Word: fragment
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hepburn is no more introspective in person than she was in her off-the-top- of-her-head, sentence-fragment memoir. Hepburn does not like people who "make a fuss." When she found her 16-year-old brother dead, hanging from the rafters by bed sheets, she cried later because it was expected of her. The apparent suicide was never discussed. She waits until the last chapter to talk about Tracy, who she says initially believed the rumor that she was a lesbian. She says she never knew how he really felt about her and wonders now if she "should...
...government's charges against al-Megrahi and Fhimah don't explain how the bronze-colored Samsonite suitcase, dispatched via Air Malta, eluded Frankfurt's elaborate airport security system. Instead, the indictment zeroes in on two tiny pieces of forensic evidence -- a fingernail-size fragment of green plastic from a Swiss digital timer, and a charred piece of shirt...
...distracted by the sight of a bunch of people perched on conference room chairs trying to be serene. We were told to focus on an object in the room, to put all our attention on that thing and not waver. But my object of attention, a fragment of the pattern in the carpet, just did not fixate my soul. I envied Larry, who, sitting in a lotus position on top of his chair, looked like the Dalai Lama in a dark blue suit. Maybe I just didn't have what it takes...
...normal or abnormal -- are passed from generation to generation essentially unchanged. Now that assumption is being challenged. Last week scientists announced that in people with a form of muscular dystrophy, they had identified a segment of DNA that can lengthen substantially with each succeeding generation. Most disturbing, as the fragment lengthens, the illness becomes more severe. "This is not your garden-variety genetic defect," says Dr. Leon Charash, who chairs the medical advisory committee of the Muscular Dystrophy Association...
...myotonic dystrophy, the most common form of muscular dystrophy, the change can be far from negligible: a fragment of DNA on chromosome 19 appears to repeat itself more frequently with every generation. Just what triggers the repetition is a mystery. Researchers surmise that a hitch occurs while DNA is being copied in the cell, much as the same bar of music repeats on a scratched record. The DNA repeat gets worse with each generation, just as with each playing of a flawed record, the music stutters for a longer period. "Presumably the replication error occurs in the sperm...