Word: flossing
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...used [by other critics] to describe the book, which give a different impression from that conveyed by your reviewer. After all, one doesn't endure, for eight years, in exile, the difficulties which were a constant factor of my work on the book, just to embroider in emerald floss another portrait of Emmet suitable for use on a cuddly sofa cushion. It took guts and ingenuity even to stay in Ireland...
...From some 160,000 ideas submitted to the Council since it was formed in 1940, the armed forces have gleaned more than 40 genuinely helpful inventions, e.g., milkweed floss, which is used as a substitute for kapok in life preservers (TIME, April...
...Milkweed Floss. The conference did discuss two newly valuable plants, both weeds: milkweed and cattails. The floss from the pods of the common milkweed is a fine cellulose tube inclosing sealed air. It retains remarkable buoyancy for weeks, is an excellent insulator. As a suit lining it can keep a man afloat in water, can protect aviators against cold. It is also useful for industrial insulation and soundproofing...
Sponsor of the floss, and inventor of the machines for processing it, is mild, spectacled Dr. Boris Berkman, onetime director of the Pasteur Institute in Moscow, for 20 years a surgeon on the staff of Chicago's Grant Hospital. He discovered one value of milkweed during a study of soil erosion. Its root system allows it to thrive on soil that is worthless for other use, and it binds the soil instead of breaking it. One million pounds of the floss could be collected from wild growth on marginal land in Emmet County, Mich, alone...
...Milkweed floss, strikingly similar to kapok. Next year it will be a cultivated crop and is already being ginned for the Navy in a Michigan factory. Like kapok in almost all respects, the floss has never been developed-picking it here at 40? an hour made cost too high to compete with kapok produced by East Indian labor...