The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is coming to a close, but not before showcasing a huge breakthrough in battery technology.

The Israeli start-up company StoreDot showed off their new product at CES: a smartphone battery that can charge in just seconds.

StoreDot’s battery charges 100 times faster than the present lithium-ion batteries and can last about five hours on a two minute charge.

However, the battery cannot be retrofitted to existing devices because most phones would be fried by the 40 amps of electricity. Instead, StoreDot’s battery is completely new – containing special synthesized organic molecules.

“We have reactions in the battery that are non-traditional reactions that allow us to charge very fast, moving ions from an anode to a cathode at a speed that was not possible before we had these materials,” Doron Myersdorf, the company’s chief executive, told BBC.

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The OmniProcessor is the ultimate example of that old expression: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Image: YouTube/Gates Notes

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is working to turn poop into drinking water with this ingenious new machine.

As part of their effort to improve sanitation in poor countries, the Gates Foundation has helped give flight to an OmniProcessor that burns human waste to produce water and electricity.

How does it work? Check out the video to see the process.

But here’s the big question – why do we need to turn waste into drinking water and electricity?

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Each year ECS awards up to five Summer Fellowships to assist students in continuing their graduate work during the summer months in a field of interest to the Society. Congratulations to the five Summer Fellowship recipients for 2014. The Society thanks the Summer Fellowship Committee for their work in reviewing the applications and selecting five excellent recipients. Applications for the 2015 Summer Fellowships are due January 15, 2015.

Get more information here.

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Websites of Note are gathered by Zoltan Nagy.

This is the latest Websites of Note, a regular feature in the ECS magazine Interface researched by Zoltan Nagy, a semi-retired electrochemist.

Corrosion Electrochemistry and Kinetics – P.R. Roberge, McGraw-Hill Professional
Two very detailed introductory websites of corrosion and its connection and measurements by electrochemistry. Find the second site here.

Cathodic Protection – Deepwater Corrosion Services
A series of a large number of papers dealing with all aspects of cathodic protection, theory, and applications.

Kinetics of Aqueous Corrosion – Dept. of Materials Science and Metallurgy, (U. of Cambridge)
A very good series of teaching material about corrosion and its connection to electrochemistry with practical applications.

Anodic Protection: Its Operation and Applications – J.I. Munro and W.W. Shim, Corrosion Services Co. Ltd
Detailed theory and applications of anodic protection, which somehow nowadays does not seem very practical, though it made big news about fifty years ago.

Dr. Nagy welcomes suggestions for entries; send them to nagyz@email.unc.edu.

P.S. If you haven’t checked out Dr. Nagy’s Electrochemistry Knowledge Base, make sure to head over to the site to see the huge wealth of electrochemical resources that he has curated.

ECS member Jiaxing Huang used freshman-level chemistry to solve the solubility mystery of graphene oxide films.
Image: Northwestern University

Sometimes science can be extremely complex and commanded by technical expertise. But there are moments when one has to go back to his roots to find a more simple answer for a complex issue. That is what ECS member Jiaxing Huang – along with a team of Northwestern University researchers – has done in order to solve the mystery that surrounds the solubility of graphene oxide films.

For years, one question has puzzled the materials science community – why are graphene oxide (GO) films highly stable in water?

When submerged, GO sheets become negatively charged and repel, which should cause membrane to disintegrate. Though much to the confusion of the scientific community, when GO sheets are submerged they stabilize.

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Toyota is looking to propel the future of the fuel cell vehicle with the recent announcement that they will be granting royalty-free use to thousands of their patents.

“I’m happy and extremely proud to announce to you today that Toyota will grant royalty-free use of all 5,680 of our fuel cell patents, including pending patents,” said Senior Vice President of Toyota’s Automotive Operations, Bob Carter, on January 5 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The patents are to be used by companies manufacturing and selling fuel cell vehicles. Carter stated that these patents – which are critical to the development and production of fuel cells vehicles – will be available through 2020.

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As the year comes to a close, we’re looking back at some of the greatest innovations and discoveries that have happened in science. While we reflect on these amazing developments, we only have one question: what’s next?

Scientific American’s Stop 10 Science Stories of 2014
The team at Scientific American is reflecting on some of the greatest breakthroughs and scientific developments that will have long-lasting implications. They’re covering everything from synthetic chromosomes to gravitational waves.

Top 10 Patents for 2014
We’re closing out the year by looking back on the greatest innovations from all over the world. From alternative energies to drones and robots, these patents may just be the best inventions from 2014.

The Most Amazing Science and Technology Images of the Year
We’ve been talking about the intersection of art and science recently, and 2014 had a lot to show for that topic. Thankfully, Popular Science has rounded up some of the most mind-blowing images for us. Thanks guys.

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An aircraft with a parallel hybrid engine – the first ever to be able to recharge its batteries in flight – has been successfully tested in the UK, an important early step towards cleaner, low-carbon air travel.
Credit: University of Cambridge

The United Kingdom is taking an important step towards cleaner, low-carbon air travel with the first successfully tested airplane with a parallel hybrid-electric engine. The novel aircraft is the first of its kind due to the ability to recharge its batteries while in flight.

This development comes out of the University of Cambridge in conjunction with Boeing, where they have worked to successfully develop a parallel hybrid-electric propulsion system for an aircraft that will use up to 30 percent less fuel than a comparable plane with a petrol-only engine.

To create the plane, the researches used the same basic principals as in a hybrid car. The aircraft uses a 4-stroke piston engine and an electric motor/generator. When maximum power is required – i.e. during takeoff – the engine and electric motor work together to power the plane. Once cruise height is reached, the motor switches to generator mode to recharge its batteries.

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This gel-based adhesive for sticking sensors on the body can measure strain and electrical activity.
Image: Nature Communications

Sensors can go almost anywhere and do almost anything – and soon, sensors may be making their way to your internal organs.

Researchers have developed an electronic sensor, of which they will attach to a newly designed sticky sheet in order to attach to the body’s organs.

This from Popular Science:

A team of researchers based at several Japanese universities made prototype sticky sensors that they’ve now tested on the still-beating hearts of living rats. The sensors measured strain and electrical activity, both of which are created when a heart beats. In a test, the sensors maintained good contact with the rats’ heart for three hours.

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Collecting this energy is enough to power lights and other small devices for minutes at a time from a mere one hundred or so footfalls.
Credit: Pavegen

When we look at the kinetic energy that people produce from things such as footfalls or climbing steps, it just makes sense that we begin to move toward harnessing energy from human activity.

That is the mantra of the company Pavegen – the developer of power-generating systems for pavements, football fields, and even school corridors.

The technology for innovations such as this already exists, with the piezoelectric effect dating back more that 130 years.

Now, we have the ability to place these piezoelectric devices in unlikely places. When Pavegen applied this technology to a football field, they were able to produce up to 7 watts of energy with each step.

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