Not to burst your bubble, but the claim is patently ridiculous.
The human body requires the ingestion or infussion of a myriad amount of PHYSICAL chemicals. Sunlight and water alone can not do that.
When one say's that they get Vitamin D from the sun, that is not true. It is a process of the sun on our skin which converts certain PHYSICAL chemicals into vitamin D.
By virtue of pissing and defecating, you lose that storehouse of chemicals. They must be replenshed by, you got it, food.
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I have no idea if it is possible or not, but I would be very curious to know if it could be done and have sicentific research done on it....

now mind you that it is unlikely that we will see those anytime soon, knowing that if it is indeed true....and people dont need to eat...imagine what it would do to the economy and many will not wish that to happen.

But if it is indeed true, it would take care of world hunger fast enough 


I believe in its possibilty....who knows

if you find any genuine research done on it with extensive details...plz share
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Interesting, although I tend to think its all in the belief, forget scientific law, if you believe enough in it, it will happen, whatever it may be.


edit- also, the word believe is a tricky one, i dont really think that the word believe is ever really used in the 100% correct sense.

You cannot just say you believe you have to believe you believe

 
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Not to burst your bubble, but the claim is patently ridiculous.
The human body requires the ingestion or infussion of a myriad amount of PHYSICAL chemicals. Sunlight and water alone can not do that.
When one say's that they get Vitamin D from the sun, that is not true. It is a process of the sun on our skin which converts certain PHYSICAL chemicals into vitamin D.
By virtue of pissing and defecating, you lose that storehouse of chemicals. They must be replenshed by, you got it, food.

Here's my question.  Say you have several days in a row with no sunlight due to bad weather.  What then??  Do you give in and eat?? 


This is very true, our Bodies make the change, Sunlight is the catalyst.

I do believe there may be healing properties involved however. We may not yet know the extent of the healing properties of the vitamins such as D that are produced in the reaction. Sunlight also increases levels of seratonin, which produces a "happier" state of mind. More sun=less depression, higher state of well being.
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hmmm,....  the feet thing seems a lil far fetched to me. 
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I agree that the claim is beyond the present understanding of medical science. But even to reject a claim, the science needs a proof.. And he was investigated by a reputed prof. at U.Penn ( USA) under funding of NASA and a medical doctor team ( 24/7) for over 100 days. When I was with him for three days, I did not see him eating anything. So did the people who hosted him before and after me..
Also, according to a yahoo group on the sungazing, there are a few people in US that have reached the non-eating stage. A lot of research grants have been applied to NIH, NASA and other funding organizations to understand the phenomena..

But as usual, most research is funded or influenced by big Pharma. co.s and most people reject an unusual claim without even making any effort to understand it..

I am very curious, so I have started the experiment on myself.. From the testimonials on various groups, ( and based on my own experience ow), I know that looking at sun directly during the safe period ( first hour of sunrise or last hour of sunset, when UV index is below 2), there is no harm to the eyes...

Vipul......

Yes post those links.
I used to sungaze. I would do it at Sunrise, I would try to catch the very first flame of the Sun and then watch as the Sun disk crossed the horizon, I could literally see the Earth move. The Sphinx sungazes as well.
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Or so you and the website claims... Any verifiable source by Nasa or U.Penn? i don't even have to say how ridiculous this is. Usually I wouldn't be so angered but this is a really unhealthy belief! You just cannot subsist on light alone!
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Yes post those links.
I used to sungaze. I would do it at Sunrise, I would try to catch the very first flame of the Sun and then watch as the Sun disk crossed the horizon, I could literally see the Earth move. The Sphinx sungazes as well.
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Yes post those links.
I used to sungaze. I would do it at Sunrise, I would try to catch the very first flame of the Sun and then watch as the Sun disk crossed the horizon, I could literally see the Earth move. The Sphinx sungazes as well.
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The problem with pereptions is that they aren't always correct, and therefore many eye witnesses accounts can't be taken as reliable.  If this was true, David Copperfield would really fly.
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I agree that not all eyewitness accounts are not correct especially if the person (in this case the magician) is not willing to disclose his method. That is not the case with HRM. He is teaching his method to everyone for mental, physical and spiritual  benifits at with no charge. He has been investigated by many doctors.  He lectrues all over the world  and one can meet him or write to him with questions. And his teachings have been followed by thousands and so many people are willing to share the benifits they have received from sungazing.

It is amazing, how we all ( including me) find arguments to justify our beliefs rather than driving ourselves to find the real data. Just a thought  came to my mind that it is easy for use to accept a rear disease ( and there are hundreds of them with only a  few reported cases in  a million where medical science is clueless and has no expalnation. But we can accpet them very easily but can not accept the possiblity of a person living on sunlight even when a few medical doctors are willing to verify the claim. 

Vipul..


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More quotes on the safe Sungazing from the website I previously posted:

The real cause of solar eye damage
Actually, it turns out that the main damage to the eye is photochemical, not thermal. So it is the short wavelengths that are harmful. This is shown in the paper

W. T. Ham, Jr., H. A Mueller, and D. H. Sliney
Retinal sensitivity to damage from short wavelength light
Nature 260, 153-155 (1976)

Ham and his co-workers estimated that ``sungazing at bright midnoon for 100 s can produce a threshold lesion.'' This may be roughly consistent with Lowe's experience, and is certainly in line with the reports of eye damage in sun-gazing religious pilgrims, who required at least several minutes' exposure without protection to suffer long-lasting eye damage.

A later paper

W. T. Ham, Jr., H. A. Mueller, J. J. Ruffolo,Jr., and D. Guerry III
``Solar retinopathy as a function of wavelength: its significance for protective eyewear'', in ``The Effects of Constant Light on Visual Processes'' edited by T. P. Williams and B. N. Baker
(Plenum Press, New York, 1980) pp. 319-346

says there is

. . . conclusive evidence that infra-red radiation in the solar spectrum cannot produce a retinal lesion unless one gazes at the sun for 1000 seconds with a 8 mm pupil. If the wavelengths below 700 nm in solar radiation are removed with a filter like the RG-715 Jena glass filter, direct sun gazing can be tolerated for appreciable periods of time.
In summary, . . . near infra-red solar radiation makes only a negligible contribution to retinal damage.

However, they note that shorter visible wavelengths can be harmful, so that an optical attenuation by a factor of 1000 would be required for safe continuous observation of the Sun. One can hardly disagree with the statement that using a filter attenuating sunlight by a factor of 1000 would be safe.


Statistical evidence
Evidence that the normal eye is (marginally) able to look briefly at the Sun without harm is shown by the statistical distribution of solar injuries. After all, the near-total eclipses at which eye injury occasionally occurs are visible only a few minutes per century at any given location on Earth; the unobscured Sun is available for viewing every clear day. If we suppose the Sun is up (on the average) for 12 hours a day, that's about 440,000 hours or over 26 million minutes per century that the Sun is up outside of eclipse, compared to a few minutes of dangerous time near totality. So you'd expect eye injuries from unprotected Sun-viewing to be roughly a million times more common than injuries during eclipses.

But in fact, according to the review of such injuries published by Istock in 1985, ``the vast majority of solar retinal injuries occur as a result of viewing a solar eclipse without adequate protection.'' So it usually requires the special conditions of an eclipse near totality, in which the low level of general illumination allows the pupil to open up instead of contracting (as it normally does when looking at the Sun), to push the visual system over the threshold for damage in a brief exposure.

Even when eclipses are available, such injuries are uncommon. This suggests that some additional factor, such as exposure to eye-dilating drugs, may be involved. (Quite a variety of nasal decongestants and other common drugs, as well as exposure to some pesticides, have been reported to dilate the pupils.)

While there are a handful of cases of solar retinopathy produced by staring at the Sun outside of eclipse, these are nearly all associated with bizarre religious practices, drug use, mental illness, or other abnormal and rare circumstances. Normal people just don't get eye damage from looking at the Sun; the average person looks away when the Sun is ``too bright to look at,'' and exposure for a few seconds does not seem to be sufficient to damage most eyes — though some people may be unusually susceptible to this kind of injury.


Actual eye injuries
Outside of eclipse, eye injuries from staring at the Sun are rare, because it's so unpleasant to look at the Sun when it is actually too bright to look at safely that any normal person looks away and avoids eye damage.

Eclipse injuries, on the other hand, can occur without the observer being aware of it. But even these are uncommon. For example,

M.Juan-López and M.P.Peña-Corona
Estrategia para prevenir daños a la salud ocasionados por la observación del eclipse solar en México
Salud Pública de México 35, 494-499 (1993)

discuss the incidence of solar retinopathy at the 1991 eclipse in Mexico, and find it to be less than 1 in 100,000.

One of the most famous cases of eye injury from deliberately staring at the Sun is that of Gustav Theodor Fechner, generally regarded as the ``Father of Psychophysics.'' In 1840, he looked at the Sun through various colored glasses and solutions in a study of after-images. The details of his experiences are published in

G. Th. Fechner
Ueber die subjectiven Nachbilder und Nebenbilder
Poggendorff's Annalen der Physik und Chemie 50, 193-221, 427-470 (1840)

Some of the filters he used were blue and violet in color, which produced a serious eye hazard: the blockage of most of the visible light allows the pupil to expand, but the color of the filter allows most of the photochemically harmful short waves to enter the eye. Worse yet, he viewed the Sun through a hole in the shutter of a darkened room, which — like the dim light of a solar eclipse — would contribute further to the expansion of the eye pupil. Finally, he stared at the Sun ``as long as the eyes could bear without excessive irritation.'' You could hardly devise conditions more likely to damage the retina photochemically if you tried! Not surprisingly, Fechner seriously injured his eyes in this process. The photophobia resulting from this experience is a classic symptom of solar retinitis.

Yet, after spending three years secluded in a darkened room, he found that his vision had recovered. Such recoveries are actually fairly common, though they are somewhat unusual in cases as severe as Fechner's.

For example, the Mexican study of eclipse scotomas cited above found that all 21 victims ``recovered their full visual function after four months.'' Another study,

L. S. Atmaca, A. Idil, D. Can
Early and late visual prognosis in solar retinopathy
Graefe's Archiv Clin. Exp. Ophthalmol. 233, 801-804 (1995)

found that about half the victims recovered completely in a few months. Only eyes that initially lost half or more of their visual acuity retained long-lasting damage.

In fact, Sir Isaac Newton seems to have suffered a mild scotoma at age 22 while looking at the Sun. Like Fechner, he suffered photophobia, but shut himself in a darkened room for only a few days, after which his sight returned to normal in a few months. His case was much like those reported in the Mexican study. (The details are given on another page here.)

Because eye injury outside of eclipse is so rare, and because it is caused primarily by the shorter, photochemically active wavelengths, we can expect that no injury at all can be produced when the Sun is low and the harmful wavelengths are largely removed by atmospheric extinction. The papers cited above allow this matter to be investigated quantitatively, bearing in mind the safety factor of 1000 attenuation suggested by Ham et al., and the statement that an unprotected eye can be marginally injured in 100 seconds when the Sun is high.


Sunset eye safety
In fact, in the article ``Eye protective techniques for bright light,'' published in Ophthalmology 90, 937-944 (1983), David H. Sliney wrote:


When the sun is low in the sky it is yellow or orange indicating that the hazardous blue light has been scattered out of the direct path of sunlight, and the sun may be fixated for many minutes without risk.
It's worth going through the numbers for this situation, because there is a very large and rapid change in the brightness of the Sun near sunset.

For example, the smallest possible atmospheric extinction coefficient at sea level in blue light is about 1/4 stellar magnitude per airmass (the airmass at the zenith is taken to be unity.) When the Sun is 5° above the horizon, the airmass is about 10, so the blue light is reduced by at least 2.5 magnitudes, or a factor of 10. This would ordinarily not permit a threshold lesion to develop in 100 seconds; if we suppose the damage depends only on the total exposure, then 1000 seconds would be required, assuming the brightness remained constant. But, at low latitudes, the Sun sets 20 minutes or only 1200 seconds after reaching an altitude of 5° — and during this time, its brightness is rapidly decreasing. This suggests that, at low latitudes, staring at the Sun for the full 20 minutes before sunset might be marginally enough to produce a threshold photochemical retinal lesion in an average eye. As there is evidently some variation in sensitivity, not all eyes would necessarily be safe at this point.

A prudent observer might ask for an additional factor of 10 to be safe. This requires waiting until the Sun reaches 20 airmasses, or about 2° altitude, 8 minutes before sunset at the Equator, or 12 minutes before sunset in places like Montreal, Paris, or Rome. At higher latitudes, the Sun is lower and even safer to look at 10 minutes before sunset; so ``10 minutes before sunset'' seems a safe rule to employ. As the width of the thumb at arm's length is just about 2°, it is a good ``rule of thumb'' that if you can cover up the image of the Sun with your thumb, extended at arm's length, and still have the lower edge of the thumb touching the sea horizon, you can look at the Sun safely.

A very conservative observer who wanted the full factor of 1000 attenuation of blue sunlight recommended by Ham et al. would wait until the Sun reached 30 airmasses, at an altitude of a little less than a degree (i.e., 2 solar diameters). At this point, ``continuous'' viewing is safe; but the Sun remains in sight for only 4 more minutes at low latitudes.

A more realistic calculation would allow for the additional attenuation by aerosols, which can be quite strong at the low altitudes mentioned here. In fact, the Sun is so attenuated at short wavelengths that the first people who tried to photograph sunset phenomena were continually frustrated by their inability to record an image of the Sun at the horizon on unsensitized photographic plates: see, for example, the paper by Riccò in the bibliography. The short, photochemically active wavelengths required for photography on unsensitized plates are the same ones responsible for photochemical retinal injury; if the setting Sun cannot be photographed at these wavelengths, it cannot possibly cause retinal injury.

After I did the calculations described above, I found that similar calculations had been made by

D. Sliney and H. Wolbarsht
Safety with Lasers and Other Optical Sources
(Plenum, New York, 1980)

On pp. 205-206, they say:


As sunset approaches, the relative fraction of blue light in this direct solar spectrum dramatically decreases as the sun nears the horizon. . . . [O]nce the total irradiance falls below 3 mW/cm2 (corresponding to an elevation angle of less than 5° at sunset in relatively clear weather), most people find it reasonably comfortable to look at a sunset which lasts for less than 10 minutes. . . . [They then go through a detailed calculation that need not be repeated here.] This would also explain why an individual who drives toward the sun at low elevation angles as he goes to and from work does not receive a retinal injury.
So, when the Sun is touching the sea horizon, it is certainly completely safe to look at. This is in accord with the experience of millions of people who have watched many seaside sunsets without harm.


Age effects
One consequence of the photochemical nature of retinal damage is that younger people are much more likely to suffer damage than older ones, because the lens and other media of the eye gradually become yellower with age, filtering out the most harmful short wavelengths. No doubt this helps explain Lowe's experience of being able to fixate the Sun without harm — an experiment he performed at the age of 56. Tso and La Piana's patients were likewise middle-aged. So it appears that older people are less likely to suffer eye damage from looking at the Sun.

This idea is supported by the age distribution of people who suffer solar retinitis at eclipses. According to the 1985 review article

Timothy H. Istock
Solar retinopathy: A review of the literature and case report
Journal of the American Optometric Association 56, 374-382 (1985)

a survey made after the 1970 eclipse showed that the average age of the 145 cases studied was 20.7 years.

Likewise, the median age of 20 victims of solar retinopathy suffered at the 1976 eclipse reported by

L. Rothkoff, A. Kushelevsky, M. Blumenthal
Solar retinopathy: Visual prognosis in 20 cases
Israel J. Med. Sci. 14, 238-243 (1978)

was only 15.5 years, with all but 3 being 18 or younger. The oldest of the 20 was 40 years old.

In other words, it may be possible for old geezers to look at the Sun for a few minutes, but, kids, don't try this yourself.


Telescopic observations

Retinal heating
Now, let's consider the hazards of using optical magnification. This introduces hazards of two kinds: a larger solar image on the retina, and a brighter illumination of the instrument's exit pupil. (The exit pupil of a telescope, also known as the ``Ramsden disk'', is the little circle of light, behind the eyepiece, through which you see into the instrument.)
The larger solar image on the retina produces more heating than in naked-eye observation, as shown by the calculations of White et al. Still assuming an eye pupil diameter of 3 mm, they find that a 25x telescope would produce a retinal temperature rise of 12°C in one second, and 34°C in 10 seconds. Both of these numbers exceed the threshold for retinal thermal damage. However, they assume the Sun in the zenith; for the Sun only 5° above the horizon, the heating rates are smaller by a factor of 4, which would push even the 10-second telescopic observation (just) below the threshold for thermal damage. The smaller image produced by low-power binoculars would be safer still.

Thus, while thermal damage to the retina can be produced in a few seconds if a telescope is used when the Sun is high in the sky, it is thermally safe to look at the Sun with binoculars when it is within a few degrees of the horizon.


Retinal photochemical damage
The photochemical hazard depends only on the image brightness, which (by a well-known theorem of optics) cannot be increased by an optical system. So, on the whole, using optical aid cannot significantly increase the photochemical hazard to the retina, and (if the instrument's exit pupil is small, and/or the instrument's transmission is significantly less than unity) may even decrease it.

I have argued above that the retina will not be damaged photochemically if the Sun is within a few degrees of the horizon. This conclusion remains true if optical aid is used, as any optical instrument (e.g., binoculars) can only make the retinal image dimmer, not brighter.


Heating of the iris
On the other hand, the bright exit pupil of a telescope can produce very rapid heating indeed. That is why solar filters are made to go over the telescope objective, rather than over the eyepiece. For example, a friend of mine once tried to use a dark welder's glass at the eyepiece of his telescope; he had put the glass over the eyepiece, and was just about to look in, when the welder's goggle exploded!

Let's have a look at the quantitative side of this problem. The diameter of the exit pupil of a telescope depends on the magnification of the eyepiece used, and is always the diameter of the entrance pupil (usually, the objective) divided by the magnification. So, with a magnification of 8x (typical for binoculars), the exit pupil is 1/8 the diameter of the objective.

But this means the power density and heating rate go up with the square of the magnification. For 8x binoculars, this factor is 64. But for a typical small telescope with a 100x eyepiece, this factor is 10,000. (No wonder my friend's dark glass filter exploded!)

Clearly, the hazard here is a pupil so bright it will burn the iris of the eye, even if the retinal image is still within safe bounds. And this hazard increases with the square of the magnification of ordinary telescopes and binoculars.

As the zenith solar irradiance at the surface of the Earth is about 0.1 watt/cm2, the brightness of the exit pupil of 8x binoculars is 64 times larger than this, or some 6.4 W/cm2, which is only a little less than the 6.7 W/cm2 retinal irradiance calculated by White et al. for the 25x telescope.

The heating of the retina is almost entirely due to absorption of radiation by the underlying pigment epithelium, which is only 0.01 mm thick. If the iris of the eye had its pigment concentrated in as thin a layer as the retinal pigment epithelium, the heating of the iris would be comparable to the numbers given above. Actually, the pigment in the iris is distributed over a greater depth; so we certainly overestimate the heating in making this comparison. This shows that the heating of the iris is certainly below the thermal damage threshold when binoculars are used to observe the Sun within 5° of the horizon.

Clearly, both the retina and the iris are below the threshold of injury when the Sun is viewed through binoculars within a few degrees of the horizon, but not when it is higher in the sky.


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the human flower....i wonder how long he can stay like that before he withers...
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Sunlight also increases levels of seratonin, which produces a "happier" state of mind. More sun=less depression, higher state of well being.

Not sure if anyones mentioned this..but i think what your talking about is an Autotroph..This has already been a topic on UM  i believe..

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377..._autotroph.html
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On  yahoo fourm on sungazing, someone mentioned about autotroph but it did not have any details. About this posting, I have met HRM myself and he is based in Orlando florida ( www.solarhealing.com).  From reliable sources, I have also confirmed his fasting india from a doctor who was on the team who investigated him.. Also,  the  personal doctor of Ex-rime minister of India ( Mr. Bajpai) took personal interst in him and one of the popular TV channel in India made a documentay at her place..
Also a German TV and BBC has made documentary on HRM and many pepole who have reached sungazing times of over 30 minutes are reporting their expeirnes on various groups/forums on sungazing on internet.. I have a booklet on the subject ( describing hte method with Q/A and a few testimonial which I can send it to anyone interested.. [ patelvipulk-- at-- hotmail.com]



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Yes post those links.
I used to sungaze. I would do it at Sunrise, I would try to catch the very first flame of the Sun and then watch as the Sun disk crossed the horizon, I could literally see the Earth move. The Sphinx sungazes as well.
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*shrug* If you wanna get skin cancer, go right ahead...
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If you talk about science, to reject a claim also requires a proof.. Can you please enlighten us with your scientific hypothesis on why one can not live on sunlight?
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I agree that the claim is beyond the present understanding of medical science.  But even to reject a claim, the science needs a proof.. And he was investigated by a reputed prof. at U.Penn ( USA) under funding of NASA and a medical doctor team ( 24/7) for over 100 days. When I was with him for three days, I did not see him eating anything. So did the people who hosted him before and after me..
Also, according to a yahoo group on the sungazing, there are a few people in US that have reached the non-eating stage.  A  lot of  research grants have been applied to NIH, NASA and other funding organizations to understand the phenomena..

But as usual, most research is funded  or influenced by big Pharma. co.s and most people reject an unusual claim without even making any effort to understand it..

I am very curious, so I have started the experiment on myself.. From the testimonials on various groups, ( and based on my own experience ow), I know that looking at sun directly during the safe period ( first hour of sunrise or last hour of sunset, when UV index is below 2), there is no harm to the eyes...

If you talk about science, to reject a claim also requires a proof.. Can you please enlighten us with your scientific hypothesis on why one can not live on sunlight?

I could see the earth rotating as well!! isnt it just amazing?
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By in large herbs like this sun nonsense are untested, unproven and far more dangerous then any one gives them credit for.  People rush this nonsense out as cure alls for any thing with out testing it and assume its safe because its all natural(hey rattlesnake venom is purely natural so lets all go let rattle snakes bite us then after that we can eat puffer fish and round it off with a nightshade, fox glove cocktail there all natural and from the earth so they must be healthy).  Science does change yes but it does so through constant careful testing and evaluation.  The problem is in our society no body wants to work for any thing.  They'd rather take some magical cure all like acupuncture or homeopathic remedy(the single most ubsurd quakery I know of "we're going to give you some water and its going to make you better because once upon  a time it had an infenstismal ammount of some other chemical near it that we've completely diluted out so all your really doing is drinking water").  These kind of superstitions are untested, unproven and really no different then a snake oil salesman of the 1800s.  If this sun man actually can do some thing lets test it right.  Put him in an American hospital in a locked room guarded 24/7 and constantly monitored by video survalence for three months(make sure to do a full body cavity search first) if he's still alive at the end of three months(oh we'll give him a big sky light so he gets lots of sun and guard that 24/7 to we can even leave it open when its not raining if he needs that) I'll take the claim seriously.  Other wise its more superstition no different then flat earth society bunk.
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