Nominations Deadline: March 15, 2017

The ECS Battery Division is currently accepting nominations for four awards:

Battery Division Research Award: established in 1958 to encourage excellence in battery and fuel cell research, and to encourage publication in ECS journals.

Battery Division Technology Award: established in 1993 to encourage the development of battery and fuel cell technology, and to recognize significant achievements in this area.

Battery Division Postdoctoral Associate Research Award sponsored by MTI Corporation and the Jiang Family Foundation: established in 2016 to encourage excellence among postdoctoral researchers in battery and fuel cell research.

Battery Division Student Research Award: established in 1979 to recognize promising young engineers and scientists in the field of electrochemical power sources.

Please review the full award criteria for distinct application requirements before making the nomination.

The four Battery Division Awards are part of ECS Honors & Awards Program, one that has recognized professional and volunteer achievement within our multi-disciplinary sciences for decades. Learn more about various forms of ECS recognition and those who share the spotlight as past award winners.

Nominate a colleague today!

A joint research effort from Rice University and Kazan Federal University is demonstrating a new way to pull radioactive elements out of contaminated water. The researchers behind this study believe their results could go a long way in purifying the hundreds of millions of gallons of water that were contaminated after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident.

(MORE: Listen to the ECS Podcast with Way Kuo, nuclear energy expert and Fukushima consultant.)

This from Rice University:

They reported that their oxidatively modified carbon (OMC) material is inexpensive and highly efficient at absorbing radioactive metal cations, including cesium and strontium, toxic elements released into the environment when the Fukushima plant melted down after an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

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June 26-30, 2017 – University of Illinois at Chicago

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) presents Next Generation Electrochemistry (NGenE), a one week, student-centered, summer intensive workshop that explores the frontiers of electrochemical research. The program brings together approximately 25 graduate students with demonstrated interest and research experience in the field of electrochemistry, for an immersion experience with 10 renowned electrochemists from across North America. Admission to NGenE is competitive. There is no program fee for participation, and travel and lodging support is available to everyone participating in the program.

The program’s primary objective is to introduce advanced students in electrochemistry to research at the frontiers of the field, with an emphasis on the identification of the critical gaps in our understanding of electrochemistry, and develop innovative strategies to address those gaps through collaboration and critical thinking. To achieve these objectives, the faculty will explore these topics through lectures on cutting-edge research, complemented with a site visit at Argonne National Laboratory. The students will carry out collaborative research projects during the week, where they will be challenged to develop innovative research methods under the guidance of faculty mentors.

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Nominations Deadline: March 1, 2017

The ECS Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry Division is currently accepting nominations for the prestigious Max Bredig Award in Molten Salt and Ionic Liquid Chemistry that will be recognized at the fall 2018 biannual meeting in Cancun, Mexico:

Max Bredig Award in Molten Salt and Ionic Liquid Chemistry: established in 1984 in order to recognize excellence in molten salt and ionic liquid chemistry research and to stimulate publication of high quality research papers in this area in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. This award is unique as it directly coincides with the International Symposium on Molten Salts and Ionic Liquids that takes place every two years at our fall biannual meetings. PRiME 2016 marked the twentieth anniversary of the symposium, where Masayoshi Watanabe delivered “Design and Electrochemical Application of Ionic Liquids Based on an Understanding of Their Nature” as the keynote award address.

Please review the full award criteria for distinct application requirements before making the nomination.

The Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry Division Bredig Award is part of ECS Honors & Awards Program, one that has recognized professional and volunteer achievement within our multi-disciplinary sciences for decades. Learn more about various forms of ECS recognition and those who share the spotlight as past award winners.

Nominate a colleague today!

While not the only source of science, government funded research plays a huge role in the lives of many individuals. From something as simple as the weather apps underpinned by the National Weather Service to the Food and Drug Administration’s work on preventing Salmonella, this tax-payer funded research shapes lives and helps provide knowledge to make crucial decisions.

On January 23, word came from the White House that almost all U.S. scientific government agencies had been temporarily barred from communicating with the public via press releases, blogs, and social media.

It’s not currently clear how extensive the gag order is – with some reports saying that explanations of just published peer reviewed research are barred, while others citing a much more lenient scenario – but it is confirmed that almost all agencies, from the U.S. Department of Interior to the Department of Health and Human Services, received a memo restricting – to some degree – outreach to the public.

Even after the gag order was put in place, federal agencies such as the Badlands National Park continued tweeting on its official account with a stream of facts pertaining to climate change. The tweets have since been deleted, though the park did address the president in a letter on Huffington Post.

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As the demand for newer, faster electronics rises, so does the amount of e-waste across the globe.

E-waste refers to discarded electrical and electronic equipment, the amount of which has risen by 63 percent in just the past five years. Globally, it’s observed that the volume of e-waste has hit an astonishing new peak, totaling in at over 40 tons – seven percent of which includes communication devices such as smartphones and computers.

The challenge of rising levels of e-waste is a global issue. A report from U.N. think tank, United Nations University, shows that in 12 Asian countries, the volume of e-waste increased by nearly two-thirds between 2010 and 2015. Hong Kong, for example, produced nearly 48 pounds per person in digital trash. To compare, the average waste from Europe and the Americas is approximately 34 pounds per person.

Because Asia buys about half of all electronics on the market, the uptick in e-waste is expected. However, the infrastructure to recycle and the laws that mandate such actions do not exist in these countries. In the United States, however, states such as New York have implemented bans on disposing of unwanted electronics, posing fines to those who do not properly recycle their devices.

E-waste shows both great potential and hazards for the world. On one hand, it’s estimated that in the United States alone, the over $50 billion is wasted in the form of digital trash that can be recycled for alternative uses.

Additionally, e-waste – which includes components such as lithium-ion batteries – if not properly disposed of, could lead to substantial amounts of health-threatening toxins such as mercury, cadmium, chromium, and ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons.

By: Mathew Wallenstein, Colorado State University

Walk into your typical U.S. or U.K. grocery store and feast your eyes on an amazing bounty of fresh and processed foods. In most industrialized countries, it’s hard to imagine that food production is one of the greatest challenges we will face in the coming decades.

By the year 2050, the human population is projected to grow from 7.5 billion to nearly 10 billion. To feed them, we will need to almost double food production within just three decades, all in the face of increasing drought, herbicide and pesticide resistance, and in a world where the best cropland is already being farmed.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, international initiatives referred to collectively as the Green Revolution dramatically increased food production, largely by breeding crop varieties that were able to take advantage of man-made fertilizer and developing powerful pesticides and herbicides. But as we intensified agriculture, we also intensified its environmental impacts. They include soil erosion, reduced biodiversity and the release of greenhouse gases that drive climate change.

Today our ability to continuously push these systems to produce more crops year after year has largely stagnated, and is not keeping pace with rising demand. Clearly, new innovations are needed to change the way we grow food and make it more sustainable.

I am part of a new crop of scientists who are harnessing the power of natural microbes to improve agriculture. In recent years, genomic technology has rapidly advanced our understanding of the microbes that live on virtually every surface on Earth, including our own bodies. Just as our new understanding of the human microbiome is revolutionizing medicine and spawning a new probiotic industry, agriculture may be poised for a similar revolution.

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A recent report published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that the global sea level could rise by as much as 8 feet by 2100.

A key force behind rising sea levels is climate change. A warming climate can cause seawater to expand and ice to melt, both of which lead to a rise in sea level. Because many people live in coastal areas across the globe, scientists have been monitoring the rising sea level closely due to its ability to displace families. According to NOAA, the global sea level has been rising at a rate between 0.04 to 0.1 inches per year since 1900.

However, that rate expected to greatly accelerate in the coming years.

“Currently, about 6 million Americans live within about 6 feet of the sea level, and they are potentially vulnerable to permanent flooding in this century. Well before that happens, though, many areas are already starting to flood more frequently,” Robert E. Kopp, co-author of the report, tells Rutgers Today. “Considering possible levels of sea-level rise and their consequences is crucial to risk management.”

The researchers came to this consensus after examining the latest published, peer reviewed science, while taking into account the recent information on the instability of the Antarctic ice-sheet.

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By: Jeff Inglis, The Conversation

Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories.

With the selection of Ajit Pai to chair the Federal Communications Commission, President Trump has elevated a major foe of net neutrality from the minority on the commission to its head. Pai, already a commissioner and therefore needing no Senate approval to become its chair, would need to be reconfirmed by the end of 2017 to continue to serve.

But what is net neutrality, this policy Pai has spent years criticizing? Here are some highlights of The Conversation’s coverage of the controversy around the concept of keeping the internet open:

Public interest versus private profit

The basic conflict is a result of the history of the internet, and the telecommunications industry more generally, writes internet law scholar Allen Hammond at Santa Clara University:

Like the telephone, broadcast and cable predecessors from which they evolved, the wire and mobile broadband networks that carry internet traffic travel over public property. The spectrum and land over which these broadband networks travel are known as rights of way. Congress allowed each network technology to be privately owned. However, the explicit arrangement has been that private owner access to the publicly owned spectrum and rights of way necessary to exploit the technology is exchanged for public access and speech rights.

The government is trying to balance competing interests in how the benefits of those network services. Should people have unfiltered access to any and all data services, or should some internet providers be allowed to charge a premium to let companies reach audiences more widely and more quickly?

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Thirty seven new issues of ECS Transactions have just been published from PRiME 2016; these are the “standard” issues and they cover a wide variety of topical interest areas.

The papers in these issues of ECST were presented in Honolulu, Hawaii October 2 to October 7, 2016. ECST Volume 75, Issues 1 to 54 can be found here.

Papers from these issues of ECST can be purchased as full-paper downloads. Please search for ECST issues from the PRiME 2016 meeting in the ECS Digital Library.