Word: mucus
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...land, they are dependent on humidity. They prefer to travel and graze only when light rain is falling or when the ground is wet with dew. The rest of the time they sleep safely shut in their shells, sometimes sealed into them with a membrane of dried mucus. Their senses of touch and smell are acute, but the little eyes on the ends of their tentacles are not efficient; they must be moved very close to an object before the snail really sees...
...locomotion of the snail is explained in detail. The long flat "foot" lays down a roadway of sticky mucus; then parts of the foot grip the ground while other parts move forward. When the snail is crawling on glass, the action of its foot can be seen as a series of slow waves. The speed averages 2½ in. per minute, and the snail makes about 35 foot-waves to cover this distance. The tractive force is considerable. A snail can lift five times its weight up a vertical surface, and on the horizontal it can pull a toy wagon...
...Babies Hospital, put together the symptoms she had seen in sick children and the physical changes she found in their organs after death. Thus, cystic fibrosis won medical recognition. It is marked by two chief sets of symptoms. One involves the lungs, which are blocked by a heavy viscid mucus, with frequent infections like pneumonia, and wheezy breathing or persistent, hacking cough. The other set of symptoms affects the pancreas, which fails to deliver the normal quota of enzymes to the digestive system, so that children eat voraciously but fail to gain weight, and have frequent, abnormal bowel movements...
There is a chicken-and-egg argument as to what the root cause of the trouble is. Some doctors believe that it lies in the mucous glands, which secrete an unusually thick, viscid mucus. This clogs the lung airways and also blocks the tiny ducts in the pancreas, so that its enzymes (notably trypsin) do not get through to the digestive tract. Others think the pancreas itself is at fault, and that its failure to produce enough enzymes causes both the intestinal trouble and the stickiness of the mucus...
...Western Cwn. A man has not long to live above 22,000 ft. His heart dilates and beats faster, he has no desire to eat. The thin air leaves him gasping, the cold that numbs his limbs fills his throat with lumps of mucus. Worst, it can sap his courage so that every step forward demands a conscious effort of will to jog the body...