American Dollar to Canadian Dollar = 0.764624; American Dollar to Chinese Yuan = 0.151289; American Dollar to Euro = 1.186918; American Dollar to Japanese Yen = 0.009679; American Dollar to Mexican Peso = 0.048093.

When the price of diesel goes up, the cost of everything else follows. Peak travel season is upon us and gasoline prices continue to soar. Americans are rightfully concerned as the cost of filling up their tank keeps going up at the pump. And while most may not pay as much thought to the price of diesel, the reality is that number weighs even heavier on their pocketbooks. Virtually every good you can think of travels by truck before it’s in your reach. And today’s trucks, by and large, run on diesel. The price of diesel is baked into the price of everything else, gasoline included. Right now, motor carriers are getting slammed by nightmarish surges in the price of diesel. It’s especially hard on smaller fleets, which don’t operate at a scale to negotiate rates down or lock prices into a contract. These small businesses account for 97% of trucking companies in the U.S., running 20 trucks or fewer.

In our modern world, eliminating plastics is inconceivable. Unfortunately, they do have disadvantages, including the formation of CO2 in both production and combustion, depletion of fossil feedstocks, and growth of landfills. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Russian researchers introduce a new way forward, a polymer made entirely from biomass that can easily and inexpensively be used in 3D printing. Objects produced in this way are of high quality, easily recyclable, and highly solvent-resistant. Conventional “subtractive” processes involve cutting, sawing, turning, or milling, which results in a great deal of wasted material. In contrast, 3D printing processes are, in principle, waste-free, because they are “additive”: three-dimensional objects are produced in a layer-by-layer application of material. The most common technique is called fused deposition modeling (FDM). In this process, the raw material is squirted through a hot nozzle onto a mobile base and thereby liquefied (extrusion). The printer head produces the programmed form like in a conventional two-dimensional printing process, releasing small amounts of the polymer instead of ink. This is repeated for layer after layer until the desired three-dimensional object is complete. Yet, the polymers used until now have a number of disadvantages that limit their use. Some of the polymers are attacked by organic solvents. Those that withstand the solvents, on the other hand, adhere poorly and shrink on heating, allowing their layers to come apart and causing errors in the printing process. Click Read More below for additional information.