Word: optimum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...trimmed a week to ten days from the growing season in the middle latitudes that are the earth's breadbasket. Continued cooling could lead to agricultural disasters. The vaunted "miracle" wheat and rice of the Green Revolution were specifically created by plant geneticists to thrive under the optimum growing conditions of recent years. They are particularly vulnerable to vagaries of weather. A decline in moisture can significantly reduce their yields; they can also become susceptible to blights and pests. It was a bout of wet, chilly air during the growing season that apparently touched off the Middle Ages...
...that would be caused by a single rotating cylinder. Even material from the moon, asteroids and other planets would eventually be used. Finally, so many people might be resettled in space that the earth's population could be reduced to what O'Neill regards as a comfortable optimum: the 1910 level of 1.2 billion people. Then, he adds, the earth would become "a worldwide park, a beautiful place to visit for a vacation...
...this year's first quarter, private nonfarm productivity declined at an annual rate of 3.5% largely as a result of the severe first-quarter drop in real output of goods and services.* As is usual in times of an economic slowdown, both workers and machines operated below optimum efficiency because employers did not trim their work force as fast as they reduced production. The main cause of the productivity slump in the first quarter was that the gasoline crisis forced automakers to cut production of big, gas-drinking cars. Since auto manufacturing is one of the nation...
...good times, feed-lot operators buy 500-lb. to 700-lb. calves from ranchers, gorge them on a special, high-protein diet until the cattle reach the optimum slaughter weight of 1,100 lbs., then resell them to packers for about the same price per pound that they paid. They corral a profit if the expense of putting the added weight on the animals is less than the price that the added poundage brings...
...gobbling expensive corn, put on still more pounds-and packers pay less per pound for overweight steers than they do for pleasingly plump ones, because the additional weight is mostly unwanted fat. About all the operators can do is go on selling the steers when they reach optimum slaughter weight and hope for a price rebound later. That could happen in about six months, to the housewife's chagrin: there are an estimated 20% fewer steers coming into feed lots than a year ago. The result is that demand could exceed supply by late fall...