Blips on the radar screen.

News flows through TAPPI in many ways. We talk with people, we get e-mails, we receive faxes and press releases, and we read other publications. Then we select, edit, and write news items to include in Solutions! magazine, in weekly "Over-the-Wire" e-mails, and in news updates on the TAPPI web-site. The month leading up to this issue produced a variety of interesting news items, a few of which are summarized here. Some directly pertain to pulp and paper companies and will reappear in our usual news outlets. Others are peripheral, but worth noting because they have potential implications or applications.

Two from one--Georgia-Pacific's announced plan for a strategic separation emerged as an interesting divergence from mergers and acquisitions. The company's board will consider approval of a finalized plan at its May meeting to separate G-P's consumer products and packaging business from its building products and distribution businesses. Analysts speculate that the building products business will inherit any asbestos liabilities, while the consumer products business may assume debts relating to G-P's acquisition of Fort James Corporation.

Sell, sell, sell--Potlatch, in deciding to exit the coated printing paper business, is selling its Cloquet, Minnesota, USA pulp and paper facilities to Sappi and closing its mill in Brainerd, Minnesota. Stora Enso is selling its mill in Molndal, Sweden, to KLIPPAN AB of Sweden. International Paper completed the sale of its oriented strand board facilities to Nexfor.

Energy Challenge--A team of chemical engineering students from the Georgia Institute of Technology won this year's competition, followed by teams from Miami University of Ohio and the University of Maine. The challenge was to design and construct a 100% recyclable paper sailboard. (Last year's challenge was to construct a sail from paper, the challenge before that was to build a functional paper kayak.)

Agricultural plastics--Cargill Dew LLC is opening the world's first global-scale manufacturing facility to make commercial-grade plastic resins from field corn and other annual crops, rather than petroleum. The manufacturing plant is located outside of Omaha, Nebraska.

Hemp again--Staples office supply stores have begun stocking reams of a new 90% recycled, 10% non-wood white bond paper. The non-wood portion of Vanguard Recycled Plus, produced by Living Tree Paper Company of Eugene, Oregon, and distributed through Southworth Paper Company, of Agawam, Massachusetts, consists of hemp and flax.

Tree-mendous research--Melvin T. Tyree will receive the 2002 Marcus Wallenberg Prize for his studies relating to water transport in trees. Tyree is supervisory plant physiologist at the USDA Forest Service's Northeastern Research Station in Vermont.

Serious "pop" science--Weekly reviews from Scientific American magazine come to me by e-mail. Some items are candy for a curious mind; some items have immediate or potential application in pulp, paper, or packaging production. One item, for example, concerned "the promise--and perils--of genetically modified trees." It linked to reports about the ability--or inability--of forests to serve as a sink for carbon dioxide emissions. Another item cited a report in Environmental Science and Technology concerning primarily household pollutants in U.S. streams. It linked to news about zinc oxide's potential to detect and help eliminate water pollutants such as chlorinated phenols. A related item concerned the potential use of ultrasound to clean water. An earlier news brief cited a report in Nature explaining why stainless steel corrodes (chronmium depleted pockets form during steel fabrication because of sulfur impurities). The authors believe unconventional heat treatments could be developed to address the problem. Another report dealt with the physics of crumpled paper.