Word: plasticizers
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...half-hour before Mohammed Jamil ended his life, he was a busy man. As he sat in a pickup truck loaded with C4 plastic explosives, he made and received no fewer than 109 calls on his cell phone, talking, at least in some cases, to accomplices in his effort to incinerate the President of Pakistan. Jamil, 23, might have assumed that the evidence he was creating would disintegrate in the blast he planned for Pervez Musharraf. If he did, he was wrong. Not only did he and a second car bomber fail to kill Musharraf in their Dec. 25 attempt...
This wouldn't be the first time that the medical profession was caught inventing a disease to go with the cure in hand. In the 1990s plastic surgeons discovered "micromastia," a syndrome characterized solely by small breasts and conveniently curable with silicone implants. A century and some years ago, doctors detected an epidemic of "hysteria" among affluent women, manifested by hundreds of unrelated symptoms and requiring constant medical attention. Or we may reflect on the case of hormone-replacement therapy, which doctors promoted as a cure for the "disease" of menopause, only to discover, after millions of women had been...
...upscale Canyon Ranch chain. Cabins are comparatively roomy, and three-quarters of them have balconies. Some observers on the preliminary tour complained that the furniture in some of the lounges looked cheap and that deck chairs for the lowest-priced cabins were white plastic instead of the traditional teak. Victoria Mather, travel editor of the British magazine the Tatler, dismissed the pervasive Art Deco look as "Las Vegas"--kitschy instead of tasteful. Note to travel snobs: those kitschy Las Vegas casinos make serious money...
...procedure was simple but not easy. First Mashek and I made the participant as comfortable as possible in the scanner--a large, horizontal, cylindrical, cream-colored plastic tube that is open at both ends and extends from above the head to about the waist. After taking preliminary scans to establish basic brain anatomy, the 12-min. experiment started. First the subject looked at the photograph of the beloved on the screen for 30 sec. as the scanner recorded blood flow in various brain regions. Next the subject was shown a large number and asked to count backward...
...microcantilevers, resemble rows of diving boards or spatulas, each vibrating spontaneously. They can be made so thin that 100 would fit snugly inside a human hair. The cantilever is coated on one side with a chemical that specifically binds a target molecule--say, a cancer-related protein or a plastic explosive. When that molecule sticks to it, the cantilever bends and the frequency of its vibration changes, which can be measured by bouncing a laser beam off its surface. Thundat and his team are only months from completing an exquisitely sensitive handheld detector that will suck in air and search...