Word: starfish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Washington dirt farmer in her modest (65 acres) spread. Then she marches through a stand of Douglas fir to the slate-gray pebbled beach that fronts her property, and gazes fondly out at the waters she has known since childhood. Bending, she picks up a beached starfish, studies the specimen for a moment, and tosses it back into the water?"to preserve the natural balance," as she puts...
...nature's miracles, few have intrigued scientists more than the phenomenon of regeneration. The lowly starfish can regrow any missing parts and may even produce an entire creature from a single arm; the salamander can regenerate much of its body. Higher animals, however, lack this ability. Mammals cannot replace a missing tail or internal organs. In man, skin and bone regrowth comes closest to the true regenerative process...
...sharpness" arouses the narrator's fascination and envy. The other is Luciano Pulga, a scruffy, pushy newcomer to the school "with a physique like a little wading bird's." Pulga is slavishly and successfully cultivated by the young Jew until Cattolica moves against them like a starfish bisecting a clam...
...Forte di Belvedere straddles a hill to the south of Florence. From the air, its weathered bastions and parapets give it the shape of an immense starfish. Completed in the 16th century, it gradually lost its strategic value and nobody ever found much civilian use for it. After the disastrous flood of 1966, it became a storehouse for damaged books from Florence's national library. But a problem remained: how to integrate this masterpiece of obsolete military building with the tourist life of the city below? The answer was to turn it into an exhibition center. The fortress...
...should anyone care about the land mollusk, or even the Southern bald eagle? Because, as ecologists keep repeating, all species are interrelated in the biological pyramid. Destroying one can adversely affect many others. A prime example is Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which is being eaten away by starfish. Some scientists speculate that the ecological balance was upset when man began to remove their natural predators...