We’re delving into our archives as part of our continuing Masters Series podcasts. In 1995, ECS and the Chemical Heritage Foundation worked to compile various oral histories of some of the biggest names in electrochemical and solid state science.

One of those key figures was Norman Hackerman, a giant among giants. Hackerman was a world renowned scientist, an outstanding educator, a highly successful administrator, and a champion for basic research. Hear his voice once again as he tells colorful stories of the science, his life, and everything in between.

Listen and download these episodes and others for free through the iTunes Store, SoundCloud, or our RSS Feed. You can also find us on Stitcher.

As far back as 1839, the English scientist William Grove had the idea that the reactants of a battery could be gases fed into it from external tanks. For most of their history, fuel cells existed only as laboratory curiosities. But fuel cells have gained much more attention in recent years, with many considering these power sources for applications in vehicles and alternative grid technology.

New research from Harvard University shows just how promising fuel cell technology could be. According to the study, the researchers were able to develop more efficient fuel cells that get more robust as they age instead of degrading.

“The elegance of this process is that it happens naturally when exposed to the electrons in fuel,” says Shriram Ramananthan, lead author of the study and past ECS member. “This technique can be applied to other electrochemical devices to make it more robust. It’s like chess—before we could only play with pawns and bishops, tools that could move in limited directions. Now, we’re playing with the queen.”

Fungal infections can often be life-threatening, especially for those with weak immune systems. The current standard test to detect the presence of fungi in a person takes at least a dozen hours, with the results sometimes being unreliable. Now, researchers from the Polish Academy of Science have developed a new device that could allow medical practitioners to more quickly and reliably detect fungal infections, allowing for better and faster overall treatment.

The research team, led by ECS member Wlodzimierz Kutner, devised a chemical sensor that can shorten the detection of the fungi from a few days to just a few minutes.

“The most important element of our sensor is a film of polymer selectively recognizing D-arabitol,” Kutner says. “It captures molecules of D-arabitol, a compound indicating the presence of fungi. The measurement takes only a few minutes, and the D-arabitol is detected with a high degree of certainty even in the presence of interfering substances with a similar molecular structure.”

One of the most critical aspects of the treatment of fungal infections is time. The longer these infections go undetected, the more serious they become. This new development will allow for the quick, reliable detection of fungal infections and more successful administration of appropriate fungal therapy.

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The future of technology

The iconic Moore’s law has guided Silicon Valley and the technology industry at large for over 50 years. Moore’s prediction that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years (which he first articulated at an ECS meeting in 1964) bolstered businesses and the economy, as well as took society away from the giant mainframes of the 1960s to today’s era of portable electronics.

But research has begun to plateau and keeping up with the pace of Moore’s law has proven to be extremely difficult. Now, many tech-based industries find themselves in a vulnerable position, wondering how far we can push technology.

Better materials, better chips

In an effort to continue Moore’s law and produce the next generation of electronic devices, researchers have begun looking to new materials and potentially even new designs to create smaller, cheaper, and faster chips.

“People keep saying of other semiconductors, ‘This will be the material for the next generation of devices,’” says Fan Ren, professor at the University of Florida and technical editor of the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology. “However, it hasn’t really changed. Silicon is still dominating.”

Silicon has facilitated the growth predicted by Moore’s law for the past decades, but it is now becoming much more difficult to continue that path.

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May the 4th be with you

Whether you’re a Star Wars superfan or find yourself lost when the conversation turns to discussions of the feasibility of the Death Star, you can probably identify the epic space series’ iconic lightsaber. The lightsaber has become one of the most recognizable images in popular culture, but is it purely fiction or could it be a reality?

According to the Star Wars books, lightsabers are pretty complex devices but essentially boil down to a few key elements: a power source and emitter to create light, a crystal to focus the light into a blade, a blade containment field, and a negatively charged fissure. In the Star Wars galaxy, a lightsaber creates energy, focuses it, and contains it.

But that’s fiction and those ideas are not in line with current science and technology. So how could we build a lightsaber with the tools we have today?

Many people look initially to laser technology when discussing a practical lightsaber. It’s unrealistic to say that light could be the source of the blade seeing as light has no mass (creating a pretty insufficient weapon), but lasers could be an alternative. It may seem contradictory to say that lasers could be the blade in a lightsaber when lasers are essentially light focused to a very fine point, but as Looper puts it, light is to a laser what a tree is to paper.

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Musicians ArcAttack are bringing new meaning to the genre of electronic music with their rendition of Europe’s “Final Countdown” rendered through the hums of the infamous Tesla coils.

In order to produce the fury of sound and electricity, the band rigged their instruments to the frequencies of electrical current coursing through the coils. The resulting sparks can cause vibrations through the air at predetermined frequencies.

ECS Student Chapter Munich hosted its first-ever symposium on February 15, 2016, featuring invited talks by Professor Jeff Dahn and Professor Thomas J. Schmidt, a poster session, and numerous opportunities for discussion and networking.

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We talk about climate change a lot here at ECS, but the realities of rising sea levels and record-breaking carbon emissions in the atmosphere makes for pretty grim material. In an effort to drum up support for environmental protection, Defend Our Future teamed up with Funny or Die to give the climate change discussion a little comic relief.

Cloris Leachman, Michael Lerner, and a few other funny people discuss how seniors view climate change – or as they describe it, the “after I’m dead problem.”

After all the laughs, Defend our Future has one simple message: old people don’t care about climate change, that’s why you have to.

Building a sustainable future

Over 40 years ago, the modern environmental movement was born. Passion and concern drove a small group of twenty-somethings together in a rallying cry to create a more environment-conscious society, establishing what has become known as Earth Day.

The original Earth Day focused on the issues of pollution, but today’s modern Earth Day focuses the pressing global issue of climate change.

Global challenges

Currently, carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest in over 650,000 years, the global temperature has risen 1.4°F since 1880, and the sea level nearly 7” over the past 100 years.

While a few people and politicians may sill dismiss climate change, around 200 worldwide scientific organizations now formally hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action. Additionally, nearly 170 countries are preparing to sign the Paris Climate Agreement today, which will put global plans into motion in an effort to tackle the issue of rising temperatures.

The science of renewable energy

Here at ECS, we believe the path to stopping climate change and tackling these issues that are devastating the environment begins with science.

With population growth and industrialization, global energy needs continue to grow. Economic, political, and environmental issues are largely dictated by energy needs.

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Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a new technique that has the potential to boost a traditional chemical reaction, opening doors for new developments in pharmaceuticals and other industries.

The researchers developed an easier, cheaper, and greener way to preform allylic oxidation – a process that typically employs toxic or expensive reagents and has previously been difficult, if not impossible, to implement on a large scale. By using the power of old-fashioned electrochemistry, the TSRI researchers discovered a way to make the process scalable through the use of safe chemicals.

(READ: “Scalable and sustainable electrochemical allylic C-H oxidation“)

“Turns out one of the best reagents you can buy is sitting in your wall socket,” said principal investigator Phil Baran. “The scope of the reaction is just phenomenal. It’s super easy to do, and the overall improvement in environmental sustainability is dramatic.”

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