ECS Deputy Executive Director Mary Yess mused about how electrochemistry made it to the big screen in the blockbuster movie, Avatar:
Grace: What we think we know is that there is some kind of electro-chemical communication between the roots of the trees, like the synapses between neurons. And each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora. Parker: Which is a lot, I’m guessing. Grace: It’s more connections than the human brain. Get it?! It’s a network. It’s a global network and the Na’vi can access it!
Sadly, Sigourney Weaver (who played the role of Dr. Grace Augustine in Avatar) will not be accepting an Acheson Award anytime soon; although you might make a case that she has made “contributions to the advancement of any of the objects, purposes, or activities” of ECS by the mere mention of “electrochemical” in a wide-release movie.
While mentioned in Avatar, the word “electrochemical” certainly hasn’t made it (yet) into the lexicon of popular culture (let alone be understood out there); but the many things that ECS does certainly falls within the definition of a true global network. International meetings, technical Divisions, Sections, Student Chapters, and a series of online publications are all threads. One of the most enduring strands that has enhanced the community has been the “news”—by, about, and for the people who make up ECS.
ECS Sections in the News—The ECS Canadian Section was featured in the spring issue of Interface, reporting on their successful fall program on “Electrochemistry and the Future: Solving Today’s Problems for a Better Tomorrow” … and the Detroit Section reported on a joint meeting on advanced automotive batteries that included talks on hybrid, plug-in, and electric vehicles.
The ECS Digital Library provides searchable online access to the best content in electrochemistry and solid-state science from the only nonprofit publisher in the top ten electrochemistry journals. The Journal of The Electrochemical Society is one of the most highly-cited journals in electrochemistry; Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters was the first journal in electrochemistry to publish one article at a time; and ECS Transactions (ECST) is an online database of full-text content of proceedings from ECS meetings and ECS-sponsored meetings.
ECS is a proud sponsor of IMLB 2010 (June 27-July 2). The meeting provides an opportunity to stay up-to-date on the state of lithium battery science and technology, as well as current and future applications in transportation, commercial, aerospace, biomedical, and other promising sectors. This year’s meeting honors Prof. John Goodenough, winner of the 1999 ECS Olin Palladium Award.
Websites of Note and Tech Highlights are regular features of Interface. In each issue, Tech Highlights contains summaries of about a half a dozen articles published in ECS journals. Click anywhere in a summary and you’ll be linked to the full-text version of the article for free reading.
