Word: understands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Until recently, however, scientists did not understand exactly how such a large primate - weighing up to 180 lb., orangutans are the largest living arboreal animal - can navigate the delicate branches at the top of the tallest trees. At that height, tree branches are thin and begin to wobble as animals climb on them, much as a suspension footbridge vibrates as people walk over it. Too much vibration and an orangutan can be thrown off altogether. From high in the trees, such a fall would be deadly. (See pictures of a bonobo Eden...
...understand how orangutans swing, it helps to compare them to their primate cousins, the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees pull their bodies close to the tree branch as they move, but being relatively small, they can do that without worrying about the vibrations caused by their own body weight. If orangutans behaved that way, the vibrations would build dangerously, as they do on a suspension bridge...
...fact, few of the leaders of the 1979 revolution accepted Khamenei as their leader in spite of his selection by the Assembly of Experts. Khomeini was too ill at the time to understand the implications of making Khamenei Supreme Leader. Their mistrust, the opposition believes, was justified. Khamenei has failed to uphold Khomeini's legacy, turning the country into a military camp run by the Revolutionary Guards...
...this has aroused Lebedev's reformist zeal. More than ever, he says, Russia needs an independent judiciary and legislature, a free press, real elections, real political parties. The oligarchs, he says, understand that the system cannot survive forever. They are scared and looking for handouts. (At the top of the list is Oleg Deripaska, head of investment firm Basic Element, which has interests in the aluminum, energy and financial-services sectors among others, and recently received a $4.5-billion infusion from the state.) "Once they found themselves in trouble they started this sort of SOS signal, calling on Putin...
...Everyone seems to pay attention in February," Judi Ann Mason, the playwright and television writer, said of Black History Month. But what Mason, who died July 8 at age 54, wanted people to understand was that black history happens every day. She once said that as a child growing up in the 1960s South, she failed to appreciate the strides black leaders were making for racial equality--Thurgood Marshall wearing the robes of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Shirley Chisholm legislating in Congress, Martin Luther King Jr. toiling tirelessly in the struggle for civil rights...