Word: sifting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Among the CDF's most vital parts are the fast electronics that sift through torrents of incoming data, instantaneously separating the mundane from the rare. "We're looking for needles in haystacks," observes University of Michigan physicist Myron Campbell, "and to find them, we have to process a haystack every second." During the last experimental run, for instance, a trillion collisions between protons and antiprotons occurred inside CDF's big particle trap. Yet of these, only 16 million were deemed promising enough by the detector's electronic gate-keepers to be worth more detailed analysis. Further winnowing occurred as banks...
...aftershocks -- and the rumble of speeding trucks -- sent Angelenos scurrying for protective portals, engineers and architects turned the city into a giant laboratory, figuring out what withstood the tremors, what didn't and why. Even last week there was still much new evidence of damage to sift through. The University of Southern California's children's hospital had to be evacuated because of structural defects, and it was suggested that the L.A. Coliseum, site of two Olympic Games and home of the Raiders, would have to be torn down. As it turned out, the stadium may well be salvageable -- with...
...with it, cool, wet breezes from the sea. Although more Santa Anas are predicted and many of the state's fires continue to rage, this particular furnace has been banked. That is small solace to the groups of people, who, at 1 a.m., are already dodging police blockades to sift through the ashes and weep. A nighttime wanderer seeks out Skyline Drive -- once a noble address -- and finds a row of unconnected stone chimneys, naked and alone as tombstones and lit by the bluish flames of broken gas mains...
...compensation to the victims will now cost the company some $20 million in administrative expenses over the next three years. Pollack will earn $20,000 a month for supervising a cadre of lawyers, accountants and financial appraisers hired at his discretion on the Pru's dime, who will sift through customers' claims. "If you're a widow for whom the purchase of a risky oil-and-gas partnership was inappropriate and you were told it was safe, you're very likely to get compensation," says Thomas Newkirk, an associate SEC enforcement director who worked on the case. "But this...
Fondest memory: [The good moments were] so few and far between. It takes a long time to sift through the chaff...