Agilent Technologies has acquired Polymer Standards Service (PSS), which provides hardware and software solutions for polymer characterization. The acquisition of PSS, which is based in Mainz, Germany, “will add key technology to Agilent’s gel permeation chromatography and size exclusion chromatography offerings,” said Jacob Thaysen, senior vice president, Agilent.
As new risks spill into an economy already weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts global growth to continue to slow in 2022. In its July 2022 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update: Gloomy and More Uncertain, an update to its yearly WEO released in April, the IMF predicts growth to slow to 3.2% in 2022, revising its April forecast of 3.6% and down from 6.1% in 2021.
The pandemic shook up nearly every facet of modern life, including employees’ views of what they value at work. In a trend dubbed the “Great Resignation” or the “Great Attrition,” about 47.4 million workers quit their jobs in 2021, and more than 4 million people have quit their jobs each month this year.
The economic fallout from the war in Ukraine will reach far beyond than the countries involved. In its April 2022 World Economic Outlook (WEO): War Sets Back the Global Recovery, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cited the conflict as the primary reason for the slowing of global growth the institution now predicts.
On March 15th, 2022—nearly six months late—President Biden signed the FY2022 spending bill. Compared with the previous fiscal year’s appropriations, total federal funding for R&D increased 7.1% to $169 billion. Although many agencies were allocated much less than the Biden administration had requested, all science agencies received increases in funding.
In 2021, the process analytical instruments (PAI) market and PAI worldwide enterprise (which also includes the value of analyzer-related services) reached $4.7 billion and $7.5 billion, respectively. Over the next few years, demand from many end-user markets is expected to increase 5%–7% per year driven by solid growth from the pharmaceutical industry.
With the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing attempts to reestablish normal operations, 2021 was a year of ups and downs. The global economy began to improve, with vaccinations against COVID-19, declines in death rates, and resumption of activity in many slowed or stalled areas pointing toward steady economic recovery. However, new SARS-CoV-2 variants, continued supply disruptions, and elevated inflation have tempered these gains. The lab and analytical instruments industry has been somewhat insulated from these changes—many of its technologies underlie processes or operations in our society and economy that persist except in the case of lockdown.
A confluence of factors over the last couple of years has led to a surge in cannabis use in the US and beyond. For one, the cannabis market has been booming for the past several years, as individual states in the US (the largest geographic market for cannabis) have increasingly legalized adult-use and medical cannabis. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted consumption of the drug in North America.
In an August survey conducted by TDA, product shortages and delays in delivery were at the top of the list of market trends scientific researchers were experiencing. The blame for this lies in more than one way in the COVID-19 pandemic.