Word: act
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tends to think of the bones as inert, calcified structures, but they are, in fact, active tissues that constantly renew themselves. Cells called osteoblasts continually build new bone, while osteoclasts destroy old bone. What the new research shows is that the bones also act as a kind of endocrine organ. They release a hormone called osteocalcin that not only acts locally to influence bone formation, but also increases the production of insulin in the pancreas, raises the body's sensitivity to insulin and reduces stores...
...tendency in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Japan to forget about wartime atrocities. Japanese history has always been in the background of his works - and his best novel, 1994's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, dissected the groupthink that led Japan into a catastrophic war - but now he wants to act. "Before, I wanted to be an expatriate writer," he admits. "But I am a Japanese writer. This is my soil and these are my roots. You cannot get away from your country." Though he offers no specifics, Murakami hints that his next novel will address Japanese nationalism...
...recent afternoon in this east-coast Italian city, you could hear the first snippets of dialogue from the next act of the global economy's evolving plotline. "Wo jiao Francesco," says a young Italian man, at the start of a Mandarin lesson in an office conference room. With a quick "Bravo," for Francesco, Alessandra Brezzi, a moonlighting professor of Chinese from the nearby University of Urbino, begins drilling her seven students on useful workplace vocabulary (ziliao/raw material; caiwuchu/accounting department) and proper Chinese etiquette (introduce yourself with a business card ready; never open a gift right away). Of course, these lessons...
FACE FACTS The so-called Real ID Act, which would mandate a national digital-identification card by 2013 for every person living or working in the U.S., may have lost a funding battle in July, but it might not be finished...
...Laughs.] I am going to use a cordless microphone, and there is a new coat of paint, but nothing else will change. The games and sets are all the same. I won't be doing a Bob Barker impression. I can't be dirty like I am in my act. I am just going to be myself, and people will accept...