Speculative Research

There are many crucial activities which must be completed during or in parallel to each of these phases, such as application testing, HSE studies, product registration and customer, clinical or field trials, these are discussed in greater detail in subsequent sections. If all the steps were carried out in a sequential manner, the time from start to finish would be inordinately long. This is never the case, most of the steps overlap and the big issue of the management of time in the overall project is covered in Section D, 2.3. 

Initially, the criteria used to evaluate the samples produced in the laboratory will be those based on the desired technical performance. However, if the performance criteria for a new product have been defined in their entirety, it is unlikely that any speculative sample will satisfy all of them. Therefore, it is usual to define a default set of essential properties in the target document A problem arises if the best candidate products meet all of these but misses on one or more of the important but less essential other criteria. In this case a view needs to be taken on the relative importance of the criteria that have not been achieved, and a decision made on which product, on balance, is the best. The defining questionis will this product be good enough 

If the answer to the question on the market potential of a candidate is positive, a preliminary view of the cost of its manufacture is required. This figure will in turn 

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The development of a process to make a new chemical entity is not a simple procedure and a project leader will need to be appointed, if one has not been there during the speculative research phase. Process development usually costs several times more than the expenditure on the initial product research and is not entered into lightly. The procedure adopted for process development needs thoughtful planning, if time and money are not to be wasted. The procedure, which is described here, is normally applied to novel chemical entities, but many of the aspects apply equally to the addition of a known material to a company s selling range. 

There has also been some speculative research, of importance in the study of surface HjO, which will not be considered here. This research includes (i) investigation of the possibility of the existence of kinks , or structures, in the tempo ature dependence of various physical propeTies,... 

It was quite clear that the scale of production in the William Dunn School could barely provide enough material for further clinical trials hence, Florey tried to elicit the help of drug companies. ICI, Burroughs Wellcome, Boots and a small London company, Kemball-Bishop, all showed interest but due to the exigencies of war-tom Britain, none had sufficient funds for speculative research. They were probably also worried that a chemical synthesis of penicillin would be devised once its structure had been elucidated thus, money spent on culture technology would be wasted. They were also probably worried about the patent situation. Florey had mentioned this issue to the Medical Research Council, which had provided a modest amount of research money. Apparently, the senior MRC officials were vehemently opposed to patenting on the grounds that it was unethical for medical researchers to benefit from their discoveries. The American pharmaceutical companies suffered no such qualms of conscience, and in due course the British companies had to pay royalties to their US counterparts before they could produce penicillins. 

After graduation and a spell in research at Cambridge University, John Pennington joined the Research and Development laboratories attached to a manufacturing site for bulk organic chemicals near Hull, now owned by BP Chemicals. The work primarily involved factory support and new process development, in both laboratory and pilot plant, but occasionally more speculative research. John progressed in a technical capacity, latterly as a company-wide internal consultant until (early) retirement (at the end of 1988). 

For a polyatomic, there are many questions on the role of the polyad number in energy flow from the molecule to the bath. Does polyad number conservation in the isolated molecule inlhbit energy flow to the batii Is polyad number breaking a facilitator or even a prerequisite for energy flow Finally, does the energy flow to the bath increase the polyad number breaking in the molecule One can only speculate until these questions become accessible to fiiture research. 

Depending on the product and sales arrangement, the revenues calculation can take from a few man-hours to many man-months of effort. For instance, determining the price for a synthetic fuel from coal can be done in a very short time, based on the cost of service. However, if the price is tied to the price of natural gas or oil, the task becomes very difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand, determining the sales growth and selling price for a new product requires a great deal of analysis, speculation, market research, and luck, but projections can be made. 

The committee recommends that a steady-state program of 15 research excellence awards in chemical engineering be achieved over 3 years. This new mechanism is described in Chapter 10. Because these awards are intended to fund speculative high-potential research, they will probably work best in the milieu of a small research group. Thus, the committee recommends that they be funded at about Level D. The steady-state cost of the initiative would be 1.5 million. 

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) and saxitoxin (STX) are potent sodium channel blockers that are found in phylogenetically diverse species of marine life. The wide distribution of TTX and STX has resulted in speculation that bacteria are the source of these toxins. Recently, investigators have reported isolation of marine bacteria, including Vibrio Alteromonas, Plesiomonas, and Pseudomonas species, that produce TTX and STX. This chapter details the methods and results of research to define bacterial sources of TTX and STX. 

In our study, consumption of rye bread or rye bread with phloem did not have an effect on serum lipids (total, LDL or HDL cholesterol or triglycerides) (Table 14.4). This is contrary to a recent finding suggesting that soluble fiber from rye bread decreased the concentrations of cholesterol (Leinonen et al., 2000). In that study ingestion of rye bread (220 g/d) with naturally high amounts of insoluble (18 g/d) and soluble fiber (4 g/d) decreased the LDL concentrations by 8% in hypercholesterolemic men. The researchers speculated that soluble fiber, maybe P-glucan, was responsible for the hypocholesterolemic effect. The amount of rye bread (70 g/d vs 220 g/d), the amount of total (5.9-11.8 g/d vs 22.1 g/d) and soluble fiber (0.6-1.3 g/d vs 4 g/d) ingested in this study was considerably less, and could explain the lack of effects on blood lipids in our study. 

Although the o-hydroxylation hypothesis has been given considerable support, it is clear that nitrosamines with alkyl side chains longer than methyl present additional possibilities for biological activation. It was stated earlier that even the o-hydroxylation hypothesis is based on considerable circumstantial evidence. This means that the other possible pathways are even more speculative, and hence, much more research needs to be carried out before some of the ideas advanced below will gain acceptance, or be put to rest. 

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