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8raziSîan industries Booming Steel p r o d u c t i o n e x p a n d s to point of self-sufficiency; basic chemical industries attract f o r e i g n m o n e y JL HE shortage of exchange for imports, coupled with a steadily expanding home market and the possibility of wide profit margins on manufactured articles, continues to make Brazil an attractive field for industrial investment. Development is particularly rapid in the steel industry. This rests on the existence in Brazil of large iron ore deposits of high metallic content and is encouraged by the increasing demands of expanding public utility companies and official projects to re-equip Brazilian railways and ports. It has attracted the interest of foreign steel concerns. Annual consumption of rolled steel products in Brazil is expected to be about 2 million tons by 1960; current domestic output is about 1 million tons a year, with annual consumption at about 1.2 million tons. To achieve a higher level of production the National Steel Plant has been authorized to raise a loan of $35 million to be guaranteed by the National Treasury. The Krupp interests intend to invest about $25 million in Brazil without demanding the remittance of profits. The group will manufacture locomotives, install foundries, rolling mills, tube factories, and cement factories, and will produce a variety of basic industrial and transport equipment. The investment will be made over a period of five years. • Aluminum. Brasileira de Aluminio (CBA) recently opened a new plant near Sorocaba, Sao Paulo, with an annual capacity of 10,000 tons. This will later be expanded to 50,000 tons and will make Brazil practically self-sufficient in aluminum. • Zinc Oxide. A new plant will be built between Santos and Sao Paulo to produce yearly 7200 tons of zinc oxide under agreement with a British company. Eventually output will be doubled and other pigments will be produced there. • Petroleum. Japanese interests are studying a project for installing an oil refinery at Belem with a capacity of 40,000 barrels daily. Official sources say present output of Brazilian refineries is resulting in an economy of $45 to $50 million annually in imports of petroleum products. Two Japanese 3698
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1955
spinning firms are establishing spindle factories and a Japanese silk company will set up a plant in Sao Paulo to produce silk yarns. Installation of a factory in Brazil to produce high grade ceramics is being studied by a German group from Weechtersbach. Firm representatives report that Brazil has all the materials necessary for ceramic manufacture. • Cement. Production of cement in 1954 exceeded 2 million tons, 18% more than in 1953. A large number of existing companies are building or planning new plants or expansion of existing ones, and a few new companies are entering the field. • Agriculture. Progress in agricultural methods will b e given a boost through an expanded research program at the University of Sao Paulo's school of agriculture, made possible through an appropriation of $120,000 from Rockefeller Foundation. Research projects currently in progress at the school include radioisotope and biochemical studies of a number of microorganisms of agricultural importance, the chemistry of the soils of the Sao Paulo region, genetic studies on food crop improvement, climatological factors of agricultural production, improved mechanization for crop production, and statistical improvement in experimental design.
Biochemistry Congress Over 2 0 0 0 from 2 6 countries attend third conclave A HE structure of gramicidin J was elucidated a t the Third International Congress of Biochemistry in Brussels recently by the Japanese coworkers S. Otani and Y. Saito of Osaka. They showed the structure to be that of a cyclic heptapeptide containing 3 Damino acids and 4 L-amino acids. An important result was obtained by E. Katchalski, A. Berger, L. VichowskySlomnicki, and J. Kurtz of Israel, -who synthesized copolymers with the amino acids present in gramicidin S and obtained synthetic material that exhibited the same biological activity as the na-
tural compound. They found that ornithine is essential for the antibiotic activity, while the other groups were less important. Another new antibacterial peptide related to penicillin was studied by G. G. F. Newton and E . P. Abraham of Oxford, the constitution of which, is that of an α-hydroxypeniciiamine deriv ative. S. A. Waksman and collabora tors at Rutgers isolated a new peptidelike antibiotic of the basic water-soluble type, called myrcothricin, which is said to show interesting possibilities. A new method for the synthesis of thyroxine has been developed by G. Hillmann of Tubingen, Germany. This is the third convenient method for ob taining this hormone. A chemical pos sibility for the biosynthesis of thyroxine via diiodotyrosine and the correspond ing keto acid was suggested, in view of positive in vitro results for thyroxine, but negative ones for the other three iodothyronines known to exist as natural compounds in thyroid gland. • Hormonal Regulations. W. Marx and Elsie Wainfan of the University of Southern California showed that the propionic acid analog of thyroxine is the most active in promoting oxidation of glucose b y bacteria. These results, together with new evidence o n thyroid hormones previously presented in Zurich, may soon lead to important re sults in this field, according t o Walter Wolf of The Netherlands. The formation of some nucleic acids was shown by D . Wayne Woolley and S. G. A. Alisivatos of Rockefeller In stitute to occur via the reduction of an onium salt and not merely the cleav age of a phosphor bond. T h e relation between enzyme synthesis and nucleoproteins was brought out by E . F. Gale of Cambridge, who showed that en zymatic growth was specifically stimu lated by different nucleotide fractions. Vincent du Vigneaud's paper on the structure of arginine and lysine vasopressine, said to be octapeptides closely related to oxytocin, aroused much in terest. • Protein Biosynthesis. H . Borsook of Pasadena brought visitors u p to date on protein biosynthesis. In t h e ensuing discussion, A. Brenner from Basel told of experiments with o-aminoacyl de rivatives of salicylic acid, which rear range to salicyl peptides, and suggested that this process could be a model for the synthesis of peptides on serine and cysteine.
British Sulfuric Sulfuric acid making capacity in Britain has outstripped the steadily ex panding consumption for the first time since World War II. Consumption amounted t o 605,800 tons during the
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INTERNATIONAL
first quarter of this year, and although the advance continues steadily, capacity has bad three important additions in t h e form of acid-from-anhydrite plants. Largest of these is the ICI plant at BiîIiiigham-on-Tees; its capacity was entlarged by about 80,000 tons last December and is now potentially about 200,000 tons a year. The second largest is the plant of United Sulphuric Acid Corp. which has a capacity of Ιβδ,ΟΟΟ tons a year and serves 11 large users at Widnes, Lancashire. The other plant is that of Solway Chemicals at Whitehaven, West Cumberland; its projected capacity of 83,000 tons has been revised t o 110,000 tons. The thxee new plants thus have a combined potential output of over 35,000 tons of sulfuric acid. These, plus works al ready operated by ICI, can meet ap proximately a quarter of Britain's pres ent acid demand.
Fuel on the Desert British Petroleum Co. scientists re cently carried out a series of road tests in Algeria in order to study the per formance of gasoline and engine oils under high atmospheric temperature driving conditions. The tests were
done vit h a fleet of eight cars of British, German, French, and Ameri can manufacture, each specially fitted with devices for recording the tempera ture of any part of the engine. T h e cars Mere run on various specially blended fuels shipped from England and the results related to commercial fuels. The information obtained during the tests is n o w being examined at Sunbury. Later in the year, further tests are to be made in Scandinavia to test the low temperature end of the scale and discover more about the effect of cold weather on engine starting and warming up.
• Malathion in large quantities is being flown to Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to save over a million acres of late seeded barley crops from a rapidly spreading infestation of the corn leaf aphid. • French refinery at Donges, owned by Antar-Petroles de l'Atlantique, will have a 10,800-barrel-per-day Houdriformer. It will process naphthas from Iraq crude petroleum, and a blocked operation will be utilized by which the
unit will alternately produce highoctane motor gasoline and aromatics. k Fisons Pest Control, Ltd., will distribute D u Pont agricultural chemicals in the U. K., Eire, and British possessions in Africa. These chemicals -will be offered through usual sales channels under Du Pont trade names and British patents. • G e r m a n y ' s first atomic p o w e r p l a n t
will b e located near Karlsruhe, according to the Federal Press Office in Bonn. Munich, site of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, was earlier considered, as that organization was rated as the one most highly qualified to advance nuclear research in West Germany. But it was also considered that Munich is in a more dangerous location in case of war. M o d i n e - 1 3 1 a n d colloidal c j o l d - 1 9 8 ,
which are distributed from t h e Radiochemical Centre at Amersham, England, have been reduced in price, according to the U . K. Atomic Energy Authority. The concession has been made possible by a continuing growth in demand and b y improved manufacturing efficiency at Amersham. Savings to the average isotope user will be about 20%.
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• international Researchers Associa t e d , a division of International Processes, Inc., Chicago, is offering an international research and service program for American companies. Engineering consultants in eight European countries report regularly to offices of the organization in Genoa, Italy, on specific research problems, o n foreign markets, patent searches, and on various other information of interest to investors. • Coconut milk is the subject of a research project at Bose Research Institute, Calcutta, India. Chromatographic examination with a view to elucidating its growth-promoting properties indicates t h e presence of galactose, glucose, mannose and/or sorbose, and aspartic acid, cystine, ornithine, asparagine, lysine and/or arginine, methionine, phenylalanine, and leucine. The sugars are all present in much greater proportion than the amino acids.
C&EK Foreign Correspondents Contributing to This Issue:
C. E. NABUCO DE ARAYJO, JR., Brazil
G. ABRAHAMSON, Britain W. L. SPEIGHT, South Africa
A. P. SOM, India
