Word: insection
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Napa County farmer noticed that his vines were thinning out and called in experts from the department of oenology at the University of California at Davis. They concluded that the phylloxeras had mutated into a new, prolific biotype that threatened all AXR 1 rootstalks. Reproducing asexually, one insect can spawn a billion offspring annually...
...this makes the mosquito a formidable adversary, one that has caused no end of trouble for human beings. Malarial mosquitoes, some historians think, contributed to the fall of ancient Greece. Europeans of medieval times were tormented by the insect Chaucer knew as the midge; the English word mosquito, from the Spanish for "little fly," appeared in the 16th century, along with new and nastier New World species. In the 1880s the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, fresh from the triumph of building the Suez Canal, was utterly vanquished in his heroic effort to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Panama...
...hike out of the Ndoki in two days, covering more than 30 km in the last 24 hours. It would be rough going for a distance runner, but I am in no shape for the trip at all. An insect has apparently injected me with one of the countless toxins found in the jungle, and I come down with pleurisy-like symptoms that make every breath painful. It is probably dengue fever, also called breakbone fever. Whatever it is, the final day's march is sheer hell. As at the beginning of the trip, darkness falls when we are still...
...moldboard plow, which laid the earth open to wind and water erosion. Instead farmers leave residue from the previous year's crops in place to hold soil and moisture, then scratch or chisel in seeds, which sprout through the decomposing residue. Crop rotation is used to break insect cycles. Weeds are targeted, controlled by new herbicides that quickly break down and vanish. In this rare and happy story that emerges from centuries of anguished agriculture practices and policies, there is the touch of God's hand soothing the earth and nudging it back a bit toward the condition in which...
With huge doors covered with giant insect sculptures, the Museum of Comparative Zoology features fossil invertebrates, whale skeletons, the largest turtle shell ever found, and extinct birds. It, too, is housed in the Peabody Building. The natural history museums are open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday...