Word: factor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many birders get started in their preteen years. "They may get wide-eyed seeing their first 'Baltimore' oriole," says Turner, a birder since age six. "That aesthetic component gets mixed quickly with the urge to collect -- the baseball-card factor -- and the hunting instinct, which is probably in the genes...
Unfortunately, only some risk factors, such as a high-fat diet, can be controlled. Many others -- age (over 50), for example, or a family history of the disease -- cannot. But evidence has been growing during the past several years that there may be one more factor women can do something about: the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Two studies published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine made that case even stronger...
Those results suggest an intriguing possibility. Says Bell Labs' Penzias: "Transition temperatures have increased by a factor of four in the past year. If temperatures are raised by another factor of four in the same period of time, we'll have room-temperature superconductors in less than a year." Adds IBM's Praveen Chaudhari: "All the mental barriers are gone. No one is asking how high it will go anymore." If room-temperature superconductivity is achieved, whether in a year or in a score of years, its impact will be incalculable. The need for refrigerators and insulation, even for liquid...
...technology and formed Hypres, Inc., which has begun marketing its first Josephson junction product -- a high-speed oscilloscope. Says Faris: "The new materials are at a primitive stage, but we're anxious to exploit them to bring down costs and improve speed." Since switches are a limiting factor in computer speed, an economical Josephson junction could prove invaluable...
...other major factor Wilson cites is the widening class division between blacks who have escaped the ghetto and those who have not. In what may be the book's most contentious section, he argues that the easing of discrimination against middle-class blacks has contributed indirectly to the desperate plight of the underclass. Once, he says, segregation forced middle-class, working- class and poor blacks to live together in "vertically integrated" communities with thriving churches, small businesses and schools. But desegregation laws allowed blacks with stable jobs to flee the ghettos in great numbers, knocking the props from local institutions...