ΡΕ to purchase Photovac Perkin Elmer (Norwalk, CD and Photovac (Toronto, Canada) have signed a letter of intent for Perkin Elmer to purchase Photo vac, manufacturer of portable gas chromatographs and volatile organic com pound analyzers, for an undisclosed sum. At Pittcon '95 in New Orleans, Riccardo Pigliucci, president of Perkin Elmer, commented, "We're extremely proud of this acquisition and we think that this will signal our intent to enter the market for portable, on-site instrumentation and be the leader from day one. Photovac will act as a 'center of excellence' in small in strumentation and extend our penetration into the fast-growing business of on-site environmental monitoring of toxic gases and vapor in air, soil, and water. We in tend to leverage Photovac's advanced packaging and miniaturization expertise infield-portableinstrumentation and to broaden distribution channels for Photovac's products." Richard Leveson, president of Photo vac, adds that "Photovac's acquisition by Perkin Elmer will enable us to remain en trepreneurial in character, yet provide the essential global market support that the situation demands." With sales in ex cess of $5 million, Photovac commands a significant share of the world's $20-25 mil lion portable gas chromatograph market. The privately held company, with a staff of more than 100, was founded in 1975.
Forensic white papers sought The Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC) of the Office of National Drug Control Policy is soliciting R&D white papers on innovative forensic ap proaches for investigating criminal cases involving the manufacture, distribution, and abuse of illegal drugs. The intent of CTAC's broad agency announcement (BAA #94-02) is to identify technologies that can provide solutions to enhance the forensic capabilities of law enforcement agencies in drug cases. Projects should focus on analytical methods for the identification and quanti tation of illicit drug materials; portable in strumentation for the development of nondestructive inspection capabilities at crime scenes; DNA technology for deter mining the country of origin of plant mate rial; improvements in the speed, sensitiv ity, and selectivity of toxicological me thods used to detect drugs and their metabolites in biological tissues and flu ids; and fingerprint technology to visual ize latent prints on plastics and tapes used for drug packaging and to better under stand the spectroscopic properties of natu ralfingerprintresidues. A pamphlet pro viding additional information can be ob tained from the U.S. Army, Directorate of Contracting, P.O. Box 748, Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613-0748 (fax 602-533-5157). Deadline for submission is Aug. 31.
NOMINATIONS • 1996 EAS Awards The Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) is soliciting nominations for the 1996 awards in the fields of analytical chemistry, near-IR spectroscopy, separation sci ences, and magnetic resonance. Each award recognizes an individual who has helped to shape one of these fields. Award winners will receive an honorarium, a plaque, travel expenses, and the opportunity to present their work at the 1996 an nual meeting, which will be held Nov. 17-22 in Somerset, NJ. Nominations should consist of a discussion of the significance of the nominee's work; a list of publica tions, presentations, and awards; and a statement of his or her willingness to present an address at the meeting. Seconding letters are not required, but if submit ted, they should supplement the information in the primary nomination. All materi als should be sent to EAS Awards Committee, P.O. Box 633, Montchanin, DE 197100633, by Sept. 30. For additional information, call the EAS Hotline (302-738-6218).
FOR YOUR INFORMATION • Physics home page The NIST Physics Laboratory home page (http://physics.nist.gov) pro vides links to critically evaluated data as well as general information on research and activities. Access is provided to databases that give atomic and molecular wavelength and intensity information, energy level and transition probability data for a number of elements, and rec ommended values of fundamental physical constants. Also available are extensive bibliographies on atomic transition probabilities and lineshape parameters, references to spectroscopic data, descriptions of programs and facilities in the Phys ics Laboratory, and published arti cles of wide interest. • Chemical drawing software on the Web MDL Information Systems has made a special version of ISIS/ Draw available on the Internet World Wide Web. It allows Web browsers to use ISIS/Draw as a helper application to retrieve chemi cal information stored in MOL, TGF, or RXN formats from Web servers. Once in ISIS/Draw, scien tists can harness the inherent chemical features of these struc tures to conduct searches, register data, and communicate with other researchers. Structures stored in MOL, TGF, or RXN can be incorpo rated in Internet mail messages as MIME attachments, provided both the sender and receiver have ISIS/ Draw. The Windows software, which is free of charge for academic use and personal use at home, can be downloaded from MDL's home page (http://www.mdli.com). Ad ditional information and instruc tions are also available at this lo cation. A Macintosh version should be available soon.
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