A reversible fabric keeps skin a comfortable temperature whatever the weather—and could save energy by keeping us away from the thermostat. As reported in Science Advances, the double-sided fabric is based on the same material as everyday kitchen wrap and can offer warmth or cooling depending on which side faces out. “Why do you need to cool and heat the whole building? Why don’t you cool and heat individual people?” says Yi Cui, professor of materials science and engineering at…
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Congratulations to the winners of the General Student Poster Session for the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland! ECS established the General Student Poster Session Awards in 1993 to acknowledge the eminence of its students’ work. The winners exhibit a profound understanding of their research topic and its relation to fields of interest to ECS. In order to be eligible for the General Student Poster Session Awards, students must submit their abstracts to the Z01 General Society Student Poster…
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Engineers have developed a 4-in-1 smart utilities plant that produces electricity, water, air-conditioning, and heat in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way. The eco-friendly system harvests waste energy and is suitable for building clusters and underground cities, especially those in the tropics. “Currently, significant amount of energy is required for the generation of electricity, water, air-conditioning, and heat. Running four independent processes also result in extensive energy wastage, and such systems take up a huge floor area,” says Ernest Chua,…
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Nearly 2,400 people from 54 countries attended the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, October 1-5, 2017. Participants could choose from 49 symposia, over 1,250 oral talks, 644 student presentations, and nearly 570 posters. Plenary Session ECS President Johnna Leddy presented the opening remarks at the 232nd ECS Meeting. ECS President Johna Leddy welcomed attendees to the meeting during Monday evening’s plenary session. In addition to wrapping up the first full day of technical sessions and honoring award winners,...
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Scientists have learned how to tame the unruly electrons in graphene. Graphene is a nano-thin layer of the carbon-based graphite in pencils. It is far stronger than steel and a great conductor. But when electrons move through it, they do so in straight lines and their high velocity does not change. “If they hit a barrier, they can’t turn back, so they have to go through it,” says Eva Y. Andrei, professor in the Rutgers University-New Brunswick department of physics…
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Transparent solar materials on windows could gather as much energy as bulkier rooftop solar units, say researchers. The authors of a new paper argue that widespread use of such highly transparent solar applications, together with the rooftop units, could nearly meet US electricity demand and drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels. “Highly transparent solar cells represent the wave of the future for new solar applications,” says Richard Lunt, an associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan…
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A new kind of lithium sulfur battery could be more efficient, less expensive, and safer than currently available lithium batteries. “We demonstrated this method in a coin battery,” says Donghai Wang, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State. “But, I think it could eventually become big enough for cell phones, drones, and even bigger for electric vehicles.” Lithium sulfur batteries should be a promising candidate for the next generation of rechargeable batteries, but they are not without problems. For…
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By: Timothy J. Jorgensen, Georgetown University Ask people to name the most famous historical woman of science and their answer will likely be: Madame Marie Curie. Push further and ask what she did, and they might say it was something related to radioactivity. (She actually discovered the radioisotopes radium and polonium.) Some might also know that she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. (She actually won two.) But few will know she was also a major hero…
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Stephen Maldonado is an associate professor at the University of Michigan, where he leads a research group that focuses on the study of heterogeneous charge transfer processes relevant to the fields of electronics, chemical sensing, and energy conversion/storage technologies. He was recently reappointed as an associate editor for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) in the area of physical and analytical electrochemistry, electrocatalysis, and photoelectrochemistry. ECS: When did you become an ECS associate editor? What made you pursue an…
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Researchers have created a way to look inside fuel cells to see the chemical processes that lead them to breakdown. Fuel cells could someday generate electricity for nearly any device that’s battery-powered, including automobiles, laptops, and cellphones. Typically using hydrogen as fuel and air as an oxidant, fuel cells are cleaner than internal combustion engines because they produce power via electrochemical reactions. Since water is their primary product, they considerably reduce pollution. The oxidation, or breakdown, of a fuel cell’s…
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