Word: thresholds
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...such, the innocuous-seeming creature and its curvy spoor mark the threshold of a critical interlude in the history of life. For the Cambrian is a period distinguished by the abrupt appearance of an astonishing array of multicelled animals - animals that are the ancestors of virtually all the creatures that now swim, fly and crawl through the visible world. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
...primitive chordate Branchiostoma (formerly known as Amphioxus) has 10. So around 550 million years ago, Erwin and the others believe, some wormlike creature expanded its Hox cluster, bringing the number of genes up to six. Then, "Boom!" shouts Jablonski. "At that point, perhaps, life crossed some sort of critical threshold." Result: the Cambrian explosion...
...difficulty and with his legs spread apart. His skin had taken on a disturbing gray patina. And his face appeared strangely bloated--"puffy," in the words of one American official present. In the minds of the CIA analysts, it all pointed to one thing: Yeltsin was poised on the threshold of another bout of heart trouble that could swiftly land him in the hospital, or worse...
...somehow taken that whatever the legal consequences--or illegality--of a 50 percent threshold, this was subsidiary to the expressed "will of the people." This ignores, of course, the fact that in this case the law for good reason sought precisely to prevent a major constitutional change from happening with only marginal support...
There should not have been any reason to fear that the Quebec referendum, with its misleading question and ridiculously low threshold of success, would have any serious moral legitimacy. And this is to say nothing of the secession requirements in international law that a minority be persecuted, that the parent country concur and that the secession receive broad international recognition...