I was shocked by the sheer quantities of drugs being taken in the subcultures they exposed me to.
True, such effects are dwarfed by the sheer quantities of carbon dioxide released during combustion, which is responsible for a quarter of all greenhouse-gas emissions in America.
But the rise of maritime trade vastly increased the variety and sheer quantities of these goods that made it to European shores, and guaranteed their wider distribution and appreciation.
Not to mention the sheer quantities of merchandise that languish in our armoires, living as we do in a time when 30 pairs of shoes don't raise an eyebrow, instead of the measly two (or maybe three or four, if they were really prosperous) that our forebears made do with.
A CITES report two years ago noted that for smuggled ivory, "Trade patterns have shifted to Indian Ocean seaports," and the sheer quantities of cargo moving through Asian ports "makes detection of concealed ivory a severe enforcement challenge".
As such, our basic knowledge of eukaryotic genetics and gene expression could only be increased by understanding how (and why) dinoflagellates structure their genes and regulate transcription within the sheer quantities of DNA in their cells.
