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Imagine that your hip implant is experiencing the first signs of failure. Before you even notice anything unusual, the self-sensing implant “telegraphs” its status, allowing you to alert your doctor and take preventive measures before it becomes an emergency. “Smart” prosthetics and medical implants are among the potential applications of research at the University of Glasgow into PEEK-based honeycomb structures engineered to carry an electric charge. PEEK is a nonconductive material, but…

In 2006, Buddy Doyle of Gardiner, Maine, was the recipient of a tandem kayak, a gift for helping out a friend. That gift would inspire a product idea that Doyle hoped would benefit him as well as paddlers everywhere. The problem, as Doyle discovered, was lifting the kayak onto the roof of his vehicle, driving to the waterfront, offloading it, and getting it into the water, then doing it all…

Converting partners of Nexus includes Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron Phillips among others. Nexus, located in Atlanta, Ga., is an operational, commercially scaled converter of waste plastics to feedstocks, which in turn are converted back to virgin plastics. The company recently announced it has entered into a strategic relationship with Wood, the global consulting and engineering company, to globally expand its advanced molecular plastics recycling business to meet significant market…

As part of Thinktank Industrial Resource Strategies, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have been working with Audi for six months on a pilot project devoted to chemical recycling of plastics from automotive manufacturing. Now that the project has been completed, it is clear that chemical recycling of mixed plastic waste is both technically feasible and environmentally and financially promising, they said. The plastic waste from automotive manufacturing…

Tests conducted to determine the bonding performance of medical-grade thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) from Teknor Apex with a clear copolyester substrate developed by Eastman Chemical showed a combination of high peel strength and adhesive failures. These properties are advantageous in over-molded applications, said Teknor Apex. In 90° peel tests of test specimens produced in a two-shot molding process, three Medalistmedical-grade TPEs provided durable bonds to four of Eastman’s Tritan copolyesters. Formulated to…