Word: fungi
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...Royal Society decided that Naturalist Smeathman was heat-crazy when he reported that tropical termites build nests ten to 35 ft. high (sometimes miscalled ant-hills), the largest structures built by any animal except man. In the U.S. the work of termites was long mistaken for that of fungi and dry-rot which usually follow their riddlings...
Pinta, a tropical skin disease, caused by fungi which settle in the epidermis, permanently blotch the skin with patches of greyish violet or red. When the sickness runs its course, dark men are streaked dead white, fair men dull blue, sometimes tinged with green. (Mr. Wilson first saw green and blue men on a Colombia farm after a "night out".) Neither painful nor fatal, pinta is serious because it disfigures, is very infectious. It can be checked with antiseptic drugs, especially chrysarobin, powder obtained from a tropical tree, which is an ancient remedy of Indian herb doctors. But only tattooing...
...Fordham's Frederick F. Nord before the American Chemical Society. Nord's starting point: his discovery that pentose, a sugar which is plentiful in corn and wood but has hitherto resisted fermentation by yeast enzymes, can be attacked and broken down by other enzymes secreted by certain fungi grown on mineral foodstuffs. The fungi reduce pentose to a heavy syrup (pyruvic acid) easily converted to ethyl alcohol...
...Andes. There, scientists believe, the Nicotiana tabacum now commonly smoked developed long ago through natural hybridization. Federal tobaccomen think that wild, tough plants from their native mountains can perhaps be crossed with the highly bred, less vigorous tobacco strains now cultivated in the U.S., to increase their resistance to fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects which yearly cost growers millions of dollars...
...same sort of fungi can still be found sprouting palely in the darker, danker corners of A.F. of L. For instance: "Umbrella Mike" Boyle. During the lush war years, Mike collected thousands of dollars in "insurance premiums" for guaranteeing that his Chicago electrical workers would not strike. He served two months (on a year's sentence) in the clink for conspiring to break the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. But last week he was still running the Chicago electrical workers...