Medicines that have passed their use-by date can be dangerous. So the University of Salford and local company Tacit Technology have devised a medicine bottle which “times out” (GB 2378941).
The bottle has a standard screw cap that mates with a thread on the neck of the bottle. But the thread is not physically part of the bottle: it is part of a plastic sleeve that sits around the bottle’s neck.
This threaded sleeve is secured to the bottle by small biodegradable tabs, and by a broad flange around the rim that stops it coming off. The tabs degrade…
