Word: fin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bats' built-in echolocation system is so finely tuned that it can detect insects' footsteps, changes in air currents caused by vibrating insect wings, even the ripple in a pond as a minnow's fin breaks the surface...
...answer may be in the genes. That's the tantalizing conclusion of a team of researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. They have discovered that genes associated with the formation of fins in fish are the same ones that orchestrate the development of paws in mice. "Think of a mouse as a fish with limbs, or a fish as a mouse with fins," says University of Geneva developmental biologist Denis Duboule. "What a mouse does is take a fin and put something extra...
Timing may also explain the progression of fins to feet. In tetrapods (four-legged animals), feet do not grow straight out of the leg, proceeding from the ankle out, but develop in a fanlike progression that runs from the smallest digit to the largest. In Geneva, Duboule and his colleagues tracked the activity of four Hox genes in the budding feet of embryonic mice and found precisely this pattern. By contrast, studies showed that in the zebrafish, the Hox genes switch off earlier, perhaps to ensure that a flexible fin ray (useful for swimming) will form in the place...
...fin-de-siecle, something has changed about what this hobby means to the American middle class -- a change that advertisers, publishers, catalog companies and entrepreneurs are scrambling to exploit. The garden is no longer a private refuge: it is a fashion statement. Far from getting back to nature, the competitive gardener defies it, coercing the most inhospitable climates into growing orchids, coaxing water to run uphill, carving animals in topiary, all for slightly more than it costs to put a child through a year at Harvard. "Louis XIV started small and watched Versailles grow," says power gardener Martha Stewart...
...most of the year, midtown Manhattan adheres to the fin-de-siecle urban ritual of a working lunch. But during Fashion Week, held in Bryant Park every spring and fall, the bow-tied and sensibly heeled easily forgo risotto on an expense account for Quarter Pounders on a crowded lawn. Dazzled by the chic, they perch themselves near the heavily guarded white tents where designers unveil their seasonal collections. The businessmen, of course, do not come because they are interested in Richard Tyler's position this year on velvet. They want to catch a glimpse of the shows' real centerpieces...