January 2019

Do Microbes Control the Formation of Giant Copper Deposits?

Do Microbes Control the Formation of Giant Copper Deposits?

This type of ore can frequently be found in porphyry copper deposits. One of the major issues when studying ore deposits formed in ...

Earth's Oldest Known Rock Was Found on the Moon

Earth History, NASA, Rocks 7:46 PM

Earth's Oldest Known Rock Was Found on the Moon

This lunar sample brought back from the Apollo 14 mission has more of a story to tell than you might think. (Photo: NASA) A lot o...

New Study Quantifies Deep Reaction Behind 'Superdeep' Diamonds

Diamonds, Geochemistry, Tectonic 6:39 PM

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q2xDSH8L7og/XENEWEG_b0I/AAAAAAAAQvg/agpeeGTe4e0t2b6gXlJULOslysvzg7TugCLcBGAs/s1600/New%2BStudy%2BQuantifies%2BDeep%2BReaction%2BBehind%2B%2527Superdeep%2527%2BDiamonds%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1006" data-original-width="1393" height="462" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q2xDSH8L7og/XENEWEG_b0I/AAAAAAAAQvg/agpeeGTe4e0t2b6gXlJULOslysvzg7TugCLcBGAs/s640/New%2BStudy%2BQuantifies%2BDeep%2BReaction%2BBehind%2B%2527Superdeep%2527%2BDiamonds%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Photo: Petra Diamonds</span><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whether they are found in an engagement ring or an antique necklace, diamonds usually generate quick reactions from their recipients. Now, new research shows deep inside the Earth, fast reactions between subducted tectonic plates and the mantle at specific depths may be responsible for generating the most valuable diamonds.</span><br />
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The diamonds mined most often around the world are formed in the Earth's mantle at depths of around 150-250 kilometers (93-155 miles). They are created by extreme pressure and temperature of at least 1050 degrees Celsius (1922 degrees Fahrenheit). Only a small amount of these diamonds make it to mineable regions since most are destroyed in the process of reaching the Earth's crust via deep source volcanic eruptions.<br />
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But a tiny portion of mined diamonds, called sub-lithospheric or superdeep diamonds, are formed at much deeper depths than others, mostly in two rich zones at depths of 250-450 kilometers (155-279 miles) and 600-800 kilometers (372-497 miles). These diamonds stand out from others due to their compositions, which occasionally include materials from the deep Earth like majorite garnet, ferropericlase and bridgmanite.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Although only composing 1 percent of the total mined diamonds, it seems lots of large and high-purity diamonds are superdeep diamonds, so they have good value as gems," said Feng Zhu the lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, who was a post-doctoral geology researcher at the University of Michigan when he performed the research.<br />
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No previous theory has completely explained the reason why very few diamonds have been found near the surface from the area at depths of 450-600 kilometers (372-497 miles) – the region between the zones where most superdeep diamonds are formed.<br />
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The new study seeks to explain this phenomenon. Zhu, now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai'i, and his colleagues believe the two superdeep areas where diamonds are formed are rich in the gems due to high production rates. The new study explains what drives the diamond-producing reaction in some areas and what slows it down in other areas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Diamond formation</span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> According to the authors, diamonds can form anywhere in the mantle, which extends from about 35 to 2,890 kilometers (21-1,800 miles) below the Earth's surface. However, humans rarely see most of the diamonds formed. Very few diamonds survive the volcanic trip to the Earth's crust where we can sample them.<br />
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That means the chances of finding diamonds from deep regions in the mantle, which produce relatively few of the gems, is extremely small. Only 1 percent of mined diamonds come from superdeep regions.<br />
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"In our hypothesis, the production of diamonds at any depth in the mantle is possible, it's just the production rate is different, so they have a different chance to be sampled in the crust," Zhu said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Creating diamonds</span></span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> In order to mimic the extreme pressures experienced deep inside planets, the study's authors used diamond anvil cells and a 1,000-ton multi-anvil apparatus at the University of Michigan. Both these devices allow researchers to compress sub-millimeter-sized material in extreme pressures. They compressed magnesium carbonate powder with iron foil in extreme heats and managed to create minuscule diamond grains visible through scanning electron microscopes.<br />
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They found that when conditions are right, diamond grains can form as quickly as every couple of minutes, and never took longer than a few hours to form, although the growth of gem diamonds may take much longer time in an actual melting fluid environment.<br />
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In the shallower region rich in superdeep diamond formation, 250-450 kilometers (155-279 miles) down, a subducting tectonic plate pushes under the Earth's mantle. This supplies plenty of carbonate, which creates "factories on a conveyor belt" for diamonds when combined with the iron from the mantle, the authors said.<br />
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High temperatures promote reactions which form diamonds, but pressure does the opposite. At depths roughly 475 kilometers (295 miles) below the surface, the pressure increases, and the reactions slow down drastically, the authors said. That's why few diamonds are found near the Earth surface coming from between 450-600 kilometers (372-497 miles).<br />
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"When your pressure reaches the diamond stable region, it will form. But when you increase pressure it will form at lower rates. You have a trade off there," Zhu said.<br />
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One exception to this rule is in the deeper region of 600-800 kilometers (372-497 miles) beneath the surface. In this region, accumulation of carbonate due to the stagnation of tectonic slabs pushing downwards makes up for the overdose in pressure. So while the reactions slow down, higher temperatures and an abundance of carbonate makes for a diamond-rich region.<br />
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Zhu said the new study adds to scientists' understanding of the Earth's mantle, about which relatively little is known for sure.<br />
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"Superdeep diamond inclusions bring us the only mineral samples from the Earth's deep mantle," he said. "Seeing is believing, and these inclusions provide a solid ground for the studies on the inaccessible mantle."<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://blogs.agu.org/geospace/2019/01/16/new-study-quantifies-deep-reaction-behind-superdeep-diamonds/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://blogs.agu.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Geophysical Union.</a></span></i></u><br />
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New Study Quantifies Deep Reaction Behind 'Superdeep' Diamonds

Photo: Petra Diamonds Whether they are found in an engagement ring or an antique necklace, diamonds usually generate quick react...

A Gemstone That Looks Like Deconstructed Chocolate Bars

famous, gemstones 8:02 PM

A Gemstone That Looks Like Deconstructed Chocolate Bars

Photo credit: Rob Lavinsky/iRocks.com Chocolate calcite Resembling an artful edible decoration from some top Swiss chocolate, Inc...

More Plants Survived the World’s Greatest Mass Extinction Than Thought

Earth History, Fossils 7:22 PM

More Plants Survived the World’s Greatest Mass Extinction Than Thought

A mummified seed-fern frond flaking off a piece of mudrock after being exposed to the light of day for the first time in some 255 million...

Earth's Magnetic Pole Is Wandering and Geologists Don’t Know Why

Earth History, Earth's magnetic field, Researches 6:24 PM

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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The planet’s magnetic field is up to mischief again and geologists are pretty dumbfounded.</span><br />
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Earth’s magnetic poles can wander several kilometers every year, however, the north pole's movement has become increasingly stranger in recent years. For reasons that are currently unclear, the magnetic north pole seems to be increasingly slipping away from Canada and towards Siberia at an erratic rate, according to a news report in Nature.<br />
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Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move.<br />
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On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 — but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information.<br />
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The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet. Liquid churning in Earth’s core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change. In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission tracked the shift.<br />
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By early 2018, the World Magnetic Model was in trouble. Researchers from NOAA and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh had been doing their annual check of how well the model was capturing all the variations in Earth’s magnetic field. They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wandering pole</span></span></h4>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: World Data Center for Geomagnetism/Kyoto Univ.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“That was an interesting situation we found ourselves in,” says Chulliat. “What’s happening?” The answer is twofold, he reported last month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC.<br />
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First, that 2016 geomagnetic pulse beneath South America came at the worst possible time, just after the 2015 update to the World Magnetic Model. This meant that the magnetic field had lurched just after the latest update, in ways that planners had not anticipated.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Second, the motion of the north magnetic pole made the problem worse. The pole wanders in unpredictable ways that have fascinated explorers and scientists since James Clark Ross first measured it in 1831 in the Canadian Arctic. In the mid-1990s it picked up speed, from around 15 kilometres per year to around 55 kilometres per year. By 2001, it had entered the Arctic Ocean — where, in 2007, a team including Chulliat landed an aeroplane on the sea ice in an attempt to locate the pole.<br />
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In 2018, the pole crossed the International Date Line into the Eastern Hemisphere. It is currently making a beeline for Siberia.<br />
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The geometry of Earth’s magnetic field magnifies the model’s errors in places where the field is changing quickly, such as the North Pole. “The fact that the pole is going fast makes this region more prone to large errors,” says Chulliat.<br />
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To fix the World Magnetic Model, he and his colleagues fed it three years of recent data, which included the 2016 geomagnetic pulse. The new version should remain accurate, he says, until the next regularly scheduled update in 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Core questions</span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the meantime, scientists are working to understand why the magnetic field is changing so dramatically. Geomagnetic pulses, like the one that happened in 2016, might be traced back to ‘hydromagnetic’ waves arising from deep in the core1. And the fast motion of the north magnetic pole could be linked to a high-speed jet of liquid iron beneath Canada2.<br />
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The jet seems to be smearing out and weakening the magnetic field beneath Canada, Phil Livermore, a geomagnetist at the University of Leeds, UK, said at the American Geophysical Union meeting. And that means that Canada is essentially losing a magnetic tug-of-war with Siberia.<br />
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“The location of the north magnetic pole appears to be governed by two large-scale patches of magnetic field, one beneath Canada and one beneath Siberia,” Livermore says. “The Siberian patch is winning the competition.”<br />
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Which means that the world’s geomagnetists will have a lot to keep them busy for the foreseeable future.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nature</a>.</span></i></u></span></div>

Earth's Magnetic Pole Is Wandering and Geologists Don’t Know Why

The planet’s magnetic field is up to mischief again and geologists are pretty dumbfounded. Earth’s magnetic poles can wander seve...

New ‘Outer Space’ Mineral Found Inside Gemstones

Geochemistry, Mineralogy 8:03 PM

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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A mineral new to science has been found inside bits of volcanic rock in a valley below Mount Carmel, northern Israel, a group of scientists revealed last month.</span><br />
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The dark-colored new mineral, called carmeltazite, was formed by the eruption of some rather puny volcanoes along the Carmel crest some time during the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs were prowling the land, geologists say.<br />
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In fact, the mineral mix constituting carmeltazite has been identified in rocks from outer space, says Abraham Taub, CEO of the Israeli gemstone-mining company, Shefa Yamim, that found it.<br />
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But this is the first time it’s been found on Earth, he says.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How did a rock better known in outer space wind up in the Zevulun Valley by the Carmel? Back in the Cretaceous, as much as a quarter-billion years ago (and earlier too), there were no fewer than 14 volcanic vents along the crest of the Carmel, that’s how, Taub tells Haaretz. Over eons, the lava would have eroded and minerals within it would also have flowed down streams to the valleys spilling into the Mediterranean.<br />
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News of the discovery, which Shefa Yamim people made on the Carmel, has done absolutely nothing for the share price of the company – a smallcap firm listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (the holding company) with a subsidiary on the London Stock Exchange.<br />
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On Monday, Shefa Yamim stated that its same-name subsidiary had received confirmation from the International Mineralogical Association that the mineral would be registered as a new one. Evidently, English investors were unmoved as well, since Shefa’s London share price began tanking last September and hasn’t recovered since.<br />
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Taub seems equally unmoved by the market’s cold shoulder. “Investors in Israel don’t understand a thing,” he told Haaretz, in the context of his company’s endeavors. In any case, the company with the licenses is the London-listed one and it’s very new there, just listed from last year. “The market doesn’t know us,” he said.<br />
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While investors seem clammy to the revelation, chemists and geologists were delighted to discover the new form of rock – which was found in pockets of trapped rock-melt either within, or in the cracks of, crystalline material within volcanic rock on Mount Carmel.<br />
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Its properties were studied for more than three years by Prof. Bill Griffin of Macquarie University, Sydney, with academics from the University of Western Australia, the University of Florence and the University of Milan, the company says.<br />
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How on earth does one identify a new rock within a rock? Well, after it discovered another rarity – earth-bound moissanite along the banks of the Kishon – Shefa Yamim was contacted by Griffin, Taub explains. “Moissanite is rarer and more expensive than diamonds and only tiny amounts smaller than one millimeter were found. We found much larger minerals,” he says. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Carmeltazites are forever</span></span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Driven by the expectation of finding precious stones along such streambeds, Shefa Yamim has been exploring along the bed of the Kishon Stream. Over time its efforts – involving collecting soil, washing and filtering it – have found rubies, sapphires and more, says Taub.<br />
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Griffin is the one whose lab identified the carmeltazite, the CEO adds. Writing in the journal Minerals, he, the team and Vered Toledo of Shefa Yamim say carmeltazite contains titanium, aluminum and zirconium (and oxygen). In fact, the name carmeltazite is based on Mount Carmel and the aforementioned dominant metals present in the mineral.<br />
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The carmeltazite was found within sapphires, Shefa Yamim adds. Both regular sapphires and carmeltazite are based on crystalline aluminum oxide, this is true. Carmeltazite’s specific formula is <span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">ZrAl<sub>2</sub> Ti<sub>4</sub> O<sub>11</sub> .</span><br />
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In color, carmeltazite is black with a tendency to reddish streaks and a metallic luster, though if one squints through various instruments one can discern dark browns and greens. And white spots (“It depends on the angle of light,” Taub observes). Internal reflections are absent, the geologists add in their characterization of it.<br />
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Density testing shows that carmeltazite is harder than diamond, Taub says, and is therefore suitable for jewelry.<br />
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So, will you be able to buy your dog a collar studded with carmeltazite? Not quite yet. But if the new rock makes it into the world of gems – which it should given that the company is working on designs, says Taub – expect to pay through the nose. “Gemstone prices are usually a function of their rarity,” Taub points out.<br />
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While he thinks his company has located seven or eight potential locations along the Kishon for gemstones, including carmeltazite, at this point it remains rarer than diamonds.</span><br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> The above post is reprinted from <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-company-finds-new-outer-space-mineral-on-earth-1.6823868" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Haaretz.com</a></span></i></u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
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