A weak dollar is charging up US exports of plastics. US plastics exports grew 12.3 percent last year and rose 11.7 percent through July of this year. Imports are down 7.3 percent through July of this year. Even better news: American plastics companies invested $11.3 billion in new capital equipment. I got the new data from Bill Carteaux, the president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, a US trade group. It’s the first really positive sign for the industry in about seven years. Sales of injection molding machines had dropped about in half in that period, and may be bouncing back a little now. Even though imports from China continue to grow, America has a positive trade surplus in plastics, and that number is now growing. A plastics trade surplus of $5.9 billion through July exceeded the entire trade surplus in 2006.
Ford and Unifi, maker of Repreve, will gather and recycle 2 million plastic bottles at CES and other shows for conversion into the Repreve seat fabric used in the 2012 Focus EV.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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