Design tradeshow, RD Weis Rochester!

Dear friends and colleagues

Did you miss Chicago? Or not see everything there?

Please join us

at the

Co-Sponsored RD Weis Companies

and

Rochester City Center IIDA

DESIGN TRADESHOW

Wednesday June 29, 2011

4 to 8 p.m.

Register online here. Come enjoy drinks and food, and check out wonderful new products from all your favorite manufacturers, including:

• FreeAxez
• Mondo
• Mannington
• Armstrong
• Forbo
• J&J Invision
• InterfaceFlor
• Interior Resource Group
• Merkel Donohue
• Milliken
• Bentley Prince Street
• Kraus Floors
• DesignTex
• Koroseal
• Tantus
• Roppe

We look forward to seeing you! Click here for a map.

Please RSVP to Christine Lee 585-334-8570 or email clee at rdweis.com.

245 Summit Point Drive

Suite 1

Henrietta, NY 14467

Office: 585-334-8570

Fax: 585-334-8597

Cell: 508-353-1350

Sheri Gorman at NeoCon 2011

Check out Sheri Gorman's Show and Tell on NeoCon 2011 here:

Floor Covering News: Ceramic practices patience during slow recovery

Louis Iannaco in Floor Covering News has an interesting story about the ceramic tile situation during this slow economic recovery:

...The consensus among executives currently has commercial sales representing approximately 40% of the total ceramic tile market, and most saw this trend continue during the first quarter of the year with commercial actually outperforming residential.

As Bettiga noted, bidding is slowly improving and the second half of 2011 and first half of 2012 will result in slight increases for our members in work. “Backlogs (future projects) are definitely healthier compared to a year ago. The companies that are surviving are being flexible, ready to work in areas outside of their normal comfort zone, such as traveling, partnering with other contractors on projects, and diversifying their offerings into specialized niches such as maintenance, restoration, remodeling, etc.”

There is a sense that the field has been “cleansed to some degree,” he added, “and those who have stayed fluid and financially healthy are poised to reap the benefits in the next 12 to 24 months.”...

Green robots!

Journalist and Science Wednesday editor Aaron Ferster has a wonderful story in the EPA's Greenversations blog. Whatever did happen to all those futuristic gadgets (flying cars!) we looked forward to as children?

Ferster writes about one healthy development -- using robots to test potentially harmful chemicals:

...I recently got another glimpse of our emerging high-tech future when EPA joined its research partners from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) National Toxicology Program, the National Institute of Health (NIH) Chemical Genomics Center, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and others to unveil a high-speed robot screening system. The robots are set up to test chemicals for their potential to trigger health problems.

The system consists of robot arms that continually move rectangle “plates” through the toxicity testing process. Each plate contains 1536 small wells that can hold a dab of chemical solution and cells (human and non-human animal), and the arm precisely moves each plate though exposure testing and computer analysis. Take a look at this video to see it in action.

The robot system, housed at the National Institutes of Health Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) in Rockville, Maryland, was purchased as part of the Tox21 collaboration between the EPA, NIEH’s National Toxicology Program, NCGC, and FDA. Tox21 merges existing resources—research, funding and testing tools—to develop ways to more effectively predict how chemicals will affect human health and the environment.

Tox21 partners have already screened more than 2,500 chemicals for potential toxicity using robots and other innovative chemical screening technologies, such as ToxCast. EPA tapped such technologies to test oil dispersants for potential endocrine disrupting activity following the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

The 10,000 chemicals the robot system will screen include those found in industrial and consumer products, food additives, and drugs. Testing results will provide information useful for evaluating if these chemicals have the potential to disrupt human body processes enough to lead to adverse health effects...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle -- and Refuse.

Let's find a way to "just say no" to plastic. From TED Talks, artist Dianna Cohen speaks about plastic:

Also check out

Stop Plastic Pollution: The Great Garbage Patch.