MMA production is one of the core businesses of the Basic Chemicals Sector of Sumitomo Chemical, and its demand and capacity is continuously going to be expanded, mainly in Asia. Now five technologies for monomer- MMA production coexist in the world, and none of them is the predominant process. Among those technologies, the C4 methods are going to be adopted in many production plants. Sumitomo Chemical also selected this technology for its MMA production. In this paper, the current processes, mainly for C4 methods, and the next generation of potential technologies will be reviewed.
( 4 - 14 by Koichi NAGAI,Toshiaki UI )

Plastic CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) is used as indispensable technology in the plastic product design today. However, by integrating CAE technology and the CAO (Computer Aided Optimization) technology in which utilization has started, the automatic optimal design of a plastic product is attained and much more shortening the period of a product design, reducing development cost, and improving the quality and the performance of a product can be expected. Moreover, it becomes the powerful support technology of material development. In this paper, the outline of the integrated technology of the plastics CAE and CAO that we have developed, some application examples, and the integrated design optimization system for the plastic products of our company are described.
( 15 - 25 by Yoshiaki TOGAWA,Tomoo HIROTA,Shinichi NAGAOKA )

Recently pharmacokinetics is increasingly gaining weight in the development of new drugs. At every stage of the development process (from discovery to sales and even after the launch of a product), it is becoming essential to generate appropriate pharmacokinetics information in a timely manner. The information is quite useful and, therefore, enables us to make a go/no-go decision on a sound scientific basis. This report presents an overall picture of pharmacokinetics study conducted at our laboratory including some methods employed for this purpose. In addition, one of the new technologies that are expected to empower the pharmacokinetics study as well as clinical trials is described.
( 26 - 34 by Kimihiko SATO,Takao WATANABE,Kazuhiko NISHIOKA,Masashi YABUKI,Setsuko KOMURO )

Today, imaging diagnosis in oncology is based on the regional anatomical information. However, anatomy-based imaging provides limited functional information and can only differentiate tumors from normal tissue based on shape, density, vascularity, fat and water. Imaging of regional tumor biology by nuclear medicine provides quantitative estimates of regional biochemistry and receptor status and can overcome the sampling error and difficulty in performing serial studies inherent with biopsy. In this review, current status of the functional imaging of tumor by nuclear medicine will be described.
( 35 - 44 by Hideshi HATTORI,Jun TOYOHARA )

Development of nanotechnology necessitates the structural, physical and chemical characterization of constituent advanced materials at the nanometer level. For example, compound semiconductors used to optical and electronic devices are composed of many thin layers in nanometer level. Electron microscopy is one of the most effective methods for these kinds of analysis, which gives direct information of the structure and the elements distribution with high spatial resolution. Recently, new imaging techniques in electron microscope have been developed. This review describes state of the art and future technologies of electron microscope.
( 45 - 54 by Yoshiaki HONDA )

Nowadays, electrostatic theories are usefully applied to various industries. On the other hand static electricity cause ESD (electrostatic discharge) problem in high technology industries or fire and explosion in chemical industries. In order to prevent incidents caused by electrostatic discharge, it is important that operators or staffs working in chemical plants find electrostatic potential hazards and have consultations with safety experts. Electrostatic charge and discharge phenomena, countermeasures against static electricity and some methods for evaluating electrostatic hazards are described in this paper.
( 55 - 64 by Kiyoshi OTA )