geekosystem

Neuroengineers at MIT have developed a new kind of fuel cell that is small enough to be implanted in the human body and can generate electricity from the glucose already present in your cerebrospinal fluid. The power from these cells would allow you to generate enough electricity to power sensors that can decode your brain activity and interface with cool peripheral gadgets and prothetic limbs. A cyberpunk future is surely close at hand.

Plants' ability to survive and thrive on a simple diet of sunlight and water can seem sort of miraculous, especially to we animals who have to go through the indignity of eating other living things, pleasant as that may be at times. Wouldn't it be great to be able to harness the Earth's abundant supply of sunlight and water for our own power needs? A newly designed revision of the artificial leaf might let us do that on a wide scale, not for food of course, but for electricity.

If you've got tons of mobile devices but aren't always around an outlet to charge them, you're about to have a new alternative to extra batteries. Lilliputian Systems is set to release a portable USB charger for sale at Brookstone, but not just any portable charger. What's so special about it? It runs on butane and can charge a phone 10-14 times before needing a refill.

Ever feel like MacBooks could be even smaller and lighter? Sure, the MacBook Air is floating around out there, as thin as thin could be, but if two recently discovered patents have anything to say about it, as thin as thin could be isn't thin enough. The Apple patents focus on employing the use of fuel cells to power a "portable computing device," and if they replaced the current batteries used to power the portable computing devices, the devices could become even smaller and more efficient than they currently are.