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Equine Speedometers 123

Posted by michael from the sorry-officer-I-didn't-know-how-fast-I-was-going dept.
Makarand writes "According to this article in The New Zealand Herald scientists at Massey University (NZ) are using GPS to monitor racehorses during their training programme. GPS technology is being used to follow horses around a racetrack and measure how far and fast horses gallop each day. This GPS data along with heart rate measurements is transforming racehorse training into a science."
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Equine Speedometers More

Equine Speedometers

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  • Now not only do people destroy their family life savings with horse racing.

    Now GPS help the horse race business go even higher tech. As if fantasy football and internet slot machine wasn't enough.

    • Re:What an overkill (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NtroP ( 649992 )

      Now not only do people destroy their family life savings with horse racing.

      Now GPS help the horse race business go even higher tech. As if fantasy football and internet slot machine wasn't enough.

      I hope this was meant to be funny. Because it sure smacks of the modern American practice of never taking responsibility for one's own actions. Just because a few people can't or won't control their own impulses, I am supposed to be "protected from myself" with draconian regulations. And to top it all off th

  • Yes because this is obviously something that couldnt be done with sensors on the side of the race track we had to wait till GPS came along. Oh well good job on harnessing technology that will help in my gambling problem

    • Re:New Tech? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Politburo ( 640618 )
      Since a horse may not be at a track all day, GPS makes tracking the horse's distance and speed much easier. Plus, there is very little infrastructure to install with a GPS system, whereas your system would need to have sensors installed. The sensors for GPS are already installed, for all of us.
    • 24-7 monitoring is very difficult. GPS makes this data flow a lot easier.

      I think its a very well thought-out design.

      GPS being able to monitor heart rate and rate-of-speed changes and distance travelled. Very Very useful for making decisions on training and work load especially if you monitor many horses through a web-based interface.

  • Updates for "the Track" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:42PM (#7873841)

    Next time we are at the racing track will we see m.p.h real-time as the race progresses?

    AC

  • Some more info (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this article has already been posted [terrato.org] in the november issue of Terrato local newsletter (the town is particularly known for being fond of horses.)

    I am not supposed to tell you this: but given that GPS is not that cheap, the locals are considering switching to some 802.11b application that can track locations via triangulation, so if there are any enterprising slashdotters reading this, let it be known that we would pay quite nicely for a low-overhead solution!

    Contact me at mark@pobox.com if you think you q
    • MODS- parent is a goatse troll.
    • What stupid ignorant dick of a moderator modded this "Informative" without even checking the link? It's a *shudder* animated Goatse link. Please mod the parent -1 OBSCENE TROLL really fast.
    • Besides a goat link, the information is dead wrong. There is a mention of high price on GPS.. Um do a google search on OEM GPS modules, or hand held GPS receivers with NMEA output. A GPS (about the price of a wireless card) costing more than 802.1b with many receivers and network to do triangulation is dead wrong. Many GPS receivers are cheaper than a wireless lan card. Any PDA or pocket PC that can record RS232 can capture data from any handheld GPS that has a NMEA output. The file can be transfered to

  • units (Score:3, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:44PM (#7873851)
    so will the speed be measured in furlongs per fortnight?
    • so will the speed be measured in furlongs per fortnight?
      By the time you capture the data to a file, a simple spreadsheet could convert the data to almost any format you wish. It could even convert to the percent of the speed of light so you could figure how much red or blue shift there was. I wouldn't want to be wrong choosing the winner because of the color shift.

  • Horse racing will be a true science... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:44PM (#7873855)
    ...when they can turn back the odometer on one of them.

  • OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TrollBridge ( 550878 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:45PM (#7873857) Homepage Journal
    ...but haven't trainers been doing the exact same thing with stopwatches for decades? I really don't see what benefit GPS could add to the conditioning of race horces beyond the simple but effective technology of yesteryear.
    • Due to the human error presented by stopwatches, the interval size must be large. This means that an average speed can be determined, but instantaneous speeds and accelerations at a given point are EXTREMELY difficult to monitor with a stopwatch.

      However, a GPS can determine the horse's position on Earth accurately on very small intervals (say, 0.1 seconds). This data can be analyzed to determine the horse's near-instantaneous speed and acceleration at many points throughout the horse's workout.

      Further

      • However, a GPS can determine the horse's position on Earth accurately on very small intervals (say, 0.1 seconds).

        Yeah, they've got great precision. Accuracy, on the other hand...

        If you hild a normal (consumer-grade) GPS unit in your hand and stand still, you'll be surprised to find that you're bouncing around like an ADD-ridden five-year-old after eating a bag of Skittles. "I'm here! No, I'm over there! Now I'm 20 feet away and 10 feet underground! Wow!"

        Consumer-grade GPS isn't hyper-accurate. Car na

        • If you hild a normal (consumer-grade) GPS unit in your hand and stand still, you'll be surprised to find that you're bouncing around like an ADD-ridden five-year-old after eating a bag of Skittles

          Add differential correction to it. That fixes the problem. Most consumer handheld GPS units will accept a signal from a differential receiver. However the receivers may cost several times the cost of the hand held GPS receiver.
    • Yeah, pretty much. This is an advance, but it's really just an incremental one that makes the job a bit easier and more precise. It isn't transformative.

      I don't train horses, I train bicycle racers. The horsie people might the advantage of horses being a bit smarter and less argumentative.

      A measured course, a stopwatch, a video camera and a heartrate monitor in the hands of a trained observer is 99.9999% of the way there.

      Of course with all the money involved with horse racing a few more significant digit
    • perhaps...but would you like to be the trainer who has to manually enter the data into the computer?

      Or would you rather have all of that information automatically entered and graphs and charts automatically at your fingertips 24-7?

      Imagine how many more horses you could train if you had a system where you didn't have to waste time individually with each horse but could tell an apprentice to go do X, based on information on your computer.
      • perhaps...but would you like to be the trainer who has to manually enter the data into the computer?

        Some data gathered by GPS simply can't be captured by hand to manualy enter. NMEA output from GPS receivers give speed, direction, position, and other data once a second. Acceleration is easly calculated. Try that with a pencil and a stopwatch.
  • I've got my car speedometer, plus the tach, plus freaking police radar signs telling me to slow down...I get the message!

  • Not suprised (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    GPS Monitoring and tracking technology, I think, has been used on all species. I might be a bit paranoid, but I think it would be feasible to actually monitor the "whereabouts" of everybody, to know roughly where they are. Given technology, I can tell between such and such time, you were posting to Slash dot, on the web. Monitor on freeway would tell me where you were driving, phone usage, credit cards, etc, etc. With enough money and computer technology, is this something you think is impossible?

  • 15 year old tech (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:52PM (#7873906) Journal
    I've seen a telemetry system for horses about 15 years ago, that measured speed, heart rate, blood pressure and some other things.

    These systems haven't become very widespread because of their cost... and even if we can make them really cheap, I'm not so sure what use it'll have. It's probably interesting to know a horse is running at x km/h, with a heart rate of y and blood pressure z, but what are you going to do with that information?

    • Basically you would do the same thing the edurance athletes have been doing for a while. Since we know that certain heart rates correspond to aerobic or anaerobic exercise, you can make sure that the horse is training aerobically or anaerobically. Also using a heart rate monitor allows you to figure out if the horse is overtraining. With people, overtraining leads to elevations in their resting heart rates and problems in getting your heart rate up while exercising. I'm sure there are analogs in horse

    • Re:15 year old tech (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

      These systems haven't become very widespread because of their cost... and even if we can make them really cheap, I'm not so sure what use it'll have. It's probably interesting to know a horse is running at x km/h, with a heart rate of y and blood pressure z, but what are you going to do with that information?

      There are two related uses for the information; First to weed out horses that are 'sub par' early on in their training process. Secondly to identify potential studs and dams that may be visually ind

      • -----
        DerekLyons wrote:
        There are two related uses for the information; First to weed out horses that are 'sub par' early on in their training process. Secondly to identify potential studs and dams that may be visually indistinquishable or 'sub par', yet have valuable breeding characteristics.
        -----

        Any trainer or jockey worth his or her salt can function at least as well as this GPS system ... those guys have excellent timers in their heads. And they also have something that technology doesn't have: the abili
    • It's very useful for endurance riding. If you run your horse too hard you are required to rest the horse at stages, which can greatly affect your standings. You can be outright disqualified if you push your horse too hard. With the monitors, you can push your horse to its maximum speed possible without endangering its health.

      For track racing, I wouldn't know. I'm not a fan of the track racing industry as there is too much abuse associated with it.

      And yes, I do have my own saddle (obscure ST:TNG refere
    • "I've seen a telemetry system for horses about 15 years ago, that measured speed, heart rate, blood pressure and some other things."

      Was it a device carried by the horse? If so, then the key question is "How much did it weigh?"

  • Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Braintrust ( 449843 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:53PM (#7873913)
    The greatest mammalian athlete of the last thousand years... the best there ever was, the best there ever will be... to borrow a quote attributed to another once-in-a-lifetime athlete...

    Look it up. The horse was preternatural... with a heart more than DOUBLE the size of a typical champion thoroughbred...

    When he won the Kentucky Derby in '73, Secretariat ran each successive quarter-mile FASTER than the previous one... this is simply unheard of in horse-racing...

    A genetic zenith.

    • Secretariat's heart weighed 22 pounds [sptimes.com], while a typical thoroughbred's ticker weighs about eight and a half.

      That's a lot of chow. [alpo.com]

    • He was indeed special, but I find it difficult to be impressed by any American race results. The reason is that this country effectively legalise doping in it's racing.

      Look up any racing program, and you will find that 90% (if not more) of the horses run on Lasix. One of the functions of Lasix is that it an be used to mask other chemicals. Now, how can you then trust that any results are won fair and square?

      I don't know if still goes on, but I believe that racing in the state of New York it was allowed to
      • I absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent agree with your comments regarding doping in American racing... rampant. Always has been. The only horse of the twentieth-century who can even be mentioned in the same breath with Secretariat is Man-O-War, who is widely regarded as one of the most doped horses of all time.

        However, EVERYTHING I've ever read or studied about Secretariat, has consistently remarked upon just how clean an animal he was. He was not doped. I encourage you to read further about thi
        • I would also argue that American racing is no more corrupt from a doping standpoint than any other organized body. To think otherwise is naive, in my opinion.

          I have to disagree. What make American racing unappealing to me is that it specifically allows doping like Lasix (and I think Bute in New York).

          Don't get me wrong, I think that in any sport anywhere that involve lots of money there will always be someone that try to cheat. However, when the sports ruling body say that it is allowed to cheat (Lasix a
          • Lasix does nothing for performance. It is to reduce the incidence of bleeding in the esophagus. In fact, because it lowers blood pressure, it might slightly impair performance (but not so much as breathing blood would). Bute is not a painkiller, but is an anti-inflammatory, much like an NSAID. When human athletes are barred for life for taking aspirin before a race, I'll accept that American racing is a haven for performance drugs.

  • This technology exists for humans too (Score:4, Informative)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:54PM (#7873919)
    Just go to gpsports.com [gpsports.com]. The SPI 10 unit can do everything the horse unit can do, plus there is some nifty software so you can make pseudo-3D maps upon returning to your home PC after your workout, as well as altituted and barrometric pressure. Supposedly the unit averages multiple surveying techniques allowing an extremely accurate survey of speed. However, the price is quite steep. Expect to be shelling out at least 1500 bucks, plus more for software upgrades.

  • I'm unclear as to why they chose GPS. Surely the same result could be achieved used a terrestrial or local area wireless sensor system set up around the track.

    The article mentions the problem of speeds differing depending on the start gate, and improved accuracy of GPS is within "a few metres" which is accurate enough. "Good enough" is a long-standing principle in technology deployments but it's not very clear from the article what specific advantage GPS has over other systems beyond the obvious.

    This li

    • The problem with setting up a terrestrial or local area wireless system is that the trainer would have to do so at every track the horse trains at. Horses do not stay at the same track during racing season, or even off-season--they are often carted all over the world. Having to set this up each and every time would consume time and, you might not always get permission to set it up. With GPS, the technology has already been put in place. All it takes is a GPS transceiver on the horse, and you are ready t

  • Importance of GPS, & questions on its Reliabil (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dexterpexter ( 733748 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:03PM (#7873974) Journal
    A smally nitpick: As someone who worked in the equine industry before I entered the tech world, I personally believe that horse racing is a science (in a broad sense), and always has been. *smiles*

    I believe several posters hit an important point when they stated that they have been able to measure a horse's speed for years using stopwatches. However, they should consider that this technology is only as useful as the person pressing the button, and relies on the user to be able to determine *exactly* when that horse's nose touches the line, and for them to be able to press the stop button fast enough. This tool is extremely handy because, assuming it has great accuracy, it takes the human error problem out. You might not think that parts of a second would matter in horse racing, but it does. Fractions of a second came between breaking Secretariats (famous race horse) track record, and not. It is true that they have bream beams at the major tracks, but overall photo technology is used to determine split seconds, who won, etc., and often this is not available to trainers outside of a race. GPS will simplify that process.

    However, my concern is that, having used this technology in a robot that we are working on, the readings are sometimes unreliable as one second it may say you are one place, and the next tell you that you are a foot the other way. That might not seem like a huge distance to you, but combine that with the 30+ mph galloping speed of a well-trained thoroughbred, and you have a problem when it reads the horse as finishing when it really has not. I would be interested in seeing how they address this problem. In horse racing, when gauging against track records, split seconds count!

    I believe that a greater application of this technology would be to track those expensive animals in the case that they get stolen. They have been using a variant of RFID to do this for years, but it is limited in distance and thus rarely actually catches animals except at slaughterhouses where they are required to scan for a stolen animal. This might ease an insurance company's mind, and also the owner's, knowing that their animal can be tracked in-transit. Awesome.
    • ..the readings are sometimes unreliable as one second it may say you are one place, and the next tell you that you are a foot the other way...

      This is what to expect with an autonomous GPS unit like the cheap $200 hand-held units you can get from Garmin or Magellan.

      There are surveyor grade differential GPS units that have sub-centimeter accuracy.

      The way these work is you first need to survey a position, in this case how about the center of the infield, to find its exact coordinates. You then set up a b

      • But in the article, they mentioned that their GPS units were only accurate to a few meters. Yes, your mentioned technology would certainly be best, but, unless I read the article incorrectly (egads! I RTFA), they are not using very reliable units.

        Perhaps they should look into using units similar to your own. I am familiar with differential GPS and have used it, not finding it accurate enough for our liking, but I have never tried the surveyor grade ones, nor am I familiar with them. The units that we
        • The Roving GPS can still be used as a normal GPS unit, no?

          Precise measurements are more important when running in circles (close proximity, lots of direction change.) However, in larger patterns (field riding,) the GPS unit would have more space to average over.

          Besides, precise, accurate measurements are more important during a race than when training.
      • DGPS (differential gps) units run around $5,000 each. One is needed for a base staion, the other would go on the horse. The ones that I've seen weren't too small either.
        • The $5,000 ones are the cheap ones too. The best go for about $20,000. I am looking ahead over the next 5 years. As GPS, GIS, and location based services become more common and widespread, the cost and size of hardware will drop dramatically.

          There is nothing about the hardware that should be expensive except that the current market is incredibly small, so all research costs must be spread over a very small user population.

          The Corp of Engineers have fixed DGPS base stations in certain areas that can be u

      • The concept you are explaining is usually referred to as Differential GPS (DGPS) and is used very frequently by small airports.

        I flew GPS satellites for the AF for about 8 years, and taught it as a AETC instructor for about 3 of those 8. So you can consider me a Subject Matter Expert :-)

        Anyway, DGPS and GLONASS (the Soviet Union's equiv to GPS) lead to the DoD turning off Selective Availability (SA), which degraded GPS to about a hundred meters. There are two signals sent down (L1 and L2) with Precisio

    • I believe that a greater application of this technology would be to track those expensive animals in the case that they get stolen. They have been using a variant of RFID to do this for years, but it is limited in distance and thus rarely actually catches animals except at slaughterhouses where they are required to scan for a stolen animal.

      Did you RTFA? Are we supposed to be expecting a Darwinesqe award from someone who stole a million dollar horse and forgot to leave the GPS unit behind?

      Hint: Read
      • My intention, and I appologize if this was unclear, was for them to develop smaller units similar to the implantable RFID ones. I have seen some very, very tiny GPS units (at the 2003 Boston Embedded Systems Conference they had units that were almost the size of quarters), so I was trying to suggest that they should develop smaller, implantable units, or at least units small enough to be tucked inside its traveling halter. I suppose that I left that for guessing, but in saying a "greater application" and
    • They solved the problem of human intervention years ago in motor racing. They have some sort of optical or radio based sensor on the car so they can measure lap times to the nearest 1000th of a second apparently.

      Why not just use that technology which is available off the shelf?
      • I appologize if I am not clear. I will give explaining this my best shot, but I am having trouble putting it into words. But I will give it a shot, anyways.

        Two words: size, convenience

        Now, an explanation:
        I am fairly certain that the boxes put in NASCAR cars are large and heavy, insofar as I can remember. I suppose that, when dealing with cars, size was not a concern. A device inside the car doesn't really reduce aerodynamics or increase the relative weight that much. The same is not true for placing
  • If they're taking an approach based on observation and experimentation, then it was already a science before this. Numbers and measurements do not make a practice a science. If that's all it took, phrenology and numerology would be science.
    • My thoughts exactly. Besides, horse trainers have been using quantitative observations for well over 100 years. One of the earliest uses of cameras, as a scientific tool, was to analyze how horses run. This was during the late 1800s.
  • This GPS data along with heart rate measurements is transforming racehorse training into a science

    Like most sports/races, it's been a science for decades. it's called doping. I guarantee the money that is spent on doping research(and both the technology to test for said drugs as well as the technology to skirt testing) will always pale in comparison to the money spent on GPS units, laptops, and database programs.

    Doping is almost at crisis levels in the world of sports; it's rampant. What's pathetic i

  • Hook up a cantenna... (Score:3, Funny)

    by AgentPhunk ( 571249 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:12PM (#7874018)
    and you can "WarHorse" all of the wireless AP's at the racetrack.

  • Precision? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 )
    Isn't GPS too imprecise over those sort of scales? Racehorses win races by lots less than "fifteen meters, plus or minus".
    • "fifteen meters, plus or minus".
      Not a problem. If you have drift, the reading could be that far off. Drift is slow. Races are fast. Who cares if the position data has drifted off 15 feet? You are not using the GPS to find the finish line. Even with the drift, the speed data is usualy quite good. My owners manual states the speed accuracy as 0.1 nautical mile. (MPH but using Nautical miles, not US miles) Second to second speed accurate to about 0.1 MPH is usualy better than you can do with a stopwa
  • This GPS data along with heart rate measurements is transforming racehorse training into a science.

    Yes, because as everybody knows, anything that involves measuring something instantly becomes 'science.'

    Goodness, that comment is going to get all the statistics freaks upset.

  • Hah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by FrankGibson ( 722021 )
    We've got hobbits AND cyborg horses. Take THAT, Coalition of the Willing!
  • I thought GPS even without the US military's intervention had a margin for error. True it might be measured in centimeters but when the performance of a horse is measured in microseconds (think photofinish at the track) those tiny errors become a relatively large factor.
    I just don't see that this is feasible to the degree of accuracy trainers and most owners will require.
  • Timex is selling a device called the Bodylink [timex.com] that does all this: GPS + Data Recorder + Heart Rate Monitor.
    • To be fair, the unit sucks nuts. It is a sub par HRM, a sub par GPS unit, and a decent watch, packaged together at a fairly good price.

      I have a Timex HRM that isn't really all that great, and the watch is bulky and not so great (the band is a fabric material and smells bad as it fills with sweat - takes some time to dry out too). But all in all, it suits my needs. I would rather have a Polar, but they cost much more (for good reason, they are high quality) - and I don't really need all that much.

      I also ha
  • This GPS data along with heart rate measurements is transforming racehorse training into a science.

    In other news, GPS technology is also transforming aeronautics and navigation into a science, at long last...

    Oh, wait, it already was. And so was racehorse training. Just ask any of the veterinarians who've worked in that field for 30 years or so (like my father).
  • Hopefully the EU won't give in to the US pressure and cripple the Galileo project because that'll give solution providers even more accuracy.

    Galileo Leaflet [eu.int]

    Unfortunately I think tunnel vision (just like a horse !) defence issues will prevail over the potential money to be made from extremely accurate geolocation technology. And boy there is a lot of money to be made here - 200 Billion according to EU estimates.

    And before I get modeed as a Troll - Terrorists don't need accurate telemetry. When a bomb

  • I'm still waiting for a way to measure an equine's horsepower...

    What? Oh...
  • The question is how does this effect the privacy of the horses? I mean, sometimes after a long race, a horse needs some privacy to... well.. we all know where this is going =:-)
  • I don't even want to know where you put the speedometer cable.
  • Isn't GPS a huge overkill for this kind of project? I mean... you don't need a frekin sattelite to track horse around a 1/2 mile track.

    Plus I thought commercially available GPS was only accurate to aabout + or - 3 meters (or 3 feet ~= 1 meter? something like that...).

    And how much of an advantage would that be to knowing the track length and counting the number of laps? Oh well... I guess people are lazy.
    • Although basic GPS is only modest accuracy there is a way to use it differentially with twin receivers that gives accuracy to within a cm or so.
      • No need for two receivers. You are using it to measure change in position, the absolute position does not matter. As long as all measurements in a session are off by the same amount you get an accurate result.
  • WHO CARES ???? Is this the best we can do on /. ?
  • Shoot, I've been using a GPS for a speedometer in my car for close to a year now. I've found it accurate, easy to use, and cheaper than actually fixing the problem :-) (and yes i'm afraid i'm serious about that last part)
    • speedometer in my car

      Me too. I don't have to have it re-calibrated each time I change tires. No more speeding tickets just because the big tires make the speedomoter read low.

  • like with gliders... [filser.de] so data can be logged and analysed [seeyou.ws]. It has the size of a pack of sigarettes (needs 12V/100mA though). The loggers have digital signatures and they can't be tampered with (ok, you could feed an HF gps signal in there but that is stretching it).

  • privacy issues? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @04:53PM (#7875001)
    The real worry here is that they'll start tracking how fast I ride my rental horse, and charge me extra for going too fast.
  • They're not transforming training into a science... (In a lot of way's it was already there, anyways).

    They're transforming it into a statistical exercise.

  • I seriously doubt this will catch on in anywide spread way. Its simply another way of thelling how quickly the horse is traveling, but this doesnt help in the conditioning of the horse any more than a stop watch. I'm involved with horses(in a non-techy way), and believe me, the people who work in the industry are old school, and tech illiterate. They wouldnt even know what to do with this.

  • At my family's bicycle store [bikeworld.com], we have a shop dog [bikeworld.com] named Macy, who is a labrador mix. Macy is getting old now but back in his prime, he loved to pull people around on a skateboard. Some of the braver employees would put a harness on the dog and take a longboard out behind the shop and let him run. It was unreal how fast this dog could run. One of the guys came up with an idea for clocking Macy's top speed: the GPS. Using a Garmin eMap, we clocked them at 28mph. At this speed, the board began to get unst
  • HKJC is already using [drf.com] a commercial HorseTrack System.
    "Each jockey will have a small transponder tag placed in their helmet. As they pass one of the 31 strategically placed radio frequency receivers on the racetrack, their location will be calculated to within 10 centimeters."

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