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DEFINITION: (noun) The food-conducting tissue of vascular plants, consisting of sieve tubes, fibers, parenchyma, and sclereids. SYNONYMS: bast. USAGE: "Girdling" a tree, or cutting through its phloem tubes, results in the starvation of the roots and, ultimately, the death of the tree.

Rumi was a great Persian poet and Sufi mystic. His Masnavi-ye Manavi is a 6-volume poem regarded by many Sufis as second in importance only to the Qur'an; it is often called "Qur'an-e Parsi" (The Qur'an in Persian). Rumi's influence spread to Persian-speakers in Afghanistan and central Asia, and beyond, to Turkey and India. His followers founded the Mevlevi order, whose members use dancing and music as part of their spiritual method and are popularly known by what name?

Ultima Online (UO), a popular massive multi-player online role playing game (MMPORG), is credited with popularizing the genre. There were games prior to UO that allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, but this MMPORG can be played simultaneously by thousands of players worldwide through various game servers called "shards." Over 1,000,000 paid accounts have been created since the game launched in 1997. In July 2003, at the peak of its popularity, UO had how many subscribers?

The parasitic dodder plant, which feeds on tomatoes, onions, and carrots, has long posed a problem for farmers. Now researchers found that the dodder "senses" its prey and knows to grow in its direction. When researchers placed scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73% of dodder seedlings headed in that direction. It is still unclear how the plant "smells" the chemicals given off by the host plant.

Ilan Ramon was Israel's first astronaut. As a pilot in the Israeli Air Force, he fought in the Yom Kippur War and took part in the bombing of Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor. He went on to serve as payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and was killed when the craft disintegrated during re-entry. Despite being a secular Jew, Ramon chose to observe Jewish law while in orbit, feeling he represented "all Jews and all Israelis." What objects did Ramon take with him into space?