New measurements of C/C ratios in Galactic molecular clouds have been conducted using the N 1⁄4 1 ! 0 transition of the CN radical. This species is unique in that it has extensive hyperfine structure that can be accurately used to correct for line saturation effects. Combined with the past observations of Savage and coworkers, the ratios derived from CN are the most extensive data set to date f...

We have investigated the two-dimensional (R,Z) distribution of deuterated molecular species in circumstellar disks around young stellar objects. The abundance ratios between singly deuterated and normal molecules (“D/H ratios”) in disks evolve in a similar way as in molecular clouds. Fractionation is caused by rapid exchange reactions that are exothermic because of energy differences between de...

The supported K2O–V2O5/Al2O3 catalytic system was designed to create surfaces that were 100% acidic, 100% basic, 100% redox, mixed redox-acidic and mixed redox-basic. The resulting nature of the surface sites was controlled by the impregnation of the specific additives (K-basic or V-redox/acidic), their order of impregnation and their surface coverage. The exact locations of the surface methoxy...

Millimeter wavelength observations are presented of NGC 1333 IRAS 4, a group of highly-embedded young stellar objects in Perseus, that reveal motions of infall, outflow, rotation, and turbulence in the dense gas around its two brightest continuum objects, 4A and 4B. These data have finest angular resolution of ∼2 (0.0034 pc) and finest velocity resolution of 0.13 km s. Infall motions are seen f...

Formamide has a key role in prebiotic chemistry as it is the simplest molecule containing four most important atoms from biological point of view: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Due to its importance, formation this been studied different pathways have considered both gas-phase on ices dust grains since was first detected. In present work, thermodynamics route formamide starting NH2 H2C...

I decided to devote my research career to studies of interstellar molecules on December 17, 1968. On that day I read in the Sussex Library of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in Ottawa the December 16 issue of Physical Review Letters, in which the discovery of interstellar NH3 through radio emission between inversion levels of the J = K metastable NH3 was reported by the group of C...