Word: phenomenon
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...state and the extended family as social mechanisms in China differ from those in modern Western societies. All of this, Jacques argues, means that the 21st century will be one of "contested modernities." Until around 1970, he says, modernity was, with the exception of Japan, "an exclusively Western phenomenon." But as China assumes a bigger role in global economics and politics, that is changing. (See pictures of China's infrastructure boom...
...across the country are experiencing unprecedented increases in the number of unclaimed deceased - not only the dead people who could not be identified, were indigent or were estranged from their family, but also apparently the growing number whose loved ones simply cannot afford to bury or cremate them. The phenomenon has increased costs for local governments, which have to dispose of the bodies...
...where there is less light and fewer predators; as the sun sets, they swim up to the surface to feed. Swarms of krill can be massive - some the size of Rhode Island - so oceanographers have suspected that their movements may cause significant ocean-mixing. But despite numerous attempts, the phenomenon has not been observed since the 2006 study. "Instead, many people studying mixing have not seen large increases in mixing during times krill or other zooplankton migrate," says Michael Gregg, an oceanographer at the University of Washington. (See pictures of aliens of the deep...
...important in a warlord society with a long-established tradition of local commanders switching sides to back the force deemed most likely to prevail. It was that dynamic that explained the speed of the Taliban's capture of Kabul in a matter of months back in 1996. The same phenomenon saw its regime collapse even more rapidly when the U.S. invaded at the end of 2001. General McChrystal, in a recent interview in New Perspectives Quarterly, explained the offensive in Helmand largely on the basis of the impression it made on the minds of Afghans. "The reason I believe...
...tactics are unorganized, largely leaderless and only just beginning. They spread by e-mail, websites and word of mouth. But their variety and scope indicate that Iran's uprising is not a passing phenomenon like the student protests of 1999, which were quickly quashed. This time, Iranians are rising above their fears. Although embryonic, today's public resolve is reminiscent of civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s. Mohandas Gandhi once mused that "even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled." That quotation is now popular...