Word: vital
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even with Skelton's injury, this year's corps of receivers is one of the deepest and most talented of Murphy's tenure. Quarterback-turned flanker Jared Chupaila has blossomed into a vital compo- nent of the Harvard offense, and with a greater emphasis on the air attack this season, his role should expand even further...
Even with Skelton's injury, this year's corps of receivers is one of the deepest and most talented of Murphy's tenure. Quarterback-turned flanker Jared Chupaila has blossomed into a vital compo- nent of the Harvard offense, and with a greater emphasis on the air attack this season, his role should expand even further...
...human body ages, it loses bone. Individual cells lose something equally vital. Every time one divides, it sheds tiny snippets of DNA known as telomeres, which serve as protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. After perhaps a hundred divisions, a cell's telomeres become so truncated that its chromosomes--site of the cell's genes--begin to fray, rather like shoelaces that have lost their plastic tips. Eventually, such aged cells die--unless, like "immortal" cancer cells, they produce telomerase, an enzyme that protects and even rebuilds telomeres. Scientists have long dreamed of drugs that would inhibit the immortalizing...
...mean, I probably have more reason to think about this stuff than the average John Q. All Too Public. A few years ago, for instance, after I applied for a credit card at a consumer-electronics store, somebody got hold of my name and vital numbers and used them to get a duplicate card. That somebody ran up a $3,000 bill, but the nice lady from the fraud division of the credit-card company took care of it with steely digital dispatch. (I filed a short report over the phone. I never lost a cent...
Sharks play a crucial role in keeping aquatic wildlife in balance. Scientists now understand that the ocean ecosystem has been evolving over hundreds of millions of years as an integrated whole--a biological machine in which each component has a vital function. For most sharks, that function is to serve as what biologists call an apex predator, the ocean equivalent of a lion or tiger or bear. Not only do they keep prey populations in check, but they also tend to eat the slowest, weakest and least wily individuals. In so doing, they improve the target species' gene pool, leaving...