The undercoat is made of a polymer that acts like the glue on a Post-it note.
The concept is amazingly simple: A polymer scaffold is designed in the shape of, say, an individual's liver.
It's a blend of cotton and polylactide, a polymer derived from dextrose, which can be cost-effectively made from corn.
Canada will soon join a growing list of countries that use a polymer-based plastic instead of paper for its cash.
He then took brain stem cells from another rat and grew part of the spinal cord on a polymer scaffold.
Wherever the light hits the material, it hardens into a polymer, creating a grid of cells full of liquid crystal.
Bacteria in such a film are embedded in a polymer matrix, which makes them harder to kill than isolated individuals.
In this, the electrolyte is a polymer membrane coated with platinum, a metal that acts as a catalyst for the chemistry involved.
The SmartFlex Card features a polymer exterior that feels nice to the touch and absorbs shock in the event of a fall.
FORBES: Searching for the Best iPhone Wallet Case? Speck's Got It
Statkraft isn't disclosing its secrets, except to say that its magic membrane is made of a polymer similar to plastic and extremely thin.
Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo has built for himself a stretchy, flexible conducting material using carbon nanotubes mixed with a polymer.
ENGADGET: Another flexible circuit project emerges, carbon nanotubes to blame
The compact battery in Apple's iPods relies on a polymer made by Kureha, which holds 70% of the market, and whose factory was damaged.
Otto Wichterle, when a professor of chemistry in Prague in the 1950s, had discovered a polymer called hydrogel poly-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, with its affinity for water.
Dr Strano, however, has exploited a new manufacturing process based on a polymer gel that has an affinity for semiconducting nanotubes, but not metallic ones.
These are then sewn into a very small (1.22mm wide) lead made of a polymer yarn and wires, which are then inserted into the spine.
ENGADGET: Chip implanted in spinal cord could help sufferers of chronic pain (video)
Another project: Dow is working with makers of digital videodisks and CDs in the music and software industries to produce a polymer that can help prevent piracy.
Another project: Dow is working with makers of digital video discs and CDs in the music and software industries to produce a polymer that can help prevent piracy.
After ten years of research, David Martin, a materials scientist at the University of Michigan, came up with a polymer that could help deaf people hear and blind people see.
Luckham and Torres milled down old fabrics and mixed the fibers with a polymer, then added a solvent that would evaporate before the formula hit a surface and turned solid on contact.
There's a wooden book that unfolds into a desk lamp and a polymer incubation blanket for infants that's "on track to save 100, 000 children's lives, " according to Hatch, TechShop's spikey-white-haired CEO.
Dr Greenhalgh's solution was to use a polymer gel-based resin that combines two networks of cross-linking structures, one that holds the material together and the other providing a conduit for charged particles.
Rick Claus, an electrical engineer at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Jennifer Lalli, a polymer chemist at NanoSonic, a spin-out from Virginia Tech, believe they have solved this problem.
Lucent researchers replaced it with an electret microphone, which picks up sound using a polymer foil more than 1, 000 times smaller than the diaphragm in a dynamic microphone that picks up fewer vibrations.
Fuel cells come in several varieties, but the heart of the sort developed by Ballard is a polymer membrane coated on either side with platinum electrodes (the platinum also acts as a catalyst).
The two electrodes, cathode and anode, are separated by a polymer electrolyte membrane which permits protons to cross to reach the cathode while the electrons are made to flow as part of a circuit to carry an electrical current.
In a process the researchers describe in articles published today in Science and Advanced Materials, they used a silicon needle with a tip about ten thousand times smaller than an ant to sculpt a polymer material known as polyphthalaldehyde.
FORBES: IBM Draws A World Map 1000 Times Smaller Than A Grain Of Sand
They would be converted into glucose (of which cellulose, which makes up much of the dry weight of a plant, is a polymer) and the glucose would be shipped around much as oil is today, for eventual conversion into biofuels and bioplastics.
The use of a polymer filling for the gaps instead of air lets the Singapore agency create a 3D, cavity-backed silicon antenna that measures just 0.06 by 0.04 inches, roughly the size of a seed on your hamburger bun, even as it increases the breakneck pace.
ENGADGET: Seed-sized A*STAR antenna could open the door to 20Gbps wireless
The stock market currently is focused on new stents being developed by Guidant (nyse: GDT - news - people ) and Medtronic (nyse: MDT - news - people ), but these stents are based on the same idea as those that are currently on the market: They are made of steel, coated with a polymer.
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