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Abstract
This article analyses 'doomscrolling', or the compulsive reading of anxiety-inducing online content during the COVID-19 pandemic, against the common idea that it is simply an addictive social practice that impedes mental flourishing. Instead, in order to open up its inclination towards care, I read doomscrolling through the anachronistic neologism that has come to define this specifically textual practice. Tracing the operations that doomscrolling and anxiety perform on lived time, the article uses the work of Eugène Minkowski, Sigmund Freud, Lauren Berlant, Walter Benjamin, and Lisa Baraitser to examine how these practices hope to take care of time when narratives of progressive history have worn thin. I include analyses of the anxious textuality of Don DeLillo's The Silence and Saidiya Hartman's reworking of W. E. B. Du Bois's 'The Comet' to demonstrate how doomscrolling emerges from a moment when trust is anxiously fractured, but how it works, nevertheless, to witness what gets to count when time is felt to be coming to an end.
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Salisbury L, Baraitser L, Catty J, Anucha K, Davies S, Flexer MJ, Moore MD, Osserman J. A waiting crisis? Lancet 2023; 401:428-429. [PMID: 36873458 PMCID: PMC7614272 DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(23)00238-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Creative Writing (LS), Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (LS, KA, MJF, MDM), University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QH, UK; Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK (LB, SD, JO); Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK (JC)
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Bastian M, Flatø EH, Baraitser L, Jordheim H, Salisbury L, van Dooren T. 'What about the coffee break?': Designing virtual conference spaces for conviviality. Geo 2022; 9:e00114. [PMID: 36530215 PMCID: PMC7613954 DOI: 10.1002/geo2.114] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2022] [Revised: 07/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/03/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
Geography, like many other disciplines, is reckoning with the carbon intensity of its practices and rethinking how activities such as annual meetings are held. The Climate Action Task Force of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), for example, was set up in 2019 and seeks to transform the annual conference in light of environmental justice concerns. Mirroring shifts it geographic practice across the globe, these efforts point to a need to understand how new opportunities for knowledge production such as online events can operate effectively. In this article, we offer suggestions for best practice in virtual spaces arising from our Material Life of Time conference held in March 2021, a two day global event that ran synchronously across 15 time zones. Given concerns about lack of opportunities for informal exchanges at virtual conferences, or the "coffee break problem", we designed the event to focus particularly on opportunities for conviviality. This was accomplished through a focus on three key design issues: the spatial, the temporal and the social. We review previous work on the benefits and drawbacks of synchronous and asynchronous online conference methods and the kinds of geographic communities they might support. We then describe our design approach and reflect on its effectiveness via a variety of feedback materials. We show that our design enabled high delegate satisfaction, a sense of conviviality, and strong connections with new colleagues. However we also discuss the problems with attendance levels and external commitments which hampered shared time together. We thus call for collective efforts to support the 'event time' of online meetings, rather than expectations to fit them around everyday tasks. Even so, our results suggest that synchronous online events need not result in geographical exclusions linked to time zone differences, and we outline further recommendations for reworking the spacetimes of the conference.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Emil Henrik Flatø
- Department of Culture Studies and Oriental LanguagesUniversity of OsloOsloNorway
| | | | - Helge Jordheim
- Department of Culture Studies and Oriental LanguagesUniversity of OsloOsloNorway
| | | | - Thom van Dooren
- Sydney Environment Institute and Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of SydneyThe University of SydneySydneyNew South WalesAustralia
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Partington G, Salisbury L, Hinchliffe S, Michael M, Choksey L. The Index of Evidence: speculative methodologies in response to the post-truth era. Wellcome Open Res 2021. [DOI: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16938.1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
The past year has shown that even the fundamental idea of ‘evidence’ – in health contexts, but also more broadly - is coming under increasing strain. This open letter argues that the current crises of evidence and knowledge in which we find ourselves demands new speculative methodologies. It introduces the Index of Evidence – a Beacon Project funded by Exeter University’s Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health - as one example of such a methodology, outlining its theoretical foundations and process. The key innovation of this project is to rethink the form and presentation that research can take. Using the conceptual and material affordances of the index, it merges the creative and critical in ways that aim to make an important contribution to more inter-connected, theoretically sophisticated thinking around evidence.
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Baraitser L, Catty J, Salisbury L, Anucha K, Davies S, Flexer MJ, Moore MD, Osserman J. Waiting in healthcare: the time to act might be later. BMJ 2021; 372:n429. [PMID: 33579741 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n429] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Jocelyn Catty
- Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London NW3 5BA, UK
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Abstract
In this paper, we take up three terms - containment, delay, mitigation - that have been used by the UK Government to describe their phased response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the terms refer to a political and public health strategy - contain the virus, flatten the peak of the epidemic, mitigate its effects - we offer a psychosocial reading that draws attention to the relation between time and care embedded in each term. We do so to call for the development of a form of care-ful attention under conditions that tend to prompt action rather than reflection, closing down time for thinking. Using Adriana Cavarero's notion of 'horrorism', in which violence is enacted at precisely the point that care is most needed, we discuss the ever-present possibility of failures within acts of care. We argue that dwelling in the temporality of delay can be understood as an act of care if delaying allows us to pay care-ful attention to violence. We then circle back to a point in twentieth-century history - World War II - that was also concerned with an existential threat requiring a response from a whole population. Our purpose is not to invoke a fantasised narrative of 'Blitz spirit', but to suggest that the British psychoanalytic tradition born of that moment offers resources for understanding how to keep thinking while 'under fire' through containing unbearable anxiety and the capacity for violence in the intersubjective space and time between people. In conditions of lockdown and what will be a long and drawn-out 'after life' of COVID-19, this commitment to thinking in and with delay and containment might help to inhabit this time of waiting - waiting that is the management and mitigation of a future threat, but also a time of care in and for the present.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa Baraitser
- Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck University of London, London, WC1E 7HX, UK
| | - Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QJ, UK
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Abstract
In this paper we take up three terms - containment, delay, mitigation - that have been used by the UK Government to describe their phased response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the terms refer to a political and public health strategy - contain the virus, flatten the peak of the epidemic, mitigate its effects - we offer a psychosocial reading that draws attention to the relation between time and care embedded in each term. We do so to call for the development of a form of care-ful attention under conditions that tend to prompt action rather than reflection, closing down time for thinking. Using Adriana Cavarero's notion of 'horrorism', in which violence is enacted at precisely the point that care is most needed, we discuss the ever-present possibility of failures within acts of care. We argue that dwelling in the temporality of delay can be understood as an act of care if delaying allows us to pay care-ful attention to violence. We then circle back to a point in twentieth-century history - World War II - that was also concerned with an existential threat requiring a response from a whole population. Our purpose is not to invoke a fantasised narrative of 'Blitz spirit', but to suggest that the British psychoanalytic tradition born of that moment offers resources for understanding how to keep thinking while 'under fire' through containing unbearable anxiety and the capacity for violence in the intersubjective space and time between people. In conditions of lockdown and what will be a long and drawn-out 'after life' of COVID-19, this commitment to thinking in and with delay and containment might help to inhabit this time of waiting - waiting that is the management and mitigation of a future threat, but also a time of care in and for the present.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa Baraitser
- Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck University of London, London, WC1E 7HX, UK
| | - Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QJ, UK
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Abstract
This editorial introduces a collection of research articles and reflections on what it means to wait during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Written from conditions of lockdown, this collection gathers together the initial thoughts of a group of interdisciplinary scholars in the humanities and social sciences who have been working on questions of waiting and care through a project called
Waiting Times.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa Baraitser
- Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck University of London, London, WC1E 7HX, UK
| | - Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QJ, UK
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Abstract
This article analyses how World War II shifted and contained embodied experiences of waiting in relation to broader ideas of lived time in modernity. The trench warfare of World War I has often been imagined as a limit experience of anxious waiting, but World War II produced compelling accounts of experiences of suspended time in civilian populations exposed to the threat and anticipation of 'total war'. This article analyses representations of this suspended present drawn from Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf, alongside materials in the Mass Observation Archive, to develop an account of how exposure to a future shaped by the potential of annihilation from the air reshaped experiences of durational temporality and the timescapes of modernity in the London Blitz. It also explores the relationship between anxiety, waiting, and care by attending to psychoanalytic theories that developed in the wartime work of Wilfred Bion and Melanie Klein. Extending Freud's account of anxiety as producing 'yet time', this article describes how and why both literary and psychoanalytic texts came to understand waiting and thinking with others as creating the conditions for taking care of the future.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QJ, UK
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Hinchliffe S, Jackson MA, Wyatt K, Barlow AE, Barreto M, Clare L, Depledge MH, Durie R, Fleming LE, Groom N, Morrissey K, Salisbury L, Thomas F. Healthy publics: enabling cultures and environments for health. Palgrave Commun 2018; 4:57. [PMID: 29862036 PMCID: PMC5978671 DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0113-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/16/2017] [Accepted: 04/19/2018] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
Despite extraordinary advances in biomedicine and associated gains in human health and well-being, a growing number of health and well-being related challenges have remained or emerged in recent years. These challenges are often 'more than biomedical' in complexion, being social, cultural and environmental in terms of their key drivers and determinants, and underline the necessity of a concerted policy focus on generating healthy societies. Despite the apparent agreement on this diagnosis, the means to produce change are seldom clear, even when the turn to health and well-being requires sizable shifts in our understandings of public health and research practices. This paper sets out a platform from which research approaches, methods and translational pathways for enabling health and well-being can be built. The term 'healthy publics' allows us to shift the focus of public health away from 'the public' or individuals as targets for intervention, and away from the view that culture acts as a barrier to efficient biomedical intervention, towards a greater recognition of the public struggles that are involved in raising health issues, questioning what counts as healthy and unhealthy and assembling the evidence and experience to change practices and outcomes. Creating the conditions for health and well-being, we argue, requires an engaged research process in which public experiments in building and repairing social and material relations are staged and sustained even if, and especially when, the fates of those publics remain fragile and buffeted by competing and often more powerful public formations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stephen Hinchliffe
- Department of Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Mark A Jackson
- Department of History, College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Katrina Wyatt
- Child Health and Health Complexity, Institute for Health Research, University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter, UK
| | | | - Manuela Barreto
- Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
- Lisbon University Institute (CIS/ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal
| | - Linda Clare
- Centre for Research in Ageing and Cognitive Health, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Michael H Depledge
- European Centre for the Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, Truro, UK
| | - Robin Durie
- Department of Politics and International relations, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Lora E Fleming
- European Centre for the Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, Truro, UK
| | - Nick Groom
- Department of English, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Karyn Morrissey
- European Centre for the Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, Truro, UK
| | - Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
| | - Felicity Thomas
- University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter, UK
- College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
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Salisbury L, Code C. Jackson's Parrot: Samuel Beckett, Aphasic Speech Automatisms, and Psychosomatic Language. J Med Humanit 2016; 37:205-222. [PMID: 26922435 PMCID: PMC4866982 DOI: 10.1007/s10912-015-9375-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between automatic and involuntary language in the work of Samuel Beckett and late nineteenth-century neurological conceptions of language that emerged from aphasiology. Using the work of John Hughlings Jackson alongside contemporary neuroscientific research, we explore the significance of the lexical and affective symmetries between Beckett's compulsive and profoundly embodied language and aphasic speech automatisms. The interdisciplinary work in this article explores the paradox of how and why Beckett was able to search out a longed-for language of feeling that might disarticulate the classical bond between the language, intention, rationality and the human, in forms of expression that seem automatic and "readymade".
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Salisbury
- />Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Room 221, Queen’s Building, Queen’s Drive, Exeter, EX4 4QH UK
| | - Chris Code
- />Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Washington Singer Building, Perry Road, Exeter, EX4 4QG UK
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth Barry
- Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
| | - Ulrika Maude
- Department of English, University of Bristol, 3/5 Woodland Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1 TB, UK
| | - Laura Salisbury
- Department of English and Film, University of Exeter, Room 221, Queen's Building, Queen's Drive, Exeter, EX4 4QH, UK
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Salisbury L, Wilkie K, Bulley C, Shiels J. 'After the stroke': patients' and carers' experiences of healthcare after stroke in Scotland. Health Soc Care Community 2010; 18:424-432. [PMID: 20491968 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2524.2010.00917.x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
We report findings on patients with stroke and carers experiences of the healthcare system in Scotland after stroke. These findings emerged from data collected in a primary qualitative study exploring patients with stroke and carers perception of a Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Clinic. Rich data emerged in relation to healthcare after stroke as experienced by both patients and carers, highlighting important clinically relevant messages and constituting an important area for dissemination. Thirteen patients with stroke and nine carers consented to participate. Data were collected using face-to-face semi-structured interviews, undertaken in April and May 2007, and analysed using the framework of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). IPA aims to explore in depth the participants lived experiences of a specific phenomenon. An overarching theme of 'After the stroke' was identified. Within this, six sub-themes emerged entitled, (1) 'What is wrong?'; (2) 'Help came quickly'; (3) 'Something is still wrong'; (4) 'In the hospital'; (5) 'I'm taking them home' and (6) 'Back at home'. Interestingly, patients with stroke and carers recalled similar parts of the pathway through the healthcare system after stroke, resulting in the six chronological sub-themes. The data highlighted issues surrounding recognition of stroke symptoms by both participants and professionals; expeditious admission to hospital and stroke unit; consultation during the discharge planning process and access to support and community follow up. Despite the availability of clinical guidelines to direct the management of stroke, this study suggests that the experiences of patients with stroke and carers do not always concur with guideline recommendations. These results highlight that such recommendations do not always transfer into clinical practice. Both clinicians and service managers should consider these issues when delivering care to patients after stroke.
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Affiliation(s)
- L Salisbury
- Centre for Integrated Healthcare Research, School of Health in Social Science, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, UK.
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Salisbury L, Durward BR, Rowe PJ. Measurement of Rising to Stand, Standing and Gait Using a New Quantified Functional Outcome Measure to Evaluate Physiotherapy in Stroke. Physiotherapy 2002. [DOI: 10.1016/s0031-9406(05)60567-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
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Salisbury L, Johnson M. The Analgesic Effects of Interferential Therapy Compared with TENS on Experimental Cold Induced Pain in Normal Subjects. Physiotherapy 1995. [DOI: 10.1016/s0031-9406(05)66581-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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Dauner CD, Salisbury L. Point-counter/point. Solving California's health care crisis. Calif Hosp 1992; 6:6-9, 27. [PMID: 10116459] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- C D Dauner
- California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems
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Salisbury L, Toombs HS, Kelly EA, Crawford S. The effect of end-user searching on reference services: experience with MEDLINE and current contents. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1990; 78:188-91. [PMID: 2073240 PMCID: PMC225374] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- L Salisbury
- Information Services, Washington University School of Medicine Library, St. Louis, Missouri 63110
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Smith MD, Nakeff-Plaat JP, Salisbury L. Introduction. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1987; 75:19-20. [PMID: 16017879 PMCID: PMC227599] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- M D Smith
- Washington University School of Medicine, 660 S. Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63110
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Smith MD, Salisbury L. Bibliographic research and critical inquiry: a learning module for graduate students in health services administration. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1985; 73:242-8. [PMID: 4027442 PMCID: PMC227639] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Critical to the success of contemporary health administration practice is the ability to identify, access, synthesize, apply, and report information from a diversity of sources. To enhance the critical logic and bibliographic research skills of first-semester graduate students in health services administration, a fifteen-hour learning module was collaboratively developed and integrated into a required course on health care organization. Reference librarians and health administration faculty participate to provide both group and individual instruction.
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Duerre JA, Salisbury L, Miller CH. Preparation and characterization of sulfoxides of S-adenosyl-L-homocysteine and S-ribosyl-L-homocysteine. Electromyography 1969; 9:505-14. [PMID: 5385061 DOI: 10.1016/0003-2697(70)90213-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/15/2023]
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