6th ECS Yamagata University Student Chapter Symposium

The ECS Yamagata University Student Chapter in Japan has been very active, organizing symposia on November 20 and 17 December, 2019.

6th ECS Yamagata University Student Chapter Symposium

The 6th ECS Yamagata University (YU) Student Chapter Symposium featured Dr. Philipp Stadler, Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria. His lecture, “Conductive Biopolymers as Sustainable Electrocatalysts,” covered the research background to the serious problems caused by global climate change and the scarcity of resources for developing sustainable technology. He presented recent progress on metal-free organic conductive polymer catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR). A lively discussion followed as the talk was directly related to YU students’ research. (more…)

Gitanjali Rao / Photo Credit: NPR

When you think back to a young, 13-year-old you, what do you see? Were you climbing trees? Playing some gnarly rounds of tag with friends? Attempting to get as much air as possible on playground swing sets? Not Gitanjali Rao. According to NPR, the 13-year-old science entrepreneur made the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list before she even stepped into high school, and in 2017, the then 11-year-old was named ‘America’s Top Young Scientist’ for the design of a small, mobile device that tests for lead in drinking water.

And today, she’s onto the next project. Rao has set her eyes on bringing her water testing device Tethys—named after the Greek Titan goddess of clean water—to the market. The 3D-printed box uses carbon nanotube sensors to detect lead in water. (more…)

Plan S, created to teardown scholarly journals’ paywalls, is still shy from achieving its goal, according to Science Magazine. Whether it will achieve its mission in part on details that remain to be settled, including a cap on the author charges that funders will pay for OA publication.

Still, the Europe-backed program—which launched in September 2018—is gaining traction. China, for one, expressed strong support for Plan S back in December. It seems they’re not alone. This month, a national funding agency in Africa is said to join, as well as a second U.S. funder. Others around the world are also considering jumping onboard.

Plan S is projected to be in full swing by January 2020 and is receiving support from many scientists who welcome the change to the publishing system. While other scientists and publishers worry that Plan S could restrict their choices. (more…)

ECS is currently accepting nominations for two Canada section awards:

Canada Section W. Lash Miller Award

The Canada Section W. Lash Miller Award was established in 1967 to recognize Canada residents with publications and/or excellence in the field of electrochemical science and technology and/or solid state science and technology. The award consists of a $1,000 CAD prize.

Application Deadline: December 31, 2018 (more…)

Sixteen* new issues of ECS Transactions have just been added to the ECS Online Store for pre-order.

The following issues of ECST will be published from symposia held during AiMES 2018, the ECS and SMEQ joint international meeting, in Cancun, Mexico, September 30 – October 4, 2018,  and will be available in limited quantities for pick-up at the meeting.

Electronic (PDF) editions will be made available for purchase beginning September 21, 2018. To pre-order a CD or USB edition, please follow the links below:

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By: Gunnar W. Schade, Texas A&M University

Urban air pollution in the U.S. has been decreasing near continuously since the 1970s.

Federal regulations, notably the Clean Air Act passed by President Nixon, to reduce toxic air pollutants such as benzene, a hydrocarbon, and ozone, a strong oxidant, effectively lowered their abundance in ambient air with steady progress.

But about 10 years ago, the picture on air pollutants in the U.S. started to change. The “fracking boom” in several different parts of the nation led to a new source of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere, affecting abundances of both toxic benzene and ozone, including in areas that were not previously affected much by such air pollution.

As a result, in recent years there has been a spike of research to determine what the extent of emissions are from fracked oil and gas wells – called “unconventional” sources in the industry. While much discussion has surrounded methane emissions, a greenhouse gas, less attention has been paid to air toxics.

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ECS is proud to announce its partnership with the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC). By joining forces with I4OC, ECS has opened up citation data, further expanding accessibility to scientific knowledge by releasing into the public domain reference data published in ECS journals.

This partnership aligns directly with ECS’s Free the Science initiative, which seeks to make our peer-reviewed research free to all readers while remaining free for authors to publish.

“We applaud the efforts of I4OC. In addition to our significant amount of open access full-text content, we are excited to be able to provide yet another mechanism for researchers to freely access a very important part of ECS content,” says Mary Yess, chief content officer for ECS. “Opening up our citations will not only allow scientists and engineers easy access; but because the citations are in common, machine-readable formats, this will also allow them to data mine those citations. All of these open access opportunities are a critical to progress in our fields and others.”

Since its establishment in April, I4OC has worked to partner with publishers to provide accessible citation data. Citations are a central component to scholarly information, providing credibility to statements and bolstering overall discovery and dissemination by highlighting research.

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