medical school, has been handling the initial strategy. But the actual mechanics of the study will be handled by the Division of Medical Sciences, headed by Dr. R. Keith Cannon. DRB will continue in an advisory role as a forum for exchange between industry, government, and the medical community. D. C. Trexler, staff officer for the Medical Sciences Division, says the various study panels—to be broken down according to drug classificationshould have an initial report evaluating the bulk of significant drugs by the end of 1967. For now, nobody is willing to name the major drugs under study. An FDA spokesman explained that it's difficult to know what drugs are currently on or off the market, and anyway, the whole problem is in the hands of the academy, which will determine what compounds are targeted for scrutiny. The number will likely be considerably less than 4000.
Mallinckrodt survives AEC move Closing of the Weldon Spring, Mo., atomic fuel plant, operated by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works for the Atomic Energy Commission, "is not expected to materially influence Mallinckrodt earnings," says president (and chairman) Harold E. Thayer. Government fees for the first quarter of 1966 accounted for only 5.2% of the company's pretax earnings. Nor will AEC's decision create a major personnel problem. Many of the technical employees will be transferred to other Mallinckrodt plants. The move will, however, take a pioneer firm out of the nuclear business—at least on an active basis.
President Thayer No material influence expected 28 C&EN MAY 9, 1966
Mallinckrodt still has an interest in United Nuclear Corp., headquartered in New York. Mallinckrodt has been in the business since 1942 when it contracted to make pure uranium oxide for the Army. The company made the oxide and other nuclear materials at its St. Louis plant until 1957, when the Weldon Spring operation started up. Operations at Weldon Spring, near St. Louis, will be moved to AEC's Fernald plant, near Cincinnati. That plant was built in 1949 and is run by National Lead Co. of Ohio. Both Weldon Spring and Fernald have been operating at reduced levels since January 1964, when AEC cut back plutonium and enriched uranium production. The Weldon Spring plant produces uranium tetrafluoride and uranium metal. These have been sent to Fernald where they are fabricated into uranium fuel cores for production reactors (at Richland, Wash., and Aiken, S.C.) that convert uranium-238 into plutonium. AEC believes that the entire operation can be handled more cheaply by consolidating it at the Fernald plant. The transfer will start immediately and is slated to be completed within a year. Some units at Fernald will have to be reactivated to handle the increased work load. Certain process development equipment will be moved from Weldon Spring to Fernald. Coincidentally last week, the Fernald plant received the first shipment of recovered nuclear fuel from a private reprocessing plant. The 3.5 tons of uranium solutions came from Nuclear Fuel Services' plant, West Valley, N.Y. NFS is owned by W. R. Grace. Mallinckrodt's uranium feed materials business has been declining for the past several years, and the government fees for operating Weldon Spring in the first quarter contributed a net of only about $40,000 to earnings after taxes. Over-all, Mallinckrodt earned $773,000 after taxes in the first quarter on sales of $14.4 million. After-tax earnings were 66% above the first quarter of 1965. Weldon Spring currently has about 500 employees, about half of whom are salaried. Many of the technical employees, including about 60 chemists and chemical engineers, will be transferred to other Mallinckrodt plants, says Charles Swartout, vice president and general manager of the personnel division. Mallinckrodt will help the remainder of its employees, mostly production people, to find other employment in the St. Louis area. AEC plans in the near future to ask for expressions of interest from industry for possible commercial use of the Weldon Spring plant.
Lysozyme high in one leukemia Overproduction of the protein lysozyme seems to be a specific biochemical abnormality in patients with monocytic leukemia, according to Dr. Elliot F. Osserman of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He has found that 11 consecutive patients with monocytic leukemia excreted large amounts of a protein, identified as lysozyme, in their urine. Also, their blood contained markedly high levels of the protein, Dr. Osserman said at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Federation of Clinical Research, in Atlantic City. Lysozyme is not new to medical science. It was discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. It is widely distributed in nature. What is new is that this relationship between excessive lysozyme and monocytic leukemia can be used as a diagnostic tool for detecting this form of leukemia in a patient. Dr. Osserman says that the test method he developed is as simple as an ordinary urinalysis. The test is made in a petri dish containing a layer of gel, such as silica gel, with small holes in it. The holes are filled with bacteria and then with urine from an eye dropper. The lysozyme in the urine attacks the bacteria. However, excessive lysozyme in the urine of the patient with monocytic leukemia will show up as a halo around the bacteria. This halo is readily discernible with the naked eye. Dr. Osserman says that this test will supplement the conventional blood and bone marrow studies now used. Lysozyme appears in high concentrations in human saliva, tears, and the type of white blood cells known as monocytes. Dr. Osserman says that the protein is probably synthesized by the monocytes, and that the proliferation of these cells in monocytic leukemia causes the high lysozyme levels.
Nuclear particle first of class Discovery of a new class of nuclear particles helps support the theory that nuclear particles proliferate indefinitely. Using a 30-b.e.v. accelerator, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, Long Island) uncovered a particle which appears to be the first in a new family of 27 members. The international team, headed by Dr. Rodney L. Cool, assistant director of Brookhaven, says that the new particle is likely a K+-nucleon resonance structure, consisting of a K+-meson and a nucleon. The particle has an isotopic spin of 1.
Commenting on the Brookhaven discovery at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C., physicist Geoffrey F. Chew, of the University of California, Berkeley, stated that the new family tends to confirm his "boot-strap hypothesis." In this concept, each nuclear particle creates other nuclear particles and is created by the others in turn. No elementary building block exists in nuclear reactions, and the number of products increases without limit. Consistent with this view, Dr. Chew maintains, the Brookhaven particle exhibits an enlarged nuclear combination which comprises more than two or three basic units. In the absence of a fundamental particle, there is only one way to organize the welter of nuclear particles (which now number more than 100). This is the system of families proposed by Caltech's Dr. Murray GellMann. In his classification, all the major particles (before the present discovery) fit into eight- or 10-membered families. Larger families, such as the one found by the Brookhaven scientists, are also possible in the GellMann system. At the opposite end of the nuclear family scale lies a possible three-particle group, which another Brookhaven team
is
investigating.
The
triad's
members are called quarks, which Dr. Gell-Mann and other physicists have proposed as possible fundamental particles. Dr. Chew says that such particles, if ever found, would disprove the boot-strap hypothesis, which envisions no quarks at all.
Rapson wins McCharles Prize Dr. W. Howard Rapson, professor at the University of Toronto, will have a rather unusual experience next January. He's going to get the 1965 McCharles Prize (worth $1000) for "outstanding contribution to Canadian industry, chemical industry with respect to the chemicals involved and the pulp and paper industry with respect to their application." What makes the event somewhat unusual (besides wording of the citation as set out in the original terms establishing the prize) is that the prize has been given only nine times since one T. L. Wilson (of Ottawa) earned it in 1909. Mr. Wilson's contribution to technology was a method for mass producing calcium carbide. Dr. Rapson (working at times in the past few years with Dr. Morris Wayman, also of the university) is perhaps most noted for transforming chlorine dioxide into one of the most important and widely used agents to bleach pulp. Among his other
When completed, the new furnaces along with appropriate degassing and continuous casting units will be integrated into a complex capable of continuous processing from ore to slab. The two furnaces will probably replace the six open-hearth furnaces now used at Midland. Also being installed as an integral part of the new furnaces is a dust collecting unit. This equipment is designed to reduce air pollution from the furnaces at Midland, the company adds.
World product catalog started
Winner Rapson The 10th since 1909
achievements, he has developed new processes for bleaching kraft pulps to make them suitable for printing and writing paper. He was also the first to use chlorine dioxide to bleach dissolving pulps for making rayon and cellophane.
Design engineers and purchasing agents may soon have a new tool to help them in their work. A small firm in Englewood, Colo., Information Handling Services, Inc., is putting together a world-wide industrial communications network to pass product information from maker to user. IHS has signed agreements with firms in the United Kingdom and Japan to put together a microfilmed catalog of engineering-oriented products available from most of the industrialized nations of the world. This file will be broken into major industry
segments and sold to subscribers.
Crucible has new stainless route Sometime in 1968, Crucible Steel plans to start making stainless and alloy steels by a new process that it expects to reduce production time and costs significantly. Crucible will build two specially designed top-blown oxygen converters, which are the key to the process, at its works at Midland, Pa. Dravo Corp. will handle the job. In Crucible's process, chromiumrich iron will be added to the topblown oxygen converters in the form of liquid metal produced from ore in one of the company's blast furnaces. Currently, stainless steel is made by adding chromium to the melt in the form of ferrochromium or chromium-bearing scrap. Once in the new furnaces, the melt will be blown with oxygen in much the same way as with other basic oxygen furnaces. However, Crucible's vessels will be much deeper than conventional basic oxygen vessels, allowing the molten metal to be blown with oxygen at higher pressures without splashing out. Silicon in the molten metal prevents excessive oxidation of the chromium, the company notes. The complete smelting process including charge calculating, pacing, monitoring, and updating control parameters will be supervised by a digital computer. Combined capacity of the units will be about 1 million tons per year.
IHS
already
has
such
a
system
working in the U.S. The company has gathered data from some 12,000 U.S. suppliers on their products. The information consists of the usual material in a product data sheet. IHS has classified the information according to product (pumps, valves), indexed it, and put it on microfilm. Thus a subscriber gets a microfilmed file of products made by 12,000 companies. The catalog—some 1 million microfilmed pages—is broken into iive separate files: defense/aerospace; consumer products industries; processors of chemicals, petroleum, food, paper, drugs, and metals; a file for purchasing agents; and military standards. President Richard H. O'Brien says IHS has teamed up with International Publishing Corp., of London, to form a joint venture—Information Handling (U.K.), L t d . - i n the United Kingdom. Another subsidiary, Information Handling (Europe), Ltd., has been formed to start up the system in Europe. A joint venture, Nippon VSMF, with Japanese backers has also just been formed. Information Handling (U.K.), Ltd., and Information Handling (Europe), Ltd., have already begun building microfilm catalog files in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, and several Middle East countries. Nippon VSMF is gathering data for files for Japan, Korea, and Formosa. MAY 9, 1965 C&EN
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