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Fuel cells turn chemicals into electricity. Now, a U of T Engineering team has adapted technology from fuel cells to do the reverse: harness electricity to make valuable chemicals from waste carbon (CO2).

“For decades, talented researchers have been developing systems that convert electricity into hydrogen and back again,” says Professor Ted Sargent (ECE), one of the senior authors of a paper published today in Science. “Our innovation builds on that legacy, but by using carbon-based molecules, we can plug directly into existing hydrocarbon infrastructure.”

In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen come together on the surface of a catalyst. The chemical reaction releases electrons, which are captured by specialized materials within the fuel cell and pumped into a circuit.

ACS Publications is providing free access to articles related to the #coronavirus, in support of the on-going coronavirus outbreak relief efforts in #China.

View the Virtual Issue to access all available articles:


In light of the current outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019–nCoV), ACS Publications would like to share this Virtual Issue that features a collection of articles on coronavirus research. Chemistry has a key role to play in understanding everything from viral structure to pathogenesis, isolation of vaccines and therapies, as well as in the development of materials and techniques used by basic researchers, virologists and clinicians. This Virtual Issue aims to provide a brief overview of the important contributions of chemistry to understanding and controlling the spread of coronaviruses and includes articles from„„, and as well as the preprint server ChemRxiv. We hope the research contained in this Virtual Issue will provide you with important insight into challenges and approaches in virus research.

To address the challenge, some startups are making chips focused on specific software tasks. Others are pushing further, finding processing and storage solutions in new materials, including synthetic DNA.


Quantum computing is the best-known of these new methods. Startups as well as tech giants including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and International Business Machines Corp. are developing quantum computers, which harness the properties of quantum physics to sort through a vast number of possibilities in nearly real time. The advent of quantum computing has paved the way for other experimental techniques, startup executives say.

The market for new computing technology comes as advancements in traditional chip making are hitting a physical limit under Moore’s Law, the idea that every two years or so, the number of transistors in a chip doubles.

At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence, easier access to huge troves of data and the continuing digitization of business processes are putting new demands on corporate and scientific computing.

A burn that is over 25% of the human body area can be life threatening. However a burn that is only 1 percent but on a visible area of the body can be life-worsening. That is why advancements in the area of wound care and burns treatment are so important from patient perspective. Being a doctor of the future will include having a point-of-care device such as a 3D-Bioprinter that will scan the lesions in dept and width and print a gel imbued with cells and prolo-factors.

Forgive me my conservatism… we already have such clinics that are on the clinical trials for such treatments.

Read more in the article. Stay tuned for more topics through the Academy blog. Gain more knowledge in Regenerative Medicine and practical experience with biologics through the Annual Congress — Global Regenerative Congress 18–20 September 2020 in Dubai. Registrations are open: www.grc2020dubai.com


Researchers from the University of Toronto (ON, Canada) have reported success in trials of a handheld bioprinter for treating serious burns and wounds.

One of the biggest problems in the sneaker resale market may now be more manageable.

Product authentication technology provider Entrupy on Wednesday released its Legit Check Tech (LCT) solution, a device that uses artificial intelligence to determine whether a sneaker is counterfeit or not — and it only takes about a minute to use.

Fake pairs of popular Nike and Adidas sneakers are rampant in the resale sector. Authorities recently busted a counterfeiting operation that shipped $470 million worth of fake Nikes to the US.

This handheld 3D printer deposits layers of skin tissue, and could one day help to heal deep wounds. Instead of waiting for skin patches to grow in a Petri dish, you apply it directly.

A team of Canadian scientists has successfully applied skin tissue to burn wounds using a handheld 3D printer. This technology may become a game-changer in the way severe burn victims are treated.

The handheld skin 3D printer, the work of scientists at the University of Toronto Engineering and Sunnybrook Hospital, was first shown back in 2018. Since then it has undergone a major redesign that improves upon the initial model’s functionality.