Image: CC0 Public Domain

By now you’ve probably heard the headlines about the dangers of self-driving cars in light of the first fatal crash involving a Tesla vehicle.

That crash took place on July 1, but more incidents involving the autopilot feature of Tesla vehicles have been reported since.

Just one day after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started their investigation into the safety of Tesla’s self-driving mode, another non-fatal accident was reported outside of Pittsburgh.

In a recent interview with NPR, Wired magazine report Alex Davies discussed how Tesla’s autopilot feature works and what some of its safety issues are.

According to Davies, Tesla’s autopilot feature functions similarly to the advanced cruise control of other makes and models. Once you exceed 18 mph, drivers can activate the autopilot mode, where the car then uses cameras to read lane lines and sensors to keep appropriate distances from other vehicles.

But the technology does not seem to be working without complication.

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The French research network on electrochemical energy storage (RS2E) – a public research organization focused on batteries and supercapacitors – has just launched the Young Energy Storage Scientist Award 2016.

The YESS Award is geared toward young scientists in the energy storage field, focused on awarding research funds to innovative and significant projects in the field of electrochemical energy storage, coupled fields of electrochemical energy storage and conversion, or associated characterization techniques.

With this award, RS2E aims to encourage the next wave of energy storage researchers to be as innovative as possible and to say in private/publish energy storage research. The award aims to aid scientists 35 years old or younger from the U.S., Europe, and Canada.

Two $11,000 awards will be distributed, as well as five $2,700 awards.

Deadline for project submissions is July 27, 2016.

Learn more.

Prior to the turn of the 20th century, society pondered a question that baffled people for millennia: What drives the sex of a baby? What makes a boy a boy? What makes a girl a girl?

Pioneering female geneticist Nettie Stevens set out to tackle that mystery in 1905, when she discovered the sex is determined by chromosomes. Pretty revolutionary stuff for a society that assumed that mother, environment, or diet determined if a child was born male or female.

Today would be her 155th birthday, which Google is honoring with their daily doodle.

Interestingly enough, when Stevens presented her initial work on chromosomes’ role in sex determination, it was pretty widely denied by the scientific community. However, when Edmund Wilson (who also believed environmental factors also played some role in determining sex) released research that same year that came to the same relative conclusion as Stevens’, the connection between chromosomes and sex determination became more widely accepted.

Essentially, the foremost researcher in sex determination’s work was initially rejected largely because of her sex. While Stevens’ work eventually stood on its own merit and gave us the ultimate understanding for sex determination, her story speaks to the struggles that women in STEM faced, and often still face today.

(READ: “Celebrating Women in STEM“)

When Stevens died in 1912 from breast cancer, the New York Times wrote, “She was one of the very few women really eminent in science, and it took a foremost rank among the biologists of the day.”

Cathode particles treated with the carbon dioxide-based mixture show oxygen vacancies on the surface.
Image: Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion, UC San Diego

An international team of researchers has recently demonstrated a 30 to 40 percent increase in the energy storage capabilities of cathode materials.

The team, led by ECS member and 2016 Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award winner, Shirley Meng, has successfully treated lithium-rich cathode particles with a carbon dioxide-based gas mixture. This process introduced oxygen vacancies on the surface of the material, allowing for a huge boost to the amount of energy stored per unit mass and proving that oxygen plays a significant role in battery performance.

This greater understanding and improvement in the science behind the battery materials could accelerate developments in battery performance, specifically in applications such as electric vehicles.

(READ: “Gas-solid interfacial modification of oxygen activity in layered oxide cathodes for lithium-ion batteries“)

“We’ve uncovered a new mechanism at play in this class of lithium-rich cathode materials,” says Meng, past guest editor of JES Focus Issue on Intercalation Compounds for Rechargeable Batteries. “With this study, we want to open a new pathway to explore more battery materials in which we can control oxygen activity.”

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Image: CC0

With atmospheric greenhouse gas levels at their highest in history, many researchers have been contemplating one question: How can we reutilize carbon dioxide?

One new study reports a new catalyst with the ability to execute highly selective conversion of carbon dioxide into ethylene, producing an important source material for the chemical industry.

The push to convert carbon dioxide into useful chemicals is not a completely novel concept among the scientific community. For this study, researchers opted to make the process more efficient by implementing a new catalyst with higher selectivity to produce more useful chemicals and less unwanted byproducts.

Ruhr-Universitӓt Bochum PhD student and ECS student member, Hemma Mistry, veered away from the traditional catalyst used in this process and instead opted for copper films treated with oxygen or hydrogen plasmas. By doing this, Mistry was able to alter surface properties for optimal performance.

(MORE: Read Mistry’s past ECS Meeting Abstract entitled, “Selectivity Control in the Electroreduction of CO₂ over Nanostructured Catalysts.”)

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Reutilizing carbon dioxide to produce clean burning fuels

David Go has always seen himself as something of a black sheep when it comes to his scientific research approach, and his recent work in developing clean alternative fuels from carbon dioxide is no exception.

In 2015, Go and his research team at the University of Notre Dame were awarded a $50,000 grant to purse innovative electrochemical research in green energy technology through the ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship. With a goal of aiding scientists in advancing alternative energies, the fellowship aims to empower young researchers in creating next-generation vehicles capable of utilizing alternative fuels that can lead to climate change action in transportation.

The road less traveled

While advancing research in electric vehicles and fuel cells tend to be the top research areas in sustainable transportation, Go and his team is opting to go down the road less traveled through a new approach to green chemistry: plasma electrochemistry.

(MORE: Read Go’s Meeting Abstract on this topic, entitled “Electrochemical Reduction of CO_2(aq) By Solvated Electrons at a Plasma-Liquid Interface.”)

“Our approach to electrochemistry is completely a-typical,” Go, associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, says. “We use a technique called plasma electrochemistry with the aim of processing carbon dioxide – a pollutant – back into more useful products, such as clean-burning fuels.”

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Former ECS President and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientist, Paul Natishan, has recently been awarded the Department of the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award for “his outstanding performance and record of scientific achievements and contributions made to the Navy in the field of corrosion science and technology.”

Among his most notable accomplishments with NRL, Natishan developed significant advances for the understanding of materials in marine environments. By gaining a greater understanding of the breakdown of metals, Natishan’s work has made great impact on the Navy’s use of aluminum and stainless steel materials.

“Dr. Natishan’s breakthroughs in corrosion science have been an immeasurable contribution to the Navy as well as to the world in establishing a more thorough scientific understanding of corrosion phenomena and mitigation measures,” Capt. Mark Bruington, Commanding Officer, NRL said in a release. “As an internationally recognized expert in corrosion science, his contributions and achievements have allowed for conventional materials used in many applications for the Navy — operating continuously in a chlorine-laden environment — to be made more resistant to localized corrosion and degradation.”

Learn more about Paul Natishan.

A recent survey shows the scholarly publication model is changing, and researchers are embracing that change.

A survey of over 6,500 academics commissioned by Jisc and Research Libraries UK found that two-thirds of the scientific community support abolishing the traditional subscription-based publishing model in favor of open access.

In addition to the well-over 50 percent of researchers in favor of a more open access model, 40 percent of respondents stated that a journal’s openness is a very important factor in choosing where to publish. Compare that to a study done just three years ago where less than 20 percent put major emphasis on access, and the shift in the world of publishing becomes even more prevalent.

“The ability to disseminate research material online to anyone with internet access,” Paul Even, founder for the Open Library of the Humanities, told Time Higher Education, “without the reader bearing the cost, is becoming more and more important to researchers from across a broad set of disciplines.”

ECS is also embracing the changing publishing industry through our Free the Science initiative. Free the science seeks to remove all fees, providing complete open access to the ECS Digital Library for authors, readers, and libraries.

Learn more about Free the Science.