Evaluating the riots of 1967, Newark educator Nathan Wright, Jr. said, "No typical American city has as yet experienced such a precipitous change from a white to a black majority."

Still other noncoding stretches may be buffers against precipitous change, serving rather as flak jackets to absorb the impact of viruses and other genetic interlopers that infiltrate an animal's chromosomes.

The trustees urged Congress to "take early remedial measures to bring future costs and finances into balance" and to "avoid the need for later, potentially precipitous changes" in the program.

The Conservatives explain that the precipitous change in membership requirements was needed to prevent the Orthodox from packing the synagogue with Lubavitchers and becoming a majority as a result.

It usually takes a precipitous change in the sunny weather - something, say, the magnitude of El Nino - to shake the relative calm of this sleepy Southern California city.

We don't see any precipitous change up or down.

Thomas Gambino and Rosen, McGuire felt, had made some reasonable arguments why garment-center trucking operated as it did and why precipitous change could disrupt a vulnerable industry, buffeted by foreign competition.

And the tremendous power he amassed from his public standing, political skills and changes in the military's structure were employed largely to brake against precipitous changes in the status quo.

"Only indirectly, by causing a precipitous change in air pressure at the surface datum."

Several senators invoked the chamber's traditional role as a brake on precipitous changes, to review deliberately in the face of demands for fast action.