Word: cosmically
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...chapters of The Trial (the story of a man crucified by inches), they laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks, and Kafka himself laughed so hard he could not go on reading. It is, says Novelist Thomas Mann solemnly, "very deep-rooted and involved" humor. Kafka's cosmic comedy of man's foredoomed failure in his quest for God is brought down to earth and up to the minute by the use (in The Trial and The Castle) of all the adventitious paraphernalia of 20th Century living -telephones, railroad trains, banks, boardinghouses, taxicabs...
...look for is uranium's radioactivity. The best loker is the portable Geiger counter, which finds uranium under the ground as a hog smells out truffles. The prospector carries it over the hills, poking into crevices. In his earphones he hears a few clicks stirred up by cosmic rays and normal earth radioactivity. If the clicks come faster, his heart generally beats faster too. If they swell to a roar, he may be near a uranium bonanza...
...Cosmic Contribution. On the research front, an ingenious investigator has opened up a new line of inquiry. Atomic radiation is known to promote cancer growth. Could cosmic rays, the infinitesimal energy particles that continually bombard the earth from outer space, also promote it? Dr. Frank H. J. Figge, of the University of Maryland Medical School, published in Science some data that seemed to show they...
...Figge experimented with mice exposed to varying amounts of cosmic radiation. He varied the cosmic ray concentration by contriving a special cage with a thin lead roof, which does not stop cosmic radiation but intensifies its effect. He injected 184 mice of a susceptible strain with a chemical that almost invariably produces cancer, put some of the mice in ordinary cages and some in the special lead-covered ones. Sure enough, the mice exposed to more intense cosmic radiation developed cancer much faster than the others. Dr. Figge's conclusion: cosmic jays, acting on body cells, may help develop...
...Figge admitted that he had not figured out how his discovery might help, since "cosmic radiation cannot be avoided." But he offered a thought for city dwellers, and builders: "We may be increasing the intensity factor by spending a high proportion of our lives in buildings beneath roofs and other materials which . . . produce cosmic radiation showers...