Word: insectes
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...early decades of the 20th century, farmers had few pesticides at their disposal more effective than arsenates to protect their crops from insect depredations. During World War II, German and Allied laboratories produced complex and lethal chemical compounds, including DDT and lindane. Since then new generations of pesticides such as carbamates (Bux Ten, Furadan and Mobam) have proved to be efficient at curbing insects and microscopic pests without producing the strong toxic effects of DDT on the environment. At the same time, however, these new silent killers still pose a potential threat to other forms of life, including human...
...pull off such a celebration with any degree of grace-to say nothing of respect for the 80-year-old-differences, deeply divisive differences, would have to be set aside for the duration. No one had put a voice to this consideration, yet everyone had thought it through. The insect-humming Pennsylvania countryside would not become an arena. At least this once, one could hold one's tongue...
This summer's severe insect infestation has also struck North Dakota, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nevada. Heavy snows, followed by a cool, damp spring, led to what farm experts called "a real good hatch" of grasshoppers. Idaho had requested $10 million in federal funds to spray with Malathion, the chemical used to combat the Mediterranean fruit fly. But experts question its use at this late stage. Says South Dakota Entomologist Ben Kantack: "If we spray now, we're just spraying for revenge...
...breakthrough represents a new stage in the ancient battle against malaria and the insect that carries it, the female Anopheles mosquito. Peruvian Indians discovered the first important weapon: the bark of the Cinchona tree. For centuries the bark and its derivative, quinine, were the only means of preventing and treating malaria's waves of fever, which can recur erratically and weaken victims for years. Gin and tonic, originally made with quinine, is said to have been developed by British colonialists as a way of making their daily doses more palatable...
...sense three bugs in one (see diagram): the sporozoite, which enters the human bloodstream when an infected mosquito bites; the merozoite, which invades the red blood cells and causes the disease's chills and fever; and the gametocyte, which, when ingested by a biting mosquito, reproduces inside the insect and yields a new generation of sporozoites...