Word: method
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI strongly reaffirmed his church's traditional opposition to artificial means of birth control. That authoritative teaching left Roman Catholic couples with only two ways to limit the size of their families: 1) use the morally acceptable rhythm method, which was then so unreliable as to justify the sobriquet "Roman roulette"; or 2) follow their consciences rather than papal counsel and adopt such forbidden means of contraception as diaphragms, condoms or the Pill -- which millions...
What to do about the situation is the subject of a simmering debate. Take unwanted pregnancies. While publicly funded abortion has long been accepted as a method of birth control among Chinese married couples, the state refuses to make contraceptives available to single people. Many unmarried women are thus driven to seek dangerous back-alley abortions rather than risk the scandal that would arise from exposure of their illicit affairs if they chose legal channels. "If we teach them how to prevent pregnancies, maybe premarital sex will become even more common," frets Liu. Still, Dr. Wu labels Beijing's stand...
...than successful: some disintegrated under sunlight, unavailable at the bottom of landfills. Others came apart after contact with water, causing supermarket executives to shudder at the thought of what would happen to the groceries in a plastic shopping bag containing a leaky milk bottle. But now there is a method of adding cornstarch to some plastics. Bacteria eat the starch, causing the plastic to fall apart into pieces that can be ingested by microorganisms. Result: the plastic disintegrates in four to seven years...
...high, steep valleys. A huge Sikorsky helicopter is pulling logs out of a narrow canyon. What is going on is not just clear-cutting, which a widely ignored provision of the National Forest Management Act of 1976 permits on national forest land only when it is the optimum cutting method. This, says Stewartt, is really "a mining operation, a one-time extraction of resources." Valley walls too steep to walk on have been scraped to bare earth. Acreage bulldozed for shopping malls looks like this. Until these ravaged uplands reseed themselves -- which on the steepest slopes simply may not happen...
...enzymes sensitive to glucose in the bloodstream are placed in microscopic polymers along with insulin. The drug is released through the complex, porous polymer structure. Because the solubility of insulin increases in the presence of glucose, the more glucose in the blood, the more drug is released. This "intelligent" method represents a potential revolution in the treatment of diabetes, since blood-sugar levels in diabetics are thought to be best controlled by the continuous release of insulin each day, supplemented by increased doses around mealtimes...