After more than half a century of studying invasive species, biologists still can't tell which ones will die off and which ones will run rampant.
After a century of studying their tangled mathematics, physicists can tie almost anything into knots, including their own shoelaces and invisible underwater whirlpools.
The knowledge generated during more than a century of studying the human gastrointestinal microbiota has shown that this ecosystem is indeed a forgotten organ of the human body.
Much is known of the detailed processes of vegetation modification along the Mediterranean, since they have been observed and studied since Classical times, and a good deal is also known from the more than three centuries of study of the Cape area of South Africa, but until the late 19th century very little was understood about these processes in tropical Africa.
Then there's the apparent fact that, after years and centuries of study, we have no clue as to what 96percentt of the universe consists of.
The phylogenetic affinity of Strepsiptera remains uncertain despite more than two centuries of study [e.g., 4,10,13 30].
The Trechini fauna of the Alpine range is one of the best known in the world due to two centuries of studies by professional and amateur speleologists and biospeleologists.
As genome sequencing become both less expensive and easier to conduct (http://genome10k.soe.ucsc.edu/), such approaches will become available for more species, but the descendants of domesticated taxa will still have the advantage of centuries of study.
Bling, of course, is deadly unpopular now: banker bling; footballer bling; below-stairs celebrity bling; foreigner bling; the whole early 21st-century look of studied OTT vulgarity.
