The World Bank projects world economic growth at 3.5% over the next few years; India will likely grow at 7% annually, Prabhu says. The Indian chemical industry, growing at 35% annually, will Polypropylene be a significant contributor both to the Thousands of metric tons capacity The Indian government has a grand vi- future growth of the country and to the Chiba Polypropylene 80 sion: It wants to create $8 billion worth enlargement of the country's middle Chtsso 316 of "comprehensive chemical estates" to class, he maintains. Grand Polymer 598 boost its pharmaceutical and chemical The minister also said he wants to atidemitsu Petrochemical 370 industry, and it's offering a series of in- tract chemical R&D investments to the Japan Polychem 782 ducements to U.S.firmsto make its vi- country. India "has world-class governMonteH SKO Sunrise 217 sion a reality. ment labs" and produces a large number Sumitomo Chemical 200 of chemistry Ph.D.s and postdoctoral India's Minister of Chemicals & FerTokuyama 140 candidates annually, Prabhu pointed out. tilizers Suresh P. Prabhu described the Ube Polypropylene 90 somewhat vague but ambitious plan at a Yet many chemists are unable tofindjobs Ukishima Polypro 105 news conference last week that kicked in the country. 'The cost of conducting Yokkaichi Polypro 65 off an 11-day tour of the U.S. The Indian R&D in India is about 10% of the cost of TOTAL CAPACITY 2,963 federal government plans to develop up doing R&D in either Europe or the U.S.," to four new industrial parks devoted to he said. "U.S. companies should take adSource: Japan Petrochemical Industry Association pharmaceutical, petrochemical, and de- vantage of our R&D capabilities." rivatives manufacture along the east Private investors in the research park facilities that the government Japanese polypropylene producers and west coasts of India. wants to promote—distinct from the inannounced price increases in October dustrial parks—would have additional of last year, points out Masami Sawato, government incentives: 150% capital inchemical analyst at the Tokyo offices of vestment write-offs and a 10-year "tax the investment banking arm of ABN holiday" for R&D projects. Amro. However, he comments that the investigation is unlikely to have a negaOver the course of his visit to the tive effect on the earnings of the compaU.S., Prabhu said he will meet with top nies involved. U.S. chemical industry executives at DuPont, Hercules, Rohm and Haas, and Polypropylene is not the only plastic to others to promote the Indian governhave enjoyed outstanding price stability ment plan. The government will also in Japan in recent years. High- and lowsponsor India Chem 2000 in New Delhi, density polyethylene prices remained staOct. 6-8, to further promote developble between October 1996 and January ment of India's chemical industry. 1999, Smith says. Sawato adds that price increases by producers of most major Marc Reisch resins are announced at the same time and are of the same magnitude. It used to be that the Japanese govChemistry Preprints ernment itself, through the Ministry of International Trade & Industry, coordiCome Into Vogue nated the setting of prices of basic petrochemical products in Japan, notes Yo- Prabhu: India is reinventing relationships For years, physicists have sent each othsuke Ishikawa, director of chemical er early drafts of research papers, in business research at SRI Consulting in Eight state governments are compet- part so their peers can offer feedback Tokyo. Stable prices were believed to ing to attract the industrial parks, which before publication. These preprints are promote the health of the industry. Yo- would have power grids, access to trans- now commonly distributed electronicalshikawa believes that the government portation, and central waste treatment fa- ly, often through access points such as has quietly changed its stance and is cilities. A fence line would keep out un- the preprint server sponsored by Los now promoting the interests of consum- planned residential and commercial Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). ers rather than those of producers. growth, sprawl, and squatter communi- Over the past few years, sites offering There are few precedents to the raids ties. Land would be offered to private in- preprints for other branches of science on polypropylene producers. In a price- dustry developers "at nominal cost" to have sprung up. And now, chemists are fixing case settled last year, Kubota, a promote the parks, which he hopes will following their lead. producer of steel pipe, was ordered to be ready for business within three years. In July, ChemWeb.com—the online halt production for one year, and its seAt one time, the Indian government community for chemists operated by nior executives resigned. No one went believed its role was to "issue licenses, ChemWeb, a subsidiary of Elsevier Scito jail, but the maximum penalty for find fault with industry, and act as a big ence—will launch what it believes will be price fixing in Japan is three years in brother," but now it wants to partner thefirstpreprint server devoted to chemprison. with industry, Prabhu said. "We are re- istry (eventually accessible via http:// Jean-François Tremblayinventing our role." preprint.chemweb.com).
Seven raided firms account for 9 0 % of Japanese capacity
India Seeks Foreign Partners For Large Chemical Ventures
JUNE 5, 2000 C&EN
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n e w s of t h e w e e k William G. Town, director of opera- will initially cover preprints from LANL's tions at ChemWeb in London, sees his archives in topics such as condensed site's preprint server as a means for matter and nuclear theory, and then gradchemists "to exchange ideas before they ually extend its coverage to other sites, are in a final form that is ready for publi- Toussant says. The preprint abstracts will cation." Town says the site will accept any be tagged with a special code to distindocument about chemistry. The preprint guish them from abstracts of other types drafts are to be submitted in standard of documents in CAS's databases. word-processing format; additional files Sophie Wilkinson such as chemical structures or graphics can also be included. Once a document is placed on the server, readers will be able to comment on it, a process that Town describes as a nontraditional form of peer review. Authors will have the option of replacing the original submission with a re- For their lifetime achievements in biovised version. synthesis, two eminent chemists will Readers will access the preprints for share the $300,000 Welch Award for free and will be able to sort through 2000. The winners are Sir Alan R. Batthem using a variety of filtering mecha- tersby, emeritus professor of organic nisms. One will highlight hot articles chemistry, University of Cambridge, that are getting the most traffic. Another U.K., and A. Ian Scott, Davidson Profeswill rank papers by readers' evaluation sor of Science and director of the Center of their significance. And the preprints for Biological Nuclear Magnetic Resowill be gathered into broad categories nance, Texas A&M University, College so users can browse the latest additions Station. in their field of interest. The Houston-based ChemWeb.com isn't alone in its inter- Welch Foundation, est in a chemistry preprint server. For which has bestowed the two years, the American Chemical Soci- award every year since ety's Publications Division has been con- 1972, cited the two men sidering setting up such a system, for their seminal rethough responses to a survey of ACS search in understanding members and journal subscribers ranged how nature makes com"from condemnation to enthusiasm," ac- plex molecules and in cording to Robert D. Bovenschulte, divi- recreating those prosion director. He adds that ACS journal cesses in the laboratory. editors are concerned about the impact of Both researchers were preprints on the society's "prior publica- pioneers in using cartion" policy, which prevents journals bon-13 in combination from accepting work that has been pub- with NMR experiments to unravel metabolic Battersby Battersby lished previously elsewhere. Are chemists ready for preprints? pathways. Each sepa"We're conducting a sort of experi- rately solved the puzzle of how vitamin ment," Town says. "Until one offers the B-12 is made and elucidated the routes by service, nobody knows whether it will which other important natural products get used or not." Such issues will be are made as well. 'These insights set the stage for furhashed out in the chemistry community ther efforts to mimic nature and proover the next few years. In the meantime, however, ACS's duce vitamins, antibiotics, and other Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) divi- beneficial products in a shorter time and sion "believes it is important to include with less cost in terms of both money preprint records in the CAS databases and the impact on the environment," in the interest of providing the most notes Welch Foundation Board Chaircomprehensive and current coverage of man Richard J. V. Johnson. 'The work chemistry," notes Editorial Operations of Drs. Battersby and Scott truly embodDirector Matthew J. Toussant. In the ies the spirit of the Welch Award: basic past few weeks, CAS has begun provid- research in chemistry that contributes ing abstracts of chemistry preprints to to the betterment of humankind." Battersby, born in 1929, earned its database customers. CAS will glean the preprint material bachelor's and master's degrees in that it chooses to abstract from preprint chemistry from the University of Manservers in chemistry-related fields. CAS chester and a doctorate in chemistry
Battersby, Scott Share 2000 Welch Award
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from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. After postdoctoral work in the U.S., he held faculty positions in England at the University of Bristol and the University of Cambridge. In 1969, he accepted the chair of organic chemistry at Cambridge, from which he retired in 1992. Among Battersby's many honors are the American Chemical Society's Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Davy Medal, and the Royal Medal. He received a knighthood in 1992. Scott, 72, received bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Glasgow University, Scotland. He began his independent academic career at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He held faculty positions at the University of Sussex, England, and Yale University before moving to Texas A&M in 1977. Scott's other numerous honors include the ACS Ernest Guenther and Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards, the Centenary Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Tetrahedron Prize
Scott
for Creativity in Organic Chemistry, also shared with Battersby. Scott's first reaction in hearing he would receive the Welch Award was "a feeling of great satisfaction that the field of biosynthesis has been recognized by this major award, which appropriately is being shared with Alan Battersby," he tells C&EN. "We have both spent our scientific careers in this field, which is now entering a most exciting era. Thanks to the combination of molecular biology, organic chemistry, and NMR, we can identify and clone the genes necessary for the biosynthesis of complex molecules such as vitamin B-12 or Taxol and even carry out multienzyme synthesis in a single flask, overnight, by recombining the complete set of enzymes in vitro." Pamela Zurer
