Science blog

16 posts categorized "Social sciences"

02 July 2025

How a British AI pioneer helped to make the 1983 sci-fi classic "WarGames"

There aren’t many sci-fi movies as cleverly written and executed as the 1983 Hollywood classic WarGames, directed by John Badham and written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes. But it might not have been as good as it is if not for the input of the British AI scientist Donald Michie (1923-2007) and his knowledge of game-learning machines, especially computers that can play noughts and crosses.

Who was Donald Michie?

Donald Michie was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park (BP) during the second world war; after the war, a geneticist and later an artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer who founded the first department for machine intelligence in the world at the University of Edinburgh. He made significant contributions to all three fields that he worked in and was instrumental in institutionalising AI and machine learning (ML) research in the UK, and abroad.

A major part of his AI research focused on machines that could play games. However, one of his most famous achievements in this subfield of AI is MENACE (Machine Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine), a mechanical computer made of matchboxes and beads that could learn to play noughts and crosses. MENACE is now considered one of the first working examples of, what ML researchers call, reinforcement learning. This eventually led to the development of the BOXES algorithm by Michie and R. A. Chambers for learning of dynamic systems.

Therefore, it is no surprise that Universal Studios reached out to him when working on WarGames.

Dangerous games

If you haven’t seen it, be warned that there will be spoilers ahead.

WarGames tells the story of a young computer hacker, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) who accidentally gains access to a US military supercomputer that controls the launch of nuclear warheads. He starts playing games with it thinking that it’s a game-playing machine, which makes the supercomputer run real war-game simulations and almost launch the nuclear warheads. Fortunately, Lightman, along with Prof. Stephen Falken (John Wood), the scientist who designed the supercomputer, makes it play a game of noughts and crosses against itself, which leads the machine to conclude that a Third World War involving nuclear warheads cannot be won, thus stopping it from launching the missiles.

It might be an exaggeration to call it sci-fi as it hits a little too close to reality than most sci-fi movies would. Although there is no public record of any supercomputer malfunctioning and almost launching nuclear warheads to start a world war, there have been a few mishaps in United States alone that have almost caused nuclear detonations, and one incident in 1983 when a Soviet early warning system gave a false alarm of a missile launch by the US.

The fear of the Cold War escalating to a direct nuclear war was alive and well when WarGames was released. However, that was only a part of the reason why the movie became a box office success and a cult classic. It was the presence of an ‘intelligent’ supercomputer that could play games and treat global thermonuclear war as a game, and act on its own to potentially end the world as we know it, that made WarGames such a compelling film.

Michie’s concern

WarGames tapped into a real concern that was prevalent at that time, regarding the increasing inscrutability and influence of large computers that were being used by big companies and government organisations for various purposes. This was something that Michie too was very concerned about and he points out in his correspondence regarding the script consultancy with Universal Studios:

We are all in danger from the current emergence of super-computers inscrutable to man. Very few are yet alert to the seriousness and nature of the peril.

This is not surprising coming from Michie, who had already been discussing the social risks of AI for over a decade by this point. In fact, he was the one who organised the first global conference on the social impact of AI in 1972 at Serbelloni in Italy1. In the years since then, Michie had raised some of his concerns regarding increasingly complex and sophisticated computers in several publications despite being a pioneer in the field. It makes sense why he was enthusiastic to collaborate on this sci-fi movie project, which was initially titled The Genius.

Main suggestions

Letter from Donald Mitchie. Transcript: Machine Intelligence Research Unit  University of Edinburgh  Prof. D. Michie  Tel. (03 1)667-1011  Ext.    Hope Park Square  Meadow Lane  Edinburgh  EH8 9NW    page 128 (continued): I would suggest the game FIVE-IN-A-ROW (sometimes called PEGGITY, sometimes GO-MOKU) as suitable.  Why should David hit the ENTER key? The program has already been entered.   page 127: YOU HAVE BEEN DISCONNECTED is far too severe a response by any system of familiar type to the mere typing in of symbols which are not recognised as valid input by a running program.   page 127 near bottom:"Stalemate" is a term from chess. In tic-tac-toe one only speaks of "draws".  page 128 bottom: This concept of "consuming more and more system power" makes no sense, whether it is electric power or computational resource. There is nothing known to present-day computer science which corresponds to "mental effort", "cognitive strain" etc.  page 129: "The random numbers are slowing down ...." This suggests that the SIOP system is time-sharing between  TIC-TAC-TOE self-play and the thermonuclear game in which it is trying to fire the real missiles by matching the Authenticator Codes; and that the share of time allocated by the system to the TIC-TAC-TOE program is increasing at the expense of the allocation being consumed by the war game. It is very hard to see any reason why this should occur. I believe that there is an intrusion here of a common misconception derived from the way the human brain "time-shares" among competing tasks: if one of two concurrent mental tasks enters a "difficult" phase, attention is drained from the other. This is essentially because there is only one "processor" available in the human case for handling the sequential part of each given task, so that when a task requires sequential processing from the brain, it has to "claim the processor" (i.e. distract attention) from any other task which may be under consideration. In the computer case  (i) where the machine only has a single processor available for program execution, switching backwards and forwards between jobs also occurs, but on criteria
“WarGames Correspondence with Universal Studios”, 1981. (Add MS 88958/3/54). Reproduced with permission of the estate of Donald Michie.

In his correspondence, Michie points out five pages worth of technical inaccuracies in the draft script. Most of them are small details regarding the terminologies that are spoken about and technical issues in how the technology is used in various scenes. Michie recommended a lot of minor changes, for instance using the term “printer” instead of “teleprinter,” which was no longer used among the computing community by the 1980s. However, he also pointed out major technical errors, such as that a program once terminated would not have a fragment of itself accidentally re-animated when the computer goes online as was shown in one of the scenes in the draft script.

Although some of Michie’s minor suggestions have been taken into account by the scriptwriters, we can see that most of the technical inaccuracies he pointed out are still there in the final cut of the movie. This includes the premise of Michie’s main suggestion: to consider changing the climax sequence where the machine is self-playing a 3-in-a-row noughts and crosses to “learn” that it’s a game that cannot be won. Michie recommended changing it a game called 5-IN-A-ROW (sometimes called Peggity) as it would take much longer for the computer to self-learn how to play compared to noughts and crosses, which can be learned by a fast computer within seconds. This, in his view, would make the long climax sequence where the computer is learning to play the game more realistic. Moreover, Michie pointed out that the supercomputer “would try to establish the ‘no win’ property by logical proof,” rather than brute-forcing through various playing strategies as is shown in the movie. He states that a computer as sophisticated as the one shown in the movie would not use a ‘try everything’ strategy to learn how to play a game.

Crucial contribution to the script

However, one key suggestion of Michie’s that was taken into account by the studio and the scriptwriters was the technique by which David and Prof. Falken make the computer play itself. In the draft script given to Michie, the computer “somehow” starts self-playing, presumably without a prompt. Michie suggested changing the number of players to “zero” to make the computer play itself. This is what happens in the movie.

Michie also recommends changing the way the supercomputer abruptly stops trying to guess the launch codes of the missiles, as it was in the draft script. He instead suggests that the filmmakers show the computer generalise from the self-play sequence that ‘nuclear wars are not winnable’ and apply this to terminate the war game it was playing. He recommends David or someone else instructing the computer to do this, although this was not taken into account. In the film, the computer automatically generalises from the noughts and crosses self-playing that various real-world nuclear war-game simulations all end up with no winners.

Although Michie’s main suggestion to change the 3-in-a-row game to 5-in-a-row was ignored by the filmmakers, he himself points out in the correspondence that it is not necessary to fix this as ‘there is a risk of distracting from the gripping simplicity of the ending by fussing over side-issues.’ It shows his concern for how well laypeople could receive the movie and its main theme of the futility of nuclear war, rather than focusing too much on the technical inaccuracies or inconsistencies in the script.

Aswin Valsala Narayanan

The Donald Michie Papers at the British Library comprise two separate tranches of material gifted to the Library in 2004 and 2008. They contain correspondence, notes, notebooks, offprints and photographs and are available to researchers.

Aswin Valsala Narayanan is as PhD student at the University of Leeds and the British Library. He is on an WRoCAH Collaborative Doctoral Award researching the Donald Michie Archive, exploring Michie's work as an artificial intelligence researcher in post-war Britain.

[1] Rosamund Powell, “The ‘Artificial Intelligentsia’ and Its Discontents: An Exploration of 1970s Attitudes to the ‘Social Responsibility of the Machine Intelligence Worker,’” BJHS Themes, September 19, 2023, pp.1–15, https://doi.org/10.1017/bjt.2023.8.

18 June 2020

Citizen Science and COVID-19

Your experience of the COVID-19 pandemic could be an important contribution to science. Researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds are keen to learn about your stories, insights, routines, thoughts and feelings. While some projects would be eager to receive diaries in the narrative style of Samuel Pepys or John Evelyn, others want more specific information in survey format.

Hand-drawn and painted cartoon illustrating various ways people have entertained themselves during lockdown
Illustration: Graham Newby, The British Library: Lockdown Rooms (3rd June 2020)

Citizen science engages self-selected members of the public in academic research that generates new knowledge and provides all participants with benefits. The engagement can vary from data gathering or participatory interpretation to shared research design. Different forms of citizen science can be referred to as public science, public participation in scientific research, community science, crowd-sourced science, distributed engagement with research and knowledge production, or trans-disciplinary research that integrates local, indigenous and academic knowledge.

Contributing to citizen science projects sustains a sense of control, sense of belonging (empowering feelings in and after isolation) and sense of being useful which are particularly important in uncertain times. According to the UK Environment Observation Framework, self-measured evidence is more trusted by people, and organisations that draw on data generated through citizen science are more trusted. Trust is linked to transparency. Better understanding of how scientific knowledge is produced, and having a role and responsibility in shaping the knowledge production process, are likely to enable citizen scientists to re-frame the often-uneasy relationship between society and science.

Scale is a distinctive feature of citizen science. The more people are engaged, the more comprehensive an understanding can be reached about the researched topic. The featured COVID-19 Symptom Study has become the largest public science project in the world in a matter of weeks:  3,881,488 citizen scientists are involved as of 18th June 2020. Big data allowed medics to develop an artificial intelligence diagnostic that can predict the likelihood of having COVID-19 based on the symptoms only: a vital tool indeed when testing is limited.

The citizen science initiatives highlighted here, COVID-19 Symptom Study, COVID-19 and You, and COVID Chronicles, may inspire you to contribute to them or find other projects where you can take an active role in developing better understanding of current and future epidemics.

COVID-19 Symptom Study
https://COVID.joinzoe.com/data
Epidemiology
Institutions: King's College London, ZOE
Launched: 25th March 2020
Your contribution helps you and researchers understand COVID-19 and the dynamics of the pandemic (UK, USA).
How: Submit your physical health status regularly.

COVID-19 and You
https://nquire.org.uk/mission/COVID-19-and-you/contribute
Social sciences
Institutions: The Open University, The Young Foundation
Launched: 7th April 2020
Your contribution helps you and researchers understand how COVID-19 is affecting households and communities across the world.
How: Fill in an online survey with choices and narratives.

In addition to supporting current research, your contribution could add to future inquiries as well. Collecting and archiving short personal stories ensures authentic data will be available when researchers in the future look back to us now with their research questions. Reliable data should be collected now, while we are still living in unprecedented times. It is especially important to record the experiences of people from less privileged backgrounds, in contrast to earlier pandemics where the voices of all but the upper and middle classes, and the political, legal and scholarly elite, have often been lost to history. COVID Chronicles, an archival initiative, is doing just that. COVID Chronicles is a joint project: BBC 4 PM collects and features some of the stories and The British Library archives them all for future academic inquiries.

COVID Chronicles
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52487414
History, social sciences
Institutions: BBC Radio 4, The British Library
Launched: 30th April 2020
Your contribution helps you and future researchers understand how people experience the COVID-19 pandemic in their daily life, at a personal level.
How: Submit a mini-essay (about 400 words) to BBC Radio 4 PM via e-mail: pm at bbc dot co dot uk. Your essay will be archived by The British Library and made available for future research.

The gradually easing lockdown and the anticipated long journey of national and global recovery generate a growing appetite to record, reflect on and analyse the COVID-19 epidemic's influence on our life. Not all "citizen science" projects observe high standards of privacy and ethical responsibility, however. Before joining in any research with public participation, consider the principles of citizen science suggested by the European Citizen Science Association and the questions below:

Five questions before joining a citizen science initiative

  1. Can you contact the researchers and the institution(s) they belong to with your questions and concerns?
  2. Is the research approach clear to you? In order words, is it clear to you what happens to your contribution, how it shapes the investigation and what new knowledge is expected?
  3. Is your privacy protected? In other words, is the privacy policy clear to you, including how you can opt out any time and be sure that your data are deleted?
  4. Are you contacted regularly about the progress of the research you are contributing to?
  5. Are you gaining new transferable skills, new knowledge, insights and other benefits by participating in the research?


Further reading:

Bicker, A., Sillitoe, P., Pottier, J. (eds) 2004. Investigating Local Knowledge: New Directions, New Approaches. Aldershot : Ashgate.
BL Shelfmark YC.2009.a.7651, Document Supply m04/38392

Citizen Science Resources related to COVID-19 pandemic (annotated list) https://www.citizenscience.org/COVID-19/
[Accessed 18th June 2020]

Curtis, V. 2018. Online citizen science and the widening of academia: distributed engagement with research and knowledge production. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Available as an ebook in British Library reading rooms.

Open University. 2019. Citizen Science and Global Biodiversity  (free online course) https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/citizen-science-and-global-biodiversity/content-section-overview?active-tab=description-tab
[Accessed 18th June 2020]

Sillitoe, P. (ed). 2007. Local science vs global science: approaches to indigenous knowledge in international development. New York : Berghahn Books.
BL Shelfmark YC.2011.a.631, also available as an ebook in British Library reading rooms.

Written by Andrea Deri, Science Reference Team

Contributions from Polly Russell, Curator, COVID Chronicles, and Phil Hatfield, Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies, are much appreciated.

 

07 February 2020

INTRODUCING: STREET SCIENTISTS – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science
 
Newcastle University’s Street Science Team bring science, engineering, technology and maths to life through the medium of street performance. We take everyday household objects and use them to demonstrate the scientific phenomena we encounter every single day. It’s science, but not as we know it!
 
Images of scientists demonstrating experiments to members of the public
  
WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020
 
The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.
 

06 February 2020

INTRODUCING: THE TRUTH INSIDE – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science
 
Is that necklace of yours really gold? Bournemouth University’s Archaeology and Anthropology Department will be showcasing their Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (PXRF) analyser which allows archaeologists to determine the composition of archaeological artefacts and sediments. Bring along any small items you'd like to discover more about or see inside one of our artefacts.
 
An image of a woman archaeologist using a piece of equipment to determine material composition

 
Join us next time to find out more about Street Scientists
 
WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020
 
The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.
 

04 February 2020

INTRODUCING: Women In Their Element – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

The co-editors and contributors of the recently published "Women in Their Element" provide a fresh perspective on the unsung contributors to science in this half-day seminar on women and the Periodic Table.

Speakers and Topics Include:

Claire Jones – The Vanished Women of Victorian Science
Annette Lykknes – The Women Behind the Periodic System: An Introduction
John Hudson – What's in a Name? Margaret Todd and the Term Isotope
Jenny Wilson – Dame Kathleen Lonsdale FRS (1903-1971) and her Work on Carbon Compounds
Brigitte Van Tiggelen – Women in their Element: Trajectories of Fame or Invisibility
Claire Murray and Jessica A. F. Wade – The unsung heroines of the superheavy elements

A image of the logo of World Scientific
An image of the cover of the book 'Women in their Element'

 
Join us next time to find out more about Bio-Selfies

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

30 January 2020

INTRODUCING: BACK TO THE FUTURE – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science
 
Learning from the science of the past to protect our futures.

The Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions (IMSET) addresses one of the most significant global challenges facing humanity today: how we manage and respond to environmental change. It does this by exploring how past societies were affected by environmental change, how they responded to these challenges and, therefore, what are the most sustainable options available to present-day societies under similar pressures. Join this panel of distinguished scientists (archaeologists, palaeoecologists)  as part of the WISE Festival evening events.

Chaired by Emma Jenkins, Director of IMSET and Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, Bournemouth University
 
Panel:
Nicola Whitehouse, Professor of Human-Environment Systems at Plymouth University and Senior Lecture in Archaeology at Glasgow University
Erika Guttmann-Bond, Author of Reinventing Sustainability: How Archaeology Can Save the Planet
Fiona Coward, Principal Academic in Archaeological Sciences, Bournemouth University
 
Join us next time to find out more about – Voices of Science
 
WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020
 
The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.
 

27 January 2020

INTRODUCING: HELEN ARNEY – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

We are delighted that Helen Arney will be the MC for the evening festival.

Science presenter, comedian and geek songstress Helen Arney has appeared on TV, radio and in theatres across the world.
You might have seen her explaining physics while riding a rollercoaster for BBC Coast, singing the periodic table on Channel 4 News, hosting Outrageous Acts Of Science on Discovery or smashing wine glasses with the power of her voice in Festival of the Spoken Nerd.
 
 
 
We can’t wait to see what she brings to the Festival!
 
An image of scientist Helen Arney
Photo credit: Alex Brenner
 
WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020.

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.
 

24 January 2020

INTRODUCING: THE SCIENCE OF TASTE – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Dr Rachel Edwards-Stuart is a renowned Food Scientist and Flavour Expert. She runs a selection of unique and bespoke events around the Science of Flavour and Gastronomy. Since graduating from Cambridge University, Rachel has trained as a chef in Paris, gained a PhD sponsored by Heston Blumenthal, lectured around Europe, appeared on TV and in the national press, set up the London Gastronomy Seminars, taught science to chefs, developed over 100 gluten free products, and helped to stabilise a 5 tonne chocolate waterfall. (To read more about Rachel, see about)

An image of Dr Rachel Edwards-Stuart behind some flasks

In her break-out session Rachel demonstrates how what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste affects flavour. Learn about the science of the senses, and discover more about how you taste in this interactive journey through flavour perception.

Join us next time to find out more about Back to the Future.

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020.

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

21 January 2020

INTRODUCING: SUNETRA GUPTA – 11 February 2020

Wise Festival - Celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science

The WISE Festival is in particularly excited to announce Professor Sunetra Gupta as its closing speaker. We will be drawing on Sunetra’s unique perspective combining her scientific work on the evolution of pathogens with her experience as an award winning novelist and translator, to discuss science as a part of our culture and not something that is separate, reserved only for scientists and independent of other human endeavour.  How can we create new links and ways of thinking that can enrich our lives beyond the perceived boundaries of science and arts? Do scientific and literary narratives have anything in common? Can science be beautiful? A perfect reflection at the British Library where different fields of knowledge sit alongside each other, ready for new connections to be made by anyone curious and creative. A picture of Sunetra Gupta, novelist, translator and scientist

Sunetra is an acclaimed novelist, essayist and scientist. In October 2012 her fifth novel, So Good in Black, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. In 2009 she was named as the winner of the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific achievements. Sunetra is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University's Department of Zoology, having graduated in 1987 from Princeton University and received her PhD from the University of London in 1992. Sunetra was born in Calcutta in 1965 and wrote her first works of fiction in Bengali. She is an accomplished translator of the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.

See more about Sunetra


Join us next time to find out more about our second plenary speaker Danielle George.

WISE (WOMEN IN SCIENCE EVENTS) Festival, British Library 11 February 2020

The British Library is joining in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating and raising the voices of women in science with a one day mini festival.  Our events and talks will encourage you to laugh, sing and think.  Every few days this blog will look in more detail at the participants and their involvement with the event.

https://www.bl.uk/events/wise-festival

24 November 2018

Psychology Resources and Research Methods Workshop for Scholars

Drawing-of-the-new-British-Library-building-from-Ossulston-Street-by-Colin-St-John-Wilson-c1991

Image source: British Library Press Images

London is blessed with a rich seam of psychology research collections represented by the British Library and the London Psychology Librarians’ Group institutions.

Together curators, reference subject specialists and psychology librarians support students, researchers and professionals in advancing our understanding the the mind, brain and behavior.

You are warmly welcome to a free workshop on Monday 3 rd December at the British Library in the afternoon, focusing on psychology research resources in London.

Monday 3 December (14.00-17.00)

This workshop, for registered Readers (and those who would find it useful to register as readers for their research needs) takes place in the Eliot Training Room in the Library’s Knowledge Centre. The workshop programme is:

Part 1: Welcome to the Library and introduction to the London Psychology Librarians Group:

  • Qualitative methods in psychology research; Christine Ozolins, Neuroscience researcher, Birkbeck College
  • Psychology collections: the London Landscape; Mura Ghosh, Research Librarian, Senate House Library

14.50-15.30 Tea break (Tea provided)

Part 2 British Library Psychology Resources and Information Literacy:

  • Information literacy for psychology research; James Soderman/Paula Funnell, Liaison Librarians, Queen Mary College
  • The post graduate psychology student voice; Holly Walton, Psychology post graduate representative
  • Psychology resources in the British Library; Paul Allchin, British Library, Reference specialist,

16.30-17.00: Question & answer session.

To find out more or to book a place, please email us at: [email protected] or speak to a member of staff at the Science Reference Desk.

The speakers will share their expertise on the what, where, and how of psychology research in London based libraries and the research needs of students and researchers generally.

A Victorian line drawing showing a person's hairless head face-on, with the area above the eyes divided into numbered sections.

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11004937825/

Posted by Paul Allchin - Reference Specialist, Science.

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