Word: reflex
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Almost by reflex, people rushed to disclaim even remote complicity in the murder. "Thank God it wasn't a Negro," said a Negro in Toronto. Many others insisted on reading into the event their own political passions. Statesmen in Africa, Asia and elsewhere insisted that the deed must have been done by a racist, and that Kennedy was a martyr like Lincoln or Gandhi. And Nehru could not resist remarking that the murder gave evidence of "dark corners in the U.S., and this great tragedy is a slap for the concept of democracy...
...shut on anything that touches it. If a fish so much as brushes against either of the bird's mandibles, the beak closes in as little as nineteen-thousandths of a second. By contrast, the human eye takes forty-thousandths of a second to blink when startled. This reflex makes the wood stork the fastest fisherman on record, and certainly gives it the fastest jaws in the drawling South...
Despite the congressional leaders' relief, the President's plan was a form of compulsory arbitration, but disguised by indefiniteness and delay. Almost by reflex, railroad union leaders grumbled about the plan. Cried Roy E. Davidson, grand chief engineer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers: "This is not only compulsory arbitration, but compulsory arbitration with the added evil of an utterly unfair preferment for the demands of management. The ICC is biased against the labor organizations." But for the unions, the President's plan was actually a good deal. At the very least, it provided delay, and delaying...
...life. The acquisition of a habit consisted of developing a new pathway of discharge in the brain. Even the most complex habits were viewed as merely a chain of discharges in the nerve centers--the result of a series of sensory stimuli and motor responses comprising a system of reflex paths...
...muscles is often a satisfactory substitute for crying. These crossovers and feedbacks between physical movements and processes that appear to be purely mental are as subtle as they are mysterious. At the Philadelphia Rehabilitation Center, Therapist Glenn J. Doman treats partly paralyzed patients by training them to "capture" reflex movements by a conscious effort. An obvious one is the knee jerk. The therapist provokes this by hitting the knee with a little rubber mallet. The nerve impulses involved travel only as far as the spinal cord, and the patient cannot make the movement of his own volition. But after willing...