Word: rothe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...addition, research has shown that a large percentage of American cockroach eggs hatch even if they are not fertilized by a male. Referring to the army's proposal to use the sex attractant as a pesticide, Roth says, "I had a vision whereby eliminating males, you could create a super race of females...
About a decade later, during the Vietnam War, army officials again considered trying to synthesize the potent female sex attractant, but this time they wanted the substance to function as a sort of natural spy detector, Roth recalls. Army officials proposed spreading the substance in areas occupied by the North Vietnamese, so anyone who crossed the boundaries between North and South Vietnam, such as a South Vietnamese spy, would be given away by a tell-tale appeal to male roaches...
...Roth remembers another incident regarding his controversial paper on cockroach reproductive behavior. A friend saw that the paper was published with the authors' addresses, not the lab's. "He wrote back: 'Dear Lou, What in hell is going on in your basement." Roth laughs and adds that he has attempted to bring his work home, with diastrous results...
Trying to determine the efficacy of a wasp that parasitizes roach eggs, Roth brought home 100 cockroach egg cases and hid them in his basement. He then released 450 wasps in the basement, allowing them to parasitize the eggs. When it came time to collect the egg cases, Roth made two unpromising discoveries: First, that the wasps parasitized less than a third of the egg cases, and second, that he could not find about 20 of the egg cases...
...didn't say anything to my wife, and a couple of weeks later, I heard a scream from my wife. She was down in the basement pointing to some newborn little cockroaches." Roth shakes his head. "That was the last experiment I did at home...