Word: maye
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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BLUE-SKY INVESTING Your mutual-fund manager may start betting on the weather, literally. This month two energy firms are expected to issue some $100 million in "weather bonds," whose returns are based solely on average temperatures. These new bonds, rated in the BB range, allow weather-sensitive businesses--utilities, ski resorts--to hedge against losses caused by extreme temperatures. If Mother Nature behaves, holders can expect 10% to 30% returns; but a mild winter or scorching summer could melt profits and principal. On another front, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange started trading weather futures in September. Along with pork bellies...
...repairing old bodies--dealing with abdominal fat, atherosclerosis, blood pressure, blood sugar, cataracts and so on. U.S. pharmaceutical companies have nearly two dozen Alzheimer's drugs in the works. In the next century, molecular biologists are likely to tinker with more and more of our genetic machinery, in what may be either mankind's worst folly or the most significant software upgrade of the 21st century. (Caveat emptor, users of version 1.0!) Just last month, biologists announced the discovery of mutations that accumulate in aging mitochondria, which are our cells' batteries; maybe someday they will learn how to keep...
...next career, he says, "unraveling the facts." But he hates to see the study of longevity being overblown by the press. "I hope the hype will not result in the same letdown as Nixon's all-out war on cancer." Even if there is a central clock, it may be harder to control than cancer...
...little longer than our parents. Today in Japan a clothing company is cashing in with "antistink" underwear for middle-aged men, who (according to the company) begin to emit odors. But by the time we die, or shortly thereafter, the expansion of youth and the postponement of old age may become one of the greatest enterprises of the 21st century. "I see it as inevitable," says evolutionary biologist Michael Rose, who breeds strains of long-lived flies in his laboratory at the University of California at Irvine. "I'm confident that Benzer's work--and the worm people...
...abnormal variant of the tau protein, which is thought to clutter the interiors of nerve cells with threadlike tangles. Over the coming years, as a new generation of Alzheimer's drugs enters the clinical pipeline, the arguments that rage today over which is more important, beta amyloid or tau, may be resolved. Kosik suspects that both may be critical...