Word: excess
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cycle. Through the use of fertilizers, the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing, humanity has doubled the levels of nitrogen compounds that can be used by living things. But those levels are more than can be efficiently absorbed by plants and animals and recycled into the atmosphere. These excess nitrogen compounds wash into fresh- and saltwater systems, where they produce dead zones by stimulating suffocating growths of algae. Since the global food system is based on aggressive use of fertilizer, restoring the balance of the nitrogen cycle poses a daunting challenge...
...been by far the hottest on record; and the rise in temperature has been greatest in polar regions and around cities. These facts dovetail ominously well with the theory that carbon dioxide (CO 2), released by burning coal, oil and gasoline for heat, electricity and transportation, is trapping excess energy from the sun. Global warming is real--and will probably get worse...
Efficiency doesn't help when the wind isn't blowing; you need to store energy generated during gales for use when the air is still. The best way to do that, says Robert Williams, of Princeton University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, is to use the excess to compress air and force it into subterranean aquifers, caves or salt domes...
Then, when the wind dies, the compressed air can be pulled out to help drive the turbines. "The technology was originally developed in the 1960s," says Williams, "to let nuclear power plants store excess electricity during off-peak hours." Now it could permit countries rich in wind resources--including China, the U.S., Denmark and Germany--to take advantage of a free, unlimited and nearly pollution-less source of electricity...
...doesn't take a pharmaceutical marketing manager to figure out the potential here. Excess stomach acid causes great misery in millions of human beings. Perhaps the frog secreted a compound that could help chemists develop a new drug to relieve some human stomach ailments. Maybe so, but we'll never know. The Australian gastric-brooding frog went extinct in 1980, long before a drug company could uncover its secret...