As Pacquiao has ascended into one of the planet's most compelling athletes, so has the reputation of the 51-year-old Roach, Pac-man's soft-spoken engineer in the corner, counseling wisely behind black-rimmed eyeglasses.

WSJ: Jason Gay: On the Periphery of Boxing Madness; Freddie Roach, Manny Pacquaio; Floyd Mayweather Jr.

It will now be even harder for the Fed to engineer a soft landing, with growth slowing smoothly to a sustainable rate.

ECONOMIST: Inflation is beginning to pick up in America

But anyone who thought that there was going to be a slowdown in infrastructure build-out this year, as the government tries to engineer a soft landing to its spectacular economic growth, need only stare at the Shanghai skyline for a few days, if not just a few minutes.

FORBES: Shanghai Times Op-Ed Links Govt Corruption to Income Inequality

Investors, though, better hope China manages to engineer its own soft landing.

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The banks, building societies, and those taking care of the UK economy, are hoping for - and in some cases trying to engineer - a soft landing.

BBC: NEWS | Business | Q&A: Have house prices peaked?

For a more recent, if similarly calamitous, manifestation of the power of chaos theory, consider how different the world would be today had not a devout, soft-spoken Saudi Arabian engineer inherited a significant fortune from his estranged father.

FORBES: Horsemeat for Dinner, Banksters under the Bed, and the Future of the Human Condition

Mr. Marcombes is a soft-spoken, earnest electrical engineer and self-proclaimed geek who loves technology and electronics.

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Dennis Hong, a robotics engineer at Virginia Tech, said research into "soft robotics" was part of a wider trend towards designing more flexible and innovative machines, such as his own "Whole Skin Locomotion" (WSL) robotic mechanism.

CNN: Robotics discovers its soft side