Word: mosquitoe
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Roanoke Sound lay beyond the stage; water lapped at the set. Lightning bugs not yet mature enough to illuminate danced on a northeast breeze. The smell of Cutter's lay heavy upon the air. Now and again someone would thwack a thigh and a mosquito would perish. Periodically, Layton would clap his hands three times sharply and stop the work: "People, make it your own-even though I am giving you all this picky stuff...
...second phase, they will begin dumping dirt into six miles of the channel once so carefully scooped out. If all goes well over the next 15 years, the river will gradually rise and engulf the artificially dry plains that surround it, transforming them back to the lush, mosquito-ridden swamps they were for hundreds of thousands of years...
...doubt the U.S. overreacted and squashed the mosquito with the sledge hammer, but LaFeber ignores the historical context of the incident. Surely 2000 tons of Soviet arms alone did not represent a threat to U.S. security, but coming in the wake of the Communist takeover in China, the Korean War and continued tensions in Eastern Europe, the U.S. was understandably alarmed at the appearance of Russian arms on its doorstep...
...Mosquitoes can be more than just a nuisance. While there has been no noticeable rise in mosquito-borne diseases so far, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is worried about the possibility of a rash of encephalitis in the South later this summer. The last major outbreak (2,000 cases) occurred in 1975 when there were similar climatic conditions: a mild winter followed by heavy spring rains...
Scientists are also using other techniques. In California, larvae-eating minnows are regularly placed in mosquito-breeding ponds. In New Orleans, U.S. Agriculture Department researchers along with local experts have been releasing a large nonbiting mosquito nicknamed Big Tox (after its scientific name, Toxorhynchites ambionensis), whose larvae dine on the larvae of smaller biting mosquitoes. Scientists have also had success with bacterial warfare: applying a larvae-killing toxin from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (which was discovered in Israel). But BTI is expensive, must be applied directly to a breeding site, and could encourage proliferation of BTi-resistant mosquitoes...