Avoiding food and beverage contamination involves more than sanitation and temperature control. Stringent government regulations mandate that food, beverage and pharmaceutical manufacturers keep foreign material out of ingredients to ensure safety for consumers. In the recent past, the USDA recalled over 15.5 million pounds of food in one year because of foreign-material contamination. These [...]

Rubber is a material that is critical to modern industrial civilization, with applications surrounding us everywhere; yet rubber is probably the least understood materials that engineers use.  The most notable application of rubber occurs in modern transportation, which relies entirely upon rubber tires for propulsion, whether by truck, car, motorcycle, or bicycle.  Rubber is the [...]