m Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems

Monitor

This section is edited by Richard Brereton and Raymond Dessy. Ar- ticles may be submitted to the ap- propriate editor, according to geo- graphical location - Raymond Dessy

(Americas, Caribbean and Austra- lasia) and Richard Brereton (Rest of the World). News items may include

reports of conferences, major inter- national events, prizes, new courses and so on. In addition to reviews of

new software products, we also will publish annual critical reports of de- velopments within the major soft- ware packages, and how these in- volve the chemometrician. Further,

we welcome press releases and short brochures. Suggestions for topics to be covered in this section should also be sent to the above mentioned asso- ciate editors, who welcome corre- spondence. D

m News

Chemometrics in IUPAC

Chemometrics is a very dynamic field with inputs from many different sources. For instance, some of the first applications of clustering in chemistry were clearly influenced by reading biological applications, since the method was introduced as numerical taxonomy, while some of the early applications of factor analy-

sis were clearly inspired by applica- tions from sociology. This is one of the most appealing characteristics of chemometrics: it permits the chemist to break through the isolation im- posed on him by his specialization. It does however also have some disad- vantages, the main one being prob- ably the confusion in nomenclature and terminology. One of the organi- sations that might help to clear up this difficulty is IUPAC, the Interna-

tional Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (for our non-chemist read- ers it can best be described as a kind of United Nations for Chemists). IUPAC has been striving hard to bring uniformity in terminology and

symbols and to disseminate chemical knowledge.

Recently IUPAC has entered the chemometrics field. Its analytical di- vision (division v) is for instance contemplating the start of a new divi- sional project, namely the mathe- matical treatment of data. At a lower level at least two commissions of this division have started work on smaller projects. Commission V.3 (the ana- lytical terminology commission) has received for consideration a draft proposal about symbols to be used in analytical data analysis and commis-

sion V.l (the commission on analyti- cal reactions and reagents) has been awarded IUPAC funds to create a working party on chemometrics. Its task consists of, among others, the preparation of guidelines or recom- mendations for the publication of articles on chemometrics, actions to promote a better integration of chemometrics in analytical practice and a study of educational require- ments.

The February 1986 issue of Chemistry International, the IUPAC journal, also announces that two of the three new projects of the Com- mission of Automation and Clinical Chemical Techniques (VII.1) are about nomenclature for robotics and about functions of integrated instru- ment software.

D.L. MASSART

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