Word: smalling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that's just the beginning. Within a few decades, nanotechnologists predict, they will be creating machines that can do just about anything, as long as it's small. Germ-size robots will not just measure internal vital signs; they will also organize the data with molecular microcomputers and broadcast the results to a mainframe (implanted under your skin, perhaps), where the data can be analyzed for signs of disease. Nanomachines could then be sent to scour the arteries clean of dangerous plaque buildup, or aid the immune system in mopping up stray cancer cells, or even, a la Fantastic Voyage...
Researchers have made headway toward molecule-size transistors and wires and even batteries thousands of times as small as the period at the end of this sentence. These laboratory feats make talk of sugar cube-size computers less speculative than it was a few years ago. Says Lifset: "A lot of the consumer goods and industrial equipment could become dramatically smaller when nanotechnology comes online. That, plus more efficient recovery of the discarded goods, ought to translate into huge reductions in waste...
Malthus cared about only one species: ours. And, ecologically speaking, ours is an unusual species. With the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, we became the first species in the 3.7 billion-year history of life not to be living as small populations off the natural fat of the land. Taking food production into our own hands, we stepped outside the local ecosystem. All but a few cultivated plants became weeds, and all but a few domesticated herds, pets and game animals became pests and vermin...
...cases, the brink of biological extinction--more than 100 popular species of food fish, including Nassau groupers, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy and cod. What we don't know, what we'll never know, is how many undiscovered species have been eradicated along the way. What creatures, great and small, might have contained genetic or chemical secrets that could have saved lives or improved them, conquered diseases or averted them...
Bent like an arthritic thumb high above the antarctic ice cap, the mountain's uppermost point was so small and precarious that it could accommodate only one person at a time. So I shivered on a ledge in the subzero breeze and waited for my partners, first Alex and then Conrad, to climb the final 20 ft. to the summit. We'd been on the move for 14 hours. My back hurt, and I had lost all feeling in my toes. But as my eyes wandered across the frozen vastness of Queen Maud Land, a sense of profound contentment radiated...