Word: massification
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...centuries the route to Damascus has posed a challenge to travelers. The Syrian capital is walled away from the West and from the Mediterranean by the double massif of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, rising to 10,000 ft. In other directions, the city is surrounded by the Badiya as-Sham, the great Syrian Desert, where, for seven months of the year, the relentless sun becomes a blinding enemy. But while the physical obstacles to Damascus remain, other barriers appear to be falling. Its economy in tatters, its army mired in Lebanon and its alignment with Iran a growing...
...very old. France is the scene of other tales, just as it has been the setting for much of Fisher's own adult life. The collection's finest piece, The Oldest Man, is about an American woman's visit to a stern, mountainous region called the Massif Central, where a centenarian and his septuagenarian son have their ancestral home. As always, the author's observations of local landscape, weather, architecture and gastronomical specialties (in this case, Roquefort) are as keen and winning as her insights into her characters. Most engaging is the 100-year...
...southern, summer, when the South Pole is bathed in sunlight 24 hours a day, geologists from the U.S., Australia and New Zealand explored the rocky mountains of Northern Victoria Land. They found signs of such valuable metals as tantalum and lithium, used for making high-strength alloys. The Dufek Massif in the Pensacola Mountains, similar to South Africa's Bushveld, may have platinum and chromium, both strategic metals...
...still in the process of formation. Though 60% of the Venusian topography consists of flat rolling plains, it also includes four major highland regions, the highest being Ishtar Terra (named after the Assyrian goddess of love and war), which is dominated by a 11,800-meter (38,700 ft.) massif, probably volcanic, that eclipses Everest...