It may have surprised some to see auto CEOs cheer new US fuel mileage guidelines that will require a huge shift to smaller cars. But the fact is that a giant mishmash of regulations have emerged affecting the design of just about everything. CEOs are just glad to know there is a single target and they know what to do, agree or not with the new standards.Design engineers face a similar regulatory chaos with guidelines on high-performance polymers used in electronics. OEMs face rules from the European Union through Reach and RoHS; the Green Chemistry Imitative, which became law in California in 2008; Canada, US law, and various state laws. Every OEM seems to have a different plan to comply. Nokia went halogen free in 2007. Intel banned brominated flame retartdants in 2008. Motorola restricted brominated flamr retardants this year. And so on.
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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