Word: adaptions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Temperature and rainfall patterns would shift in unpredictable ways. That might not pose a problem for agriculture, since farmers could change their crops and irrigate. Natural ecosystems that have to adapt on their own, however, could be devastated. Observes Oppenheimer dryly: "They cannot sprout legs and move to another climate." Perhaps a third of the world's forests, he says, might find themselves living in the wrong places...
...EXPLORE THE EARTH'S OCEANS, going where no man has walked before, has always been a romantic theme on a par with exploring space [COVER STORY, Aug. 14]. Like the space program, the quest for a better understanding of the ocean is about human ingenuity and the ability to adapt. Why not use NASA's expertise to put a man on the floor of the ocean at its utmost depth before 2010? PETER ZEMELKA Cocoa Beach, Florida...
...simply to learn how to use products that are completely new to them, American staples like ersatz whipped cream, ready-made pie crusts or-that native classic-squeezable cheese. "They ask me, 'What is this, and what do you do with it?' or 'How do you eat this?'" Many adapt quickly; one former pupil now extols the virtues of Kraft macaroni and cheese as a quick and easy children's breakfast. But at first the sheer abundance of an American supermarket can be overwhelming. Pausing before an array of 22 varieties of bread crumbs, Raftery soothes her bewildered charges...
...Humans adapt to the most difficult circumstances. Strangely, I began to look forward to my solitary dining. At Harvard, people are in your face 24 hours a day--in the morning when mysterious singing would drift through the ventilation system into the shower, during section and then again at 3 a.m. when one's roommates host a party. I needed space to think; in the Union, everyone left me alone...
...million years ago, as any schoolchild who knows his prehistoric zoology can tell you, some adventurous fish managed to hoist themselves onto their stubby fins and crawl clumsily out of the swamps to forage for food. Once these primeval creatures were on terra firma, their offspring began to adapt to their new environment, natural selection (over tens of millions of years) favoring those that developed features well suited to life on land: paws, hooves, knees, joints, fingers and thumbs. Thus, as generations of schoolchildren have learned, did these marine creatures give rise to frogs, birds, dinosaurs and all the rest...