Withings intros WiFi-connected baby scale so you can tell your friends oh, how they've grown (hands-on)

Withings put itself on the map with its WiFi-connected scale, and though it recently took a detour into blood pressure readings, it's now returning to what it does best: tallying the weight of sweet, vulnerable, crying humans. The Smart Baby Scale is exactly what it sounds like -- a scale designed specifically for infants and toddlers -- and like its predecessor, it organizes all its data in charts that you can read on a PC or iOS device. The scale comes with a baby basket for infants, which you can remove once your little bambino outgrows it. According to the company, the weighing area was specifically designed to be just large enough for babies, but small enough that grown-ups likely won't be able to weigh packages, watermelons and other heavyweight items that might break the scale. Look for it in the second quarter of this year for $179 -- a twenty-dollar premium over the adult version. Check our hands-on after the break.
Mat Smith contributed to this report.

Continue reading Withings intros WiFi-connected baby scale so you can tell your friends oh, how they've grown (hands-on)

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Kutcher wants to return to 'Two and a Half Men' (omg!)

Actor Ashton Kutcher speaks during the panel discussion for the sitcom "Two and a Half Men" at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour for CBS, the CW and Showtime, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)

PASADENA, California (AP) ? A clean-cut Ashton Kutcher said Wednesday that he's interested in continuing with "Two and a Half Men" beyond this season ? and CBS wants him, too.

Kutcher's addition to television's most popular comedy following star Charlie Sheen's implosion was a grand experiment that has worked out better than CBS or the producers could have dreamed.

The show is up 20 percent in viewers over Sheen's final season, the Nielsen ratings company said, and Kutcher has also brought in a younger crowd.

"I've had a blast," said Kutcher, who plays the heartbroken Walden Schmidt. "Since I stopped doing 'That '70s Show' I've always wanted to go back and do television."

Kutcher appeared at a news conference without the long hair and beard he has worn this season. It was cut as part of the plot in an episode of "Two and a Half Men" that airs Monday, he said.

Kutcher will be working on movies after filming for this season of "Two and a Half Men" concludes, but "right now I'm looking at it as a hiatus," he said.

CBS would have to strike a new deal with actors and producers to continue the show beyond this season. All parties seem interested in working it out, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said.

"In spirit and intent, everybody is very motivated," she said.

Series creator Chuck Lorre said he gave thought to ending the series after Sheen left last season and couldn't imagine it continuing. But CBS and his co-creator, Lee Aronsohn, nudged him to continue.

"Lee said, 'Why not try? If we fail, no one would be physically harmed,'" Lorre said. "It seemed like such a heartbreaking way to end, and we didn't want it to, so we said let's keep the light on."

Writers were able to change the tone by making Kutcher's character a heartbroken Internet billionaire who has everything he wants except the woman he loves. Jon Cryer, who played Sheen's annoying little brother, is now Schmidt's older friend. It was all a welcome tone change, Aronsohn said.

"It's been a lot of fun and a challenge to create a different show with a lot of the same elements," he said.

Lorre, who was the target of sharp barbs from Sheen last spring after he was fired, said he wished his former star well.

"I really do," he said. "I'm glad he's sober and I think it's terrific."

Actor Ashton Kutcher, center, speaks as executive producer Chuck Lorre, left, and and actor Jon Cryer look on during the panel discussion for the sitcom "Two and a Half Men" at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour for CBS, the CW and Showtime, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_kutcher_wants_return_two_half_men184108950/44151215/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/kutcher-wants-return-two-half-men-184108950.html

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NFL playoffs 2012: Tim Tebow, Denver Broncos eliminate Pittsburgh Steelers in OT

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  • NFL playoffs 2012: Tim Tebow, Denver Broncos eliminate Pittsburgh Steelers in OT
  • NFL playoffs 2012: Tim Tebow, Denver Broncos eliminate Pittsburgh Steelers in OT
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Source: http://www.e-lane.info/pittsburgh-steelers/nfl-playoffs-2012-tim-tebow-denver-broncos-eliminate-pittsburgh-steelers-in-ot-2/

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As home prices fall, more borrowers walk away

John Brecher / msnbc.com

David Martin, 68, in his home in north Seattle, Washington. He and his wife are facing retirement within five years, but their retirement income won't cover their mortgage.

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

When David Martin and his wife bought their north Seattle condo five years ago, they figured they had plenty of time to downsize if they needed to?before they retired.

Now, with the property worth roughly $60,000 less than the balance of their mortgage, Martin, 68, has been giving serious thought to just walking away, a process lenders call "strategic default."

"Guilt and morality are one side, and objective financial analysis are on the other side," Martin said. "They're coming to two opposite conclusions. I wonder how many other people are struggling with the same question."

Strategic defaults like the one contemplated by Martin are on the rise. A survey last year by two Chicago-area finance professors, Paola Sapienza at Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago, found that roughly three out of 10? mortgage defaults in 2010 were by homeowners who could afford to make their payments, up from 22 percent in 2009.

"It's a looming problem that's in the shadows," said Jason Kopcak, a mortgage trader at Cantor Fitzgerald who advises lenders on how to value the loans on their books. "It's very worrisome to mortgage lenders."

Researchers point to a number of forces that are driving borrowers to walk away from their mortgages. At the top of the list is the estimated 12 million homes that are underwater, meaning the owners owe more than they are worth.

Until recently,?borrowers like Martin and many industry analysts held out hope that a housing recovery would reverse the rising tide of "negative equity." But after stabilizing this summer, home prices began falling again, dropping 7.5 percent in the third quarter alone and leaving more homeowners underwater.

Even if prices?stabilize this year, millions of underwater borrowers face a long wait before they can sell their homes without having to write a big check to their lender to cover the shortfall. Economists at Goldman Sachs recently forecast that after bottoming in 2013 house prices won't recover their 2006 peak until 2023. (No, that's not a typo.)

Many homeowners simply can't wait that long.

In the early stages of the housing bust, the main causes of defaults included unemployment or other financial setbacks and?adjustable mortgages that reset to unaffordable levels, according to researchers. Now, five years into the housing recession, strategic defaults are growing as financially healthy borrowers learn of friends or family who have decided to walk away.

A recent study commissioned by the Mortgage Bankers Association likens the rise in the rate of strategic defaults to the spread of a disease. The longer the crisis drags on, the more homeowners will be exposed to someone who has successfully walked away, making the decision easier, the study suggested. "As fundamentally social animals, humans consciously (and subconsciously) look to their peers when forming opinions, habits and behaviors," the report said.

"Most people who own a home know of someone -- a friend, a colleague a family member -- who has defaulted, especially in housing markets that have taken a big hit," said Chad Ruyle, co-founder of youwalkaway.com, a service that advises?homeowners on?walking away from their mortgage. "They realize these are not bad people. They're not deadbeats. They're just like them."

Researchers say strategic default is also more common among borrowers who feel no personal connection to the party on the other end of the transaction. Gone are the days when you walked into a bank and met with a lender who shepherded your application and congratulated you when the loan was approved, said Michael Seiler, a finance professor at?Old Dominion?University and a co-author of the MBA study.

"If you defaulted, it was like you were defaulting on your friend," he said. "Your kids might go to the same school. You all might go to the same church. And you're constantly reminded of who you're defaulting on."

That scenario is a far cry from the modern system of mortgage finance, where loans are sold over the phone or online, chopped up into pieces and then sold to multiple, anonymous investors. Many underwater homeowners who try to negotiate with their lender can't even find out?who owns their loan.

"We're finding that people are much more willing to walk away when the other party is unknown or what you might call a 'bad bank,'" said Seiler. "Those are the ones that received a lot of bailout funds or were active in the subprime market, giving loans to people who couldn't afford them and they knew that."

The mortgage lending industry's widespread reluctance to modify loan terms has also changed homeowner attitudes about walking away, according to Ruyle.

"They feel much better about doing it if they've tried to contact the lender and the lender won't budge," he said. "They feel justified about it because they've tried to do their best to work it out."

Shifting attitudes about the causes of the housing bust are also playing a role, say researchers. In their surveys, Sapienza and Zingales found that 48 percent of Americans said they would be more likely to default if their bank was accused of predatory lending, even if they are morally opposed to strategic default. Some 11 percent said they?d be less likely to pay their mortgage, and more likely to walk away from their loan, if their lender was cited for using false foreclosure documentation.

The government's ineffective response to the housing crisis, even as it went to extraordinary lengths to backstop banks, has also propelled walkaways, say researchers. Since the housing?bubble?burst in 2006, some $7 trillion in home equity has?evaporated, according to?Federal?Reserve?data. Now, as home prices resume their fall, some homeowners believe lenders should bear at least a portion of the losses inflicted by a housing bust the industry helped create.

"The money didn't disappear," said Martin. "We still owe it to the bank, so the bank will end up getting all of its money back on a loan that no longer has its original value. They're taking no part in the loss."

Widespread reports of lenders' bad behavior, from filing defective paperwork to selling investors bad loans, have begun to erode one of the strongest deterrents to walking away: the sense that skipping out on a debt is morally wrong. University of Arizona finance professor Brent White?interviewed hundreds of homeowners for his research on strategic default. He found that, in the eyes of many homeowners, mortgage bankers have lost the moral high ground.

"The reality is: for the bank it is simply an economic transaction," he said. "They have no moral qualm about taking your house, and they feel no moral obligation to modify your mortgage even if you're in a difficult financial situation."

Still, there are much more serious consequences to strategic default than pangs of guilt. Any loan default will damage a borrower's credit score. But some strategic defaulters are finding that the impact isn't as long-lasting as widely believed, according to Ruyle.

"You don?t destroy your credit, you wound your credit," he said. "Just like a wound, it heals over time."

Ruyle said surveys of the roughly 8,000 customers who have signed up for his service in the last four years found that some strategic defaulters are able to restore their credit in as little as a year and a half. ?

The bigger risk for walkaway borrowers is that their lender will pursue them in court and win a so-called "deficiency judgment," a court-ordered, full repayment of the mortgage balance. That process is governed by state laws; some so-called "non-recourse" states bar lenders from pursuing such judgments.

But the force of that deterrent is also weakening, according to Sapienza.

"(There's an) increasing perception that lenders are not going after borrowers who walk away," he said.

That perception may be dangerously misplaced, as many lenders continue to aggressively pursue judgments against homeowners who strategically default. That's why there's widespread agreement that homeowners considering it need to get solid legal advice from an experienced real estate attorney in their state.

"There's a process to strategic default and a lot of people don't know how to do it," said Kopcak. "They don't really know what their options are. People really need to talk to a lawyer who knows the process."

For now, Martin is electing to stay in his home and continue paying the mortgage.

"We intend to continue as we are on the basis that we gain nothing from acting at this point," he said in a note.?"We think that the real estate market in Seattle will rise by 2013 enough to offer better alternatives. There is a small chance that the federal government will act to offer more rational choices. The real possibility is that the debt might be refinanced in 2013 at a level that might offer enough reduction in payments to allow us to hang on long enough to shore up our financial position."

In short, giving up at this point may be worst of all alternatives. Giving up seems to run counter to our value system, no matter how financially wise experts seem to believe it may be."

?

?

Would you consider a 'strategic default' if your home was worth less than your mortgage?

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/21/9614305-as-home-prices-fall-more-borrowers-walk-away

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HUSTLERCASINOLA: On January 23rd we will celebrate Chinese New Year! Festivities will include a special Pai Gow buy-in game! http://t.co/mGyTcWlR

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Snoop Dogg -- Arrested for Weed in Texas

Snoop Dogg ARRESTED FOR WEED

Snoop Dogg arrested
Snoop Dogg
isn't the only canine with a nose for weed ... TMZ has learned the rapper was ARRESTED in Texas this weekend after a drug-sniffing dog uncovered marijuana on his tour bus.

Law enforcement sources tell us ... Snoop's tour bus was stopped at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca -- a small town in West Texas where Willie Nelson was popped for weed back in 2010.

It's all pretty ironic -- considering Snoop RAILED against cops in 2010 for arresting the country singer, claiming, "They better leave Willie the f**k alone." (video below)

We're told the border patrol ran a standard inspection of the bus with the dog ... when the animal alerted the agents to a possible hit in a waste basket in the back of the vehicle.

The agents claim they found a red prescription bottle with several joints inside. We're told the bottle contained under a half-ounce of weed.

Cops say Snoop admitted the dope belonged to him. Snoop has a prescription for cannabis in California, but law enforcement tells us, there is a zero tolerance policy for weed in Texas ... regardless of his status in other states.

Snoop was issued a citation for misdemeanor drug possession and released. If convicted on the drug charge, Snoop could face up to 180 days in jail.

Attempts to reach the rapper's rep were unsuccessful.

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Source: http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/09/snoop-dogg-arrested-weed-texas-marijuana/

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Samsung?s TV Content Plan: Renewed Focus On Apps And 3D

samsung_logoSamsung has already pulled back the curtains on their new flagship Smart TV, but really -- what good is a TV without content? To that end, Samsung Consumer Electronics President Tim Baxter took a few moments to talk about Samsung's new content initiatives.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6aTU4Z25-uk/

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Miami-Dade Mayor Gimenez plans to veto commission moves in bid to avert police layoffs

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Friday he plans to veto the county commission?s decisions Thursday not to impose labor concessions on county unions, but added he will still move ahead and send out the first wave of pink slips to county employees on Friday Jan. 13.

The mayor?s move will force the board at its next meeting on Jan. 24 to reconsider controversial votes that he says will trigger the layoffs of some 300 police and corrections officers.

The commissioners on Thursday night voted 7-6 against forcing 5,400 police and corrections officers, represented by the Dade Police Benevolent Association, to pay an additional 5 percent of pay towards health care.

The panel also refused to impose the controversial 5-percent giveback on its professionals and supervisors, who are represented by the Government Supervisors Association of Florida OPEIU Local 100. Both unions had already approved contracts that include substantial reductions in pay, but had hit an impasse on the additional 5 percent the county is counting on to balance its 2011-12 budget, which is based on a lowered property-tax rate.

?I hope that some commissioners will reconsider their votes and sustain the veto and move to implement the 5-percent health-care contributions,?? Gimenez said Friday.

Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, who has announced plans to challenge Gimenez in the mayoral race this year, took the veto news in stride. ?Pursuant to the charter, that is well within his powers,?? Martinez said. ?We?ll deal with it at the next commission meeting.??

The mayor said commissioners knew that painful employee concessions were needed when they voted in September to approve his budget plan, which reduced the property-tax rate.

Without the cost savings from those additional concessions ? which would double the employees? health-care contributions to 10 percent of their pay ? he said he will have to resort to the unprecedented law-enforcement layoffs, among other cuts.

Union leaders, who fought hard to defeat the added health-care contribution, criticized the mayor?s veto plans. ?The county and the union agreed the impasse would be resolved by the county commission, and now the mayor decides he doesn?t like the decision so he vetoes it,?? said Greg Blackman, GSAF Local 100 president.

?He didn?t win, so now he wants to kick up some dust and see if he can get his way,?? said PBA president John Rivera.

Despite the veto plan, the mayor still aims to deliver the first wave of pink slips on Friday the 13th to some employees in a scramble to close a burgeoning budget gap that totals about $35 million for the PBA and GSAF unions alone.

The mayor told his top brass to present plans Tuesday to carry out the layoffs in the least painful way.

For the police department, that likely will mean sacrificing crime-prevention efforts in favor of maintaining sufficient officers on the streets, the mayor said: ?We?re going to try to preserve essential police services as much as possible.?

In the end, the least senior employees will be let go, because of seniority and so-called bumping rights.

Officer Ryan Cowart, 28, who joined the Miami-Dade police force last year as a patrol officer in Kendall after leaving the Monroe County Sheriff?s Office for better career prospects and the chance to return home to Miami, expects he will be among the first out the door. Married with two young children, Cowart said the financial pinch of being laid off will threaten his ability to hang on to his home. ?The average time to get back in to another police job is six months,?? said Cowart, who ranks 24th from the bottom in seniority.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/06/2577036/miami-dade-mayor-gimenez-plans.html

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Infection rates at California hospitals released

The California Department of Public Health has released its second annual report on hospital-acquired infections at hospitals statewide, in what officials say is an effort to cut infection rates and provide consumers with more information about health care providers.

?These reports provide the most detailed picture yet of healthcare-associated infections in California hospitals,? department Director Dr. Ron Chapman said in a news release. ?Changes that are made to improve quality of care as a result of these data will potentially save hundreds of lives in California each year.?

A law passed by the Legislature in 2008 requires hospitals to report the data and for the state to make it available online beginning in 2010.

Hospitals throughout San Diego County reported their data, contributing to a 91 percent to 98 percent rate of compliance statewide.

The reports looked at rates for hospital-acquired MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a virulent staph infection resistant to most antibiotics; VRE, a type of bloodstream infection called vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus; central line-associated bloodstream infections; and surgical site infections.

Some infection rates were expected to be higher in teaching and long-term acute care hospitals where more severely ill patients are treated, state officials said. For that reason, some reports broke out separate data for major teaching hospitals, long-term acute care hospitals, pediatric hospitals and general community hospitals.

Among hospitals in San Diego, the reports showed:

? San Diego County hospitals with rates of MRSA worse than the state average were: Alvarado Hospital, Kaiser Foundation Hospital of San Diego, Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center, Sharp Grossmont Hospital and Tri-City Medical Center. Among long-term acute care hospitals, Vibra Hospital of San Diego scored worse than the state average.

? San Diego hospitals with rates of VRE worse than the state average were: Alvarado Hospital, Kaiser Foundation Hospital of San Diego, Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center, Sharp Grossmont Hospital, and Tri-City Medical Center.

? For central line-associated bloodstream infections, the state divided the data into 37 categories for different patient care areas within the hospitals. San Diego hospitals did relatively well overall, with most scoring at or better than state averages in all patient areas.

Hospitals scoring worse than the state average in one of the 37 categories were: Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, in surgical critical care; Scripps Mercy Hospital, in its general medical ward; Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center, in its general medical ward; UCSD Medical Center, in its medical/surgical critical care, compared only with major teaching hospitals; Promise Hospital of San Diego and Vibra Hospital, compared with long-term acute care facilities.

? The state also looked at surgical site infections at hospitals where the data was available for colon surgeries, coronary bypass surgeries, and hip or knee replacement surgeries. San Diego hospitals reporting sufficient data for analysis had rates within the expected range for the hospital?s patient population.

? The state also reviewed infection rates of a bacterium associated with serious intestinal conditions. Patients taking antibiotics for prolonged periods are susceptible to the bacterium, Clostridium difficile, and can be exposed to it through unclean hands or contaminated surfaces. The report cautions against comparing hospitals because testing procedures weren?t uniform and the study did not adjust for different risk factors among patient populations at different hospitals.

Source: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/06/infection-rates-california-hospitals-released/

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Scientists map the frontiers of vision

Friday, January 6, 2012

There's a 3-D world in our brains. It's a landscape that mimics the outside world, where the objects we see exist as collections of neural circuits and electrical impulses.

Now, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are using new tools they developed to chart that world, a key step in revolutionizing research into the neurological basis of vision.

For the first time, the scientists have produced neuron-by-neuron maps of the regions of the mouse brain that process different kinds of visual information, laying the groundwork for decoding the circuitry of the brain using cutting-edge, genetic research techniques only possible in mice.

"In the field of cognitive research, this puts the mouse on the map - by putting the map on the mouse," says James Marshel, a Salk research associate. Marshel and Marina Garrett, a graduate student at University of California San Diego, were lead authors on a paper reporting the advance in the December 22 issue of Neuron.

To understand the extraordinarily complex computations of the human brain, including those behind visual cognition, scientists have mostly relied on studies on primates, such as monkeys, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, and the most like us in terms of cognitive ability.

Researchers have identified what portions of the primate brain process different aspects of the sensory information they gather from the outside world. In particular, a great deal is known about what regions of the primate brain process certain visual information, helping them identify objects and follow their movements in three-dimensional space.

"We've learned a lot about how our eyes feed information to our brains, and a huge portion of our brain is devoted to processing this information," says Edward Callaway, a professor in Salk's Systems Neurobiology Laboratory, whose laboratory conducted the research. "Vision is a terrific system for understanding how the brain works and, ultimately, for studying mental diseases and consciousness."

Powerful new scientific tools are emerging that could allow scientists to better understand the human brain by studying the relatively simpler brains of mice. These methods allow scientists to alter genes, the instructions in DNA that control the behavior of cells - including the neurons that form brain circuits. By using genetic methods for mapping brain connections and controlling the activity of cells, scientists hope to generate detailed wiring diagrams of the brain and probe how these circuits function.

"While mice can not replace the work that is being done in monkeys, these research techniques are much further along in mice than in monkeys," Callaway says. "The ability to modify neural activity using genetic tools and to study the resulting changes in brain and nerve activity is revolutionizing neuroscience."

Although such genetic engineering techniques in mice offer huge potential, little was known about what areas of the mouse visual cortex - the high-level brain region that computes the meaning of signals from the eyes - were responsible for processing different elements of the visual information.

To remedy this, Callaway and his colleagues set out to chart a map of the mouse's visual processing system. They injected mice with a calcium-sensitive fluorescent dye that glows when exposed to a certain color of light. The amount of calcium in nerve cells varies depending on the activity level of the neurons, so the scientists could measure the activity of brain cells based on how brightly they glowed.

The scientists then displayed different types of visual stimulus on a television monitor and recorded what parts of the brain glowed. To make the recordings, they used a high-resolution camera capable of discerning the activity of individual nerve cells.

They found that a mouse's visual field, the area of three-dimensional space visible through its eyes, is represented by a corresponding collection of neurons in its brain. The researchers precisely recorded which neurons were associated with which area of the animal's visual field.

The scientists studied seven different areas of the animal's visual cortex containing full neuronal "maps" of the visible outside world, and found that each area has a specialized role in processing visual information. For instance, certain areas were more sensitive to the direction objects move in space, while other areas were focused on distinguishing fine detail.

With these maps of brain function in hand, the Salk researchers and others now have a baseline against which they can compare the brain function of mice in which circuit function is manipulated using genetic methods. Ultimately, Callaway says, understanding in detail how the mouse brain works will illuminate the workings of the human mind.

"This gives us new ways to explore the neural underpinnings of consciousness and to identify what goes wrong in neural circuits in the case of diseases such as schizophrenia and autism," Callaway said.

###

Salk Institute: http://www.salk.edu

Thanks to Salk Institute for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116523/Scientists_map_the_frontiers_of_vision

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