Word: thousanders
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...small smile that creased his normally stolid face said more than a thousand press conferences: Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker was pleased. And with good reason. Seven years ago, he set out to negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict involving Angola, Cuba and South Africa. Last week the three countries jointly announced "a de facto cessation of hostilities" in the 13-year-old war and pledged to work toward the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Angola and neighboring Namibia. The impending agreement is not only a personal triumph for Crocker but also one of the most impressive...
...problem by repeatedly feeding examples to the machine. The computer responds to each example by randomly activating its circuits in a particular configuration. The trainer electronically reinforces any connections that produce a correct answer and weakens those that produce an incorrect one. After as many as several thousand trials, the computer activates only those circuits that produce the right answer. "It works just like a kid," says Farrokh Khatibi, senior product manager at AI Ware Inc., a 3 1/2-year-old neurocomputing company in Cleveland. "It learns and learns, and when you tell it what it did wrong, you hope...
...skeptics. Thomas Poggio, head of the Center for Biological Information Processing at M.I.T., insists that proponents of neural networks have exaggerated their computers' smarts. "The only thing they have in common with the human brain is the word neural," he argues. At best, neurocomputers consist of only a few thousand connections -- a very small number compared with the trillions of connections between billions of neurons found in the human brain. "Before trying to duplicate the human brain," Poggio says, "scientists will have to learn far more about the brain than they already know...
Buried toxins can also be moved around by shrimp and other creatures that dig into the bottom and spread the substances through digestion and excretion. Though ocean sediment generally accumulates at a rate of about one-half inch - per thousand years, Biogeochemist John Farrington of the University of Massachusetts at Boston cites discoveries of plutonium from thermonuclear test blasts in the 1950s and 1960s located 12 in. to 20 in. deep in ocean sediment. Thus contaminants can conceivably lie undisturbed in the oceans indefinitely -- or resurface at any time...
...believes the popular media and listens to one's friends -- not to mention one's physician -- Americans are shunning artery-clogging desserts and nibbling lighter foods. But on Executive Boulevard, that perception is a few degrees and a few thousand calories low of the mark. Here the recipe for success is decidedly heavyweight: 140 lbs. of chocolate, 100 lbs. of milk, a bottle of kirsch, eight cooks and one world-famous pastry chef. Stir for a week and voila: doctorates in desserts from the International Pastry Arts Center...