Word: nitrogen
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...There’s a demo every day—it’s never just pure lecture. One day [Charbonneau] got into a rocket chair and zoomed across the room to demonstrate one of Newton’s laws. Another time he froze a grapefruit in liquid nitrogen and broke it on the floor...
Their company, Aresa, a Copenhagen-based biotech start-up, has genetically modified a common weed called thale-cress so that its leaves turn red when the plant comes in contact with nitrogen dioxide--a compound that naturally leaches into the soil from unexploded land mines made from plastic and held together by leaky rubber seals. Aresa is growing large patches of the stuff on old army shooting ranges that have been seeded with land mines...
Aresa uses a seeding hose known as a "hydroseeder"--groundskeepers use such a hose to grow green grass on golf courses--to cover about a football field of territory in a day. After four to five weeks the thale-cress will have sprouted and turned red if it encounters nitrogen dioxide. Normally, plants neutralize nitrogen dioxide, which they recognize as harmful. But Aresa scientists, led by founder Meier, have genetically engineered thale-cress, fusing its nitrogen dioxide neutralizer with an enzyme that creates red pigment (plants naturally produce red pigment, which isn't visible until the green disappears in autumn...
Aresa has had mixed results. The thale-cress does indeed turn red when it meets nitrogen dioxide. But Aresa can't get the weed to grow large enough to be easily visible. Aresa has experimented with only one of the more than 1,600 varieties of thale-cress. Following the summer letdown, the company ordered 174 different strains, and is awaiting seeds from Libya, Norway, the Caucasus, Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere...
...water was murky grey and appeared to contain everything from household garbage to industrial sediment and waste. And it’s really no surprise, since environmental regulations do little to prevent the dumping of waste into water bodies by factories and farms, including everything from petroleum to ammonia nitrogen to mercury. Since China has only one-fifth the water supply per capita as the U.S., conservation and stricter regulation is essential in order to preserve a sustainable water supply...