Key Currency Exchange Rates for Friday, 5/28/21

Futures were 0.4 percent lower in New York after falling 4.2 percent the previous three sessions. U.S. production had its biggest weekly gain since the end of June, climbing to the highest level since July 2015, according to Energy Information Administration data Wednesday. The increase offset the price impact of an 8.95-million-barrel decline in crude stockpiles, the biggest drop since September. U.S. crude output rose by 79,000 barrels a day last week to 9.5 million a day, the EIA reported. Crude stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for WTI and the biggest U.S. oil-storage hub, expanded a second week to 57 million barrels. Gasoline inventories climbed by 22,000 barrels to 231 million. Click Read More below for additional detail.

In our modern world, eliminating plastics is inconceivable. Unfortunately, they do have disadvantages, including the formation of CO2 in both production and combustion, depletion of fossil feedstocks, and growth of landfills. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Russian researchers introduce a new way forward, a polymer made entirely from biomass that can easily and inexpensively be used in 3D printing. Objects produced in this way are of high quality, easily recyclable, and highly solvent-resistant. Conventional “subtractive” processes involve cutting, sawing, turning, or milling, which results in a great deal of wasted material. In contrast, 3D printing processes are, in principle, waste-free, because they are “additive”: three-dimensional objects are produced in a layer-by-layer application of material. The most common technique is called fused deposition modeling (FDM). In this process, the raw material is squirted through a hot nozzle onto a mobile base and thereby liquefied (extrusion). The printer head produces the programmed form like in a conventional two-dimensional printing process, releasing small amounts of the polymer instead of ink. This is repeated for layer after layer until the desired three-dimensional object is complete. Yet, the polymers used until now have a number of disadvantages that limit their use. Some of the polymers are attacked by organic solvents. Those that withstand the solvents, on the other hand, adhere poorly and shrink on heating, allowing their layers to come apart and causing errors in the printing process. Click Read More below for additional information.

American Dollar to Canadian Dollar = 0.727771; American Dollar to Chinese Yuan = 0.138169; American Dollar to Euro = 1.065636; American Dollar to Japanese Yen = 0.006525; American Dollar to Mexican Peso = 0.060505.