Word: tracts
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...race has yet to further the discovery of significant gene mutations. What's more, say critics, it promotes racial thinking while dismissing the more germane issue of socioeconomics. Indeed, Albain and her coauthors used a single, widely disputed metric in their study - patients' zip codes linked to census tract data - to "adjust" for socioeconomic status. Yet researchers know that people living within one zip code can include the city's wealthiest and poorest residents. And even if zip codes were a trustworthy indicator of income and education, they would still be insufficient to level the socioeconomic playing field. As previous...
...current pandemic is the possibility that H1N1's virulence might suddenly change. Flu's hardiness as a recurring human scourge is the result of its unstable genetic structure. One flu virus can easily swap genetic information with another, or mutate as it reproduces in the human respiratory tract. The World Health Organization tracks flu viruses for changes in their genetic makeup that would make them more deadly. But even exhaustive 21st century virology can only help health officials react to what's already happened. The best laboratory in which to study the flu virus is the human population itself...
...cells of their animal hosts. When a virus jumps from animals to humans, its contagiousness is largely determined by what is called the "binding specificity" of this protein. An alpha-2,3 binding specificity means the virus is well suited to the cells in an animal respiratory tract but probably not human cells. An alpha-2,6 binding specificity, on the other hand, means the virus can easily bind to human cells...
...villain rises and an old bad guy assumes a position of great power. "This has only just begun," one of them says, explicitly promising or threatening a sequel. Will there be more of the same? It doesn't matter to me, or I to the filmmakers; my G.I. tract, in fact the communal contumely of critics, is irrelevant to box-office performance. G.I. Joe could be a Transformers-size hit, or it could be another The Golden Compass, the first episode of the His Dark Materials novels; that film cost $180 million and helped drive New Line Cinema...
...similar behavior in animals that suggests its evolutionary roots. If you step on a dog or cat's tail, it will let out a sharp yelp of pain, for example. "Swearing probably comes from a very primitive reflex that evolved in animals," Pinker says. "In humans, our vocal tract has been hijacked by our language skills," so instead of barking out a random sound, "we articulate our yelp with a word colored with negative emotion...