A team of researchers from Iceland is looking to fight climate change by turning greenhouse gases into rocks.

A recent paper published in Science details how researchers have been able to capture carbon emissions and lock them in the ground, transforming them from harmful atmospheric greenhouse gases to volcanic rock.

“Our results show that between 95 and 98 percent of the injected carbon dioxide was mineralized over the period of less than two years, which is amazingly fast,” said lead author Juerg Matter.

A large majority of all electricity in Iceland come from geothermal energy. While geothermal may seem like a very clean source of energy, it is not carbon dioxide independent.

In fact, the geothermal energy of Iceland produces 40,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year. That is only about five percent of what a fossil fuel plant of the same size would emit, but research team is looking to work toward a completely carbon dioxide independent economy.

New research from the University of Washington is opening another avenue in the quest for better batteries and fuel cells. But this research is not a breakthrough in efficiency or longevity, rather a tool to more closely analyze how batteries work.

While we’ve come a long way from the voltaic pile of the 1800s, there is still much work to be done in the field of energy storage to meet modern day needs. In a society that is looking for ways to power electric vehicles and implement large scale grid energy storage for renewables, batteries and fuel cells have never been more important.

A research team from the University of Washington – including ECS members Stuart B. Adler and Timothy C. Geary – believes that these improvements will likely have to happen at the nanoscale. But in order to improve batteries and fuel cells at that microscopic level, we must first understand and see how they function.

[MORE: Read the full journal article.]

The newly developed probe offers a window for researchers to understand how batteries and fuel cells really work.

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Open Access LogoWhen eLife emerged in 2012, the biomedical journal aimed to be on-par with such competitors as Nature and Cell as far as content goes, but publish those papers at no cost to the author or reader.

After 1,800 papers four years of a complete open access model, eLife will get another boost from its funders to allow the journal to continue down its path of high standards and openness.

eLife’s status in the field is rising quite quickly,” eLife editor Sjors Scheres told Nature News. “I liked the idea behind it — to make a high-impact journal completely driven by scientists, and open.”

ECS’s Free the Science initiative draws many parallels to eLife’s publication model. Much like eLife, ECS looks to maintain our rigorous peer-review process as we move toward making the ECS Digital Library completely open access.

Free the Science is an initiative that seeks to remove all fees associate with publishing and accessing our scientific content so scientists can share their research with readers around the world, allowing more minds to think about and solve problems.

Learn more about Free the Science and watch our video explaining why it has never been more important to advance our technical domain.

Pictured (from left to right): Mahsa Lotfi Marchoubeh, Leanne Mathurin, Isaac Taylor, and Haitham Kalil[Click to enlarge]

Pictured (from left to right): Mahsa Lotfi Marchoubeh, Leanne Mathurin, Isaac Taylor, and Haitham Kalil
[Click to enlarge]

It is with great pride that ECS honors the winners of the General Student Poster Session Awards for the 229th ECS Meeting in San Diego, California. In following with biannual ECS meeting tradition, awards recognized the top two poster presentations in electrochemical and solid state categories.

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 Session symposium and present their posters at the biannual meeting. First and second place winners receive a certificate in addition to a cash award.

The winners of the General Student Poster Session Awards for the 229th ECS Meeting are as follows:

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Apply for a Travel Grant

PRiME_2016_FINALDon’t miss out on your chance to receive an ECS travel grant this year! The deadline for travel grant application submissions for PRiME 2016 is just around the corner—Friday, June 10th, 2016!

Many ECS divisions and sections offer travel grants to undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and young professionals & faculty presenting papers at ECS biannual meetings. Applications must be received no later than the submission deadline.

Click here to view a list of the ECS divisions and sections currently offering travel grants.

Important note: Applicants may only apply for a travel grant from one division.

Travel grant applications are available to student/postdoc and young professional/early career applicants.

After reviewing the additional application requirements for your particular division or section, please contact travelgrant@electrochem.org with any questions or concerns.

ECS wishes all applicants the best of luck! Hope to see you in Honolulu this October!

 

ECS Battery Division Postdoctoral Associate Research Award
Sponsored by MTI Corporation and the Jiang Family Foundation

Deadline: July 15, 2016

With your submission to a Battery Division Symposia for PRiME in October 2016, we are excited to offer the following new Battery Division award. Consider an application or pass it on!

ECS seeks nominations for the very first postdoctoral associate award in our Honors & Awards Program. The Battery Division recently established this award to encourage excellence among postdoctoral researchers in battery and fuel cell research with the primary purpose to recognize and support development of talent and future leaders therein. The award is generously sponsored by the MTI Corporation and the Jiang Family Foundation.

The Award: an appropriately worded scroll, a $2,000 prize and complimentary meeting registration at the designated meeting. Two awards will be granted each year. Winners are also invited to present on a subject related to the contributions for which the award is being presented.

The Recipient: Ideal candidates must be under (or at) the age of 35 at the nomination deadline date. Only current members of The Electrochemical Society may be considered. The candidates should show exceptional promise that includes leadership, advocacy, outreach or teaching, in addition to excellence in scientific research during their postdoctoral assignment.

A complete nomination package would include:

  • Electronic Nomination Form
  • Cover letter with a statement of research interests and accomplishments
  • Support letter from the postdoctoral advisor
  • Copy of the publication(s) that describe the science and technology achievement.

Take some time to review the award details and consider becoming the very first Battery Division Postdoctoral Award winner! PRiME will be a milestone meeting for ECS and the Battery Division — with over 1,000 abstract submissions, the Battery Division will make up ~ 25% of talks at the meeting. Two of those presentations can be for the new award! Apply today!

Researchers from the University of Connecticut are pushing toward a hydrogen economy with the development of a new catalyst for cheaper, light-weight hydrogen fuel cells.

The catalyst — made of graphene nanotubes infused with sulfur — could potentially work to make hydrogen capture more commercially viable.

This development comes during a time where many people are looking to hydrogen in the search for a new, sustainable energy source. While hydrogen may be abundant, it often requires a costly and energy-consuming process to produce. However, if scientists could find an affordable and efficient way to capture hydrogen, it may begin to shift society away from the fossil fuel-driven economy toward a hydrogen economy.

The material developed by the University of Connecticut professors currently shows results that are competitive with some of the top materials traditionally used in these processes, but at a fraction of the cost.

The secret lies in the non-metal catalyst that has many of the same electrochemical properties as rare earth materials.

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From televisions screens we can roll up like newspapers to see-through batteries, researchers are moving electronics toward a more flexible, more transparent future.

The most recent development in this area comes from a group that has developed transparent, flexible supercapacitors made of carbon nanotube films. But this development goes far beyond wearable electronics, with potential applications in both energy storage and harvesting.

“Potential applications can be roughly divided into two categories: high-aesthetic-value products, such as activity bands and smart clothes, and inherently transparent end-uses, such as displays and windows,” co-author of the study Tanja Kallio, told Phys.org. “The latter include, for example, such future applications as smart windows for automobiles and aerospace vehicles, self-powered rolled-up displays, self-powered wearable optoelectronics, and electronic skin.”

With the thin films demonstrating 92 percent transparency and high efficiency compared to other carbon-based counterparts, the researchers believe that further improvements to the supercapacitors durability and energy density could make the product commercially viable.

This week, The Moth podcast celebrated the world of science by going beyond the technical aspects to capture the behind-the-scenes stories. Listen to scientists and storytellers discuss everything from 8th grade science fairs to the Nobel Ceremony.

You can find The Moth on iTunes, Android, and through their RSS feed.

Listen to the ECS Podcast for more stories on the impact of science and the minds behind some of today’s biggest breakthroughs and innovations.

Please join us on Tuesday May 31 at 0700h for an invigorating morning run in support of ECS’s open access efforts.

The race winners (top male and top female) runner will each receive an Open Access Credit! This credit may be used to publish a paper as OA in either JES or JSS.

For more information on ECS publications, please visit the ECS Digital Library and the ECS online store and be sure to stop by the ECS Publications booth, located on the Sapphire Level of the San Diego Hilton Bayfront.

Looking forward to seeing you in San Diego!