Word: ago
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years after Louis had incorrectly assumed that the absence of tools there implied that hominid fossils would not be found--when they discovered a trail of remarkably clear ancient hominid footprints impressed and preserved in volcanic ash. It was a stunning glimpse of the world 3.6 million years ago. If only Louis had lived...
...scroll down the list far enough, hundreds of entries deep, and you'll find this hidden Rosebud of cyberspace: "Enquire Within Upon Everything"--a nifty little computer program written nearly 20 years ago by a lowly software consultant named Tim Berners-Lee. Who knew then that from this modest hack would flow the civilization-altering, millionaire-spawning, information suckhole known as the World Wide...
...hundred years ago, the English economist Thomas Malthus calculated that the world's population would soon outstrip its food-growing capacity. What he didn't anticipate was Norman Borlaug. Working in Mexico from 1944 to 1960--long before the advent of modern biotechnology--the U.S. biologist developed a hybrid strain of wheat that was enormously more prolific than its natural cousins. Borlaug's "miracle wheat" allowed Mexico to triple its grain production in a matter of years, and when his hybrid was introduced in south Asia in the mid-1960s, wheat yields there jumped 60%. Miracle strains of rice...
...pace of discovery is sure to be even faster than it is today and the social and ethical dilemmas created by the exploitation of new knowledge even more haunting. Our understanding of the world has deepened at an accelerating rate since the beginning of modern science 500 years ago. Our century, for example, has had the wit to ask how the universe is constructed, how even the tiniest particles of matter move and how life manages to exist in the face of all the odds against...
...century has also turned science into the principal agent of technology. When James Watt built the first steam engines 200 years ago, he had intuition but not the laws of thermodynamics to guide him. We do not sufficiently applaud our century's discovery that science can be useful--or the degree to which science has come to depend on technology for its new instruments: powerful telescopes, atom smashers, computers...