Word: decays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...theory that explains the relationship of two of nature's basic forces: 1) electromagnetism, which accounts for such phenomena as sunlight and radio waves, and 2) the weak force that governs the release of a beta particle from the nucleus of an atom in a process called radioactive decay...
...researchers found in tests on beagles that the anti-biotic tetracycline stops the decay of the bone underneath the gumline that is affected by the disease. Beagles, like most dogs and human beings, contract periodontal disease spontaneously...
Meanwhile, there still exists no proven method of safely isolating from the environment the millions of tons of radioactive wastes already produced for even a decade or two, let alone for the half-million years required for the poisons to decay to relatively safe levels of radioactivity. The Senate and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have already lifted their short post-TMI freeze on new plant licensing, and dozens of TMI clones across the country continue to operate freely...
Americans must beware, however, of looking for decadence in the wrong places. The things that can make the nation decay now are not necessarily what we think of when we say decadence: they are not Roman extravagances or Baudelaire's fleurs du mal, or Wilde's scented conceits. Nor, probably, do they have much to do with pornography, license or bizarre sexual practice. It is at least possible that Americans should see the symptoms of decadence in the last business quarter's alarming 3.8% decline in productivity, or in U.S. society's catastrophic dependence upon foreigners...
...sense of decay arises also from all of society's smoking frictions of rapid change, the anxiety caused by a sense of impermanence. The nation's creative forces, however, remain remarkably strong - in the sciences, for example, where achievements in physics, mathematics, biology and medicine rank beside anything so far accomplished on the planet. Before anyone tries to use too seriously the awful and thrilling word decadence, he ought to distinguish between the customary mess of life and the terminal wreckage of death...