Menagerie, haul, obligatory, optional

Berlin gears up for referendum on religion in the classroom

What’s the place of religion in the classroom? In Berlin a referendum
will on Sunday ask that very question. Currently, the subject of ethics is
obligatory and courses in different religious faiths are optional.

The DW-WORLD Article
http://newsletter.dw-world.de/re?l=ew0pukI44va89pI1


Less clear is whether the games will pay the kind of political dividends that China had hoped for domestically and abroad. The gold-medal haul (51 compared with America’s 36 and 23 for Russia) will boost national pride. But many complain about the impact that stringent security precautions and tightened visa restrictions for foreigners have had on business. Security has been particularly intense in Tibet and neighbouring Xinjiang. This may well worsen grievances among their inhabitants and strengthen pro-independence sentiment in both regions.


haul
v., hauled, haul·ing, hauls. v.tr.

1. To pull or drag forcibly; tug. See synonyms at pull.
2. To transport, as with a truck or cart.
3. Informal. To compel to go, especially for trial: “hauled the huge companies into court” (Peter Matthiessen).
4. Nautical. To change the course of (a ship), especially in order to sail closer into the wind.

v.intr.

1. To pull; tug.
2. To provide transportation; cart.
3. 1. To shift direction: The wind hauled to the east.
   2. To change one's mind.
4. Nautical. To change the course of a ship.

n.

1. The act of pulling or dragging.
2. The act of transporting or carting.
3. A distance, especially the distance over which something is pulled or transported.
4. Something that is pulled or transported; a load.
5. Everything collected or acquired by a single effort; the take: a big haul of fish.

haul

━━ v. 引っ張る, たぐり寄せる; 運搬する; （裁判所などに）召喚する; （船の）進路を変える; 風が方位を変える.
haul down the flag [colors]　旗を巻く; 降伏する.
haul off　【海事】針路を変える; 退く; 〔話〕 （なぐろうとして）腕を引く.
haul up　船首を風上に向ける; 〔話〕 呼びつける, 召喚する.
━━ n. 強く引くこと; 運搬（物，距離）; 運送量; ひと網の漁獲量; 〔話〕 （不正な）もうけ; 盗難被害額; 警察［税関］押収額.
in [over] the long [short] haul　長［短］期間にわたって, 長［短］期的には.
haul・age
　━━ n. haulすること; 牽引（力，量）; 運搬費.
haul・er, haul・ier　〔英〕 n. 運送業者; 坑内運搬作業員.

menagerie
noun [C]
a collection of wild animals which are kept privately or to show to the public

me・nag・er・ie

━━ n. 見せ物の動物たち; 動物園; 風変わりな人々の集まり.

諸例

A leading brand in the market for outdoor apparel is listening to the call of the wild by enlisting a menagerie's worth of beasts to burnish its image.




A Featherless Audubon Menagerie
By JAMES GORMAN
John James Audubon’s portraits of mammals as seen at the Museum of Natural History’s new gallery offer a chance to glimpse a little-known part of his career and work.

Forensic science

The glass menagerie

Sep 25th 2007
From Economist.com

A technology that mimics nature should allow sensitive biological samples to be stored at room temperature
EVEN miracles have their price. When DNA fingerprinting was introduced in 1984, it was an extraordinary advance in forensic science. It was also an irresistible temptation to the public authorities to build databases of their criminal (and often their not-so-criminal) citizens’ genetic profiles. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of those decisions, these databases have created a need for the mass storage of biological samples.
Keeping samples in refrigerators—the familiar way of preserving them—is precarious. Power supplies can be interrupted. Thermostats may be mis-set. Things can go missing because they have been stuffed at the back of the fridge and forgotten about, rather than having been stored with other, less perishable evidence. And even then, preservation is not perfect. The average sample lasts for about a decade, which is not really long enough if the sample itself, rather justa computer record of its details, is needed for future reference.

It would be far better if there was a way of keeping such samples at room temperature. And now there is. Biomatrica, a firm based in San Diego, California, has taken a leaf out of the book of the humble brine shrimp in order to dry samples rather than freeze them.
Readers of a biological bent may recall buying “Sea Monkeys” in their youth. These creatures (or, rather, their eggs, which are sold dried in packets) magically came to life when put in water. The eggs are able to survive desiccation (to a water content of less than 1%) because their cellular structure is stabilised by sugar molecules that act like a glass casing. Biomatrica is applying this principle to storing DNA and other biosamples, with the role of the sugar molecules being taken by a special polymer that dissolves in water, wraps itself around the DNA of the sample, and then holds on to and protects that DNA as the sample is dried out.
According to Judy Muller-Cohn, Biomatrica’s boss, the firm has simulated long-term storage equivalent to 13 years at room temperature, by applying higher temperatures than samples would normally endure. Such storage costs a third as much as freezing the samples would. And when a sample is needed for analysis, you just add water à la Sea Monkey.
The market for this sort of stuff is potentially huge. America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation alone has a backlog of more than 200,000 unprocessed DNA samples from convicted criminals (about 85% of the samples it has collected during the past six years). This number has almost doubled in the past year, yet it may grow even faster in the future since what was once a procedure required only for sex offenders has now become obligatory for a range of felons from murderers to drug-addicts. Moreover, starting next year, both the federal authorities and a number of states will cast an even wider net by collecting DNA from everyone they arrest (as now happens in Britain). That will swell the haul of samples by at least half a million specimens a year.
Nor is the market restricted to forensic science. Cambridge Biostability, a British company, has developed a sugar-based stabilisation technique to store vaccines at room temperature. GenVault, a firm based in Carlsbad, California, which uses a type of high-tech blotting paper to dry out sample materials, has signed a deal with the government of Quebec to build a “biobank” of samples for medical research. And Biomatrica itself is being used by GlaxoSmithKline to transport samples between seven of its laboratories in America and Britain. Even NASA, America’s space agency, is in on the game. It reportedly wipes down its spacecraft when they return in case they are carrying traces of alien genetic material. Any Martian murderers must be quaking in their boots.





Instead the members of the menagerie overseen with such deep-burrowing
insight by Robert Wilson in the Comédie-Française's revelatory "Fables
de La Fontaine," part of the Lincoln Center Festival 2007, are most
memorable for their capacities for inflicting and suffering great
pain. And whether predator or victim, none is morally unblemished.
They're just trying to get by, get through and, in some cases, get to
the top, just like the people sitting around you in the audience.

oblige (FORCE)
verb [T + object + to infinitive] (MAINLY US OR FORMAL obligate)
to force someone to do something, or to make it necessary for someone to do something:
The law obliges companies to pay decent wages to their employees.
Sellers are not legally obliged to accept the highest offer.

obligation 
noun
1 [C or U] when you are obliged to do something:
[+ to infinitive] If you have not signed a contract, you are under no obligation to (= it is not necessary to) pay them any money.
You have a legal obligation to (= The law says you must) ensure your child receives a proper education.

2 [C] something that you must do:
I haven't got time to do his work for him - I've got too many obligations as it is.

obligatory
adjective
1 describes something you must do because of a rule or law, etc:
The medical examination before you start work is obligatory.
[+ to infinitive] The statute made it obligatory for all fit males between 12 and 60 to work.

2 expected because it usually happens:
Some secret service agents turned up, all wearing the obligatory raincoat and hat.

obliged
adjective [after verb; + to infinitive] (MAINLY US OR FORMAL obligated)
Doctors are legally obliged to take certain precautions.
She feels obliged to be nice to Jack because he's her boss.