Word: signallers
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...While the jolly Jet Propulsion Lab fellows liked to drown out the Martian silence with Twist and Shout, these movies are about the wisdom of being quiet enough to hear the otherworldly message--the simple sequence of chords that announces the aliens' arrival in Close Encounters, the pounding radio signal from Vega that Jodie Foster's character picks up in Contact...
...came more or less periodically every two to seven years. But in the early 1990s several El Ninos appeared in a row, one right after another. Now, after dying down in 1995 and '96, El Nino is back. What is going on? scientists wonder. Are frequent El Ninos a signal of global warming caused by human tampering with the atmosphere? Or do they arise from random fluctuations in the natural cycle? There are as yet no good answers to these questions. Observes Michael Glantz of the National Center for Atmospheric Research: "The discrepancy between what we think we know about...
...Clinton Administration's decision not to oppose a $1.6 billion plan to build a natural-gas pipeline through Iran is a signal that the U.S. wants to improve relations with the Islamic regime. "It's the flip side of sanctions," says a White House official--an inducement to Iran (which wants the pipeline) to stop supporting terrorism, halt its attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and tone down its opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process. White House officials say they're monitoring the performance of newly inaugurated Iranian President MOHAMMED KHATAMI for favorable signs. It's all part...
...Exchange. No listing. Nope. Or call Dallas--Irving, to be precise, home of the Dallas Cowboys--and ask for the number of Da'Boys. No listing. You provide the address--1 Cowboys Parkway--and are finally given a number, which produces only the screech of the no-such-number signal. The list goes on: no number for state representatives' offices in New England, or for the Mayflower hotel in Washington, D.C. One operator, when asked for a number in Des Moines, informed the caller that there was no such place...
This idea hasn't yet been confirmed by other shark researchers, but they don't dismiss it either. They know that sharks are extremely sensitive to electromagnetic signals; a "sixth sense" lets them home in on faint electricity generated by another fish's movement, gill action or even heartbeat. Indeed, Holland's team in Hawaii routinely tricks baby hammerheads at Coconut Island into striking at electrodes dangling in the water. Adult sharks, apparently drawn by the same process, have been known to bite through undersea cables. Holland is planning to investigate what sorts of electric signal might repel rather than...