Plastic Components announced the death of its longtime president, Tom Stark, on March 6.

Plastic Components now offers individual brochures for its PVC Trims and Accessories product lines, which include stucco/plaster, stone veneer, drywall, Direct Applied Systems, Exterior Insulated Finish Systems and fiber cement board trims.

Ian Theodoreson, who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in 2019, wrote that he ‘had lived a good life’ in a blog post posthumously published on 27 October

Washington – OSHA’s scaled-back enforcement efforts on silica exposure during a recent two-year period left more workers at risk, according to a Department of Labor Office of Inspector General audit report released Sept. 29.

If you look back at our biggest failures, have they been the result of drastic action or the lack of it?

Washington – OSHA recently issued a fact sheet about protecting workers from abrasive blasting materials.

The brand's new formula is crafted to meet the nutritional needs of intermittent fasters in a single drink mix thanks to a trio of essential ingredients including electrolytes, fiber and amino acids.

Each ProLon box contains everything needed for a five day ProLon FMD experience and is designed to promote the body’s natural ability to protect and rejuvenate.

Inline Plastics has expanded its Safe-T-Fresh® portfolio to include three new 7-inch rounds with a smooth wall. By popular demand, the new products will include 24oz, 32oz, and a four 6oz compartment option, with more items to follow soon.

The Whole Foods Market Trends Council – a collective of more than 50 Whole Foods Market team members ranging from foragers and buyers to culinary experts – develop these trend predictions each year through a combination of deep industry experience, keen observation of consumer preferences, and collaborative sessions with emerging and established brands.

The Good Plastic Company is turning trash into treasure, giving old plastic a glamorous makeover.

There are many different foreign materials that could and actually have ended up in foods. The most insidious of these and the one most feared is glass.

Emmy-winning sportscaster Bob Costas will deliver the keynote address at the CCA Global Partners Retail Group's annual ConneXtion convention in January 2025.

SolidTech R is engineered with a unique stone recycled core, replacing all PVC with 100% recycled single-use plastic. Each square foot of SolidTech R contains the equivalent of 20 recycled water bottles. Additionally, every purchase of SolidTech R goes toward stopping ocean plastic in collaboration with Plastic Bank.

Hastings will lead the company's strategic growth initiatives, leveraging his expertise in finance, accounting and agricultural industry experience.

ABSTRACT Introduction Individuals with schizophrenia present anomalies in the extension and plasticity of the peripersonal space (PPS), the section of space surrounding the body, shaped through motor experiences. A weak multisensory integration in PPS would contribute to an impairment of self-embodiment processing, a core feature of the disorder linked to specific subjective experiences. In this […]

The post Peripersonal Space Plasticity in Relation to Psychopathology and Anomalous Subjective Experiences in Individuals With Early‐Onset and Adult‐Onset Schizophrenia was curated by information for practice.

A tsunami of toxic plastic waste looms on the horizon but a revolution is promised. Quite how serious is the situation and what is being done? To set the scene, two thirds of plastic products are short-term, throw-away items containing over 13,000 chemicals, many of them toxic, products like shopping bags, straws, cups and so on. The history The first manufactured plastic was Parkesine, patented in 1862 by its British inventor, Alexander Parkes. It was made from cotton fibres dissolved in nitric and sulphuric acid, and mixed with vegetable oil. It substituted tortoise and turtle shells and ivory. Over the other side of The Pond, John Wesley Hyatt founded the Celluloid Manufacturing Company (USA) and mass produced items such as combs, sunglasses... and cinema film. By 1907 the first fully synthetic plastic had been invented by the Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland, who combined formaldehyde and phenol to produce Bakelite (the material used in the old telephones). By the early twentieth century, the plastics manufacturing giants had already been formed by the alliances of chemical and petroleum industries – ExxonMobil, Dow Chemicals, DuPont, BASF and the British company, ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries), which by 1932 was producing Perspex.

US President Joe Biden may take drastic actions before he resigns, Alexander Yakovenko, a member of the scientific council at the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former Russian Ambassador to the UK believes. "Biden and his administration are still in power as a lame duck. In December 2016, Barack Obama similarly decided to sharply aggravate relations with Russia by expelling 35 Russian diplomats. The same can be expected now, especially in Ukraine,” Yakovenko said. Trump will take up US foreign affairs before his inauguration while trying to push the current administration out of decision-making processes, Yakovenko suggested.

[Culture] :
Two South Korean films, "Exhuma" and "Handsome Guys," won prizes at the 57th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, Spain. According to the South Korean film distributor Showbox on Tuesday, director Jang Jae-hyun's occult thriller "Exhuma," which was invited to the official competition ...

[more...]

A unique phase transition, twinning and ferroelastic domain structure in [NH3(CH2)2NH3]2[ZnBr4]Br2 is found. The new additional domain structure is observed at the phase transition on heating, which is preserved after cooling to room temperature.

The rotating substrate method of crystallite deposition is modeled, allowing computation of effective material coefficients of the layers resulting from the averaging. A worked numerical example particularized to 6mm ZnO is provided.

This study presents the first theoretical predictions of the phase transitions, elastic properties, and thermal behavior of AuMTe2 (M = Ga, In) chalcopyrite compounds. Using density functional theory and the quasi-harmonic Debye model, key mechanical and thermodynamic properties are analyzed, offering insights valuable for future experimental validation.

Single-crystal growth, differential thermal analysis (DTA), derivative thermogravimetry (DTG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray structural studies and polarized microscopy observations of bis(ethylenediammonium) tetrabromozincate(II) bromide [NH3(CH2)2NH3]2[ZnBr4]Br2 are presented. A reversible phase transition is described. At room temperature, the complex crystallizes in the monoclinic system. In some cases, the single crystals are twinned into two or more large domains of ferroelastic type with domain walls in the (100) crystallographic plane. DTA and DTG measurements show chemical stability of the crystal up to ∼538 K. In the DSC studies, a reversible isostructural phase transition was revealed at ∼526/522 K on heating/cooling run, respectively. Optical observation on the heating run reveals that at the phase transition the plane of twinning (domain wall) does not disappear and additionally the appearance of a new domain structure of ferroelastic type with domain walls in the planes (101), (101), (100) and (001) is observed. The domain structure pattern is preserved after cooling to the room-temperature phase and the symmetry of this phase is unchanged.

Accurate modeling of conformational energies is key to the crystal structure prediction of conformational polymorphs. Focusing on molecules XXXI and XXXII from the seventh blind test of crystal structure prediction, this study employs various electronic structure methods up to the level of domain-local pair natural orbital coupled cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples [DLPNO-CCSD(T1)] to benchmark the conformational energies and to assess their impact on the crystal energy landscapes. Molecule XXXI proves to be a relatively straightforward case, with the conformational energies from generalized gradient approximation (GGA) functional B86bPBE-XDM changing only modestly when using more advanced density functionals such as PBE0-D4, ωB97M-V, and revDSD-PBEP86-D4, dispersion-corrected second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (SCS-MP2D), or DLPNO-CCSD(T1). In contrast, the conformational energies of molecule XXXII prove difficult to determine reliably, and variations in the computed conformational energies appreciably impact the crystal energy landscape. Even high-level methods such as revDSD-PBEP86-D4 and SCS-MP2D exhibit significant disagreements with the DLPNO-CCSD(T1) benchmarks for molecule XXXII, highlighting the difficulty of predicting conformational energies for complex, drug-like molecules. The best-converged predicted crystal energy landscape obtained here for molecule XXXII disagrees significantly with what has been inferred about the solid-form landscape experimentally. The identified limitations of the calculations are probably insufficient to account for the discrepancies between theory and experiment on molecule XXXII, and further investigation of the experimental solid-form landscape would be valuable. Finally, assessment of several semi-empirical methods finds r2SCAN-3c to be the most promising, with conformational energy accuracy intermediate between the GGA and hybrid functionals and a low computational cost.

The strong interaction of high-energy electrons with a crystal results in both dynamical elastic scattering and inelastic events, particularly phonon and plasmon excitation, which have relatively large cross sections. For accurate crystal structure refinement it is therefore important to uncover the impact of inelastic scattering on the Bragg beam intensities. Here a combined Bloch wave–Monte Carlo method is used to simulate phonon and plasmon scattering in crystals. The simulated thermal and plasmon diffuse scattering are consistent with experimental results. The simulations also confirm the empirical observation of a weaker unscattered beam intensity with increasing energy loss in the low-loss regime, while the Bragg-diffracted beam intensities do not change significantly. The beam intensities include the diffuse scattered background and have been normalized to adjust for the inelastic scattering cross section. It is speculated that the random azimuthal scattering angle during inelastic events transfers part of the unscattered beam intensity to the inner Bragg reflections. Inelastic scattering should not significantly influence crystal structure refinement, provided there are no artefacts from any background subtraction, since the relative intensity of the diffracted beams (which includes the diffuse scattering) remains approximately constant in the low energy loss regime.

Combined 100 ms resolved grazing-incidence small/wide-angle X-ray scattering and optical interferometry reveal that the additive diiodooctane can significantly double the solvent evaporation rate, thereby effectively suppressing the rapid spinodal decomposition process in the early stage of spin-coasting, favouring slow phase segregation kinetics with nucleation and growth.

In electron microscopy the principle of reciprocity is often used to imply time reversal symmetry. While this is true for elastic scattering, its applicability to inelastic scattering is less well established. From the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy for a thermally isolated system must be constant for any reversible process. Using entropy and statistical fluctuation arguments, it is shown that, while reversibility is possible at the microscopic level, it becomes statistically less likely for higher energy transfers. The implications for reciprocal imaging modes, including energy loss and energy gain measurements, as well as Kainuma's reciprocal wave model are also discussed.

Algebraic expressions for averaging linear and nonlinear stiffness tensors from general anisotropy to different effective symmetries (11 Laue classes elastically representing all 32 crystal classes, and two non-crystalline symmetries: isotropic and cylindrical) have been derived by automatic symbolic computations of the arithmetic mean over the set of rotational transforms determining a given symmetry. This approach generalizes the Voigt average to nonlinear constants and desired approximate symmetries other than isotropic, which can be useful for a description of textured polycrystals and rocks preserving some symmetry aspects. Low-symmetry averages have been used to derive averages of higher symmetry to speed up computations. Relationships between the elastic constants of each symmetry have been deduced from their corresponding averages by resolving the rank-deficient system of linear equations. Isotropy has also been considered in terms of generalized Lamé constants. The results are published in the form of appendices in the supporting information for this article and have been deposited in the Mendeley database.

MltG, a membrane-bound lytic transglycosyl­ase, has roles in terminating glycan polymerization in peptidoglycan and incorporating glycan chains into the cell wall, making it significant in bacterial cell-wall biosynthesis and remodeling. This study provides the first reported MltG structure from Mycobacterium abscessus (maMltG), a superbug that has high antibiotic resistance. Our structural and biochemical analyses revealed that MltG has a flexible peptidoglycan-binding domain and exists as a monomer in solution. Further, the putative active site of maMltG was disclosed using structural analysis and sequence comparison. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of the transglycosyl­ation reaction of the MltG family, aiding the design of next-generation antibiotics targeting M. abscessus.

A significant part of the present and future of optoelectronic devices lies on thin multilayer heterostructures. Their optical properties depend strongly on strain, being essential to the knowledge of the stress level to optimize the growth process. Here the structural and microstructural characteristics of sub-micron a-ZnO epilayers (12 to 770 nm) grown on r-sapphire by metal–organic chemical vapour deposition are studied. Morphological and structural studies have been made using scanning electron microscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction. Plastic unit-cell distortion and corresponding strain have been determined as a function of film thickness. A critical thickness has been observed as separating the non-elastic/elastic states with an experimental value of 150–200 nm. This behaviour has been confirmed from ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy measurements. An equation that gives the balance of strains is proposed as an interesting method to experimentally determine this critical thickness. It is concluded that in the thinnest films an elongation of the Zn—O bond takes place and that the plastic strained ZnO films relax through nucleation of misfit dislocations, which is a consequence of three-dimensional surface morphology.

The design and first results of a high-transmission soft X-ray spectrometer operated at the X-SPEC double-undulator beamline of the KIT Light Source are presented. As a unique feature, particular emphasis was placed on optimizing the spectrometer transmission by maximizing the solid angle and the efficiencies of spectrometer gratings and detector. A CMOS detector, optimized for soft X-rays, allows for quantum efficiencies of 90% or above over the full energy range of the spectrometer, while simultaneously offering short readout times. Combining an optimized control system at the X-SPEC beamline with continuous energy scans (as opposed to step scans), the high transmission of the spectrometer, and the fast readout of the CMOS camera, enable the collection of entire rapid resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering maps in less than 1 min. Series of spectra at a fixed energy can be taken with a frequency of up to 5 Hz. Furthermore, the use of higher-order reflections allows a very wide energy range (45 to 2000 eV) to be covered with only two blazed gratings, while keeping the efficiency high and the resolving power E/ΔE above 1500 and 3000 with low- and high-energy gratings, respectively.

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, an activist from Malawi, is one of six recipients of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize. Majiga-Kamoto has been instrumental in implementing Malawi's ban on thin plastics.; Credit: /Goldman Environmental Prize

For Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, her great awakening to plastic pollution started with goats.

She was working for a local environmental NGO in her native Malawi with a program that gave goats to rural farmers. The farmers would use the goat's dung to produce low-cost, high-quality organic fertilizer.

The problem? The thin plastic bags covering the Malawian countryside.

"We have this very common street food, it's called chiwaya, and it's just really potato fried on the side of the road and it's served in these little blue plastics," Majiga-Kamoto says. "So because it's salty, once the goats get a taste of the salt, they just eat the plastic because they can't really tell that it's inedible. And they die because it blocks the ingestion system — there's no way to survive."

The goats were supposed to reproduce for the program, with the goat kids going on to new farmers. But because of plastic deaths the whole goat chain started falling apart.

"It was a lot of expectation from the farmers waiting to benefit. So you had this farmer who had this one goat and then they lost it. And that means that in that chain of farmers, that's obviously affected quite a number of farmers who won't get their turn."

For Majiga-Kamoto, her experience at the NGO with the plastic-eating goats was the moment it all changed. All of a sudden she started noticing how plastics were everywhere in the Malawian environment and food system — affecting people's livelihoods and health.

The fish in Lake Malawi were eating plastic trash. The country's cows were eating plastic. Researchers found that in one Malawi town 40% of the livestock had plastic in their intestines.

"We're choking in plastics," Majiga-Kamoto says, "And so what it means is that in one way or the other, we as humans are consuming these plastics."

Majiga-Kamoto was also seeing how plastics contributed to the growth of disease. Huge piles of plastic trash were blocking off Malawi's many waterways, creating pungent breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry malaria and for bacteria that cause cholera.

The 30-year-old says she remembers a time when Malawians didn't rely so much on thin, single-use plastic. "I remember back in the day when we'd go to the market and buy things like fish, like dried fish, you'd get it in newspapers."

But thin plastics have taken off in the last decade or so as new manufacturers sprung up in Malawi, selling products like thin plastic bags at cheap prices that made them affordable and accessible even in the most undeveloped parts of the country. A 2019 UNDP funded report found that Malawi produces an estimated 75,000 tonnes of plastic a year, with 80% reportedly single-use plastic. Single-use plastic refers to bags, straws and bottles that can't be recycled, and thin plastic refers to plastic that's under 60 microns in thickness.

The proliferation of this thin plastic waste led to the Malawian government's 2015 decision to ban the production, distribution and importation of single-use thin plastic. But before the ban could go into full effect, Malawi's plastics manufacturing industry filed an injunction at the country's High Court. The ban stalled.

When Majiga-Kamoto and a group of her fellow environmental NGO-workers and activists heard about the injunction they were angry and frustrated. "It sort of caught our interest to say, 'Wait a minute, you mean that there's actually people in our society who think that this is not a problem and that we should actually continue to live this way?'"

Galvanized, Majiga-Kamoto led a group of local environmental activists and NGOs to actually implement the single-use plastics ban, organizing marches on the judiciary where the decision would be decided. She kept her job at her NGO, the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy, and did this work on her own time.

She rejected the plastic industry's argument that the ban would hurt Malawi's economy — and even debated an industry lobbyist on TV.

Finally in 2019, after multiple injunctions filed by the plastics industry, the High Court ruled in favor of the single-use thin plastic ban. The following year the Malawian government began closing down illegal plastic manufacturers.

Last week Majiga-Kamoto was named one of the six winners of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work on this issue. Michael Sutton, executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, says Majiga-Kamoto's fight with the plastic lobby epitomizes the spirit of the prize. "She mustered the troops, the grassroots communities, to take on the government and big industry and won several times," Sutton says, "She not only won the ban in law, but is now holding the government's feet to the fire to enforce it."

And Majiga-Kamoto isn't letting up her pressure to uphold the single-use plastic ban anytime soon. Although she is trying to get some summer vacation time with her family — that is, if she isn't interrupted.

"I was just at the lake a couple of weeks ago and we were there just enjoying the beautiful lake and along come these pieces of plastic." Three plastic bags floated up closer to her, her son and her niece as they played in the water.

Majiga-Kamoto grabbed for the bags.

"My family was laughing to say, 'You shouldn't be working! You're at the lake!' And I'm like, 'But I can't just leave them in there!'"

Julia Simon is a regular contributor to NPR's podcasts and news desks focusing on climate change, energy, and business news.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Revelle Lecture Explores the Problem and Proposes Solutions

From N-95 masks that are protecting health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic to food packaging found in every aisle of the grocery store, plastics play an essential role in our lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a harsh light on the consequences of chronic underinvestment in public health, and the limited recognition of its role. Unless there is a crisis, it is not always obvious that public health is “always on,” working quietly in the background on chronic disease prevention, vital statistics, sanitation, safe water, safe food, occupational diseases and injury, and infection control.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today that Laura Castillo-Page will become its first chief diversity and inclusion officer, effective June 1.

The United States should create a national strategy by end of 2022 to reduce its outsized and increasing contribution to plastic waste in the world’s oceans.

Stanford engineers have developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could cool your body far more efficiently than is possible with the natural or synthetic fabrics in clothes we wear today.

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An international group of biologists is calling for data collection on a global scale to improve forecasts of how climate change affects animals and plants.

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A manager from Orbis weighs the benefits of opting for plastic rather than wood pallets.

The Hormel-owned snack brand has installed solar panels to boosts its sustainability.

Company announces additional investment in flow wrap equipment to reduce plastic packaging across three of its popular brands.

The handheld device can be used to secure cartons and other items in various packaging environments.

Multi-Conveyor recently built a series of stainless steel plastic chain conveyors, in stages, to transport both full and empty cases of food product through nearly 50 feet of conveyance.

Heat and Control has chosen SNAXPO 2019, their 55thyear as an exhibitor, to introduce their latest snack processing innovation, the new Rotary Dryer Roaster (RDR).

The Parmesan Crisps brand will debut these updates at The 2022 Winter Fancy Food Show.

PM Engineer Chief Editor Nicole Krawcke sits down with Lance MacNevin, director of engineering, building and construction division of the Plastics Pipe Institute, to discuss top trends influencing the use of plastic pipes in commercial applications.

Dairy farming is vital for rural communities and household nutrition. Durable materials like REHAU PEXa plumbing systems are essential for dairy barn construction. Three WRC dairy barn projects feature these systems.

When it comes to beverage manufacturing and packaging practices, OEMs are creating the machinery necessary to help beverage-makers conserve and reduce their energy output. For plastic bottle manufacturing, it’s not just the increasing adoption of rPET plastic bottles, but also reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that it takes to power these machines, experts note.