continue work on energy storage. Hu says the positive experience with Weadock has convinced him to recruit more undergraduates to his lab.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We call the segment Joe's Big Idea. NPR's Joe Palca is constantly on the lookout for interesting new inventions and inventors. Recently a press release turned up with the headline "An Environmentally Friendly Battery Made from Wood." Joe was intrigued and he decided to investigate.

JOE PALCA, BYLINE: The battery is being developed at the Energy Research Center at the University of Maryland in College Park. When I went out there, I was hoping to see something wild, like maybe an oak tree with wires coming out of it powering an electric car, or at least some double A'sThe AMS/Paterson Lecture: becoming alternative? Modern transformations of Chinese medicine in China and in the United States.
"Becoming Alternative" offers an overview of the transformations of Chinese medicine at home and abroad since the mid-19th century. After coming into contact with biomedicine, China's indigenous medicine was redefined in terms of national culture and history on the one hand, and a competitive alternative science on the other. Reimagined in terms of scientific syncretism in the PRC, and embraced as a counter-cultural alternative to bio-medicine in the United States, the medicine we call "Chinese" today emerges as a pluralistic system with global reach involving complex accommodations with local medical cultures and institutions both at home and abroad.