Word: takings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Untangling this metabolic mess will probably take decades. But given the immense profits waiting for whoever can invent a safe, effective weight-control substance, drug companies aren't waiting. With the clues they have in hand, pharmaceutical firms are now investigating about 60 compounds, most of them based on some of the 130 genes that have so far been implicated in weight control...
...Bombay (26 million people by 2015), Lagos (24 million), Dhaka (19 million) and Karachi (19 million). By 2030, almost 60% of the world's people will live in urban areas. By then, some megacities could have 30 million or more people. The population of California today is 35 million. Take all of California, cram those people into one city, remove most doctors and medical care, take away basic sanitation and hygiene, and what you have is a ticking biological time bomb. Now make eight or 10 such bombs and plant them around the world...
Ginseng, ginkgo biloba and homeopathic potions have become as American as apple pie, but will anyone still be taking them in 2025? Advocates of alternative medicine, buoyed--and enriched--by the $30 billion Americans spend annually on unconventional therapies, confidently predict that herbal remedies and homeopathic potions will not only flourish in the coming decades but will also take their rightful place alongside vaccines, antibiotics, gene therapy and the other tools of modern medicine...
Change won't be easy. But how we respond will help answer the metaphorical meaning of "Will we run out of gas?" That is, will our species fizzle out in the coming century, a victim of its own appetites and lethargy? Or will we take action and earn a longer stay on this beautiful planet...
Biotechnology is giving us additional tools to cope with waste--and turn it to our advantage. We now have microbes that can take toxic substances in contaminated soil or sludge--including organic solvents and industrial oils--and convert them into harmless by-products. Soon we may be using genetic engineering to create what Reid Lifset, editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology, calls "designer waste streams." Consider all that stalk, or stover, that every corn plant grows along with its kernels. Scientists at Monsanto and Heartland Fiber are working toward engineering corn plants with the kind of fiber content that...