"This year, Spangler shifted away from the no-label lifestyle with its "Commitment Hearts," which feature artificial intelligence scanning technology that lets consumers express their desire for cohabitation, symbolic headstones and even matrimony.

The new candies read "MOVE IN?", "MARRY ME" and "4EVER EVER?". After buying these new sweethearts, customers can visit sweetheartcandies.com, where they will find a button that says "Commit to your Sweetheart." Clicking the link brings up a page that lets them scan their candies with a webcam.

Alleima is a Swedish steelmaker that makes products out of advanced stainless steel and special alloys. The company, formerly Sandvik Materials Technology, was officially spun out of Sandvik in 2022 and has more than 900 active alloy recipes. The company typically makes seamless steel tubes for the energy, chemical and aerospace industries, precision strip steel for white goods and even ultra-fine wires for medical and micro-electronic devices.

The company recently found itself facing a unique challenge: the crumbling remains of a nearly 400-year-old ship. On August 10, 1628, the Vasa cast off from below Tre Kronor castle in Stockholm and left the harbor. She was a mighty ship with three masts that could carry ten sails, measuring 52 meters from tip to keel and 69 meters long, it weighed 1,200 tons. The Vasa was hit with a mighty gust from the gods that caused her to capsize. Water poured in through open gun ports, the Vasa sank to the floor of the sea, and at least 30 of the 150 or so people aboard perished.

Last week, Panasonic and Mitsubishi Materials recently provided an update on a joint effort more than ten years in the making to operate and expand a product-material-product (PMP) loop. Since 2011, the collaboration has strived to reuse gold, silver, and copper recovered from waste circuit boards, primarily from old Panasonic home appliances. So far, it has been a smashing success.

According to the companies, the PMP loop is the industry's first to achieve consistent resource recycling. As of December 2024, the partners have recovered 1.1 tons of gold, 33 tons of silver, and 8,100 tons of copper.