Word: specializer
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...Across the Andes in Ecuador, a constitutional referendum last year gave leftist President Rafael Correa the chance to govern until 2017. Correa first won in 2006; Ecuador's new constitution allows him to run for a four-year term in a special election this year, and then another in 2013. Bolivia's leftist President, Evo Morales, who was elected in 2005, won a similar reform in a referendum last month. The question now is whether both leaders will eventually follow their ally Chavez's lead and seek the right to run for re-election indefinitely. Elsewhere, political watchers are waiting...
...Czechs, who currently hold the E.U.'s presidency, are seething at Sarkozy's threats. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has announced a special E.U. summit in Brussels for March 1 devoted to protectionism, and another in Prague in May to examine jobs and unemployment...
...varnish. That's the theory of Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A & M University. In a study published last week in the scientific journal Public Library of Science ONE, Nagyvary argues that Stradivari probably had no idea what made his instruments special because the crucial factor, an externally applied varnish on the wood, was beyond his apprehension or control. (See pictures of things money can buy, including a violin...
...problem with the Little Ice Age Theory," he says, "is that the same wood was available to French, German and other violin makers in Europe, but only instruments made in Cremona were any good. I believe that's because of the special, preservative varnish used there...
...historian Plutarch, the Roman general Sertorius in 80 B.C. had his troops pile mounds of gypsum powder by the hillside hideaways of Spanish rebels. When kicked up by a strong northerly wind, the dust became a severe irritant, smoking the insurgents out of their caves. The use of such special agents "was very tempting," says Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist and author of Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological & Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World, "especially when you don't consider the enemy fully human...