World’s Oldest Boomerang, Nuclear Legislation Hotline and Pesticide Pamphlet

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ILLUSTRATION: JANICE FRIED
The boomerang was found in a cave in southern Poland amid a layer of sediment containing stone and bone tools belonging to a prehistoric European culture.

News briefs on finding the world’s oldest boomerang, a new nuclear legislation hotline and a free pesticide pamphlet for homesteaders.

World’s Oldest Boomerang, Nuclear Legislation Hotline and Pesticide Pamphlet

Have You Heard About …

Most organic gardeners are familiar with Bacillus thuringiensis (BT), a bacterium–sold commercially under several brand names– that is used as a natural control against such larval-stage insect pests as cabbage loopers. Previously, scientists believed that BT was an insect disease, and that to grow the bacterium it was necessary to start with infected caterpillars. Geneticist Phyllis Martin and entomologist Russell Travers have discovered, however, that BT is in fact a widely distributed soil-horne bacterium. Thus far, they’ve found 72 new varieties of BT in soil samples from around the world–from a car bumper in Iceland, from a cave in West Virginia, from the slopes of the Himalayas. Travers believes that some of the new varieties are at least 10 times as effective against insect pests as current commercial types. (The pair discovered one of the new strains, which in lab tests was effective against mosquitoes, in dirt scraped from the paw of a colleague’s cat, Fluffy. They promptly named the new BT Bacillus thuringiensis var. fluffiensis.

Burning Rubber

  • Published on May 1, 1988
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