Word: eyeless
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...find out, developmental biologist Walter Gehring and two colleagues focused on a gene known as eyeless. Fruit flies that lacked this gene, they knew, failed to develop eyes. But the researchers wanted to know more about the powers of eyeless. So they inserted multiple copies of the gene into minuscule fruit-fly embryos, and the results were no less than eerie. The flies grew normal eyes--sparkling red, like multifaceted rubies--but they were all over: on the legs, the wings, the antennae. There were up to 14 eyes...
Changes have taken place underground as well. In Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, which is 350 miles long, park managers have halted a popular boat ride on an underground river because the disturbance was harming aquatic wildlife, including 12 species of eyeless cave dwellers found nowhere else in the world. Park tour guides have also abandoned a tradition of their forebears, who illuminated recesses of large chambers by throwing torches into them. The kerosene smoke darkened cave walls...
Caves have led to new insights about evolution. The absence of light and scarcity of food limit the number of species that can survive underground. Most common are crickets, beetles and eyeless fish. "We see simple communities that may be made up of only four species," says Tom Poulson, professor of biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "But that allows us to look in greater detail at what is going on, say, between predator / and prey." As a result, biologists can study subterranean ecosystems in their entirety -- a feat that often proves impossibly complex aboveground...
...Game 5, for example, Fischer was adrift, wandering eyeless about the board. His rook moves two squares -- then, on the next move, back one. (Like gaining 8 yds. on first down, then voluntarily taking a 4-yd. loss on second.) A bishop thrusts sharply across the board -- to a useless perch at the edge of play. "What was his ((bishop)) supposed to be aiming for?" asked a bewildered Robert Byrne in the New York Times. A good question made poignant by the source. Thirty years ago, Fischer defeated Byrne in a win so beautiful it was once described as "more...
...eyes but from the high ground of the Creation. It sets no test for survival and respects the meek as it does the mighty. The humpback whale and the black rhinoceros enjoy no greater protection than the noonday snail and the lakeside daisy. Recently an inch-long unpigmented eyeless shrimp found in a sinkhole near Gainesville, Fla., joined the ranks of the imperiled. In shielding the humblest species, the act expresses its highest reverence for diversity, and has evolved into an almost sacred covenant defining the nation's relationship with nature...