The beginning of a new year is a great time to look back to see what's been accomplished. Since CheEncted is about to enter its second year (February 2009 was our start), we'd like to take a moment to reflect on what the last year has brought.

This past year was a busy year for the Young Professional Advisory Board Chicago local section. Our YP group has grown tremendously over the past few years with several new active members. The Chicago section has recently restructured in order to give more YPs more chances for leadership roles. Each month we hold an event specifically focused on young professional topics rotating our focus each month between technical topics, professional development topics, outreach events and purely social events. In the past few months we hosted events all throughout the greater Chicagoland area.

Ever wonder what stories are told around the campfire at Chemistry Camp? Well, the Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements by Sam Kean might just be the greatest collection of chemistry campfire stories.

Atala, whose team developed the first lab-grown organ, explains how his lab's 3-D printing technology is used to create human organs. In addition to the bladder that was transplanted, Wake Forest has also managed to engineer miniature kidneys from bio-materials and cells.

IBM announced plans to give the National Institutes of Health a database of more than 2.4 million chemical compounds. NIH will add this information to PubChem, a freely available database of chemical structures of small organic molecules and information on their biological activities.

Dutham, North Carolina-based startup Semprius has taken the transfer-printing technology it originally developed for flexible electronics and applied it to solar cells. It's now producing low-cost cells the size of a ballpoint pen tip and able to convert 41 percent of solar energy into electricity.

John F Kennedy once said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” As a chemical engineer, you are a lifelong student. Let’s face it – your college degree likely did not cover the intricacies of what your current job function requires. There are constantly new technologies, government regulations, and industry standards to learn. Additionally, as a young professional, you are learning the corporate culture, organizational structure, and the hundreds of acronyms that are supposed to make your life easier. It can become overwhelming! Luckily, AICHE makes learning simple and fun through online webinars.

In 2002, AIChE set out to better serve its young members by creating the Young Professional Advisory Board (YPAB). Its goal was to gain and maintain participation of young professional AIChE members. Almost ten years later, it continues to pursue this goal through a variety of ways led by some of AIChE’s brightest and highly motivated young members.

Scientists in Germany have created a way to cloak objects acoustically, using a technique that neither absorbs sound nor reflects it.

The latest to pitch in at Fukushima will be wild monkeys living in the area of the Fukushima nuclear plant. The animals will be fitted with collars containing radiation meters and GPS transmitters.