of mapping Africa and Antarctic, from spell binding treasure maps, to the naming of America, from ordinance survey to Monopoly!
On the Map a fascinating, witty and irrepressible mini history and exploration of maps and our world, where we've been, where we're going, and how we actually got there! En route there are 'pocket map' tales of dragons and undergrounds, a 19th century murder map, research on the different ways that men and women approach a map, and an explanation of the curious long-term cartographic role played by animals.
NZ$29.00 + delivery.
BLUE MIND.By Wallace J Nichols. Paperback, 0.32kg, 128mm x 198mm, 332 pages, (This edition Published 2018).
The best-selling book by marine biologist Dr. Wallace J. Nichols on the remarkable effects of water in all of its shapes and forms on our health and well-being.
Why are we drawn to lakes, rivers, oceans and pools each summer? Why does being near water set our minds and bodies at ease?
Blue Mind revolutionizes how we think about these questions, revealing the remarkable truth about the benefits of being in, on, under, or simply near water.
Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with compelling personal stories from top athletes, leading scientists, military veterans, and gifted artists, Dr Nichols shows how proximity to water can improve performance, increase calm, diminish anxiety, and increase professional success.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
THE WEATHER EXPERIMENT.By Peter Moore. Paperback, 0.35kg, 130mm x 198mm, 395 pages, Full colour illustrations. Published 2016.
In 1856 a broken Admiral Robert FitzRoy locked himself in his dressing room and cut his throat. His grand meteorological project had failed. Yet only a decade later, FitzRoy’s storm warning system and ‘forecasts’ would return, the model for what we use today.
In an age when a storm at sea was evidence of God’s great wrath, nineteenth-century meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma. But buoyed by the achievements of the Enlightenment a generation of mavericks set out to explain the secrets of the atmosphere. Among them were Luke Howard, the first to classify the clouds, Francis Beaufort who quantified the winds, James Glaisher, who explored the upper atmosphere in a hot-air balloon, Samuel Morse whose electric telegraph gave scientists the means by which to transmit weather warnings, and FitzRoy himself, master sailor, scientific pioneer and founder of the Met Office.
Reputations were built and shattered. Fractious debates raged over decades between scientists from London to Galway, Paris to New York. Explaining the atmosphere was one thing, but predicting what it was going to do seemed a step too far. In 1854, when a politician suggested to the Commons that Londoners might soon know the weather twenty-four hours in advance the House roared with laughter.
Peter Moore’s exhilarating account navigates treacherous seas, rough winds and uncovers the obsession that drove these men to great invention and greater understanding.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
THE BAROMETER HANDBOOK.,By David Burch. Paperback, 191mm x 235mm, 239 pages, black and white photographs and illustration.
Since the first public appearance of barometers some three hundred years ago, the barometer has traveled through history along two seperate paths.
There has been the lineage of instrument makers and engineering scientists who focus on how barometers work, how to make and repair them, how to calibrate them, and how to tell a good one from not so good; and along the other path is the lineage of barometer users whose focus is one the meaning of atmospheric pressure and how to use that information to analyze and forecast the weather.
The barometer remains the most important tool for evaluating and predicting the weather. This book explains why knowing accurate values of the atmospheric pressure can improve this process and benefit all applications. Ways to evaluate and calibrate aneroid and electronic barometers using readily available data by Internet or telephone are clearly described. Tactical applications to marine navigation are covered. The book also includes worldwide average monthly pressures and their standard deviations.
NZ$56.50 + Delivery
NORTH POLE SOUTH POLE.
By Gillian Turner. Paperback. 274 pages, 140mm x 210mm, black and white illustrations.
This engrossing book tells, for the first time, the complete story of the quest to understand earth’s magnetism – from the fascination of ancient Greeks with magnetised rocks to the astonishing modern discoveries that finally revealed the truth. North Pole South Pole gives us an extraordinary window into science, passion and the brilliance of the human mind.
NZ$41.00 + delivery.
PLIMSOLL SENSATION.By Nicolette Jones. Paperback. 416 pages, Black and White Images. 0.31kg Published 2007.
The tale of the agitation led by Samuel Plimsoll MP, 'The Sailor's Friend', and by his wife Eliza, who worked together to defend sailors against nefarious practices including overloading and the use of unseaworthy 'coffin-ships'. The backlash of libel cases and vilification almost ruined Plimsoll, but his drive and passion made him feverishly popular with the public; he was the subject of plays, novels, street ballads and music hall songs. With the demonstrative support of the nation, he faced down his enemies, came close to ousting Disraeli's government and achieved lasting safety measures for merchant sailors, including the load line that bears his name. Nicolette Jones throws light on a cross-section of Victorian society and tells the story of an epic legal, social, and political battle for justice, which is still an inspiring example of how the altruism and courage of determined individuals can make the world a better place.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
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