Overall Commercial Trends

Looking at the pattern of recent takeovers and share exchanges (see table blow), three clear trends can be identified  

Globalization. Following the key end-users (especially in automobiles, electronics, medicals, and packaging) as they set up manufacturing worldwide, to be able to deliver exactly the same formulation, anywhere. This has been a feature of many recent mergers and partnerships, and also of new investment (such as in carbon black, by Columbian). 

Redefinition of core business and identification of key sectors, to concentrate on new technology and product development. Great Lakes has identified flame retardants as a core sector and is now looking to improve its position in stabilizers DuPont, Millennium, and KerrMcgee have decided to stay in titanium dioxide, purchasing the assets of ICI and Bayer and Elf Atochem has identified hydrogen peroxides as a core business. A global position in phosphates (partly as a source for flame retardants) 

All in all, the additives business in recent years has emerged as a major global segment of value-added speciality chemistry. 

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Most of the thermodynamic studies have been performed in aqueous solutions as the cycles and their derivatives are first of all ligands for complexation of water-soluble metal ions. Numerous compounds have been studied and, therefore, only a general overview of trends is given. More information can be find in commercial databases such as NIST Standard Reference Database 46 (Critically Selected Stability Constants of Metal Complexes) or The IUPAC Stability Constants Database (SC-Database) or in reviews <2005PAC1445> (critically evaluated data for DOTA 3 and TETA 4), <1999CCR97> (protonation constants of polyamines) and <2000CCR309> (protonation constants of polyamino-polycarboxylic acids). Overall basicity of the ligands is mostly the main determinant for values of stability constants of metal complexes. 

The publication record is an appropriate measure of the overall impact of software in both business and nonbusiness environments. Pharmaceutical, chemical, agrochemical, and biotechnology companies have been among the prime purchasers of commercial software. Academicians use these same software packages, which they usually can acquire relatively inexpensively. Although scientists in industry do not experience the same pressure to publish as academicians and therefore tend not to publish the same quantity of papers, many of the leading computational chemists in industry do publish as extensively as their academic counterparts. Thus the scientific literature gives a reasonable measure of the frequency with which software played a role in publications. Comparisons can be made based trends in those frequencies. 

Based on available product brochure information of commercial membranes and the literature data of developmental membranes. Table 5.5 provides some indication of the various mechanical properties of a few inorganic membrane elements. It should not be used for serious comparison as the testing conditions are usually not given or sketchy at best. In addition, the mechanical properties of a membrane element depend, to a great extent, on its shape, membrane thickness, porosity and pore size. While overall the majority of the data appears to be consistent, there is some strength data that seems to be off the trend line. 

This trend became increasingly demanding towards the turn of the century and culminated in the first decade of the 2F century. Commercials that celebrate the coolness of greed have transferred this fixation on low price onto overall consumer attitude. However, the balance should not be lost here. As far as flavours are concerned, it should be kept in mind that as a percentage of the total product costs, flavour costs are usually rather low and it is often solely its flavour that accounts for victory or defeat of a product in the market place [17]. 

Parallel to the rise in commercial LIMS, the processing speed of third-party software capabilities increased and laboratories switched more and more to small workstations and personal computers, and the LIMS environment had to follow this trend. During the 1990s, the term LIMS became universally recognized, and more and more standard solutions from commercial software vendors became available. The systems were refined to combine the individual transfer of laboratory test data into the transfer and consolidation of the results to provide laboratory managers an overall view of the laboratory and a platform to assist them in running the laboratory. 

Overall, AEC is a well-developed separation technique which is widely applied for organic acid analysis. Some of the current trends include the implementation of eluent generators " development of and increased accessibility to ion chromatograph/MS systems which are now commercially available " miniamrization of complete ion chromatographic systems and the development of monolithic columns which have been used for fast analysis of inorganic... 

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