Much of the work is also centered on figuring out some of the game's most vexing problems — when to kick a field goal versus going for it on fourth down; what to do under the new overtime rules; when to challenge a call; when to use a timeout — amid the chaos of the sideline.
Dr. Meyer is a Forest Service ecologist based in Provo, Utah, and her work these days is centered on figuring out how this fungus, which looks like a miniature mohawk haircut, does its lethal work on cheatgrass, perhaps the most disruptive invasive plant in the country — and how to help the tiny spears do more of it.
These stories may not be as glamorous or inspiring as the ones from shows centered on political figures or high-powered lawyers, but they are the kind of stories that most of us are living.
Look at the eight Best Picture nominees: four of them — "American Sniper," "The Imitation Game," "Selma," and "The Theory of Everything" — are fact-based dramas centered on significant figures and events in modern history.
Here are exhibitions centered on literary figures, scientific personages, paintings of war at sea and a look at Scotland's links with Pakistan in the form of portraits of the Scottish-Pakistani community.
A lot of the set had been played in various Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts over the last 19 years, programs that have centered on single figures: Duke Ellington, with "Satin Doll" and "Solitude"; Count Basie, with "Li'l Darlin' "; Woody Herman, with "Early Autumn"; Dizzy Gillespie, with "Things to Come"; and so on.
Even films set in the real world have centered on fantastical figures -- Gone Baby Gone turned on the extremely rare crime of child-snatching.
"The Idea of Beautiful: A Visit to Rome in the 17th Century With Giovanni Pietro Bellori," at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni (March 29 to June 26), is centered on the figure of the Italian art critic and historian who formulated the cult of Classical antiquity in the Baroque period.
8 A.M. (USA) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) The filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen take on Cormac McCarthy's modern western in a film that A. O. Scott, writing in The New York Times, called "bleak, scary and relentlessly violent," centered on "a figure of evil so calm, so extreme, so implacable that to hear his voice is to feel the temperature in the theater drop".
9 30 A.M. (USA) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) The filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen take on Cormac McCarthy's modern western in a film that A. O. Scott, writing in The Times, called "bleak, scary and relentlessly violent," centered on "a figure of evil so calm, so extreme, so implacable that to hear his voice is to feel the temperature in the theater drop".
