Word: sizing
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...exoplanet standards. One star, just 42 light-years away, is home to a trio of such worlds - which Mayor is now calling "super-Earths." The largest of the three is just 9.5 times as big as Earth, the smallest just 4.2 times. It was not only the modest size of all the new worlds that got astronomers so excited; it was the sheer number of them too. Mayor found his planets by studying a group of just 200 stars - an infinitesimal sliver of the total number out there. That has led him to estimate that at least a third...
...Scientists at the Karolinska Institute studied brain scans of 90 gay and straight men and women, and found that the size of the two symmetrical halves of the brains of gay men more closely resembled those of straight women than they did straight men. In heterosexual women, the two halves of the brain are more or less the same size. In heterosexual men, the right hemisphere is slightly larger. Scans of the brains of gay men in the study, however, showed that their hemispheres were relatively symmetrical, like those of straight women, while the brains of homosexual women were asymmetrical...
...days of the Clinton Administration in 2001, looks to harness state and federal action to reduce the flow of fertilizer into the Mississippi, much of which comes from agricultural sources that aren't covered by the regulations of the Clean Water Act. The ultimate goal is to shrink the size of the dead zone, averaged over five years, to 1,930 sq. mi. or less by 2015 - considerably smaller than the 7,900 sq. mi. the zone reached last year. "This plan has greater accountability and specificity [than 2001]," says Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water. "This...
...early fall, has averaged about 6,046 sq. mi. But the threat is growing. A study released last week by scientists from Louisiana State University (LSU) and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium estimated that this year's dead zone would be more than 10,000 sq. mi., roughly the size of Massachusetts. But that prediction was made before massive floods hit the Midwest: with the flow of the Mississippi at dangerous levels, and with rains sweeping fertilizer off drowned farms, the dead zone could grow even bigger. The Louisiana fishing industry, the second largest in the nation, is already hurting...
Human beings are not wired to look at things this way. We're suckers for size, for flash, for speed, for scale; we mistake immensity for complexity and subtlety for simplicity. That has very often been our undoing. Shock and awe should win a war, until an insurgency beats it back. An election should be sealed by storming Super Tuesday, until the campaign dies of a thousand little losses. The 2003 Yankees, with their $180 million payroll, should win the World Series, until the $63 million Marlins send them packing...