Word: tasked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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City-hall workers naturally dubbed their new professorial task force "Fishy" (Allen), "Tweety" (Harris, the bird man) and "Blue Eyes" (Gearheart). Another nickname mattered: an abandoned dump near the oxidation pond was called Mount Trashmore. No one put it all together until Allen probed his students one day. A student "who slept all the time" raised his hand. No problem, the student said. "Just run it ((the wastewater)) around Mount Trashmore...
Reading these genetic words and deciphering their meaning is apparently a snap for the clever machinery of a cell. But for mere scientists it is a formidable and time-consuming task. For instance, a snippet of DNA might read ACGGTAGAT, a message that researchers can decipher rather easily. It codes for a sequence of three of the 20 varieties of amino acids that constitute the building blocks of proteins. But the entire genome of even the simplest organism dwarfs that snippet. The genetic blueprint of the lowly E. coli bacterium, for one, is more than 4.5 million base pairs long...
Tracking down the location of a gene requires tedious analysis. But it is sheer adventure when compared with the task of determining the sequence of base pairs in a DNA chain. Small groups of scientists, working literally by hand, have spent years simply trying to sequence a single gene. This hands-on method of sequencing costs as much as a dollar per base pair, and deciphering the entire genome by this method might take centuries...
...enthusiasm that the genome project has generated among scientists and their supporters in Washington, however, none matches that of James Watson as he gears up for the monumental task ahead. "It excites me enormously," he says, and he remains confident that it can be accomplished despite the naysayers both within and outside the scientific community. "How can we not do it?" he demands. "We used to think our fate was in our stars. Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes...
...operations and to diminish the oppressive levels of firepower and military manpower. Optimally, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact will be restructured along defensive lines, with no country or alliance having the power to attack others. Acknowledges a Soviet expert on conventional arms: "This is the most complicated diplomatic task since the end of World...