With new technology and scientific breakthroughs in the automobile industry, everyone is waiting for the first car that will be able to run autonomously. Now, it may be closer than we expected.

Tesla Motors’ CEO and chief product architect, Elon Musk, made a prediction in September of 2013 stating that Tesla automobiles would operate autonomously for “90 percent of miles driven within three years.” Musk has now revised his statement and has proponents of autopilot capable cars hopeful for the future.

This from IEEE Spectrum:

One year later, he’s revised his estimate a bit, now saying that “a Tesla car next year will probably be 90 percent capable of autopilot. Like, so 90 percent of your miles can be on auto. For sure highway travel.” Although he didn’t go into any detail (besides some suggestion of an obligatory sensor fusion approach), Musk seems confident that this is something that Tesla will make happen, not just sometime soon, but actually next year.

Read the full article here.

While there is still much ambiguity on what Musk’s statement actually entails, we will be waiting to see what technology Tesla puts forward within the next year.

Want to find out more about the future of the automobile? Take a look at what our scientist are researching via our Digital Library.

The prosthetic arm plugs into the patient’s electrode implant to create natural-feeling sensations.
Credit: Russell Lee

Prosthetic limbs help amputees with mobility and functionality, but do not allow one to regain their sense of touch. Scientists and engineers have been attempting to re-create touch for those who have lost limbs for some time now, and they may have found the answer.

A study published in Science Translation Medicine states that long-lasting, natural-feeling sensations are now able to be produced artificially for those with prosthetic limbs. Of course, those using the device cannot physically feel the ball. Although, the patterns of electric singles that are sent by a computer into nerves around the patient’s arm will tell him or her differently.

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The DOD FY 2015 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) BAA has been published. 

Proposals are due 17 Nov 4:00pm ET. 

This announcement seeks proposals to purchase instrumentation in support of
research in areas of interest to the DoD, including areas of research supported by the Army Research Office (ARO), the Office of Naval Research
(ONR), and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).

It’s recommended that potential proposers contact the appropriate program
manager prior to submitting their proposal

Find out more. 

Thanks to ECS board member Dr. Robert Mantz from the Army Research Office for the heads up.

Find openings in your area via the ECS job board.

ECS’s job board keeps you up-to-date with the latest career opportunities in electrochemical and solid-state science. Check out the latest openings that have been added to the board:

Sr. Process Engineer
TriStaff Group – San Diego, California
As our Sr. Process Engineer, you will be responsible for the process development for advanced capacitive energy storage devices. This is a hands-on role, spending a significant amount of time in the lab doing work aimed at developing lab scale and pilot line processes for advanced electrodes and energy storage devices

Faculty Positions
Soochow University – Suzhou, China
Ten full professor or principal investigator (PI) and 20 associate professor positions are available at Institute of Energy of Soochow University. The Institute of Energy focuses on researches in areas related to science and technology of new energy.

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Brookhaven National Laboratory – Upton, New York
Essential duties and responsibilities include: development of lithium rechargeable cell technologies utilizing Sulfur based cathode materials, conduct basic research on multiple battery materials and electrochemical systems by utilizing various material and electrochemical characterization techniques, plan and execute research experiments in electrchemical call systems via material processing, study cell level component interactions, achieve mechanistic understanding and identify degradation mechanisms, and implement and create methods of diagnostic testing for battery characterization.

“Pee to Energy” demo at the Edison Theatre in the exhibit hall in Cancun, Mexico. Rob Gerth, Gerri Botte, and Madhi Muthuvel getting ready to go.

I’m working on an official review of what happened at the meeting. In the meantime, I’ve been looking at some of the photos which got me thinking about the adventure that is an ECS meeting.

A couple of quick hits first:

• All meeting attendees get Author Choice Open Access Article Credits!
• Some Cancun issues of ECS Transactions are now available, with the remaining issues coming in January 2015. All of the Orlando issues have now been published. You can get any of these issues now.
• Be sure to share your Cancun photos with everyone on Facebook and Twitter

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Pictured is the funding review panel for the 2014 Electrochemical Energy and Water Summit grant proposals: Gerardo Arriaga, Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnologico en Electroquimica; Kathy Ayers, Proton OnSite; Ioannis Ieropoulos, University of the West of England – Bristol; Paul Kohl, Georgia Tech, President of ECS; Barry MacDougall, National Research Council of Canada, Past President of ECS; Paul Natishan, Naval Research Laboratory, Past President of ECS; Brian Stoner, RTI International; E. Jennings Taylor, Faraday Technology Inc. and Treasurer of ECS. Non-voting observers pictured: Dan Fatton, ECS Director of Development, Roque Calvo, ECS Executive Director, Carl Hensman, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The winners of the 2014 Electrochemical Energy and Water Summit funding challenge have been selected and notified. Once we get the signed agreements from each of their institutions, we will formally announce the results.

It was an incredible experience all around. Thank you to everyone who participated.

By the numbers:

• 2,200+ attendees
• 120 participants in the facilitated brainstorm
• 47 proposals received
• 30 applicants invited to present
• 4 projects selected
• $210,000 in funding and the projects will be announced soon!

See what else happened at the meeting.

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”

The awardees are as follows: Eric Betzig, 54, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, VA.; Stefan W. Hell, 51, of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidlberg, Germany; and William E. (W.E.) Moerner, 61, of Stanford University.

Because of these men, it is possible for us to obtain optical images at the nanometer scale and understand molecules.

This from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences:

For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

Read the full article here.

The committee noted the importance of these achievements, by which we’re able to see how proteins in fertilized eggs divide into embryos and track proteins involved in Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

“Due to their achievements, the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld,” said the committee.

Find out more information on the discoveries of the winners at Chemical & Engineering News.

Also, check out our past issue of Interface entitled, “25 Years of Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy.” The journal is completely open access, allowing everyone to partake in and share this wealth of information.

Harvard students test the flow rate from one of the newly installed tap stands.
Credit: Christopher Lombardo

A group of students from Harvard have been working to help restore clean water to the rural town of Pinalito in the Dominican Republic. Now, for the first time in a long time, the water in Pinalito is clean again.

This from Harvard Gazette:

For the past 2½ years, students in the Harvard University chapter of Engineers Without Borders have been rehabilitating and improving a potable water system in the rural town in the Dominican Republic. After the most recent visit, the students returned to campus in late August having successfully worked with the community to upgrade the water quality and distribution system.

Read the full article here.

The residents now have clean water – something that wasn’t available prior due to the failed well built by a government contractor. The well installed by the Harvard students can produce 27 gallons a minute, according to Christopher Lombardo – assistant director for undergraduate studies in engineering sciences at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

During their time in Pinalito, the students made sure to integrate the community into the design and building of the well in order to combat skepticism and foster relationships.

Not only does this experience provide the rural town with clean water, but it also shows the students that there are many other perspective they’ll need to consider when they go further in the field of engineering, and they won’t always have access to a state-of-the-art lab.

At ECS, we’re also joining the fight to provide clean water though innovation and research to those in need. We are in Cancun right now working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to find and fund new research to combat some of the world’s most serious water and sanitation issues.

Stay connected with us to see the grant winners and their solutions to bridge the critical technology gaps in water, sanitation, and hygiene challenges being faced around the world.

Michael Gordin discusses the universal language of science and the demand for scientists to publish new discoveries in English.
Credit: Frank Wojciechowski

The words “permafrost,” “oxygen,” and “hydrogen” may look like the language of science, but these words really have Russian, Greek and French origins. So how is it that English has become the universal language of science? That is the question Michael Gordin, professor the history of science at Princeton, sets out to answer in his interview with PRI.

“If you look around the world in 1900, and someone told you, ‘Guess what the universal language of science will be in the year 2000?’ You would first of all laugh at them because it was obvious that no one language would be the language of science, but a mixture of French, German and English would be the right answer,” Gordin said in his interview.

Gordin goes on to describe how German – the dominant language of science – collapsed during WWI when a boycott was organized against scientists in Germany and Austria, prohibiting them from attending conferences or publishing in Western European journals. Pair this with the anti-German hysteria taking place in the United States and the rise of American scientific establishments, and you being to see how English started to take over as the universal language of science.

“And you have a set of people who don’t speak foreign languages,” said Gordin, “They’re comfortable in English, they read English, they can get by in English because the most exciting stuff in their mind is happening in English. So you end up with a very American-centric, and therefore very English-centric community of science after World War II.”

Here at ECS, due to our vast number of international members, we know science doesn’t conform to a specific mold or language. Through open access (OA) publication, we hope to break this rigidity and focus on the more important issue – the free dissemination of scientific research for the benefit of all. Find out more about ECS’ bold move toward open access publication and publish your paper as OA today.

Listen to Gordin’s full interview below.

The new solar battery stores power by “breathing” air to decompose and re-form lithium peroxide.
Credit: Yiying Wu/Ohio State University

Is it a solar cell? Is it a rechargeable battery? Well, technically it’s both.

The scientists at Ohio State University have developed the world’s first solar battery that can recharge itself using light and air. The findings from the patent-pending device were published in the October 3, 2014 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

This from Ohio State University:

Key to the innovation is a mesh solar panel, which allows air to enter the battery, and a special process for transferring electrons between the solar panel and the battery electrode. Inside the device, light and oxygen enable different parts of the chemical reactions that charge the battery.

Read the full article here.

The university plans to license the solar battery to industry.

“The state of the art is to use a solar panel to capture the light, and then use a cheap battery to store the energy,” said Yiying Wu, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State University. “We’ve integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost.”

The device also tackles the issue of solar energy efficiency by eliminating the loss of electricity that normally occurs when electrons have to travel between a solar cell and an external battery. Where typically only 80 percent of electrons make it from the solar cell into the battery, the new solar battery saves nearly 100 percent of electrons.

Want to know more about what’s going on with solar batteries? Check out the latest research in ECS’s Digital Library and find out what our scientists think the future looks like.