Workers at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant may need to wear plastic raincoats as the coronavirus outbreak threatens production of protective suits in China, the operator warned on Tuesday.
Feb 18, 2020
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Consumer & Gadgets
Samsung's fully embraced the "Go big or go home" mentality with its tabletlike Galaxy Fold last year. But its second foldable phone—rumored to be called the Galaxy Z Flip (internal code name Galaxy Bloom) - is almost guaranteed ...
Jan 30, 2020
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Machine learning & AI
Inspired by the functioning of the human brain and based on a biological mechanism called neuromodulation, it allows intelligent agents to adapt to unknown situations
Jan 28, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
Ash spewed by a Philippine volcano is being mixed with plastic waste to make bricks in an inventive response to the country's persistent problems of pollution and frequent natural disasters.
Jan 18, 2020
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Hi Tech & Innovation
With many of the products we use every day held together by adhesives, researchers from UBC's Okanagan campus and the University of Victoria hope to make everything from protective clothing to medical implants and residential ...
Dec 4, 2019
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Robotics
Idea hatchers at the Moonshot Factory, Alphabet X, have been busy on an Everyday Robot project and its goal is quite simple. They are keen on "building a robot that can learn to operate in many different situations."
Business
Airbus nailed down $30 billion in new plane orders on the second day of the Dubai Airshow after previous rounds of the biennial showcase saw its competitor Boeing take the lion's share of deals.
Nov 18, 2019
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Energy & Green Tech
Laura Parker in National Geographic last year: Scientists have tried to get a handle on the amount of plastic that ends up in the seas and harm to birds, marine animals, and fish. .Billions of tons of plastic have been made ...
Engineering
The 60th Maintenance Squadron is the first field unit in the U.S. Air Force to be certified with an industrial-sized, 3-D printer that is authorized to produce nonstructural aircraft parts.
Aug 21, 2019
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Engineering
Artificial limbs made out of plastic water bottles could save healthcare providers millions of pounds and help tackle pollution at the same time.
Aug 19, 2019
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A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs. Monomers of plastic are either natural or synthetic organic compounds.
The word plastic is derived from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning capable of being shaped or molded, from πλαστός (plastos) meaning molded. It refers to their malleability, or plasticity during manufacture, that allows them to be cast, pressed, or extruded into a variety of shapes—such as films, fibers, plates, tubes, bottles, boxes, and much more.
The common word plastic should not be confused with the technical adjective plastic, which is applied to any material which undergoes a permanent change of shape (plastic deformation) when strained beyond a certain point. Aluminum which is stamped or forged, for instance, exhibits plasticity in this sense, but is not plastic in the common sense; in contrast, in their finished forms, some plastics will break before deforming and therefore are not plastic in the technical sense.
There are two types of plastics: thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers. Thermoplastics are the plastics that do not undergo chemical change in their composition when heated and can be moulded again and again; examples are polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Thermosets can melt and take shape once; after they have solidified, they stay solid.
The raw materials needed to make most plastics come from petroleum and natural gas.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
