A debate held at the annual Charleston Library Conference tackles the journal impact factor, with speakers looking at the metric and analyzing if it does more harm than good. The debate was moderated by Rick Anderson, Associate Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication; and argued by Sara Rouhi, director of business development at Altmetric; and Ann Beynonn, manager at Clarivate Analytics.

A journal’s impact factor is a long-established metric intended to evaluate the relevancy of a publication by factoring the average number of times its articles were cited over the course of the prior two years. However, the metric does not reflect journals that continue to have impact long after the two year time-span.

Opening polls of the debate showed that 54 percent of all respondents believed that the impact factor does more harm than good. By the end of the debate, that number had grown to 57 percent. However, because the debate garnered a small number of attendees, the vote does not represent a true statistical significance.

Read full transcripts here.

New paper-based, point-of-care diagnostic tools could lead to improvements in device cost, weight, and flexibility. The recently developed SPEDs, or self-powered, paper-based electrochemical device, can detect biomarkers such as glucose and white blood cells, all while remaining easy to read for non-experts.

The Purdue University research team behind this project believes it could be applicable for patients in regions where access to sophisticated medical equipment is limited.

“You could consider this a portable laboratory that is just completely made out of paper, is inexpensive and can be disposed of through incineration,” says Ramses V. Martinez, an assistant professor of industrial and biomedical engineering at Purdue University. “We hope these devices will serve untrained people located in remote villages or military bases to test for a variety of diseases without requiring any source of electricity, clean water, or additional equipment.”

Researchers have created a new method to more efficiently convert potato waste into ethanol. The findings may lead to reduced production costs for biofuel in the future and add extra value for chip makers.

Using potato mash made from the peelings and potato residuals from a Pennsylvania food-processing company, researchers triggered simultaneous saccharification—the process of breaking down the complex carbohydrate starch into simple sugars—and fermentation—the process in which sugars are converted to ethanol by yeasts or other microorganisms in bioreactors.

The simultaneous nature of the process was innovative, according to researcher Ali Demirci, professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State. The addition to the bioreactor of mold and yeast—Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, respectively—catalyzed the conversion of potato waste to bioethanol.

The bioreactor had plastic composite supports to encourage and enhance biofilm formation and to increase the microbial population. Biofilms are a natural way of immobilizing microbial cells on a solid support material. In a biofilm environment, microbial cells are abundant and more resistant to environmental stress causing higher productivities.

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In its first Science for Solving Society’s Problems Challenge, ECS partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to leverage the brainpower of electrochemists and solid state scientists, working to find innovative research solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues in water and sanitation. A total of seven projects were selected, resulting in a grand total of $360,000 in funding.

The researchers behind one of those projects recently published an open access paper in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society discussing their results in pursuing a single-use, biodegradable and sustainable battery that minimizes waste. The paper, “Evaluation of Redox Chemistries for Single-Use Biodegradable Capillary Flow Batteries,” was published August 18 and authored by Omar Ibrahim, Perla Alday, Neus Sabaté, Juan Pablo Esquivel (pictured with prototype at right), and Erik Kjeang.

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While pursing work on the highly desirable but technically challenging lithium-air battery, researchers unexpectedly discovered a new way to capture and store carbon dioxide. Upon creating a design for a lithium-CO₂ battery, the research team found a way to isolate solid carbon dust from gaseous carbon dioxide, all while being able to separate oxygen.

As global industry, technology, and transportation grows, the consumption of fossil fuels has increased. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the burning of petroleum-based products has resulted in 6,587 million of metric tons of carbon dioxide released into the environment in 2015. The emission of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide trap heat in the atmosphere, which researches have linked the global warming. Because of this, capturing and converting carbon emissions has become a highly researched area.

“The problem with most physical and chemical pathways for CO₂ fixation is that their products are gases and liquids that need to be further liquefied or compressed, and that inevitably leads to additional energy consumption and even more CO2 emissions,” says Haoshen Zhou, senior author of the recently published research. “Instead, we are demonstrating an electrochemical strategy for CO₂ fixation that yields solid carbon products, as well as a lithium-CO₂ battery that can provide the energy necessary for that process.”

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By: Timothy H. Dixon, University of South Florida

This summer I worked on the Greenland ice sheet, part of a scientific experiment to study surface melting and its contribution to Greenland’s accelerating ice losses. By virtue of its size, elevation and currently frozen state, Greenland has the potential to cause large and rapid increases to sea level as it melts.

When I returned, a nonscientist friend asked me what the research showed about future sea level rise. He was disappointed that I couldn’t say anything definite, since it will take several years to analyze the data. This kind of time lag is common in science, but it can make communicating the issues difficult. That’s especially true for climate change, where decades of data collection may be required to see trends.

A recent draft report on climate change by federal scientists exploits data captured over many decades to assess recent changes, and warns of a dire future if we don’t change our ways. Yet few countries are aggressively reducing their emissions in a way scientists say are needed to avoid the dangers of climate change.

While this lack of progress dismays people, it’s actually understandable. Human beings have evolved to focus on immediate threats. We have a tough time dealing with risks that have time lags of decades or even centuries. As a geoscientist, I’m used to thinking on much longer time scales, but I recognize that most people are not. I see several kinds of time lags associated with climate change debates. It’s important to understand these time lags and how they interact if we hope to make progress.

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Researchers have found a new method for finding lithium, used in the lithium-ion batteries that power modern electronics, in supervolcanic lake deposits.

While most of the lithium used to make batteries comes from Australia and Chile, but scientists say there are large deposits in sources right here in America: supervolcanoes.

In a recently published study, scientists detail a new method for locating lithium in supervolcanic lake deposits.

The findings represent an important step toward diversifying the supply of this valuable silvery-white metal, since lithium is an energy-critical strategic resource, says study coauthor Gail Mahood, a professor of geological sciences at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

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In May 2017 during the 231st ECS Meeting, we sat down with Doron Aurbach, professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, to discuss his life in science, the future of batteries, and scientific legacy. The conversation was led by Rob Gerth, ECS’s director of marketing and communications.

During the 231st ECS Meeting, Aurbach received the ECS Allen J. Bard Award in Electrochemical Science for his distinguished contributions to the field. He has published more than 540 peer-reviewed papers, which have received more than 37,000 citations. Doron serves as a technical editor for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society and is an ECS fellow. His work in fundamental battery research has received recognition world-wide.

Listen to the podcast and download this episode and others for free on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Podbean, or our RSS Feed. You can also find us on Stitcher and Acast.

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Some of the participants at the first ISCGC-2017.
Click to enlarge.

The 1st International Semiconductor Conference for Global Challenges (ISCGC 2017) was held in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, July 16-19, 2017. The conference was jointly sponsored by The Electrochemical Society and the Chinese Physical Society.

The 200-plus attendees from around the world addressed the global challenges of semiconductor science and technology. The conference covered a wide spectrum of semiconductor research areas including growth and characterization, electronic/optoelectronic/power devices and their applications, and energy devices and systems.

On hand were eight keynote and 40 invited speakers. Thirty-seven contributing papers were presented, along with 66 posters. The meeting included 10 invited and keynote speakers from ECS as well as the involvement of five ECS divisions (Electronics and Photonics, Dielectric Science and Technology, Luminescence and Display Materials, Sensors, and Nanocarbons).

“ECS wants to have an influence in this region of the world as to the way scholarly publishing is carried out,” says Roque Calvo, executive director of ECS. “We want to communicate the idea of our Free the Science initiative — embracing open science to further advance research in our fields.”

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The next generation of feature-filled and energy-efficient electronics will require computer chips just a few atoms thick. For all its positive attributes, trusty silicon can’t take us to these ultrathin extremes.

With two new semiconductors, however, it may be possible.

Electrical engineers have identified two semiconductors—hafnium diselenide and zirconium diselenide—that share or go beyond some of silicon’s desirable traits, starting with the fact that all three materials can “rust.”

“It’s a bit like rust, but a very desirable rust,” says Eric Pop, an associate professor of electrical engineering, who coauthored with postdoctoral scholar Michal Mleczko a paper on the research that appears in the journal Science Advances.

The new materials can also be shrunk to functional circuits just three atoms thick and they require less energy than silicon circuits. Although still experimental, the researchers say the materials could be a step toward the kinds of thinner, more energy-efficient chips demanded by devices of the future.

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