Joe Howard, a Pittsburgh native with an MBA and a sales and marketing background in specialty steels and ketchup, isn’t a flashy guy. But he sure has a flair for magic.  From his black shopping bag of tricks, he pulled a beaker filled with 100 milliliters of water, a clear-plastic drinking cup, and a gallon-size food storage bag containing 1 gram of superabsorbent particles that look like sand, but aren’t. Howard poured them and the water into the cup, swirled it, and turned it upside down. Not one drop fell from the cup, its contents transformed to a solid similar to slime in less than six seconds. “I told you it was really cool,” the president and chief executive of Advanced Absorbent Technologies LLC said, pleased with his performance. “That’s why we don’t need wood pulp.”  Read more.