They have only a limited charge (they work by combining vats of chemicals), focus on only one target at a time and can easily be fooled by using simple countermeasures such as spinning the missile, lining it with cork or launching on a cloudy day.
If the single-chemical focus developed as a response to regulatory needs, what were the costs and benefits from that relationship?
Strong evidence linking environmental neurotoxicants and autism is scant; the majority of research papers concerning these chemicals focus on neurotoxicological endpoints in laboratory models.
"This acquisition supports the ongoing transformation of our portfolio to a higher margin, less cyclical specialty chemicals focused company," Cabot's chief executive, Patrick Prevost, said in a statement.
Research on how life might have emerged from non-living chemicals focuses on three possible starting points: self-replication, an organism's ability to produce offspring that are very similar to itself; metabolism, its ability to feed and repair itself; and external cell membranes, which allow food to enter and waste products to leave, but exclude unwanted substances.
The journal EHP, on the other hand, clearly reveals a distinct sub-specialty, with its 34 overlapping chemicals focusing on more commonly encountered environmental compounds such as particulate matter, bisphenol A, arsenic and lead.
Most of the research in reductive transformations of chemicals focuses on dehalogenation of chlorinated aliphatic or aromatic contaminants, and on the reduction of nitroaromatic compounds (Tratnyek et al., 2003).
DSM, for its part, is exiting the market for commodity chemicals to focus on specialty chemicals for biotechnology companies and performance materials for the automotive and electronic industries.
Traditionally, chemical suppliers focus on selling their products in the largest possible quantities.
