Word: ponderous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...something no company can control: the value of the U.S. dollar--the world's most trusted currency, which has been melting away for three years. Currency moves are a normal part of global trade. Their impact generally is best left for financial geeks and really bored people to ponder. But not now. The dollar's long slide--and widespread expectations that it will slip further--has officials on three continents fearing that their economies are stretched to the breaking point. They're assigning plenty of blame anywhere but their own backyard, and the accountability void only deepens worries...
...they right--or does the altered state brought on by caffeine, fatigue and lack of slow-wave sleep merely make them believe they are right? It's a question they might do well to ponder--if only they had the time. --Reported by Anna Macias Aguayo/ Dallas, Paige Bowers/Atlanta, Simon Crittle/ New York and Leslie Whitaker/Chicago
...couldn’t help but ponder this frustrating paradox during Martin Scorsese’s newest, The Aviator, a film chronicling the life of Hollywood wonderboy Howard Hughes. There is no question that Martin Scorsese is a brilliant and gifted filmmaker, but his new biopic is lifeless—a word rarely applied to the always vital Scorsese. It is a film without passion seemingly made solely to finally get Scorsese the Oscar his previous work has so richly deserved...
...area of scientific inquiry at least since 1986, when Bell Labs invented one. (Grier had done a postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Labs.) Back then, Bell Labs scientists invented a single-beam "optical tweezers" that trapped just one substance. That was a monumental breakthrough, but scientists began to ponder traps that could catch multiple substances and move them from one point to another. Since their plastic fantastic moment gave Grier and Dufresne 16 separate optical traps, that was enough for the University of Chicago to eventually showcase the duo to Lewis Gruber, a biotech entrepreneur and patent lawyer. Within months...
Raise your hand if you take vitamin E. Maybe, like millions of others, you hope its antioxidant properties can ward off heart disease, cancer or Alzheimer's. But ponder a new review of 19 clinical trials involving more than 135,000 participants that determined that taking high doses of the vitamin (400 international units or more) may actually increase overall mortality and should be avoided. Be advised, though, that this will surely not be the last word on the topic. Expect other researchers, as well as the vitamin industry, to dispute the findings and weigh in with their studies. Feel...