For geeks who prefer "text sex" to physical encounters, e-mail to "facemail," e-commerce to "bricks and mortar" shopping, the human body is nothing but "wetware" -- a fragile, inefficient alternative to the shiny hardware of their computers.
However, these environments can also be extremely fragile and susceptible to alternative pressures from insensitive land-use practices and their dynamic geomorphological setting.
Such artificial peace processes will always be fragile, but the only alternative is to wait for a military outcome.
An alternative and less fragile hypothesis assumes that environmental conditions in the host change during the course of disease in favour of X4 viruses.
Consistent with previous studies, the fragile regions, detected using our alternative approach, are enriched for segmental duplications, although based on a small sample.
The holograms are an inexpensive alternative to bulky, often fragile physical models of wood or polystyrene, says Jared Smith, a senior vice president at Parsons Brinckerhoff in Seattle, an engineering, planning and architecture firm.
Even today, though, the overwhelming majority of library usage is from printed books for which digital substitutes can be used, and for which a digital display is preferable to the alternative of microfilm for fragile items.
Any policy strategy targeted at improving the livelihoods of the rural poor located in remote and fragile environments should be assessed against an alternative strategy, which is to encourage greater out-migration from these areas.
Thus, the fragile breakage model [ 13], as an alternative to the random breakage model, has not been well established.
