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…)

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Plan S: Taking Down Paywalls

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…)

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The following are the 2019 updated deadlines and submission guidelines for section and student chapter news to be considered for Interface.

2019 Submission Deadlines for Sections & Student Chapters
  • Spring – January 16
  • Summer – April 17
  • Fall – July 17
  • Winter – October 16

Submit your section and student chapter news articles to: Shannon.Reed@electrochem.org (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…)

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ECSTSixteen* 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:

(more…)

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Call for Volunteers

ECS is looking for several volunteers for the 233rd ECS Meeting in Seattle, WA. A volunteer shift is 6-hours in length. Additional benefits of being selected as a student volunteer are:

  • receive 50% off your meeting registration
  • (1) ticket to the student mixer and
  • (1) free year of student membership

Take advantage of the opportunity to network and engage with meeting attendees, symposium organizers, and ECS staff while learning how registration operates, technical sessions run, and how Seattle student volunteersmajor meeting programs are facilitated. In addition to hands-on experience, volunteers will also receive a volunteer t-shirt, a complimentary ticket to the student mixer and a certificate of participation.

Multilingual speakers are highly encouraged to apply!

Applications are open from April 9 – 18, 2018
Candidates notified: Wednesday, April 25
SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

NOTE: If you do not complete the six hours of work on-site, you will be invoiced for the full registration fee. We will do our best to accommodate the hours you have listed as being available but this is not a guarantee. Each volunteer position will require interaction with the attendees, long periods of standing, and foot-traffic flow management. If you are unwilling or unable to complete these tasks please make us aware upon submitting your application.

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

FrackingUrban 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.

(more…)

I4OC logoECS 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.

(more…)

ECS Teams Up With Tesla

On Saturday May 20, ECS participated in Pennington Day, a local community festival that highlights local artists, food and other vendors, and nonprofits. As one of the largest organizations in Pennington, NJ and with an important message to communicate, ECS took to the streets for the all-day street affair.

To engage passersby, we partnered with Tesla to demonstrate what our sciences look like when applied to the real world. The Tesla Model X, with its DeLorean-esque doors attracted plenty of curious people who inquired about the car’s capabilities. The top 3 questions were:

  • How far can you drive on one charge?
  • Where are there charging stations?
  • How much does it cost? The model we had was $110,000!

Pennington DayAnd for something for younger, budding scientists, we collaborated with students from PRISM (Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials) at Princeton University. They worked on building molecules out of gumdrops and toothpicks!

We had a steady stream of visitors, including some of our members, throughout the day and gave away prizes to people who could answer questions about our sciences. A big thanks to the organizers of Pennington Day and our partners at PRISM and Tesla for making our booth so successful at this event!

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