Word: semicircular
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...also contained in the innermost third of the ear, and working in far more mysterious ways, is a labyrinth of three nonhearing organs. The best known is a set of three semicircular canals. Minute changes in the flow and pressure of the fluid in these canals send the brain such signals as "You're turning to the right." Together, the canals make up what is probably the most important single "organ of equilibrium." But there are others...
...chalky substance composed mainly of calcium carbonate, no bigger than grains of fine sand. In the space age, physiologists are learning much more about these otoliths (ear stones), which respond to forces of gravity or acceleration. Now otolith mechanisms are known to have an im portant function. The semicircular canals tell the brain when a man's position or posture is changing because of a turning motion. But it is the utricle that responds to acceleration, and the saccule to deceleration...
...sometimes known as "the Swan of Lichfield." Anna carried on a lifelong flirtation with him (they exchanged playful love letters on behalf of their cats), and remembered him as a man given to "sarcasm of very keen edge" and so "inclined to corpulence" that he had to have a semicircular hole cut in the table to accommodate him at meals. "A fool," the doctor used to say to Anna, "is a man who never tried an experiment." Erasmus tried them all the time, and occasionally they worked. He prescribed electric shock for jaundice and scarlet fever, purges for the gout...
...ANTA Theatre off Washington Square is just splendid. With a capacity of 1158, it has 21 rows of seats arranged in a semicircular amphitheatre, with the arena and all but the last six rows below ground level. The acoustics are perfect and the sight-lines optimal. The $530,000 building is announced as a temporary structure pending the completion, in a year or two, of the uptown Vivian Beaumont Theatre. It would be a shame if such a fine theatre were not to become a permanently available site for dramatic productions...
...also makes minuscule bronzes, some no more than three inches high, which have the pulpy look of ancient artifacts dug up after centuries. Some are whimsical toys others complex hieroglyphs-one called Sacrifice is at once bull and matador, the horns becoming the man and his sword while another semicircular form suggests that the whole object is the sword's hilt...