furfural and 65% of 27 cents per lb for phenol, such an operation would return 30% profit before taxes. In mid1976, he notes, ethanol was going for $1.15 to $1.19 per gal and furfural for 47 cents per lb. Further, Goldstein points out, a plant processing 3000 tons per day could return 30% profit at an ethanol selling price of only 68 cents per gal. Despite the encouraging economics, however, Goldstein sees a number of tough institutional and other obstructions in the way of a chemicalsfrom-wood industry. Plant investment is high, for example, and with profitability based ultimately on arbitrary petroleum prices, uncertainty is high. Moreover, the chemical industry isn't accustomed to collecting a solid raw material over a several thousand square mile area. Nor are the forest products industries, which regularly do this and more, comfortable with the idea of producing chemicals. D
Science advice office is off and running Judging by a progress report on the new White House Office of Science & Technology Policy presented by director H. Guyford Stever to the Committee of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) last week, the new office is off and running and deeply involved in matters such as the fiscal 1978 federal budget for research and development. Dr. Stever indicated at CSSP's annual meeting at ACS headquarters in Washington, D.C., that President Ford and top staff have welcomed the office and that it is physically well established. Two of three assistant director slots have been filled by former National Science Foundation personnel. Philip Smith is the assistant director for natural resources and commercial services. And Dr. Russell C. Drew is the assistant director for national security. The slot of assistant director for human resources has not been filled. Two senior consultants have been named: Dr. William Nierenberg, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Dr. Donald Kennedy, professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. Other members of the initial OSTP core staff are on loan from various federal agencies. Legislation setting up OSTP called for the creation of two committees. One is a Presidential committee on science and technology, which is to survey, examine, and analyze the overall context of the federal science, engineering, and technology effort.
Stever: physically well established
Dr. Simon Ramo is chairman of the committee and Dr. William O. Baker is vice chairman. Stever says he expects the Carter Administration to fill the remaining four vacancies on the committee. The other committee is an Intergovernmental Advisory Panel, which is to give special attention to technology transfer questions and state and local government relationships. Names of those appointed are to be made public this week. Asked whether a council of advisers or a single science adviser is the better way to get advice at the White House, Stever replied that either will work and that both should be tried. He says that he has no knowledge of what the incoming Carter Administration will do. Nor has he had any contact with Carter's transition team. Stever says the nation's science and technology community faces a "major educational problem" with the new Congress in that there will be many new members of both House and Senate who will need enlightenment on science and technology issues. He adds that if a pending reorganization of the Senate committee structure goes through he hopes that science and technology will have "complete visibility" in the Senate. D
Pheromone isolated from citrus pests The sex pheromone of an insect that attacks citrus fruit in California and in other parts of the world has been identified by researchers from Cornell University. The pheromone is the first sex attractant of the Homopteran insect species yet identified, and the chemists believe that it may be useful in controlling the destructive pests. The sex pheromone belongs to the California red scale, Aonidiella aurantii, an insect that does extensive
damage to California citrus trees by infesting leaves, fruit, and twigs. The insect also attacks citrus trees in Egypt, Israel, and other Mediterranean countries. The pheromone has two major components, (Z)-3methyl-6-isopropenyl-3,9-decadien1-yl acetate and 3-methyl-6-isopropenyl-9-decen-l-yl acetate. The first compound has one asymmetric center and the second has two asymmetric centers. Both compounds are independently active, and the one enantiomer of the first compound, synthesized by chemists at Zoecon Corp., Palo Alto, Calif., is as attractive to the insects as the natural compound. Previously, pest control operators obtained the red scale pheromone by raising virgin female insects on lemons, and then used them to bait traps. Since a synthetic pheromone would simplify things greatly, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratories in Riverside, Calif., began working on the project several years ago. Subsequently, scientists at the New York State Agricultural Research Station in Geneva, N.Y., a part of Cornell University, were able to isolate and purify the two major components of the red scale pheromone. Chemists at Zoecon, who have been actively working with pheromones for years, then synthesized the enantiomer. •
Stanford starts up new higher-intensity x-ray Analytical chemists and others began experiments last week using a new higher-intensity tunable x-ray at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California. The new synchrotron radiation beam has about 50 times the photon flux and about 250 times higher flux density than earlier x-ray beams from synchrotron sources. This increased brightness means that samples to be x-rayed can be smaller and more dilute. In particular, it may mean that many biologically important molecules now can be examined at their physiological concentrations, bypassing possible changes in structure that occur when these molecules are concentrated. The new beam combines improvements in both focusing and wave length selection, explains project director Herman Winick. Depending on operating conditions of SLAC's SPEAR storage ring, which provides the synchrotron radiation, about 10 11 photons per second will be available in a 2- to 4-sq-mm spot size with about a 5-eV energy spread from any selected energy value from 3.5 to 10 Dec. 6, 1976 C&EN
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keV. This concentration makes the x-ray beam the brightest ever achieved, so bright that the beam it self is visible as a pale blue helium fluorescence before it enters the monochromator. Synchrotron radiation has the im portant advantage over conventional x-ray sources of providing a continu ous spectrum through much of the x-ray region. In the six years of its active development, it has been ex ploited by analytical chemists par ticularly for its ability to determine the local environment surrounding heavy metal atoms in complex mole cules or alloys, for x-ray diffraction at previously unobtainable wave lengths, and for trace element deter mination by fluorescence analysis. The new high-intensity beam is expected to decrease by one or two orders of magnitude the concentra tion of heavy metal atoms needed to study the local atomic environment ill a technique called extended x-ray absorption fine structure analysis (EXAFS). This will bring sensitivity to one metal atom for every 106 or 107 other atoms in a sample, a ratio found in many important enzyme and pro tein molecules. And the new beam can focus on a crystal as small as 50 micrometers, a much easier size to grow than the larger crystals needed up to now. D
Commission formed to collect data on drugs A new commission charged with de vising a nationwide reporting system for adverse reactions to prescription drugs and current trends in drug prescribing was announced on Capi tol Hill last week at a press confer ence, sponsored jointly by Sen. Ed ward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers As sociation. The 18-member Joint Commission on Prescription Drug Use is neither a government nor an industry organi zation. The majority of its members are physicians, pharmacologists, and lawyers. Others are associated with universities and some with state or local government agencies or industry groups. Three public members have been appointed to represent the consumers of drugs. Commission members were picked by Kennedy; Dr. Theodore Cooper, assistant sec retary for health of the Department of Health, Education & Welfare; and Dr. David A. Hamburg, president of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. The commission will have three years in which to complete its job and 6
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Velsicol Chemical's Bayport, Tex., plant during the years—1971 through 1975—that the company produced leptophos. Leptophos, an organophosphate insecticide [0-(4-bromo-2,5-dichlorophenyl) - Ο -methyl phenylphosphonothioate], has been used only experimentally in the U.S. but has been sold under the tradename Phosvel to Egypt for use in cotton fields and to other countries. Last January, Gunter Zweig, chief of the chemistry branch at the Envi ronmental Protection Agency's cri teria and evaluation division, sent a memo to a staff member at NIOSH, alerting him to the dangers of lepto Kennedy: important national experimentphos. In the memo, Zweig cited EPA studies and literature data that indi will hire its own staff and select its cated that leptophos can cause dis own chairman. To ensure its inde orders of the central nervous system. pendence its annual funding of about NIOSH officials immediately went to $250,000 will come from a trust fund Bayport to survey the plant and in set up by PMA. The funds cannot be terview employees. They were told by withdrawn for any reason and the company officials that Velsicol had commission may petition for addi just terminated production of lepto tional funds if required. phos because of a surplus of invento According to PMA, it is sponsoring ry· the new commission because of a NIOSH requested complete med challenge issued by Kennedy in a ical records of all employees—in speech to PMA last May, when he cluding those that had left—who were called on the industry to use its re working at the plant in the five years sources to initiate a drug data col that Velsicol manufactured lepto lecting mechanism. Kennedy points phos. Following months of corre out that up until now the regulation spondence, NIOSH says that it finally of prescription drugs has focused al got some limited information. It finds most exclusively on the premarketing that six employees are suffering ner phase. Once a drug is marketed, he vous disorders—three from enceph says, a physician may use a drug in alitis, two from multiple sclerosis, and any dosage for any purpose—whether one from permanent disability due to or not that purpose has been evalu spastic paralysis of the lower ex ated scientifically. tremities. What the institute didn't The Food & Drug Administration get was information on how many does have a voluntary adverse drug employees were examined by the reaction reporting system. But Ken company doctor during those five nedy says two years of hearings by his years and how many employees are Senate Subcommittee on Health has suspected of suffering nervous dis shown that very little detailed infor orders. Velsicol, the only company to have mation is available on the postmark eting use of drugs. " We simply don't made leptophos, says it first became know," he says, "how different kinds aware in 1975 of "the serious occu of doctors use different categories of pational health problem" associated drugs and we don't know the true in with the compound. At that time, cidence of adverse reactions." The according to a company spokesman, commission "must be viewed as an "we retained independent medical important national experiment." D experts to review the health of our employees." Since that time, he says, there have been no additional inci dents. He adds that the firm has "re Insecticide blamed ported fully" on the situation to ap propriate government agencies, and for nervous disorders that it is cooperating with them in A casual memo from one chemist to reviewing the matter. Velsicol had applied to EPA for another has led to the discovery of cases of pesticide poisoning reminis tolerances for the insecticide's use on cent of those in the Kepone incident lettuce and tomatoes, and had re a year ago. Officials of the National ceived a preliminary denial. It ap Institute for Occupational Safety & pealed this denial but later withdrew Health now are actively following up its appeal. EPA had terminated the on the health histories of more than experimental use permit three weeks 100 employees who had worked at ago. D
