Word: flora
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Amazon is more than just good material for TV specials. The rain forest is a virtually untapped storehouse of evolutionary achievement that will prove increasingly valuable to mankind as it yields its secrets. Agronomists see the forest as a cornucopia of undiscovered food sources, and chemists scour the flora and fauna for compounds with seemingly magical properties. For instance, the piquia tree produces a compound that appears to be toxic to leaf-cutter ants, which cause millions of dollars of damage each year to South American agriculture. Such chemicals promise attractive alternatives to dangerous synthetic pesticides. Other jungle chemicals have...
...ever deepening ruts that erode into gullies. And oily wastes have leached out of supposedly secure dumps. The consequences of the contamination are unclear, but some scientists believe that since the permafrost confines biological activity to a layer of ^ earth just a couple of feet thick, and because its flora is so fragile, small spills can have large effects...
...programs for Boston-area students, says the work that schools do with the arboretum ranges from annual field trips to coordinated year-long programs. In the long-term programs, which the arboretum conducts mainly with local schools, Sylverson and other arboretum staffers visit the classroom and teach about the flora with which students later have contact...
Scientists working out of the arboretum's facilities are currently doing work on the flora of all of China and North America, as well as work on other countries' flora. The professors working on the China flora project came to Harvard in March to discuss its progress...
Burley has collected plants from the Philippines and Sumatra so far. He is also working on the National Geographic Society project and the Southeast Asia flora project...