Word: fields
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...determine when the rock might be nearing the breaking point. More recently, they have begun to look for other signals of an impending quake, such as changes in the ability of the rock to convey sound waves, local alterations in the earth's surface tilt and magnetic field, and increases in the release from the ground of radioactive radon gas, a phenomenon associated with the fissuring of rock under pressure. Experts have even begun to take seriously reports that animals behave skittishly before quakes...
While such data have been used to foretell tremors accurately, they can also be misleading. Because the earth's geology varies greatly, rock in one place might behave in a much different way than rock does elsewhere. Also, monitoring seismic data requires networks of field stations that can automatically pipe information to central analysis points, something few countries can afford. In Italy and indeed throughout the Mediterranean region, predictions are complicated by yet another factor: the area is the meeting place of not just two plates but three or more. Italian Geophysicist Forese Wezel describes the region...
Outside the factory and the lab, the work that needs to be done in this world is almost without limits, and so is the robot's potential ability to do it. In the field of farming and food processing, for example, Unimation has been asked to design a robot that can pluck chickens. Australian technicians are already testing robots to shear sheep. One machine first stuns the animal with an electric shock, then closes in with its shears. Clipping the back and sides is not too hard, but the technicians still report "significant difficulties" in finishing up the neck...
Some rules have been relaxed to make ROTC students feel more at ease. Male cadets need not cut their hair short, and uniforms are required only during field exercises. But the telling development is that the students no longer feel they have to camouflage their armed forces connections. Says Senior Kim Thompson, 22, Princeton's first female cadet commander: "As a freshman, I would never dine in my eating club if I didn't have time to change out of my fatigues. Now I'll go in uniform." Thompson noted a sharp drop in the razzing...
...people in the stadium don't tell the whole tale. The 4,000 or so fans that spent the entire game on the railroad tracks at the east end of the field, pressed against a construction fence and without much of a view, are a marvel in themselves...