cause the division has always been man­aged as an operationally and legally sepa­rate unit The division's current chief ex­ecutive, Jtirg Witmer, 51, will hold the same post in the new company. Its nonex­ecutive chairman will be Henri B. Meier, 63, Roche's chief financial officer, who will continue in that post as well. And the new company will continue to be based at the division's current headquarters in the Geneva suburb of Vernier.

Roche entered the flavors and fra­grances business in the early 1960s with the acquisition of Swiss-based Givaudan and France's Roure Bertrand. Over the years, Roche has expanded the busi­ness with a succession of acquisitions.

Sales of Roche's flavors and fragranc­es unit in 1998 were about $1.27 billion, and its operating profits were $168 mil­lion, or 13% of sales. In the first half of 1999, Roche says, the division's operat­ing profit margin increased to 17%.

Depending upon who does the esti­mating, Givaudan's sales level is rough­ly neck-and-neck with New York City-based International Flavors & Fragranc­es (IFF), the only one of the top five suppliers in the flavors and fragrances business currently traded on a public stock exchange.

Givaudan and IFF each have just un­der 17% of the worldwide flavors and fra­grances market. They are followed by Quest, owned by Britain's ICI, with a 13% market share; family-owned Firmenich of Switzerland, which has just over 11%; and Haarmann & Reimer, a subsidiary of Ger­many's Bayer, which has 10%.

Shares in Givaudan will be distribut­ed as a special dividend to holders of Roche shares and nonvoting equity se­curities at the rate of one Givaudan reg­istered share for each Roche share held.

Patricia Layman

Pickings are slim for former Soviet weapons scientists

International programs to support former Soviet weapons scientists have favored nuclear and missile scientists at the expense of chemists and biologists. In a just-released report, Amy E. Smith-son of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based national securi­ty research group, quantifies the bias.

The collapse of the U.S.S.R has left tens of thousands of nuclear, biological, and

chemical weapons scientists in over 60 re­search institutes destitute. Russia has been unable to pay their salaries or support their research. So leading Western nations, fear­ing a "brain drain" and the spread of weap­ons of mass destruction to rogue states and terrorists, have set up grant assistance programs.

In the study 'Toxic Ar­chipelago: Preventing Proliferation from the Former Soviet Chemical & Biological Weapons Complexes," Smithson finds that from 1994 to 1998 four research grant programs have contribut­ed $310.3 million to sup­port 1,733 collaborative projects. Only $26 million went to 178 biotechnolo­gy research projects and even less—$11.3 mil- Smithson lion—funded 69 chemis­try grants. "Unfortunately, chemical weapons proliferation matters are always near the bottom of the priority list," Smithson tells C&EN.

The U.S.S.R produced at least 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, including a new generation of nerve agents. It made thou­sands of tons of anthrax, smallpox, and plague; developed genetically modified strains of anthrax and plague; and ex­plored disease combinations (chimeras).

Of the tens of thousands of scientists

New ACS journal to high The world of nanotechnology will soon gain another outlet for its research pa­pers. In January 2001, the American Chemical Society will begin publishing a journal whose working title is Nano Letters. The society has formed a search committee to recruit an editor.

Nano Letters will concentrate on rapid communication of short papers that present preliminary research results. The journal will initially be published monthly and later will shift to a biweekly schedule. Topics will include physical, chemical, and biological phenomena, pro­cesses, and applications for materials and devices within the nanoscale size range.

Nanotechnology intersects a variety of scientific spheres, with applications ranging from electronics and optics to biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. The volume of literature is growing ac­cordingly, doubling in less than two years, according to Elisabeth M. C. Lu-

who worked on weapons for the former Soviet Union, the U.S. estimates that roughly 10,500 have critical chemical and biological weapons expertise that is of special concern for potential weapons pro­liferation. Of these, 3,500 specialize in chemical weapons and 7,000 in biological

weapons. The comparable | number for nuclear weap-i§ ons scientists is 2,000. g Yet on an annual aver-£ age, the four research as-| sistance programs have °" provided only $8.4 mil­

lion in chemistry and bi­ology grants. The report recommends at least a doubling of the funding for collaborative biolog­ical research projects and, at a minimum, a tri­pling of funds for collabo­rative chemistry grants. Smithson says that if the

U.S. alone were to pay for the increases, the higher level of chemistry funding would amount to 0.0023% of the Penta­gon's $267 billion fiscal 2000 budget, and the biological projects 0.0046%.

"If Washington is serious about fight­ing the proliferation of chemical and bio­logical weapons, it will provide sufficient resources to enable brain-drain preven­tion funding to reach this large communi­ty of weaponeers," Smithson says.

Lois Ember

ght nanotechnology tanie, manager of new product develop­ment for ACS's Publications Division.

This expansion has attracted other publishers, including Kluwer Academic Publishers, which began the quarterly Journal ofNanoparticle Research in July. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Physical Society (APS) have announced plans to launch the weekly Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology in January 2000. This online product will consist of elec­tronic links to nanotech articles appear­ing in participating source journals.

Other more broadly focused journals that carry related papers include Wiley-VCH's Advanced Materials, AIP's week­ly Applied Physics Letters, and APS's weekly Physical Review Letters.

Despite all this activity, "there is no publication on the market that allows true cross-fertilization of knowledge among scientists from the various disci-

DECEMBER13,1999 C&EN 9

n e w s o f t h e w e e k

plines, ranging from solid-state science to biology," Lutanie says. "Papers are scattered all over the place, so scientists have to screen a lot of journals to collect all the nano information. With Nano Let­ters, we are hoping to offer a central place for short papers focused on nano only, one that will be truly interdiscipli­nary." In fact, she says, scientists ex­ploring in the nanometer scale have many research challenges in common.

Nano Letters will feature electronic submission and review of manuscripts, links to resources, and online availabili­ty of articles anywhere from two to six weeks in advance of print publication.

Sophie Wilkinson

ACS Scholars Program extended five years The American Chemical Society Board of Directors extended the ACS Scholars Program for another five years, added substantial new funding, and removed limits to scholarship amounts at its Dec. 5 meeting in Arlington, Va.

The program provides scholarships to economically disadvantaged black, Na­tive American, and Hispanic undergradu­ate students majoring in the chemical sci­ences (C&EN, Nov. 15, page 76). The original five-year program, launched in 1995, was to expire at the end of this year with $2.1 million of the original $5 million allocation still to be spent. Now, that amount plus an additional $1.5 million can be awarded over the next five years. The board also re­moved the limit of $2,500 per scholar­ship so that larger scholarships may go to particularly needy applicants.

"ACS has taken an important step toward shaping the future of chemistry," said Nancy B. Jackson of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, who is chair of the ACS Minority Affairs Committee. Jackson is especially pleased that the program can once again give renewable scholarships, which were discontinued in 1997 because of funding concerns.

In other budget actions, the board approved a 2000 operating budget for ACS in which revenues of $339.3 million will exceed expenses of $337.4 million, providing a net contribution of $1.9 million. The board also approved a capital budget of $39.8 million, well above 1999 capi­

tal expenses of $22.8 million. The increase will pay for the ACS Columbus Facilities Project (see page 46) and a new member and subscriber fulfillment system.

The board learned that ACS will end the year with a net contribution of $5.1 million, substantially above the original estimate. The favorable vari­ance is a result of better than expected revenues from Chemical Abstracts Ser­vice and the Publications Division. In particular, the Publications Division re­alized larger than expected expense savings and had a one-time gain on the sale of ACS's 50% ownership in the Jour­nal of Pharmaceutical Sciences to the American Pharmaceutical Association, which has copublished it since 1993.

In other major actions, the board vot­ed to accept changes to the "Long Term Plan for National Meeting Finances," which the council approved in New Or­leans in August This plan includes a $10 increase in member advance registration fees for 2000 and a schedule of other changes in the registration structure to be phased in over time. The board increased councilor reimbursements to national meetings, from $1,000 for two meetings and $500 for one meeting to $1,500 for two meetings and $750 for one meeting.

The board approved a statement on "Global Climate Change," which will be distributed to key policymakers. The statement says there is evidence that "our environment and global climate

ACS Board, 2000 CHAIR Henry F. Whalen Jr., director-at-largea

EX-OFFICIO DIRECTORS Daryle H. Busch, president3

Attila E. Pavlath, president-elect8

Ed Wasserman, immediate past-president8

John K Crum, executive director (nonvoting)15

REGIONAL DIRECTORS Michael E. Strem, Region Ia

Helen M. Free, Region II Maureen G. Chan, Region III Maurice M. Bursey, Region IV Elizabeth Ann Nalley, Region V Glenn A. Crosby, Region VI

DIRECTORS-AT-IARGE James D. Burke C. Gordon McCarty Nina I. McClellandab

Eli M. Pearce Joan E. Shields Henry F. Whalen Jr.a

Note: Biographical information about the board can be found at http://www.acs.org/directors. a Executive Committee mem­ber, b Two-year term on Executive Committee.

system are changing." While acknowl­edging that there are "considerable un­certainties" about the causes and effects of climate change, the statement notes that the effects of global climate change "could be profound." ACS says that "prudent, timely, and responsible ac­tions must be undertaken to address these challenges," including continuing scientific investigation and the develop­ment of technologies to mitigate them.

The board also approved cosponsor-ship of the Green Chemistry & Engi­neering Conference for 2000-02, and changed the date of the fall meeting in 2002 because of a conflict with the Jew­ish holiday Rosh Hashanah. The meet­ing will now be held in Boston on Aug. 18-22 instead of Sept. 8-12.

The board will be led for the second year in a row by Henry F. Whalen Jr., vice president and director of corporate development for PQ Corp., Valley Forge, Pa. The board elected Director-at-Large Nina I. McClelland, president of Nina I. McClelland L.L.C., Ann Arbor, Mich., to the Board Executive Commit­tee for a two-year term and Region I Di­rector Michael E. Strem, president of Strem Chemicals, Newburyport, Mass., for a one-year term. Others on the Exec­utive Committee include the ACS presi­dential succession and ACS Executive Director John K Crum.

Acting on a motion by ACS President Ed Wasserman, the board agreed to ap­

point a task force to study its future activities, operations, and structure. The task force will report back to the board in June 2000.

Whalen announced the 2000 chairs of the society and board stand­ing committees: Paul S. Anderson, Budget & Finance; Donald E. Jones, Education; Glenn A Crosby, Grants & Awards; Elizabeth Ann Nalley, Professional & Member Relations; and Daryle H. Busch, Public Affairs & Public Relations.

On Dec. 3, the board was briefed on the chemical industry's Responsi­ble Care program by Chemical Man­ufacturers Association President and CEO Frederick L Webber; CMA Re sponsible Care Vice President Rich­ard Doyle; and David J. D'Antoni, CMA board chairman for Responsi­ble Care and president of Ashland Chemical. The ACS Board formed a task force to investigate ways in which CMA and ACS can coordinate more closely.

Madeleine Jacobs

10 DECEMBER 13, 1999 C&EN