Word: insects
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...earth, the satellite would sprout a circular sail of thin plastic coated with shiny aluminum. If the satellite is spinning, the sail would spread itself by centrifugal force. Another method would be to construct a sail with inflatable tubes connected by fragile membranes on the model of an insect's wing. At the proper moment, plastic foam would be injected into the hollow tubes, distending them and spreading the sail. Later, the foam would harden to act as supporting ribs...
...busy little bee that improves each shining hour is a slouch compared to a great many natural-history writers. Such a one is Britain's John Crompton, who has proved once again that a true passion-even a love of man for insect-is the substance of literature. Displaying a talent that recalls Rachel (The Sea Around Us) Carson, Apiarist Crompton has in the past written engagingly on the ant, the hunting wasp and the spider. But evidently the bee is his true poetic faith-and the bee in his bonnet is as good as a sonnet...
...bees will do much to keep this inept and sweaty creature away from the true business of production-honey. They will sting, and when they do, Author Crompton insists, the bees know that they give their lives for a good cause. The most successful career woman in the insect world converts her useless ovipositor into a weapon of aggression-and self-destruction. Only the queen bee has it made. Not for nothing did Napoleon have his robes embroidered with the bee symbol: that belated Beelzebub knew who was Lord of the Flies...
Social Security. Although it is about bees, this is a human book. The sensitive might almost weep as Crompton tells how he has been obliged to silence diseased hives with Cyanogas, and heard the orchestral voice of his insect friends shut off "as if a hand had been placed over an echoing string." And he follows the worn old worker bee to her last rendezvous with social security. Her wings are torn; her last load of nectar is nothing much; she falls short of the hive. "Just at the time the youngsters at the hive are coming out for school...
...from Canada, Russia, the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Britain, Chile, Mexico, India, while other workers planted experimental fields containing thousands more for harvest and research next year. Some day soon the scientists of Tibaitata Experiment Station hope to find the strains that best combine yield, taste, nutritional quality, disease and insect resistance. When they do, one of a dozen programs to help Colombian agriculture will have paid...