Word: sopping
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...Separating the factors that contribute to climate change from the things that help reverse it is not always easy because sometimes they're one and the same. Trees sop up CO2, for example, but when they die and decay they release it back into the air. Wetlands and rice paddies serve a similarly dual role for both CO2 and methane, acting as sources and sinks simultaneously. The challenge has been trying to tease out how those two functions balance out, but a new paper in the Jan. 14 issue of Science has provided some hard numbers. Using satellite data, investigators...
...President Obama, in a sop to Republicans, spoke favorably of medical malpractice reform in last week’s speech. But his proposed action on this front (the creation of a committee to make recommendations to Congress) is a cop-out. This is not surprising, given trial lawyers’ support for the Democratic Party. Malpractice lawsuits, while a necessary recourse for victims of medical errors, impose a cost on health-care providers. Fearing lawsuits, doctors buy expensive malpractice insurance and order unnecessary tests. Juries, lacking medical expertise, are generally poor assessors of guilt: A study in the New England...
...Ukraine's parliament has been on a moral crusade of late, banning gambling last month and, in the past few weeks, prohibiting the possession and production of pornography. Observers have expressed concern that such decisions are a sop to retrograde social forces that oppose liberalization and have the support of the generally conservative Ukrainians. With a presidential election scheduled for Jan. 17, politicians seem to be on the lookout for ways to give themselves a boost in the polls. "[They] are trying to make an impression on society by using the most extreme methods," says Taras Karasiychuk, director...
...lives? In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, Douglas Besharov of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and a colleague argued that expanding prekindergarten programs "without demanding reforms will not help children." Other critics have also opined that funding early-childhood initiatives is just a sop to liberal interest groups...
...student of French history knows, it doesn't require a presidential order to generate argument about a proposal - especially one that detractors suspect is fueled by political motives. Sarkozy, political opponents allege, is using the museum push as another sop to voters on the hard right, many of whom fear French culture and tradition are being over-run by immigration and globalization...