Word: plasticity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...masks, two with body armor, stormed a three-bedroom bungalow in the Maryvale area of Phoenix, Ariz., at 4 a.m. one day last week, using a sledgehammer to bludgeon their way into the house. In one bedroom they found Louisa Sharrah and proceeded to bind her arms with plastic cuffs and strike her with a metal flashlight. The men woke her young children and held them at gunpoint as they screamed in terror. Then the invaders kicked in the door to the bedroom where Foote, a 23-year-old construction worker, and his girlfriend, Wright, a 19-year-old college...
Sure, I could pay cash for everything and leave no paper trail for prying eyes. But the seduction of using plastic is the frequent-flyer miles I accrue. By funneling just about everything--from haircuts to a down payment on a used car--into one credit card, I'm flying from Boston to Belfast and back. For me this sure is a tolerable trade-off. TOM WITTENBERG Indianapolis...
...sheds tiny snippets of DNA known as telomeres, which serve as protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. After perhaps a hundred divisions, a cell's telomeres become so truncated that its chromosomes--site of the cell's genes--begin to fray, rather like shoelaces that have lost their plastic tips. Eventually, such aged cells die--unless, like "immortal" cancer cells, they produce telomerase, an enzyme that protects and even rebuilds telomeres. Scientists have long dreamed of drugs that would inhibit the immortalizing enzyme because, observes M.I.T. biochemist Robert Weinberg, "then maybe cancer cells would run out of telomeres...
...task, considering that its skin is as thick as a watermelon rind and as tough as leather. The shark doesn't even flinch. "That's nothing," Meyer reassures me, "compared with the wounds they inflict on each other during mating." I slip a barb-tipped wire with a white plastic tag into the incision and tug hard to anchor it in place...
...middle-class and upper-middle-class homes the following scenario is played out daily. Wife and Husband have decided to buy a new family car, their last one having been rendered immobile by the accumulated weight of gum wads, empty juice boxes and broken plastic toys from McDonald's Happy Meals. Do they go with the stolid minivan or the racy sport-ute? They consult consumer guides. They compare prices. They make, if they have the stomach for it, a few desultory visits to a variety of reptilian car salesmen. And they gather promotional brochures...