Good news.

It would be nice to write about only good news. Unfortunately, news is news, and if it's bad, you can't spin it away. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate if a news item is good or bad. For instance, when the cost of key materials in the rubber product manufacturing process keeps rising, its good news for the suppliers, but not such good news to the manufacturer.

I was perplexed by the news of the continuing rise in Goodyear's stock price even though the company's union plants were on strike, their output was down and most analysts said the company was losing large sums of money. Obviously, higher stock prices are good news to management and those who hold stock, but what message is being sent? Is it that Wall Street prefers the company in that situation as opposed to the pre-strike company?

But there is good news. Did you know that the robber industry was ranked as one of the best performing industries for the month of December by the Institute for Supply Management? The industry ranked fourth in performance, helping pull the institute's monthly PMI index to 51.4. The ISM says a reading above 50 suggests the manufacturing economy is generally growing, while a sub-50 reading indicates it is declining. The PMI was 49.5 in November. The ISM says the reading showed inherent strength in manufacturing and that we are in a slow growth mode instead of no growth.

More good news is coming out of the University of Pennsylvania where chemists have created a new process for free radical polymerization. The new technique, called single electron transfer-living radical polymerization, also offers chemists greater control over the molecular architecture of the polymers they create and allows them to use materials that did not work with the traditional process. The mechanism of the synthesis reaction works so well that there is very little worry about undesirable side reactions, and the resulting polymers do not need to be purified to remove the catalyst.

The method takes place at room temperature, uses less metal catalyst to drive the reaction and requires a very short reaction time. It allows for greater control over the three-dimensional polymers being created and is more efficient.