Related topics: soil · climate change · carbon dioxide · plants · hydrogen

Nanoscale magnetic imaging of ferritin in a single cell

In life sciences, the ability to measure the distribution of biomolecules inside a cell in situ is an important investigative goal. Among a variety of techniques, scientists have used magnetic imaging (MI) based on the nitrogen ...

Self-folding origami machines powered by chemical reactions

A Cornell-led collaboration harnessed chemical reactions to make microscale origami machines self-fold—freeing them from the liquids in which they usually function, so they can operate in dry environments and at room temperature.

Scientists identify a plant molecule that sops up iron-rich heme

Symbiotic relationships between legumes and the bacteria that grow in their roots are critical for plant survival. Without those bacteria, the plants would have no source of nitrogen, an element that is essential for building ...

Meteorite provides record of asteroids 'spitting out' pebbles

In 2019, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sent back images of a geological phenomenon no one had ever seen before: pebbles were flying off the surface of the asteroid Bennu. The asteroid appeared to be shooting off swarms of ...

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Nitrogen

Nitrogen (pronounced /ˈnaɪtrədʒɨn/) is a chemical element that has the symbol N and atomic number 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78% by volume of Earth's atmosphere.

Many industrially important compounds, such as ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates (propellants and explosives), and cyanides, contain nitrogen. The extremely strong bond in elemental nitrogen dominates nitrogen chemistry, causing difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting the N2 into useful compounds, and releasing large amounts of energy when these compounds burn or decay back into nitrogen gas.

The element nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford, a Scottish physician, in 1772. Nitrogen occurs in all living organisms. It is a constituent element of amino acids and thus of proteins, and of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). It resides in the chemical structure of almost all neurotransmitters, and is a defining component of alkaloids, biological molecules produced by many organisms.

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