Editor's note

Lithium-ion batteries are in almost every electronic device. But how to make them better? To build the next generation of energy storage, researchers are experimenting with the chemistry and structure of batteries, North Carolina State University’s Veronica Augustyn explains. That includes making new materials and looking deep inside batteries to see what’s happening at the atomic level.

Black women make up 25 percent of Brazil’s population – but just about 1 percent of its congressional representatives. That may change on Sunday, thanks to a record number of black women who are on the ballot in Brazil’s general election. The 1,237 Afro-Brazilian women running for public office is a reaction to the alarming rise of sexism and racism in Brazilian politics, writes Kia Lilly Caldwell, a professor of African diaspora studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

With newsrooms shrinking and advertising revenue collapsing, it’s tough being a journalist in the 21st century. Texas A&M media historian Randall Sumpter sees a lot of parallels in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Back then, media markets were oversaturated, reporter’s pay was being slashed, and owners were convinced that only sensationalism would sell. Sumpter describes the shady practices that Gilded Age reporters engaged in to scrape by.

Jeff Inglis

Science + Technology Editor

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Research is finding better ways to make batteries both big and small. Romaset/Shutterstock.com

New materials are powering the battery revolution

Veronica Augustyn, North Carolina State University

Is it too much to dream of batteries that are part of the structure of an item, helping to shape the form of a smartphone, car or building while also powering its functions?

Black women in Brazil protest presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro, who is known for his disparaging remarks about women, on Sept. 29, 2018. AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo

Sexism, racism drive black women to run for office in both Brazil and US

Kia Lilly Caldwell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In Brazil, a record 1,237 black women will stand for office in Sunday's general election. As in the US, their campaigns reflect deep personal concern about rising racism and sexism in politics.

An 1899 photograph of the pressroom of the Planet, a newspaper in Richmond, Va. Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com

Think journalism’s a tough field today? Try being a reporter in the Gilded Age

Randall S. Sumpter, Texas A&M University

To survive in 19th-century newsrooms, reporters would have to hustle to get by, even if it meant producing fakes, staging events and sharing work with reporters from competing newspapers.

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“Donna Strickland is only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics, out of 210 recipients, and the first since 1963.”

 

2018 Nobel Prize for physics goes to tools made from light beams – a particle physicist explains

 

Todd Adams

Florida State University

Todd Adams