We worry a lot about bisphenol A (BPA) — a compound used to make plastics — and whether or not it harms us (and not just BPA, we worry about its substitutes as well). Now, to keep us more awake at night, scientist writer Erika Gebel reports in Chemical & Engineering News that a group of [...]
Medical Device and Other Biotech Companies Grow in Central VA
June 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Central Virginia is seeing a rise in biomedical industry endeavors, reports columnist Bryan McKenzie in The Daily Progress. More and more companies are jumping into the sector to develop medical devices and a slew of other biomedical products and health services, many of which have spun out of research done in laboratories at the University [...]
Is FDA Stifling Medical Device Innovation?
June 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Just like teenagers complain that their parents don’t let them be, it’s expected that medical device and other biomedical companies will complain that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) slows them down. But it may be more serious than that. Timothy Hay reports in the Venture Capital Dispatch blog of The Wall Street Journal [...]
DAK Americas Expands Polymer Business
June 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Senior Editor Alex Tullo of Chemical & Engineering News reports that the North Carolina-based DAK Americas, a subsidiary of the Mexican conglomerate ALFA, will buy the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) business of Wellman, Inc., for $185 million. Tullo reports: The business has a PET resin capacity of 950 million lb per year at its plant in [...]
Plastic Stress Sensor Fixes Itself
June 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
What good is an instrument if it breaks while in use? As an article in Plastics Today reports, researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU) have made a new type of sensor based on polymers that can fix itself if it literally cracks under pressure. Engineers face a vexing problem when using conventional sensors for measuring the strain, [...]
Polymeric Kitty Litter
June 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment
According to an intriguing article in the Financial Times (scroll all the way down to find it), our domesticated feline friends may soon be digging in polymer-based kitty litter. The new litter is being developed to make the business of cat litter manufacturing more eco-friendly. For those of us with cats for pets, it’s not [...]
Polymers Make Mona Lisa Smile
June 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This time, we know why the Mona Lisa is smiling. She’s smiling in this particular rendering because Chinese researchers have made special 3D polymer “nanobrushes” to copy her face on a miniaturized scale. In a Chemistry World article, Mike Brown describes a new quick and cheap approach that exploits the distance between arrays of polymer [...]
Biodegradable Plastics Questioned
June 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Can we have it both ways: use plastic and save the environment at the same time? Biodegradable plastics, the kind that is supposed to break down in landfills and not languish forever as pollutants of land and sea, Â have been touted as the plastic you can use with a clear conscience. But can you? A [...]
J&J to Leave Stent Medical Device Market
June 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is leaving the market it has created almost 20 years ago, reports an article in The Wall Street Journal. The company is saying farewell to a $5 billion global market for the tiny metal devices called stents that hold clogged heart arteries open. The move comes after years of downhill sales [...]
Using Medical Technology to Determine Plastics Failure
June 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
By Linda Dailey Paulson Various imaging techniques and technologies traditionally associated with the medical industry have been successfully applied to diverse industrial processes. Materials testing in particular has adapted technologies such as X-ray and ultrasound almost as immediately as they have been introduced in order to assist in the evaluation and prevention of material and [...]
