The numbers of people – men, women and children – desperate to move north has risen drastically over the past 10 years, as war carves its way through countries such as Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan, and economic atrophy grips the sclerotic Mediterranean rim and troubled states further south such as Eritrea.
The whips' power of patronage will atrophy along with much else.
There are many reasons why Labour is in so much trouble in Scotland: taking its core voters for granted, allowing its organisation to atrophy, too many lacklustre or accident-prone leaders, and being outclassed by the Nationalists.
After Freak Show, American Horror could probably do with shaking up the formula slightly to prevent atrophy, though with Lange reportedly hanging up her scowl at the end of the current run its hand may be forced.
And in a recent poll by MORI for the Constitution Unit at University College London, 68% of respondents thought it was sometimes all right for the Lords to vote against government bills.The danger for the House of Lords, Walter Bagehot noted in the 19th century, lies "not in assassination, but atrophy; not abolition, but decline".
At the time, Sir Nicholas Serota, its director, argued that declining public funds would cause the museum's collection to atrophy unless artists and collectors agreed to give works to a grateful nation.
Lady Greenfield is aware that misgivings such as hers are as old as writing itself (famously condemned by Plato, who worried that it would atrophy memory).
Non-competes prevent people from selling their labour for long periods during which skills atrophy and contacts fade away.How can the competing claims of employers and employees be reconciled?
Worryingly, roughly half of the joblessness is now long-term (over a year), which is more difficult to escape as individuals lose confidence, their skills atrophy and they find themselves shunned by prospective employers.
But as the skills and habits of the unemployed atrophy, they may become unemployable, and America could end up with structural unemployment similar to Europe's in the 1980s and 1990s.
Besides offering a means of exercising the muscles, and so preventing atrophy, the hope is that this "functional electrical stimulation" might also help restore mobility to patients.Reanimate thisBut external stimulation is less than ideal, says Dustin Tyler, a biomedical engineer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
