Word: preciousness
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...commercial rights. (Thomson, however, was free to distribute his stem cells to fellow academics.) Because he could afford only one part-time assistant, he ended up doing much of the work himself, getting up at 5 a.m. and trudging off to the lab, rain or shine, to tend his precious cells. "You have to watch them every day or they differentiate"--that is, start turning into specialized tissue. After six months of watching them divide and multiply without undergoing any change, he was sure he had mastered the art of growing his life-giving seeds and set about writing...
...their trade as they did almost 600 years ago. According to the admiral's chronicler Ma Huan, inland mountain streams flushed gems to the surface after heavy rains, a bounty of "red rubies, blue sapphires, yellow oriental topaz and other gems," he wrote. "There is a saying that the precious stones are the crystallized tears of Buddha...
...wash dishes or New England to earn a degree, but they come to Africa to make fortunes and garner respect. Zheng He did as well. It was from Malindi, now a sleepy resort town a two-hour drive up the coast from Mombasa, that he received his most precious tributes: a qilin (or unicorn), a celestial stag and a celestial horse - now identified more prosaically as a giraffe, an oryx and a zebra. Since moving sight unseen to Mombasa in 1992, Li and his family have also taken Africa's natural riches - especially its abundance of rare animals and medicinal...
...best loot is hidden in the back, past the seahorse skeletons and powdered pangolin. From inside a rusted safe, shopkeeper Zhu fishes out a bundle of cloth and unwraps a precious amber-streaked crescent. "Rhino horn," he whispers. "Straight from Africa...
...years ago and passed it on to his son. But at the present rate of carnage, there will be little left when Zhu's 11-year-old son takes over the business. For one thing, there may be no black rhinos remaining in the wild to give up their precious horns...