Besides being deep and hot to handle, the metallic structures are dense and heavy, yet fragile, striated with fractures that the researchers feared would cause them to crumble like dry cake before they reached the surface.
The process is new-born and fragile and has yet to begin the real business of negotiation.
What is also being impressed on Mrs Clinton is the fact that the reform process is fragile and could yet be derailed.
Responsibility to protect is not yet dead, but it is fragile.
But that's in large part because the fragile economic recovery has not yet put a full burner under the nation's industry.
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We all depend on the mobile Internet for our day-to-day activities, yet the economics underlying this resource are more fragile than they appear.
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The events in Europe this week were yet another reminder that the global financial markets remain fragile, three years after the onset of the financial crisis.
Yet at the center of the group was a fragile-looking, diminutive woman in a crisp white shalwar kameez, a neat black jacket, and heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, named Asma Jilani Jahangir.
Yet business's new enthusiasm for clean energy is a fragile green shoot in a dark landscape.
"It is a start, but it's very fragile, and we mustn't get overexcited just yet, " Middleton said.
But his arrogance has now plunged India into yet another political crisis that threatens to unravel the country's fragile, three-month-old coalition government headed by Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral.
Yet even after the move, many trust a devalued franc over a fragile euro or dollar.
Much as the Yankees gutted out yet another division title this year, their status as an elite team is fragile.
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And yet its leaders know that if they want to build up their country's fragile economy, they'll have to develop relations with the West - and that means restoring relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Yet perhaps a bit of opportunist deal-making is what South Africa needs as it tries to consolidate its fragile democracy.
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