The literature on rigid polyurethane foam has been reviewed with an emphasis on the gaseous products generated under various thermal decomposition conditions and the toxicity of those products. This review is limited to publications in English through 1984. Carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) were the predominant toxicants found among more than a hundred other gaseous products. The ...

Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria produce chemical compounds with different benefits for the plant. Among them, HCN is recognized as a biocontrol agent, based on its ascribed toxicity against plant pathogens. Based on several past studies questioning the validity of this hypothesis, we have re-addressed the issue by designing a new set of in vitro experiments, to test if HCN-producing rhizob...

Extended Abstract It has been suggested by a number of theoreticians that cellularity is a precondition for a living system. Over the years many researchers have sought to synthesize structures morphologically resembling cells under prebiotic conditions. These structures may be vesicular or contain no lipid and are perhaps best termed “cell-like structures” than “proto-cells” or “cells”. Conver...

Some soil bacteria protect plants against soil-borne diseases by producing toxic secondary metabolites. Such beneficial biocontrol bacteria can be used in agricultural systems as alternative to agrochemicals. The broad spectrum toxins responsible for plant protection also inhibit predation by protozoa and nematodes, the main consumers of bacteria in soil. Therefore, predation pressure may favou...

Although hydrogen cyanide has become quite a common molecular tracing species for a variety of astrophysical sources, it, however, exhibits dramatic non-LTE behaviour in its hyperfine line structure. Individual hyperfine components can be strongly boosted or suppressed. If these so-called hyperfine line anomalies are present in the HCN rotational spectra towards low or high mass cores, this wil...

Abstract: To study the effects of inherent and external alkali and alkaline earth metallic species (AAEMs, i.e., K, Ca and Mg) on the behavior of N-containing species release during rice straw (RS) pyrolysis, different pretreatments were applied in numerous experiments. Results indicate that ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) are the major N-containing species and that the yields of isocy...

Flour mill fumigations are currently carried out with methyl bromide (MB). By 2005, this gas will be phased out in developed countries because it has been listed under the Montreal Protocol as a substance that depletes the ozone layer. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) was used as the fumigant of choice for mills in the first part of the last century, and was then replaced by MB. Consequently, it should n...