Word: plasma
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...American Diabetes Association has called for all adults 45 and older to be tested for adult-onset diabetes every three years. The Association also dramatically lowered the blood glucose threshold that alerts doctors to the disease. Previously, "normal" glucose levels were at least 140 milligrams per decileter of blood plasma. New research shows that repeated blood sugar levels of as low as 126 milligrams can later set off a string of potentially life-threatening, complications ranging from heart disease to kidney failure. By detecting the disease early on, doctors could help reduce what is currently the number-four cause...
...more important: the picture is murkier than images on most old-style television sets, and the Ivana-thin display costs, ahem, $25,000 (for the 42-in. incarnation, on sale at Hammacher Schlemmer). Nonetheless, TV analyst Allen Griffin says the set is a good omen. The breakthrough "plasma" technology that made these high-end boxes possible should push higher-quality, lower-cost versions into the price range of mortals sometime near century...
SLIM FAST Once merely the stuff of a decorator's dreams, thin computer monitors to hang on the wall or adorn the desk are fast becoming a (costly) reality. Hitachi's high-resolution plasma-thin Ovation is a skinny 3 in. deep, but it provides a 25-in. picture and can be hung as simply as a painting. Available in late...
...transmit data continuously. But next year NASA will launch the Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE satellite, and place it in permanent orbit between the earth and the sun. Moment by moment, ACE will sample the solar wind and, almost as quickly, relay its findings back. If a blob of plasma heads this way, then ACE will see it--and alert forecasters like Hildner that a big one is about...
...most violent space storms of all occur when magnetic field lines in the solar wind connect with those that surround the earth, creating a kind of funnel that channels huge quantities of solar plasma into the magnetosphere. In response, powerful currents surge through the high reaches of the atmosphere, where they can utterly scramble broadcast signals, and even through seawater and bedrock. These surface currents can corrode buried pipelines, interrupt transatlantic phone conversations and overheat electrical transformers. In 1989, during the most recent solar maximum, currents induced by a geomagnetic storm brought down the power grid that supplies Canada...