April 26, 2007

Designed in part by University of Florida engineering students, an environmentally friendly fly trap uses battery-powered LEDs flashing at different frequencies to attract its quarry.

At the recent Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) 2007 Global Plastics Environmental Conference, GE Plastics received an environmental award for New Technologies in Progress. SPE recognized GE’s Valox iQ and Xenoy iQ resins, both synthesized from post consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.

A module from TT electronics IRC Wire and Film Technologies Div., in cooperation with its AB Automotive Electronics division, produces almost instant hot washer fluid for cleaning and deicing windshields.

Tired of waiting for your PC to boot up from its hard drive?

A developer of custom conveying systems figures modular wiring let it assemble and install a new packaging line for paper towels in one-fourth the time needed ordinarily.

Horsepower isn't a problem for the Top Fuel drag bike from Salakazi Racing in Finland.

The LMV221 RF power detector from National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., targets mobile-phone power controls in current and emerging cellular standards, including GSM, CDMA, UMTS and TD-SCDMA.

Will ducted fans bring flying cars closer to reality?

A team led by aerospace researcher Anthony Colozza, a researcher with Analex Corp., in Fairfax Va., and NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Oh., have been working on designs for a plane that will fly like a bird.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Akron, Ohio, is using carbon-fiber reinforcement to add stiffness across the width of their continuously variable transmission or CVT belts.

A new vacuum void controlled (VCC) production process puts less resin inside a carbon-fiber-reinforced composite bike frame.

The Fluid Power Conference & Expo on May 15 & 16 at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay Hotel in Tampa, Fla., offers more than 18 seminars on a variety of topics, from fluid-power fundamentals to compressed-air preparation, from motion-control basics to hydraulic-systems filtration, and more.

Sandia National Laboratory's huge Z machine, capable of generating temperatures hotter than the Sun, also turns water into ice — in nanoseconds.

A Swedish design firm has built a miniature model of Stockholm, Sweden, using a 3D printer from Dimension 3D Printing Group, a business unit of Stratasys Inc.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute report they've created the world's first material that reflects virtually no light.

Delphi Corp., Troy, Mich., says it has developed the first automotive ammonia sensor.

The lightweight kid carrier that attaches to the new trioBike is a vacuum-formed, five-layered structure made from coextruded sheets of Luran S and ABS from BASF Corp., Florham Park, N.J.

A new patent-pending aluminum alloy from Kobe Steel is made using a spray forming process and is said to be the strongest aluminum alloy available.

A heavily filled composite stereo-lithography (SL) resin from DSM Somos, Elgin, Ill., let the Italian rapid-prototyping service bureau Provel s.r.l. test a scaled prototype of the M346 trainer aircraft in a wind tunnel.