Go on and file this one away in the folder of "awesome things that could, but won't ever happen." As the brilliant minds around the world figure out how to solve vicious diseases, move motorcars with peanut oil and send engineers to fix a telescope in outer space, we still can't buy a pack of AA cells that last longer than a month or two in our favorite toy. Some call it a limit of physics, some deem it a conspiracy. Whatever the case, we've no doubt whatsoever that a new silicon-containing carbon material -- designed by Dow Corning Toray to double the capacity of existing Li-ion batteries -- won't ever have a real impact in our lives. Of course, it's not like any consumer would actually benefit from having a netbook battery good for 16 hours, nor would wedding photographers enjoy being able to shoot 1,000 indoor shots without cracking the battery door open on their SB-600. No -- that's just absurd. C'mon Dow, prove us wrong here.

It's funny, really. We've figured out how to put men an women on the moon and repair an orbiting telescope, but we can't concoct an AA battery that lasts more than four days inside a Teddy Ruxpin. Thanks to a revolutionary new design from the labs at the University of St Andrews, all that could be well on the way to changin'. Researchers at said institution have teamed up with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle in order to design an air-fuelled STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell that could theoretically last up to ten times longer than current batteries. Put as simply as possible, this design utilizes oxygen in the air as a re-agent instead of heavy, costly chemicals; the result is a lighter, cheaper battery with loads more capacity. Needless to say, gurus within the project are already dreaming of a prototype to fit in small gizmos such as cellphones or MP3 players, though we wouldn't expect one anytime soon -- after all, there's still two years of research left to complete.

[Thanks, Khattab]

Given that Florida has accurately been coined The Sunshine State, it's not at all shocking to hear that America's first "solar city" will be built in the state's southwest corner. Or, at least that's the plan. According to a new report, West Palm Beach-based Kitson & Partners is currently developing a new city near Charlotte County, which will get juiced by a massive 75-megawatt solar plant. Said plant will cost around $300 million to build and will be installed by Florida Power & Light; if all goes well, homes will begin construction on a sizable plot of land dubbed Babcock Ranch by 2011. If things don't go so well, we're told that the actual power plant will still be erected and fed into the larger grid. In other words, Florida's gettin' some solar power, with or without this newfangled concrete jungle.

[Via Fark]

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the electricity grid in the United States has been infiltrated by "cyperspies," in an attempt to map the infrastructure, leaving behind software that could pose potential threats in times of crisis. Quoting anonymous "current and former" national security officials, the report claims that the spies, hailing from China, Russia, and "other countries" have not attempted to do any damage, but that they could, and that these types of intrusions are on the rise. Officials are of course worried about the potential implications of such penetrations, noting that much of our infrastructure, including nuclear power plants and financial institutions, are at risk. Unfortunately for the WSJ and its Cold War-era headline, the article goes on to state that it's not really possible to know whether a particular attack is "government sponsored," or just the work of regular old hackers from those regions running amok in cyberspace. Additionally, spokespeople from the Russian and Chinese Embassies vehemently deny their respective governments involvement in any such work. The Wall Street Journal, of course, fails to point out the most obvious of explanations: it's aliens.

Update: China has officially responded to the report. From a WSJ blog post:

"The intrusion doesn't exist at all," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular press conference. "We hope that the concerned media will prudently deal with some groundless remarks, especially those concerning accusations against China."

"I have also noticed that the U.S. White House had denied the media reports," she said.

You know what'll be awesome? Actual end products resulting from this presumably nonstop research on piezoelectric nanowires. Yet again we're hearing of a new group of researchers that have figured out a way to harness electricity from life's simplest things: walking, a heart beating or even the flowing of blood. Put simply, the gurus have discovered how to use zinc oxide nanowires in order to generate an electric current when "subjected to mechanical stress." The difference here, however, is that these critters could actually be implanted under the skin, though the scientists have made quite clear that there isn't a timetable for commercial production. In other words: yawn.

[Via textually, image courtesy of NSF]

The New York Times is reporting Google will announce a free web service tomorrow called PowerMeter that'll let users track energy consumption in their homes or business, provided there's a means to upload the data. That part of the equation's gonna be up to other companies to create compatible devices, and while no manufacturing partners have been named, we'd suspect strange bedfellow GE will probably jump aboard pretty quickly. The service is expected to roll out in the next few months. Ready to give the boys in Mountain View even more access to your life?

Update: The official site has launched. According to the FAQ, PowerMeter is currently in closed beta. There's also a video about the program, which you can peep after the break.

University of Illinois researchers have developed what they claim is the world's smallest working fuel cell, and it's certainly a good bit tinier than anything we've seen. The itty-bitty battery measures 3 mm x 3 mm x 1 mm and is comprised of just four layers: a water reservoir, a thin membrane, a chamber of metal hydride, and an assembly of electrodes. It can produce 0.7 volts and a 0.1 milliamp current for about 30 hours, with a newer model boasting similar voltage and 1 milliamp of current. That's not gonna juice your BlackBerry anytime soon, but scientists suggest it could be used for simple electronics and microbots. As for future application, we're hoping one day can power a fingernail-sized smartphone.

[Via Register Hardware]

It's our best guess that University of Florida PhD student Jason Winters woke up at 10:00AM ET this morning and took an approximately 18-minute shower. How did we come to this conclusion? Using an AC clamp attached to an ioBridge, the biomedical engineering scholar measures the main electrical lines entering his house and sends the data to a Google charts widget on his personal blog that reports the kilowatt-hour usage in real time. As a footnote, he presents an example graph of when the hot water is turned on, which then produces close to 4500 watts. That's just over the amount of power he used this morning for about 1100 seconds. Of course, we can't say for certain any of these morning events really transpired, but then again, we don't exactly want to know. Hit up the read links for directions on DIYing this.

Not that waste heat in general hasn't been repurposed for non-wasteful activities before, but researchers at Doshisha University are now edging ever closer to making useful the previously annoying thermoacoustic phenomenon. For those not really tied into the science realm, said phenomenon is a nonlinear one in which "heated air autonomously transforms into sound when passing through small mesh holes in a wire sheet." Gurus are now developing a cooling technology that would have heat converted to sound, where it would then be transferred through a tube and reconverted into heat; furthermore, other whiz-kids are looking to generate actual electricity from the racket. In related news, the thermoelectric conversion is being used to transform waste heat from candles into energy for LEDs, which would emit more light than the candle powering it. Pop on past the break for a demonstration of the former.

By sitting there and getting ran over by motorcars, that is. In an effort to best other power-generating highway options that involve solar panels and enlarged blender arms, Britain's Environmental Transport Association is looking to test a prototype highway that's embedded with piezoelectric crystals. Essentially, the process would work much like the power-generating Tokyo station floors we saw earlier this week; each car that squishes a crystal would contribute a tiny bit of energy, and the collective effect could be enormous. In fact, it's estimated that a single kilometer of roadway could generate 400-kilowatts of energy, or enough to power around eight small cars. And we're no rocket scientists (nor physicists), but we're assuming these whiz kids already made sure these magic crystals weren't friction-generating, too. Right?