- Email: [email protected]
Tswett Chromatography Medals 1986
trendsin analyticalchemistry, vol. 5, no. 9, I986
VIII More than 200 industries, universities, and research laboratories have called NBS requesting help with specific applications of microwave techniques. Chemists are typically advised of container pressure limits and equipment configurations to prevent uncontrolled venting of superheated acids. The method of predicting temperature from microwave power has eliminated the need to guess about actual operating conditions. Though requests for quick advice are common, some groups have established more formal, longer-term relationships with NBS to study microwave dissolution. Some examples: l Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is investigating the effectiveness of microwaves in breaking down biological samples such as buffalo and
l
l
human bone tissue. Scientists there have sought help at NBS in researching the elemental composition of bone tissue for anthropological studies of animal and human behavior. Hints about the origins of early earth crust are the goals of scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (DC), who are using microwave techniques to prepare samples of rocks older than 2500 million years for isotopic analysis. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company scientists plan to use remotely controlled microwave equipment to dissolve and analyze radioactive sludge samples at the Defense Waste Processing Facility under construction at the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, SC, U.S.A. Du Pont oper-
ates the plant for the Department of Energy. Kingston and Jassie now are finetuning the techniques even further. For example, they are experimenting with a novel fiber-optic temperaturesensing system to monitor temperature more accurately and efficiently than the thermocouples they have been using. Also, they hope to improve the valve apparatus for the Teflon vessels, and to test ways to automate the dissolution process. Industries, universities, or government agencies interested in learning more about the NBS/CEM research should contact Dr. Howard M. Kingston or Lois B. Jassie, A353 Chemistry Building, National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, U.S.A. Telephone: (301) 921-3674.
Tswett Chromatography Medals 1986 The M.S. Tswett Chromatography Medal was awarded in 1974 for the first time. It is intended as public recognition of important achievements and research in the field of chromatography. This year five medals have been awarded to C. A. Cramers, B. L. Karger, E. Bayer, S. Hara and H. Miyazaki .
C. A. Cramers
Carolus Alfonsus Cramers was born on September 4, 1935, in Breda, The Netherlands. After studying at the College of Chemical Engi-
neering in Heerlen, he entered Eindhoven University of Technology where he received an M.S. in chemical engineering in 1963, and a technical doctorate in 1967. After graduation he spent one year at the University of California in Los Angeles. Returning to Eindhoven as an assistant professor, he was appointed an associate professor in analytical chemistry in 1974, and a full professor in 1978. Dr. Cramers is the author and coauthor of over 100 scientific and technical publications. Under his direction eleven Ph.D. theses have been prepared at Eindhoven University of Technology. Dr. Cramers became involved in chromatography in graduate school, under the late professor A. I. M. Keulemans. His doctorate thesis was entitled ‘Some problems encountered in high-resolution gas chromatography’ and reported on the effect of sample introduction on capillary column performance, on the development of novel inlet systems, and on studies on pyrolysis-gas chromatography with special respect to the identification of unknown compounds by this technique. He has
been active in chromatography ever since; his major fields of interest are open-tubular (capillary) columns particularly columns with small diametersoptimization of the analytical conditions, and high-speed chromatography, micro-packed columns, pyrolysis-gas chromatography of hydrocarbons, and the combined use of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
B.A. Karger
Barry Lloyd Karger was born on April 2, 1939, in Boston, MA, U.S.A. He graduated in 1960 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a B.S. degree in (Continued
onp. X)
A Computer Program for Improving the Performance of Common Laboratory Instruments> Authors: S.N. Deming and S.L. Morgan adjust as many as ten continuous variables simultaneously based on the sequential simplex method of optimization available for the Apple II series and IBM-PC clear, fully descriptive manual with tutorial full source code listings easy to use us $205.00
AVAILABLE
FROM
Elsevier Scientific Software (JIG) 52 Vanderbilt Avenue New York, NY 10017 USA Phone: (212) 916 1250 Telex: 420643 or Elsevier Scientific Software P.O. Box 330 1000 AH Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS Phone: (020) 5862 828 Telex: 18582 “The program was extremely easy to use. . .” (G.M. Hieftje in TrAC) I, . . . the package can be recommended for its full documentation and ease of use. . .” (The Analyst) ‘I . . . this “no frills”software package could be easily successfully used by anyone with a desire for instrumentation optimization.“(J.A. Holcombe in the Journal of American Chemical Society) “The package constitutes a very competent microcomputer implementation of simplex optimization algorithm. . . “(E.L. Short in Chemistry and Industry)
No shipping charge if paid in advance
Write to us for further Apple is a r istered trademark of Apple Co“8, puter, Inc. IBM-PC is a registered trademark
of IBM.
X chemistry, and.in 1963 from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry. He joined Northeastern University of Boston in 1963 as an assistant professor and rose to the rank of professor in 1972. In 1985 he was appointed to the James L. Waters Chair in analytical chemistry. In 1973 Dr. Karger was a founder of the Institute of Chemical Analysis at Northeastern University which, in 1983, was renamed the Barnett Institute of Chemical Analysis and Materials Science. Dr. Karger has been the director of the Institute since its inception. Today, this Institute consists of a large number of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and senior staff, with research activities in a broad range of chromatographic areas. Dr. Karger is the author and coauthor of over 140 publications. At Northeastern University, approximately 50 graduate students have obtained Ph.D.‘s under his direction. Dr. Karger has been a pioneer in modern high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). He has been active over his career with manipulating chemical equilibria in both the mobile and stationary phases to achieve selectivity optimization. He was the first to show that chiral species can be separated by reversedphase liquid chromatography, using chiral additives to the mobile phase. Currently, his focus is on the application of HPLC to the biological sciences, with a special interest in biopolymer separations. His research involves the design of stationary phases and the influence of those phases on the three-dimensional structure of biopolymers.
E. Bayer
Ernst Bayer was born on March 27, 1927, in LudwigshafenlRhein,
trendsin analyticalchemistry, vol. 5, ~0. 9,1986
F.R.G. He studied chemistry at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg, receiving his M.S. degree in 1952, and his Ph.D. in 1954. His doctoral thesis was done at the Max Planck Institut fur Medizinische Forschung, Heidelberg, under Professor Richard Kuhn, the winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His thesis dealt with investigations of hemovanadine, the vanadium-containing blood-coloring compound. After graduation, Dr. Bayer remained for one year at the Institute of Professor Kuhn. In 1955 he joined the Government Research Institue at Geilweilerhof, as the head of the Department of Chemistry and Physiology. In 1958 he became an associate professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Technical University of Karlsruhe. In 1962 he was elected to the Chair of OrganicChemistry and as the director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the University of Tubingen. Between 1967 and 1970 he served as the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston (Texas, USA). In 1970 he returned to Ttibingen University to his former position. Dr. Bayer is the author and co-author of over 300 publications. Dr. Bayer’s basic field of research has been organic chemistry, particularly natural substances such as metal complexes, antibiotics, peptides and nucleotides, enzymes, etc. He became involved in chromatography in 1956, with the GC studies of amino acid derivatives and the flavoring compounds of wines. Since then, his pioneering research in chromatography included investigations on stationary phase selectivity, the use of biological objects (silk moth) as GC detector, flavor analysis, on-line coupling of gas and liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry and of liquid chromatography with continuous-flow NMR spectroscopy, development of a micro-adsorption detector for liquid chromatography, analysis of peptides and nucleotides, preparative liquid chromatography (the separation of sequence isomers of nucleotides and porphyrins), development of chiral phases for the GC separation of enantiomers and
basic studies on chiral recognition. Most recently, he has been involved in the development of pressurestable polymeric beads for HPLC and in the NMR investigations of the chromatographic mechanism in HPLC.
S. Hara
Shoji Hara was born on January 5, 1927, in Shiki, Japan. Both his grandfather and father were pharmacists in this town and it was his original intention to follow them, eventually taking over the family pharmacy. Therefore, he studied at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Tokyo University graduating in 1950 as a licenced pharmacist. However, instead of joining his father he remained at the University as a research fellow and continued his studies. He received his Ph.D. in the Spring of 1960 with a thesis dealing with steroid synthesis. Immediately after he joined the Tokyo College of Pharmacy as a professor, a position he has held ever since. Dr. Hara is the author and co-author of over 200 scientific and technical publications, and the author or editor of 30 books on organic and analytical chemistry, especially chromatography. He has also translated several books from German and English into Japanese. In the early part of his career Dr. Hara was primarily involved in the synthesis of natural products and related biologically active compounds. He had already utilized chromatography at this time, e.g., as an efficient purification process in organic synthesis. He pioneered in the utilization of thin-layer chromatography
XI
trends in analytical chemistry, vol. 5, no. 9,1986
in Japan. In the past 20 years he has been active in fundamental studies on chromatographic retention and its mechanism, on the mechanism of chiral recognition, on the elucidation of metabolic pathways of pharmaceuticals, and on the development of continuous flow systems.
H. Miyazaki
Hiroshi Miyazaki was born on June 1, 1929, in Yokohama, Japan. He studied at Tokyo College of Pharmacy, graduating in 1950. In 1976 he received a Ph.D. from Tohoku University. In 1950 Dr. Miyazaki joined Nippon Kayaku and has been associated
with this company ever since. Since 1974 he is also a lecturer at the Pharmaceutical Institute of Tohoku University and since 1978 at the Science Institute of Tokyo Metropolitan University. Dr. Miyazaki is the author or coauthor of over 100 scientific and technical papers. He is also the coauthor of two books. Dr. Miyazaki’s achievements in separation sciences are mainly related to the study of biologically important substances and drug metabolism utilizing chromatography and isotachophoresis. Among others he developed methods for the preparation of novel derivatives to be used in the gas chromatography and mass spectrometry of biologically important substances such as prostaglandins, bile acids, biogenic amines, etc. In capillary electrophoresis he pioneered in the development of the proper instrumentation and in its use for the separation of biologically important substances. He also developed a new index system for isotachophoresis, similar to the retention index system used in GC, to express the retention characteristics of a substance.
China’s science and technology Looking to the year 2000, the People’s Republic of China is straining to catch up with the industrialized nations and to close the technology gap. In recent years China has modified its policies to hasten development and modernization. Chemistry plays a vital role in China’s program of Four Modernizations (agriculture; industry; science and technology; national defense) and the reduction of the technology gap. For chemists, this gap is due to two major problems. The first problem is the unavailability of adequate materials and instrumentation. This problem is being overcome gradually through an increase in domestic production coupled with the importing of domestically unavailable materials and instrumentation. Often, spe0165-9936/86/.$02.00.
cial analysis, testing and/or computational centers are established at universities, research institutes and major cities to house new equipment. The goal of these centralized facilities is to give a wide range of researchers access to modern instrumentation. The second problem facing chemists is the lack of technically trained people at all levels. For example, while most imported instrumentation is microprocessor or computer controlled, most Chinese universities have only recently established modern computer centers to train students. This problem is slowly being resolved through improvements in the overall educational system. One important trend is the addition of more ‘hands-on’ experience to bal-
ante the already well developed theoretical foundations. Large contributions are being made by thousands of returning Chinese scholars who have gained invaluable expertise while working in research laboratories throughout the world. Despite these problems, China’s chemists have made rapid progress that is representative of the overall growth of science and technology in China. Based on this progress of recent years we can expect more Chinese contributions in many areas of science and technology. To maintain and even increase the rate of development the Chinese government continues to welcome foreign investment in its modernization plans. Many foreign companies are putting their capital and expertise behind China’s push for modernization. Unfortunately, both large and small companies are encountering difficulties that sometimes outweigh the benefits of partnership. These problems are often due to differences in cultural, political and economic systems. To provide assistance in overcoming these problems affecting both Western and Chinese firms, Management Technologies International has recently opened the International Science and Technology Consulting Center (ISTCC) in Tianjin, China’s third largest city and a major industrial center. In order to provide solutions for these problems the eighty Chinese and Western professionals on the staff of the ISTCC are divided into three groups. The first group specializes in management, financial, marketing and legal problems. The second group provides cross-cultural and language training. The third group provides expertise in various areas of science and technology for cases that involve technology transfer. All three groups work together with the support staff of the ISTCC to provide a full range of services from assisting with initial inquiries and market analyses through negotiation and construction to operation and expansion. These services are made available in China to firms interested in setting up mutually beneficial cooperative ventures while @ Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.
VIII More than 200 industries, universities, and research laboratories have called NBS requesting help with specific applications of microwave techniques. Chemists are typically advised of container pressure limits and equipment configurations to prevent uncontrolled venting of superheated acids. The method of predicting temperature from microwave power has eliminated the need to guess about actual operating conditions. Though requests for quick advice are common, some groups have established more formal, longer-term relationships with NBS to study microwave dissolution. Some examples: l Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is investigating the effectiveness of microwaves in breaking down biological samples such as buffalo and
l
l
human bone tissue. Scientists there have sought help at NBS in researching the elemental composition of bone tissue for anthropological studies of animal and human behavior. Hints about the origins of early earth crust are the goals of scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (DC), who are using microwave techniques to prepare samples of rocks older than 2500 million years for isotopic analysis. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company scientists plan to use remotely controlled microwave equipment to dissolve and analyze radioactive sludge samples at the Defense Waste Processing Facility under construction at the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, SC, U.S.A. Du Pont oper-
ates the plant for the Department of Energy. Kingston and Jassie now are finetuning the techniques even further. For example, they are experimenting with a novel fiber-optic temperaturesensing system to monitor temperature more accurately and efficiently than the thermocouples they have been using. Also, they hope to improve the valve apparatus for the Teflon vessels, and to test ways to automate the dissolution process. Industries, universities, or government agencies interested in learning more about the NBS/CEM research should contact Dr. Howard M. Kingston or Lois B. Jassie, A353 Chemistry Building, National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, U.S.A. Telephone: (301) 921-3674.
Tswett Chromatography Medals 1986 The M.S. Tswett Chromatography Medal was awarded in 1974 for the first time. It is intended as public recognition of important achievements and research in the field of chromatography. This year five medals have been awarded to C. A. Cramers, B. L. Karger, E. Bayer, S. Hara and H. Miyazaki .
C. A. Cramers
Carolus Alfonsus Cramers was born on September 4, 1935, in Breda, The Netherlands. After studying at the College of Chemical Engi-
neering in Heerlen, he entered Eindhoven University of Technology where he received an M.S. in chemical engineering in 1963, and a technical doctorate in 1967. After graduation he spent one year at the University of California in Los Angeles. Returning to Eindhoven as an assistant professor, he was appointed an associate professor in analytical chemistry in 1974, and a full professor in 1978. Dr. Cramers is the author and coauthor of over 100 scientific and technical publications. Under his direction eleven Ph.D. theses have been prepared at Eindhoven University of Technology. Dr. Cramers became involved in chromatography in graduate school, under the late professor A. I. M. Keulemans. His doctorate thesis was entitled ‘Some problems encountered in high-resolution gas chromatography’ and reported on the effect of sample introduction on capillary column performance, on the development of novel inlet systems, and on studies on pyrolysis-gas chromatography with special respect to the identification of unknown compounds by this technique. He has
been active in chromatography ever since; his major fields of interest are open-tubular (capillary) columns particularly columns with small diametersoptimization of the analytical conditions, and high-speed chromatography, micro-packed columns, pyrolysis-gas chromatography of hydrocarbons, and the combined use of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
B.A. Karger
Barry Lloyd Karger was born on April 2, 1939, in Boston, MA, U.S.A. He graduated in 1960 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a B.S. degree in (Continued
onp. X)
A Computer Program for Improving the Performance of Common Laboratory Instruments> Authors: S.N. Deming and S.L. Morgan adjust as many as ten continuous variables simultaneously based on the sequential simplex method of optimization available for the Apple II series and IBM-PC clear, fully descriptive manual with tutorial full source code listings easy to use us $205.00
AVAILABLE
FROM
Elsevier Scientific Software (JIG) 52 Vanderbilt Avenue New York, NY 10017 USA Phone: (212) 916 1250 Telex: 420643 or Elsevier Scientific Software P.O. Box 330 1000 AH Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS Phone: (020) 5862 828 Telex: 18582 “The program was extremely easy to use. . .” (G.M. Hieftje in TrAC) I, . . . the package can be recommended for its full documentation and ease of use. . .” (The Analyst) ‘I . . . this “no frills”software package could be easily successfully used by anyone with a desire for instrumentation optimization.“(J.A. Holcombe in the Journal of American Chemical Society) “The package constitutes a very competent microcomputer implementation of simplex optimization algorithm. . . “(E.L. Short in Chemistry and Industry)
No shipping charge if paid in advance
Write to us for further Apple is a r istered trademark of Apple Co“8, puter, Inc. IBM-PC is a registered trademark
of IBM.
X chemistry, and.in 1963 from Cornell University with a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry. He joined Northeastern University of Boston in 1963 as an assistant professor and rose to the rank of professor in 1972. In 1985 he was appointed to the James L. Waters Chair in analytical chemistry. In 1973 Dr. Karger was a founder of the Institute of Chemical Analysis at Northeastern University which, in 1983, was renamed the Barnett Institute of Chemical Analysis and Materials Science. Dr. Karger has been the director of the Institute since its inception. Today, this Institute consists of a large number of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and senior staff, with research activities in a broad range of chromatographic areas. Dr. Karger is the author and coauthor of over 140 publications. At Northeastern University, approximately 50 graduate students have obtained Ph.D.‘s under his direction. Dr. Karger has been a pioneer in modern high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). He has been active over his career with manipulating chemical equilibria in both the mobile and stationary phases to achieve selectivity optimization. He was the first to show that chiral species can be separated by reversedphase liquid chromatography, using chiral additives to the mobile phase. Currently, his focus is on the application of HPLC to the biological sciences, with a special interest in biopolymer separations. His research involves the design of stationary phases and the influence of those phases on the three-dimensional structure of biopolymers.
E. Bayer
Ernst Bayer was born on March 27, 1927, in LudwigshafenlRhein,
trendsin analyticalchemistry, vol. 5, ~0. 9,1986
F.R.G. He studied chemistry at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg, receiving his M.S. degree in 1952, and his Ph.D. in 1954. His doctoral thesis was done at the Max Planck Institut fur Medizinische Forschung, Heidelberg, under Professor Richard Kuhn, the winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His thesis dealt with investigations of hemovanadine, the vanadium-containing blood-coloring compound. After graduation, Dr. Bayer remained for one year at the Institute of Professor Kuhn. In 1955 he joined the Government Research Institue at Geilweilerhof, as the head of the Department of Chemistry and Physiology. In 1958 he became an associate professor at the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Technical University of Karlsruhe. In 1962 he was elected to the Chair of OrganicChemistry and as the director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the University of Tubingen. Between 1967 and 1970 he served as the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston (Texas, USA). In 1970 he returned to Ttibingen University to his former position. Dr. Bayer is the author and co-author of over 300 publications. Dr. Bayer’s basic field of research has been organic chemistry, particularly natural substances such as metal complexes, antibiotics, peptides and nucleotides, enzymes, etc. He became involved in chromatography in 1956, with the GC studies of amino acid derivatives and the flavoring compounds of wines. Since then, his pioneering research in chromatography included investigations on stationary phase selectivity, the use of biological objects (silk moth) as GC detector, flavor analysis, on-line coupling of gas and liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry and of liquid chromatography with continuous-flow NMR spectroscopy, development of a micro-adsorption detector for liquid chromatography, analysis of peptides and nucleotides, preparative liquid chromatography (the separation of sequence isomers of nucleotides and porphyrins), development of chiral phases for the GC separation of enantiomers and
basic studies on chiral recognition. Most recently, he has been involved in the development of pressurestable polymeric beads for HPLC and in the NMR investigations of the chromatographic mechanism in HPLC.
S. Hara
Shoji Hara was born on January 5, 1927, in Shiki, Japan. Both his grandfather and father were pharmacists in this town and it was his original intention to follow them, eventually taking over the family pharmacy. Therefore, he studied at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Tokyo University graduating in 1950 as a licenced pharmacist. However, instead of joining his father he remained at the University as a research fellow and continued his studies. He received his Ph.D. in the Spring of 1960 with a thesis dealing with steroid synthesis. Immediately after he joined the Tokyo College of Pharmacy as a professor, a position he has held ever since. Dr. Hara is the author and co-author of over 200 scientific and technical publications, and the author or editor of 30 books on organic and analytical chemistry, especially chromatography. He has also translated several books from German and English into Japanese. In the early part of his career Dr. Hara was primarily involved in the synthesis of natural products and related biologically active compounds. He had already utilized chromatography at this time, e.g., as an efficient purification process in organic synthesis. He pioneered in the utilization of thin-layer chromatography
XI
trends in analytical chemistry, vol. 5, no. 9,1986
in Japan. In the past 20 years he has been active in fundamental studies on chromatographic retention and its mechanism, on the mechanism of chiral recognition, on the elucidation of metabolic pathways of pharmaceuticals, and on the development of continuous flow systems.
H. Miyazaki
Hiroshi Miyazaki was born on June 1, 1929, in Yokohama, Japan. He studied at Tokyo College of Pharmacy, graduating in 1950. In 1976 he received a Ph.D. from Tohoku University. In 1950 Dr. Miyazaki joined Nippon Kayaku and has been associated
with this company ever since. Since 1974 he is also a lecturer at the Pharmaceutical Institute of Tohoku University and since 1978 at the Science Institute of Tokyo Metropolitan University. Dr. Miyazaki is the author or coauthor of over 100 scientific and technical papers. He is also the coauthor of two books. Dr. Miyazaki’s achievements in separation sciences are mainly related to the study of biologically important substances and drug metabolism utilizing chromatography and isotachophoresis. Among others he developed methods for the preparation of novel derivatives to be used in the gas chromatography and mass spectrometry of biologically important substances such as prostaglandins, bile acids, biogenic amines, etc. In capillary electrophoresis he pioneered in the development of the proper instrumentation and in its use for the separation of biologically important substances. He also developed a new index system for isotachophoresis, similar to the retention index system used in GC, to express the retention characteristics of a substance.
China’s science and technology Looking to the year 2000, the People’s Republic of China is straining to catch up with the industrialized nations and to close the technology gap. In recent years China has modified its policies to hasten development and modernization. Chemistry plays a vital role in China’s program of Four Modernizations (agriculture; industry; science and technology; national defense) and the reduction of the technology gap. For chemists, this gap is due to two major problems. The first problem is the unavailability of adequate materials and instrumentation. This problem is being overcome gradually through an increase in domestic production coupled with the importing of domestically unavailable materials and instrumentation. Often, spe0165-9936/86/.$02.00.
cial analysis, testing and/or computational centers are established at universities, research institutes and major cities to house new equipment. The goal of these centralized facilities is to give a wide range of researchers access to modern instrumentation. The second problem facing chemists is the lack of technically trained people at all levels. For example, while most imported instrumentation is microprocessor or computer controlled, most Chinese universities have only recently established modern computer centers to train students. This problem is slowly being resolved through improvements in the overall educational system. One important trend is the addition of more ‘hands-on’ experience to bal-
ante the already well developed theoretical foundations. Large contributions are being made by thousands of returning Chinese scholars who have gained invaluable expertise while working in research laboratories throughout the world. Despite these problems, China’s chemists have made rapid progress that is representative of the overall growth of science and technology in China. Based on this progress of recent years we can expect more Chinese contributions in many areas of science and technology. To maintain and even increase the rate of development the Chinese government continues to welcome foreign investment in its modernization plans. Many foreign companies are putting their capital and expertise behind China’s push for modernization. Unfortunately, both large and small companies are encountering difficulties that sometimes outweigh the benefits of partnership. These problems are often due to differences in cultural, political and economic systems. To provide assistance in overcoming these problems affecting both Western and Chinese firms, Management Technologies International has recently opened the International Science and Technology Consulting Center (ISTCC) in Tianjin, China’s third largest city and a major industrial center. In order to provide solutions for these problems the eighty Chinese and Western professionals on the staff of the ISTCC are divided into three groups. The first group specializes in management, financial, marketing and legal problems. The second group provides cross-cultural and language training. The third group provides expertise in various areas of science and technology for cases that involve technology transfer. All three groups work together with the support staff of the ISTCC to provide a full range of services from assisting with initial inquiries and market analyses through negotiation and construction to operation and expansion. These services are made available in China to firms interested in setting up mutually beneficial cooperative ventures while @ Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.