Traction in the damage region is characterized by a softening power-law, in terms of the ultimate strength, a softening index and a rate sensitivity factor.
Her presentation suggests that if we could only escape the acoustic buffer of our atmosphere and surmount the softening powers of distance, we would confront a universe throbbing with sound.
One hopes the sideburns and Ford Cortinas won't act as a nostalgic buffer, softening the power of the book's unsettling vision.
The plan for Camden, the state's poorest city, discards the near-dictatorship proposed last summer by the governor then, Christie Whitman, and softens the power of the new city executive under a cloak of cooperation with the mayor and City Council, who would retain some powers.
The emphasis on egalitarian team functioning, including shared decision making and responsibility for results, probably helped to soften institutional power hierarchies and to facilitate local innovation and continuous improvement.
And demand for nuclear power is softening, at least in Europe and America.
Some Eurocrats bravely argue that the EU's soft power softened up Arab regimes: EU-driven telecoms reforms, they say, helped the Twitter and Facebook revolutions.
Thus a term like snafu, its shocking power softened with the explanation "situation normal, all fouled up," worked its way gradually from the military in World War II by word of mouth (because the media largely shunned it) into respectable circles.
Moreover, the state's stubborn preference of mediation over strict regulation (such as active labor inspections, arbitration awards, the administration of justice, and so on) will in the long run soften the binding power of labor laws and fuel unscrupulous violations by employers.
Wearing an apron and washing dishes while contesting the party leadership, and, once in power, drawing on "softening" feminine trademarks like her bouffant blonde hair, pussy-bows and handbag, her image was in other ways a mixture of conflicting signifiers.
