Group items tagged

Ohio-based supplier of specialty copper alloy products Brush Engineered Materials Inc. reported second quarter results. Q2 2009 sales were US$174.1 million, 29% lower than the same period a year ago but an improvement of 29% from the first quarter this year. Net loss was US$0.8 million versus net income of US$7.2 million in Q2 2008. The Specialty Engineered Alloys segment reported Q2 sales of US$41.2 million, compared to sales of US$83.0 million the same period in 2008. Operating loss for Q2 was US$9.3 million compared to an operating profit of US$4.8 million a year ago. The decline in segment sales was primarily due to the effect of the severe global recession in key markets including telecommunications, computer, automotive electronics, oil and gas, aerospace and heavy equipment. A portion of the decline was due to lower metal prices. The company is foreseeing an improving order book and is expecting to generate a slight profit in Q3 this year with higher sales volume and positive impact from its cost-reduction activities.

The town of Guiyu in China's Guangdong Province, where residents have made an industry of recycling waste computer products with serious impact on their health, is one example. "People in Guiyu are breaking down mounds of toxic electronics with crude instruments and burning the electronics in fire pits for the gold and copper wiring in the circuit boards," Greenpeace International campaigner Casey Harrell told TechNewsWorld. "New studies show that the health impacts aren't just a combination of the impacts of chloro- and bromo-dioxin; it's exponentially higher than that," he said. "Among the few places in the world where you find mixed chloro- and bromo-dioxin is in places where you burn items with chlorine and bromine in them."

Recent research into the properties of graphene nanoribbons provides two new reasons for using the material as interconnects in future computer chips. In widths as narrow as 16 nanometers, graphene has a current carrying capacity approximately a thousand times greater than copper - while providing improved thermal conductivity.

The Chinese government said that it would expand an existing subsidy program to encourage the purchase of new vehicles and home appliances, thereby boosting domestic spending. China will now allocate 5B yuan ($733M) for owners of light trucks and passenger vans who upgrade to new models. It also plans to spend 2B yuan ($293M) to fund discounts of new purchases of home appliances when customers turn in old goods, which will possibly give support to domestic copper demand. The plan will apply to almost all household appliances, including air-conditioners, television sets, refrigerators, washing machines and computers. Exports of these have been weak and the plan will help local producers to de-stock more quickly.

""In the other part of the project, we're interested in collecting valuable metals that could be sold, including some of the more technologically important metals, such as vanadium and copper that are in cell phones, computers and alloys,""

The Chinese government announced that it will terminate its old-for-new home appliances subsidy scheme on 31st December 2011. The subsidy, which was introduced on 1st June, provides consumers in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Fuzhou, Changsha and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Guangdong with a 10% discount on a selected group of appliances. These include televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, air-conditioners and computers. All of these appliances are major end use segments for copper semis products.

But the humble copper cabling linking most households to the internet looks set to remain a feature of our national IT infrastructure for some time yet.

This new process for creating features on silicon wafers that are between five and 20 nanometers thick has been developed by a multidisciplinary team led by Craig Hawker, materials professor and director of the Materials Research Laboratory at UCSB and the members of his research group. Hawker worked with professors Glenn Fredrickson - and his research group - and Edward Kramer - and his research group.

The lab has a lofty vision: "Enable one person to invent and run the next revolutionary IT service, operationally expressing a new business idea as a multi-million-user service over the course of a long weekend."

Copper