Federal government solar panel advises tight settings in painkiller Vicodin

In a move to stem the epidemic of prescription drug deaths, a federal advisory panel has proposed tighter controls on the narcotic painkiller ideal recognized with the brand title Vicodin. It is actually the nation's most broadly prescribed drug.

By a 19-to-10 vote, an advisory panel to your U.S. Meals and Drug Administration suggested Friday the agency reclassify hydrocodone, the energetic ingredient in Vicodin, as being a Routine II narcotic, putting it during the similar category as other broadly abused medicines, which include OxyContin and fentanyl.

In the event the FDA approves the modify, sufferers can be capable to get fewer hydrocodone tablets at a single time, and there might be a lot more restrictions on refills. Furthermore, pharmacies would really need to comply with stricter procedures for dealing with and storing the drug.

Routine II will be the government's most restrictive category for pharmaceuticals with accepted health-related utilizes. Hydrocodone is now listed on Routine III.

The Usa consumes 99% on the hydrocodone created throughout the world, and medical doctors compose far more prescriptions for it than for that foremost antibiotic and hypertension medicines.

Prescription medicines ?a largely narcotic painkillers this kind of as hydrocodone ?a bring about or contribute to extra deaths than heroin and cocaine mixed. Therefore, drug fatalities have surpassed deaths from motor motor vehicle crashes, lengthy the major reason for accidental death within this nation.

A Los Angeles Occasions evaluation of three,733 prescription drug-related fatalities in Southern California from 2006 by way of 2011 located that hydrocodone was involved with 945 of your deaths, in excess of any other prescription medicine.

Health professionals have prescribed hydrocodone with couple of restrictions because it was introduced 4 decades ago. Due to the perception that it is actually significantly less risky than other narcotic painkillers, it is actually broadly prescribed by common practitioners and dentists.

Nonetheless drug enforcement officials have lengthy complained that hydrocodone was extremely addictive and broadly abused.

For a long time, the FDA resisted tightening the principles on its use from concern that performing so would make it extra complicated for sufferers with genuine discomfort to receive the drug. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asked the agency to reconsider in light with the drug's widespread availability around the black market place.

Earlier this week, the American Academy of Ache Medicine sent the FDA advisory panel a letter saying that though it had some concern that tighter principles could curtail genuine prescribing, it didn't oppose moving hydrocodone to Routine II.

Morgan Liscinsky, a spokeswoman for your FDA, stated she couldn't say once the agency would act to the recommendation.

In searching for to stem the raise in fatal drug overdoses, authorities have focused on how addicts and drug dealers acquire prescription narcotics illegally, this kind of as by stealing from pharmacies or relatives' medicine cabinets. Latest content articles from the Instances, even so, reported that lots of overdoses stem from medicines prescribed for your deceased by a medical professional.

In practically half on the prescription drug fatalities in 4 Southern California counties, prescription drugs prescribed by doctors induced or contributed on the death, based on a Instances evaluation of coroners' records.

Seventy-one health professionals, a small fraction of all practicing doctors inside the 4 counties, have been linked having a disproportionate amount of deaths.

In response on the posts, the Health care Board of California has appealed towards the public to report situations of extreme prescribing, and legislative leaders, together with the president in the California Senate, have promised to offer the board additional investigators and higher authority to halt reckless prescribing.

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Obama, Biden show up at inaugural prayer support from Buenos aires Nationwide Cathedral

Rows of pastors and priests, imams and rabbis made available prayers for President Obama at an inaugural worship support Tuesday, their varied depictions and requests of God seeming to embody the challenge of unifying an America divided on all the things such as the purpose of faith.

"To quite a few Americans, we really feel like a property divided that can't stand. We discover ourselves divided and desperately longing to uncover prevalent ground," the Rev. Adam Hamilton, leader of the 16,000-member Methodist church in Kansas, mentioned in his sermon to Obama and two,200 invited visitors with the inaugural prayer support at Washington Nationwide Cathedral. "This may well be, this bringing collectively of our nation, a a lot more critical situation than something else we encounter."

The tradition of the prayer support for newly sworn-in presidents goes back to your start out of your nation, and because the 1930s a lot of the solutions happen to be held in the cathedral. They've got turn out to be more and more interfaith more than time and also have integrated nationwide clergy from your Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Sikh traditions. To the very first time, the 23 faith leaders integrated an openly gay clergy member: the Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, moderator of Metropolitan Local community Church, a Christian denomination that focuses on outreach towards the LGBT local community.

Following the drama and pomp on the inauguration ceremony as well as let-loose vibe of Monday night's inaugural balls, the prayer support - even within the cavernous neo-Gothic cathedral in Northwest Washington - felt just about intimate, with 3 rows of faith leaders seated on the dais several feet in front on the to begin with pew, which held the president and very first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill Biden.

Around the dais have been a few of the United States' most prominent clergy, folks who represent several of the country's biggest faith communities. In one particular row, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Catholic archbishop of Washington, was seated upcoming to Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, head from the Episcopal Church, who was seated subsequent to Archbishop Demetrios of America, primate in the Greek Orthodox Church in America.

Numerous prayers have been supplied, substantially, in the center from the nave. Imam Abdullah Khouj, through the Islamic Center of Washington, gave a standard phone to prayer in Arabic just immediately after Cantor Mikhail Manevich of Washington Hebrew Congregation intoned a prayer in Hebrew.

Obama was supplied a quilt of prayers to a God described working with distinctive names and personalities. Wuerl gave a studying describing humanity as "afflicted in every single way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair." Nationwide Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson termed to "faithful God .?.?. that you are gracious, O lover of souls."

Nevertheless leaders of organized religion are distinctly conscious of the issues of reaching a modifying America. The fastest-growing faith group within the nation includes individuals that say these are religiously unaffiliated.

Hamilton, the Methodist minister from Kansas, seemed created for this time, this president; he has written on embracing "the gray" place and calls himself a "passionate centrist." His sermon was a plea for your shaping of some shared priorities, ideally - to his thoughts - ones revolving all-around "a deep and abiding faith in God." It attempted to forge U.S. historical past to scriptural background, weaving the story of Moses trying to find freedom for Hebrew slaves using the poem within the Statue of Liberty ("Give me your exhausted, your bad, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free of charge .?.?.") and together with the anniversary in the Emancipation Proclamation.

Hamilton prospects a single from the largest mainline Protestant churches from the nation, but in his sermon he mentioned that America's pews are filled with deeply divided persons.

Lots of "congregations typically will not know why they exist, nor do they've a compelling image of your potential that unifies them. Sadly, this feels accurate of America these days," he explained.

As a result of large safety, visitors with the services had to arrive an hour or two early. By midmorning, the ornate nave looked such as the merger of the Washington political gathering as well as a conference of notables from your clerical neighborhood. Heads of consider tanks, in sober suits, mingled with clergy from each and every imaginable faith local community sporting a number of colorful robes and head coverings, through the white wrap on the Bahai on the Jewish yarmulke.

Amongst the political heavyweights had been Lawyer Common Eric H. Holder Jr., U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Overall health and Human Providers Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Residence
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Household Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick (D).

The cathedral, the seat in the Episcopal Church during the Usa, is usually selected to host memorial companies and occasions honoring prominent U.S. leaders from throughout the political spectrum. However the cathedral's leaders have created news in current weeks by taking progressive social stands.

The Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral's new dean, announced in December the cathedral would start hosting same-gender weddings, and he also has taken up the reason for gun handle inside the wake of final month's Newtown, Conn., college shootings.

Inaugural prayer companies have already been held constantly on the cathedral given that 1933, together with the exception of individuals following the inaugurations of Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1997.

Clinton chose Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black church in downtown Washington, because the web-site for his prayer companies. The Obama family members worshiped at Metropolitan on Sunday.

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Grownup Come Cellular material: A bit of Me, Via Tissues in My Provide

I left my heart in Minnesota -- a small, pulsing piece of it, anyway.

The people with the Mayo Clinic get in touch with it "Lil' Bill" and it lives within a at ease Petri dish on the climate-controlled shelf deep inside the bowels of your renowned hospital.

Daily it really is taken out for care and feeding and quite clever individuals very carefully check out for making positive it can be increasing larger and more powerful through the hour.

Possibilities are remote that Lil' Bill will ever join its genetic brethren in my chest, however the truth that I can peer by means of a microscope and see my very own cardiac tissue pulse at 60 beats a minute proves that we're tantalizingly near to a Holy Grail of healing: regenerative medication.

For the reason that although Lil' Bill acts like heart muscle, it did not come from my heart. It came in the skin below my arm.

Medical practitioners have dreamed of the day when science could develop nutritious spare elements in the lab to the human entire body. A pivotal minute within this search came inside the late '90s once the 1st embryonic stem cells had been isolated. These cells will be the biological "seeds" that divide, differentiate and develop to the myriad components in the human physique.

When it had been a thrilling discovery, it had been also the start out of an ethical and political firestorm, given that an embryo needed to be destroyed in an effort to isolate its stem cells. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive purchase to restrict more exploration.

The move forced scientists to look for other means and in 2007, researchers in Japan and Wisconsin figured out a method to reprogram grownup cells into stem cells. Word of your discovery reached Mayo, and Dr. Tim Nelson and his colleagues on the Center for Regenerative Medication had been intrigued. This might be a method to assistance all individuals youngsters, born with deformed hearts, who sit on transplant waiting lists at Mayo every year.

"This is one particular engineering that permits us to know condition," Dr. Nelson informed me, "but furthermore, it will allow us to dream regarding the day we apply that therapeutically." And as he described his operate, he created me a tantalizing supply. If I'd agree to partake within their investigation, he mentioned I "could be the primary particular person to ever see his personal heart tissue beat outdoors his physique."

It started having a biopsy from the skin underneath my left bicep, all of the greater to hide the small scar. Having a tiny round knife, Dr. Nelson dug out a pencil eraser-sized chunk of my flesh and plopped it right into a jar of pink liquid. I flew property plus they went to function, employing a blend of genes to bioengineer these bits of flesh into pluripotent ("many potentials") stem cells. At that stage, they could've nudged them into starting to be neurons or lung cells and even components of my eyeball, but in retaining with Dr. Nelson's guarantee, the Mayo crew turned them into cardiac tissue.

Months later on, I returned for any one-of-a-kind reunion and gazing by means of that microscope, I could see pumping evidence why this sort of health care science just won the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Nelson received most energized when he showed me a small piece of my cardiac tissue that had significantly formed to the form of the heart -- a pumping, three-dimensional glimpse right into a potential when this sort of cell could theoretically be injected right into a heart-attack victim or possibly a diseased little one and virtually mend the man or woman from inside.

That is certainly the hope, but though these cells could increase hearts, lungs or brains they could also develop tumors. So it may very well be many years just before the science is prepared for 1st clinical trials on people.

For dad and mom of little ones to the transplant record, the do the job can not go quick sufficient.

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Hicks: Katherine Webb executing photo shoot with Sports activities Illustrated?

Model Katherine Webb -- Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron's girlfriend that has risen to international fame in just a single week, because of announcer Brent Musburger salivating in excess of her for the duration of university football's nationwide championship game -- tweeted that she'll be appearing within a Sports activities Illustrated photo shoot.

Seems like Musburger features a commission examine coming.

Webb tweeted the news that she was executing a photo shoot with Sports activities Illustrated, then, apparently deleted it.

In line with MSN.com, Randall Tyree with 101.five Jamz in Phoenix captured the tweet. So did Rachel Baribeau, a sports activities radio demonstrate host with 92.9 "The Game" in Birmingham. It is not clear when the photo shoot is for the story about her immediate celebrity standing, or for your huge enchilada: the approaching Sports activities Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

Webb was the 2012 Miss Alabama USA and completed within the Major ten during the 2012 Miss USA pageant. She's also reportedly been approached by Maxim magazine the previous week. There are actually reports that McCarron is simply not delighted with his girlfriend's sudden fame.

Webb performs being a model in Los Angeles. But she mentioned she's preparing to move back to Alabama to get closer to McCarron.

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U.S. Reports Very best Price range Outcome for December Due to the fact 2007

The U.S. government spending budget deficit narrowed to its ideal December month-to-month outcome in 5 many years, reflecting larger income, decrease investing and calendar-driven shifts in a few payments.

The shortfall final month shrank nearly absolutely to $260 million from $86 billion in December 2011, in line with Treasury Division information issued currently in Washington. The gap was smaller sized than the $1 billion median estimate inside a Bloomberg survey of economists. With the very first 3 months of this fiscal year, the deficit was 9.one % more compact than exactly the same period final year.

"We had a fairly strong month in December primarily due to very a little bit of tax-related action that was shifted into December on account of issues in excess of the fiscal cliff and anticipated increased tax charges in 2013," stated Thomas Simons, a government financial debt economist at Jefferies Group Inc. in New York. "Going forward we're even now likely to run rather significant deficits this year and in coming many years without the need of any considerable alter on the investing policy."

The U.S. had a month to month spending budget surplus of $48.three billion in December 2007. The U.S. reached its $16.four trillion financial debt restrict on Dec. 31. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner stated on Dec. 26 he could make about $200 billion of "headroom" in order to avoid feasible default using the utilization of extraordinary measures.

U.S. Workers

The Property of Representatives passed legislation averting cash flow tax increases for many U.S. employees Jan. one right after Republicans abandoned their hard work to attach investing cuts that might are rejected from the Senate. The 257-167 bipartisan vote broke a yearlong impasse in excess of the way to head off $600 billion in tax increases and investing cuts that had been scheduled to start taking result on Jan. one.

Although the measure averts many of the instant ache, it's only a compact stage toward controlling the federal deficit -- a problem which will return by using a looming battle in excess of raising the financial debt restrict.

Today's report showed income rose twelve.three % in December from your exact same month a year earlier, to $269.five billion from $240 billion. Investing fell 17.two % to $269.eight billion from $325.9 billion.

December Estimates

Estimates for December ranged from a gap of $35 billion to an even stability for your month, based on the Bloomberg survey of 22 economists.

Person earnings tax receipts from the 1st 3 months of this fiscal year rose to $312.four billion from $270.four billion inside the very same period final year. Corporate cash flow tax receipts rose to $62.five billion from $55.six billion.

The Congressional Price range Workplace stated Jan. eight December would demonstrate a price range deficit of $1 billion.

The CBO stated that receipts in December 2012 have been about $30 billion in excess of the receipts within the exact same month the year prior to.

"In the two many years, investing was impacted by a shift of selected payments from January to December -- for the reason that January one is really a vacation -- but investing this December also was impacted by a shift of particular payments into November," the CBO mentioned.

The CBO mentioned there was a $24 billion enhance in withheld taxes final month.

" The sturdy development in withheld taxes may possibly be attributable in aspect to an acceleration within the payment of some compensation from calendar year 2013 to 2012 for the reason that folks have been anticipating larger tax prices," the CBO stated.

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DNA pioneer David Watson requires are designed for "cancer establishments"

A day just after an exhaustive nationwide report on cancer discovered the U.s. is creating only slow progress against the sickness, among the country's most iconic - and iconoclastic - scientists weighed in on "the war against cancer." And he isn't going to like what he sees.

James Watson, co-discoverer from the double helix structure of DNA, lit into targets substantial and little. On government officials who oversee cancer investigation, he wrote inside a paper published on Tuesday while in the journal Open Biology, "We now have no basic of impact, significantly much less electrical power ... top our country's War on Cancer."

About the $100 million U.S. venture to find out the DNA adjustments that drive 9 types of cancer: It's "not most likely to create the certainly breakthrough medicines that we now so desperately want," Watson argued. Within the strategy that antioxidants this kind of as people in colorful berries battle cancer: "The time has come to critically request irrespective of whether antioxidant use substantially much more most likely brings about than prevents cancer."

That Watson's impassioned plea came for the heels of your yearly cancer report was coincidental. He worked within the paper for months, and it represents the culmination of decades of considering the topic. Watson, 84, taught a program on cancer at Harvard University in 1959, 3 many years ahead of he shared the Nobel Prize in medication for his function in finding the double helix, which opened the door to comprehending the function of genetics in ailment.

Other cancer luminaries gave Watson's paper mixed evaluations.

"There really are a great deal of exciting thoughts in it, a few of them sustainable by current proof, other individuals that simply just conflict with well-documented findings," explained one particular eminent cancer biologist who asked to not be identified so as to not offend Watson. "As is usually the situation, he's stirring the pot, more than likely inside a incredibly productive way."

There exists broad agreement, having said that, that existing approaches are certainly not yielding the progress they promised. Considerably of your decline in cancer mortality during the United states of america, as an illustration, reflects the truth that fewer individuals are smoking, not the advantages of clever new therapies.

GENETIC HOPES

"The good hope with the modern day targeted method was that with DNA sequencing we can be ready to search out what particular genes, when mutated, induced every single cancer," explained molecular biologist Mark Ptashne of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The subsequent stage was to style a drug to block the runaway proliferation the mutation triggered.

But virtually none in the resulting treatment options cures cancer. "These new therapies do the job for only a couple of months," Watson informed Reuters inside a uncommon interview. "And we've got nothing at all for significant cancers this kind of because the lung, colon and breast which have turn out to be metastatic."

The principle cause medicines that target genetic glitches will not be cures is the fact that cancer cells possess a work-around. If a single biochemical pathway to development and proliferation is blocked by a drug this kind of as AstraZeneca's Iressa or Genentech's Tarceva for non-small-cell lung cancer, stated cancer biologist Robert Weinberg of MIT, the cancer cells activate a distinct, equally powerful pathway.

Which is why Watson advocates a diverse technique: targeting options that all cancer cells, primarily these in metastatic cancers, have in widespread.

One particular this kind of commonality is oxygen radicals. People types of oxygen rip apart other elements of cells, this kind of as DNA. Which is why antioxidants, which have grown to be near-ubiquitous additives in grocery meals from snack bars to soda, are imagined to get healthful: they mop up damaging oxygen radicals.

That basic image gets to be additional challenging, nonetheless, when cancer is present. Radiation treatment and quite a few chemotherapies destroy cancer cells by producing oxygen radicals, which set off cell suicide. If a cancer patient is binging on berries and also other antioxidants, it could possibly in fact preserve therapies from doing work, Watson proposed.

"Everyone considered antioxidants had been excellent," he mentioned. "But I am saying they'll protect against us from killing cancer cells."

'ANTI-ANTIOXIDANTS'

Investigate backs him up. Many research have shown that taking antioxidants this kind of as vitamin E don't lower the chance of cancer but can in fact raise it, and may even shorten daily life. But medicines that block antioxidants - "anti-antioxidants" - could make even present cancer medicines extra productive.

Anything at all that keeps cancer cells filled with oxygen radicals "is probably a vital part of any powerful treatment method," explained cancer biologist Robert Benezra of Sloan-Kettering.

Watson's anti-antioxidant stance incorporates 1 historical irony. The primary high-profile proponent of consuming plenty of antioxidants (especially, vitamin C) was biochemist Linus Pauling, who died in 1994 at age 93. Watson and his lab mate, Francis Crick, famously beat Pauling towards the discovery from the double helix in 1953.

A single elusive but promising target, Watson mentioned, is usually a protein in cells identified as Myc. It controls extra than one,000 other molecules within cells, which include quite a few associated with cancer. Research recommend that turning off Myc brings about cancer cells to self-destruct inside a method named apoptosis.

"The notion that targeting Myc will remedy cancer continues to be about to get a lengthy time," mentioned cancer biologist Hans-Guido Wendel of Sloan-Kettering. "Blocking production of Myc is surely an exciting line of investigation. I believe there is guarantee in that."

Targeting Myc, even so, is a backwater of drug improvement. "Personalized medicine" that targets a patient's particular cancer-causing mutation attracts the lion's share of analysis bucks.

"The largest obstacle" to a accurate war against cancer, Watson wrote, could be "the inherently conservative nature of today's cancer exploration establishments." So long as which is so, "curing cancer will usually be ten or twenty many years away."

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Asteroid Apophis Will take the Complete inside 2036

Astronomers definitely delight in dramatic stories as a lot because the rest of us. But these days they played spoilers using the welcome announcement the sizable Earth-crossing asteroid 99942 Apophis will pose no threat when it comes close to our planet in 2036.

Appropriate now Apophis is from the midst of the rather distant still much-awaited pass in Earth's vicinity, coming inside 9 million miles (14? million km) earlier nowadays. It truly is been tracked for about every week by NASA's 230-foot (70-m) Goldstone radio/radar dish in California, and individuals observations have provided astronomers the self confidence to concern an "all clear" to the foreseeable potential.

"Goldstone single-pixel observations of Apophis have ruled out the prospective 2036 Earth influence," says Jon Giorgini, a dynamicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to revised orbit calculations, he says Apophis will then come no closer than about 14 million miles - and much more probable miss us by one thing closer to 35 million miles. Furthermore, the radar information have enhanced the asteroid's positional uncertainty a lot that dynamicists can now accurately predict its trajectory decades in to the potential.

Apophis was identified in 2004 by observers Roy Tucker, David Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi. Initially, orbital computations recommended that this near-Earth asteroid, At first designated 2004 MN4, had a 3% possibility of striking our planet in 2029. About a year later on, it had been named Apophis, for your Egyptian god of evil and destruction. An apt title, will not you feel? Thankfully, by then prediscovery observations had led to a revised orbit, which ruled out an influence in 2029.

Including for the uncertainty was the extent to which a subtle force, acknowledged because the Yarkovsky result, may possibly be altering the asteroid's orbit. This result is brought on by the uneven way that a spinning entire body absorbs sunlight after which reradiates it back to area. Ground-based observers established that Apophis rotates in 30.five hrs, but its precise form and orientation are unknown. Conceivably, gentle but persistent nudging from your Yarkovsky impact may possibly have pushed Apophis straight by way of the 2029 keyhole.

Once more, says Giorgini, there is no longer any possibility of that. The Goldstone observations have "shrunk the orbital uncertainties a lot that, no matter what the still-unknown physical parameters of Apophis may be, radiation stress can not be adequate to move the measurement uncertainty area adequate to experience the Earth in 2036."

Had been this asteroid to hit us, pretty undesirable issues would come about. Apophis estimated to get approximately 900 feet (270 m) across, and it might strike with all the kinetic-energy equivalent of 500 million plenty of TNT.

Just-released infrared observations in the European Area Agency's Herschel spacecraft recommend the diameter of Apophis may possibly be some 20% greater. ""The 20% raise in diameter, from 270 to 325 m, translates right into a 75% maximize in our estimates with the asteroid's volume or mass," says Thomas M¡§1ller (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics), who's coordinating the Herschel observations. Having said that, his team's modeling assumes that Apophis is spherical - and also the real form is considered to get elongated.

We have not heard the final word on this minor interplanetary demon. Goldstone radar observations of Apophis will carry on by way of January 17th, and added tracking is planned up coming month with all the giant Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico. All that pinging need to reveal the asteroid's form and spin state, along with super-accurate positional information.

However the be worried about this asteroid has only been postponed, not eradicated. The orbit of Apophis isn't all that distinct from Earth's, and a few day during the distant long term the 2 bodies will both possess a catastrophic collision - or an experience so near that Earth's gravity will yank Apophis onto a brand new and substantially various interplanetary path.

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