Q&A series with ECS OpenCon 2017 speakers

Ashley Farley, open access program associate at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

ECS will be hosting its first ever OpenCon event on October 1 in National Harbor, MD. OpenCon will be ECS’s first, large community event aimed at creating a culture of change in how research is designed, shared, discussed, and disseminated, with the ultimate goal of making scientific progress faster.

During ECS’s OpenCon, Ashley Farley, open access program associate at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will deliver the keynote talk, “The Importance of Open Science in a Changing Scholarly Communictions Paradigm.”

The following conversation is part of a series with speakers from the upcoming ECS OpenCon. Read the rest of the series.

ECS: Why are you interested in OpenCon?

Ashley Farley: I have greatly admired OpenCon, since I first learned about open access of scholarly communications. A critical part of any movement is a strong community and OpenCon has done an excellent job at forming and supporting a community that strives to achieve goals in the open science environment. OpenCon is particularly important to early career researchers or open access advocates starting their career and I have definitely benefited from this network. I appreciate the fact that I can give back to the OpenCon community, while still learning, engaging and partnering with others.

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Q&A series with ECS OpenCon 2017 speakers

Dan Schwartz, Boeing-Sutter Professor and director of the Clean Energy Institute at the University of Washington

ECS will be hosting its first ever OpenCon event on October 1 in National Harbor, MD. OpenCon will be ECS’s first, large community event aimed at creating a culture of change in how research is designed, shared, discussed, and disseminated, with the ultimate goal of making scientific progress faster.

During ECS’s Open Con, Dan Schwartz, director of the Clean Energy Institute at the University of Washington, will give a talk on the open science movement and academia. In addition to speaking at OpenCon, Schwartz will also co-organize the ECS Data Sciences Hack Day.

The following conversation is part of a series with speakers from the upcoming ECS OpenCon. Read the rest of the series.

ECS: When we say “data sciences,” what does this encompass?

Dan Schwartz: “Data science” is shorthand for the scientific and engineering principles that underpin efficient creation, visualization, analysis, and sharing of data. I have a conjecture—unevaluated but euphemistically called “Schwartz’s law” around here—that every PhD I graduate produce more data than the sum of all prior PhDs. Basically, each year cameras and detectors have deeper bit depth, equipment and software get more automated, more of the software tools allow data and simulation to be animated, etc. In short, both experimentalists and simulation people are seeing huge growth in data they need to analyze, visualize, and share with collaborators.

ECS: Specifically, what areas of electrochemistry and/or solid state science can most benefit from the various components of data sciences, such as open data, open source software and cloud-based computing tools, etc.?

DS: I believe we can accelerate progress and improve reproducibility of all ECS science and technology through open data, open software, and access to shared computational resources. A critical part of this is building the ECS community that establishes standards for data repositories, creates, peer evaluates, and improves software tools.

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Since its launch in 2016, ECS Plus has flourished into a widespread movement. At its forefront are leading, forward-thinking institutions that recognize the value of incentivizing open access publishing on an individual, institutional, and global scale.

ECS Plus offers institutions a competitively priced subscription package that grants access to all of the content in the ECS Digital Library, including our top-ranking, authoritative, peer-reviewed journal content, as well as free and unlimited open access publishing for affiliated authors.

Immediately following its January 2016 launch, ECS Plus acquired the National Science and Technology Library of China—a consortium then consisting of just under 800 institutions—as a subscriber. Over the subsequent months, ECS Plus saw a steady rise in subscriber count, reflecting a desire shared among institutions worldwide to make open access publishing a viable option for authors.

If data trends serve as any indication, this desire holds fast. In recent months, ECS Plus gained two new subscribers: Arizona State University and the University of Michigan. Just last month, the National Science and Technology Library of China increased its ECS Plus subscriber count from 907 to 924. The University of South Carolina recently confirmed an ECS Plus subscription for 2018.

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Safety concerns regarding lithium-ion batteries have been making headlines in light of smartphone fires and hoverboard explosions. In order to combat safety issues, at team of researchers from Drexel University, led by ECS member Yury Gogotsi, has developed a way to transform a battery’s electrolyte solution into a safeguard against the chemical process that leads to battery fires.

Dendrites – or battery buildups caused by the chemical reactions inside the battery – have been cited as one of the main causes of lithium-ion battery malfunction. As more dendrites compile over time, they can breach the battery’s separator, resulting in malfunction.

(MORE: Read more research by Gogotsi in the ECS Digital Library.)

As part of their solution to this problem, the research team is using nanodiamonds to curtail the electrochemical deposition that leads to the short-circuiting of lithium-ion batteries. To put it in perspective, nanodiamond particles are roughly 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a single hair.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released a report Wednesday night on electricity markets and grid reliability, stating that the decline in coal and nuclear production has not impacted grid reliability, instead the rise in a diverse energy portfolio has increased the grid’s stability.

The study, commissioned by Energy Secretary Rick Perry in April, also states that coal plant closures across the country have been due to market pressure and competition from low-priced natural gas plants, not policy changes that support renewables such as wind and solar.

(MORE: Listen to our interview with former U.S. Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu.)

“America is also fortunate to have a variety of fuel sources. We need to consider how to use each effectively while recognizing our differences and unique state and regional circumstances,” Perry says in the report’s cover letter. “We must utilize the most effective combination of energy sources with an ‘all of the above’ approach to achieve long-term, reliable American energy security.”

While the report does not state that there is a current concern with grid reliability, it does warn that future problems could arise if coal and nuclear plants continue to close at the current rate. Many environmental advocates cite this as a last-ditch effort for these companies to remain relevant in the energy landscape. However, the report does go on to highlight the role of renewables in developing a diverse energy infrastructure.

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Nomination Deadline: September 30, 2017

The Electrochemical Society has a new award!

You are invited to nominate qualified candidates for the new ECS India Section S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award.

The S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award was recently established to assist a deserving student in India to pursue a career in disciplines related to electrochemistry and solid state science and technology. The award was created to honor the memory of Dr. S.K. Rangarajan for his dedication and contributions to our fields. The award consists of a framed certificate, a $500 (U.S.) prize and complimentary ECS membership for one year. Explore the full award details on the ECS website prior to completing the electronic application.

P.S. The S.K. Rangarajan Graduate Student Award is the most recent addition to the ECS honors and awards program, one that has recognized professional and volunteer achievement within our multi-disciplinary sciences for decades. Learn more about various forms of recognition and those who share the spotlight as past award winners.

A debate held at the annual Charleston Library Conference tackles the journal impact factor, with speakers looking at the metric and analyzing if it does more harm than good. The debate was moderated by Rick Anderson, Associate Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication; and argued by Sara Rouhi, director of business development at Altmetric; and Ann Beynonn, manager at Clarivate Analytics.

A journal’s impact factor is a long-established metric intended to evaluate the relevancy of a publication by factoring the average number of times its articles were cited over the course of the prior two years. However, the metric does not reflect journals that continue to have impact long after the two year time-span.

Opening polls of the debate showed that 54 percent of all respondents believed that the impact factor does more harm than good. By the end of the debate, that number had grown to 57 percent. However, because the debate garnered a small number of attendees, the vote does not represent a true statistical significance.

Read full transcripts here.

New paper-based, point-of-care diagnostic tools could lead to improvements in device cost, weight, and flexibility. The recently developed SPEDs, or self-powered, paper-based electrochemical device, can detect biomarkers such as glucose and white blood cells, all while remaining easy to read for non-experts.

The Purdue University research team behind this project believes it could be applicable for patients in regions where access to sophisticated medical equipment is limited.

“You could consider this a portable laboratory that is just completely made out of paper, is inexpensive and can be disposed of through incineration,” says Ramses V. Martinez, an assistant professor of industrial and biomedical engineering at Purdue University. “We hope these devices will serve untrained people located in remote villages or military bases to test for a variety of diseases without requiring any source of electricity, clean water, or additional equipment.”

Researchers have created a new method to more efficiently convert potato waste into ethanol. The findings may lead to reduced production costs for biofuel in the future and add extra value for chip makers.

Using potato mash made from the peelings and potato residuals from a Pennsylvania food-processing company, researchers triggered simultaneous saccharification—the process of breaking down the complex carbohydrate starch into simple sugars—and fermentation—the process in which sugars are converted to ethanol by yeasts or other microorganisms in bioreactors.

The simultaneous nature of the process was innovative, according to researcher Ali Demirci, professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State. The addition to the bioreactor of mold and yeast—Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, respectively—catalyzed the conversion of potato waste to bioethanol.

The bioreactor had plastic composite supports to encourage and enhance biofilm formation and to increase the microbial population. Biofilms are a natural way of immobilizing microbial cells on a solid support material. In a biofilm environment, microbial cells are abundant and more resistant to environmental stress causing higher productivities.

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In its first Science for Solving Society’s Problems Challenge, ECS partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to leverage the brainpower of electrochemists and solid state scientists, working to find innovative research solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues in water and sanitation. A total of seven projects were selected, resulting in a grand total of $360,000 in funding.

The researchers behind one of those projects recently published an open access paper in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society discussing their results in pursuing a single-use, biodegradable and sustainable battery that minimizes waste. The paper, “Evaluation of Redox Chemistries for Single-Use Biodegradable Capillary Flow Batteries,” was published August 18 and authored by Omar Ibrahim, Perla Alday, Neus Sabaté, Juan Pablo Esquivel (pictured with prototype at right), and Erik Kjeang.

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