Research Team Slams Global Warming Data In New Report: "Not Reality... Totally Inconsistent With Credible Temperature Data"

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

As world leaders, namely in the European Union, attack President Trump for pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement which would have saddled Americans with billions upon billions of dollars in debt and economic losses, a new bombshell report that analyzed Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) data produced by NASA, the NOAA and HADLEY proves the President was right on target with his refusal to be a part of the new initiative.

According to the report, which has been peer reviewed by administrators, scientists and researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and several of America’s leading universities, the data is completely bunk:

In this research report, the most important surface data adjustment issues are identified and past changes in the previously reported historical data are quantified. It was found that each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, it was nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.

As a result, this research sought to validate the current estimates of GAST using the best available relevant data. This included the best documented and understood data sets from the U.S. and elsewhere as well as global data from satellites that provide far more extensive global coverage and are not contaminated by bad siting and urbanization impacts. Satellite data integrity also benefits from having cross checks with Balloon data.

The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever –despite current claims of record setting warming.

Finally, since GAST data set validity is a necessary condition for EPA’s GHG/CO2 Endangerment Finding, it too is invalidated by these research findings. (Full Abstract Report)

Of course, this won’t stop global climate normalcy deniers from saying it’s all one big conspiracy to destroy the earth. They’ll naturally argue that data adjustments to the temperatures need to be made for a variety of reasons, which is something the report doesn’t dispute. What it does show, however, is that these “adjustments” always prove to be to the upside. Always warmer, never cooler:

While the notion that some “adjustments” to historical data might need to be made is not challenged, logically it would be expected that such historical temperature data adjustments would sometimes raise these temperatures, and sometimes lower them. This situation would mean that the impact of such adjustments on the temperature trend line slope is uncertain. However, each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history.

In short: The evidence has been falsified.

Karl Denninger sums it up succinctly:

It is therefore quite-clear that the data has been intentionally tampered with.

Since this has formed the basis for plans to steal literal trillions of dollars and has already resulted in the forced extraction of hundreds of billions in aggregate for motorists and industry this quite-clearly constitutes the largest economic fraud ever perpetrated in the world.

I call for the indictment and prosecution of every person and organization involved, asset-stripping all of them to their literal underwear.

The real data looks something like this:

(Via ZeroHedge.com)

And the establishment, along with their fanatical global warming myrmidons, continue to push the need for massive, costly initiatives to reduce green house gases and global temperatures to “normal” levels.

The problem, of course, is that there is no global warming according to the above referenced report.

Moreover, none of those supporting the Paris Climate Agreement and other initiatives have any idea what these behemoth regulations will actually do to curb climate change, as evidenced by the following video of Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, who despite his best efforts, can’t seem to figure out exactly how these agreements actually lower temperatures and help Americans:

No, the “New” CNN Video of the Chemical Incident Does NOT Prove that the Syrian Government Did It

Background.

The Sun claims that CNN has released new footage of last month’s Syrian chemical incident … and strongly implies that the Syrian government was responsible.

Washington’s Blog asked MIT rocket scientist and chemical weapons expert Theodore Postol^* what he thought of the footage.

Postol replied:

I agree that the footage is harrowing. However none of it is new and none of it proves that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of a nerve agent attack.

As such, this article merely falls into the category of propaganda.

The kindest alternative description of the article is that it might instead be yet another example of bad reporting that mixes ill-considered assumptions with facts that may or may not be relevant to its conclusions.

This kind of reporting could actually be encouraging such attacks.

If there was a false flag nerve agent attack, this tells the perpetrators that when they engage in the murder of children they can build a stronger false case against the Syrian government and thereby increase their chances of creating political pressure on the US Government to intervene militarily on their behalf.

If people are sickened by the inhumanity of these events, they might want to consider alternative explanations of who might be responsible for the immoralities we are seeing.

* Postol is  professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT.  Postol’s main expertise is in ballistic missiles. He has a substantial background in air dispersal, including how toxic plumes move in the air. Postol has taught courses on weapons of mass destruction – including chemical and biological threats – at MIT.  Before joining MIT, Postol worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment, as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations, and as a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory.  He also helped build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study weapons technology in relation to defense and arms control policy. Postol is a highly-decorated scientist, receiving the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society, the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Richard L. Garwin Award from the Federation of American Scientists.

Exposing The Student Servitude Scam

Authored by Gordon Long via MATASII.com,

Many today strongly believe it is morally wrong to indenture students to the degree of liabilities presently required to achieve the education required to become a productive contributor within our modern society.

The question we need to demand answers to is why has college costs for students exploded upward, while salaries and job positions for graduates has not?  What is driving the relentless and inexplicable surge in the debt burden for students and their parents?

The well researched "Ivy League Inc" by my friends at OpenTheBooks only begins to scratch the surface of what is minimally a sham and may be better described as an orchestrated banking scam, not to dissimilar in design to the last financing bubble (i.e. the Residential Real Estate bubble in the last decade).  Let me take the discussion in a critical direction which they politically may have felt it to be too sensitive to broach?

TWO BASIC NOTIONS OF UNDERSTANDING

First, to quickly grasp the underpinnings of how this sham has been symphonized it would help to frame our thinking around what might appear as two unrelated notions of how the capitalist system works (or more appropriately in the case of growing student debt - doesn"t work!).

INFLATION - Money Supply and Coconuts

If three hungry people were stranded on an island, each having two damp dollar bills and one having the only coconut which he/she found - what is the price of that coconut?

This of course assumes the finder of the coconut is a former Wall Street banker. The likelihood is that the maximum price that can be extracted for that coconut (no doubt partially eaten by our banker) is $4.

If a government plane then suddenly appears and drops much needed assistance in the form of $5 of financial aid for each inhabitant (which they distribute equally) - How much is the coconut now likely to be worth?

I suspect the banker would extract closer to $14.

As Nobel Economist Milton Freedman postulated " Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".   Credit or Money supply as this scenario illustrates, significantly determines price.

CORPORATE PRICING - "Pricing-to-Market"

When a corporation has a product it prices that product based on the market.

In the first instance, if there are many competitors then the product must be priced relative to competitive pricing.

In the second instance, if there are relatively few well know competitors and the product is not yet well accepted in the market it usually will be priced against how much money it will save or how much it will increases revenues by. The corporation then prices their product against what the customer might be willing to surrender via their expected profit increases to secure the product.

Finally, when a corporation has no competition, a monopoly exists or "unwitting" demand exists,  then the corporation will "Price-to-Market".  That is to say it will charge whatever the market is willing to pay, can afford or can secure financing for.

As in a gold rush, miners in the field paid anything for the picks and shovels they needed to strike a claim. Similarly, today parents and students will pay anything for the "degree" they need to get "a leg up" towards needed employment.

IVY LEAGUE ENDOWMENTS

Let"s start by considering the requirement by colleges for increased tuition levels. Do they actually need significantly more money? Where is the money going?

We decided to start by examining the Endowments of US Ivy League colleges and not surprisingly found that endowments are now measured in the billions of dollars. So why are college costs for Ivy League now being raised to $63,ooo/year? Why do these financially well positioned colleges need $63,000 per year from students?

If we use an average of $2M/student from the above table as endowment levels per student from Tier One colleges, we can quickly calculate that a minimal 5% annual return on endowment money would fund full scholarships for every Ivy League student and still leave $37K/year left over for operating costs, grow the existing endowment and fund new capital expenditures. However, that is not what is happening simply because there is no incentive for this to occur. There is just too much financial aid available

Colleges such as Harvard are incredibly doing much, much, better than our 5% illustration above and frankly better than most professional investors can understand to be possible in a QE/ZIRP environment!

Who is Getting An Overall 15% Yields in an Era of QE/ZIRP?

Consider the most recent Financial Statement of Harvard University (not to pick on Harvard as all the elite colleges reflect similar financial approaches). We see that the revenues from Federal Government sponsorship aid is equivalent to 60% of the revenue received from student income (remembering that in turn student debt is sponsored by government aid funding).

As we see below, Operating Revenue is dominated by Government funding, despite Harvard sitting on an endowment approaching net asset value of ~$40 BILLION dollars (and rapidly expanding). This asset base is bigger than most major banks in America.

Similar to our three deserted island inhabitants, when the government inserts more money or credit financing aid the price of the "coconut" or "student tuition" goes up!

The simple truth is that Ivy League schools have become non taxable, not-for-profit investment banks funding expenses through outrageous government guarantees in the form of student aid loans.

The "Ivy League Inc"   report summarized their investigations as follows:

1. Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in government monies, subsidies, & special tax treatment per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.

2. The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments - student assistance ($460 million).

3. In monetary terms, the "government contracting" business of the Ivy League ($25.27 billion - federal contracts and grants) exceeded their educational mission ($22 billion in student tuition) FY2010-FY2015.

4. The eight colleges of the Ivy League received more money ($4.31 billion) - on average - annually from the federal government than sixteen states: see report.

5. The Ivy League endowment funds (2015) exceeded $119 billion, which is equivalent to nearly $2 million per undergraduate student.

6. As a non-profit, educational institution, the Ivy League pays no tax on investment gains. Between FY2011-FY2015, the Ivy League schools received a $9.6 billion tax break on the $27.3 billion growth of their endowment funds. In FY2014, the tax-free subsidy on endowment gains amounted to $3.4 billion, or nearly $60,000 per student.

7. With continued gifts at present rates, the $119 billion endowment fund provides free tuition to the entire student body in perpetuity. Without new gifts, the endowment is equivalent to a full-ride scholarship for all Ivy League undergraduate students for 51-years, or until 2068.

8. In FY2014, the balance sheet for all Ivy League colleges showed $194,332,115,120 in accumulated gross assets. This is equivalent to $3.35 million per undergraduate student.

9. The Ivy League employs 47 administrators who each earn more than $1 million per year. Two executives each earned $20 million between 2010-2014. Ivy League employees earned $62 billion in compensation.

10. In a five-year period (2010-2014) the Ivy League spent $17.8 million on lobbying, which included issues mostly related to their endowment, federal contracting, immigration and student aid.

What we found particularly amusing  is that Harvard"s endowment had cashflow in 2016 of over $5.5B in trading changes in government repos and reverse repos.  Go figure how this is good for parents and their indebted children? What appears good for Harvard and the Government isn"t necessarily good for students and parents.

We would truly like to see where all this endowment money is being invested, but of course like the teamster"s union pension which under Jimmy Hoffa was invested by the "mob" into funding Las Vegas, we will never know!  I am not for a moment suggesting anything nefarious is going on here but rather that angry and debt burdened parents have a right to know why tuition is going up despite the size of the endowments - if only for their own piece of mind.

You are probably thinking, well this may all be true for the elitist schools but my kids are going to colleges for normal kids, well down the the status ladder. They are  just trying to get a shot at a job.

What we need to fully appreciate is that the above directly affects everyone trapped in the American post secondary educational scam.

EVERYONE IS BENCHMARK PRICING

As many parents have learned, when the "Harvard"s" raise their annual cost to $63K  every college then adjusts their price to close the available revenue gap in about a New York minute! As salaries rise at Ivy League schools, every college feels forced to raise salaries to attract Professors. Colleges feel competitively trapped and have little choice but to follow.

Of course all of this is nothing more than college"s version of the corporate game of how to "Price-to-Market" which we discussed above as our second notion of understanding.

Whether competitive pricing or price-to-market the colleges know they have an insatiable demand for their product and can price accordingly. Its how the capitalist system works. It continues until demand falls off  because pricing becomes un-affordable. This cycle will not stop until the an affordability level is reached and the cost no longer merits the debt level. With shrinking availability of quality, well paying jobs in America, the perceived "value level" is becoming even higher.

GAMING GOVERNMENT GRANTS & "FUNNY MONEY"

Just so you don"t think the villains here are solely the Ivy League schools, lets consider a personal example I encountered.

My neighbor"s son was a terrible student and his father often forlornly related the fact that unless his under achieving son received  a full basketball scholarship (which was the only thing he had a talent for), college was probably out. The concern wasn"t just his son"s poor academic achievements, but also the overall financial cost burden to the family with other more academically inclined children.

However, when he graduated high school his father suddenly appeared over my fence to tell me the great news. His son had graduated and had been accepted into college.  As I was digesting the surprise and was about to ask where he had received the basketball scholarship from, his father proceeded to unload the big news.

Though his son had not been awarded a basketball scholarship he had been awarded a $15,000/year academic scholarship.

"From where?" I blurted out uncontrollably.

His father sheepishly named a college I had never heard of and told me the annual tuition was going to be $45,000 but his son"s annual funding would now only be $30K after taking off the $15K scholarship.  I knew at the time that $30K was about what a state college would cost. I therefore asked where the money was coming from to pay for the scholarship as the college he named didn"t appear to have that sort of financial capabilities to reach down to his son"s GPA level?

It turned out after some further investigation that it was partly some government funding to the college for the program his son was enrolling in.  The more seats they filled the greater the money flowed.

However, it was much more insidiously as I curiously investigated the situation further. It turns out it was nothing more than the college elevating their stated college tuition by $15K and then "giving it way as a scholarship". Effectively creating "funny money". It was an illusion.  It was nothing more than a marketing sham. However, it worked in filling student seats, even if some of these students simply weren"t meant for college!

My neighbor was so proud of his son being awarded a scholarship that despite distance and other obstacles his son attended that college. Of course it didn"t go unnoticed by other colleges that tuition was now $45K at a college not "nearly as good as theirs"  Academic communities are notoriously very competitive and highly status conscious.  They obviously reacted in a New York minute!

This young man will possibly graduate? He and his family will likely have $120,000 in debt.

The questions to be answered is; Will he be employable?  Get a job?  Will he and his parents ever pay off the $120,000 of debt?

GAME ON

Once the game above has begun, it quickly takes on a life of its own. Everyone immediately justifies why more "whatever" is needed and tuitions shoot up. Salaries rise. Benefits rise. New buildings spring up. Labs become more  opulent. Administration becomes larger. Today the games is being further enhanced with additional fees (fees for student activities, fees for athletics, fees for building maintenance, fees for libraries—even fees for graduation, the bills for which often arrive just as students and their families thought they were finally done paying for their higher education).

This chart which Charles Hugh Smith and myself circulated a number of years ago shows, by 2010 we felt it was out of control.  Little then stood in the way of college costs being pushed to student loans and government grants guaranteed by the Department of Education and then serviced by private unscrupulous service providers (some of which are only now being brought to court).

The real questions today is whether the education is any better and whether jobs are available for these now heavily indentured debt slaves!

If the answer is no, then the only winners have been those receiving all the endowment investments, college spending or higher government income taxes being paid.

With student debt now approaching $1.3T and over $600M now in "forebearance", there is little doubt who the losers of this sham are: students, parents and every US taxpayer.

It maybe that Tax Payers just don"t know it yet!

How Space Tourists Will Benefit From No Government Regulation

Via The Daily Bell

Space tourism industry has a chance to show benefits of less regulation

If space truly is the final frontier, then it won’t be long until the first pioneers are making the journey, as several companies race to take paying passengers out of the Earth’s atmosphere and beyond. And true to form, right on its heels will be the regulators, red tape lassos in hand.

But like any brand new industry, the slight head start of the businesses will give them the opportunity to show the high standards that can be accomplished absent government control — and with any luck, they can do it in a way compelling enough to cast doubt on the “necessity” of regulation.

A March 20 article in Quartz about space tourism details the thus-far minimal regulatory burden on the burgeoning industry and questions how passengers will be protected without the “benefit” of tight regulations.

The first spaceflight participants will be guinea pigs in an experiment that asks: Just what does it mean to be safe in space when the government isn’t in charge?

The obvious answer, to those who believe in the power of market-driven incentives, is that space tourism will likely be safer with minimal government intervention than it would be with tight regulations and oversight, since the companies will police themselves, as Blue Origin Executive Erika Wagner says in the article.

Wagner recently told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ‘ . . . in terms of us having a safe place in the market, we take that seriously, we want to put our own families on board, we take that very seriously. So we are holding ourselves to internal standards.’

The case for strict government regulation is built on some faulty beliefs about humanity and behavior. It assumes that people in business are at their core unconcerned about other people and are motivated solely by profit. It assumes in contrast, that those people in government are the complete opposite, motivated only by altruism and never by self-interest. On this questionable foundation is built the assertion that the people in government must regulate the people in business so that the interests of customers and the public at large are protected.

It is easy enough to strike down these arguments. First, this stark divide between the values of businessmen and politicians does not exist. Good or bad personality traits can be found within any group, and I would argue that you’ll actually find disproportionately more politicians on the self-interested end of the spectrum than in other career paths, because politics either attracts or creates those kinds of people.

In any event, there is not a neutral ruling elite that can sit above the fray, benevolently handing down edicts to keep the otherwise-evil businesses in check. Politicians and regulatory agencies have a dog in the fight too, be it money, connections, political pressure, or desire for power.

But for argument’s sake, let’s assume the worst of businesses and the best of government. Even in this case, the goal for both parties is the same: safe space travel. At their most altruistic, regulators want it because they don’t want people to die. At their worst, space travel businesses want it because death and injury is bad for business.

Any company, whether they are building and flying rockets or simply selling sandwiches, needs to have customers to stay in business. Blue Origin, SpaceX, Boeing and Virgin Galactic — all companies planning to fly people out into space — won’t be able to keep customers if people aren’t flying back to Earth intact.

And unlike the mistakes of a sandwich shop, which might never make the front page news, in a pioneering industry like commercial space flight, you can bet every potential customer on earth would hear about the company’s missteps. As safety risks increase, customers will decrease, and if that balance gets out of whack, the company will fail.

Not all customers desire the same level of safety. And that’s OK. When regulations are minimal, companies can cater to whatever customer base they want. Riskier or more expensive products or services will  have a smaller customer base than those that are safer or cheaper.

Perhaps each space tourism company will use this formula to choose a different niche; companies could advertise that they tested their spacecraft the most, or offer the least expensive weightlessness experience, or orbit the earth the fastest.  In this way, less regulation gives the consumer more choices, while regulation would restrict some of these options, eliminating the preferences of some customers while simultaneously crippling those niche businesses.

“Minimal” Regulation

What does “minimal” regulation look like in the space tourism industry? Right now, it’s governed by the Commercial Space Act, which establishes the Secretary of Transportation as the governing authority. The Secretary has the power to grant launch licenses to rockets, which can include requirements on crew training and medical standards.

The license holder must inform crew and passengers in writing about the risks involved in space travel, and let them know that the United States Government has not certified the launch vehicle as safe for carrying crew or space flight participants. The Secretary can also restrict rocket design features or operating practices that have resulted in serious or fatal injury or a high risk thereof.

By many standards, that amount of regulation is already too much. It’s not that these rules are especially onerous or illogical; it’s just that they are unnecessary. Crew members and paying customers are voluntarily participating in space flight — a non-essential service, moreover — through the company. Therefore, customers and employees should work directly with the company to ensure a satisfactory experience. The company can then meet those demands or lose those customers and workers. They can cut out the middleman of regulation because there is no one to protect; all parties are already satisfied, and customers are signing up in droves. According to the article, Virgin Galactic has accrued 700 paid passengers since 2005.

The article cites Uber as a close example of how the space travel industry could expect to pave its own way:

Because the slate is still blank for how the federal government will treat the space business, the earliest companies will be in a position to set the tone, much as Uber’s regulatory battles laid the groundwork for the still tetchy relationship between cities and ride-hailing apps.

This is a fitting analogy, but frustrating if space tourism goes the way of ride-hailing apps. Because Uber and others like it are another example of a business in which regulators tried to fix problems that didn’t exist. Everyone involved was already happy. And yet because of pressure from the highly-regulated taxi companies, politicians implemented regulations to handcuff ride-sharing companies as well, under the guise of consumer protection.

In my home state of Massachusetts, for example, a bill regulating ride-sharing companies required Uber drivers to complete a two-part background check, carry insurance coverage of at least $1 million, and have their vehicles get a second safety inspection in addition to the annual inspection required of all registered cars. And—perhaps the biggest affront— the law required the companies to pay 20 cents per ride to the state, which will fund public transportation, including the taxi industry. The bill was signed into law last August, adding Massachusetts to the long list of states that punish and restrict the ride-sharing app companies while buoying their competitors.

Yet Uber and other ride-sharing app companies have largely survived the onslaught of regulations because the service they offer is so attractive, not only from a practical standpoint, but also a symbolic one. It gives both customers and drivers freedom and self-determination, the ability to set their own hours, choose their own route.

And that’s just ground transportation. It’s hard to imagine a more freeing experience than blasting off in a rocket to outer space, quite literally extricating oneself from earthly cares. So while we will likely see a shorter leash on space tourism companies as the industry matures and regulators catch up, these pioneering companies have a chance to demonstrate that they can be self policing. They can prove that private industry can safely, astonishingly, and beautifully launch people into the final frontier — and bring them home again.

A new age is dawning. Will governments be left in the dust?

MIT Ups the Activism Ante — Offers $250K to Best Act of DISobedience

Throughout history, humans across the world have engaged in innumerable courageous acts of rebellion, resistance and dissent against authority, many of which have led to revolutions and meaningful progress in society. There is now a financial incentive for such movements involving disobedience with the creation of an unusual contest from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

On March 6, MIT’s Media Lab began accepting applications for individuals and groups presenting an act of “responsible disobedience,” with a $250,000 prize awarded to the winner. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, is funding the award. Hoffman serves on the advisory board of the Media Lab.

The concept was created “after a realization that there’s a widespread frustration from people trying to figure out how can we effectively harness responsible, ethical disobedience aimed at challenging our norms, rules, or laws to benefit society,” according to a MIT Media Lab post. “My hope is that the prize helps us understand that the way we make progress as a society and as humanity is by recognizing the right heroes who take personal risk, and sometimes that risk is a form of disobedience to help us evolve as humanity,” said Hoffman.

While the application time window opened up just recently, the university has had this in the works for some time, as the contest was announced last July. Submissions are currently being accepted and the deadline is May 1st, 2017.

The criteria for submission is complex, and it’s clear that the university is seeking exceptional endeavors that would substantially impact society: “The award will go to a living person or group engaged in what we believe is extraordinary disobedience for the benefit of society. Specifically, we’d like to call out action that seeks to change society in positive ways and is consistent with a set of key principles. These principles include non-violence, creativity, courage, and taking responsibility for one’s actions. We’re seeking both expected and unexpected nominees. This could include–but isn’t limited to–those engaged in scientific research, civil rights, freedom of speech, human rights, and the freedom to innovate.

Also among the criteria is the requirement that the “recipient must have taken a personal risk in order to affect positive change for greater society.” Applicants may be individuals or formed as a group, and there is an option to nominate others.

The college listed several influential figures from various points in history to reference as “inspiration” such as Galileo Galilei, the Founding Fathers, Sitting Bull, Martin Luther King Jr., Mark Felt, and the unidentified “Tank Man” who blocked a military tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Last year, the Media Lab hosted a presentation from one of modern history’s most notable dissenters, Edward Snowden, and engineer Andrew “Bunnie” Huang. The presentation, titled “Against the law: countering lawful abuses of digital surveillance,” centered around the moral dangers of digital surveillance, particularly of journalists, and discussed measures of protection from “lawful” government monitoring.

The winner will be chosen by a committee within the Media Lab network on July 21st, 2017.