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3 posts from August 2009

August 05, 2009

Polymer technology used to improve beer!

Beer Now here is a plastics application worth toasting. According to this BBC report and others, researchers at the Technical University of Dortmund, in Germany, led by Borje Sellergren have invented a process using 'molecularly imprinted polymers' to remove riboflavin (B2) from beer and other drinks.

Turns out that the riboflavin is what reacts with sunlight to cause poor shelf life and stale beer. Now by producing a clever molecular 'trap' they can remove the riboflavin before shipment.

AlphaGalileo reports "An important transition [for molecularly imprinted polymers] from being artificial receptors used in laboratory applications to being scrubbers capable of selectively removing unwanted, toxic or irritating compounds from many types of consumer products" - Nicholas Snow, Seton Hall University, South Orange, US

They actually form the polymer against real riboflavin molecules, then once the riboflavin is removed, you have a proper molecular trap for that particular thing.

Also, from AlphaGalileo, Antonio Martín-Esteban an expert in analytical applications of molecularly imprinted polymers at the National Institute for Agriculture and Food Research and Technology, Madrid, Spain, comments that Sellergren's polymer formation strategy 'is so simple and effective that it will most likely become routinely incorporated in the synthesis of a new generation of improved water-compatible imprinted polymers'.

August 04, 2009

Guk keeps slipping between the server cracks

Shake until the slosh, slosh becomes thump, thump...



Guk In 1994 one of the wildly popular pages we hosted was our proprietary slime formula which we fondly named... GUK! This page was always one of the most heavily trafficed, but every time a server upgrade occurred, it seems the slime page slipped off into the unknown.

Perhaps someone in IT, long gone, lacked a sense of humor.

Now, for once, it has slipped INTO an appearance instead of away. While posting our original 1994 web site Poly-Links, as a historical oddity for those that like that sort of stuff, we also re-posted the 'original' slime page with the GUK formula!

While this formula remains in our forums, it is sort of hidden there. So without further ado, may I present the one, the only, the original GUK page!

Note: the formula still works, is well time tested.  The science is explained, along with some other weird chemistry items BUT we take no responsibility for anyone who eats the GUK or stains a shirt! You're all on your own here.  But I did always have fun with this with the kids!



August 03, 2009

Plastics Internet History - Polylinks

Polylinks circa 1994 Harken back to yesteryear again, this time for Poly-Links!

Poly-Links is plastics.com's grandfather (polymers.com is the father) and was the very first plastics portal or plastics community ever.

While rummaging through our archives I came across an almost intact version of our very first site, Poly-Links. And I came across our 'exact' birthday, November 7th, 1994. Previously we only had this date down to the month of Nov. Now we can hold a proper birthday party. You're all invited.

Poly-Links predated all other plastics sites except for an uploaded set of images from the GE Plastics brochure. At first it linked engineering links and polymer academics as they were the only useful links around, but it grew quickly.

Poly-Links, which was renamed polymers.com in 1995, then plastics.com in 2000, and predated all other plastics pioneers; polysort, plasticsnet, etc.

Modeled like an early day yahoo, it was clean and simple. Of humorous note, we even had foreign 'mirror sites' because international internet connections were tenuous and very slow at the time!

In any event, we put it back online for those archivists and plastics historians who want to... 'Harken Back to yesteryear' circa 1994.

 

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