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The WHO and the Open Society Institute initiated HINARI Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative. Peter Suber, the publisher of the "Free Online Scholarship" newsletter, summarizes the initiative thus: "Under the program, the world's six largest publishers of biomedical journals have agreed to three-tiered pricing. Countries in the top tier pay full price.
The great utility of cork is fully understood in countries where trade has not supplied this bark in plenty. Equinoctial America nowhere produces, not even on the back of the Andes, an oak resembling the Quercus suber; and neither the light wood of the bombax, the ochroma, and other malvaceous plants, nor the rhachis of maize, of which the natives make use, can well supply the place of our corks.
When the tree is some five years old, its whole energy is directed toward the increase of the suber. A mass of cells is formed with great rapidity, and layer upon layer is added, until that part of the trunk grows so unwieldy that it would crack and split of its own accord. But such a thing is rarely allowed to happen: the suber is of too much value to man.
It covers the trunk and branches, fills up the spaces between the veins of the leaves and contains the sap, which flows in canals arranged for it in the most beautiful and wonderful manner. In one species of oak this layer which is called the suber assumes a peculiar character and is of remarkable thickness.
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