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Dear reader,
among others, the first quarter of 2025 was characterised by the preparations for the DFG interim report symposium, which took place on 11 February at Bonn together with the other eight NFDI consortia of the second round. In general, it was emphasised that NFDI4Earth has been well received in our community, and that we have shown significant achievements across several key areas. This gives us additional motivation for the renewal proposal, which must be submitted to the DFG by the beginning of August.
Furthermore, we launched our services as well as presented our architecture, the NFDI4Earth Label and the NFDI4Earth FAIRness & Openness Commitment as part of a first NFDI4Earth Roadshow in March. End of April, the EGU is on the agenda of many members of the NFDI4Earth community. The consortium will be represented again with a booth as well as a supporting programme of pitches about our manifold acticities, and we look forward to meeting you at Vienna!
Our newsletter shall function as an information hub based on your contributions. The newsletter is published quarterly. The submission deadline is two weeks before the end of a quarter, so for the next newsletter please send your contributions before 15 June 2025. See the newsletter website for more details.
For now, enjoy the Spring Newsletter and Happy Easter!
The NFDI4Earth Team
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Welcome GESIS | Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
Four Institutional signatories of NFDI4Earth Commitment
NFDI4Earth Outcomes
The NFDI4Earth Roadshow
NFDI4Earth OneStop4All is online
NFDI4Earth Academy school on RDM and data manipulation
Advancing FAIRness: Concept Paper by NFDI4Earth Interest Group HPC in ESS
Bridging Science and Policy: NFDI4Earth x GDI-DE
NFDI4Earth Synthesis Architecture Workshop in Bremen
Save the Date!
NFDI4Biodiversity meets NFDI4Earth - Joint Plenary 2025 at Bremen
Participate in NFDI4Earth
Helpdesk Question of the Quarter
HeFDI Code School courses
Meet us here
News from the RDM & ESS Communities
NFDI4Earth at the E-Science Days 2025
DeepExtremeCubes: New Open Dataset Enhances Predictions to Climate Extremes
FAIRagro publishes FAIRness and Openness Commitment
International News
International Data Week 2025 in Brisbane
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In March 2025, GESIS joined the NFDI4Earth Consortium with the EarthLinks Pilot Project, a multidisciplinary use case co-funded by KonsortSWD - NFDI4Society. Dr. Dennis Abel and Dr. Stefan Jünger, both from the team Survey Data Augmentation (SDA) at GESIS, lead the pilot project to advance the usage of Earth observation data in the social sciences. The team provides innovative harmonization and linking services for research data. One focus lies on the integration of georeferenced survey data with context variables such as environmental indicators. The team has a strong inter- and transdisciplinary orientation and engages in networks like the Leibniz Research Network “Earth & Societies”.
EarthLinks bridges the gap between Earth observation data and social science research by creating an open-source, user-friendly tool for integrating time- and space-sensitive datasets. The R Shiny-based application simplifies data linking and analysis without requiring programming skills, empowering researchers to explore new interdisciplinary avenues. By adhering to FAIR principles and providing comprehensive tutorials, EarthLinks fosters collaboration between social sciences and Earth system sciences, opening pathways to innovative research on environmental and societal dynamics.
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences is Europe’s largest infrastructure provider in the social sciences. It maintains institutional and project-related collaborations with universities and research institutions in Germany and abroad. It coordinates KonsortSWD – NFDI4Society and participates in important European projects such as the European Social Survey (ESS), the European Value Study (EVS), the European archive network CESSDA and the OECD project Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
Bernhard Miller (GESIS)
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NFDI4Earth Welcomes four Institutional Signatories of NFDI4Earth Commitment
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In February and March 2025, multiple organisations signed the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment.
First, the Department of Earth Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin) has become the first university department to sign the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment. This is a clear statement of the department's commitment to FAIR and open research data. The topic will play an increasingly important role at the department in the future and concrete measures will be implemented to achieve the goals of the commitment. Scientists at the Department of Earth Sciences and the University Library of FU Berlin are already involved in NFDI4Earth: H.Becker (Geochemistry), I. Kirchner (Meteorology) and A. Hübner (University Library). More information: Geo FU press release. Contact: Prof. Dr. T. John (timm.john@fu-berlin.de).
AGILE is the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe. With over 80 members, it provides a forum for geographic information researchers and educators to meet and exchange ideas. At its last meeting, the AGILE council unanimously voted to sign the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment, making AGILE the first academic society to do so. The signing is a signal for the AGILE community's engagement in making research FAIR, open, and reproducible. Their engagement includes funding education-related initiatives such as the AGILE PhD school and promotion of data and code publications. More information: AGILE blog article. Contact: C. Keßler (agile-secretary@gmail.com).
The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) is committed to advancing FAIR data and Open Science principles in geodata management and become the first governmental agency to sign the NFDI4Earth Commitment. BKG underscores its dedication to transparent, high-quality, and interoperable geodata provision based on sustainable research data infrastructures, open standards, and geodata regulations. The commitment aligns with BKG’s ongoing efforts to ensure efficient geodata management and enhance collaboration with the scientific community. Contact: M. Brühl (Head of the Coordination Office GDI-DE, VorzimmerPraesident@bkg.bund.de).
The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities is the first infrastructure provider to sign the NFDI4Earth Commitment. The LRZ strives for FAIRness through institutional policies on securing good scientific practice and its participation in the NFDI. In its role as a service institute, LRZ helps ESS customers and collaborators to make their research data FAIR and open – by consulting and education, and by enabling FAIR data publication from our High-Performance Computing systems through novel approaches. Contact: Prof. Dr. D. Kranzlmüller (Chairman of the Board of Directors, leitung@lrz.de).
NFDI4Earth engages with the community – be it student, service provider, or scientist. The team looks forward to collaborate with the signing organisations in the spirit of the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment.
Daniel Nüst (TU Dresden)
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NFDI4Earth Roadshow Series: Engaging the Community and Shaping the Future
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NFDI4Earth presented its services in a roadshow series (Photo Credit: NFDI4Earth team at Plenary '24)
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NFDI4Earth has launched a roadshow series to present the latest developments in products and activities while actively gathering feedback from the community.
The first roadshow event focused on central support services, including the OneStop4All, a central access point to RDM resources, the User Support Network offering a helpdesk, the Living Handbook, curated by the Editorial Board, the Knowledge Hub, providing semantic data, and the EduTrain portal, offering interactive open learning resources. Each service encourages community contributions, e.g., by suggesting resources, providing best practices and tutorial articles, or becoming a Helpdesk expert.
The second roadshow event spotlighted the FAIRness and Openness Commitment, the Label, and Architecture. Key engagement opportunities include: signing the commitment - either as an individual or institution, and supporting the architecture synthesis with curating building blocks.
The most recent roadshow event outlined the timeline and strategy for developing the NFDI4Earth 2.0 proposal, emphasizing the importance of community input in shaping the next phase of NFDI4Earth.
Christin Henzen (TU Dresden)
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NFDI4Earth OneStop4All is online
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Screenshot of the search form of the OneStop4All. |
The OneStop4All is the key entry point to the resources of NFDI4Earth. We are happy to announce that the first public beta version is online. It has already been presented to the community at an NFDI4Earth Academy Coffee lecture and the NFDI4Earth Roadshow. We included requirements of the community in the development process, and now we welcome your feedback on its usability, content and functionality, so that we can improve the portal iteratively.
Therefore, we invite you to try out the OneStop4All portal and to give feedback on your experience and every aspect of the site – functionalities, usability, descriptions, features, things you liked, ideas for improvement, etc. – all feedback is very welcome. Please share your feedback with helpdesk@nfdi4earth.de or file a ticket to the user support network with the "User Support" form in the OneStop4All.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Ivonne Anders (DKRZ), Sibylle Hassler (KIT) and Marie Ryan (Hereon)
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NFDI4Earth Academy school on RDM and data manipulation
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Participants from the Academy School at University of Cologne. (Photo Credit: NFDI4Earth Academy)
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Our first school of the second Academy cohort took place at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy of the University of Cologne from 18 to 20 March 2025 and offered a varied and interesting programme, partly in collaboration with other NFDI consortia.
On the first day, Justine Vandendorpe and Sophie Boße from the ZB MED, who lead the training activities within NFDI4Microbiota and FAIRagro respectively, gave detailed presentations on data organisation and documentation. On the second day, Daniela Ransby and Kathrin Riemann-Campe (AWI/PANGAEA) followed with intensive hands-on workshops on how to prepare your own dataset for data submission and how to retrieve and use datasets from PANGAEA in R and Python. In the evening, Sonja Hänzelmann (AWI) and Jonas Kuppler (GFZ) spoke about visual exploration, showing the different options and possibilities in Python and R. The programme was completed by Carsten Keßler (M 1.3, Bochum University of Applied Sciences), who gave an interactive lecture on geospatial data analysis on the third day of the school.
Both the atmosphere and the weather during the event were very sunny and there was plenty of room for exchange between the 18 participants and the lecturers.
We would like to thank all the speakers and Fellows present for their valuable contributions!
More information about the Academy and upcoming events can be found on our website !
Jonas Kuppler (GFZ & Geo.X) & Kristin Sauerland (MARUM & Deutsche Allianz Meeresforschung)
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Advancing FAIRness: a Concept Paper by the NFDI4Earth Interest Group on High-Performance Computing
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An up-to-date take on advancing FAIR Research Data Management in HPC in the Earth System Sciences: The official status report and addendum to the 2022 concept paper of the Interest Group (IG) "High-performance Computing in Earth System Sciences" of NFDI4Earth are published on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14796888).
The update to our original paper "FAIR@HPC - Improving HPC usage in ESS by FAIR data and compute services" addresses the continuously increasing demand for HPC infrastructure in the Earth System Sciences and the challenges arising from this for the NFDI. It underscores the importance of integrating HPC with Data Lakes, the need for efficient data cataloguing and indexing strategies, and the consideration of the specific requirements of ML/AI applications. Furthermore, the document discusses the idea of "data projects" and the need for a stronger and more consistent paradigm shift towards data-centric projects. With these methodical focuses, we suggest steps towards a FAIR HPC and data-driven computing ecosystem in the upcoming years.
Hannes Thiemann (DKRZ), Stephan Hachinger (LRZ), Stephan Frickenhaus (AWI), Jonas Eberle (DLR) & Angelika Humbert (AWI)
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Bridging Science and Policy: NFDI4Earth x GDI-DE
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A recent workshop mid of March 2025 offered an opportunity to explore how closer cooperation between NFDI4Earth and governmental bodies like GDI-DE (Geodateninfrastruktur Deutschland) can benefit both scientific communities and policy-making. Hannes Thiemann’s introduction of the NFDI4Earth services highlighted a streamlined approach to managing geodata via a unified approach.
Additionally, discussions around high-value datasets (HVD) emphasized the potential of making quality geodata more accessible to all stakeholders. Such collaborations could enhance data interoperability, ensure more efficient sharing of essential datasets, and ultimately support informed decision-making at both research and governmental levels.
By working together, scientific and governmental institutions can create a more robust infrastructure that meets diverse user needs and promotes sustainable progress.
Tim Schürmann (BKG)
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NFDI4Earth Synthesis Architecture Workshop in Bremen
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Participants of TA3 at 'Haus der Wissenschaft', Bremen (Photo Credit: Ira Gerloff) |
A workshop on the NFDI4Earth Synthesis Architecture took place at the beginning of April at the ‘Haus der Wissenschaft’ in Bremen. The workshop was organized by Task Area 3 '2Interoperate'. Representatives from the Helmholtz DataHub were also engaged.
The workshop focussed on the topic of how the findings on the NFDI4Earth Synthesis Architecture can be represented in a terminology and in what form the existing NFDI4Earth ontology and the Living Handbook can be used. Furthermore, general directions, such as data-as-a-service, contacting service providers to adapt their processes with regard to NFDI4Earth requirements, and the use of workflow management systems (such as Galaxy ES) were evaluated.
Finally, questions about the onboarding processes of other stakeholders were evaluated and analysed using examples, and categorizing different forms of contributions to the architecture. It became clear that these onboarding processes must be very well designed, customised to the respective stakeholders, and that correspondingly coordinated information material must be provided. If you are working on related topics and would like to contribute, feel free to contact Task Area 3 '2Interoperate'.
Claudia Müller & Stephan Frickenhaus (AWI)
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NFDI4Biodiversity meets NFDI4Earth - Joint Plenary 2025 at Bremen
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NFDI4Earth and NFDI4Biodiversity are ‘close mates’, which is documented by intensive personal and institutional contacts, cooperative activities, and regular exchanges, as well as common events and meetings. Therefore, both consortia decided to hold a joint back-to-back community event in 2025 taking place on 22 to 25 September at the University of Bremen and at MARUM (Center for Marine Environmental Sciences).
NFDI4Earth opens the back-to back plenary in the week on 22 and 23 September with its annual NFDI4Earth Plenary, followed by a joint event of both consortia on 23 and 24 September.
Save the date and join us at Bremen in September 2025!
Jörg Seegert (TU Dresden, for the event co-organisation team)
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Participate in NFDI4Earth
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Helpdesk Question of the Quarter
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The User Support Network (USN) answers public helpdesk questions. This section highlights relevant enquiries and solutions.
Question: In hydrosciences, data like ERA5 are often pre-processed (e.g., aggregated from hourly to daily). How can such derived data be shared efficiently within research groups or with project partners to avoid redundant work?
Answer: We started with a consultation to distinguish between data and technical needs. As the main contact for climate model data, we recommended the DKRZ, which provides direct access to ERA5 data in collaboration with ECMWF.
Since DKRZ’s services didn’t fully meet the user’s needs, we suggested using a Thredds server, which shares data in NetCDF format, includes metadata following CF conventions, and integrates well with analysis workflows. We supported the setup of a test server with a linked shared drive, in cooperation with the institutional IT team. The solution was successfully tested and fulfilled all requirements.
Feedback: The solution works well for this case. Within NFDI4Earth, we promote such examples as good practice to support reuse and streamline data processing across the community.
Ivonne Anders (DKRZ) and Christin Henzen (TU Dresden)
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HeFDI Code School 2025 offers two courses on research software
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The HeFDI Code School 2025 offers researchers at Hessian universities a valuable opportunity to enhance their software development skills, focusing on sustainable and qualitative research software. All workshops are free of charge. There are two tracks, one basic and one advanced track. The basic track is called ‘Getting Started with Python Programming’. This track is designed for individuals new to programming or those seeking a refresher in Python. It comprises three online workshops and spans over three days in May 2025 (9, 16 and 23 May). Participants will engage in hands-on coding sessions, alternating between presentations and exercises to solidify their understanding.
There is also an advanced track on ‘Sustainable Research Software’. This track caters to experienced developers with a general knowledge of programming languages and a basic understanding of object-oriented programming and versio control (e.g. Git). It focuses on enhancing code quality, reusability, and sustainability in scientific software development..
For more information and registration details, visit the HeFDI Code School 2025 website.
Dominik Hezel (Goethe University Frankfurt)
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After the great interest last year, NFDI4Earth will again join the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) from 27 April to 2 May 2025 at Vienna.
NFDI4Earth welcomes researchers at its booth #19 entrance hall, where we have daily talks about diverse topics during the conference breaks, such as community activities, the user support nerwork, and our services as well as about the work of our partners.
The booth has friendly neighbours jointly organised by our partners German Climate Computing Center and University of Hamburg at booth #18 and the German Aerospace Center and the Leibniz Supercomputing Center Munich at booth #21.
Many colleagues from NFDI4Earth and our community are involved in various sessions or events of the EGU - a preliminary selection as well as our booth programme can be found here, whereby we would like to draw your attention especially to two of our joint events
Please spread the word about these events and don’t miss to visit us at our booths or join our events and sessions.
We are looking forward to meeting you at Vienna!
Jörg Seegert (TU Dresden)
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News from the Research Data Management & Earth System Science Communities
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NFDI4Earth at the E-Science Days 2025
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The E-Science Days 2025 were held in Heidelberg from 12 to 14 March 2025. Four representatives of NFDI4Earth participated and presented innovative projects. The pilot project for the provision of governmental data for science was presented (Anders et al. 2025), as well as an incubator project for the use of Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) for decentralized and efficient data management (Kulüke et al. 2025).
The team also took part in workshops on key topics such as the networking of RDM helpdesks, legal aspects of licences and open science, the use and standardization of metadata, as well as practical exercises on the necessity of multiple RDM aspects using Lego bricks. The event provided a valuable opportunity to make new contacts, exchange ideas with experts, and further develop sustainable research data strategies.
Ivonne Anders (DKRZ), Sibylle Hassler (KIT), Klaus Getzlaff (GEOMAR)
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DeepExtremeCubes: New open dataset enhances predictions to climate extremes
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Illustration of DeepExtremeCubes generation and example minicubes over South America, along with the corresponding data layers contained within each minicube. |
As compound climate extremes—such as simultaneous heatwaves and droughts—become more frequent, understanding their ecological impacts is increasingly important. A newly released dataset, DeepExtremeCubes, provides structured, high-resolution data to improve machine learning (ML) models for predicting vegetation responses to these events.
The dataset comprises over 40,000 globally sampled minicubes (2.5 km × 2.5 km areas) containing climate extreme variables, satellite imagery, climate data, and land cover maps from 2016 to 2022. These minicubes capture extreme conditions, including heatwaves, droughts, and compound heatwave-drought events, as well as non-extreme conditions. This comprehensive coverage enables ML models to better predict ecological responses to climate extremes. Additionally, the minicubes integrate Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, ERA5-Land climate reanalysis data, and topographic information, with a focus on regions dominated by persistent vegetation.
DeepExtremeCubes was developed by an international research team from Leipzig University, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, the University of Valencia, and Brockmann Consult GmbH, with funding from the European Space Agency (ESA). The dataset is openly accessible in the link here, as cited in the associated publication supporting reproducible research and advancing strategies for assessing ecosystem responses to climate extremes.
Chaonan Ji (University of Leipzig)
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FAIRagro publishes FAIRness and Openness Commitment
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The NFDI consortium FAIRagro published the FAIRagro FAIRness and Openness Commitment. It is based on the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment with only small adjustments to address the agricultural sciences community. This is a great step towards more FAIR and Open research data management practices in a closely related research discipline and the NFDI4Earth members look forward to jointly advance our missions, infrastructures, products, and services with the support of both commitments’ signatories.
From the FAIRagro announcement (read the full announcement here):
“Access to high-quality data is essential as a basis for gaining scientific knowledge. We are committed to promoting FAIR and open research data management across disciplines and institutions in agricultural science – and we want to make a difference. [..] The Commitment helps to involve the FAIRagro community in shaping, promoting and implementing the FAIRagro agenda. We invite all researchers and institutions to become ambassadors for sustainable change towards more FAIR and open data practices in agricultural science.”
Daniel Nüst (TU Dresden)
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International Data Week 2025 (IDW 2025) in Brisbane
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International Data Week (IDW) is an international research data management event held every two years. This year’s 2025 edition will take place from 13 to 16 October 2025 in Brisbane, Australia. The event is jointly organized by the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA), the World Data System (WDS), and the Research Data Alliance (RDA) being delivered by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), Australia’s leading research data infrastructure organisation.
IDW 2025 will bring together the 25th RDA Plenary Meeting (RDA P25) and SciDataCon, the scientific conference focusing on the frontiers of data in research. Key topics include data sharing, management, and reuse in the context of pressing global challenges. Under the theme “Data for Positive Change: Empowering Communities and Advancing Research,” the event will convene a global community of researchers, infrastructure providers, policymakers, and societal stakeholders.
Deadline for submissions for RDA P25 is 21 April 2025.
Germany and the NFDI will also be part of these events and will be sending a delegation of NFDI experts. Topics such as data ethics, interoperability, and the FAIR principles are central to the goals of the NFDI and the group looks forward to constructive discussions and exchanges around critical data sharing issues that the international community also face.
Members of NFDI4Earth consortium are warmly invited to contribute with talks, workshops, or networking ideas, and to make the German perspective on research data more visible on the global stage.
Please get in touch with us at nfdi4earth-news@tu-dresden.de if you plan to attend!
Christiane Schmidt (GFZ) & Najla Rettberg (TU Dresden)
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NFDI Consortium Earth System Sciences | https://nfdi4earth.de
Newsletter edited by: Dr. Christiane Schmidt (Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences) & NFDI4Earth Coordination Office (TU Dresden)
Report news to: nfdi4earth-news@tu-dresden.de
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