talismanic thought of as having magical power.
yen the basic monetary unit of Japan.
capricious changing abruptly and without apparent reason; erratic, flighty.
radiation sickness nausea, diarrhea, bleeding, loss of hair, and so on caused by overexposure to radiation.
Maupassant (Henri René Albert) Guy de 1850-93; French writer of novels and short stories.
bluets a small plant of the madder family, having small, pale-blue, four-lobed flowers.
Spanish bayonets yuccas having stiff, sword-shaped leaves.
goosefoot a weedy plant with small green flowers and fleshy foliage.
purslane a weed with pink, fleshy stems and small, yellow, short-lived flowers.
panic grass any of several grasses of the genus Panicum, such as millet, used as fodder.
feverfew a bush with finely divided foliage and flowers with white florets around a yellow disk.
sickle senna any of the caesalpinia family of plants, with finely divided leaves and yellow flowers.
regeneration Biol. the renewal or replacement of any hurt or lost part.
emanations heavy, gaseous isotopes that result from the decay of a radioactive element.
cyclotron a device for accelerating charged nuclear particles through a magnetic field in a widening spiral path; particle accelerator.
triangulating a method of determining the distance between two points on the earth's surface by plotting on a chart a series of connected triangles, measuring a base line between two points, and locating a third point by computing both the size of the angles made by lines from this point to the ends of the base line and the lengths of these lines.
white count the number of white blood cells, which are important in the body's defenses against infection.
moxibustion the burning of moxa (a soft, downy material) on the skin as a cauterizing agent or counterirritant, especially in traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine.
unprecedented having no precedent or parallel; unheard-of; novel.
succumbed died.
crux the essential or deciding point.
