Friday, March 14, 2008

Polyester

Polyester is the most widely used manufactured fiber in the United States. Natural fiber polyester fabrics are used for attire and home furnishings. These include bed sheets, bedspreads, curtains and draperies. Polyester fiberfill is also used to substance pillows, comforters and cushion stuffing.

Polyester fabrics sometimes have a "less natural" feel when compared to correspondingly woven fabrics made from ordinary fibers, e.g., cotton. However, polyester fabrics may demonstrate other advantages over natural fabrics, e.g., improved wrinkle confrontation. As a result, polyester fibers are often spun mutually with natural fibers, e.g., cotton, to create a cloth with blended properties.

Polyesters are also used to make bottles, films, oilcloth, liquid crystal displays, holograms, filters, dielectric film for capacitors, film insulation for wire and insulating tapes. Liquid crystalline polyesters are among the first scientifically used liquid crystalline polymers. In general they have extremely good perfunctory properties and are exceptionally heat defiant. For that reason, they can be used as an abradable seal in jet engines.

Thermosetting polyester resins are normally copolymers of unsaturated polyesters with styrene. The unsaturation in the polyester is generally governed by maleic acid or fumaric acid. Another important family is the group of vinyl esters. Here the unsaturation is found in the alcohol part of the polyester. The double bond of the unsaturated polyester reacts with styrene resulting in a 3-D crosslinked structure, the thermoset fabric. The cross-linking is initiated through an exothermic reaction involving an organic peroxide, such as methyl ethyl ketone peroxide or benzoyl peroxide. Unsaturated polyesters are commonly used as casting materials, fiberglass laminating resins, and non-metallic auto-body fillers. Fiberglass reinforced unsaturated polyesters find wide application in bodies of yachts and as body parts of cars.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Race

The historical definition of race was an unassailable and distinct type or species, sharing distinct cultural characteristics such as creation, temperament, and mental abilities. These races were not conceived as being related with each other, but formed a ladder of inherent value called the Great Chain of Being with Europeans usually at the top. As time progressed, Darwin's theory of evolution was applied to races. By this time, anthropologists considered humans to be related to each other. The word "race," interpreted to mean common tumble, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza, which may have been derived from the Latin word generatio (a begetting). The etymology can be further traced back to Latin gens (clan, stock, people) and genus (birth, descent, origin, race, stock, family) which in turn comes from the Greek γένος (race, stock, or family).

This late cause for the English and French terms is regular with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a very small number of groups of human beings based on extraction dates from the time of Columbus. Older concepts that were also at least partly based on common dive, such as nation and people, entail a much larger number of groupings.