May 2012

  • Published On: May 1, 2012

    Garments made of fabric embedded with technologies such as flexible circuitry, antennas and power sources will revolutionize life in the 21st century—once methods to manufacture those wearable products can be harnessed. An agreement between Genevieve Dion, director of Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, Philadelphia, Pa., and Shima Seiki USA Inc., [...]

  • Published On: May 1, 2012

    Corn-husk fiber may be the next big thing in sustainable textiles, if two research scientists at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln have their way. Professors Michael James and Yiqi Yang have developed“Husker fiber” into a prototype sweater, but require millions of dollars in capital to develop hundreds of pounds of the fiber for manufacturers to test [...]

  • Published On: May 1, 2012

    When a vehicle crash triggers an airbag, the chemical reaction that inflates the bag blows out waste particles and gases. Autoliv Inc., Stockholm, Sweden, has found a better way to inflate airbags. Autoliv’s new inflator uses hydrogen and oxygen with inert gas to inflate the airbag, which produces water vapor when it deploys, a much [...]

  • Published On: May 1, 2012

    The European Commission and the U.S. have settled a long-standing dispute concerning a practice called ‘zeroing’ that the U.S. uses to calculate duty rates for products that are dumped on the market at below-market prices. Zeroing is a calculation method that led to higher duties for EU exporters, despite the method being found inconsistent by [...]