Word: ferment
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Nobody knows exactly why teeth decay. Dentists generally agree on one clue to the mystery: certain acid-forming bacteria, such as lactobacilli, grow on tooth enamel, ferment crumbs of sweet and starchy foods which lodge in tooth crevices. The acid thus formed dissolves calcium in the teeth, causes cavities...
...Bavarian Protestant family which had produced craftsmen and tradesmen for generations, was a restless bookbinder who went from Augsburg to Paris. Rudolf, born in Paris in 1858, learned to use his hands in his father's atelier, delivered finished goods in a pushcart. Stirred by the ferment of new inventions-the storage battery, the gas engine, electric lights, dry-plate photography-the boy spent hours browsing in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, two blocks from his home...
...intense ambition to become world's greatest saint. Spring ferment set up a crossruff resulting in terror, self-mortification, pneumonia. A kind Jewish doctor relieved him at once of his guilt...
...Spanish frontier heard that the frontier was closed, that there was street fighting in northern Spain between Falangists and Requetés. That night three of the refugees slipped across the frontier with two submachine guns and one machine gun. Next day the entire Spanish battalion was in a ferment and the volunteers sat out on the beach singing civil-war songs and talking of mass desertion. The French prudently transferred the entire camp to Valbonne, north of Lyon...
...inactivated" pineapple juice; a third in plain salt water. At the end of 24 hours the worms in the heated juice and the salt water were "very lively and active." But those in the fresh pineapple juice were "completely digested" (dead). Reason: fresh pineapple juice contains an enzyme, or ferment, which acts like a corrosive acid on worms. No worm-killer is canned pineapple juice, said the scientists, for the boiling necessary to preserve the juice destroys the anthelmintic enzyme...