unit's most sophisticated chemical agent detection capability comes from the German-made Fox nuclear, biological, and chemical reconnaissance vehicle. This mobile mass spectrometry-gas chromatography lab can drive into a contaminated area and analyze air and soil to determine the precise chemical or biological agents present. At the other extreme of sophistication are the paper strips the troops will use to detect liquid chemical agents. The Naval Medical Research Institute is supplying the unit with a "formidable, condensed biological agent identification capability," claims Col. James P. Burans, head of the biological defense research program at the institute. Burans describes the prototype capability as a $100,000 portable—four boxes containing 300 lbs of equipment—"deployable lab with the ability Marine in full protective gear secures decontaminated area during training. protective suits in North Carolina's heat to be able to deal with nerve gas agents like Sarin and blister agents like mustard gas, as well as some 25 biological and toxin threats like anthrax and typhoid. The training is designed to build endurance and to enable the troops to operate efficiently in the swamplike conditions of an Atlanta summer. The "first field training to operate in an expeditionary environment" took place the first week of June, Corbett says. The training environment was "most austere/7 with the unit having to bring in its own generators and purify its water. "Training between now and the Olympics will be more mission oriented," Corbett says, "to operate in an urban environment." Krulak grades the first field test as "very successful," saying it has shown that CBIRF "has great promise as a national asset." Right now, this potential national asset is costing the nation only $2 million—a comparatively small amount— because most of the necessary equipment has come from other Marine operations. "An operating budget has yet to be determined for the coming [fiscal] year," Corbett says. Most of the unit's equipment is offthe-shelf, including its protective gear called MOPP (for Mission Oriented Protection Posture suits) and gas masks. The
Civilian experts serve as Marine's virtual staff Joshua Lederberg, Panel Chairman President emeritus Rockefeller University Gail H. Cassell Chairwoman, Microbiology Department University of Alabama, Birmingham Margaret A. Hamburg Commissioner New York City Department of Health Gerald L. Mandell Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases University of Virginia Roger O. McClellan President Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology Thomas P. Monath Vice President for Research & Medical Affairs OraVax Corp., Cambridge, Mass. Michael T. Osterholm Acute Disease Epidemiology Section Minnesota Department of Health Edward H. Shortliffe Departments of Medicine and Computer Sciences Stanford University School of Medicine George M. Whitesides Department of Chemistry Harvard University
to identify biological warfare agents in clinical and environmental samples." The lab contains some off-the-shelf equipment, ''but it took five and a half years to develop reagents, mesh the assays, and optimize the systems," Burans explains. The prototype today contains a suite of assays—from immunological antigen capture assays to polymerase chain reaction assays to advanced culture techniques—that can be used to identify a host of biological and toxin agents. One rapid (15-minute) immunological antigen capture assay is configured like a pregnancy test and can be used to screen for agents. Its confirming test—an ELISA (enzymelinked immunosorbent assay) test— takes longer. The combination of screening plus confirmatory tests permits on-site commanders to have confidence that they are getting "a gold-standard identification and not a false positive," Burans says. It give commanders "absolute information at their fingertips." Exactly how CBIRF's capabilities may be used at the Olympics is still being worked out by civil and military authorities. An effort is now under way to mesh all civil and military capabilities into a standardized response to a possible chemical or biological terrorist attack at the Olympics. •
Asian countries move up in global technology Back in the pre-Watergate years of the Nixon presidency, a quiet but forceful Commerce Department economist, Michael Boretsky, began warning policymakers that the U.S. lead in hightechnology industries was slipping— right under the noses of people who should care about such matters. Japan, he said, was moving up on the U.S., and threats to the dollar and national security could ensue unless the U.S. established policies to beef up its innovation potential. By the early 1980s, Boretsky had retired, but his warnings had taken root. The U.S. government had begun studying technology policy in earnest, seeking running scorecards to compare U.S. innovation rates with those of other countries. Now, it is easy to find out how countries are doing in the global high-tech marketplace. Science & EngiJULY 1,1996 C&EN
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GOVERNMENT neering Indicators, a thick compilation of charts, tables, and text published every two years by the National Science Board, always devotes a chapter to technological competitiveness. This year, it is chapter six—"Technology Development & Diffusion." The current bottom line? More countries are getting better and better and better at the technologies that drive industrial economies. The U.S. is holding its own to be sure, being an economy that did a total of $1.2 trillion in trade in 1994. But Asian nations—not just Japan or China, but Indonesia, Singapore, India, and others—are poised for a run at U.S. supremacy. The technologies discussed in "Technology Development & Diffusion," which are derived from a Census Bureau classification system, include aerospace, biotechnology, computers and telecommunications, computer-integrated manufacturing, electronics, technologies for the life sciences, optoelectronics, material design, nuclear technology, and weapons. Just three categories account for the great bulk of 1994 U.S. technology product exports: computers and telecommunications at 36%, aerospace at 29%, and electronics at 21%. Meanwhile, computer software, always a U.S. strength, accounts for 2.5%; biotechnology accounts for less than 2%. As to imports of technology products, the U.S. is typically insatiable. The value of high-tech imports rose from $59.4 billion in 1990 to $98.4 billion in 1994. Information technologies made up 51% of the 1994 total; electronics, 26%; and aerospace, almost 12%. Where are chemistry and chemical technology in all this? Nowhere by name, but everywhere by implication. Chemistry and chemical engineering may be high-tech fields to people involved in them. But Indicators buries them under everything else, although chemistry's subset fields of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology are on the high-tech list. Still, U.S. chemical manufacturing is a research-intensive industry and, despite some drop in competitive advantage, far surpasses the market share of Asian countries. Lawrence Rausch, the Indicators staffer who prepared chapter six, concedes that chemistry is indeed a hightech field in its own right, but he says it is too mature to take its place alongside optoelectronics and aerospace 24
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Exports of chemicals top those in high-tech fields technology. Nevertheless, the chapter does note that materials synthesis and processing is, after software, the top contributor to the industrial innovation process. Chemistry, of course, is its scientific base. Rausch acknowledges that, for the 1998 edition of Indicators, it might be interesting to assess why a high-tech field such as chemistry, one that contributes so much to other hightech areas, should not itself be classified as high tech. Chemical misunderstandings aside, the U.S. still enjoys a hefty, positive trade balance in high-tech products— $22.5 billion in 1994. But that edge is quickly narrowing—it was $35.3 billion in 1990. Some new trends are worth noting. China's star is rising as an exporter of technology to the U.S.—2.4% of U.S/s imports in 1994 but only 0.3% in 1990. Canada's is going down, from 12% in 1990 to 8.5% in 1994. And Mexico's is rising slightly. Not surprisingly, Japan, with 29%, is the prime exporter of high-technology products to the U.S., followed by Singapore at 11%. The four major European countries—the U.K., France, Italy, and Germany—import the most U.S. high-tech products, totaling $25.3 billion worth in 1994. Moving up fast are the newly industrialized countries of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong at a combined $21.2 billion. Just behind those so-called Asian tigers come Canada, Mexico, and Central America at a collective $19.0 billion. Next are the emerging countries of India, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia, with $8.8 billion in imports among them. South America at $3.2 billion, Eastern Europe at $933 million, and Africa at $485 million bring up the rear in the rankings of importers of U.S. high-tech products. The newly industrialized Asian countries are increasingly significant suppliers to the U.S. For example, Malaysia supplies 15% of U.S. optoelectronic imports as well as 15% of material design technologies; Singapore provides 17% of information technologies; and Korea supplies 18% of electronics. In all, in 1994, the four tigers supplied almost 26% of all U.S. high-tech imports. In 1989, their share was 23%. Toting up U.S. exports to various countries, Indicators says, can give a certain measure of those countries' technological development. Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan took in 17% of U.S. high-tech
1994 $ Millions
Exports
Imports
$34,974 $11,417 Aerospace 74 1,027 Biotechnology 51,600 33,915 Chemicals3 2,892 5,195 Computer-integrated manufacturing 25,769 25,873 Electronics 42,918 49,937 Computers & telecommunications 4,817 6,823 Life sciences 637 870 Material design 23 1,559 Nuclear technology 2,536 929 Optoelectronics 436 3,031 Software 734 146 Weapons a Not considered a high-technology field in he National Science Board report; data from the Department of Commerce. Source: "Science & Engineering Indicators, 1996"
exports in 1994, compared with 12% in 1990. Singapore—hungry for information technologies—leads in imports from the U.S., "ahead of the much larger economies of South Korea and Taiwan/' according to the report. All this fits into Singapore's goal of becoming an information-based economy. One fact stands out: The U.S. cannot seem to overcome its deficits in optoelectronics, electronics, and computers. Asian competitors are too good and getting better. "During the first half of the '90s," says Indicators, "massive trade deficits with several Asian economies in these three technology areas overwhelmed trade surpluses generated from trade with other countries." There are facts in the chapter that raise eyebrows and inspire curiosity. In 1994, for example, the leading exporter of biotechnology products to the U.S. was the Republic of Slovenia, one of the countries that used to make up Yugoslavia and that spun itself into independence before the Bosnia-Serbia-Croatia carnage. Indicators doesn't go into much detail on this except to say that "biotechnology research in Slovenia focuses on cloning and gene expression, studies on metabolic regulation, and development of processes for new fungal metabolites." An area of undiminished U.S. strength is trade in knowledge—the income that comes to the U.S. from royalties and fees from patents and copyrights. In 1993, U.S. receipts in that category were $20 billion, more than double the figure for 1988. As Indicators points out, "About 75% of the transactions in-
volved exchanges between U.S. firms and their foreign affiliates/' When the figures are restricted to intellectual property transfer between unaffiliated firms, the 1993 U.S. export figure goes down to $2.8 billion. Indicators attempted something new this year, using a "Current Impact Index" to capture "a patent's impact on the technological community and its importance to technological advances/' The technique counts how many times a country's patents in one field or another are cited compared with those of another country. Indicators found that Japan's patents in five commercially important fields—industrial machinery, radio and television equipment, electronic components and communication equipment, motor vehicles and equipment, and aircraft and parts— were cited more often than patents issued to U.S. inventors. The U.S. retained its lead in the computer field. Japan beat out Europe in every single category. Another category, scientific linkage, ties patents to basic research developments cited in them. Here, according to Indicators, "U.S. inventors showed stronger ties to science in all six technology areas than those for Japan and Europe." However, Indicators says Japanese patents "may have a greater impact on the advancement of new technologies and seem to take the important next steps in improving upon the original technologies." Americans continue to focus on basic discoveries and leave the incremental innovations to others. That, Indicators points out, does not seem to be changing, even if much else is. Wil Lepkowski
Industry group seeks official UN status The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) has applied to the United Nations (UN) Economic & Social Council for certification as a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, a status more often associated with activist environmental and social development groups. NGOs can send observers to meetings of the council and its subsidiary bodies, such as the UN Environment Program (UNEP); submit written state-
ments relevant to the work of the council; and consult with the UN Secretariat on matters of mutual concern. ICCA—whose members include the chemical industry associations of Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, Mexico, and the U.S.—is seeking official recognition of a role it and its member organizations already perform. "The fact is, over the last few years we have been able to participate informally [in the work of the UN] because its agencies have more or less given us NGO status informally," says R. Garrity Baker, director of international relations for the Chemical Manufacturers Association. He points out that UNEP, for example, "wants the input of the chemical industry" when it's working on matters related to chemicals, such as the prior informed consent convention. "Prior informed consent," Baker explains, "is the notion that before you ship to another county a chemical or product that has been banned in your country, you should notify that other country and get [its] consent to the
shipment." Essentially, what UNEP is doing, he says, is "taking a voluntary program we have had for the last 10 or so years and making it into a legally binding instrument. . . . Those are the kind of activities [the UN gets involved in] where we want to have a seat at the table and, when it's appropriate, to stand up and speak. "So, lack of NGO status isn't stopping us from getting our points across," he adds, but having it will ensure that ICCA can participate in UN activities such as the Earth Summit that was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. That meeting was so huge that attendance was limited to NGO organizations. If ICCA's application is accepted, and Baker is pretty sure it will be, although it may take a year or more, it will become one of more than 1,500 NGOs accredited by the UN. "I don't know that it's that big a deal, but it is important and we are pursuing it. We hope our application will be received favorably," Baker says. Janice Long
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