To get around this, researchers piped water through sealed tubes just 50 microns (millionths of a metre) in diameter, between individual layers.

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But the meat of the argument has to do with the fate of individual companies that have a stake in particular layers of the stack.

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The interaction between light and the atoms of individual elements in a star's outer layers causes some wavelengths to be suppressed, and others to be amplified.

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Each one of those individual actions has an associated cost, so layers of cost that have no value to the process, the customer, or the company have just become embedded inertia.

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At the moment, memory chips are made by laying down strata of different chemicals on a silicon base, and then carving canyons through the layers in order to separate the individual components.

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When Elop arrived at Nokia, 11 layers of management separated him from an individual engineer.

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Ms Hirono replies that devolving power to individual islands or to regional boards will mean more layers of bureaucracy, not less of it.

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Scale can be thought of as the different layers that comprise an organization, including the individual, the team, the corporation itself, the markets in which the corporation operates, the environment and the societies in which the corporation is involved.

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