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The two last-named compounds can be used at temperatures about 1000° C for direct conversion of heat to electricity, and it has been suggested that if a series of these compounds could be so arranged that each was operating at its optimum temperature, such a device might produce a useful amount of electric power from the heat of jet engine exhausts and other sources. The cooling effect produced when an electric current is passed through some of the compounds suggests their application in small refrigeration plants or in automobile air-conditioning units.

Thus, the search for chemical systems capable of combining with nitrogen molecules and transforming them into nitrogen compounds was not inspired primarily by economic necessity but mainly by the challenge posed to the chemist's ability and ingenuity. The chemist's ideas about the reactivity of the nitrogen molecule have been changed with arresting suddenness. Japanese and Italian chemists have recently demonstrated that when certain cobalt compounds are strongly reduced (stripped of oxygen) in the presence of appropriate ligands (compounds in which a metal atom is surrounded by a few nonmetal atoms), substances capable of combining with nitrogen molecules are produced. One of the resulting compounds produced in this way has been isolated in pure crystalline form.

Furthermore, the development of a new drug—from discovery to placement on the druggist's shelf —may cost a company as much as $5 million to $7 million and take as long as five years. And for every compound that runs the gamut of experimentation, clinical testing and final approval for marketing, some 3,000 compounds fall by the wayside, representing substantial losses in money and time.