Word: nitrogen
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...Smog. How could minute plants live in a cloud? Many of them, Parker decided, are large enough to act as nuclei for slowly condensing droplets of water-an essential ingredient for all earthly life. The tiny organisms also have an amazingly varied diet available even in unpolluted clouds: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, ammonium, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, butane and acetone. Such necessary minerals as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iron and magnesium could be transported to the clouds in airborne soil and dust particles...
Detroit is aghast. The auto industry's nightmare is a requirement that all 1975 model cars show a 90% reduction over 1970 emission standards for hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide. Detroit would have to guarantee emission controls on each new car for 50,000 miles-or pay a $10,000 fine on each vehicle found polluting...
Best for Brain. Dr. John Laughlin of Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute reports nitrogen 13 and oxygen 15 highly effective in studying lung diseases. An entirely artificial element, technetium 99, produced by nuclear bombardment of molybdenum in a reactor, is rated by most medical centers as the best for detecting tumors of the brain. Both the gases and technetium have the advantage of short half-lives-that is, they lose half of their radioactivity in hours, or at most a few days. Thus, their radiation is so short-lived that it will not harm the patient exposed...
...week long-but there was also a temperature inversion. Like a lid on a jar, a stagnant upper layer of warm air kept heated air below from escaping. And what air! The city's brisk winds stopped dead; the sky darkened. Oxidants, caused by the reaction of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons to sunlight, became a major addition to the city's usual outpourings of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and tiny particles of lead, asbestos and other suspended matter. Day after day the city's Department of Air Resources reported pollution levels ranging between "unhealthy" and "unsatisfactory...
...scientists point to other products that consume vast amounts of power and have unfortunate side effects-for example, the serious water pollution that is caused by runoff from nitrogen fertilizer and the manufacture of pulp and paper. Instead of throwing away paper, which accounts for 80% of the trash disposal problem, Americans should reprocess it to make more paper and save power as well. Meantime, alternate sources of energy should be harnessed as quickly as possible. They could include nuclear fusion, sunlight, even the earth's own heat...