Word: kind
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tumor has acquired the mutations for spreading, the doctor of the future may call on matrix metaloproteinase inhibitors, a new kind of drug that can be taken orally to block the enzymes a tumor uses to break down the cells of surrounding tissue and invade it. Vaccines cobbled together from whole cancer cells or bits and pieces of those cells have been shown to boost the body's immune system, helping it recognize and kill tumors on its own. "This was all a dream five years ago," marvels John Minna, director of the Hamon Center for Therapeutic Oncology Research...
...using genetic engineering to create what Reid Lifset, editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology, calls "designer waste streams." Consider all that stalk, or stover, that every corn plant grows along with its kernels. Scientists at Monsanto and Heartland Fiber are working toward engineering corn plants with the kind of fiber content that paper companies would find attractive. So long as the genetic tinkering poses no ecological threat, that approach could tap into a huge stream of agricultural waste, turning some of it into an industrial ingredient...
...pile of debris. In the long run, we have to reduce the amount of material we use in the first place. Some progress is being made--aluminum cans and plastic soda bottles have become thinner over the years, for example--but more sweeping reductions will require a whole new kind of manufacturing process...
That, says Lifset, is where nanotechnology plays a role. In this emerging field, which employs just about every kind of scientific and engineering discipline, researchers expect to create products by building them from scratch, atom by atom, molecule by molecule. This bottom-up nanotechnological way of making things differs from the traditional drilling, sawing, etching, milling and other fabrication methods that create so much waste along...
...laws of physics decree that the planet has to radiate the same amount of energy back into space to keep the books balanced. The earth does this by sending infrared radiation out through the atmosphere, where an array of molecules (the best known is carbon dioxide) form a kind of blanket, holding outgoing radiation for a while and warming the surface. The molecules are similar to the glass in a greenhouse, which is why the warming process is called the greenhouse effect...