News of the Week

GROWTH OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT SLOWING Pace of U.S. chemical investment abroad cools somewhat, but so does foreign

$ Millions

U.S. DIRECT All areas

Petroleum

Chemicals

Europe Petroleum

Chemicals

Canada Petroleum

Chemicals

Latin America Petroleum

Chemicals

investment here

Cumulative investment at year's end

1980

INVESTMENT $213,468

46,920

19,044

95,686

19,924

9,695

44,640

10,573 3,382

38,275 4,336

3,586

FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN

Total

Petroleum

Chemicals

65,483

12,253

7,859

1979

ABROAD $186,760

38,744

16,878

82,622

17,755

8,646

40,243 8,648

2,966

35,056

3,948 3,081

U.S. 54,462

9,906

7,212

Outflow3

1980

$1548 - 2 7 5 7

1924

4962 - 1 0 1

1005

370 518

416

- 6 9 1

96

464

4664

- 3 2 4

464

1979

$4984 3120

2873

1225 523

1879

1035 156

402

270

58

295

7921

- 4 9 9

730

Reinvested earnings'3

1980

$16,998 4,553

1,856 7,821

2,251

1,002

3,490 1,389

305

3,347

288

370

6,190 2,671

183

1979 I

$18,964 5,414

2,083

10,627 2,884

1,338

3,003 1,052

289

2,924

788

224

3,955 1,645

380

a Equity and intercompany accounts from country in which parent company is headquartered, b For corporate affiliates. Note: Negative number means net inflow to U.S. for U.S. investment abroad and to foreign country in foreign investment in U.S.

The recession last year in the U.S. and abroad took its toll on both in­vestment by U.S. chemical firms overseas and foreign investment in U.S. chemicals. Both were up, but not nearly so much as they had been in 1979, according to statistics published by the Commerce Department.

According to a Commerce Depart­ment spokesman, U.S. chemical in­vestment abroad at the end of 1980 amounted to $19.0 billion, a 12.8% increase from year-end 1979, which had been up 18.5% from 1978.

Again, the biggest investment was in Europe at $9.7 billion. However, Europe, with a 12.1% increase in in­vestment, was not the biggest gainer. Latin American investment at the end of the year was $3.6 billion, up 16.4% from 1979. Canada also was growing faster than Europe in terms of U.S. chemical investment. Invest­ment of U.S. companies in Canadian chemicals at year's end totaled $3.4 billion, an increase of 14.0% over year-end 1979.

While investment abroad in chemicals was increasing 12.8% last year, foreign companies' investment in U.S. chemicals was increasing only 9.8%. Foreign investment in U.S. chemicals at the close of 1980 totaled $7.9 billion, compared with $7.2 bil­lion at year-end 1979. This rate of increase is less than half the 18.3% increase from 1978 to 1979.

Net direct investment outflows from the U.S. for chemical invest­ment exceeded the net direct invest­ment inflow into the U.S. by foreign companies by more than four to one last year.

Outflows from the U.S. for direct chemical investment were $1.9 billion last year, compared with inflows into the U.S. by foreign companies of just $464 million. However, in spite of the big lead over inflows from foreign firms, outflows by U.S. investors were down 33.0% in 1980 from almost $2.9 billion in 1979. Outflows in 1980 were larger in only two areas—Latin America and Canada—than they had been in 1979. U.S. firms sent $464 million to Latin America for chemical investment last year, a 57.2% increase over outflows to that area in 1979. Outflows from the U.S. to Canada rose 3.5% to $416 million from $402 million in 1979.

By contrast, outflows to Europe

last year were a little more than $1 billion, a 46.5% drop from outflows of almost $1.9 billion the year before.

Inflows from foreign sources to U.S. chemicals last year were $464 million, down 36.4% from 1979. Inasmuch as European companies are the largest foreign investors in U.S. chemicals, the sluggish European economy un­doubtedly played a part in the lower rate of investment last year.

Reinvested earnings at U.S. firms' foreign chemical operations generally followed the pattern set by outflows. Reinvested earnings abroad in 1980

Company funds universe Mallinckrodt Inc. and Washington University, both in St. Louis, have entered an agreement whereby the company will support research into hybridoma technology. Calling this the "largest single university-industry agreement" to support such research in the U.S., the two parties an­nounced that the company will pro­vide more than $3.88 million to the university during the next three years.

The research arm of the program

fell 10.9% to almost $1.9 billion from the previous year. Once again, Europe was the loser with a 25% decline to $1.0 billion from 1979. Canada and Latin America again gained. Rein­vested earnings in Canada were up 5.5% over 1979 to $305 million. And in Latin America, reinvested earnings increased a whopping 64.2% to $370 million from the year before.

Reinvested earnings by foreign companies in U.S. chemical opera­tions dropped sharply last year. Reinvested earnings were just $183 million, down 51.8% from 1979. D

hybridoma research will be guided by Joseph Davie, who is head of the department of micro­biology and immunology in the uni­versity's school of medicine. Members of other departments, including pa­thology and internal medicine, also will be part of this joint venture.

According to the agreement, Washington University scientists will remain free to publish their research findings in the scientific literature and they also will be allowed to ex­change materials, such as cell lines,

8 C&EN Sept. 7, 1981

with their peers. Meanwhile, Mal-linckrodt retains the option to license developments that come out of the sponsored research, and the company will pay a royalty to the university from resulting revenues.

Hybridoma research represents another aspect, besides recombinant DNA research, of the current boom in biotechnology. Hybridoma research involves the fusion of mammalian cells, which are grown in large quan­tities to produce useful materials such as antibodies. The most advanced hybridoma work so far, and the work that already has begun to realize some of its commercial potential, consists of monoclonal antibody production.

Monoclonal antibodies derive from fused cells that can produce virtually limitless quantities of a single type of antibody molecule. Such antibodies

can be used for a variety of purposes, but their major early commercial use is and will be in diagnostic kits for clinical and veterinary tests. Mono­clonal antibodies also are being test­ed, so far in very limited fashion only, as vehicles for delivering drugs to specific tissues to treat diseases there.

The new agreement is described by Mallinckrodt as a "logical extension of its plans for growth in the field of health care and particularly diag­nostic medicine. On a long-term basis, the research will have application in the company's present business in both clinical and imaging diagnos-tics." The agreement also will help put the company into a position to compete directly with the group of new companies set up during the past few years expressly for exploiting hybridoma technology. D

Mary Good elected IUPAC division president U.S. chemist Mary L. Good has been elected president of the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry's inorganic chemistry division. The voting took place last week during IUPAC's general assembly, held in Leuven, Belgium.

Late last year, Good was appointed vice president and director of re­search at UOP Inc., Des Plaines, 111., where she manages all centralized research activity for the corporation. Prior to that she had been Boyd Professor of material science in the division of engineering research at Louisiana State University. Her many activities in the American Chemical Society include chairing the board of directors in 1978.

During her four-year term of office, she will be responsible for overseeing the inorganic chemistry division and the work of its three commissions. The oldest of these is the commission on nomenclature of inorganic chem­istry, now in its 60th year. The others are the commission on atomic weights and isotopic abundances, set up in its present form in 1979, and the com­mission on high temperatures and refractory materials established in 1951.

'One of the most important tasks is to rewrite the old IUPAC inorganic chemistry nomenclature book, the so-called 'Red Book,' " Good notes. "It will bring all the inorganic no­menclature up to date in one volume. We should move it as quickly as it can be done accurately." The task already is in hand. Good hopes it will be fin­ished in two years.

In the area of high temperatures and refractories, Good would like to expand the definition to embrace the broader one of solid-state and high-temperature metals. "We now are doing some very nice work on high-temperature thermodynamics and thermochemistry," she observes. "I would like to go on to the complex metal oxides with their catalyst im­plications."

For Good, as well as IUPAC, the election was a first. She is the first woman to be elevated to such a rank in that essentially all-male organiza­tion. Good already holds the distinc­tion of being the first woman to head the ACS Board of Directors. D

Good: move quickly and accurately

Lab prepares for powerful new laser The old began to give way to the new last week in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's laser fusion program. Workers at the California lab began dismantling the lab's five-year-old Argus fusion laser, in prep­aration for replacing it with the first two beams of the much more power­ful Nova laser.

The Argus laser was the third in a sequence of powerfully pulsed neo-dymium/glass lasers at LLNL. It was rated at 2000 joules and 2 to 5 trillion watts.

The two Nova beams are called Novette and will be able to deliver 20,000 joules of infrared light (or 15,000 joules of green light) in a pulse of 3 billionths of a second. In pulses shorter than a billionth of a second, Novette has a power rating of up to 20 trillion watts. LLNL's currently most powerful fusion laser is the 20-arm Shiva, fourth in the series of lasers, rated at 15,000 joules and 26 trillion watts.

Novette is scheduled to be opera­tional in late 1982. The full Nova system is scheduled to begin experi­ments in 1985. The system will be housed in the building (along with an adjoining new building) that now contains Shiva, which will be de­commissioned in early 1982.

"Using Novette," says Nova project manager Bob Godwin, "we can verify the engineering design and perfor­mance of the Nova components, while continuing to perform useful fusion experiments."

The full Nova system will be rated at 200,000 to 300,000 joules and 200 to 300 trillion watts, depending on the color of the light. Low-energy exper­iments at 200 joules have indicated that shorter wavelength light is more effective than infrared in compressing and heating the fusion fuel in the targets. The infrared light of Novette will be convertible for experiments into shorter wavelength green or ul­traviolet light by placing special crystals at the end of each of the two arms.

The idea behind laser fusion is to heat the outside of a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet with extremely powerful pulses of energy, causing the surface to explode outward. The re­sulting opposite reaction drives the remaining target mass inward, com­pressing and heating the fuel, while inertia confines the fuel long enough for ignition and rapid thermonuclear burn. D

Sept. 7, 1981 C&EN 9