Word: ammonias
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...Wales, U.S. Physiologist Sanford Siegel found a wallside spot that had been often used as an open-air urinal. Not everyone would react the same way, but it made Siegel think of his job-studying what organisms survive in hostile environments. After scooping up some well-urinated and therefore ammonia-rich earth, he conscientiously lugged it back to his lab at the Union Carbide Research Institute in Tarrytown, N.Y. What he stumbled on, writes Siegel in Science, was a microorganism that may be the living descendant of a recently discovered microfossil that is 2 billion years old. He may also...
...soil in a hostile ammoniac atmosphere, and fed it with a nutrient broth. Within weeks, there appeared a strange microorganism, umbrella-shaped, with radiating spokes and a stalk terminating in a bulb. Though unfamiliar with anything like it, Siegel noted that the organism flourished amid conditions resembling the ammonia-laden atmosphere that probably prevailed on earth when the earliest forms of life were developing, some 3 billion years...
Siegel's discovery poses a fascinating possibility that has long intrigued other scientists. The earth's once ammonia-and methane-rich atmosphere has since been recast through the release of subterranean gases and the evolution of oxygen-producing photosynthetic plants. Siegel believes that the Kakabekia-like organism has survived for "a billion years or more" by living on ammonia from the breakdown of proteins in earth. Citing spectroscopic analyses of Jupiter, which indicate that its atmosphere still contains large amounts of ammonia, Siegel theorizes that space explorers on Jupiter may some day meet living relatives of his discovery...
...Beeps. In Viet Nam, the ammonia is produced by groups of perspiring men. Urea, a component of perspiration, is attacked by bacteria on the skin and decomposed into odorless carbon dioxide and ammonia gas. Thus the air in the vicinity of a large group of men-especially in hot and humid climates-contains high concentrations of ammonia. To detect the ammonia, the E63 scoops up air, passes it over a wick saturated with hydrochloric acid and into a humidifying chamber. If the air contains any ammonia, a fog forms, changing the amount of light shining on a photoelectric cell...
Developed by General Electric and the Army's Limited War Laboratory, the E63 is based on a phenomenon often demonstrated in high school chemistry classes: if open bottles of ammonia and hydrochloric acid are placed close together, a white cloud of ammonium chloride particles forms above them. These particles serve as nuclei for the condensation of the air's water vapor into tiny, foglike droplets...