acs staff moves, office renovation to start
TRANSCRIPT
ACS staff moves, office renovation to start Barbara F. Polansky of the American Chemical Society Copyright Office packs for relocation in anticipation of the long-awaited total revamping of ACS headquarters in Washington, D.C. The design for the $8.3 million renovation of the building, constructed in I960, was developed by the architectural firm Hickok-Warner of Washington, D.C, in consultation with the society's Property Development Committee and administrative staff. The renovation is expected to begin in June and take about a year to complete. The first group of ACS staff members moved from 1155—16th St during the weekend of May 6-8, and a second contingent will move the weekend of May 13-15. ACS members calling headquarters during this period may experience difficulty reaching staff members. The ACS mailing address and all phone numbers will remain the same. For visits or special deliveries, the temporary offices are located about two blocks east of the ACS building—on the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors at 1120 Vermont Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. A number of ACS staffers have relocated to or remain in the Othmer Bldg. at 1550 M St., N.W.
Madeleine Jacobs
U.S. to push flat-panel display industry growth The Clinton Administration has announced a five-year, $1.2 billion government-industry cost-shared program to greatly expand U.S. production of flat-panel displays for use in computer screens and other applications. Currently, Japan has 95% of the $5 billion-per-year global market.
The initiative will be managed by the Department of Defense (DOD), which will supply most of the $580 million federal share. The Commerce and Energy Departments will contribute smaller sums.
The program requires Congressional budget approval. The initiative follows the lines of President Clinton's "dual-use" technology policy, which emphasizes technologies with both military and commercial applications. DOD plans that the effort will lead to building four large-scale plants with the aim of eventually capturing 15% of the global market.
Flat-panel technology is not a traditional chemical field of research, but it
is chemically intensive and overlaps with physics. A recent report by the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association in Washington, D.C, lists such development priorities as low-viscosity liquid crystals, various plastic substrates, retardation films, phosphors of many types for color displays, electroluminescent technologies, and plasma-based display systems.
Military uses for flat panels "range from wall-sized, instantly updated battlefield maps to individual helmet displays," said deputy defense secretary John M. Deutsch in announcing the program. The new technologies, he added, are a "vital element in making accessible the torrent of data pouring in on combatants in modern battlefields." Commercial uses range from air traffic control devices to avionic systems in airliners, medical imaging systems, and a host of portable information and entertainment packages.
Furthermore, Deutsch pointed out, DOD's former policy of paying the entire bill for manufacturing high-tech military items has become obsolete because commercial markets benefit from high technology, too. It is true, however, that large-scale dual-use manufac
turing—with its economies of scale— also makes for lower cost purchases by DOD.
To obtain their share of federal money, companies will have to submit proposals aimed ultimately at manufacturing displays that are light in weight, rugged, have high resolution, and use minimal power. If no factories are up and nearly running in five years, says the Pentagon, the program will end. Industry will have to invest its own money in those factories to conform to limits on government technological subsidies set by the recently concluded General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (GATT) pact (C&EN, May 2, page 15).
DOD already has an active flat-panel R&D program involving several different display technologies. It is administered by the Advanced Research Projects Agency and aims at high-volume production. Another DOD unit is funding construction of an active-matrix liquid-crystal-panel plant by Optical Imaging Systems of Troy, Mich. Whether support for this plant would conform to GATT restrictions is unclear.
Wil Lepkowski
MAY 9,1994 C&EN 7