Word: neel
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...strange behavior of trees in groups. Why do trees on the perimeter of a forest have stocky, tapering trunks, while those in the interior are tall and slender and are easily toppled by wind after the tough outer trees have been felled either by nature or man? P. Landreth Neel and Richard Harris, environmental horticulturists working at the University of California at Davis, have come up with the most convincing answer so far. Their theory: perimeter trees that are fully exposed to the wind and are shaken by it-or any tree shaken by any means-will be stronger...
Writing in the journal Science, Neel and Harris explain the simple procedure that they used to test their hunch. At a local nursery, they bought eight matching pairs of young sweetgum trees. They potted the sweet gums in four-gallon cans in their greenhouse and stopped in every morning to give one member of each pair a brisk 30-second shaking. After 27 days of this routine, the shaken trees had grown only one-fifth as much as those left in peace, had put out fewer lateral branches and developed stouter, tougher trunks. Trees, conclude the authors, have evolved...
...shares the physics prize with Alfvén for his penetrating research into magnetism. In the early 1930s, physicists explained that magnetism in materials like iron is caused by their electrons all spinning in the same direction. Neel contended that there was another form of magnetism in which the electrons of neighboring atoms whirled in opposite directions, thereby all but canceling out the observable field. The existence of this phenomenon, antiferromagnetism, was subsequently confirmed in such substances as manganese salts. Later, Néel discovered still another form of magnetism called ferrimagnetism, in which some of the spins...
...Cover: Portrait in oil of Kate Millett by Alice Neel...
...Force hospital planes drop into Saigon and other airfields in South Viet Nam, pick up as many as 60 patients each, and fly them to Clark Field in the Philippines under the constant care of a doctor, nurses and corpsmen. "What we've done," says Colonel Neel, "is to bring management to the battlefield. It is no longer a matter of sending casualties to the rear and hoping there will be room for them. We make sure there is always room." And thanks to improvements in all sorts of equipment, surgical procedures and drugs, there is always better care...