Titanium

Researchers at Millennium Inorganic Chemicals are celebrating the fact that they now have acres of space to study products so small that 12 million of them could fit on a pinhead. The company is the world's second-largest maker -- behind DuPont -- of titanium dioxide, a white pigment used in items such as paint, plastics, toothpaste, non-dairy creamer and the white writing on M&M candy. Millennium recently opened an $18-million, 120,000-square- foot research center in northern Anne Arundel County that is three times larger than its old facility five miles away in Baltimore.

Millennium Inorganic Chemicals is weighing whether it should invest millions of dollars in its southern Baltimore manufacturing plant or in other facilities elsewhere to meet rising demand for its titanium dioxide pigment. Executives of the Hunt Valley company are talking with state and city officials to see what incentives might be available to expand its 430-employee Hawkins Point plant. Should the company decide not to invest in the Hawkins Point plant, its future could be endangered.

In the world of computer memory, the floppy disk has officially reached brontosaurus status. In other words, it's ancient history. The technological meteor that will soon replace it is the new, compact flash memory card. In the week and a half I spent running PQI's Intelligent Stick 2.0 ($44.99 to $124.99) through the gauntlet, I found it to be durable, fast and remarkably easy to use -- in addition to being much smaller than a floppy disk. Flash memory, for those who are still on the floppy disk wavelength, performs the same tasks but with no moving parts and no magnets.

The collapse of a soccer goal on a Howard County practice field has led the state's highest court to reconsider more than 150 years of personal injury law, in a case that could significantly improve injured plaintiffs' chances of winning payouts. The case - which began when a crossbar crashed into then-20-year-old Kyle Coleman's face, crushing the bones around his eye - has drawn national attention, as Maryland's unusual legal standard meets its first judicial test in decades. Maryland is one of only four states, plus the District of Columbia, that bar injured people from winning lawsuits if they had any role in an accident - even if a jury finds the defendant in their suit deserved a much greater share of the blame.

Scientists say they may have to re-think some of their best theories about the origins and evolution of the planet Mercury as new data from the Sept. 29 flyby of the planet by the Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft continue to surprise. In their latest discussion of the mission's scientific findings, scientists said Tuesday they have found evidence that volcanic activity, including explosive eruptions, continued until unexpectedly recent times. The evidence appears in photos of an unnamed volcanic crater, 180 miles wide with a double ring around it. Its interior is surprisingly smooth and free of subsequent meteor impact craters, suggesting there were lava flows into the center as recently as a billion years ago. Scientists had thought Mercury's vulcanism, like that on Earth's moon, was among the first in the solar system to cease, at least 3 billion years ago. But "if the basin is young and the interior is even younger ... that may not be the case," said Brett Denevi, an imaging team member from Arizona State University in Tempe.

Borderline hysteria was in the air at the massive Apple booth at San Franciso's MacWorld in January when the titanium PowerBook was introduced. Steve Jobs, he of all things silicon and digital, had aimed to jump-start his struggling company; the new PowerBook G4 was hailed as the resurrection, the renaissance and real cool, too. Your faithful correspondent waited in lines 10 deep to get his hands on one of the G4 laptops, but, as with most things, it...

Millennium Chemicals Inc. said yesterday that it lost more than $300 million in the first quarter, partly because of a change in accounting practices. The company, which has a titanium dioxide plant in southern Baltimore, lost $336 million, or $5.29 a share, in the three months that ended March 31, compared with a loss of $15 million, or 24 cents, in last year's first quarter. The recent quarter's loss included a goodwill write-down of $305 million. New rules from the Financial Accounting Standards Board require companies to write off their good will - the premium paid for an acquisition above the value of the tangible assets acquired - all at once, instead of amortizing it over decades.

Millennium Chemicals Inc., whose largest division is based in Hunt Valley, reported earnings yesterday that beat analysts' estimates by 11 cents a share. Net income for the three months that ended Sept. 30 was $35 million, or 55 cents a diluted share, with an average of 63.9 million shares outstanding. Analysts had been expecting earnings of about 44 cents a share for the Red Bank, N.J., company. In the comparable period last year, net income was $45 million, but that included litigation settlements and tax adjustments; without the unusual gains, net income for last year's third quarter would have been $15 million, or 23 cents a share, with 67 million shares outstanding.

Millennium Chemicals Inc., which employs 800 to 900 people in the Baltimore area, reported second-quarter net income yesterday of $48 million, even with last year's second-quarter results. However, second-quarter 1999 results included $37 million in profit resulting from the sale of assets and other one-time gains. The company reported no unusual profit in the quarter that ended June 30. Earnings per share improved last quarter to 75 cents, up from 69 cents for the comparable quarter in 1999.

New positions Orner accounting director at Millennium Inorganic Millennium Inorganic Chemicals named Michael Orner director of accounting and reporting for the Hunt Valley-based producer of titanium dioxide. He is responsible for worldwide financial reporting as well as internal reporting and accounting. The Gettysburg College graduate is a certified public accountant and former senior manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Grebb, Fairley join WBAL-TV sales staff WBAL-TV, the NBC affiliate in Baltimore, appointed Debbie Grebb and Lisa Fairley to its sales staff.