Dr.Gerhard Horner is managing director of five technologies, Munich, Germany, and associated technical director of ALMSCO International, Llantrisant,UK.His main interest is multivariate signal processing for GC-MS data. Gerhard Horner is project coordinator of the joint research project EXAKT for the near-real time detection of hazardous substances funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. g.horner@fivetechno.de