Researchers at University of Massachusetts are building a new medical device that lets doctors measure blood pressure in real time as it goes through a patient’s arteries. The information it transmits helps doctors to assess the severity of blockages on the spot. This, in turn, could mean better and more timely treatments for patients. The [...]
Art and Space Conservation Unite Over Rubber
May 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
“Interdisciplinary” has been a buzzword in the scientific circles for well over a decade. But nothing emphasizes the interconnections between different areas of research than the unexpected ones, like the one Sarah Everts, senior editor of Chemical & Engineering News, highlights in the blog Artful Science: space science and art conservation. Everts discovered the connection [...]
The Plastics Collection at Syracuse University
May 13, 2011 By 1 Comment
Science magazine recently highlighted Syracuse University Library’s The Plastics Collection. The collection lists 2511 artifacts that are made of plastic, including prototype helmets from NASA’s early shuttle research. The website for the collection describes the people, materials, and corporations responsible for the plastics that surround us. It has a searchable digital collection of manuscripts, printed [...]
BASF to Open Chinese Site for Polymer Unit Production
May 12, 2011 By 2 Comments
More good news for the German company BASF. Hepeng Jia reports in Chemistry World that the chemical giant has won approval to build the world’s largest methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) plant. MDI is used to manufacture a critical polymer. The plant will be located in China’s Three Gorge area, in Changshou, a district of Chongqing. Jia says: [...]
Fowl Plastics: Chicken Feathers Instead of Petroleum
May 11, 2011 By 3 Comments
Chicken may appear in more places than just your dinner plate in the future. Researchers are coming up with ways to swap chicken feathers for petroleum in some plastic products. Companies like Eastern Bioplastics are working to commercialize items like biodegradable flower pots and office furniture with fowl feather-based products. The aim of the research [...]
Chemical and Plastics Company Sees Strong Growth
May 10, 2011 By 1 Comment
BASF SE says it more than doubled first-quarter earnings because of higher demand for its chemicals and plastics, which are used to make items as diverse as cars and cosmetics. According to an Associated Press report: BASF, the world’s biggest chemicals company, said Friday it earned €2.4 billion ($3.5 billion) in the January-March period, compared [...]
Be Careful What You Wish For in Plastic Substitutes
May 9, 2011 By 1 Comment
Been buying plastic products that tout themselves to be “BPA Free”? Well, you should be wondering what chemical has been substituted for BPA (its full name is Bisphenol A) in the plastic. As reported by Erica Geis in The New York Times, Bisphenol S is used in place of BPA. The chemical is similar to [...]
Polymers Play Into Persian Gulf Oil Recovery
May 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
People commonly think of the Persian Gulf oilfields gushing crude oil by the bucketload. But as Angus McDowall and Oliver Klaus report in The Wall Street Journal, engineers have had to turn to techniques that involve chemicals, such as polymers, to coax oil out of these fields. Many Persian Gulf oilfields are wearing down after decades [...]
Medical Device Industry Wants FDA to Change
May 5, 2011 By 1 Comment
Venture capitalists, companies, and lobbyists are beginning to apply a lot of pressure to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the way it handles medical device applications. They argue the FDA’s handling of medical devices is stifling innovation in the U.S. As reported by Luke Timmerman in a Xconomy.com article that got [...]
Polymer Microarray for Drug Screening
May 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
High-throughput screening is an important method in the pharmaceutical industry to study thousands of drug candidates in one shot. But the technique demands expensive and sophisticated facilities and robots which limits its use to only those companies that can afford it. Now researchers have come up with a simple and cheap polymer-based platform that can [...]
