As a technology, thermoforming now has a surprisingly green story to tell. As Paul Gander reports, this is about energy efficiency as well as weight reduction.

John Ratcliffe was Secretary-General of The Plastics and Rubber Institute for nearly 30 years and played a key role in the post-war development of Britain’s plastics and rubber industries.

A polymer network using polyaniline could be the solution to enhanced hydrogen storage. Dr K Balasubramanian from the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) in Pune, India, explains how this could provide an alternative to traditional energy systems.

A new thermal fluid-based heating and cooling system that could work effectively at the upper and lower ends of the heating cycle has been developed.

Despite some high-profile examples in retail, active and intelligent packaging has never really broken into the European mainstream. Technology and packaging writer Paul Gander asks why this is, and how one major initiative is hoping to change that.

Dr Bob Page looks at some of the optimum methods of encapsulation of nuclear waste streams, and the progress being made.

Brian Marr of the RW Thomson Memorial Fellowship revisits the extraordinary contribution Thomson made to the development of rubber tyres.

Azrul Mutalib and Hong Hao from The University of Western Australia show how pressure-impulse diagrams for fibrereinforced polymer-strengthened concrete columns can be used to predict failure behaviour.

Dr Chris O’Connor, Senior Consultant at GL Noble Denton reports on polyethylene pipe failure in the utilities sector.

Charlotte Meeks, Senior Scientist, and Andy Foreman, Principal Scientist at QinetiQ, UK, discuss shape memory alloy reinforced composites in delivering reduced foreign object damage for aircraft.