Word: pinning
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...gene was harder to pin down than the one implicated in Huntington's disease -- which was finally located after a decade-long search last year. Not only did it turn out to be tucked into a particularly hard-to-reach spot on the tip of chromosome 4, but it was what scientists call a "stuttering gene." Hidden in its DNA is a sequence of nucleotides that spells out the same genetic word -- in this case, CAG -- again and again. The normal version of this gene contains anywhere from 11 to perhaps 34 copies of this three- letter stutter. The defective...
Christmas may not be the time to judge the popularity of angels; this is, even among skeptics, the season when we pay attention. We make them in snowdrifts, hang them on trees, bake them on cookies, play them in pageants. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a gold pin she wears on days she needs help: angel's wings, she explains. She made angels the theme of the White House Christmas tree this year...
...heaven, based on the writings of the fifth-century theologian Dionysius. They divided the heavenly host into nine choirs, each with its own task. Contrary to the mocking of modern skeptics, medieval theologians did not spend time debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. They had far more serious enterprises in mind. In their layered architecture of heaven, the highest angels were the seraphim and cherubim, those closest to God in nature, who exist to worship him. The thrones bring justice; dominions regulate life in heaven; the virtues work miracles; the powers protect mankind from...
America has been so lax about firearms that even the most basic facts about gun violence are hard to pin down, which leads to uncertainty in making effective policy. A major statistical source is the FBI's yearly Uniform Crime Report. Though it breaks down deaths into three categories -- by handguns, rifles and shotguns -- it says nothing about how many people are killed by imported guns or "Saturday-night specials," or how many died while resisting a stickup. To clarify the picture, Colorado Representative Patricia Schroeder is sponsoring a bill to establish a national firearm-fatality reporting system. Comparable...
...staggering numbers of women who inexplicably take their husbands' names left me vaguely queasy, similar to the way I felt on seeing pictures of Hillary Rodham Clinton (the thinking man's pin-up) in Vogue (The First Lady's mother did, however, confess that HRC bought her wedding dress off the rack only days before the wedding...