cause the division has always been managed as an operationally and legally separate unit The division's current chief executive, Jtirg Witmer, 51, will hold the same post in the new company. Its nonexecutive chairman will be Henri B. Meier, 63, Roche's chief financial officer, who will continue in that post as well. And the new company will continue to be based at the division's current headquarters in the Geneva suburb of Vernier. Roche entered the flavors and fragrances business in the early 1960s with the acquisition of Swiss-based Givaudan and France's Roure Bertrand. Over the years, Roche has expanded the business with a succession of acquisitions. Sales of Roche's flavors and fragrances unit in 1998 were about $1.27 billion, and its operating profits were $168 million, or 13% of sales. In the first half of 1999, Roche says, the division's operating profit margin increased to 17%. Depending upon who does the estimating, Givaudan's sales level is roughly neck-and-neck with New York Citybased International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), the only one of the top five suppliers in the flavors and fragrances business currently traded on a public stock exchange. Givaudan and IFF each have just under 17% of the worldwide flavors and fragrances market. They are followed by Quest, owned by Britain's ICI, with a 13% market share; family-owned Firmenich of Switzerland, which has just over 11%; and Haarmann & Reimer, a subsidiary of Germany's Bayer, which has 10%. Shares in Givaudan will be distributed as a special dividend to holders of Roche shares and nonvoting equity securities at the rate of one Givaudan registered share for each Roche share held. Patricia Layman
Pickings are slim for former Soviet weapons scientists International programs to support former Soviet weapons scientists have favored nuclear and missile scientists at the expense of chemists and biologists. In a just-released report, Amy E. Smithson of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based national security research group, quantifies the bias. The collapse of the U.S.S.R has left tens of thousands of nuclear, biological, and
chemical weapons scientists in over 60 re- who worked on weapons for the former search institutes destitute. Russia has been Soviet Union, the U.S. estimates that unable to pay their salaries or support their roughly 10,500 have critical chemical and research. So leading Western nations, fear- biological weapons expertise that is of ing a "brain drain" and the spread of weap- special concern for potential weapons proons of mass destruction to rogue states and liferation. Of these, 3,500 specialize in terrorists, have set up grant assistance chemical weapons and 7,000 in biological programs. weapons. The comparable | number for nuclear weapIn the study 'Toxic Ari§ ons scientists is 2,000. chipelago: Preventing g Yet on an annual averProliferation from the £ age, the four research asFormer Soviet Chemical | sistance programs have & Biological Weapons °" provided only $8.4 milComplexes," Smithson lion in chemistry and bifinds that from 1994 to ology grants. The report 1998 four research grant recommends at least a programs have contributdoubling of the funding ed $310.3 million to supfor collaborative biologport 1,733 collaborative ical research projects projects. Only $26 million and, at a minimum, a triwent to 178 biotechnolopling of funds for collabogy research projects and rative chemistry grants. even less—$11.3 mil- Smithson Smithson says that if the lion—funded 69 chemistry grants. "Unfortunately, chemical U.S. alone were to pay for the increases, weapons proliferation matters are always the higher level of chemistry funding near the bottom of the priority list," would amount to 0.0023% of the Pentagon's $267 billion fiscal 2000 budget, Smithson tells C&EN. The U.S.S.R produced at least 40,000 and the biological projects 0.0046%. tons of chemical weapons, including a new "If Washington is serious about fightgeneration of nerve agents. It made thou- ing the proliferation of chemical and biosands of tons of anthrax, smallpox, and logical weapons, it will provide sufficient plague; developed genetically modified resources to enable brain-drain prevenstrains of anthrax and plague; and ex- tion funding to reach this large communiplored disease combinations (chimeras). ty of weaponeers," Smithson says. Of the tens of thousands of scientists Lois Ember
New ACS journal to high ght nanotechnology The world of nanotechnology will soon gain another outlet for its research papers. In January 2001, the American Chemical Society will begin publishing a journal whose working title is Nano Letters. The society has formed a search committee to recruit an editor. Nano Letters will concentrate on rapid communication of short papers that present preliminary research results. The journal will initially be published monthly and later will shift to a biweekly schedule. Topics will include physical, chemical, and biological phenomena, processes, and applications for materials and devices within the nanoscale size range. Nanotechnology intersects a variety of scientific spheres, with applications ranging from electronics and optics to biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. The volume of literature is growing accordingly, doubling in less than two years, according to Elisabeth M. C. Lu-
tanie, manager of new product development for ACS's Publications Division. This expansion has attracted other publishers, including Kluwer Academic Publishers, which began the quarterly Journal ofNanoparticle Research in July. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Physical Society (APS) have announced plans to launch the weekly Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology in January 2000. This online product will consist of electronic links to nanotech articles appearing in participating source journals. Other more broadly focused journals that carry related papers include WileyVCH's Advanced Materials, AIP's weekly Applied Physics Letters, and APS's weekly Physical Review Letters. Despite all this activity, "there is no publication on the market that allows true cross-fertilization of knowledge among scientists from the various disciDECEMBER13,1999 C&EN
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