Jackie Chan Discs Help Boost Solar Panel Efficiency 194
wbr1 writes Apparently the pit pattern on a blu-ray disk is great at helping trap photons, rather than reflecting them. Applying this pattern to the glass in a solar panel can boost efficiency by 22%. Researchers at Northwestern tested this system with Jackie Chan discs. From the article: "To increase the efficiency of a solar panel by 22%, the researchers at Northwestern bought a copy of Police Story 3: Supercop on Blu-ray; removed the top plastic layer, exposing the recording medium beneath; cast a mold of the quasi-random pattern; and then used the mold to create a photovoltaic cell with the same pattern....The end result is a solar panel that has a quantum efficiency of around 40% — up about 22% from the non-patterned solar panel."
Copyright? (Score:5, Funny)
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This is a really cool development and I hope they have very-near-future plans to develop this further and commercialize it. Every little bit of efficiency we can squeeze out of solar cells makes them practical for a wider variety of uses.
Room for further research.... (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't mind listening to AC/DC from time to time, and power conversion aside, there are much worse acts whose work could be destroyed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hused for this.
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If they can do this with SuperCop, just imagine what sort of efficencies they could get by using an AC/DC album! Also by using AC/DC as the base pattern it might allow them to create native AC and skip the use of a DC->AC power inverter.
You better be careful of which album you try. "High Voltage" and "Powerage" will probably get you the best results. "Back in Black", may just give you the opposite outcome you're looking for. And good luck if you use "T.N.T", "Highway to Hell", or "Ball Breaker". It might be safer to stick with a U2 or even an Enya album.
Re:Room for further research.... (Score:5, Funny)
If they can do this with SuperCop, just imagine what sort of efficencies they could get by using an AC/DC album! Also by using AC/DC as the base pattern it might allow them to create native AC and skip the use of a DC->AC power inverter.
AC/DC is bad, the last thing you want is for your solar panels to be... THUNDERSTRUCK.
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That's ok because their panels deliver... HIGH VOLTAGE.
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While I enjoy the good musical pun play here, I should note - PV is glass-coated, typically. Not exactly the most conductive thing.
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Actually, no, apparently you do not enjoy a good musical pun or a good hard rock band. If you did you'd know that glass does nothing to stop AC/DC. [gregkihn.com]
Re:Copyright? (Score:4, Funny)
Dunno about the solar efficiency, but it sure does make the picture quality better. And it makes my CDs sound so much warmer!
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Dunno about the solar efficiency, but it sure does make the picture quality better. And it makes my CDs sound so much warmer!
But thats only if you use a Monster power cable.
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Re:Copyright? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Until that one time you are forced at gunpoint in a dark alley to calculate a cube root!
And, actually, seriously bad example - who cares about the battery life of a shitty $5 calculator when these days you can solve differential equations on your phone? Maybe you *should* have done a bit of research first...
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It's impossible to research the infinite number of strawmen, which is why people like you rely on them so strongly.
Competitive within 30 years? Try 2. (Score:2)
Nice try, though
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Yea, at this rate of efficiency gains it'll only be ANOTHER 30 years until they're economical.
You are a troll, yes? You know that thin film PV panels pay back the energy cost of their production in three years? And that even though PV solar is the least energy-efficient, it's profitable right now? You must be a troll, there can't be anybody out there who doesn't know this stuff.
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"Yea, at this rate of efficiency gains it'll only be ANOTHER 30 years until they're economical."
They're economical now even at their typical ~30% efficiency. My rooftop could've powered my entire house minus AC back in TN and had a payoff time of about 4 years. Oh, and they last typical 20 years MINIMUM and still produce ~85% original output.
Not my fault you've failed to do basic math, and the prices are only falling faster and faster as China keeps dumping.
Try again when you've done this stuff for a living
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Can you claim copyright infringement for a derivative work? Entitled to royalties at a minimum right?
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Of course derived works infringe copyright. Why don't you simply read the aprobriated law? ... hint: the law defines what a derived work is.
How ever in thise case we don't have derived work
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northwestern law school can help out there.
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old joke is old (Score:3, Funny)
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Imagine what it could be with a Chuck Norris movie!!!
Chuck Norris??? Bah. Bruce Lee beat up Chuck Norris.
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I for one am really looking forward to my brand new Enter The Dragon solar panels!
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Re:old joke is old (Score:5, Funny)
Re:old joke is old (Score:5, Funny)
Charles Nelson Reilly have Chuck Norris' head mounted on a wall.
Chuck Norris has Chuck Norris' head mounted on his shoulders.
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Is there any problem in the world that roundhouse kick from Chuck Norris can't solve?
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Is there any problem in the world that roundhouse kick from Chuck Norris can't solve?
Is it a problem if Chuck Norris keeps roundhouse kicking everything?
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Apparently, it does not work on gay boy scouts. Also, something-something Obama.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
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it would hate gays and make shitty budget 90's movies
Mass produce! (Score:2)
If this can be mass produced quickly by the likes of Solar City, imagine the gains! This could mean independence from fossil fuels in the next 2 years. Very exciting stuff.
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A.) This doesn't mean a solar car is practical.
B.) For much cleaner energy with much higher output, we already have a better option than coal that's been proven effective and safe as long as you don't build them on beaches in earthquake zones. Nuclear power pound for pound is much cleaner and much more efficient than coal and doesn't emit as much harmful radiation directly into the environment like coal. And with fast breeder reactors, the waste can be reused as fuel. And pebble bed reactors are nearly
Re:Mass produce! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mass produce! (Score:5, Informative)
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While very cool, I live in rural SC. Distances are pretty extreme. I want one to play with, but I couldn't use an electric vehicle as serious transportation until battery efficiency increases quite a bit more. A Tesla would ALMOST be practical but would cost a lot.
I'm very pro-electric but I don't see solar cars being a reality for anyone outside of a well-populated urban bubble.
Electric engines bring some interesting benefits compared to gas engines of comparable size and can keep up with and often exce
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Let's put some nuclear reactors in your backyard!
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Fine by me, if it's one of the smaller thorium types that would actually fit in one backyard.
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b) yes, but a practical nucleur car, i doubt it - the military would be all over it if it could be done practically.
c) sci-fi solution at the moment, by the time its possible all cars will probably be autonomous
Solar is definitely more practical than nucleur at the moment.
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Solar panels = Small percentage of power production
Small percentage * 1.22 = Small percentage, just a shade higher.
Its not a game changer. Its just a nice development.
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Solar panels = Small percentage of power production Small percentage * 1.22 = Small percentage, just a shade higher.
Its not a game changer. Its just a nice development.
Efficiency improvements, mass production, and making coal internalize the cost of CO2 emissions will eventually make photovoltaics more cost-effective than coal. Once that point is reached, solar will take over a large percentage of electricity production. This might not be the improvement that puts it over the top, but I think your dismissive analysis is a little too simplistic.
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Electricity is fungible - IE most people don't care where it comes from, so any one kWh is equivalent to any other.
Consider if Biodiesel is $3.50 and fossil diesel is $3. You're going to sell vastly more diesel than biodiesel. Make Biodiesel 22% cheaper and it's now $2.73. The situation will reverse practically overnight. More realistically what will happen is that investments in BD would languish until diesel hit $3.50, then plants would be built right and left, pushing down the price of both, but as p
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I'm not sure what you're talking about. Right now you can get a 250W panel for around $200. You should be able to generate around 438kWh from it a year(20% capacity factor). Or around $4.38 worth of electricity, which is a 46 year straight payoff(not worth it). If you pay 20 cents like some people, it's only a 23 year payoff(worth it).
A 22% increase in efficiency makes that 250W panel into a 305W one. 534kWh/year, $5.34 - 37 year payoff, which is barely not worth it, but you're looking at not needing t
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37 year payoff is 'barely' not worth it? When the panel efficiency starts drooping somewhat at the 20 - 25 year mark?
A 250 Watt panel doesn't stay at 250 Watts - it drops over time.
It would also be an extremely poor investment.
40 year investment = $16.02 return.
A crappy 1% interest savings account for the same $200 over 40 years = $98 profit.
For something to be a smart investment, it has to pay better than a crappy virtually risk free savings account.
Hell in 10 or 15 years politicians might wake up and deci
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It's not double the efficiency my friend, it's more than triple the efficiency: 22% + 40% = 68%.
Try to keep up.
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Electricity vs. oil (Score:5, Interesting)
Electricity and oil are both energy. You can substitute one for the other, though obviously there's advantages for certain forms in certain uses.
For home heating, oil, natural gas, and electricity are all viable depending on the cost. Right now gas is the cheapest and electricity is, in most places, the most expensive. It would take a lot of progress to get electricity to be the most economic solution for heating.
For aircraft, the weight of batteries rules them out.
For cars, Tesla is proving that electricity is an option. I know that we just signed a contract for solar panels on our house to produce more than we currently use on the assumption that we'll need the extra production to power our next car.
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Well technically, does is really matter?
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FWIW, if you have enough energy then synthetic gasoline can be manufactured. It's not the most efficient of processes, however. Using it for fuel would probably be unwise. (I think electric cars would work out better.) But you can also build lubricants.
Mind you, this process doesn't sound efficient enough to make the process practical.
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Actually, using electricity to produce fuel is something that can have practical use:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
In short, it's relatively easy to deploy a small nuclear reactor (much like one found in a submarine) to an operational base. If the excess power can be used to synthesize fuel, then that fuel doesn't have to be trucked in, which is a massive savings in a combat zone.
Also, it's a potential way of storing excess production, such as when demand drops overnight.
Why wast a good Blu-ray movie (Score:2)
I don't know if supercop was a good movie or not but it had to have been better than a number [imdb.com] of movies [imdb.com].
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It is one of the best Jackie Chan movies in my opinion.
BLUE ray (Score:5, Insightful)
The pits on a blu ray disc are optimized for reading with a blue laser. Sun's output have more energy at the other end (red spectrum). I'm thinking they might get even better efficiency if they tried a disc pitting pattern that was meant for reading with a red laser.
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Now that they have a proof of concept, it is an obvious thing for researchers to try different pit sizes and patterns in order to optimize the efficiency. One thing they probably haven't checked yet is the effect of Sun angle. Most solar panels are on a fixed mounting. So the Sun lights them from different angles during the day. Therefore any patterning will have a different apparent pit spacing. I think there is a lot more to learn about this effect, but even small efficiency gains have dramatic effec
Re:BLUE ray (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that they have a proof of concept, it is an obvious thing for researchers to try different pit sizes and patterns in order to optimize the efficiency
Actually, that already happened. As the abstract of the paper notes, previous research has already identified how to theoretically optimize patterns, but arbitrary patterns require expensive photo lithography equipment to create. This research shows that an existing inexpensive mass production technique generates results that are almost as good as the optimized patterns, but not quite as good because the spacing of the pits is a bit too periodic (especially across tracks rather than along them).
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removed the top plastic layer, exposing the recording medium beneath; cast a mold of the quasi-random pattern; and then used the mold to create a photovoltaic cell with the same pattern
So you use your expensive photo lithography equipment to create a master, make as many molds from that as you like, and then create the photovoltaic cells from those. The mass production of BD-ROM discs is irrelevant, it just makes your master cheap, but when you're making 10,000s of cells the cost of the master is unimporta
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removed the top plastic layer, exposing the recording medium beneath; cast a mold of the quasi-random pattern; and then used the mold to create a photovoltaic cell with the same pattern
So you use your expensive photo lithography equipment to create a master, make as many molds from that as you like, and then create the photovoltaic cells from those. The mass production of BD-ROM discs is irrelevant, it just makes your master cheap, but when you're making 10,000s of cells the cost of the master is unimportant.
Sure, but the cost is very relevant when you're doing research. This Blu-Ray disc experiment demonstrates that the theoretical work done previously will probably work as well as the theory predicts.
Re:BLUE ray (Score:5, Funny)
Replacing your roof with solar panels will always be an overhead cost!
Oh no, you di'nt go there... compulsion... (Score:3)
Costs are often through the roof with these technologies; mounting complexities and steep installation costs result in flash peak expenses that only gutter out after years of trussing up the math in spreadsheets. Tiling the cells can shake out some additional margin, but just the thought of it gives me shingles.
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Not a chance. I stand upon the selvage of my convections. I can go many laps with this. Care to joist further?
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In the paper they show the enhancement of quantum efficiency by wavelength. It's pretty uniform (+10-20%) throughout the 350nm (blue) to 700nm (red) range - and is really enhanced at longer wavelengths (>100%, but there isn't as much energy to be harvested here, so not as exciting as it sounds)
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If you look at the absorption and efficiency plots in the linked nature abstract, the improvement is pretty broad spectrum as it is. Based on the Fourier analysis plots, it does seem like a slightly wider pit spacing would better concentrate the energy in their desired sweet spot, but CDs and DVDs would be too wide. HD-DVD actually looks like it might have the most ideal pit spacings.
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The pits on a blu ray disc are optimized for reading with a blue laser. Sun's output have more energy at the other end (red spectrum). I'm thinking they might get even better efficiency if they tried a disc pitting pattern that was meant for reading with a red laser.
Actually, it works by simply reflecting the Sun in high-def. They tried this previously with DVDs (regular and superbit), Laserdisc, Betamax and VHS, with less efficiencies.
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I think of colors of visible light in terms of bandgap energy -- red light has an energy of about 1.7 eV and blue light has an energy of about
Piracy! (Score:2)
Quasi random my eye. That's copyright infringement! Unleash the hounds!
Talismans (Score:2)
How are there no references to the Jackie Chan cartoon show here? C'mon people...
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Source of my .sig.
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Cartoon not important. Only life important.
The First Attempt (Score:5, Funny)
I heard the first attempt was with Chuck Norris discs, but they burnt holes through the panels.
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I heard the first attempt was with Chuck Norris discs, but they burnt holes through the panels.
I weep that I have no mod points.
Split the difference.... (Score:2)
Use Commando, remastered on BluRay!
"Get the sunlight to the Choppah!!!!"
Just maybe..... (Score:2)
I'm impressed (Score:2)
That's one helluva case of 'sticky hands'. Photons beware!
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Photons be free!
Because it's Jackie Chan (Score:2)
There is no way a Jet Li disc could accomplish this.
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What's kind of funny is that the meme invokes Chuck Norris, a complete hack of a martial artist who came to fame in a time when crude technique was the general order of the day (Bruce Lee notably excepted.) Then you invoke Jackie Chan here, who is really pretty good; but you also disrespect Jet Li, who is nothing short of an awesome martial artist. 1-2-3 in skill inverted to 3-2-1 in offered kudos. All I can conclude is that the public has a very weird perception of martial artists.
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lol -- you have been marketed.
Further on Li, Chan, Norris, etc. (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, didn't quite mean to submit there.
TKD is a very specialized sport art. Very limited engagement rules and a complete lack of tools for dealing with anything but an upright, sparring style opponent relegate it to at best a functional niche limited to kicking (which any well rounded martial artist can convert into a different engagement, ground for instance) in the course of which instantly defanging most of the TKD stylists tools. TL;DR, TKD is more of a sport than a martial art. I should know; I'm dan-ranked in it within the context of the Korean taekwondo jidokwan, one of the earlier kwans that preceded the establishment of the WTF and ITF collaboration / standardizations.
Chan's martial arts background spans several styles (Shaolin gongfu, taekwondo, and hapkido), and consequently is broadly based with ground, standup, upright grappling, locking, striking, blocking, kicking, footwork and defensive components. He is by *any* sane measure a much more well rounded martial artist than Norris (and if you just admire kicking skill, I'm surprised you didn't bring up Bill "superfoot" Wallace.)
Li started training at age 8. He won his first national championship at age 11 -- remember we're talking about China here -- he traveled to more than 45 countries as a member of the Beijing wushu team. He held the title of All-Around National Wushu Champion from 1974 to 1979. He trained in internal and external styles, as well as the (then) required shíba ban bingqi (eighteen arms or weapons.)
(Please excuse the mangled pinyin; I don't use pinyin much, preferring actual hanzi, and traditional hanzi at that. (hanja for you TKD folks.) But slashdot doesn't support them (why? some geek site, lol)
Wushu means "martial art." It doesn't tell you squat about martial art effectiveness, other than that the practitioner, like a "martial artist" in the US, practices some martial art or arts. You should have a look right here [wikipedia.org] so next time you use the term wushu in the context of a Chinese martial artist, you actually know what you're saying. Although, technically speaking, just like gongfu (doesn't really mean martial art at all), the term carries implications you might not initially grasp; for instance, to a Chinese, a Korean TKD master is both a gongfu and a wushu master, plain and simple. Which again demonstrates that wushu doesn't mean anything even close to what you thought it meant.
However, your previous statement is worse in that it amounts to a blanket dismissal of all of China's martial arts, which is nothing short of ludicrous. Combined with your bewilderment of both Chan and Li's training backgrounds, your credibility is somewhere south of zero on this matter.
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There is no way a Jet Li disc could accomplish this.
A Jet Li disc would not only accomplish this, but it would do it after it said it wouldn't.
Worthless Headline. (Score:2)
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Irrelevant, but factually correct, thus better than many, many other examples.
Real world testing? (Score:3)
I wonder if they did any real world testing, as in a static solar panel and a complete day average. Somehow I would imagine these would make the solar panels great, during a narrow window of the day where the sun is directly overhead. I can't shake the feeling however that this kind of patterning would have a detrimental effect on indirect exposure. Not that it is a major issue, sun tracking systems are becoming more prevalent, but it may be an issue.
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Seems to me like making the surface one big corner reflector would guarantee the maximum absorption. A DVD or CD has space between the tracks, but a corner reflector is guaranteed to reflect twice at a broad variety of angles...
Isn't this just increased suface density? (Score:2)
And this is why... (Score:2)
Pitt (Score:2)
> solar panel that has a quantum efficiency of around 40%
Conventional panels have a QE around 90%. That's why they're opaque.
Fools (Score:2)
If only they had used a Dragon Ball Z Blu-ray disc instead, the efficiency would have increased by over 9000%!!!.
Re:when dirty? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:when dirty? (Score:5, Insightful)
The data density in bluray means that the pits are far, far, far, far too small for dirt to get stuck in, or on. Think of it like placing a pebble on a beach. There are pits between sand grains but the size disparity means it acts like a flat surface for most intents and purposes.
Not only this, but presumably the pits can be under the glass, just as they are under polycarbonate on a disc. Then the pits are not exposed to dir, and a normal washing will remove surface dust, bird poop, etc.
In related news ... (Score:2)
... Uwe Boll DVDs are experiencing an uptick in sales.
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Another team tried it with Star Wars discs and coundn't reproduce the effect.
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It only works with the original VHS, because Han has to shoot first.
TERRIBLE efficiency (Score:2)
The latter - but that's still a nice jump in the solar cell world.
No, that's a terrible quantum efficiency in the solar cell world.
Quantum efficiency is electrons out per photon in. In the wavelength band over which a solar cell absorbs, the quantum efficiency of a good solar cell ought to be very close to 100%. Even a mediocre solar cell should be 90% or better.
40%??? That's nothing to brag about.
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