Word: disappearance
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...actually assign a lot of blame for our recent troubles on a lack of interest-rate caps - that is, on the absence of strict usury laws. Why? Almost every state had usury laws in the 1920s, and they were circumvented one by one. Prohibitions against excessive interest started to disappear [South Dakota, for instance, loosened its laws in 1980], and once they did, the credit-card companies recognized a wonderful opportunity. They could charge as much as the market would bear, claiming that they had to charge more for bad credit risks. You can argue that's the democratization...
...turns out that even during the relatively peaceful eras between global calamities, during what is known as background extinction, whole families of species can disappear, pushed out of existence together. And it's not random. According to a new study published in the August 7 issue of Science, vulnerability to extinction runs in families, meaning that some groups of species have a higher likelihood of becoming extinct than others. "It turns out that some branches of the tree of life are more extinction-prone than others," says Kaustuv Roy, a biology professor at the University of California, San Diego. "Those...
...study's authors propose several other possible explanations. For instance, beyond the complete inactivity involved with TV-viewing - which alone raises the risk of high blood pressure - children may be compounding their sloth by eating junk food. "A full bag of chips or a plate of hot dogs can disappear a lot more quickly while watching TV than they might at any other occasion," says Ludwig. And the types of foods that children are likely to be eating in front of the tube, like salty snacks, can push up blood pressure readings...
...Woodring hopes that Project Kaisei will awaken people to the fact that the plastic they throw in the garbage doesn't just disappear. "Anyone who has ever been on the beach and seen plastic debris can understand this," he says. "This isn't like glacial melting or tropical deforestation, which might not be in your home territory. This is something that everyone can see and touch and make a difference...
...brick maze of courtyard homes, winding cobblestone streets plied by donkey carts, and dozens of centuries-old mosques. By some accounts, at least 85% of Old Kashgar will be knocked down. Many expect the ancient quarter, considered one of Central Asia's best preserved sites of Islamic architecture, to disappear almost entirely before the end of the year. "This is the Uighurs' Jersualem," says Henryk Szadziewski of the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project. "By destroying it, you rip the soul out of a people." (Read a brief history of the Uighurs...