别墅家居: 十月 2013

2013年10月31日星期四

Lava world baffles astronomers: Planet Kepler-78b 'shouldn't exist'

Oct. 30, 2013 — Kepler-78b is a planet that shouldn't exist. This scorching lava world circles its star every eight and a half hours at a distance of less than one million miles -- one of the tightest known orbits. According to current theories of planet formation, it couldn't have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there.

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"This planet is a complete mystery," says astronomer David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "We don't know how it formed or how it got to where it is today. What we do know is that it's not going to last forever."

"Kepler-78b is going to end up in the star very soon, astronomically speaking," agrees CfA astronomer Dimitar Sasselov.

Not only is Kepler-78b a mystery world, it is the first known Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density. Kepler-78b is about 20 percent larger than Earth, with a diameter of 9,200 miles, and weighs almost twice as much. As a result it has a density similar to Earth's, which suggests an Earth-like composition of iron and rock.

The tight orbit of Kepler-78b poses a challenge to theorists. When this planetary system was forming, the young star was larger than it is now. As a result, the current orbit of Kepler-78b would have been inside the swollen star.

"It couldn't have formed in place because you can't form a planet inside a star. It couldn't have formed further out and migrated inward, because it would have migrated all the way into the star. This planet is an enigma," explains Sasselov.

According to Latham, Kepler-78b is a member of a new class of planets recently identified in data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. These newfound worlds all orbit their stars with periods of less than 12 hours. They're also small, about the size of Earth. Kepler-78b is the first planet in the new class to have its mass measured.

"Kepler-78b is the poster child for this new class of planets," notes Latham.

The team studied Kepler-78b using a newly commissioned, high-precision spectrograph known as HARPS-North, at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma. They coordinated their work with a second, independent team using the HIRES spectrograph at the Keck Observatory. The teams' measurements agreed with each other, increasing their confidence in the result.

Kepler-78b is a doomed world. Gravitational tides will draw it even closer to its star. Eventually it will move so close that the star's gravity will rip the world apart. Theorists predict that Kepler-78b will vanish within three billion years.

Interestingly, our solar system could have held a planet like Kepler-78b. If it had, the planet would have been destroyed long ago leaving no signs for astronomers today.

Kepler-78b orbits a Sun-like G-type star located 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

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How the universe's violent youth seeded cosmos with iron

New evidence that iron is spread evenly between the galaxies in one of the largest galaxy clusters in the universe supports the theory that the universe underwent a turbulent and violent youth more than 10 billion years ago. That explosive period was responsible for seeding the cosmos with iron and other heavy elements that are critical to life itself.

Researchers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), jointly run by Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, shed light on this important era by analyzing 84 sets of X-ray telescope observations from the Japanese-US Suzaku satellite. Their results appear in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Nature.

In particular, the researchers looked at iron distribution throughout the Perseus cluster, a large grouping of galaxies about 250 million light-years away.

"We saw that iron is spread out between the galaxies remarkably smoothly," said Norbert Werner, an astrophysicist at KIPAC and lead author of the paper. "That means it had to be present in the intergalactic gas before the Perseus cluster formed."

The even distribution of these elements supports the idea that they were created at least 10 billion to 12 billion years ago. According to the paper, during this time of intense star formation, billions of exploding stars created vast quantities of heavy elements in the alchemical furnaces of their own destruction. This was also the epoch when black holes in the hearts of galaxies were at their most energetic.

"The combined energy of these cosmic phenomena must have been strong enough to expel most of the metals from the galaxies at early times and to enrich and mix the intergalactic gas," said co-author and KIPAC graduate student Ondrej Urban.

To settle the question of whether the heavy elements created by supernovae remain mostly in their home galaxies or are spread out through intergalactic space, the researchers looked through the Perseus cluster in eight different directions. They focused on the hot, 10-million-degree gas that fills the spaces between galaxies and found the spectroscopic signature of iron reaching all the way to the cluster's edges.

The researchers estimate that the amount of iron in the cluster is roughly equivalent to the mass of 50 billion suns.

"We think most of the iron came from a single type of supernovae, called Type Ia supernovae," said former KIPAC member and co-author Aurora Simionescu, who is currently with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency as an International Top Young Fellow.

In a Type Ia supernova, a star explodes and releases all its material to the void. The researchers believe that at least 40 billion Type Ia supernovae must have exploded within a relatively short period on cosmological time scales in order to release that much iron and have the force to drive it out of the galaxies.

The results suggest that the Perseus cluster is probably not unique and that iron -- along with other heavy elements -- is evenly spread throughout all massive galaxy clusters, said Steven Allen, a KIPAC associate professor and head of the research team.

"You are older than you think -- or at least, some of the iron in your blood is older, formed in galaxies millions of light years away and billions of years ago," Simionescu said.

The researchers are now looking for iron in other clusters and eagerly awaiting a mission capable of measuring the concentrations of elements in the hot gas with greater accuracy.

"With measurements like these, the Suzaku satellite is having a profound impact on our understanding of how the largest structures in our universe grow," Allen said. "We're really looking forward to what further data can tell us."

The research was supported by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and by the US Department of Energy.

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Business Tabs vs Notebooks; Samsung vs Apple

2013/10/30

IHS PC shipments Although notebook PC shipments reached 47.9 million units in Q3, up 6% from Q2 the market was 5% down on last year’s Q3, says IHS.

Q3 is the fifth consecutive quarter of y-o-y decline starting from Q2 2012 more than one year ago.

The market faces its second consecutive year of decline.

‘Mobile PCs continue to be engaged in a losing battle against tablets,’ says IHS.

Apple shipped 14.25 million iPads in Q3 – both mini and 10 inch – representing 29.7% of unit shipments, but a decrease from Apple’s Q2 shipments of 14.62 million and its market share of 33.5%.

Samsung shipped 10.7 million tablets in Q3 for a 22.2% share.

This time last year, Samsung had 14.1% share while Apple had 42.4% share.

‘The surge in sub-$250 alternatives catapulted Android to the leading operating system in tablets in the third quarter of 2012, but left vendors searching for profit in an increasingly competitive market,’ says IHS.

By contrast, Apple actually increased its revenue per iPad unit in Q3 by $3.

Apple recently passed the 170 million mark in terms of cumulative units sold since the launch of the first iPad.

Samsung, its closest competitor, has shipped 54 million units since it arrived in the tablet market in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Asus grew its Nexus 7 tablet sales 87% in Q3, and Lenovo grew its tablet sales 94.6%.

However, adds IHS: ‘Little-known, regional vendors based in China have blanketed the globe with minimally configured, Android-based, 7.x-inch tablets at price points of $100 or less.’

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Go ahead, dunk your cell phone in salt water

Oct. 30, 2013 — Barrier films, used in everything from food and drug packaging to consumer electronics and solar cells, help prevent your food from spoiling, help to preserve medication, and protect your electronics from damage due to exposure to air or a splash of water. Now a group of researchers in Georgia have developed a new way to produce better films using atomic layer deposition.

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These are not the flimsy films of plastic that may seal a package of cookies. High-end barrier films that safeguard your phone's high-tech organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display from every whiff of oxygen or molecule of water vapor require higher performance transparent materials such as metal oxides.

Existing methods for manufacturing these high-performance barriers aren't perfect. Due to the way they're made, they often have small defects, resulting in tiny holes that let in water or oxygen. That's why Samuel Graham and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been exploring how to use atomic layer deposition to produce better barrier films. At the AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition, held in Long Beach, Calif. Oct. 27 -- Nov. 1, Graham will discuss some of the latest developments in this effort.

Graham and his colleagues have created new barrier films that can protect electronics in very harsh environments -- when submerged in salt water for months, for example.

"By creating such barrier films, we are able to extend the lifetime and reliability of electronic devices," Graham said. The new coatings can be used for electronics such as implantable biomedical devices, light-emitting diodes (LED) used in solid-state lighting and displays, solar cells, and organic electrochromic windows, which go from opaque to clear when a voltage is applied. Barrier films will play a large role in the development of many future electronic devices made with organic materials, Graham added.

How Atomic Layer Deposition Works

High-performance barrier films are usually made with techniques such as sputter deposition or plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. In these methods, material is either "sprayed" onto a substrate or grown from a plasma, creating a thin layer that becomes the film. Although efficient and common in industry, these techniques often result in defects, requiring multiple coatings to create good barrier films.

With atomic layer deposition, the researchers have precise control down to the molecular level, allowing them to make thin, even films that have minimal defects. In this process, the researchers surround a substrate with a gas containing a particular metal atom like aluminum. The molecules of the gas attach themselves onto the substrate, forming a single layer of atoms. Next, excess gas is removed from the chamber and another gas is introduced that then oxidizes the metal, creating a metal oxide that's impervious to air or water. The process is repeated to reach the desired thickness, which is only about 10 nanometers. In contrast, films made with more conventional techniques are tens to hundreds of times thicker.

Companies are already developing and selling atomic layer deposition technology, Graham says. But for wide-scale commercial use, more work needs to be done to improve the technology, how fast the materials are deposited, and the chemical stability and mechanical reliability of the films.

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The secret math of plants: Biologists uncover rules that govern leaf design

The UCLA team discovered the mathematical relationships using "allometric analysis," which looks at how the proportions of parts of an organism change with differences in total size. This approach has been used by scientists since Galileo but had never before been applied to the interior of leaves.

Reporting in the October issue of the American Journal of Botany, the biologists focused on how leaf anatomy varies across leaves of different sizes. They examined plant species from around the world, all grown on the UCLA campus.

While it is easy to observe major differences in leaf surface area among species, they said, differences in leaf thickness are less obvious but equally important.

"Once you start rubbing leaves between your fingers, you can feel that some leaves are floppy and thin, while others are rigid and thick," said Grace John, a UCLA doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology and lead author of the research. "We started with the simplest questions -- but ones that had never been answered clearly -- such as whether leaves that are thicker or larger in area are constructed of different sizes or types of cells."

The researchers embedded pieces of leaf in plastic and cut cross-sections thinner than a single cell to observe each leaf's microscopic layout. This allowed them to test the underlying relationship between cell and tissue dimensions and leaf size across species.

Leaves are made up of three basic tissues, each containing cells with particular functions: the outer layer, or epidermis; the mesophyll, which contains cells that conduct photosynthesis; and the vascular tissue, whose cells are involved in water and sugar transport. The team found that the thicker the leaf, the larger the size of the cells in all of its tissues -- except in the vascular tissue.

These relationships also applied to the components of the individual cells. Plant cells, unlike animal cells, are surrounded by carbohydrate-based cell walls, and the scientists discovered that the larger cells of thicker leaves are surrounded by thicker cell walls, in a strict proportionality.

The team was surprised by the "extraordinary" strength of the relationships linking cell size, cell-wall thickness and leaf thickness across diverse and distantly related plant species. These relationships can be described by new, simple mathematical equations, effectively allowing scientists to predict the dimension of cells and cell walls based on the thickness of a leaf. In most cases, the relationships the team found were what is known as "isometric."

"This means that if a leaf has a larger cell in one tissue, it has a larger cell in another tissue, in direct proportion, as if you blew up the leaf and all its cells using Photoshop," said Christine Scoffoni, a doctoral student at UCLA and member of the research team.

By contrast, a leaf's area is unrelated to the sizes of the cells inside. This allows plants to produce leaves with a huge range of surface areas without the need for larger cells, which would be inefficient in function, the researchers said.

The team hypothesized that these strong mathematical relationships arise from leaf development -- the process by which leaves form on the branch, growing from a few cells that divide into many, with cells then expanding until the leaf is fully mature. Because light can penetrate only so many layers of cells, leaves cannot vary much in the number of cells arranged vertically. The expansion of individual cells and their cell walls occurs simultaneously and is reflected in the thickness of the whole leaf. On the other hand, the number of cells arranged horizontally in the leaf continues to increase as leaves expand, regardless of the size of the individual cells.

The new ability to predict the internal anatomy of leaves from their thickness can give clues to the function of the leaf, because leaf thickness affects both the overall photosynthetic rate and the lifespan, said Sack.

"A minor difference in thickness tells us more about the layout inside the leaf than a much more dramatic difference in leaf area," John said.

The design of the leaf provides insights into how larger structures can be constructed without losing function or stability.

"Fundamental discoveries like these highlight the elegant solutions evolved by natural systems," Sack said. "Plant anatomy often has been perceived as boring. Quantitative discoveries like these prove how exciting this science can be. We need to start re-establishing skill sets in this type of fundamental science to extract practical lessons from the mysteries of nature.

"There are so many properties of leaves we cannot yet imitate synthetically," he added. "Leaves are providing us with the blueprints for bigger, better things. We just have to look close enough to read them."

The new allometric equations are an important step toward understanding the design of leaves on a cellular basis, John said. And because leaves are so diverse, she said, there is much to learn. In future research, the group will study species that are very closely related in an effort to uncover any evolutionary relationships between leaf design and function.

"What makes the cross-sections especially exciting is the huge variation from one species to the next," John said. "Some have relatively enormous cells in certain tissues, and cell shapes vary from cylindrical to star-shaped. Each species is beautiful in its distinctiveness. All of this variation needs decoding."

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2013年10月30日星期三

Power Supplies XP Power launches 200W green power supplies

2013/10/29

XPE0174-CCB200 XP Power has introduced 200W AC-DC power supplies for medical and industrial use called CCB200 series.

Suiting convection cooled applications that require a very high efficiency in an open frame design, the series has a typical efficiency of 94% and a maximum of 95%, with a flat efficiency curve across the entire operating load range above 20%. Compared to typical 200 Watt supplies, the CCB200, when delivering full power, generates 50% less dissipated heat, resulting in significantly lower component temperatures and therefore an increased product lifetime.

The high efficiency has enabled the convection-cooled units to be packaged in an industry standard 76.2 x 127.0 x 36.32 mm (3.0 x 5.0 x 1.43 inches), usually used for forced-cooled power supplies of this rating. No load power consumption is less than 0.5 W.

The series conforms to the ANSI/AAMI ES60601-1 medical 3^rd edition safety standard and has approval for use in body floating (BF) applications where a patient applied part is used without the need for a further isolation stage. The CCB200 also complies with the internationally recognized UL/EN609501-1 safety standard for IT equipment.

Due to the high efficiency the CCB200 can deliver the full 200 Watt continuous output power over an extended temperature range from – 20 to +70 degrees C without any derating, and up to +85 degrees C with derating. The industry norm is typically + 50 degrees C before derating applies.

The technology employed in the CCB200 ensures the ultra high efficiency rating is achieved from 90 VAC input, unlike current products in the market that have lower efficiencies at low line and therefore have to specify derating. The full operating range of the CCB200 series is 80 – 300 VAC, with full power available from 90 – 264 VAC.

A total of 5 models are available providing the popular nominal outputs from + 12 to +48 VDC. A user trim function provides output voltage adjustment of -4 to + 5% of stated nominal in order to accommodate load losses.

Protection features and control signals include power fail signal, remote sense and remote on/off.

The CCB200 is available from approved regional distributors, or direct from XP Power and come with a 3 year warranty

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Analogue / Linear / Mixed Signal ICs ON Semi voltage controllers are AEC-qualified

2013/10/29

ONSPR2688_NCV8876_LRES ON Semiconductor has introduced two AEC-qualified ICs with wide input voltage operational temperature ranges for use in automotive powertrain and in-cabin systems.

Running off a 2V to 44V input voltage, the NCV8876 non-synchronous boost controller with automatic wake up and shutdown functions is designed to supply a minimum output voltage during start-stop conditions in order to counteract any sag in the vehicle’s battery voltage.

The NCV8876 is enabled when the supply voltage drops below 7.2V, then boost operation is initiated once this voltage goes under 6.8V, with the IC driving an external N-channel MOSFET.

A quiescent current of just 11µA is drawn when the device is in sleep mode so that power consumption is minimised.

The NCV896530 2.1MHz switching frequency dual channel step-down DC-DC converter is targeted at the sophisticated driver assistance systems now being incorporated into modern vehicles.

Both of its channels are externally adjustable (covering 0.9V to 3.3V) and can source currents up to 1600mA.

The NCV8876 and NCV896530 both support a junction temperature range of−40 °C to 150 °C.

The NCV8876 is offered in an SOIC-8 package and the NCV896530 is enclosed in a DFN-10 package.

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Scientists reduce behaviors associated with problem gambling in rats

The study, which featured the first successful modeling of slot machine-style gambling with rats in North America, is the first to show that problem gambling behaviours can be treated with drugs that block dopamine D4 receptors. The findings have been published in Biological Psychiatry journal.

"More work is needed, but these findings offer new hope for the treatment of gambling addiction, which is a growing public health concern," says Paul Cocker, lead author of the study and a PhD student in UBC's Dept. of Psychology. "This study sheds important new light on the brain processes involved with gambling and gambling addictions."

For the study, rats gambled for sugar pellets using a slot machine-style device that featured three flashing lights and two levers they could push with their paws. The rats exhibited several behaviours associated with problem gambling such as the tendency to treat "near misses" similar to wins.

Building on previous research, the team focused on the dopamine D4 receptor, which has been linked to a variety of behavioural disorders, but never proven useful in treatment. The study found that rats treated with a dopamine D4 receptor-blocking medication exhibited reduced levels of behaviours associated with problem gambling.

While findings suggest that blocking the D4 dopamine receptor may help to reduce pathological gambling behaviours in humans, the researchers note that further research is needed before the drugs can be considered a viable pharmaceutical treatment for pathological gambling in humans.

Background

"Pathological gambling is increasingly seen as a behavioural addiction similar to drug or alcohol addiction, but we know comparatively little about how to treat problem gambling," says Cocker. "Our study is the first to show that by blocking these receptors we might be able to reduce the rewarding aspects of near-misses that appear to be important in gambling."

Methods: In the 16-month study, a cohort of 32 laboratory rats responded to a series of three flashing lights before choosing between two levers. One combination of lights (all lights illuminated) signaled a win and seven combinations (zero, one or two lights) signaled a loss. A "cash-out" lever rewarded the rat with 10 sugar pellets on winning trials, but gave a 10-second "time out" penalty on losing trails. The "roll again" lever allowed the rats to begin a new trial without penalty, but provided no sugar pellets.

Interestingly, the rats showed a tendency towards choosing the cash-out lever when two lights (near-miss) illuminated, suggesting that rats, like people, are susceptible to the near-miss effect. By blocking the D4 receptors with drugs, the researchers were successfully able to reduce the rat's choice of the "cash-out" lever on non-winning trials.

The D4 blocker drug used in the study has previously been tested on humans in attempts to treat behaviour disorders like schizophrenia but appeared to have no effect.

Near misses: This common cognitive bias is considered an important factor in the development of pathological gambling problems. The fact that slot machines tend to have a relatively high proportion of near-misses in comparison to other gambling games may be the reason that slot machines are such a particularly addictive form of gambling.

Problem gambling: Compulsive gambling affects between three and five percent of North Americans, according to recent statistics.

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Business Altera to make ARM cores on Intel process

2013/10/29

Altera today announced that its Stratix 10 SoC devices, manufactured on Intel’s 14 nm finfet process, will incorporate a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex – A53 processor core.

The ARM Cortex-A53 processor is the first 64-bit processor used in an FPGA delivering virtualization support, 256TB memory reach and error correction code (ECC) on L1 and L2 caches.

Stratix 10 SoCs will have a programmable-logic performance level of more than 1GHz; two times the core performance of current high-end 28 nm FPGAs.

By standardizing on ARM processors across its three-generation SoC portfolio, Altera will offer software compatibility and a common ARM ecosystem of tools and operating system support.

Embedded developers will be able to accelerate debug cycles with Altera’s SoC Embedded Design Suite (EDS) with the ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Altera Edition toolkit – the FPGA-adaptive debug tool.

They will also be able to use Altera’s software development kit (SDK) for OpenCL to create heterogeneous implementations using the OpenCL high-level design language.

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How a metamaterial might improve a depression treatment

Oct. 29, 2013 — A brain stimulation technique that is used to treat tough cases of depression could be considerably improved with a new headpiece designed by University of Michigan engineers.

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Computer simulations showed that the headpiece -- a square array of 64 circular metallic coils -- could one day help researchers and doctors hit finer targets in the brain that are twice as deep as they can reach today, and without causing pain.

In transcranial magnetic stimulation, special coils create a fluctuating magnetic field that then generates a weak electrical field that can travel through the scalp and skull noninvasively. The electrical signal activates neurons in targeted parts of the brain -- a complex electrical network itself.

Exactly how the technique alleviates depression isn't well understood, but it tends to reduce symptoms in roughly half of patients who don't respond to antidepressants. It's been an FDA-approved mental illness treatment since 2006, but researchers say the technology is still relatively crude.

It can send signals only 2 centimeters into the brain before it causes uncomfortable muscle contractions in a patient's scalp. It's not the depth that causes the contractions. It's the relatively large focal spot required to go in that far.

"I started working on transcranial magnetic stimulation a while ago and realized the technology was very limited," said Luis Hernandez-Garcia, a research associate professor of biomedical engineering and co-author of a paper on the work published in the October edition of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

"It was an uphill battle to get it where I wanted. If you wanted to reach deep in the brain, you also had to stimulate a lot of other brain regions that you really didn't want to stimulate."

To treat depression more effectively, it's been hypothesized that the signal should reach beyond 2 centimeters. In simulations, at 2.4 centimeters, the new system excited 2.6 times less unwanted brain volume than today's systems. It can go deeper as well.

"That improvement isn't marginal," said co-author Eric Michielssen, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. "This should open up a lot of opportunities to treat depression and other mental illness, as well as probe the brain."

This type of neural stimulation is also a tool in the cognitive neuroscience field where researchers study how brain biology leads to thoughts and actions. For example, a neuroscientist can use it to activate regions of the brain thought to be responsible for hand movement and then watch for a hand response to confirm the hypothesis. To advance this field of study, scientists need the ability to zero in on smaller parts of the brain.

"Our coils will enable neuroscientists to further understand brain function by achieving a finer resolution and stimulating regions deeper in the brain," said Luis Gomez, a doctoral student in electrical engineering and computer science and first author of the paper. "It could help us figure out which way information flows inside neural networks, and ultimately understand how the brain works."

The headpiece design is a big departure from today's figure 8-shaped devices made of just two coils. The researchers knew that in order to send a sharper signal, they'd have to change the shape of the fluctuating magnetic field the coils produce. To design a device that could do that, they worked with Anthony Grbic, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science who specializes in metamaterials -- a class of substances tailored to exhibit specific electromagnetic properties that can, for example, focus light to a point smaller than its wavelength. Grbic suggested that a surface of loops could do the job.

"These coil arrays are sub-wavelength structures -- textured devices designed to manipulate the magnetic near-field in ways that people have never imagined before," said Grbic, the Ernest and Betty Kuh Distinguished Faculty Scholar.

The prototype needs only one power source, as opposed to 64. Other so-called multichannel arrays require a power source for each coil. Having just one would make it easier to use on patients and more affordable.

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