Word: decays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Willard Libby two decades ago, the clock depends on the decay of carbon 14, a radioactive isotope of ordinary carbon 12, which is nonradioactive and stable. Both forms of carbon are found in all living things, and their proportion remains constant during the life of the organism. New carbon of both forms is continuously added through normal metabolic processes. But when the organism dies and the intake of fresh material stops, this ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 begins to change. The amount of carbon 12 stays the same, but the unstable carbon 14 begins to disintegrate. The radioactive...
AMERICAN NOTES The Cities Revisited More than three years after the Kerner Commission analyzed the causes of the great urban riots of the 1960s, the racial ghettos of the U.S. are more than ever an environment of decay, distrust and despair. That is the conclusion of a report, "The State of the Cities." issued by a commission of the National Urban Coalition...
...become blase about moon voyages. The technical argot of the astronauts has turned off some early enthusiasts, while the rigorous attention the moon walkers must pay to their inflexible schedules has made them seem like robots. Beyond that, the U.S. has be- come concerned with other pressing priorities: urban decay and pollution, poverty and racial inequality...
...Thais seem genuinely concerned about their plight. Neon signs still blaze brightly, and the crowds seem as frenetic as during the days of the boom. But the signs of economic decay are all about. Here and there, a bar or restaurant closes and does not reopen. "We must change our attitude of complacency and extravagance," says Renoo Suvarnsit, secretary general of the National Economic Development Board...
...that it would suffice merely because it was an image and commonplace. Eliot's evening is "spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table"-the image is clinical and deflative, but its context is not. Nor is it just an observation of central-city decay when Eliot writes: "The worlds revolve like ancient women/ Gathering fuel in vacant lots...