Word: layer
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...Presence Divine (1944), scored for soprano chorus, strings and a clattering assortment of percussion, celebrates God's omnipresence by mixing swatches of Gregorian chant with Hindu rhythms and the unearthly quavering of the Ondes Martenot (an electronic wave generator). The 77-minute Turangalila Symphony (1948), a thick layer cake of orchestral textures, is part of Messiaen's treatment of the Tristan legend, which he considers "the greatest myth of human love." Chrono-chromie (1960) echoes the sounds of nature in a complex tone poem, climaxed by an ear-ringing passage in which 18 solo strings each play...
...academic tone of the 40's and College and the Dean of the Graduate School; the political activist tone of the 60's, the President and the Regents. From scandals to grades and revolt, the tone of each generation has affected the temper and the tenure of a different layer of campus administration. There are those who look back with longing to the days when it was the Dean of Students or the football coach that got the sack...
With a double heat shield on an ICBM warhead, for example, the outer shield can be made to take the brunt of X-ray damage, leaving the inner shield to protect the warhead as it descends through the atmosphere. A neutron-blocking layer of paraffin or liquid hydrogen can prevent the uranium trigger from fissioning prematurely. Installation of more rugged electrical components and addition of bypass circuits reduce the possibility of damage from the surge of current caused by an electromagnetic pulse...
Investigating the tragedy, meteorologists concluded that it had been triggered by a temperature inversion, an atmospheric phenomenon that prevents normal circulation of air. Ordinarily, warm air rises from the earth into the colder regions above, carrying much of man's pollution with it. Occasionally, a layer of warmer air forms above cooler air near the ground; the inversion acts as a lid, preventing the pollutants at lower altitudes from rising and dispersing. Inversions are no novelty, but what happened at Donora shocked public-health officials into an awareness that such layers pose a deadly threat to an increasingly industrialized...
When the Arne River burst over the parapets of Florence on November 4, it submerged the city in unimaginable quantities of mud, a thick layer of oil, and an average of 15 to 24 feet of water. Thirty-three persons were drowned, several are still missing, and the damage to art works, libraries, and architectural monuments -- to say nothing of homes and businesses -- staggers the imagination...