polymerguru

Hydrogen storage systems manufacturer Plastic Omnium has broken ground on a new facility in China. Passionate about hydrogen mobility, Plastic Omnium offers a range of products to address hydrogen storage needs whilst also working on advanced solutions for fuel cell integration. Sharing the news today (June 18), Plastic Omnium said the foundation stone of the LinGang plant was laid at the end of May, in presence of 70 guests including our customers and government representatives. Located in the world’s largest automotive market, China, the new facility marks a strategic move for Plastic Omnium, which already has 32 production facilities, 2 R&D centres and an office in Shanghai. Production at the facility will start next year. Source: www.h2-view.com

Penn Color has introduced penneffex™ line of colors that delivers a high-end, eye-catching finish for FMCG packaged products. With nearly unlimited customization options, the penneffex™ line combines Penn Color’s creativity, expertise in colors, and special effects and knowledge in manufacturing processes, to inspire creative brand design ideas in product categories such as home care, personal care, food and beverage, and more. Creating Building Blocks of Unique Colors With variations including matte, brushed metal, frost, metallic, luster, and bubbles, penneffex™ offers brands a powerful way to engage with the consumers’ senses and emotions. Whether the consumer is walking through the store, or idly shopping on-line, penneffex™ enables brand owners and creative marketing teams to better engage with their loyal and new customer base to create a unique and eye-catching product design that conveys brand values like high-end quality, sustainability, transparency, and more. T...

McClintock discovered 'jumping genes' in corn, and proved that chunks of genetic code can change position on a chromosome, affecting genetic expression. Born in Hartford Connecticut, McClintock's family had little money, so her interest in research was viewed with skepticism. It was more important for her to marry, her family thought. Despite this, with her father's support, Barbara began studying at Cornell's College of Agriculture in 1919, and her studies are where her interest remained. She was shy and anything but a careerist, but at the same time, she also realized the importance of what she had achieved, not least of all in her role as an example for other women. Learn more:  https://bit.ly/2I9qCxd

This is the World's oldest football from 1540. It was made from cowhide with a pig bladder used to inflate the ball. Half the size of a modern football. The ball was made in Stirling, Scotland, and discovered behind the paneling of the Queen's Chamber in Stirling Castle, which was decorated in the 1540s. Mary Queen of Scots was there at this time and later in life was known to have an interest in all sports but especially golf and football. She recorded a game of football in her diaries while at Carlisle Castle. The ball could have been used in the courtyards within the castle or taken to the royal gardens below the walls. Everyone from the castle, including kings and queens would have been involved. Football was a game for all just as it is today. Was this personal item, belonging to Mary, deliberately placed behind the paneling to act as a protection from witchcraft, a practice common at the time or was it somehow lost. We will never answer that question but we do know that t...

Scientists have designed a photosensitive hydrogel that can orient towards a light source. The hydrogel mimics phototropism in plants and was used to maximize the energy-harvesting ability of a photocatalyst.  Phototropism allows plants and other organisms to adapt to changing light conditions and maximize energy harvesting throughout the day. Man-made photocatalytic systems, however, typically require direct irradiation from a light source. There are only a few examples of scientists achieving artificial phototropism that are independent of external control and automatically track the direction of light. Now, a team led by Feili Lai of KU Leuven in Belgium and Tinaxi Liu of Jiangnan University in China has devised a system that combines artificial phototropism with photocatalytic hydrogen peroxide production. Modelled on a sunflower, the system contains two poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide)-based hydrogels. One hydrogel is temperature-sensitive and forms a stem. It also conta...

  Australian researchers have created what may be one of the most thermally stable materials ever discovered. This new zero thermal expansion (ZTE) material made of scandium, aluminum, tungsten and oxygen did not change in volume at temperatures ranging from 4 to 1400 Kelvin (-269 to 1126 °C, -452 to 2059 °F). That's a wider range of temperatures, say scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), than any other material demonstrated to date, and it could make orthorhombic Sc 1.5 Al 0.5 W 3 O 12  (catchy name, eh?) a very handy tool for anyone engineering something that needs to work in extremely varied thermal environments. Examples of where this might come in handy include things like aerospace design, where components are exposed to extreme cold in space and extreme heat at launch or on re-entry. Famously, the SR-71 Blackbird was designed to expand so much at its Mach 3.4 top speed that it would liberally drizzle fuel on the runway at ground temperatures; the fue...

  Williams Advanced Engineering introduced its FW-EVX electric vehicle (EV) platform in 2017, designed to give vehicle manufacturers a modular system with which to develop new vehicles.  ''WAE reports that it is applying this innovative modular platform for use in a series of EVs with the top hats engineered for the vehicles by Italdesign, one of the leading transportation design and body engineering companies in the world.''  ''The company's approach is, like many EV platforms being developed, skateboard-like in that the rolling chassis is integrated into a flat structure. However, what is different about the Williams solution is that the battery is housed in a molded composite case that is part of the vehicle load structure: front and rear chassis elements are attached to it. Crash loads are transferred through internal reinforcements that are within the side sills.''  To build this structure WAE is using both recycled composite material and alumin...