Word: retardent
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...course, if all of the company employees are unable to help the Happy Hacker and other computer users because they're too busy playing with their new computers, it could retard the acceptance and spread of the new machines...
...fields. Moreover, say opponents, the low level of radioactivity set by the FDA for produce (100 kilorads) is not strong enough to slow the ripening of most fruits and vegetables. Plant Biologist Noel Sommer of the University of California at Davis has concluded that 200 kilorads is needed to retard the growth of gray mold on picked strawberries, and at that level the berries turn squishy. Other claimed advantages may have drawbacks. Irradiation "can kill the organisms that produce the signals and odors that warn people they are eating spoiled food," cautions Leonard Solon, director of New York City...
...confusing Government regulations, harassing legal actions and in some cases the industry's own blunders. Only last month, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency fined Advanced Genetic Sciences $20,000 and suspended its permit to field test a preparation called Frostban, which contains re-engineered bacteria designed to retard the formation of frost on plants. The agency charged that the Oakland firm misrepresented data and violated the national pesticide-control law by conducting outdoor tests without a permit. (EPA officials had been alerted by newspaper stories initiated by the indefatigable Rifkin...
Lindow and Panopoulos proceeded to expose large numbers of P. syringae to chemicals, and were able to impair in some of them the gene that orders production of the protein. When these altered microbes were sprayed on plants in greenhouses and open fields, they seemed to retard the formation of frost. Equally important, they apparently did not spread or do any harm, and most gradually died out. Their release into the open went unnoticed--or at least unchallenged--because they had been altered by conventional laboratory methods...
Many experts are alarmed about the high level of consumer debt. Warns Gilbert Heebner, chief economist for Philadelphia-based CoreStates Financial, a bank holding company: "Debt problems have the potential to retard economic growth and, at worst, lead to another recession." And if a slump comes, many debt-laden families could sink into insolvency. Says Henry Kaufman, chief economist for Wall Street's Salomon Brothers: "American households as a whole have never been more exposed to a downturn...