Word: plasticity
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...unarmed Predator, the U.S. government sped up a program to fit each aircraft with two Hellfire missiles. Awesome sounding but benign looking, the 27-ft.-long Predator is painted a dull gray and shaped like an upside-down spoon with wings. The drone is made of lightweight composite plastic and metal and has a tiny, propeller-driven engine--adapted from a snowmobile's--with a decidedly unimpressive top speed of only 150 m.p.h. Rogers' previous craft, the supersonic F-15 jet fighter, can fly up to 900 m.p.h...
...company has also targeted online commerce, teaming with Internet telephone service Skype to test Internet-based voice authentication that verifies transactions on the fly for the likes of Amazon and eBay. Your plastic may still be vulnerable, says Kramer, but "no one can steal your voice...
Mike Biddle hates waste. As a kid, he was forever switching off lights at home to save energy. Years later, while working at Dow Chemical, he suggested that he focus on recycled plastics instead of high-tech composites. "We didn't hire a Ph.D. engineer to work on garbage," one of his bosses told him. When Biddle launched a company to recycle and sell plastic from complex waste streams like junked electronics and automobiles, he says, "a lot of people, including some of my board members, thought I was nuts...
Today Biddle's dream is finally taking shape--a mere 11 years after launch. MBA Polymers Inc. is the world's most advanced recycler of plastics used in durable goods. MBA raised $30 million to develop its patented technology for extracting and recycling plastic from trashed computers, printers, mobile phones, TVs, VCRs, fax machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and other forms of e-waste. Biddle claims he can recycle "anything with a cord" and then some...
That's good news, since e-waste, of which plastic is a significant part, is accumulating rapidly--choking landfills and creating toxic plumes when incinerated. Some 100 billion pounds of plastic are used in the U.S. annually, yet only 2% to 4% of complex plastics are recycled, compared with 95% for steel and aluminum. That's because it's difficult to identify and sort engineered plastic by type and grade. At its 50,000-sq.-ft. Richmond plant, MBA figured out how to do it more affordably and efficiently and on a mass scale. In November, MBA opened the world...