Professor Jesse Kroll and graduate student Sean Kessler have found a new approach to characterizing atmospheric aerosols using the carbon oxidation state, which up to now has been used primarily as a teaching tool. Theirs is the first study to demonstrate that the carbon oxidation state can be used to describe the evolving composition of a complex mixture of atmospheric organics undergoing dynamic oxidation processes. A paper describing this work appeared in Nature Chemistry online Jan. 9. Read more about this work in the On Balance research newsletter.