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Powered up: An amorphous layer (light-colored band at the right) on a crystalline battery material improves its performance. Credit: Byoungwoo Kang, MIT A lithium-ion battery electrode described this week in the journal Nature can deliver electricity several times faster than other such batteries. It could be particularly useful where rapid power bursts are needed, such as for laser weapons or hybrid race cars. Test batteries based on the new electrode--developed by Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science at MIT--can be discharged in 10 seconds. In comparison, the best high-power lithium-ion batteries today discharge in a minute and a...

<p>We have the War Against Poverty, the War Against Drugs and the War Against Terrorism. Needless to say, we're losing all of them. I say let's make a war that we can win. My proposal? The War Against Stupidity.</p> <p>Now you might think this would be the most difficult of all wars to win, but as a schoolteacher, I have hope. I'm fortunate to work in a school where the teachers think—they read books, they write poems, essays, songs and stories, they discuss current affairs and even timeless questions. They think about how they think and they think about how to help children to think. And the results are impressive. The children do think and they show promise of growing into adults who will continue to think.</p>