Word: fragment
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...followed in his ancestor's glorious naval tradition; Zheng works as a toilet engineer in a Nanjing factory. Still, while China had largely forgotten his heroic ancestor, Zheng says family legends kept his exploits very much alive. Tales of his voyages were passed down through the generations like a fragment of silken embroidery. "Zheng He's one regret," says his descendant, "is that he never reached Mecca." On the last voyage, by the time a few men from his fleet finally made the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest site, Zheng He had died. Both his father and grandfather had made...
...Crowe stars as Roger Clemens, a Yankee pitcher who has completely lost his mind. He now believes that he is Rogerius Clemensius, heir to the Roman throne, and has been cheated out of succession by Mets catcher Mike Piazza. Armed with nothing but a 98 m.p.h. fastball and a fragment of a broken bat, he vows to exact revenge. Both drama and hilarity ensue...
...some degree of confidence that you're accurate, but it's rare you find a smoking gun." In some cases, of course, a tiny bit of evidence can make all the difference. In the Pan Am 103 case, for example, it was the CIA that first identified the fragment of a timer from the bomb as implicating Libya. That set investigators on the road to the two suspects. "Without our assistance they might not have developed a case at all," says a senior intelligence official...
...cells it competes with a third enzyme known as alpha secretase, whose activity, some think, may help protect the brain against Alzheimer's disease. When alpha makes the first cut in the precursor protein, gamma secretase makes a second cut that produces not beta amyloid but an innocuous protein fragment known as p3. Elan and Pharmacia, based in Peapack, N.J., among others, are actively working to develop beta secretase inhibitors...
Other companies are focused on boosting the immune system with vaccines that can direct it to target cancer cells. A new vaccine developed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering binds a protein from a mollusk called a limpet to seven different types of sugars and a protein fragment found only on cancer cells. The vaccine is then mixed with saponin, a soaplike derivative from a South American tree. This witch's brew serves to annoy the immune system, revving it up enough to attack cancer cells that are carrying the same sugars and protein fragment...