Word: absorber
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...Industrialization" of Agriculture: Thanks to the growing rise of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, modern crops are being harvested faster than ever before. But quick and early harvests mean the produce has less time to absorb nutrients either from synthesis or the soil, and minerals like potassium (the "K" in N-P-K fertilizers) often interfere with a plant's ability to take up nutrients. Monoculture farming practices - another hallmark of the Big Ag industry - have also led to soil-mineral depletion, which, in turn, affects the nutrient content of crops...
...budget resolution in December that included an overall 10% reduction - a move that some fear means that pink slips for teachers are inevitable. "The biggest line items in most school budgets are staff and benefits," says Bob Brewer, an education consultant in East Hartford, Conn. "No district can absorb those kinds of hits without trimming some of those big-ticket items." (See pictures of politically engaged teens...
Where will those families go? And whose school districts can afford to absorb their children? In California, school officials are expecting to receive upwards of $8 billion over two years from the federal stimulus. While this money would enable districts to address some of their most pressing needs, John Mockler, an education-funding specialist in Sacramento, says, "It's not a panacea." In the long term, Mockler says, states need to come up with new funding sources to support classroom instruction and let teachers do what they were hired to do - teach...
...1980s, biologists had almost no knowledge of the genes that built them. Over the past 25 years, biologists have identified many of the genes that help build embryos. A number of them help lay out the embryo's blueprint by letting cells know where they are. The cells absorb proteins floating around them, and the signals trigger the cells to make other proteins, which in turn clamp onto certain bits of DNA to switch neighboring genes on and off. This network of genes eventually leads a cell to give rise to an arm or a brain or a tongue...
...global economic crisis. A lack of buying overseas has led to factory closures and layoffs in China's coastal manufacturing regions, and many people are heading back to their homes in the interior. Most came from farming regions, and local governments had hoped that agriculture could absorb some of unemployed returnees. But with fewer crops to harvest, and herd reductions imminent due to water shortages, there will be little need for more hands...