It’s always questionable to blog about something that is gaining attention because it’s illegal, but that’s the case with the latest crop of articles about open access in popular media.  While the scientific community has been debating the merits of open access for a while now, the business behind scientific publishing is getting a lot more attention lately because of Alexandra Elbakyan, a graduate student from Kazakhstan who has hacked into hundreds of scholarly journals.

Elbakayn leaked millions of documents, opening a (albeit illegal) door for the public to freely access just about every scientific paper ever published.

To some, Elbakyan is a hero – taking a stand for the public’s right to know. To others, she is a criminal.

“Realistically only scientists at really big, well-funded universities in the developed world have full access to published research,” said Michael Eisen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a longtime champion of open access. “The current system slows science by slowing communication of work, slows it by limiting the number of people who can access information and quashes the ability to do the kind of data analysis” that is possible when articles aren’t “sitting on various siloed databases.”

This from The New York Times:

Journal publishers collectively earned $10 billion last year, much of it from research libraries, which pay annual subscription fees ranging from $2,000 to $35,000 per title if they don’t buy subscriptions of bundled titles, which cost millions. The largest companies, like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer and Wiley, typically have profit margins of over 30 percent.

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Image: Assianir

A recent pistachio recall is bringing Salmonella and other foodborne illnesses back into the national spotlight. The popularity of the in-shell pistachio brands recalled paired with the long shelf-life of the nut has health experts concerned for the potential of the foodborne illness to spread rapidly. Many are again asking: how can we better control food safety?

Shin Horikawa and his team at Auburn University believe their novel biosensor technology could resolve many of the current issues surrounding the spread of foodborne illnesses. As the principal scientist for a concept hand-picked for the FDA’s Food Safety Challenge, Horikawa is looking to make pathogen detection faster, more specific, and cheaper.

Faster, cheaper, smarter

“The current technology to detect Salmonella takes a really long time, from a few days to weeks. Our first priority is to shorten this detection time. That’s why we came up with a biosensor-based detection method,” Horikawa, Postdoctoral researcher at Auburn University and member of ECS, says.

Horikawa and his team’s concept revolves around the placement of a tiny biosensor—a sensor so small that it’s nearly invisible to the human eye—on the surface of fresh fruits and vegetables to detect the presence of pathogenic organisms such as Salmonella. This on-site, robust detection method utilizes magnetoelastic (ME) materials that can change their shape when a magnetic field is applied. The materials respond differently to each magnetic field, changing their shapes accordingly. This allows the researchers to detect if a specific pathogen—such as Salmonella—has attached to the biosensor.

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Christian Amatore has given a new direction to electrochemistry and has had a pioneering role in the development of ultramicroelectrodes worldwide. He is currently the Director of Research at CNRS and will be giving the ECS Lecture at the 229th ECS Meeting in San Diego, CA, May 29-June 2, 2016. His talk is titled, “Seeing, Measuring and Understanding Vesicular Exocytosis of Neurotransmitters.”

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

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The ECS Outstanding Student Chapter Award was established in 2012 to recognize distinguished student chapters that demonstrate active participation in The Electrochemical Society’s technical activities, establish community and outreach activities in the areas of electrochemical and solid state science and engineering education, and create and maintain a robust membership base.

Click here for complete rules and nomination requirements. Nominations are being accepted for the 2016 award, which will be presented at the PRiME 2016 in Honolulu, HI, October 2-7, 2016.

For questions or additional information, please contact awards@electrochem.org. Submission deadline extended through April 15, 2016.

Apply today!

The 2015 Outstanding Student Chapter Award Recipient 

The 2015 ECS Outstanding Student Chapter Award recipient was Indiana University. Founded in 2015, Indiana University brings together members from a variety of research backgrounds such as mechanistic organic, environmental, bioanalytical, and materials, to promote interdisciplinary discussions about electrochemistry and solid state science. Led by faculty advisors Professor Dennis Peters and Professor Lane Baker, this group has hosted guest speakers, including Allen J. Bard and Nate Lewis, on their campus to not only present seminars, but also give career advice. The mission of the Indiana Student Chapter is to spread knowledge of electrochemical science to the younger members of their community.

Join the ECS Canada Section for their 2016 Spring Meeting! The meeting will be held at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Friday, June 10, 2016 and will feature four illustrious speakers, including keynote speaker Dr. Mark Orazem. The event runs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

This meeting is dedicated to the memory of the late Prof. Sharon Roscoe, a long-time member of the ECS and a preeminent Nova Scotian electrochemist.

Dr. Mark Orazem (Keynote)

Speakers

Dr. Mark Orazem (Keynote) | Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Florida, USA

Dr. Jacek Lipkowski | Department of Chemistry, University of Guelph, ON, Canada

Dr. Aicheng Chen | Department of Chemistry, Lakehead University, ON, Canada

Dr. David Shoesmith | Department of Chemistry, Western University, ON, Canada

Registration

Registration fees:
Regular attendees: CAD 150
Students and postdoctoral fellows: CAD 50
(to be paid on-site by cash or cheque)

If you wish to present your research, please submit your presentation title and abstract as part of the registration process. Students and PDFs are invited to participate in the poster competition.

The registration deadline is Friday, May 6, 2016.

Register now!

Experience the wonders of Argonne National Laboratory at this year’s Chicago Section Spring Event! Featuring a laboratory tour, a dinner buffet, and a talk by distinguished speaker Dr. Deyang Qu, this event is not to be missed!

This event will take place on Tuesday, April 5th and begin at 3:30 p.m. Register now!

Argonne National Laboratory

Spanning 1,500 acres, Argonne National Laboratory is the largest national laboratory in the Midwest. Argonne serves as a center for government and corporate research and development, as well as academic collaborations, in the greater Chicago region.

Location

Argonne National Laboratory
9700 S. Cass Avenue
Argonne, IL 60439
Directions

Schedule of events

3:30 p.m. | Arrival to obtain a visitor pass for Optional Tour | Argonne Information Center

3:40 p.m. | Arrival at Guest House to depart for Optional Tour

3:45-5 p.m. | Depart for Transportation Center & Advanced Photon Source Tour (from Guest House)

5:15-6 p.m. | Dinner Registration & Reception | Guest House

6:00-7 p.m. | Dinner
Buffet choices of: mixed green salad, baked tilapia, grilled herb chicken breast, roasted herb potatoes, green beans and baby carrots, and assorted mini pastries

Prices:
Students and Retired Members: $10
Student Nonmembers: $15
Members: $35
Nonmembers: $45

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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 #2: Fundamentals of Electrochemistry: Basic Theory and Thermodynamic Methods

Jamie Noël, Instructor

This course covers the basic theory and application of electrochemical science. It is targeted toward people with a physical sciences or engineering background who have not been trained as electrochemists, but who want to add electrochemical methods to their repertoire of research approaches. There are many fields in which researchers originally approach their work from another discipline but then discover that it would be advantageous to understand and use some electrochemical methods to complement the work that they are doing. The course begins with a general, basic foundation of electrochemistry and uses it to develop the theory and experimental approaches to electrochemical problems of a thermodynamic nature. It complements a sister course, “Fundamentals of Electrochemistry: Basic Theory and Kinetic Methods”, offered alternately by the same instructor. The two courses have different emphasis, and each is designed to be a stand-alone introduction to electrochemical fundamentals. If both courses are desired, they can be taken in either order.

Here at ECS, we love at things science, technology, engineering, and math. With that said, it’s only fitting that we pay a little homage to everyone’s favorite mathematical constant on its name day.

Pi is an irrational and transcendental number, continuing infinitely without repetition or pattern. It’s been calculated our as far as over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point, with Japanese memory master Akira Haraguchi having recited the first 100,000 digits of Pi in public. (However, we only need 39 digits of Pi to be able to measure the circumference of the observable universe, but we won’t tell him that.)

So what happens on Pi Day (aside from math enthusiasts around the world uniting)? Well, the San Francisco-based museum that started the celebration throws an annual party, MIT will let you know if you made their acceptance cut, and you can probably find local pizza shops that will give you a discount.

And don’t forget, Pi Day also coincides with Albert Einstein’s birthday (he’d be 137 years old today).

Celebrate today by learning more about Pi!

Together with his team, ECS member Wolfgang Schuhmann develops new electrodes, for the production of hydrogen.
Image: Ruhr Universitaet Bochum

New research out of Ruhr Universitaet Bochum is showing big gains for water electrolysis, with new efficiency levels double that of previous efforts.

By applying a layer of copper atoms in conventional platinum electrodes, researchers were able to desorption easier for the catalyst surface. This system then generated twice the amount of hydrogen than a platinum electrode without a copper layer.

This breakthrough could help water electrolysis gain a better reputation as a method for hydrogen production. Prior to this breakthrough, too much energy was lost in the process to prove it efficient. Now, the efficiency level has been doubled.

This from Ruhr Universitaet Bochum:

The researchers modified the properties of the platinum catalyst surface by applying a layer of copper atoms. With this additional layer, the system generated twice the amount of hydrogen than with a pure platinum electrode. But only if the researchers applied the copper layer directly under the top layer of the platinum atoms. The group observed another useful side effect: the copper layer extended the service life of the electrodes, for example by rendering them more corrosion-resistant.

Read the full article.

“To date, hydrogen has been mainly obtained from fossil fuels, with large CO2 volumes being released in the process,” said Wolfgang Schuhmann, ECS member and lead author of the study. “If we succeeded in obtaining hydrogen by using electrolysis instead, it would be a huge step towards climate-friendly energy conversion. For this purpose, we could utilize surplus electricity, for example generated by wind power.”