Word: nitrogen
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Vitousek is currently focusing on the problem of global nitrogen, the element that makes up 80% of the atmosphere. Nitrogen is also found in fossil-fuel exhaust and is a principal ingredient in fertilizer. Spread too much of it around, and it can throw off the planet's biological balance, triggering explosive growth in some species and suffocating others. "That's a huge alteration in how the world works," Vitousek says. "Our capacity to change the earth means we must manage this." For a man who didn't even much care for science at first, that's quite a mission...
...environment, one based on oxygen and the other on sulfide. During most of the Proterozoic, it turns out, only the shallows were infused with oxygen. The deep oceans, by contrast, were inordinately rich in sulfides, which indirectly interfere with the ability of algae to make use of growth-promoting nitrogen...
...caveats, in such a privileged spot in the report, essentially encourage regulators to take energy concerns into account when attempting to save the environment from our nation's prodigious energy consumption. That said, the group does encourage the president to pursue three-pollutant legislation, to limit the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury output of electricity generators...
...ancient civilizations had no tradition of mummification. Also, at Karachi's National Museum, where the mummy was stored, fungus began to grow on the body. Still, given the humidity of Pakistan's southern port megacity, a moldy mummy was not inconceivable. Officials rushed to protect it in a sealed nitrogen chamber...
...Police have charged no one in the case, either for murder or forgery. So, for now, the body remains like a delicate patient on life support behind a locked door in a hermetically sealed glass chamber in the bowels of the National Museum, preserved by a steady stream of nitrogen. It is Pakistan's best-conserved and most intensively studied murder victim...