Word: crystallic
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Diamonds, the crystalline form of carbon, are usually formed when organic solids are subjected to intense heat and pressures. But under the right conditions, the glittering crystals can also be manufactured from a carbon- rich gas -- something the Navy's lab has in abundant supply. Its facilities abut Washington's giant Blue Plains Waste Water Treatment Plant, which each day generates 650,000 cu. ft. of methane (CH4). Tapping that supply, chemist James Butler passed a sample of the gas over a filament of tungsten glowing at 4,000 degrees F. To his delight, a sparkling film of synthetic diamonds...
...traffic on Flemington's tree-shaded Main Street. People stream along the sidewalks and across the street carrying plastic bags emblazoned with pricey logos: ADIDAS, CALVIN KLEIN, VILLEROY & BOCH. Just who, a gridlocked visitor wonders, would come to rural Flemington, N.J., to buy such chic cityside items as Waterford crystal or Joan & David shoes? The answer: a growing legion of well-heeled devotees of factory-outlet shopping...
Sometimes Bush's speech has a chameleon quality. One day during a tour through central Illinois farmland, Bush and his wife Barbara rode in a bus with the country singers Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue, all sisters. At a stop in the town of Wenona, Bush told the crowd that the three sisters had been giving a country concert in the bus, and "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven." George Bush, out of Kennebunkport and Houston, out of Andover and Yale, had a little mountain twang in his voice when he said it, standing...
...corn has an unexpected rich barnyard kind of smell, a cloying excess of smell. Bush appears with his two oldest grandchildren, walks toward a monster mound of corn and, as photographers record the event, he acts like a man waiting for a train on a platform. Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue appear, dressed in tall spike heels, skintight pedal pushers and Bush T shirts. On the other side of the factory, for the thousandth time that day, the sisters introduce Bush by singing Coal Miner's Daughter, Amazing Grace, The Man from Galilee...
Ireland's newest intended export to the U.S. may not have the sparkle of Waterford crystal or the rich flavor of Guinness Stout, but it sure is earthy. The product is peat, the decayed moss that the Irish have traditionally harvested from the bottom of bogs and burned for heat and in cooking. The Irish Turf Board said last week that sometime this fall it aims to start selling briquettes of the material -- packed in shamrock-adorned cardboard boxes containing twelve lbs. each -- in U.S. supermarkets. Ireland's peat harvesters hope the carton of sod will be a popular souvenir...