Word: whiffs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...struggles to take shape, there is something both stirring and a trifle chilling about the Perot campaign. The hopeful sincerity of his newfound supporters is a reminder of the latent idealism in the American character. But there is also a whiff of danger in the ease with which this billionaire with a mission has harnessed television imagery, telephone technology and voter disaffection to create a volatile force in the 1992 campaign...
...just this whiff of quackery that made vitamins a research backwater for years. Most reputable scientists steered clear, viewing the field as fringe medicine awash with kooks and fanatics. A researcher who showed interest could lose respect and funding. Certainly Linus Pauling lost much of his Nobel-laureate luster when he began championing vitamin C back in 1970 as a panacea for everything from the common cold to cancer. Drug companies too have been leery of committing substantial energy and money to studies, since the payoff is relatively small: vitamin chemical formulas are in the public domain and cannot...
Since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in 1958 and cut short 14 years of political chaos, France has been a model of governmental stability. But last week brought back a strong whiff of the Fourth Republic atmosphere of clashing factions and evanescent coalitions. In elections for 22 regional councils throughout the country, voters dealt a stiff blow to the entire political establishment and catapulted fringe movements and personalities into new prominence; in many councils they will cast the deciding votes. The balloting has no direct effect on the national government; France is a highly centralized country in which...
Krikalev landed on the snowy plains of Kazakhstan, an independent country. He was wearing the emblems of the U.S.S.R., but it no longer exists. His hometown is called St. Petersburg again, not Leningrad. Understandably, Krikalev's knees were a bit rubbery. He was given a whiff of smelling salts and a cup of soup...
...sights -- through a network of nerve cells to different areas of the brain. "It's a whole cascade of processes, physiological and chemical, that sensitizes the neurons to transmit messages," notes Mortimer Mishkin, chief of the neuropsychology laboratory of the National Institutes of Health. The proper stimulus, say, a whiff of a perfume or a glimpse of a familiar place, trips the relay, firing the neurons and bringing a past event to consciousness...