The region's strengths could not protect it, however, from Japan's long downward spiral of shrinking confidence and stagnating demand.
As the soccer world shrinks, confidence seems to grow, especially among the younger American players who have learned their trade in European leagues.
United started briskly, failed to take an early lead, then seemed to shrink in confidence in front of goal and allow Swansea to settle into the game.
There are now fears that as the 2014 deadline looms for most foreign troops to leave, opportunities for women in the public sphere could shrink as confidence weakens in the face of continuing violence.
However, while the stories may be false, having scary emails forwarded to you can possibly shrink your confidence.
As Matthew Parris wrote recently in The Times of London, their economy is flat-lining, their major industries are shrinking, their "self-confidence is thin," and their new Parliament Building looks likely to cost 10 times the original estimate of $65 million.
The opposition, fearing more defeats, twice shrank from tabling further confidence motions.
The French domestic economy is shrinking; if market confidence fades further, the French government may find itself moving from gradual to crash austerity, worsening this condition.
Meta QTL analysis [ 17] is a better method for combining data from independent studies to detect consensus QTL and to shrink the QTL confidence intervals.
"High-income families, on the other hand, focused on what has happened in the stock market; their wealth shrank" and so did their confidence.
