Challenges, Volume 8, Issue 1

PARP2017, a meeting on ADP-ribosylation reactions, was held in Budapest (17–19 May 2017).[...]

The electricity sector is among the main contributors to carbon emissions. This sector has the potential to reduce its carbon emissions through producing electric energy from zero-emitting facilities and optimizing consumption to better accommodate l...

A high standard of planetary protection is important for astrobiology, though the risk for contamination can never be zero. It is therefore important to find a balance. If extraterrestrial life has a moral standing in its own right, it will also affe...

In this work a purification route of precursors for ionic liquids tailored to electrochemical energy storage systems is reported and described. The study was carried out on the N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bromide (PYR₁₄Br) precursor, which represen...

Although all countries are intensifying their efforts against terrorism and increasing their mutual cooperation, terrorist bombing is still one of the greatest threats to society. The discovery of hidden bomb factories is of primary importance in the...

In this paper, hydrogen coupled with fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries are considered as alternative energy storage methods. Their application on a stationary system (i.e., energy storage for a family house) and a mobile system (i.e., an unmanned...

Automotive and stationary energy storage are among the most recently-proposed and still unfulfilled applications for lithium ion devices. Higher energy, power and superior safety standards, well beyond the present state of the art, are actually requi...

Pyrrolidinium-based ionic liquids with anions of the per(fluoroalkylsulfonyl)imide family are particularly interesting for their use as electrolytes in lithium batteries. These ions have several geometric isomers and the presence of different ion con...

In the first part of this paper, we have introduced a novel theoretical approach to mating dynamics, known as Tie-Up Theory (TU). In this second part, in the context of the bio-cultural approach to literature, that assigns to fictional narratives an...

Perovskite oxides find applications or are studied in many fields related to energy production, accumulation and saving. The most obvious application is oxygen or proton conductors in fuel cells (SOFCs), but the (anti)ferroelectric compositions may find...

Amorphous metallic membranes display promising properties for hydrogen purification up to an ultrapure grade (purity > 99.999%). The hydrogen permeability through amorphous membranes has been widely studied in the literature. In this work we focus...

Hydrogen storage is one of the most addressed issues in the green-economy field. The latest-discovered form of ice (XVII), obtained by application of an annealing treatment to a H ${}_2$ -filled ice sample in the C ${}_0$ -phase, could be inserte...

The editors of Challenges would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for assessing manuscripts in 2016.[...]

(1) Background: Police forces and security administrations are nowadays considering Improvised explosives (IEs) as a major threat. The chemical substances used to prepare IEs are called precursors, and their presence could allow police forces to loca...