Computer Applications in the Polymer Laboratory
Focus ability for preparative-scale fraction ations, such as those required in the biotech industry. The use of CCC for cell separations, says Sutherland, is still an emerging technique that is far from perfect. It should move forward, however, with the identification of new biocompatible phase systems that are more appropriate for use with CCC than the current aqueous poly mer systems. Field flow fractionation
New! Theodore Provder, Editor Glidden Coatings and Resins Reports on the impact the technolog ical revolution is having on the re search worker in polymer chemistry. Reviews the impact of computer technology in the polymer laboratory, and speculates on future trends in task automation. Concentrates on three important areas: Laboratory information generation, manage ment, and analysis tools; instrument automation for polymer characteriza tion; and polymerization cure proc ess modeling and control. Helps bridge the gap between technical and office tools for all scientists and technologists working in the field of polymer research. CONTENTS Laboratory Automation: A New Perspective · Economic Considerations of LIMS · Applica tions of Computer Data Base Management · Advances in Scientific Software Packages · Computer-Assisted Polymer Design · Sili cone Acrylate Copolymers · Constrained Mixture-Design Formulations · Analysis of Isochronal Mechanical Relaxation Scans · Automated Rheology Laboratory: Part I · Automated Rheology Laboratory: Part II · Automated Analyses for the Tensile Tester · Data Collection for a Size-Exclusion Liquid Chromatograph · X-ray Pole Figure Studies of Polymers · Computers and the Optical Microscope · Simulation Activities in a R&D Laboratory for Coatings · Flexible Control of Laboratory Polymer Reactors · Control of a Polystyrene Reactor · The Modeling of Polymerization Kinetics · Mathematical Modeling of Emulsion Polymerization Reac tors · Kinetics Analysis of Consecutive Reactions · Optimization of Bake Conditions for Thermoset Coatings · An AnhydrideCured Epoxy Polymerization · Investigation of Self-Condensation of 2,4-Dimethyol-Ocresol Developed from a symposium sponsored by the Division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering of the American Chemical Society ACS Symposium Series No. 313 321 pages (1986) Clothbound LC 86-10831 ISBN 0-8412-0977-4 US & Canada $69.95 Export $83.95 Order from: American Chemical Society Distribution Office Dept. 20 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W. Washington, DC 20036 or CALL TOLL FREE 800-424-6747 and use your credit cardl
Steric field flow fractionation (steric FFF), an elution-based technique that sorts particles according to their size, can also be used for cell fractionation, according to Karin Caldwell of the University of Utah. FFF has a large fractionation range (baseline separa tion of a seven-component mixture of polystyrene latex spheres with diame ters ranging from 2 to 45 μτη has been performed in less than 5 min), making it particularly useful for fractionation of cells with diameters in the l-20-μπι range. The fractionator is a thin ribbonshaped channel that is exposed to a centrifugal field perpendicular to the major walls. Sample particles settle at one of the channel walls, and the flow of carrier forces the particles to move downstream at rates proportional to their size. This is a highly efficient process, and separations can be ac complished in a matter of minutes. One advantage of FFF, says Cald well, is that the choice of carrier has little influence on the separation, al
lowing use of a carrier with maximum compatibility with the cells, such as aqueous buffers or growth medium. "Generally, when you work with live materials such as cells, the less bizarre an environment they are exposed to, the better off you are," she explains. "If cells are separated in a polymer phase, then you have to move them very carefully from the polymer medi um to a growth medium so as to avoid osmotic and other shocks. But because FFF can be performed directly in the growth medium, no such transfers are necessary." This carrier flexibility, combined with the short separation times, makes FFF particularly suitable for handling cell samples in which viability follow ing separation is important. Hela cells, neurons, and glial cells have all shown good growth in tissue culture after passage through a sedimentationbased steric FFF system. Like the aqueous polymer-based techniques, FFF can be used to detect small differences in cell populations (although in the case of FFF, these are differences in size rather than in cell surface characteristics), as well as for preparative separations. For example, retention differences can be seen be tween cells of the same type from dif ferent species and between cells of the same line grown in different environ ments. FFF can also be used to sepa rate cells for use in cloning and pro duction of monoclonal antibodies and to obtain growth-synchronized cell populations. M.D. W.
Instrumentation Growth Areas Environment, process control, and biotechnology are seen driving the market Although the worldwide analytical instrument industry is currently esti mated to be generating more than $3 billion in annual revenues, it has never enjoyed high visibility among investment analysts. This lack of visi bility probably has something to do with the title of a recently published analysis of the industry by Nancy E. Pfund of Hambrecht & Quist Inc. (San Francisco, Calif.): "The Quiet Revolution: Analytical Instrumenta tion Extends Its Reach." For, despite the fact that revolutionary advances have been made in analytical instru
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mentation over the past decade, this revolution has heretofore obtained lit tle recognition on Wall Street. Investment analyses of PerkinElmer Corporation, for example, fre quently focus on the company's semi conductor chip-making equipment, despite the fact that analytical instru mentation constitutes a larger seg ment of Perkin-Elmer's gross reve nues. Recognition of the scientific in strument industry as a quintessentially high-technology enterprise has devel oped slowly, which makes increased attention to the industry by an invest-
Focus ment firm of the caliber of Hambrecht & Quist a development of some importance. The Hambrecht & Quist study presents an interesting brief on three major forces shaping contemporary demand for analytical instrumentation—environmental concerns, process control needs, and biotechnology. Environment. According to the report, about 5% of the total federal funding allocation for Superfund (the program designed to identify and clean up chemical hazards at abandoned waste sites across the country) will go toward analytical testing. As of this writing, Superfund has not yet been reauthorized by Congress, but proposals for five-year appropriations for Superfund go as high as $10 billion, which would set the analytical component at as much as $500 million. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which extends coverage to all current and future toxic waste problems, will also generate considerable revenue for analytical testing. The way in which environmental concerns can translate into demands for analytical services is exemplified by a 1985 California incident in which widespread contamination of water-
melons by the pesticide aldicarb resulted in the destruction of tons of watermelons. The aldicarb incident focused attention on the need for greater financial support of the Cali-
The Hambrecht & Quist study is the latest instance of what seems to be a growing interest among investment analysts in the analytical instrument industry. fornia Department of Food and Agriculture's analytical laboratories. This led to an increase in the annual departmental budget of $1.5 million, about half of which is being allocated to an instrumentation replacement program. According to a spokesman at
the department, this year's funding increase is supporting the purchase of eight gas chromatographs and four liquid chromatographs (plus associated detectors and accessories), to be used by departmental analytical laboratories in Berkeley, Fresno, Anaheim, and Sacramento. The purchase was in the procurement stage this past July. Additional expenditures for analytical equipment purchases have stemmed from corporate concerns about potential liability relating to inadvertent releases of toxic substances. The report explains that "the longterm trend will be toward self-monitoring, given the social and legal costs of rectifying problems once they occur. This trend will drive demand for both lab-based and real-time measuring capabilities." Process monitoring and control represents a second area of growth for analytical instrumentation. The Hambrecht & Quist report sees 25-30% annual growth for various instruments used in process monitoring and control, such as high-performance liquid chromatographs and ion chromatographs. "Corporations wanting to improve efficiency in the face of increas-
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Focus ing international competition will fine-tune their manufacturing pro cesses with analytical instrumentbased monitoring of critical com pounds," says the report. In the vanguard of developments in this area has been the Center for Pro cess Analytical Chemistry (CPAC), a cooperative academic-industrial en terprise founded by Bruce Kowalski, James Callis, and their colleagues at the University of Washington (Anal. Chem. 1984,56[1], 36 A). These re searchers recognized a trend that has already seen integrated-circuit manu facturers instituting on-line chromato graphic sampling systems to detect chip impurities and biotechnology companies installing analytical sen sors and spectrometers to monitor in put and product concentrations in fer mentation vats. Of course, recognition of the tre mendous potential of process analyti cal chemistry predates the establish ment of CPAC by many years. For ex ample, Sidney Siggia (then of Olin Mathieson, later to join the faculty at the University of Massachusetts) ex plained back in 1964 that "the signal from the analytical device can be used to activate computing and/or control
ling mechanisms so that the chemical process can be automatically kept within the desired limits In the application of analytical approaches for in-line process analysis, we have seen great advances. Almost any ana lytical tool is now available in an onstream form; i.e., infrared and ultravi olet, mass spectrometry, gas chroma tography, titration, colorimeters,... and many others" {J. Chem. Ed. 1964, 41, 329-30). However, process analyti cal chemistry has become considerably more important over the past few years as companies have had to pro duce more efficiently to compete in global markets, comply with increas ingly complex government regulations, and deal with burgeoning financial ex posures from high-award liability suits. Biotechnology is a third major area of potential growth for the analytical instrument industry, a fact exempli fied by recent events such as the ac quisition of Brownlee Labs by Applied Biosystems Inc. and the establishment of joint ventures such as Perkin-Elmer Cetus Instruments and HP Genenchem. The significance of the biotech nology-analytical chemistry interface has been frequently noted in ANAL-
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(see, for exam ple, Warren, Doris C. 1984,56[U], 1528-44 A; 1984,56[14], 1548-54 A; and Glajch, Joseph L. 1986,58[3], 385-94 A. The Hambrecht & Quist study is the latest instance of what seems to be a growing interest among investment analysts in the analytical instrument industry. (Companies such as Alex. Brown & Sons of Baltimore, Md., and L. F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin of New York City have also followed the industry closely for the past few years.) This increased visibility has been helped along by the evident suc cess of recent start-ups such as Mattson Instruments, Zymark Corporation, and Nelson Analytical, by the advent of the first newsletter ("Analytical In strument Industry Report") to cover the industry in a comprehensive fash ion, and by investment seminars spon sored by organizations such as the Sci entific Apparatus Makers Association. It is hoped that this increased atten tion to the industry by the investment community will attract more resources to analytical instrumentation develop ment and, thus, ultimately redound to the benefit of the analytical chemistry community. S.A.B. YTICAL CHEMISTRY
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