Word: mosquito
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...museum are unusual: scientists say the Cambodian Free-Tailed Bat, in particular, can be found nowhere else in the world. In addition, the museum's 2 million bats were messy but useful: they were credited with eating an estimated 17 tons of insects each night, helping reduce mosquito-borne malaria. So the government scrapped its plan to eradicate the bats. (Another factor was that the museum makes $250 a month selling bat guano.) A second, wooden ceiling, installed in 1995, failed to keep the excrement out of the gallery, so the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society is trying...
BRAZIL Killer Epidemic An outbreak of dengue fever has killed at least 18 people as it laid low one in 10 workers in Rio de Janeiro state. The mosquito-borne disease, which causes such pain that it is also known as breakbone fever, first appeared in January and is spreading at a rate of 1,600 cases a day. Thousands of soldiers have been called in to spray insecticide and clear stagnant water where the mosquitoes breed...
That kind of fine-tuning necessarily makes the immune system complicated--but to understand the vaccination revolution, you first have to understand the complications. The simplest immune reaction--triggered by a mosquito bite, for example, or an allergen--is inflammation. When the insect bites, the immune system uses cellular troops that have had no special training. Cells called leukocytes, neutrophils and mast cells routinely cruise the bloodstream sniffing for an unfamiliar chemical signature. If they find it, they signal for reinforcements that swarm to kill the invader--the equivalent of an infantry attack...
...Thomson agrees with shackling and even hooding and drugging the prisoners en route - "al Qaeda doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to aircraft. But I mind the shark cages, with their concrete floors open to the elements and the 24-hour halogen flood lights, left near mosquito-infested swamps, so the prisoners can catch malaria when some already have tuberculosis." She argues that this "vindictive" prison regime undermines the morality of what has been achieved in Afghanistan...
...musicians Goldie, Tricky and Thom Yorke. The album was written mostly while she was in Denmark (which controlled Iceland until the mid-20th century), shooting the 2000 film Dancer in the Dark and feeling homesick. "My album is sort of chamber music for this century," she says, scratching a mosquito bite on her arm. "After traveling so much, I realize how gorgeous the Internet is, bringing the home together again. So I'm looking back on a living room in the '50s where the whole family is, but it's modern and technological...