Just returned from some battery testing at the Advanced Photon Source near Chicago. Here Snehal models one of the new batteries we’ve developed for grid-scale electrical storage.

And here’s a couple of them sitting in the path of an X-ray “white beam” that will give us diffraction data while they cycle. This way you can track the mechanism of what’s happening during battery cycling … since the cycling is ultimately an electrochemical transformation.

Now we’re going through a full set of data, getting to the bottom of our underlying mechanisms. By the way it snowed quite a bit while we were there. Here’s the lovely winter view from the guest house.

A reminder that you can follow this site via Tumblr at joshuagallaway.tumblr.com.

Today I got an email from Elsevier titled “Elsevier Publishes the Top 8 Electrochemistry Journals,” which proclaimed “including the top-ranked journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics which has an Impact Factor of 6.451!” And a helpful graphic, given below free of charge with no advertising fee to Elsevier:

I don’t read much into a journal’s purpose beyond its name. What does it mean that Biosensors and Bioelectronics is the “top-ranked” electrochemistry publication? I always thought it was for biosensors. (And bioelectronics.) Does this just mean the field of biosensors is taking off like a rocket? Or does it mean that the journal is “good,” transcending the areas of study stated in the name, making it an appropriate venue for any high-profile topic, such as discovery of gravitons or life on other planets? NEW PLAN: I’m sending everything I have to Biosensors and Bioelectronics, even my grocery list.