Word: scientiste
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...close approach. Earlier than that, just a simple nudge, accomplished, say, by firing a heavy object at the asteroid, could change its course enough to miss the crucial but small keyhole. Any time after that approach, should Apophis pass through the keyhole, we could be in trouble. NASA scientist David Morrison explains: "After 2029, the deflection would have to be vigorous enough to miss not just a tiny keyhole but the much larger target of the Earth itself. And such a deflection is far beyond present technology for an asteroid this large...
...large as the one in Sichuan, and the high mortality rate and severe symptoms?which include bleeding under the skin in some cases?seem to be entirely new. "I've never before seen an outbreak of this type," says Dr. Thomas Alexander, the retired University of Cambridge veterinary scientist who first identified the bacteria in humans. "It just doesn't sound like Strep." Dr. Marcelo Gottschalk of the University of Montreal, the world's top expert on Strep. suis, says China needs help analyzing the bacteria to see if it has mutated into a more virulent form...
...F.D.R. fought a war on crime. Lyndon Johnson launched a war on poverty in 1964. In the '70s, Richard Nixon started wars on cancer and, most memorably, on drugs. "The irony is that all of these wars on abstractions have pretty much been failures," says Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard. "It's a bit of a conceptual mismatch. If your roof leaks, you don't have a war against rain." Often those waging the wars request a name change. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who fought in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, called the war metaphor "inadequate" for drugs...
While the declared nuclear powers have wobbled in their commitment to get rid of their arsenals, the rise of a global black market in nuclear expertise and materials has made the Bomb more attainable for everyone else. Despite the bust in 2004 of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist who transferred nuclear technology and designs to clients like Libya, Iran and North Korea, intelligence officials around the world believe much of his network is still in business. (Today Khan lives under house arrest in Pakistan, but the U.S. has yet to receive Islamabad's permission to question him.) Meanwhile, Nunn maintains...
...studying DNA from victims whose bodies prove difficult to identify by other means. Dental records are highly reliable; in many of the inquests that opened last week, they were cited as the basis for identification. The same was true after last year's tsunami. Pornthip Rojanasunan, a Thai forensic scientist who named 2,400 of the roughly 6,000 who died in Thailand, says, "The most useful method in identifying [tsunami] victims was their dental records." Coroners also rely on possessions - clothing, footwear, jewelry, watches, eyeglasses, together with scars, moles, birthmarks, tattoos and identity papers the person may have been...