People are already attached to their smartphones but if you have ever been in an airport waiting area and watched them scramble for outlets, you know recharging is not in the 21st century yet.

There are some solar recharging devices but they are more novelty than practical. A new paper in Nano Letters highlights a battery that can be woven into clothing fibers or incorporated into watchbands - and it even has solar cells for recharging. 

About 11 million smokers in the United States own a smartphone - they have apps to do almost anything, including quitting smoking.

Like weight loss or any other behavioral change, their ability to help is limited. But there are some basic strategies most likely to work, and most popular anti-smoking apps for iPhones or Androids lack even those, according to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

As portable electronic devices such as laptops and smartphones get more robust, consumers would like for batteries to keep pace. But rechargeable batteries -- Lithium-ion (Li-ion) being among the most popular - haven't done that. They are 25 year old technology powering things produced this year.

Japanese researchers from a prive sector-government team report an advance in Li-ion battery technology that they describe as a major breakthrough. They fabricated a cathode (positive electrode) of lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO₂) in which the compound's individual grains are aligned in a specific orientation. The researchers claim that this yields a significantly higher-performing battery than one with a randomly-oriented LiCoO₂ cathode.

Special labels for foods that have genetic modification and are not organically processed have been the target of initiatives and legislative efforts recently. While a recent survey found that only 7 percent of people felt labeling GMOs was very important to them, that number climbed to 59 percent when they were reminded about genetically modified foods.

Do we process language we hear without regard to anything about the speaker?

Perhaps or perhaps not. A small psychological experiment using University of Kansas undergraduates who were paid to participate and spoke Spanish found that the sex of a speaker affected how quickly listeners identified words grammatically - evidence that even higher-level processes are affected by the speaker. 14 of the participants were female and 6 were male.