News & Events

1,299 News items and Awards found.


  •  NEWS    Mouhacine Benosman has been invited to speak at the data-centric engineering summit held at the Alan Turing Institute
    Date: September 22, 2021
    Where: The Alan Turing Institute
    MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
    Research Area: Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • Mouhacine Benosman will give a talk about merging physical models with data-driven and machine learning methods for real-world application. The talk will include results about data-driven auto-tuning for feedback controllers with application to power amplifiers, extremum seeking and Gaussian processes for reduction/estimation of fluid dynamics models with application to indoor airflow modeling, and safe reinforcement learning for safety-critical and Sim2Real applications.
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  •  NEWS    Anthony Vetro delivers keynote on robotic manipulation at inaugural IEEE Conference on Autonomous Systems
    Date: August 12, 2021
    MERL Contact: Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics
    Brief
    • Anthony Vetro gave a keynote at the inaugural IEEE Conference on Autonomous Systems (ICAS), which was held virtually from August 11-13, 2021. The talk focused on challenges and recent progress in the area of robotic manipulation. The conference is sponsored by IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) through the SPS Autonomous Systems Initiative.

      Abstract: Human-level manipulation continues to be beyond the capabilities of today’s robotic systems. Not only do current industrial robots require significant time to program a specific task, but they lack the flexibility to generalize to other tasks and be robust to changes in the environment. While collaborative robots help to reduce programming effort and improve the user interface, they still fall short on generalization and robustness. This talk will highlight recent advances in a number of key areas to improve the manipulation capabilities of autonomous robots, including methods to accurately model the dynamics of the robot and contact forces, sensors and signal processing algorithms to provide improved perception, optimization-based decision-making and control techniques, as well as new methods of interactivity to accelerate and enhance robot learning.
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  •  NEWS    Keynote Speech by Dr. Petros Boufounos
    Date: August 5, 2021
    MERL Contact: Petros T. Boufounos
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL's Distinguished Researcher Dr. Petros Boufounos is the keynote speaker for the Center for Advanced Signal and Image Sciences (CASIS) 25th Annual Workshop on Aug. 5, 2021, with talk titled, "The Computational Sensing Revolution in Array Processing."
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  •  NEWS    MERL Congratulates Recipients of 2022 IEEE Technical Field Awards in Signal Processing
    Date: July 26, 2021
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Jonathan Le Roux; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • IEEE has announced that the recipients of the 2022 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award will be Hervé Bourlard (EPFL/Idiap Research Institute) and Nelson Morgan (ICSI), "For contributions to neural networks for statistical speech recognition," and the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing will be Ali Sayed (EPFL), "For contributions to the theory and practice of adaptive signal processing." More details about the contributions of Prof. Bourlard and Prof. Morgan can be found in the announcements by ICSI and EPFL, and those of Prof. Sayed in EPFL's announcement. Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) has recently become the new sponsor of these two prestigious awards, and extends our warmest congratulations to all of the 2022 award recipients.

      The IEEE Board of Directors established the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2002 for outstanding contributions to the advancement of speech and/or audio signal processing, while the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing was established in 2012 for outstanding contribution to the advancement of signal processing, other than in the areas of speech and audio processing. Both awards have recognized the contributions of some of the most renowned pioneers and leaders in their respective fields. MERL is proud to support the recognition of outstanding contributions to the signal processing field through its sponsorship of these awards.
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  •  NEWS    MERL researchers Diego Romeres, Devesh Jha and Siddarth Jain co-organized a workshop on Robotic Manipulation at the RSS 2021 conference
    Date: July 13, 2021
    Where: Robotics: Science and Systems
    MERL Contacts: Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Diego Romeres
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics
    Brief
    • MERL researchers Diego Romeres, Devesh Jha, and Siddarth Jain together with research groups at MIT, NVIDIA, NIST, TUM, Google DeepMind, ETH Zurich, Google AI, and UMASS Lowell organized a workshop at the Robotics: Science and Systems 2021 conference. The workshop was on "Advancing Artificial Intelligence and Manipulation for Robotics: Understanding Gaps, Industry and Academic Perspectives, and Community Building". The workshop had a list of excellent speakers both from academia and industry. Recording of the talks and of the panel discussion can be found in the link below.
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  •  NEWS    MERL researcher co-edits a special issue on Extremum Seeking Control in the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing
    Date: July 14, 2021
    MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
    Research Area: Dynamical Systems
    Brief
    • Mouhacine Benosman co-edits a special issue on Extremum Seeking Control in the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing.

      The issue contains some of the newest theoretical developments on continuous-time optimizers, known as extremum seekers, with applications ranging from microalgae cultivation control to heating and ventilation systems optimization.

      The special issue is available at:
      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10991115/current
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  •  NEWS    MERL becomes new sponsor of two prestigious IEEE Technical Field Awards in Signal Processing
    Date: July 9, 2021
    MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Jonathan Le Roux; Philip V. Orlik; Anthony Vetro
    Research Areas: Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) has become the new sponsor of two prestigious IEEE Technical Field Awards in Signal Processing, the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award and the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, for the years 2022-2031. "MERL is proud to support the recognition of outstanding contributions to signal processing by sponsoring both the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award and the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing. These awards celebrate the creativity and innovation in the field that touch many aspects of our lives and drive our society forward" said Dr. Anthony Vetro, VP and Director at MERL.

      The IEEE Board of Directors established the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2002 for outstanding contributions to the advancement of speech and/or audio signal processing, while the IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing was established in 2012 for outstanding contribution to the advancement of signal processing, other than in the areas of speech and audio processing. Both awards have since recognized the contributions of some of the most renowned pioneers and leaders in their respective fields.

      By underwriting these IEEE Technical Field Awards, MERL continues to make a mark by supporting the advancement of technology that makes lasting changes in the world.
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  •  NEWS    Rien Quirynen and Karl Berntorp to deliver keynote at IFAC NMPC 2021 Conference
    Date: July 12, 2021
    MERL Contact: Karl Berntorp
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization
    Brief
    • MERL researcher Rien Quirynen will present work in collaboration with Karl Berntorp on "Uncertainty Propagation by Linear Regression Kalman Filters for Stochastic Nonlinear MPC" as a keynote speaker at the 7th IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control 2021 on July, 12th. The paper is 1 out of 5 keynote presentations chosen among more than 50 accepted papers at the conference. An abstract of the talk can be found in the link below.
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  •  NEWS    Arvind Raghunathan joins editorial board of Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications
    Date: June 21, 2021
    MERL Contact: Arvind Raghunathan
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Optimization
    Brief
    • Arvind Raghunathan has accepted an invitation to serve on the editorial board of Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications (JOTA).

      JOTA is devoted to the publication of carefully selected high quality regular papers, invited papers, survey papers, technical notes, book notices, and forums that cover mathematical optimization techniques, computational methodologies of optimization algorithms and their applications to science, engineering, and business. Typical theoretical areas include linear, nonlinear, discrete, stochastic, and dynamic optimization. Among the areas of application covered are mathematical economics, mathematical physics and biology, all areas of engineering, and novel areas, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing optimization.
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  •  NEWS    MERL and Mitsubishi Electric U.S. participating in International Microwave Symposium Week 2021
    Date: June 18, 2021
    MERL Contact: Mouhacine Benosman
    Research Areas: Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • During the 2021 International Microwave Symposium Week (June 20-25), Rui Ma will give an invited talk on MERL's recent power amplifiers research at an IMS Technical Workshop to be held on June 21st, titled "From Digital to Intelligent: Advancement of MISO Power Amplifiers by Machine Learning".

      IMS is the annual flagship conference of IEEE MTT-S (Microwave Theory and Techniques Society) and the centerpiece of Microwave Week. It is the largest gathering of RF/Microwave professionals in the world and combines multiple technical conferences with the biggest commercial exhibitions for the microwave industry.

      Mitsubishi Electric U.S. (MEUS) will also host an online interactive booth to showcase our latest high-frequency Semiconductor & Device products at IMS week.

      More detailed information can be found at the Mitsubishi Electric booth.
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  •  NEWS    Mitsubishi Electric and MERL Help Develop IEEE Smart Meter Coexistence Standards
    Date: April 23, 2021
    MERL Contacts: Jianlin Guo; Philip V. Orlik
    Research Areas: Communications, Electric Systems
    Brief
    • IoT applications such as smart metering system are rapidly increasing. A broad range of low power wide area communication technologies have been developed. These systems all operate in frequencies below 1 GHz, commonly called Sub-1 GHz frequency bands, to meet various application requirements. Several communication standards and proprietary technologies already use the Sub-1 GHz bands: IEEE 802.15.4g (Wi-SUN), IEEE 802.11ah (Wi-Fi HaLow), LoRa, SigFox and RFID. Due to limited spectrum in the Sub-1 GHz frequency bands, it is likely that applications will compete for the same resources and interfere with one another. This is a particular issue in Japan where the amount of license-exempt Sub-1 GHz frequencies is more limited than in other regulatory regions. Therefore, the coexistence becomes an issue to be addressed. Accordingly, IEEE New Standards Committee and Standard Board formed IEEE 802.19.3 Task Group in 2018 to develop guidelines and best practices for the coexistence of IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15.4 based systems and to guide product deployment. MERL member Jianlin Guo took a lead role as Task Group Technical Editor, and was supported by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation researchers Yukimasa Nagai, Takenori Sumi and consultant Benjamin A. Rolfe (Task Group Chair) in the development of this standard. As of April 2021 a new standard recommended practice document, IEEE Recommended Practice for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks—Part 19: Coexistence Methods for IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15.4 Based Systems Operating in the Sub‐1 GHz Frequency Bands, was published. This will help guide future IoT/smart metering system deployment. The standard is widely available for download from the IEEE Standards Association at https://standards.ieee.org/standard/802_19_3-2021.html.
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  •  NEWS    Karl Berntorp gave an invited lecture at University of Houston
    Date: April 22, 2021
    Where: Houston, Texas
    MERL Contact: Karl Berntorp
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Robotics, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • The invited seminar "System Design, Planning, and Control for Autonomous Driving" was part of the Distinguished Seminar series at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, Houston, Tx. The invited lecture described MERL research related to the different system components involved in autonomous driving, with particular focus on motion-planning and predictive-control methods.
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  •  NEWS    Research on Intelligent Power Amplifier is Cover Story of Microwave Journal
    Date: April 15, 2021
    MERL Contacts: Mouhacine Benosman; Koon Hoo Teo
    Research Areas: Communications, Electronic and Photonic Devices, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • The cover article in the April issue of Microwave Journal features MERL and MELCO's invited paper entitled "A New Frontier for Power Amplifiers Enabled by Machine Learning". Our recent research applying ML for optimizing operating conditions of advanced power amplifier designs is highlighted.

      Since 1958, Microwave Journal has been the leading source for information about RF and Microwave technology, design techniques, news, events and educational information. Microwave Journal reaches 50,000 qualified readers monthly with a print magazine that has a global reach.
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  •  NEWS    Ankush Chakrabarty gave an invited talk at University of Illinois at Chicago
    Date: April 9, 2021
    MERL Contact: Ankush Chakrabarty
    Research Areas: Control, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization
    Brief
    • Ankush Chakrabarty, a Research Scientist at MERL's Multiphysical Systems (MS) Team, gave an invited talk on "Learning for Control and Estimation using Digital Twins" at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar Series organized at UIC. The talk proposed new learning-based control/estimation architectures that can utilize simulation data obtained from digital twins to add self-optimization and constraint-enforcement features to grey/black-box control systems.
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  •  NEWS    Invited talk at University of Leeds
    Date: April 7, 2021
    Where: Online
    MERL Contact: Devesh K. Jha
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics
    Brief
    • Devesh Jha, a Principal Research Scientist in MERL's Data Analytics group, gave an invited talk at the robotics seminar series at the University of Leeds. The talk presented some of the recent work done at MERL in the areas of robotic manipulation and robot learning.
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  •  NEWS    Karl Berntorp gave an invited lecture at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University
    Date: April 6, 2021
    Where: Linköping University, Sweden
    MERL Contact: Karl Berntorp
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Robotics
    Brief
    • MERL researcher Karl Berntorp was invited to give a lecture in the ELLIIT PhD course "Motion Planning and Control" at the Division of Vehicular Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University. The course is open for Ph.D. students as well as senior undergraduate students, and covers both fundamental algorithms and state-of-the-art methods for motion planning and control. The invited lecture described MERL research on the use of invariant sets for safe motion planning and control, with application to autonomous vehicles.
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  •  NEWS    Diego Romeres appointed as an Associate Editor for IROS 2021
    Date: March 14, 2021 - April 20, 2021
    Where: IROS
    MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Robotics
    Brief
    • Diego Romeres, a Principal Research Scientist in MERL's Data Analytics group, is serving as an Associate Editor (AE) for the 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2021).
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  •  NEWS    Stefano Di Cairano joins the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles
    Date: March 7, 2021
    MERL Contact: Stefano Di Cairano
    Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Robotics
    Brief
    • Stefano Di Cairano has joined the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles (T-IV) as an Associate Editor. The IEEE T-IV publishes peer-reviewed articles in the area of intelligent vehicles in a roadway environment, and in particular in automated vehicles. While primarily led by the IEEE ITS Society, IEEE T-IV is an IEEE multi-society journal.
      As Associate Editor Stefano will be responsible for the review process of some of the papers submitted to T-IV and will work with the Editorial Board to monitor the status and continuously strengthen the journal.
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  •  NEWS    Diego Romeres gave an invited talk at the Autonomy Talks at ETH, Zurich.
    Date: February 15, 2021
    Where: Virtual
    MERL Contact: Diego Romeres
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics
    Brief
    • Diego Romeres, a Principal Research Scientist in MERL's Data Analytics group, gave the invited talk "Reinforcement Learning for Robotics" at the Autonomy Talks organized at ETH, Zurich. In the presentation, some directions to apply Model-based Reinforcement Learning algorithms to real-world applications are presented together with a novel MBRL algorithm called MC-PILCO. The link to the presentation is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgbgMa4j-s.
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  •  NEWS    Chiori Hori will give keynote on scene understanding via multimodal sensing at AI Electronics Symposium
    Date: February 15, 2021
    Where: The 2nd International Symposium on AI Electronics
    MERL Contact: Chiori Hori
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Speech & Audio
    Brief
    • Chiori Hori, a Senior Principal Researcher in MERL's Speech and Audio Team, will be a keynote speaker at the 2nd International Symposium on AI Electronics, alongside Alex Acero, Senior Director of Apple Siri, Roberto Cipolla, Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge, and Hiroshi Amano, Professor at Nagoya University and winner of the Nobel prize in Physics for his work on blue light-emitting diodes. The symposium, organized by Tohoku University, will be held online on February 15, 2021, 10am-4pm (JST).

      Chiori's talk, titled "Human Perspective Scene Understanding via Multimodal Sensing", will present MERL's work towards the development of scene-aware interaction. One important piece of technology that is still missing for human-machine interaction is natural and context-aware interaction, where machines understand their surrounding scene from the human perspective, and they can share their understanding with humans using natural language. To bridge this communications gap, MERL has been working at the intersection of research fields such as spoken dialog, audio-visual understanding, sensor signal understanding, and robotics technologies in order to build a new AI paradigm, called scene-aware interaction, that enables machines to translate their perception and understanding of a scene and respond to it using natural language to interact more effectively with humans. In this talk, the technologies will be surveyed, and an application for future car navigation will be introduced.
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  •  AWARD    Excellent Presentation Award
    Date: January 25, 2021
    Awarded to: Takenori Sumi, Yukimasa Nagai, Jianlin Guo, Philip Orlik, Tatsuya Yokoyama, Hiroshi Mineno
    MERL Contacts: Jianlin Guo; Philip V. Orlik
    Research Areas: Communications, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MELCO and MERL researchers have won "Excellent Presentation Award" at the IPSJ/CDS30 (Information Processing Society of Japan/Consumer Devices and Systems 30th conferences) held on January 25, 2021. The paper titled "Sub-1 GHz Coexistence Using Reinforcement Learning Based IEEE 802.11ah RAW Scheduling" addresses coexistence between IEEE 802.11ah and IEEE 802.15.4g systems in the Sub-1 GHz frequency bands. This paper proposes a novel method to allocate IEEE 802.11 RAW time slots using a Q-Learning technique. MERL and MELCO have been leading IEEE 802.19.3 coexistence standard development and this paper is a good candidate for future standard enhancement. The authors are Takenori Sumi, Yukimasa Nagai, Jianlin Guo, Philip Orlik, Tatsuya Yokoyama and Hiroshi Mineno.
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  •  AWARD    Best Paper - Honorable Mention Award at WACV 2021
    Date: January 6, 2021
    Awarded to: Rushil Anirudh, Suhas Lohit, Pavan Turaga
    MERL Contact: Suhas Lohit
    Research Areas: Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning
    Brief
    • A team of researchers from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Arizona State University (ASU) received the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at WACV 2021 for their paper "Generative Patch Priors for Practical Compressive Image Recovery".

      The paper proposes a novel model of natural images as a composition of small patches which are obtained from a deep generative network. This is unlike prior approaches where the networks attempt to model image-level distributions and are unable to generalize outside training distributions. The key idea in this paper is that learning patch-level statistics is far easier. As the authors demonstrate, this model can then be used to efficiently solve challenging inverse problems in imaging such as compressive image recovery and inpainting even from very few measurements for diverse natural scenes.
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  •  NEWS    MERL published four papers in 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference
    Date: December 7, 2020 - December 11, 2020
    Where: Taipei, Taiwan
    MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Philip V. Orlik; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang
    Research Areas: Communications, Computational Sensing, Machine Learning, Signal Processing
    Brief
    • MERL researchers have published four papers in 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GlobeComm). This conference is one of the two IEEE Communications Societies flagship conferences dedicated to Communications for Human and Machine Intelligence. Topics of the published papers include, transmit diversity schemes, coding for molecular networks, and location and human activity sensing via WiFi signals.
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  •  NEWS    New robotics benchmark system
    Date: November 16, 2020
    MERL Contacts: Devesh K. Jha; Daniel N. Nikovski; Diego Romeres
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics
    Brief
    • MERL researchers, in collaboration with researchers from MELCO and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT, have released simulation software Circular Maze Environment (CME). This system could be used as a new benchmark for evaluating different control and robot learning algorithms. The control objective in this system is to tip and the tilt the maze so as to drive one (or multiple) marble(s) to the innermost ring of the circular maze. Although the system is very intuitive for humans to control, it is very challenging for artificial intelligence agents to learn efficiently. It poses several challenges for both model-based as well as model-free methods, due to its non-smooth dynamics, long planning horizon, and non-linear dynamics. The released Python package provides the simulation environment for the circular maze, where movement of multiple marbles could be simulated simultaneously. The package also provides a trajectory optimization algorithm to design a model-based controller in simulation.
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  •  NEWS    Devesh Jha appointed as an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).
    Date: October 29, 2020
    MERL Contact: Devesh K. Jha
    Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics
    Brief
    • MERL Researcher Devesh Jha has been appointed to the editorial board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) as an Associate Editor. IEEE RA-L publishes peer-reviewed articles in the areas of robotics and automation which can also be presented at the annual flagship conferences of RAS like ICRA, IROS and CASE.
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