News

Attendees agreed to form an 18-member interim NACLA board that would serve for one year to develop a charter for NACLA and set up the stakeholder committees. Collins will chair die interim board. The work of this group will be presented at an­other open forum. Alan Newman

Erickson to lead DOE's EML

Mitchell D. Erick­son has been ap­pointed director of the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy's Environmental Measurements Laboratory in New York kity. EML's primary mission is to support environ­

mental remediation, decommission DOE facilities, and manage chemical and radio­active wastes. Erickson was formerly a group leader in the Environmental Re­search Division of Argonne National Labo­ratory, where he had worked since 1987. He is noted for his work on environmental site characterization, improving remedia­tion techniques analytical chemistry of PCBs and remediation of PCB spills.

BUSINESS

Funding changes for the Rhine Basin Program Funding for the Rhine Basin Program, which has supported research projects along the famous river and its tributaries, will continue through a group of about 10 "partners". As announced earlier this year, Hewlett Packard has ceased spon­sorship of die program, but the instru­ment manufacturer will continue to con­tribute as a research partner.

The Rhine Basin Program was initiated in 1989 by Hewlett Packard as a "present" to the environmental sciences in honor of

the company's 50th anniversary and has funded research projects dealing with the chemistry, biology, and ecology of the river (Anal. Chem. 1997,69,21A-25A). Most of the financial support for the re­search has come from Hewlett Packard, which has spent a total of $6 million over the past six years. According to Piet van Hout, Rhine Basin Program head, future funding through the partners will proba­bly not match those levels.

Under the new plan, partners will con­tribute either personnel or money. In its new role, Hewlett Packard has committed $150,000 and an additional $100,000 in analytical instrumentation this year, said van Hout. Other partners include universi­ties, government laboratories, and drinking water companies located in The Nether­lands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and England. At the same time, the main re­search focus has shifted from pesticides to the pseudo-estrogenic activity of nu­merous chemicals of industrial origin or those found in detergents. This new re­search direction has been spurred by ob-sei*vations that in some sections of the river markedly female than male

fish are found Veronika R. Meyer

Slow analytical instrument growth expected The analytical instrument market is glo­bally competitive but is experiencing only slow growth in most areas of the world, according to The Market Book, a study of the five-year outlook for the worldwide analytical instrument market for 29 types of instruments commissioned by Cent-corn, Ltd., which handles advertising for the ACS publications. The study evaluates each instrument type, such as ICPMS, and analyzes its market size (in U.S. dol­lars) in the United States, Europe, the Pa­cific Rim and the "rest of the world"; the book also looks at industrial segmentation and market changes and trends

Because the U.S. and European markets are relatively mature, the highest rates of growth are expected in the Pacific Rim and developing countries. Techniques aimed at the life sciences are anticipated to experi­ence the highest levels of annual growth. For example, MALDI-TOFMS is expected to grow at 23%, LC/MS at t5%, ,nd dC at 14-15% per year. Mature technologies, pri­marily elemental techniques, are projected to grow the least over the next five years, barely keeping ahead of inflation. At the low

end, the study predicts that the worldwide X-ray fluorescence and atomic absorption markets will grow at approximately 3-4% per year and the UV-vis market at 3-3.5%. Most market sectors will experience moder­ate growth on the order of 6-10% that thould outpace inflation, according to the survey.

Celia Henry

A market in developing countries? Conventional wisdom is that developing countries are lousy markets for analytical instruments, but there are some signs that U.S. manufacturers are betting that invest­ments today will pay off in the long run.

In September of last year, Hewlett Packard introduced the 4890A GC and 7694E headspace sampler specifically for markets in Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The 4890A is based on the company's 5890A instrument, and the 7694E is derived from the 7694. Each will sell for less than $10,000, according to HP. Sid Bhatt, product manager for the instrument, says that the 4890A and the 7694E are part of a long-term investment by HP in what they hope will one day be a strong market. A key feature of the instru­ments, he says is that it offers good per­formance as well as reliability.

Waters is currently marketing the Tiger HPLC system in India and Thailand. According to the company, the product is privately labeled but is manufactured and distributed under a license from Waters.

Perkin Elmer has expanded its market­ing force in South America and, says the company, will work harder to have a pres­ence in all those countries rather than a targeted few; an expanded effort is also underway in Asia. PE has not developed instruments just for these countries, says company spokesperson Merle Spiegel, but is producing cheaper systems to be marketed worldwide. She cited the re­cently introduced AAnalyst 100 atomic absorption spectrometer, a less expensive version of the 300 instrument.

Alan Newman

SPSS acquires Jandel SPSS, Inc., a multinational software com­pany emphasizing statistical applications software, has acquired Jandel Scientific, a software provider best known for its SigmaPlot package. The Jandel acquisition

New EML Lead Mitchell Erickson

162 A Analytical Chemistry News & Features, March 1, 1997