Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...describe telling a biologist what you were writing about, and he says, "You should do a book called Warmth. You could do all the background research in Aruba." It's a fair point. Did that ever cross your mind? It crossed my mind a little bit, but it would have been darned inconvenient, since I live here in Alaska. Although I am working on a book now with the working title Heat: A Natural and Unnatural History. It takes the other direction on the thermometer and starts out looking at extreme heat with hydrogen-weapons testing that occurred here...
...hovering in the background of the current pandemic is the possibility that H1N1's virulence might suddenly change. Flu's hardiness as a recurring human scourge is the result of its unstable genetic structure. One flu virus can easily swap genetic information with another, or mutate as it reproduces in the human respiratory tract. The World Health Organization tracks flu viruses for changes in their genetic makeup that would make them more deadly. But even exhaustive 21st century virology can only help health officials react to what's already happened. The best laboratory in which to study the flu virus...
...turns out that even during the relatively peaceful eras between global calamities, during what is known as background extinction, whole families of species can disappear, pushed out of existence together. And it's not random. According to a new study published in the August 7 issue of Science, vulnerability to extinction runs in families, meaning that some groups of species have a higher likelihood of becoming extinct than others. "It turns out that some branches of the tree of life are more extinction-prone than others," says Kaustuv Roy, a biology professor at the University of California, San Diego. "Those...
...alignment through pre-approved scientific tools. I had watched a coming-together, but it also made me sharply aware of a growing-apart, as the crowd that had so easily formed suddenly and easily dispersed. I was a little sad to return to my frigid office, with the constant background chatter of computer keys, and wrap up the event by writing my story. I wondered what it would be like to go to the moon instead, and look back on earth for that one day each century, to see the world eclipsed by the people coming out of their self...
...natural advantage over Christie, who boasts no policy experience and in fact seems to delight in telling crowds, "I will never be the smartest man in the room." But with Wall Street (and in particular Goldman Sachs) being blamed for much of the financial crisis, Corzine's professional background has turned into a major liability. His unpopular moves of late - he's raised taxes and cut services, and New Jersey still faces massive budget deficits - have only made things worse, and even before last week's fireworks, Corzine was trailing Christie by double digits in some polls. "The economy...