Word: fungus
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...than God's punishment for their sins. The Romans, who knew the same agricultural scourge, placed a special god in charge of it and prayed to him for mercy. In King Lear, Shakespeare blamed rust's presence on a "foul fiend" named Flibbertigibbet. Whatever its origin, the fungus is still thriving; its red, yellow and orange splotches on stems and leaves cause a grain-crop loss of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And every time that modern agronomists breed a resistant grain, within a decade or so a new and devastating rust develops through natural mutation...
...recent mutant, oat rust 264, has been one of the nastiest of all, defying all efforts at control. Now, after a long search, the Israeli scientist who first identified the virulent fungus back in 1953 has not only found a wild strain of 264-proof oats, he has a plan that will enable farmers to prepare for the inevitable appearance of the next new deadly mutant...
Machinery, for instance, rarely appears in his art; he even leaves out of his works the giant high-tension towers that march behind his rural house in Chadds Ford, Pa. More truly, it is made up of fungus, leaves, snowfalls and souls. It is full of tenderness; yet there is an awareness of death's deprivation. There is in it a tragic search for preservation...
...acid, which is difficult to make (it is derived from ergot, a cereal fungus), continues to be smuggled in from Canada, Mexico and Europe. Given the acid to start with, LSD is relatively easy to cook up for anyone with a working knowledge of chemistry. Essentially, what is required is a batch of lysergic acid dissolved in some other chemicals plus a solution of diethylamine (a volatile liquid used in processes like vulcanizing). The two batches, cooled to freezing and stirred together, result in a solution that contains LSD. The trick is to extract the LSD from the solution. This...
...convicted of causing or exacerbating peptic ulcers, of giving users a fattened "moon" face, and growing mustaches on women. Colonel Moser emphasized two severe unpleasant side effects that may go undetected. Given to victims of leukemia or Hodgkin's disease, he said, these hormones predispose the patients to fungus infections, and they leach the calcium out of the bones of the bedridden elderly...