Researchers Phil Baran (left) and Evan Horn pose in front on an electric car, showcasing how the principals of sustainable transportation pertain to sustainable chemistry in the new allylic oxidation reaction.
Image: The Scripps Research Institute

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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HIV and hepatitis C are among the leading causes of worldwide death. According to amfAR, an organization dedicated to eradicating the spread of HIV/AIDS through innovative research, nearly 37 million people are currently living with HIV. Of those 37 million, one third become co-infected with hepatitis C.

The threat of HIV and hepatitis C

The regions hit the hardest by this co-infection tend to be developing parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Central and East Asia.

While these developing regions have measures to diagnosis HIV and hepatitis C, the rapid point-of-care tests used are typically unaffordable or unreliable.

An electrochemical solution

A group from McGill University is looking to change that with a recently developed, paper-based electrochemical platform with multiplexing and telemedicine capabilities that may enable low-cost, point-of-care diagnosis for HIV and hepatitis C co-infections within serum samples.

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Image: Antalexion

With the increasing popularity of solar power and ongoing dialogue about the effects of climate changes comes inevitable discussions about the viability of renewable energy. While efficiency levels have grown tremendously over the years, many still worry about the feasibility of solar panels during inclement weather when the sun is not shining its brightest.

To address that issue, more attention has been focused on energy storage. However, a group of Chinese scientists are turning to the solar panels themselves to answer some of these questions.

In a recently published paper, scientist detailed a new way for solar panels to produce electricity from rain water. The way it works is pretty simple: researchers apply a thin layer of graphene to the bottom of the solar panel; when it rains, you simply flip the panel and allow the positively charged ions from the rain drops to interact with the graphene and produce electricity.

“Although great achievements have been made since the discovery of various solar cells, there is still a remaining problem that the currently known solar cells can only be excited by sunlight on sunny days,” wrote the researchers in the paper.

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Artificial limbs have experience tremendous evolution in their long history. Throughout history, we’ve gone from the peg leg of the Dark Ages to technologically advanced modern day prosthesis that mimic the function of a natural limb. However, most prosthesis still lack a sense of touch.

Zhenan Bao, past ECS member and chemical engineer at Stanford University, is at the forefront of the research looking to change that.

(MORE: Read Bao’s past meeting abstracts in the ECS Digital Library for free.)

Recently on NPR’s All Things Considered, Bao described her work in developing a plastic artificial skin that can essentially do all the things organic skin can do, including sensing and self-healing.

The self-healing plastic Bao uses mimics the electrical properties of silicon and contains a nano-scale pressure sensor. The sensor is then connected to electrical circuits that connect to the brain, transmitting the pressure to the brain to analyze as feeling.

Additionally, the skin is set to be powered by polymers that can turn light into electricity.

While there is still much work to be done, Bao and her colleagues believe that this product could help people who have lost their limbs regain their sense of touch.

The iconic Moore’s law has predicted the technological growth of the chip industry for more than 50 years. When ECS member and co-founder of Intel Gordon Moore proposed the law, he stated that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years. So far, he’s been correct.

But researchers have started hitting an apex that makes keeping the pace of Moore’s law extremely difficult. It has become harder in recent years to make transistors smaller while simultaneously increasing the processing power of chips, making it almost impossible to continue Moore’s law’s projected growth.

However, researchers from MIT have developed a long-awaited tool that may be able to keep driving that progress.

(READ: “Moore’s Law and the Future of Solid-State Electronics“)

The new technology that hopes to keep Moore’s law going at its current pace is called extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Industry leaders say it could be used in high-volume chip manufacturing as early as 2018, allowing continued growth in the semiconductor industry, with advancements in our mobile phones, wearable electronics, and many other gadgets.

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Climate CoLab is currently running a series of contests where people all over the world can work with experts and each other to develop climate change solutions.

The waste management contest is now open. We are seeking practical proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from waste and waste management that can be rapidly implemented, scaled-up and/or replicated. We especially encourage proposals that address national (e.g. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or National Adaptation Plans) and/or sub-national strategies to address the challenges of climate change and aim to help countries, states, and communities implement those strategies.

The Judges’ and Popular Choice Winners will be invited to MIT to present their proposal, enter the Climate CoLab Winners Program and be eligible for the $10,000 Grand Prize. All award winners will receive wide recognition and visibility by the MIT Climate CoLab. See last year’s conference. Entries are due May 23, 2016. Early submissions welcome — entries can be edited until the contest deadline.

Even if you don’t have new ideas yourself, you can help improve other people’s ideas and support the ones you find most promising. Visit the CoLab to learn more.

While we may have a good understanding of battery application and potential, we still lack a great deal of knowledge about what is actually happening inside a battery cell during cycles. In an effort to build a better battery, ECS members from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have made a novel development to improve battery performance testing.

Future of energy

The team’s work focuses on the design and placement of the reference electrode (RE), which measure voltage of the individual electrodes making up a battery cell, to enhance the quality of information collected from lithium-ion battery cells during cycles. By improving our knowledge of what’s happening inside the battery, researchers will more easily be able to develop longer-lasting batteries.

“Such information is critical, especially when developing batteries for larger-scale applications, such as electric vehicles, that have far greater energy density and longevity requirements than typical batteries in cell phones and laptop computers,” said Daniel Abraham, ECS member and co-author of the newly published study in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. “This kind of detailed information provides insight into a battery cell’s health; it’s the type of information that researchers need to evaluate battery materials at all stages of their development.”

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ECS will be offering five short courses at the 229^th ECS Meeting this year in San Diego.

What are short courses? Taught by academic and industry experts in intimate learning settings, short courses offer students and professionals alike the opportunity to greatly expand their knowledge and technical expertise. 

Short Course #5: Nanobiosensors

Raluca-Ioana Stefan-van Staden, Instructor

This course is intended for chemists, physicists, materials scientists, and engineers with an interest in applying electrochemical sensors on fields like biomedical analysis, pharmaceutical analysis, and food analysis. Also, this course can help understand the manufacturers of new electrochemical tools to explore better the response characteristics of nanobiosensors, and to connect in the best way their sensitivity with the sensitivity of the instrument. The course is best suited for an attendee who has basic knowledge of electrochemistry. The attendee will develop a basic understanding of the principles of molecular recognition, design, response characteristics, a new class of stochastic nanobiosensors, and various applications and features of nanobiosensors.

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A new web-based game, Science Kombat, is pitting some of history’s greatest minds against each other.

Gamers can pick from eight of history’s most famous geniuses to play as, including Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Alan Turing, and Stephen Hawking.

But this game isn’t just any combat-based game. Each character makes use of a special superpower that is specific to their scientific contributions to the world. For example, Marie Curie can shot polonium and radium and her opponents, while Nikola Tesla unleashes huge bursts of electricity.

Check out more of these geniuses and their superpowers by playing the game.

Access to clean drinking water is something many take for granted. Crises like that of Flint, MI illuminate the fragility of our water infrastructure and how quickly access can be taken away. Even now, hundreds of millions of people around the world still lack access to adequate water.

Gaining access

But it’s not all negative. In the past 25 years, 2.6 billion people worldwide gained access to clean drinking water. This initiative stemmed from part of the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations in 1990, attempting to cut the number of global citizens without access to clean drinking water in half. While this goal was achieved in 2010, there are still about 663 million without proper water and sanitation.

(MORE: Check out powerful images from the Water Front project.)

The divide

So who doesn’t have clean drinking water? Overall, urban areas tend to have greater access due to improved water infrastructure systems set in place. Access in rural areas has improved over the years, but people in these areas are still hit the hardest.

The major divide is most visible when analyzing the numbers by regions. Africa, China, and India are among the hardest hit, making up the majority of the 663 million citizens without access to water.

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