Word: lowering
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...difference in this study was the presence of a single gene from the H3N2 human virus: the PB2 protein, which gave the hybrid viruses the ability to spread easily among the lab mice. Scientists think the protein may allow hybrid viruses to grow more efficiently in the lower temperatures of the upper respiratory tract, from which the virus can more easily spread to others. (The H5N1 virus tends to infect the lower respiratory tract in humans, where it can't easily get out and spread...
Greece suddenly found itself with a solid, reliable currency. Its government and businesses could borrow at lower interest rates than before. The country boomed, with real GDP growth topping 3.8% for eight straight years. (During the same 2000-07 run, U.S. GDP growth never hit 3.7%; Germany didn't make it past 3.2%.) It seemed as though Greece had landed a one-way ticket to economic good times...
...dimension of this turnaround is extraordinary: had the rate remained unchanged, an additional 170,000 Americans would have been murdered in the years since 1992. That's more U.S. lives than were lost in combat in World War I, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq - combined. In a single year, 2008, lower crime rates meant 40,000 fewer rapes, 380,000 fewer robberies, half a million fewer aggravated assaults and 1.6 million fewer burglaries than we would have seen if rates had remained at peak levels. (See pictures of crime in Middle America...
...retired New York City police supervisors, however, confirms what many skeptics have suspected for years. Pressure from the twice-weekly CompStat reviews inspired a certain amount of fudging (exactly how much is unknown). Police hunted for bargains on eBay so that they could adjust theft reports to reflect lower values of stolen goods, magically transforming major crimes into minor ones. A fight involving a weapon - aggravated assault - might become a mere fistfight by the time the police report was filed. Nevertheless, behind the gamesmanship was a genuine drop in crime. (Murder is down an astonishing 80% from its peak...
...been largely an empty cliché in the post-9/11 era. As Army Lieut. Colonel Paul Yingling noted in a 2007 article in the Armed Forces Journal, "A general who presides over a massive human rights scandal or a substantial deterioration in security ought to be retired at a lower rank ... As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." (See pictures from inside the apartment of Nidal Malik Hasan...