Word: damp
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...come a Yellow Springs, Ohio, advertising man named Roger Brucker, and Richard Watson, a philosophy professor at Washington University in St. Louis, to explain the damp fascinations of caving ("spelunking" seems to be a word not much used by cavers). Their book is a splendid armchair challenge, properly made, properly obsessive. For non-cavers who read it, the sensation of being trapped in Mother Earth's vermiform appendix is persuasively real, and the impulse to run gasping into the open air is strong...
...high-pressure zones, one centered over the Azores, the other just northeast of Iceland. For some unknown reason, the two came together to create the "Azores bridge." This in turn formed what weather experts called the "omega block," a high-pressure barricade that prevented the normal clockwise movement of damp air from the Atlantic to Europe, a flow that usually assumes a vast omega (Ω) shape. Australian meteorologists have attributed the drought to the unexplained absence of the rain-bearing westerly winds that usually sweep across the lower part of the continent at this time of year. The dry spells...
Climatologists admit that they really do not know. A substantial number believe the earth is undergoing a cooling trend and is returning to the conditions of the "Little Ice Age"-the generally cold, damp weather that prevailed from around 1600 to 1850. British Climatologist Hubert Lamb believes the change is cyclical, occurring every 200 years or so. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin and many others blame the earth's cooling on an increase of dust particles in the atmosphere; the particles act like tiny mirrors, reflecting back some of the sunlight sinking the atmosphere and depriving...
...life," said Martin as he popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. "It's incredible to me that it all worked so perfectly." Scientists who had sweated through Viking's earlier delays and other technical problems greeted the landing with applause or jokes. A few were damp-eyed. Most, however, were simply overwhelmed by the implications of their accomplishment. "How many times does Columbus arrive in history?" asked Gerald Soffen, Viking project scientist. "We've just witnessed one of the arrivals. We are a privileged generation." For the first time, through an obedient and ingeniously contrived...
...called integrated pest control, or ICP. Advocates of ICP leave room in their antibug arsenals for insecticides. The more potent pesticides will always be needed, they say, to cope with any insect problem that suddenly gets out of hand?a mosquito infestation brought on by an unusually hot, damp summer, for example, or an unexpected attack on a particular crop. But entomologists and agricultural scientists now believe that the most promising weapons for the battle are biological controls, which can be aimed at specific insect targets without adversely affecting either humans or the environment. Among some of the more diabolic...