Word: designers
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...were setting out to design a human being from scratch, odds are you wouldn't take J. Craig Venter as your template. You wouldn't choose to put him at risk for Alzheimer's disease, for example, but Venter has a predisposition that places him in danger of it. You might choose his startling blue eyes, both for their color and the hard clarity of their gaze. You'd surely go for his first-rate brain, though you might pass on what his detractors consider the vainglorious temperament that comes bundled with...
...known chromosomes of any self-replicating life-form - just 485 genes. What, Venter wondered back then, was the minimum genome an organism needed to survive and reproduce? If you could figure that out, you could determine the basic DNA chassis of all living things and then use it to design your own souped-up or dressed-down versions of life...
Greening house by house is already catching on--the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) extended its Leadership in Energy and Design (LEED) rating system to residences to meet the interest in more environmentally friendly homes. But the next steps will be tougher. The sprawl of the suburbs has ensured that much of the energy we consume--and carbon we emit--comes from our dependence on cars. Until we change the layout of our neighborhoods--reversing the suburban ideal of semi-isolated homes--living green won't be easy. "Having a green neighborhood and a green home are two different things...
...happens, USGBC recently launched LEED-Neighborhood Development, a new rating system that evaluates how the layout of a development has an impact on the environment. Green features on individual homes will count, but so will designing a neighborhood dense enough to make walking to the office or store a simple task, not an epic journey. "The building is a piece," says Douglas Farr, a Chicago-based architect who helped design the rating system. But "it's part of a bigger system." Making the suburbs truly green will take a construction revolution every bit as sweeping as the one that created...
...chair, things are not so simple. Flirt the wrong way with the wrong person, and you run the risk of everything from a slap to a sexual-harassment lawsuit. And of course, the American virtue of plainspokenness is not an asset in an activity that is ambiguous by design. Wayne State's Abbey, whose research has focused on the dark side of flirting--when it transmogrifies into harassment, stalking or acquaintance rape--warns that flirting can be treacherous. "Most of the time flirtation desists when one partner doesn't respond positively," she says. "But some people just...