Basics

Education and Postdoctoral Fellowships

Professional Background and Teaching

Publications and Presentations

Honors and Awards

Activities, Positions, Memberships and Service



Curriculum Vitae

Ayse Pinar Saygin, PhD
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR
Tel: (+44) 020 7679 5430
Email: a.sayginkoala@fil.ionplatypus.ucl.acjellyfish.uk (remove animals)



Education and Postdoctoral Fellowships

2008 - University Research Fellow, City University, London, UK
2006 - 2008 Marie Curie Research Fellow, University College London, UK
2005 - PhD Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

2001 - M.S. Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

1999 - M.S. Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.

1997 - B.S. (Hons) Mathematics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

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Professional Background and Teaching

Aug 2008 - Present: Researcher, University Fellow, City University, London, UK

Aug 2006 - Present: Researcher, Marie Curie Fellow, University College London

Oct 2005 - Aug 2006: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California San Diego

Oct 2005 - Aug 2006: Part time Post-doctoral Researcher

1999 - 2005: Graduate Research Assistant

2002 - 2005: Founding editor and acting editor, Cognitive Science Online

1999 - 2004: Editor, Center for Research in Language Newsletter

Summer 2004: Instructor, Dept of Cognitive Science, UCSD
Cogsci 172: Brain Disorders and Cogniton (upper division elective class)

Winter 2004: Instructor, Dept of Cognitive Science, UCSD
Cogsci 91: SCANS Presents (Seminar class for undergraduates)

Winter 2001 - Teaching Assistant, Dept of Cognitive Science, UCSD
CogSci 1: Introduction to Cognitive Science

Fall 2000 - Teaching Assistant, Dept of Cognitive Science, UCSD
CogSci 3: Introduction to Computing

Fall 1999 - Teaching Assistant, Dept of Cognitive Science, UCSD
CogSci 108A: Theory of Computation and Formal Systems

Spring 1999 - Teaching Assistant, Dept of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University
CS 416: Compiler Design

Fall 1998 - Teaching Assistant, Dept of Electrical Engineering, Bilkent University
GE 301: Science, Technology and Society

Spring 1998 - Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Business Administration, Bilkent University
MAN 254: Java Programming

Fall 1997 - Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Bilkent University
IR 201: Computing for the Social Sciences

Summer 1997 - Programmer (summer intern) at Alstom, Lattes, France.

Spring 1995 - Teaching Assistant, Dept of Mathematics, Middle East Technical University
Math 260: Linear Algebra

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Grants

Functional Properties of Brain Networks Subserving Biological Motion Perception
University Research Fellowship, City University
Date: Aug 2008
Duration: 1 year

Spatiotopic Maps in Higher Cortical Areas in the Human Brain and their Relation to Spatial Attention
European Commission (Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship FP6-2004-Mobility 5)
Date: Aug 2006
Duration: 2 years.

Investigating Human Brain Responses to the Movements of Humanoid Robots and Androids
Kavli Institute for Mind and Brain Innovative Research Grant
Date: Feb 2005.
Duration: 2 years.


Fellowships, Honors and Awards

2008 - present: University Research Fellow (City University)

2006 - 2008: Marie Curie Fellow (European Commission)

1999 - 2005: Graduate Student Researcher, UCSD - with Dr. Sereno or Dr. Bates or as Editor, CRL Newsletter (Funding sources: NSF, NIH and UCSD OGSR)

2005: Graduate Student Researcher, Salk Institute for Biological Studies - with Dr. Karen Emmorey (Funding source: NIH).

Brain Travel Fellow, 2007 to attend VSS (Guarantors of Brain)

European Conference of Visual Perception, 2006 (ECVP) Travel Award

Vision Sciences Society Student Travel Fellowship, 2005 (VSS).

Fellow, Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience (Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH) 2004, (Funding: McDonnell Foundation)

Summer Graduate Teaching Fellowship, for teaching Cogsci 172: Brain Disorders and Cognition, 2004. (Funding: UCSD Academic Senate)

Fellow, Friends of the International Center Scholarship, 2002-2003 (Funding: Friends of the International Center, La Jolla, CA).

Organization for Human Brain Mapping Travel Award, 2003.

Dean's Social Sciences Research Travel Award, UCSD, 2002.

Fellow, Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute (UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA), 2001. (Funding: Linguistic Society of America).

1997-1999: Fellowship for MS study at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Tuition, fees, stipend, insurance, housing. (Funding: Bilkent University).


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Publications and Presentations


Papers Under Review/Revision

Borovsky, A., Dick, F., Cummings, A., Trauner, D., Saygin, A.P. Emerging paths to sound understanding: language and environmental sound comprehension in specific language impairment and typically developing children. (Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences)

Saygin, A.P., McCullough, S., Alac, M., Emmorey, K. Sentences describing motion events activate MT/MST (Psychological Science)


Published or In Press Articles

Saygin, A.P. & Sereno, M.I. (2008). Retinotopy and attention in human occipital, temporal, parietal and frontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex

Saygin, A.P., Driver, J., de Sa, V.R. (in press) In the footsteps of biological motion and multisensory perception: Judgments of audio-visual temporal relations are enhanced for upright walkers. Psychological Science, 19(5):469-75.

Saygin, A.P. (2007) Superior temporal and premotor brain areas necessary for biological motion perception. Brain 130(9): 2452-61.

Borovsky, A., Saygin, A.P., Dronkers, N., Bates. E. (2007) Lesion correlates of conversational speech production deficits. Neuropsychologia, 45(11): 2525-33.

Hagler Jr, D.J. Saygin, A.P. & Sereno, M.I. (2006). Smoothing and cluster thresholding for cortical surface-based group analysis of fMRI data. Neuroimage, 33, 1093-1103.

Cummings, A., Ceponiene, R., Koyama, A., Saygin, A.P., Townsend, J & Dick, F. (2006). Auditory semantic networks for words and natural sounds. Brain Research, 1115, 92-107.

Saygin, A.P., Dick, F. & Bates, E. (2005). An online task for contrasting auditory processing in the verbal and nonverbal domains and norms for younger and older adults. Behavior Research Methods, 37(1), 99-110. [download]

Bates, E., Saygin, A.P., Moineau, S., Marangolo, P. & Pizzamiglio, L. (2005). Analyzing aphasia data in a multidimensional symptom space. Brain and Language, 92: 106-116.

Arevalo, A., Moineau, S., Saygin, A.P., Ludy, C., & Bates, E. (2005). In search of Noun-Verb dissociations in aphasia across three processing tasks. Center for Research in Language Newsletter, 17(1), 3-17.

Saygin, A.P., Wilson, S.M., Hagler Jr., D.J., Bates, E., & Sereno, M.I. (2004). Point-light biological motion perception activates human premotor cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 24: 6181 - 6188. [download]

Saygin, A.P., Wilson, S.M. Dronkers, N. & Bates, E. (2004). Action comprehension in aphasia: Linguistic and non-linguistic deficits and their lesion correlates. Neuropsychologia, 42: 1788-1804.

Wilson, S.M., Saygin, A.P., Sereno, M.I., & Iacoboni, M. (2004). Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production. Nature Neuroscience, 7: 701 - 702.

Dick, F., Saygin, A.P., Moineau, S., Aydelott, J., & Bates, E. (2004). Language in an embodied brain: The role of animal models. Cortex, 40, 226-227. [download]

Wilson, S.M. & Saygin, A.P. (2004). Grammaticality judgment in aphasia: Deficits are not specific to syntactic structures, aphasic syndromes or lesion sites. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16 (2). [download]

Bates, E., Appelbaum, M., Salcedo, J., Saygin, A.P., Pizzamiglio, L. (2003). Quantifying dissociations in neuropsychological research. Journal of Experimental and Clinical Neuropsychology, 25(8), 1128-1153. [download]

Bates, E., Wilson, S.M., Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Sereno, M.I., Knight, R., Dronkers, N. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience, 6(5), 448-450. [download]

Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Wilson, S.M., Dronkers, N.F. & Bates, E. (2003). Neural resources for processing language and environmental sounds: Evidence from aphasia. Brain, 126(4), 928-945. [download]

Dick, F., Bussiere, J. & Saygin, A.P. (2002). The effects of linguistic mediation on the identification of environmental sounds. Center for Research in Language Newsletter, 14(3), 3-9. [download]

Saygin, A.P. & Cicekli, I. (2002). Pragmatics in human-computer conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(3), 227-258. [download]

Saygin, A.P., Cicekli, I., & Akman, V. (2000). Turing Test: 50 years later. Minds and Machines, 10(4), 463-518. [download]


Dissertations and Theses

Saygin, A.P. (2005). Embodied Perception: Neuropsychological Experiments on Language, Vision and Attention. Ph.D. Thesis. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA.

Saygin, A.P. (2001). Contrasting verbal and nonverbal auditory processing in aphasia. Unpublished M.S. Thesis. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA.

Saygin, A.P. (1999). Turing Test and conversation. Unpublished M.S. Thesis. Bilkent University,Ankara, Turkey.


Abstracts and Presentations

Saygin, A.P. (2006). Combining Results from Functional MRI and Voxel-Based Lesion-Mapping to Study Biological Motion Processing. European Conference on Visual Perception. August 2006, St.Petersburg, Russia.

Saygin, A.P. & Sereno, M.I. (2005). Stimulus and attention-driven retinotopic maps in multiple parietal, temporal and frontal areas in the human brain. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts Nov 12-16, 2005, Washington DC.

Saygin, A.P. & Sereno, M.I. (2005). Retinotopy and its modulation by attention in higher cortical areas studied with structured motion stimuli. 5th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, May 6- 11, 2005, Sarasota, FL.

Borovsky, A., Saygin, A.P., Dronkers, N.F., & Bates, E. (2005). Lesion mapping of word class deficits in conversational speech production in aphasic stroke patients. 12th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, April 10 - 12, 2005, New York, NY.

Cummings, A., Dick, F., Saygin, A.P., Townsend, J., & Ceponiene, R. (2005). Detecting meaning from words and sounds: An event-related potential study. 12th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, April 10 - 12, 2005, New York, NY.

Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Moineau, S., Bates, E., Dronkers, N.F. & Sereno, M.I. (2005). Functional MRI reveals brain regions subserving recovery of speech comprehension in an aphasic patient with a lesion including Wernicke's area and severe residual environmental sound comprehension deficits. 12th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, April 10 - 12, 2005, New York, NY.

Sereno, M.I., Huang, R., Saygin, A.P., Filimon, F., Hagler, D. (2004). Retinotopy of human cortex using phase-encoded video. 34th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Cummings, A., Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Bates, E. (2004). Is there a dissociation between verbal and environmental sound processing in young children? 14th Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, May 5-8, 2004, Chicago, Illinois.

Dick, F., Saygin, A.P., Paulsen, C., Trauner, D., & Bates, E. (2004). The co-development of environmental sound and language comprehension in school-age children. Symposium on Attention and Performance XXI: Processes of Change in Brain and Cognitive Development Iron Horse, Colorado, July, 2004.

Arevalo, A., Moineau, S., Saygin, A.P., Wulfeck, B. & Bates, E. (2003). The Production Mini-Battery: A look at aphasic word production across three modalities. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Suppl. F156, p. 208.

Dick, F., Saygin, A.P., Wilson, S.M., Sereno, M. I., Pitzalis, S., Galati, G., Bentrovato, S., D'Amico, S., Pizzamiglio, L. & Bates, E. (2003). What is involved, and what is necessary for complex linguistic and non-linguistic auditory processing - a quantitative comparison. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Suppl F168, p. 210. [view text]

Saygin, A.P., Dronkers, N., Wilson, S.M., Ludy, C. & Bates, E. (2003). Pantomime interpretation and reading comprehension in patients with aphasia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Suppl. C77, p. 96. [view text]

Saygin, A.P. & Moineau, S. (2003). A case of severe auditory agnosia for environmental sounds with intact language comprehension following a lesion to Wernicke's area. Clinical Aphasiology Conference, Orcas Island: May, 2003.

Saygin, A.P., Wilson, S.M., Dick, F., Dronkers, N., Bates, E. (2003). Neural correlates of non-linguistic impairments in aphasia. Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, New York, NY: June 2003, NeuroImage, 19(2). [download]

Saygin, A.P., Wilson, S.M., Hagler, D.J. Jr., Bates, E., Sereno, M.I. (2003). Visual and motor areas in the human brain are involved in the perception of point-light biological motion. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts., Program No 438.11. [view text]

Saygin, A.P., Wilson, S.M., Hagler Jr., D.J., Bates, E., Sereno, M.I.(2003). Brain areas involved in the processing of biological motion: Lesion-symptom mapping and fMRI. Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, New York, NY: June 2003, NeuroImage, 19(2).

Sereno, M.I., Saygin, A.P., Hagler, D.J. Jr. (2003). Retinotopy in parietal and temporal cortex. Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, New York, NY: June 2003. NeuroImage, 19(2).

Wilson, S.M., Bates, E., Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Sereno, M., Knight, R. & Dronkers, N. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping: An application to speech fluency and language comprehension. Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, New York, NY: June 2003. NeuroImage, 19(2).

Wilson, S.M., Bates, E., Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Sereno, M., Knight, R. & Dronkers, N. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Suppl. Suppl: C253, p. 114. [view text]

Wilson, S.M., Saygin, A.P., Schleicher, E., Dick, F., & Bates, E. (2003). Grammaticality judgment under non-optimal processing conditions: Deficits induced in normal participants resemble those observed in aphasic patients. Brain and Language, 87(1), 67-68. [download]

Wilson, S.M., Saygin, A.P., Sereno, M.I., Iacoboni, M. (2003). Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts. Program No 770.3. [view text]

Bates, E., Saygin, A.P., Moineau, S., Marangolo, P. & Pizzamiglio, L. (2002). Aphasic patients as vectors in a multidimensional symptom space: How to change the bathwater without losing the baby. Brain and Language 83(1), 223-4.

Dick, F., Galati, G., Pitzalis, S., Hagberg, G., Bentrovato, S., D'Amico, S., Saygin, A.P., Pizzamiglio, L. & Bates, E. (2002). Bold fMRI response evoked by processing of environmental sounds and their linguistic equivalents. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts Vol 28 No. 583.5

Saygin, A.P., Dronkers, N., Dick, F., Ludy, C. & Bates, E. (2002) Deficits in processing meaningful nonverbal sounds in patients with aphasia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Suppl. 154.

Saygin, A.P. & Moineau, S. (2002) Auditory agnosia with preserved verbal comprehension after unilateral left hemisphere lesion involving Wernicke's area. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts Vol 28 No. 673.7. Selected for the Society for Neuroscience Press Book. [view text]

Saygin, A.P., Dick, F.& Bates, E. (2001). Linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory processing in aphasia. Brain and Language, 79(1), 143-145.

Saygin, A.P. (2000) Turing Test: 50 years later. Turing 2000: The Future of the Turing Test. Jan. 28-30, 2000. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.


Papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings

Saygin, A.P. & Wilson, S.M. (2002). Paradigm reanalysis and the representation of morphologically complex words in Turkish. 38th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 38). [download]

Saygin, A.P. (2001). Processing figurative language in a multilingual task: Translation, transfer and metaphor. Corpus-Based & Processing Approaches to Figurative Language Workshop, Corpus Linguistics 2001, March 29, 2001. Lancaster University, UK. [download]

Wilson, S.M. & Saygin, A.P. (2001). Adverbs and functional heads in Turkish: Linear order and scope. Proceedings of WECOL 2001: Western Conference on Linguistics, Oct 25-28, Seattle, WA. [download]

Saygin, A.P. (1998). Simple feature selection methods that make adifference: An application to text categorization.Proceedings of the International Computer Symposium (ICS 98), Dec. 17-19, 1998, Taiwan.

Saygin, A.P., & Yavuz, T. (1998). Query processing in context-oriented retrieval of information.Proceedings of the Fourth Joint Conferences on Information Science: Computer Science and Informatics (JCIS: CSI 98), Oct. 23-28, 1998. Research Triangle Park, NC.


Book chapters

Saygin, A.P. (in press). Comments on Turing, 1950. Invited commentary in R. Epstein and G. Beber (Eds). Handbook of Turing Test Sourcebook.

Saygin, A.P. (in press). Can computers cooperate?. In D. Penrod (ed) Webtalk: Writing as Conversation.

Dick, F., Dronkers, N., Pizzamiglio, L., Saygin, A.P., Small, S. L., & Wilson, S. M. (2005). Language and the brain. In M. Tomasello, & D. I. Slobin (Eds.), Beyond Nature-Nurture: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth Bates. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Saygin, A.P., Cicekli, I., & Akman, V. (2000) Turing Test: 50 years later. In J. Moor (Ed.) The Turing Test : The Elusive Standard of Artificial Intelligence. Kluwer: Amsterdam.


Reviews

Saygin, A.P. (2001). Review of Horn, R. et.al. Mapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think? Seven maps and a handbook. Minds and Machines, 11(3), 442-445. [download]


Invited Talks, Colloquia and Lectures

May 30, 2006 - Neural Basis of Language Processing and Relations to Non-Linguistic Domains, University of California San Diego, Lecture for Neuroscience Graduate Program Course NEU 200C: Cognitive and Behavioral Neurosciences.

Feb 24, 2006 - Stimulus and Attention-driven Retinotopy in Occipital, Temporal, Parietal, and Frontal Cortex. University of California San Diego, Department of Cognitive Science Open House.

Sep 2, 2005, - Vision as an Embodied Process. Cognitive and Cognitive Neuroscience Seminar, Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.

March 25, 2005 - Functional MRI as a Research Methodology in android science. Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR), Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan.

Jan 12, 2005 - Understanding Others and the Theory of "Neural Simulation"; Guest lecture for CogSci 91: Students for Cognitive and Neurosciences, Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD.

June 5, 2004 - Human Premotor Cortex and the Perception of Point-Light Biological Motion. 2004 Annual Spring Retreat for Cognitive Neuroscience, San Diego.

Dec 1, 2003 - Brain Areas Involved in the Perception of Point-Light Biological Motion. Colloquium at the Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD.

Oct 15, 2003 - Neuropsychological and Neuroimaging Studies of Biological Motion Processing. "Brain Mapping Seminars", University of California, Los Angeles.

Oct 14, 2003 - Brain Areas involved in the Processing of Biological Motion Revealed by Voxel-Based Lesion-Symptom Mapping (VLSM) and fMRI. Colloquium for the Center for Research in Language, UCSD.

Oct 8, 2003 and Jan 8, 2004 - Language and the Brain - Guest lecture for the Cogsci 1: Introduction to Cognitive Science, Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD.

May 31, 2003 - Lesion Correlates of Non-Linguistic Impairments in Left-Hemisphere Injured Patients. 2003 Annual Spring Retreat for Cognitive Neuroscience, Del Mar, CA.

April 15, 2003 - Action Comprehension in Aphasia: Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Deficits and their Lesion Correlates. PDPNLP - Colloquium for the Center for Research in Language, UCSD.

Feb 18. 2003 - Neural Resources for Processing Speech and Environmental Sounds: VLSM and fMRI (with Frederic Dick). PDPNLP - Colloquium for the Center for Research in Language, UCSD.

Jan 14, 2003 - Neural Resources for Processing Speech and Environmental Sounds: Lesion-Symptom Mapping of Patients with Left Hemisphere Damage and fMRI on Normal Controls. (with Frederic Dick) Project in Cognitive and Neural Development Science Series, UCSD.

May 29, 2001 - Verbal and Non-Verbal Auditory Processing in Aphasia. PDPNLP - Colloquium for the Center for Research in Language, UCSD.

May 10, 2001 - Turing Test and Cognitive Science. Guest lecture for CogSci 91: Students for Cognitive and Neurosciences, Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD.

April 30, 2001 - Pragmatics in Human-Computer Conversations. Colloquium at the Department of Cognitive Science, UCSD.

Oct 1999 - Philosophical Aspects of the Turing Test. Guest lecture for Phil 136: Philosophy of Mind, Department of Philosophy, UCSD.

Nov 12, 1998 - Turing Test: 50 Years Later. METU Cognitive Science Colloquium, Ankara, Turkey.

Sep 29, 1998 - The Turing Test. ACM-SIGART (Association for Computing Machinery - Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence) Bilkent Chapter, Ankara, Turkey.

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Activities, Positions, Memberships and Service


Membership

Society for Neuroscience, 2001 - present
Vision Sciences Society, 2003 - present
Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 2001 - present
Organization for Human Brain Mapping, 2003
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society (full member), 2003 - present
Linguistic Society of America, 2001
American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 1998-2000
Mind Association, 1998-2000


Ad hoc reviews

Brain and Language (multiple reviews)
Center for Research in Language Newsletter
Connection Science
Minds and Machines
Neurocase
Neuroimage


Organizational positions and service

Organizer for the UCSD Cognitive Science Distinguished Speaker Series: 2002-2003 (peer-elected position)
Graduate student representative, UCSD Department of Cognitive Science: 2001-2002 (peer-elected position)
Member of the Local Organizing Committee of Turkish Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks Conference (TAINN'98), June, 1998, Ankara, Turkey.
Member of the Local Organizing Committee for International Symposium on Computer and Information Science (ISCIS'98), Oct. 1998, Antalya, Turkey.


Mentoring

Spring, Summer 2005: Datlow, Mitch
Winter, 2003: Gordon, Lindsay
Fall and Winter, 2003: Kuang, Gina Yan Ting and Wood, Lydia (with A. Stringfellow)
Spring, 2003: Jones, Elizabeth and Fiske, Laurel (with A. Butler)
Spring and Summer, 2002: Schleicher, Eva
Fall 2000, Winter and Spring, 2001: Palacios, Luis (with F. Dick)
Fall 2000: Knowles, Janelle (with F. Dick)


References available upon request





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