Efficient innovation: the key to success

A company based in a high-cost economy cannot compete in terms of wage and infrastructure costs with one in a low-cost economy, and must find other ways to remain competitive. One proven strategy is differentiation, and in this article John Hansford and David Sadler look at how differentiation through innovation has been implemented at Zeneca Colours.     

Educating EVs to Improve Bone Regeneration: Getting Closer to the Clinic

The incidence of bone-related disorders is continuously growing as the aging of the population in developing countries continues to increase. Although therapeutic interventions for bone regeneration exist, their effectiveness is questioned, especially under certain circumstances, such as critical size defects. This gap of curative options has led to the search for new and more effective therapeutic approaches for bone regeneration; among them, the possibility of using extracellular vesicles (EVs) is gaining ground. EVs are secreted, biocompatible, nano-sized vesicles that play a pivotal role as messengers between donor and target cells, mediated by their specific cargo. Evidence shows that bone-relevant cells secrete osteoanabolic EVs, whose functionality can be further improved by several strategies. This, together with the low immunogenicity of EVs and their storage advantages, make them attractive candidates for clinical prospects in bone regeneration. However, before EVs reach clinical translation, a number of concerns should be addressed. Unraveling the EVs’ mode of action in bone regeneration is one of them; the molecular mediators driving their osteoanabolic effects in acceptor cells are now beginning to be uncovered. Increasing the functional and bone targeting abilities of EVs are also matters of intense research. Here, we summarize the cell sources offering osteoanabolic EVs, and the current knowledge about the molecular cargos that mediate bone regeneration. Moreover, we discuss strategies under development to improve the osteoanabolic and bone-targeting potential of EVs.     

Correlating Polymer Parameters to the Entire Molecular Weight Distribution: Application to the Melt Index

Summary: A method that takes into account the entire molecular weight distribution (MWD) for the prediction of polymer point properties and/or indexes is presented. The method is based on the convolution of the polymer mass molecular weight distribution and an empirical kernel function. Thus, the problem of relating the polymers properties to the MWD is reduced to the estimation of this empirical function. The proposed methodology is able to successfully predict melt indexes (MI) of a set of poly(propylene) samples.

     

Controlling the Molecular Assembly of Polyoxometalates from the Nano to the Micron Scale: Molecules to Materials

Polyoxometalates (POMs) represent a class of metal-oxide units based upon oxides of Mo, W, V, and Nb. Such cluster building blocks can also be subsequently self-organized in complex 1D, 2D, and 3D frameworks leading to functional materials with diverse properties that span size ranges from 1 to 7 nm in terms of the size of the largest molecular units/clusters. However, since the cluster building blocks have great structural flexibility, the design of architectures is non-trivial due to the sensitive dependence on reaction parameters such as pH, cation type, temperature, templating and linking units, ionic strength, redox agents. Therefore, the ability to control the aggregation or linking of the building blocks to give pre-defined structure-types as well as engineering the physical properties — for example, optical, electronic, catalytic activity/reactivity — is a tremendous challenge. In this review we survey our work from the control/design point of view and show how it is becoming possible to control the assembly of POM-based architectures. We also describe the polyoxometalate-based molecules-to-material transformations that can be seen as an osmotically driven crystal morphogenesis producing tubular architectures. This can be described as a new type of emergent phenomenon.     

德固赛:不断创新,为中国提供量身定制的解决方案——访德固赛(中国)投资有限公司涂料原料及色浆业务部亚太区销售副总裁艾瑞仕博士

德固赛作为一家以生产高效益特种化学产品为业务重点的跨国企业,位居全球特种化工领域世界前列。到目前为止,在中国已经拥有11家的合资企业和13家生产基地。2006年,德固赛中国拥有4000名员工,销售总额达到了4.5亿欧元。涂料原料与色浆业务部是德固赛的核心业务部门之一,将中国作为其最具潜力且发展速度最快的市场之一,近年来不断地加大在中国的运作。尤其是2006年春季,在德固赛上海多用户基地投产了其聚酯树脂和色浆项目,更是加速了其在中国的发展。为了进一步了解与涂料行业关系密切的德固赛涂料原料与色浆业务部在中国目前的状况及今后在中国的发展,并将给中国涂料业带来哪些影响,笔者有幸专访了亚太区销售副总裁艾瑞仕博士。     

Back to the future: Fatty acids,the green genie to design smart soft materials

Fatty acids are widely used in industries for various applications as soaps or in their crystalline form. Fatty acid soaps are used as surface-active agent to stabilize foams and emulsions, for detergency, and surface wetting. Fatty acid molecules in organic solvents are used as low-molecular-mass organic gelators. Currently, there is a renewed interest in using fatty acids in industrial applications instead of petrochemical surfactants since fatty acid soaps are green surfactants. Fatty acids exhibit also many advantages, including the design of responsive soft-materials. Fatty acid soaps are natural pH and thermoresponsive surfactants, which can lead to responsive foams and emulsions. In their crystalline form, fatty acid crystals in both aqueous and non-aqueous solvents stabilize liquid foams. These crystals are also efficient in the production of liquid marbles. Fatty acids are solvosurfactants with the ability to form microemulsions and capillary suspensions. In this review, we illustrate how fatty acid molecules can be used in the manufacture of multiresponsive soft-materials ranging from aqueous and non-aqueous foams, emulsions, nanoemulsions, microemulsions, liquid marbles and capillary suspensions.