Word: basic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...proximate cause for these changes has been the courage and foresight of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The Soviet leader realized that his country could not survive spending billions on military weapons and leaving little for the basic needs of its people. He also saw that freedom of expression and political participation were critical to the stability and happiness of a nation...
...Pentagon's inescapable budget pressures, it is urgent that Washington devise a coherent plan to have an effective but smaller military by the end if not the middle of the decade. The Pentagon's typical gamesmanship -- pretending to tighten its belt a little each year without rethinking basic issues -- could lead to the worst outcome: a hodgepodge of cuts that will come anyway, guided not by foresight and leadership but by some of the worst instincts in politics...
Miller's switches became the building blocks for Huang's optical processor, which took five years to develop. His team finished construction around Christmas but did not get the machine to work until last month. The device is far cruder than even the most basic computers: it has no permanent memory, and the only function it can perform is counting simple numbers. Just a small fraction of the thousands of switches are connected. Nonetheless, Huang insists, the machine proves that his principle works. He thinks computer makers will soon replace wiring inside their machines with optical circuits...
...most innovative goal called for students in Grades 4, 8 and 12 to pass nationwide tests in five basic subject areas. Typically, Bush left unanswered the thorny questions of who will design the tests, how they will be carried out and funded, and how results will be reported. But given the controversy surrounding national standards and student testing, the fact that the President embraced the notion at all was remarkable. "To superimpose some norms would be radical," says Chester Finn, chairman of the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (N.A.E.P.), a 20-year-old federal testing program...
Mabel Osborne, 85, had spent two years sick in bed when she read about a SeniorNet class in Dallas. She signed up and made an important discovery. "I wasn't sick," she says. "I was just bored to death." Osborne quickly mastered basic computer skills and went on to study word processing at a local community college. "She bought a word processor and is now writing the history of her life," says Florence Wetzig, 69, a former beauty-salon operator who taught Osborne how to compute. "She has said to me many times that I saved her life...