Word: smoothly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Although Deval Patrick would be needed in Washington, D.C. as soon as he is confirmed, Patrick said she will remain in the Office of Human Resources as long as possible to ensure a smooth transition for her replacement...
...established masters did not disgrace themselves. Viktor Petrenko, Kurt Browning and Brian Boitano had virtually lost their medal hopes two days earlier by skating weak short programs. But experience still counts: each was able to draw on reserves of seasoning in international competition to deliver a smooth, clean long routine. They placed fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively. That kind of finesse was what U.S. champion Scott Davis, 22, could not summon. Nervous and spill-prone, he wound up eighth...
Meanwhile, ever more powerful metaphors are being designed to smooth over the complexities of 500-channel TV, interactive video and other new media. General Magic, designing software for the new generation of pocket-size computers, draws on the metaphor of a street lined with buildings. Apple, in the design of its new online service, uses a village. Time Warner, for its video Full Service Network, is building an electronic shopping mall...
...over the past several years, researchers have dug deep into Atlantic sea-floor sediments and Greenland glaciers to study the chemistry of ancient mud and ice, and they are increasingly convinced that climate change is anything but smooth. The transition from warm to frigid can come in a decade or two -- a geological snap of the fingers. Says Gerard Bond, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Observatory: "The data have been coming out of Greenland for maybe two or three decades. But the first results were really so surprising that people weren't ready to believe them...
Besides, a simple astronomical model would predict smooth and gradual climate transitions -- the opposite of what really happens. The last Ice Age was in full retreat about 13,000 years ago when temperatures suddenly reversed and began heading lower again. They stayed low for 1,000 years, an episode known as the Younger Dryas period. The periodic "spikes" of warmer weather that have interrupted ice ages and the cold weather that often came on suddenly in the last interglacial period are also impossible to explain with astronomy. And so is the astonishingly rapid changeover from warm to cold...