Word: phenomenonal
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USAGE: "Visitors to London always have to be on the lookout for pickpockets, but now there's another, more positive phenomenon on the loose--putpockets. Aware that people are suffering during the economic crisis, 20 former pickpockets are now trawling London's tourist sites slipping money back into unsuspecting pockets...
...sometimes reveals a shock of white, sometimes goes all black, Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, is striking enough in person. That she is visible at all is a surprise. In Japan, the wives of politicians are often neither seen nor heard. But Miyuki Hatoyama has become something of an international media phenomenon because of remarks in a book she once wrote - and, oh yes, because her husband, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, is assuming the office of Prime Minister after what many are calling one of the most important elections in post-war Japanese history...
While there's no doubt that the Arctic is warming - year after year, it becomes more clearly visible - it is actually a new phenomenon. In a new study published in the Sept. 4 Science, researchers led by Darrell Kaufman at Northern Arizona University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research constructed a climate record of the Arctic over the past 2,000 years, and found that the region had been cooling for almost all of that time period. Summer temperatures in the Arctic cooled by an average of 0.2 degrees C each thousand years, thanks chiefly to wobbles...
There's just one problem: that's not how climate change is likely to unfold. Instead, scientists worry about potential tipping points - triggers that, once reached, could lead to sudden and irrevocable changes in the climate, almost without warning. It's the same phenomenon of sudden collapse that can be seen in any number of complex systems that seem perfectly stable, until they're not - ecosystems, financial markets, even epileptic seizures. The trick is to identify the warning signs that indicate a tipping point - and collapse - are about to be reached and to take action to avoid them. (Read "Heroes...
Salvy, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, refers to this phenomenon as a sort of feedback effect. Conversely, she suggests, overweight diners are more likely to tone down how much they eat in front of skinny people to avoid the stigma of overeating...