Word: nitrogenous
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...pollutants that are chemically transformed in the atmosphere and fall to earth in unusually acidic precipitation. Called acid rain, the phenomenon now stands accused of laying waste marine life along the Atlantic Coast as well. In a report issued last week, the Manhattan-based Environmental Defense Fund charges that nitrogen oxides spewed from U.S. power plants, factories and automobiles have played a major role in destroying fish and other creatures in Atlantic bays and estuaries. Acid rain, concludes Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric physicist and one of the authors of the report, is "destroying the spawning grounds for East Coast fisheries...
...Saul Kent wanted to bestow the ultimate gift upon his sickly 83-year-old mother: a new life. So when Dora Kent was near death last December, Saul, 48, took her to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Riverside. There, her head was cut off and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Called cryonics, the process is based on the hope that someday scientists will be able to attach the head to a new body...
...track recombinant bacteria through the environment has become a crucial factor in getting EPA approval for a release. The lack of an effective marker has, for example, held up a test by Biotechnica International, a Cambridge, Mass., firm, of Rhizobium bacteria altered to boost their ability to fix nitrogen in the soil. In one of the California ice- minus tests, however, scientists have been able to monitor the spread of anti- icing bacteria on potato plants. The marker system in this case was rifampicin resistance, less sensitive than Monsanto's multiple indicator but still able to detect the presence...
...superconductivity at even higher temperatures. Indeed, Paul C.W. Chu of the University of Houston and colleagues reached 98 K, or -283 degrees F, an achievement some physicists think should have earned Chu a share of the prize. That level of cooling can be achieved with more readily available liquid nitrogen. Suddenly, a wide range of applications seems economically feasible: trains that ride on a cushion of magnetism; smaller, faster supercomputers; more powerful medical imaging machines; and 100%-efficient power lines. The superfast train, notes Bednorz, "is a real dream of mine...
...altitude research aircraft is not for the fainthearted. The three pilots who flew the twelve solo missions through the Antarctic ozone hole found the task grueling. An hour before zooming into the stratosphere, each had to don a bright orange pressure suit and begin breathing pure oxygen to remove nitrogen from the blood and tissues, thus preventing the bends, which can result from rapid reductions in air pressure. Once airborne, "you have to have patience," says Pilot Ron Williams, who flew the first mission. "You're strapped into a seat and can't move for seven hours...