Word: insects
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...ward and push the Chronics around. "She wields a sure power that extends in all directions on hairlike wires too small for anybody's eye but mine; I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants...
...bombardier beetle is an inconspicuous insect that ranges much of the world with calm and self-assurance-and for jood reason. When attacked by a ferocious ant, its natural enemy, the bombardier beetle (Brachinus) merely stands its ground, pushes a flexible tube from its rear end and points it at the enemy. With a small but audible bang, a cloud of acrid vapor envelops the ant, reducing it to paralysis or trembling confusion. Until recently, the bombardier beetle's efficient defensive weapon was pretty much of a mystery. Entomologists thought that it simply squirted out a liquid that exploded...
...bombardier beetles, which he had known when his father took him to hear their small artillery on Sunday afternoons. Enlisting his wife and 17 students, Dr. Schildknecht searched a limestone region near Bayreuth and collected a good supply of the beetles. After training himself in the art of insect surgery, he learned how to extract intact the complicated plumbing in their behinds...
...some of the stored fluid into a small, strong-walled combustion chamber, where it is "ignited" by enzymes from glands lining the chamber. The peroxide quickly decomposes, giving off oxygen gas at considerable pressure-and shooting out of the cannon a loud, offensive discharge that makes the bombardier the insect kingdom's biggest...
Short-Waved. The art of "bugging"* has made spectacular strides since the days when a microphone was a cumbrous object that trailed telltale wires and could be installed only by drilling through a wall from the next room. Slimmed to insect size by transistors and printed circuits, today's microphones can be tucked into a sofa or buried inches deep in walls or floor. With battery-powered transmitters no bigger than a cigarette pack, the new gadgets need no outside power source and can eavesdrop for two whole years without attention. In one East European capital, a foreign service...