Word: insectes
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...Grigori Roskin of Moscow University casually picked up an article on South America's fatal Chagas' disease, a protozoan infection spread chiefly by an acorn-sized insect, the triatoma. In female Chagas victims there is a wasting away of breast tissues, which are composed of large, spongy cells. Could it be, Dr. Roskin wondered, that the devouring parasitic trypanosomes are especially attracted to large cells? And that cancerous tissues, which are also made up of oversized cells, might also succumb to the same parasite...
...entomologists last week made a preliminary report on another sensational British insect killer, Gammexane, claimed to be five times as deadly as DDT (TIME, May 28, 1945). It has an unpleasant naphthalene smell, lacks DDT's lasting effect. It is particularly potent against cockroaches, proved effective in checking a locust plague in Sardinia this spring, and has shown promise against the cotton boll weevil. But in the sunny U.S. climate it has been generally less lethal than in foggy Britain...
...mixture of quick "knockdown" pyrethrum and DDT has been used in many preparations, notably the U.S. Army's "aerosol" insect bombs, now being sold to U.S. householders. But Activated DDT is supposed to penetrate an insect's chitin (outer skin) and reach its nervous system more surely than previous mixtures...
Each of the pea-sized pellets contains in a clay matrix a few husked germs of Lehmann's Lovegrass (a hardy, dry-weather forage crop), a dash of fertilizer and a pinch of insect-&-rodent repellent. Scattered from a "centrifugal planter" (a rimless wheel with spokes of finch pipe), they will seed a swath about 1,000 ft. wide, at the rate of one pellet per square foot. If moisture, sun and temperature conditions are right, the seeds should germinate in the double-quick time of 48 hours, and each will start life with a helpful inheritance of rich...
Asking the Flies. They had hardly warmed up to the job when they discovered that Nature had done it 50,000,000 years ago: flies and other "dipterous insects" were actually equipped with vibrating gyroscopic flight instruments (see cut). Just behind the trailing edge of each wing they had "halteres": small rods with round balls on their ends. When the insect is airborne, or even walking, these vibrate 160 to 210 times per second. The plane of vibration is fixed in relation to the insect's fuselage. When the insect banks, turns climbs or dives, the gyroscope tries...