Analysts attention

It might seem counterintuitive, but the returns achieved by buyout firms depend crucially on public markets (e.g., Wright, M. Robbie, K. Gompers, P. Lerner, J. Clow, R. Smith, P.). Weak capital markets and the decline in valuations have made it extremely difficult to use IPOs as an exit channel. Structural impediments have also arisen. For example, an organization needs to be much larger now before it attracts analyst attention. This means that only businesses with financial critical mass are likely to have any chance of floating in Europe. The situation is different in North America where the market for mid-caps has remained popular, keeping the threshold for public businesses considerably lower. 

Since upper management talks money, these kinds of potential savings will get their attention. Wall Street talks about compaiy performance based on the profit of the compaity and dividends paid to shareholders. A change as dramatic as shown in Table 6.1 will get the analysts attention as well. 

SFC is now one of the fastest growing analytical techniques. The first paper on the technique was by Klesper and co-workers [64], but SFC did not catch analysts attention until Novotny and co-workers [65] published the first paper on capillary SFC. 

Analysts must recognize that the end use as well as the uncertainty determines the value of measurements. While the operators may pay the most attention to one set of measurements in making their decisions, another set may be the proper focus for model development and parameter estimation. The predilec tion is to focus on those measurements that the operators Believe in or that the designers/con-trollers originally believed in. While these may not be misleading, they are usually not optimal, and analysts must consciously expand their vision to include others. 

Inhibited THF is problematic for semipreparative separations. Because small quantities of polymer are being collected along with larger volumes of solvent, more inhibitor, usually butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), than sample is often collected in each fraction. Thus, one must carefully consider if the BHT will cause a problem in the subsequent analysis of the isolated fractions. If it does, uninhibited THF or other alternate solvents should be used. It must be remember that if uninhibited THF is used, the analyst must pay careful attention to the inevitable peroxide formation in the solvent/fractions. 

It is necessary to draw attention to the variable pH of water which may be encountered in quantitative analysis. Water in equilibrium with the normal atmosphere which contains 0.03 per cent by volume of carbon dioxide has a pH of about 5.7 very carefully prepared conductivity water has a pH close to 7 water saturated with carbon dioxide under a pressure of one atmosphere has a pH of about 3.7 at 25 °C. The analyst may therefore be dealing, according to the conditions that prevail in the laboratory, with water having a pH between the two extremes pH 3.7 and pH 7. Hence for indicators which show their alkaline colours at pH values above 4.5, the effect of carbon dioxide introduced during a titration, either from the atmosphere or from the titrating solutions, must be seriously considered. This subject is discussed again later (Section 10.12). 

Theoretically IQC should be the front-line approach to quality. If a method has been adequately validated and shown to meet the requirements of the user and kept in analytical control with IQC to detect intrusion of bias or imprecision, then the EQA needs to provide the occasional, independent, objective reassurance. In practice however, the EQA is likely to play an equal role with IQC, both in confirming problems brought to the attention of the analyst by the IQC and in stimulating further action. 

Evaporative LC-FTIR is rapidly gaining industrial acceptance as a useful tool in low-MW additive analysis. HPLC has also been coupled with various element-selective detectors. There is significant demand for speciation information for many elements, and the separation ability of chromatography coupled to ICP-MS offers the analyst a versatile tool for such studies. It is apparent that ICP-MS is increasingly being employed for chromatographic detection. Several modes of GC, SFC, LC and CE have been hyphenated with ICP-MS for improved detection limits compared to other traditional methods of detection such as UV-VIS spectroscopy. Inorganic speciation deserves more attention. 

To date, insufficient attention has been given to the analysis of sediments and one of the objects of this book is to draw the attention of analysts and others concerned to the methods available and their sensitivity and limitations. 

These comments were made near the end of a talk at a meeting of the Society of Public Analysts, a group composed principally of analytical chemists and medical doctors. During the discussion which followed, almost no reference was made to Hopkins new ideas and remarks, in itself a measure of the newness of such ideas along with the inability or ignorance or lack of attention paid to such comments by the group in attendance. 

An important aspect of our AI application is the attention paid to including well-established Fortran programs and database search methods into the decision structure of an expert system network. Only certain AI software tools (such as TIMM) effectively handle this critical aspect for the analytical instrumentation field at this time (57-60)> The ability to combine symbolic and numeric processing appears to be a major factor in development of multilevel expert systems for practical instrumentation use. Therefore, the expert systems in the EXMAT linked network access factor values and the decisions from EXMATH, an expert system with chemometric/Fortran routines which are appropriate to the nature of the instrumental data and the information needed by the analyst. Pattern recognition and correlation methods are basic capabilities in this field. 

Taylor et al. [20] have paid considerable attention to the changing role of management, particularly with regard to the introduction of robotic systems. Management has the responsibihty to define the best areas for automation in terms of cost-effectiveness and probabihty of success. Without adequate resources, a project will fail. Laboratory managers must act as the interface between senior management and analysts to ensure that the appropriate incentives, resources and education are made available. 

The century-long focus of theoretical attention on affinity led much of the analytical chemistry at the end of the eighteenth century to interpret these quantitative data as measures of affinity, as we have illustrated with Richard Kirwans work. But the lack of systematic analytical techniques and general rules of quantitative analysis left every analyst vulnerable to challenge by others with different results. 

In the design of a study and the selection of an analytical method, it is very important that adequate attention be paid to the extent of validation and field applicability of a particular method. Not all of the methods have been validated to the same extent. It is the analyst s responsibility to determine the data quality needed before initiating the application of a particular method. 

The total number of peaks annotated per sample showed a highly significant correlation with performance, p = 0.002, r= 0.62 this reflects the degree of attention to detail shown by the analyst [1]. 

Above all, it is worth remembering that if insufficient attention is paid to sample preparation then the validity of an analysis will be seriously undermined [20] no matter how sophisticated the measurement instrument is, whether it be a mass spectrometer or sensor. Comments on, and reviews of modem methods of sample preparation such as those of Jinno [21] and Pawliszyn [22,23] are essential reading whether one is a developer of sensors or an instrumental analyst. 

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