Word: humanization
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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People will continue to err when predicting the future if only because of the human tendency to fit new events into familiar categories. In a celebrated 1950s experiment, psychologist Jerome Bruner showed that ordinary people would "see" a red ace of spades as a regular black one if it was salted into an otherwise normal deck. The Smithsonian exhibit demonstrates that inventors are fooled in the same...
Self-effacing and at 64 still somewhat shy, MacCready would cringe at any comparison with the original Renaissance man. Yet he has created what Da Vinci dreamed of and designed, but literally never got off the ground -- flying machines propelled solely by human muscle power. These and other unique MacCready airborne contraptions have made aviation history, and his innovative electric-car designs could help usher in a new era in ground transportation...
...thoughts occurred: the $100,000 note he had co-signed to help a relative and now must repay. The news item about the value of the British pound rising to two dollars. The unclaimed 50,000 pounds Kremer prize awaiting the first person to achieve a mile-long, controlled, human-powered flight. "Suddenly this light bulb just glowed over my head," MacCready recalls. "Fifty thousand pounds was worth $100,000, which would pay off the debt...
Harrison spent five years practicing and refining his technique on hundreds of sheep and monkeys. Even so, his first six operations on human fetuses with problems similar to Blake's failed: he was unable to save the babies because of difficulties encountered in handling their organs. After his success with Blake, Harrison performed a comparable prenatal operation on a little girl, who was also born healthy...
Ever since its development in the 1940s, radiocarbon dating has been a vital tool for historians and paleontologists trying to pinpoint the ages of everything from ancient animal bones to prehistoric human settlements to Egyptian mummies. By measuring the decay of the natural radioactive isotope carbon 14, which almost all organisms ingest while they are alive, scientists can estimate how long it has been since an animal or plant died...