Word: clever
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...unable to store enough electricity. Or you can make a lightweight, efficient battery using a liquid containing lithium salts as the energy-storage medium, and risk leakage or fire in the case of an accident. Now three Arizona State University chemists have an answer that is literally a clever solution. By dissolving lithium not into liquid but into polymer (plastic), they have paved the way for a high-power battery that is light yet durable. This novel cell is still in the experimental stage and needs more engineering. It may not be long, however, before scientists proudly announce a practical...
Even to raise these questions challenges humanity's belief that it occupies an exalted place in the universe. Moreover, scientists have historic reasons to be skeptical of claims concerning animal intelligence. At the turn of the century, a wonder horse named Clever Hans wowed Europeans with his apparent ability to solve math problems, expressing his answers by tapping a hoof. Dutch psychologist Oskar Pfungst ultimately showed that Hans was merely responding to inadvertent cues from his human handlers, who, for instance, would visibly relax when the horse had tapped the proper number of times. When blindfolded by Pfungst, Hans ceased...
These behaviors are certainly clever, but what do they mean? Was Newton really devious? Can a cat really crave privacy on the potty? In short, do household pets really have a mental and emotional life? Their owners think so, but until recently, animal-behavior experts would have gone ballistic on hearing such a question. The worst sin in their moral vocabulary was anthropomorphism, projecting human traits onto animals. A dog or a cat might behave as if it were angry, lonely, sad, happy or confused, but that was only in the eye of the beholder. What was going on, they...
Contemporary English fiction is becoming incestuous. The intricate, clever construction of Black Dogs calls to mind works like Martin Amis' Time's Arrow, which is written backwards. The form of the novel clearly betrays the influence of Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot, in which a literary scholar hides from the failure of his marriage in his obsession with Flaubert. Amis, Barnes and McEwan are close friends. The three friends inspire and rival one another. The form of Black Dogs echoes the smart, complex, but often self-conscious tone of McEwan's literary circle...
...Short term," he says, "I think that gene therapy will be applied to a broader and broader range of diseases, with more and more clever approaches." He points to one brain-cancer trial that received initial approval just last week. Researchers will splice a herpes simplex gene into a mouse-leukemia virus that has been rendered harmless by genetic engineering, and insert the altered virus directly into the brain tumor. The virus, as is its nature, will promptly invade the nucleus of the tumor cells, endowing them with the herpes gene and making them susceptible to ganciclovir, an anti-herpes...