Powering Sensing Systems with Tree Power!

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/10/13/scientists_tap_into_tree_power/

Image from:

Love CJ, Zhang S, Mershin A (2008) Source of Sustained Voltage Difference between the Xylem of a Potted Ficus benjamina Tree and Its Soil. PLoS ONE 3(8): e2963. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002963

History of Electrochemistry

Check out the link. This is an article published in the latest volume of the Interface. It gives a good description of the evolution of electrochemistry and some world famous electrochemists. It pays tribute to some of the modern day electrochemists including Brian Conway. However, I was quite disappointing that it did not mention anything about Srini. Some day when we are driving around in a fuel cell car, I hope people look back at his contributions and thank him for it.

http://www.electrochem.org/dl/interface/fal/fal08/fal08_p31-39.pdf

New Protein Based Disk Recording

Folks check out the new paper by Professor Renugopalakrishnan on some novel protein based disk recording concept. This has been recently published as an article in the MRS bulletin.
"Protein based Disk Recording at Areal Densities beyond 10 Terabits/square inch.
S. Khizroev, R. Ikkawi, N. Amos, R. Chomko, V. Renugopalakrishnan, and D. Litvinov, MRS Bulletin, Volume 33, September 2008. Copy of this article will be placed in our newly created secure ftp server.

Bio-Solar Initiative Flying High

Folks our Bio-Solar initiative is now flying high with Professor Renugopalakrishnan's efforts. Several new proposals in this area have been initiated. In addition there are high impact papers with him as co-author containing Northeastern University affiliation. We look forward to more of such scholarly output and germination of new ideas through our center (NUCRET). The title of the latest papers is:
(1)"Controlled electron injection and transport at materials interface in dye sensitized solar cells," Materials Science and Engineering R (2008) In Press. [Impact factor 14+]