Word: plasticity
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...basic eight-stud red Lego brick was first sold in Denmark in 1949. But it took a further nine years for Ole Kirk's son, Godtfred Kirk, to file the patent for the versatile "Automatic Binding Brick" with its interlocking 2x4 studs. The plastic bricks are part of a unique system: tiny tubes inside give the knobs on top of other blocks more places to grip. They hold together well but can be taken apart easily by a child. And consistency has been key: the bricks produced today have the same bumps and holes, and can still interlock with those...
...January 28, 1958, that then-Lego head Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed a patent for the iconic plastic brick with its stud-and-hole design. Since then, the company has made a staggering 400 billion Lego elements, or 62 bricks for every person on the planet. And if stacked on top of one another, the pieces would form 10 towers reaching all the way from the Earth to the Moon...
...over the past decade, the group has struggled to keep pace with changing toy trends: the basic plastic bricks find it particularly tough to compete with games consoles like XBox and PlayStation to attract kids' attention. After years of eroding sales, the company posted its first-ever losses...
...Unfortunately, the utensils are not as hard as they need to be," he said over lunch at KFC, where the cholesterol-soaked skin of his fried chicken was overwhelming his plastic knife and fork...
...amazing mind," says Brem. Even before his pioneering work in cancer treatments, Folkman and a colleague, while in the Navy, perfected what they called a "leaky plastic," which later became the basis for the implantable, time-release contraceptive Norplant. Not only did Folkman's work on angiogenesis benefit cancer patients, but the same principles are now leading to novel treatments for reviving dying heart tissue, restoring circulation to tissues crippled by diabetes and improving vision in patients with macular degeneration. His theories may yet impact the treatment of other conditions, including obesity: "More recently, he had the idea that...