The National Institutes of Health is challenging science innovators to compete for prizes totaling up to $500,000, by developing new ways to track the health status of a single cell in complex tissue over time.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced an exciting new challenge through the InnoCentive Platform that will award a total of $500,000 to creative minds that are interested in solving some of the world’s most important problems.

The Single Cell Analysis Program (SCAP) Challenge is aimed to spur the development of innovative solutions in single cell analysis. Through advances in cellular analysis, NIH hopes to develop tools that would monitor a cell in the process of becoming cancerous, detect changes due to disease-causing virus, or track how a cell responds to treatment.

The challenge’s goal is to generate creative ideas and methods for following and predicting a single cell’s behavior – in essence, allowing one to “Follow that Cell.”

This from the National Institutes of Health:

Many biological experiments are performed under the assumption that all cells of a particular “type” are identical. However, recent data suggest that individual cells within a single population may differ quite significantly and these differences can drive the health and function of the entire cell population. Single cell analysis comprises a broad field that covers advanced optical, electrochemical, mass spectrometry instrumentation, and sensor technology, as well as separation and sequencing techniques.

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“This is a significant step forward to enable fully wearable and flexible devices .”
-Andrea Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre

There has been quite the buzz around graphene lately. With this material being among the strongest and most lightweight known, it has the potential to revolutionize industries from healthcare to electronics. And revolutionize is exactly what the Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC) and Plastic Logic have set out to do.

With the CGC’s graphene expertise and Plastic Logic’s already developed technology for flexible electronics, the two came together to demonstrate the first graphene-based flexible display.

This from University of Cambridge:

The new prototype is an active matrix electrophoretic display, similar to the screens used in today’s e-readers, except it is made of flexible plastic instead of glass. In contrast to conventional displays, the pixel electronics, or backplane, of this display includes a solution-processed graphene electrode, which replaces the sputtered metal electrode layer within Plastic Logic’s conventional devices, bringing product and process benefits.

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The researchers discovered that two flat semiconductor materials can be connected edge-to-edge with crystalline perfection.
Credit: University of Washington

Current member of ECS, Xiaodong Xu, has made a huge contribution to the field of electrochemical science with the creation of atomically seamless, thinnest-possible semiconductor junctions.

Xu, along with the scientists at the University of Washington, believe their semiconductor – coming in at only three atoms thick – is the most slender possible, a new class of nanoscale materials.

This from the University of Washington:

The University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that two of these single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as a heterojunction. This result could be the basis for next-generation flexible and transparent computing, better light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, and solar technologies.

Read the full article here.

“Our experimental demonstration of such junctions between two-dimensional materials should enable new kinds of transistors, LEDs, nanolasers, and solar cells to be developed for highly integrated electronic and optical circuits within a single atomic plane,” Xu said.

The research was published online this week in Nature Materials.

Find more research from Xu published in our Digital Library.

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.

Lecture Notes in Electrochemistry/Electrochemical Engineering – M. Bazant, MIT
Detailed course material from MIT, including: equivalent circuit models, thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, transport phenomena, electrostatics, electrokinetics, porous media, and phase transformations.

Electroforming — a Unique Metal Fabrication Process – R. Parkinson, Nickel Development Institute
Electroforming plays an important role in our daily lives. We have contact with its results many times each day and it greatly enhances our lifestyle in a variety of ways. In addition, it is an extremely versatile process. For instance, it is used to produce micro components for the medical and electronics industries and huge components for the aircraft and aerospace industries. For many applications it has become indispensable.

Electrochemical Machining of Metal Plates – J.F. Cooper and M.C. Evans, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Technical basis of electrochemical machining. Experimental basis of electrochemical machining. Theoretical basis of current distribution. Experimental tests and results (stationary cathode, advancing cathode, rotating cathode). Interpretations of results. Implementation of the process.

Electropolishing of Stainless Steels – Kosmač, Euro Inox
Electropolishing is a chemical surface finishing technique, by which metal is electrolytically removed, ion by ion, from the surface of a metal object. The primary objective is to minimize microroughness, thus dramatically reducing the risk of dirt or product residues adhering and improving the cleanability of surfaces. Electropolishing is also used for deburring, brightening, and passivating. The process exposes an undisturbed, metallurgically clean surface, eliminating thermal stress and surface roughening, and improving the corrosion resistance.

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

Thanks in large part to scientific breakthroughs in sensors, cars have been getting smarter – and soon they’ll be able to tell if you’re distracted behind the wheel.

General Motors and Australian company Seeing Machines have landed a 15 year deal to create sensors that will detect when drivers are distracted.

Read the full article here.

This from the company news release:

The Seeing Machines’ Operator Monitoring System is based on patented eye-tracking technology that uses sensing equipment that requires no re-calibration between different drivers and tracks head alignment for potential distraction of the driver.

The sensors are another addition to the technology that could assist in the creation of the fully driverless car. With the United Services Auto Association noting that auto-breaks, collision assurance, and adaptive cruise control potentially coming to a car dealership near you, it is apparent that our cars are getting smarter.

Though we may be several decades away from these fully driverless cars, the sensor technology in automobiles is assisting in driver safety through anti-distraction technology.

“Eye and head tracking technology is the next step in automotive safety, which we expect to play a significant role in the reduction of one of the greatest causes of accidents: driver distraction,” said Ken Kroeger, CEO of Seeing Machines. “We strongly believe that the addition of driver monitoring to ADAS will deliver a significant improvement to the safety of drivers, passengers and pedestrians.”

Learn more sensor science and technology and their global impact via ECS’s Digital Library.

“Google Science” would launch a number of journals, be “self-organising” and yet have a team of “qualified reviewers.”

There is a Google Scholar, but what if there was a Google Science? The UK edition of Wired magazine is tracking the mystery of whether it is or is not in the mix in How ‘Google Science’ could transform academic publishing.

“Google Science” would launch a number of journals, be “self-organising” and yet have a team of “qualified reviewers”.

“99.9 percent of the work, including peer review would be done by the scientific community,”

This is, of course, about open access an issue we at ECS are committed to. There’s a great discussion on this. The article says:

“Most [academics] don’t particularly care about open access, in part because they are not incentivised to do so. This is changing, but only slowly, and right now most still care more about publishing in established, high-profile journals and in gaining a lot of citations.”

Google could change the game, if they really were going to get involved. Spoiler alert: Wired found no evidence a Google Science was in the works.

Find out more about ECS open access.

Chopra wants to know how one can physically detect the content of a thought. If you know, you could win $1 million. Source: YouTube

Want to win $1 million? Well now you can – as long as you can give a valid scientific explanation for the biological basis of a first-person experience, that is.

Deepak Chopra has posted a video on YouTube asking viewers to offer a scientific understanding for the biological basis of an idea.

This from Chopra:

Just tell me how does electrochemistry produce a thought, an idea, and you get the million dollars. I will live up to this. But it has to be a valid, scientific explanation for the biological basis of an idea.

Watch the video below.

Before taking your shot at winning $1 million, read up on some of the latest research in electrochemical by the best scientists in the field.

Created for the centennial celebration of The Electrochemical Society (1902-2002).

Since its foundation in 1902, ECS and its members have been at the forefront of the challenge to bridge the gap between electrical engineering and chemistry. The years that followed the Society’s establishment have been filled with innovation, ingenuity, and excellence throughout the field of electrochemistry. Take a look back at some of ECS’s most prestigious members and their accomplishments.

Ruben presenting his Acheson Award address in 1970.

Samuel Ruben
In 1918, Samuel Ruben, an 18-year old high school graduate, was hired by the Electrochemical Products Company in New York City. Bergen Davis of Columbia University arranged for Ruben to sit in on courses at Columbia and spent evenings tutoring him. Ruben went on to invent the dry electrolytic aluminum capacitor, the vacuum tube relay, the quick heather vacuum tube, a sold-state rectifier, and the balanced cell mercury battery.

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Tesla was known for discovering amazing things and then forgetting to write them down.

You know his name, but how much do you really know about Nikola Tesla? The writers over at The Oatmeal want you to be aware of all of Tesla’s glory, and put together quite the comic to demonstrate it.

This from The Oatmeal:

Over one hundred years ago, a Serbian-American inventor by the name of Nikola Tesla started fixing things that weren’t broken… Tesla’s contributions were not incremental; they were revolutionary.

Learn more about this underdog and his inventions and contributions to science, which included: alternating current, hydroelectricity, cryogenic engineering, the remote control, neon lighting, and wireless communication just to name a few.

Check out the comic here.

Although The Oatmeal paints Thomas Edison – Tesla’s competitor and often times rival – as “a non-geek who operated in geek space,” we at ECS are still proud to have had him as a member of the Society.

If you’re looking for more humorous renditions of Tesla’s storied past, check out this Drunk History rendition via Funny or Die.

Just about exactly fifty years ago – this month, as I recall – I walked into the office of the chemistry department chairman at SMU and asked to become a chemistry major. It was among my better decisions. The fit has proven to be perfect.

(These comments were presentedby Larry R. Faulkner at the ceremony commemorating Honorary Membership in The Electrochemical Society for Allen J. Bard and John B. Goodenough, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, November 23, 2013.)

I have loved the science and its history. I have loved its relevance to the world at large. I have even loved the fact that chemists are workaholics. It’s notable, in fact, that when I went to see the department chairman back in 1963, it was about eight o’clock in the evening. The light was on in his office, as it was practically every night. While he didn’t warmly welcome my interruption, he still helped me – and Professor Harold Jeskey became an important mentor and a lifelong friend.

Read the rest.