SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In polluted environments, diesel fumes may be reducing the availability of almost half the most common flower odours that bees use to find their food, research has found.
The new findings suggest that toxic nitrous oxide (NOx) in diesel exhausts could be having an even greater effect on bees' ability to smell out flowers than was previously thought.
NOx is a poisonous pollutant produced by diesel engines which is harmful to humans, and has also previously been shown to confuse bees' sense of smell, which they rely on to sniff out their food.
Researchers from the University of Southampton and the University of Reading found that there is now evidence to show that, of the eleven most common single compounds in floral odours, five have can be chemically altered by exposure to NOx gases from exhaust fumes.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:24PM
I think hyperturtle is right, we're talking here about the higher-valency nitrogen compounds, the stinky brown gas that hurts your nose, which you get when you dissolve a coin in nitric acid.
laughing gas is N2O (N valency +1). I think it doesn't easily change into one of the other nitrogen oxides.
NOx probably means NO (N valency +2) mixed with N2O3 (N valency +3) mixed with NO2 [wikipedia.org] (N valency +4) and maybe a bit of N2O5 (N valency +5, the precursor of nitric acid), but these all probably readily change into each other depending on how much oxygen is around.