Word: caterpillar
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Only 2 in. to 3 in. long when fully grown, the gypsy-moth caterpillar looks harmless enough: a brownish, multilegged strip of fur with telltale pairs of red and blue spots running down its back. But looks are deceptive. Ever since 1869, when it was inadvertently turned loose in Massachusetts by a misguided French naturalist who wanted to cross the European gypsy with the silkworm to produce a disease-resistant hybrid that would eat virtually anything, it has been munching its way across the Northeast. As many as 30,000 caterpillars can infest a single tree, and each of them...
...subtler forms of warfare have been introduced, including sprays that contain Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a bacterium that kills various moth and butterfly larvae. It, too, should be applied early. Another new experimental spray spreads a virus that afflicts the gypsies with fatal wilt disease, so called because the dying caterpillar shrivels into a kind of inverted-V shape. More diabolical are traps scented with sex lures to attract male moths. Scientists have also been distributing different types of insects-wasps, flies, beetles-that prey on gypsy moths at various stages in their life cycle...
...policy, though, has been glaringly inconsistent. For example, Armco steel was barred in March 1980 from joining a Japanese steel firm in constructing a $350 million cold-rolling mill in Novolipetsk. But Caterpillar was granted approval late last year to supply pipelaying equipment used in building the 3,000-mile Yamal Peninsula natural gas pipeline. A semiconductor chip that U.S. companies cannot sell to the Soviets has been licensed for production in Brazil, which is not bound by the embargo. The microchip, in fact, is a component in a popular computer game that is for sale in Western European...
...short-term loans and begged its 225 creditor banks for an extra three years to restructure a debt of close to $5 billion. Last week the majority of the banks reluctantly agreed to the refinancing. The company also raised some cash by selling its Solar Turbines division to Caterpillar for $505 million...
Disaster, however, soon struck. McCardell decided to provoke a showdown with the United Auto Workers, the company's major union, over changes in the work rules. Workers at International Harvester, unlike those at such competitors as Deere and Caterpillar, had no compulsory overtime, for example. McCardell claimed that the work rules and other inefficiencies had cost the company $1.3 billion over the previous three years and vowed to make some important changes. But on Nov. 1, 1979, 35,000 workers walked out rather than accept the new work rules. The strike, which became the longest in U.A.W. history, lasted...