Word: pivotal
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...past three decades, farmers have pumped water out of the Ogallala as if it were inexhaustible. Nowadays they disperse it prodigally through huge center-pivot irrigation sprinklers, which moisten circular swaths a quarter-mile in diameter. The annual overdraft (the amount of water not replenished) is nearly equal to the yearly flow of the Colorado River. Like all aquifers, the Ogallala depends on rain water for recharging, and only a trickle of the annual local rainfall ever reaches it. Gradually built up over millions of years, the aquifer is being drained in a fraction of that time. The question...
Conservation may forestall the end. Farmers can simply use less water. They are already converting from profitable but water-thirsty corn to water-thrifty crops such as wheat, sorghum and cotton. James Mitchell, a cotton farmer from Wolfforth, Texas, has installed an experimental center-pivot sprinkler that, instead of spraying outward, gently drops water directly into the planted furrows, thereby reducing evaporation. Sophisticated laser-guided land graders can now almost perfectly flatten the terrain so that water is not wasted in runoff. Electrodes planted in the fields can measure soil wetness and determine exactly when water is needed. Today, these...
Koziara, who leads the Ivies in both scoring and rebounding this year, has won All-America and Academic All-America honors in a collegiate career unparalleled by any other Ivy player. With her in the pivot Dartmouth is favored to win its third straight league championship this weekend...
...weigh more and burn more fuel than a comparable fixed-wing aircraft. As far back as 1945, Robert T. Jones of NASA's Ames Research Center, who proposed the first U.S. swept-wing aircraft, saw a simple solution: a single, rigid wing that would swing on a single pivot point. The oblique wing, as he called it, would vastly simplify the structural problem. The fact that one end of the wing would be pointing forward might look odd, but it was, he realized, aerodynamically unimportant. In high-speed flight, what matters is the angle at which the wing meets...
...fool; he trusts you. You see the spot. It's a target between the second and third button on his shirt. As you calmly talk and smile, you move your left foot to the side to step across his right-side body length. A light pivot toward him with your right shoulder and the world turns upside down: you have sunk the knife to its hilt into the middle of his chest...