NEWS OF THE WEEK
ASAHI ADMITS FAULTY CONSTRUCTION The percentage of operating profits that come from the home and construction materials business:
JAPAN: Defective residential buildings
could cost big chemical maker dearly
A
SAHI KASEI, one of Japan’s largest chemical
companies, admits that a subsidiary that builds residential homes performed substandard work and falsified data on apartment towers it built in Yokohama, Japan. In a statement, Asahi says it BUILDER Homes are a major doesn’t know if the problems afbusiness at Asahi Kasei. flict other construction projects Electronic materials undertaken by the subsidiary, Asa8% hi Kasei Construction Materials, Health care Chemicals 12% & fibers but it has promised to investigate. 49% Asahi Kasei Construction Materials will inspect about 3,000 residential and commercial projects it Homes & participated in recently. construction materials Moody’s, the credit rating agen31% cy, revised Asahi Kasei’s credit Annual sales = $16.6 billion outlook to “negative” in view of NOTE: Figures are for fiscal year ending on the large financial liability that the March 31. Currency converted at March 31 excompany now could face. “We exchange rate of $1.00 U.S. = 120 Japanese yen. pect Asahi Kasei Construction Ma-
48%
ALCOHOL, SUGAR SPOTTED ON COMET ASTRONOMY: Complex organics formed
in nascent solar system, study suggests
FABRICE NOEL
Comet Lovejoy contains glycolaldehyde and ethanol.
A
STRONOMERS have for the first time de-
tected ethanol and the simple sugar glycolaldehyde in a comet (Sci. Adv. 2015, DOI: 10.1126/ sciadv.1500863). The observations add to the rapidly growing roster of complex organics found in comets and bolster the theory that such molecules somehow formed on icy dust grains during early solar system formation. The report comes on the heels of the recent discovery of four other molecules never before seen in comets: methyl isocyanate, acetone, propanal, and acetamide. The Philae lander, dispatched to the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, spotted those species earlier this year (C&EN, Aug. 3, page 7). In the new experiments, Nicolas Biver, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, in France, and colleagues obtained rotational spectra from a comet called LoveCEN.ACS.ORG
6
terials will bear a substantial amount of costs incurred for investigation as well as necessary reinforcement and repairs of the defective building(s).” But Moody’s expects that Asahi Kasei will weather the storm financially. According to Japanese media reports, residents of an apartment building in Yokohama noticed that their tower was leaning. Following this revelation, Asahi was forced to confirm that its construction materials subsidiary had not piled the building’s foundation deep enough and filed false paperwork during construction. Two other companies, Mitsui Fudosan Residential and Sumitomo Mitsui Construction, also participated in the project, which was completed in 2007. Chemical companies in Japan tend to be more diversified than their Western counterparts. Asahi Kasei entered the homes construction business in the 1970s as an extension of its construction materials portfolio. Whereas homes in Japan at the time needed to be rebuilt every 25 to 30 years, Asahi positioned itself as a supplier of long-lasting homes that could stand for at least 50 years. In recent years, homes have been a star performer for Asahi, which also produces basic chemicals and electronic materials and earlier this year paid $2.2 billion to buy the battery materials operations of the U.S. firm Polypore International. In the fiscal year that ended March 31, Asahi’s homes segment generated nearly half of its earnings while accounting for less than one-third of sales.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
joy using the 30-meter telescope at IRAM, in Spain’s Sierra Nevada. Lovejoy is a particularly active comet, spewing great quantities of dust and gas into space and providing Biver’s team with a rich source of material to study. The group found signatures for 21 different molecules, including species that have already been identified in comets, such as ethylene glycol and formamide. But although ethanol and glycolaldehyde have been observed—along with many other complex organics—in star-forming regions of space, they had never before been observed in comets. Given that these two molecules are in the same family of compounds, such as methanol and formaldehyde that have been found in comets, the discovery is not surprising, says Jason P. Dworkin, an astronomer at the National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Additionally, scientists have formed these species in the lab under cometlike conditions. Dworkin says he’s looking forward to “the prospect of collecting and returning cometary ice to study in laboratories on Earth” to determine how these small molecules might have formed. For example, NASA is considering a project called the Comet Surface Sample Return mission that will send a lander to a comet, collect a scoop of the comet’s surface, and send the sample back to Earth.—ELIZABETH WILSON
OCTOBER 26, 2015
