Parade executives approached Donnelly a couple of years ago, and the 40-foot-long balloon, made from urethane-coated nylon, has been in process ever since.

WSJ: Up in the Air | Making It

Its "nose" is a 2-inch-long glass cylinder coated on the inside with a concoction of glowing chemicals like those found in the belly of a lightning bug.

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At a lunch at One Market in San Francisco, Chris Gronet, a Solyndra founder and then-chief executive, pulled from a case a long cylindrical tube that was coated in thin-film solar cells.

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Schering-Plough, which has long dominated the interferon market, sells the very similar polymer-coated interferon called Peg-Intron.

FORBES: Health

Conveyor belts carried long, wafer-thin strips of metal into printing-press-like rollers, which coated them with electrode-active material.

NEWYORKER: Green Giant

In the past year, Guidant has lost a long series of legal and scientific battles to be one of the first companies to bring to market a drug-coated heart stent, which helps prevent arteries from re-clogging.

FORBES: Guidant's Guilt Seen As Old News