Thursday December 17, 2009

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What the deuce? Power outage here in the upstate leaves 5,000 plus w/out power. Duke Energy and Blue Ridge Electric estimate it'll be 10am before power is restored completely in the upper 20 degree weather..

Elsewhere on the ol interweb...

Hit up THIS Iron Man 2 website www.StarkSecretConfessionRevealed.com

A 2-year-old boy with more than 40 sewing needles stuck in him is being airlifted to another hospital in northeastern Brazil because two of the needles are close to his heart, an official said Thursday. The boy's stepfather had been arrested, that he had confessed to sticking the needles into the boy with the help of another woman, and that authorities were investigating whether black magic was involved.

An 11-year-old North Carolina boy has found and returned a stolen purse with nearly $2,000 inside. The News & Record of Greensboro reported Wednesday that Edward Myers and his siblings were helping neighbors plant trees in a Greensboro park when he spotted a purse on the creek bank. The Boy Scout and his mother called the police, and the purse's owner showed up to collect. The owner rewarded Edward with one of the $100 bills. He gave $40 of it to his mother and spent the other $60 on a Carolina Panthers jersey.

Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry is "battling for his life" after falling out of the back of a pickup truck Wednesday during what police described as a domestic dispute with his fiancee

and FINALLY,

MONTPELIER, Vt. – Vermont's highest court is being asked to decide what a dog's love is worth.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday was to hear a case that began in July 2003, when Denis and Sarah Scheele, who were visiting relatives, let their mixed-breed dog wander into Lewis Dustin's yard and he fatally shot it.

Now the Scheeles are asking the court to carve out a new legal doctrine that a dog's owners can sue for emotional distress and loss of companionship, just like parents can when they lose children.

"We're still working toward having the courts recognizing the true value of companion animals. They're members of the family, not mere property," Sarah Scheele, 58, said from her home in Annapolis, Md., on Wednesday before flying north for the court hearing.

Dustin's lawyer, David Blythe, said Dustin never intended to kill the Scheeles' dog, Shadow, and "has always regretted that it happened." He said Dustin fired an air pellet rifle at the dog in hopes of scaring it off the lawn of his home in Northfield, a community of about 6,000 residents just south of Montpelier in the heart of the state's Green Mountains.

The shot Dustin fired penetrated the dog's chest and severed an aorta, and the dog died on the way to a veterinarian's office.

Dustin, 76, has said he was aiming at the dog's rear end. He did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Wednesday.

He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty and was given a year probation. He also was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and pay $4,000 in restitution to the Scheeles.

But the Scheeles weren't done. Sarah Scheele gave up her work as a meeting planner and has devoted her time since the dog's death to advocating for animal welfare and caring for the six special-needs dogs — most of them abused in the past — the couple has adopted in recent years. Denis Scheele, 50, continues to work as a plumber.

The Scheeles filed a civil suit against Dustin, pressing their claim that Shadow was more than a piece of property and that they could not be compensated just with reimbursement of what they paid to adopt him from an animal shelter, the veterinary bill that resulted from the shooting and the cost of his cremation.

Blythe, who owns a poodle and a maltipoo, said he would be very angry if someone shot one of his dogs. But he argued that the Scheeles aren't entitled to the legal remedy they're seeking.

Historically, laws across the country have limited sharply the ability of plaintiffs to collect damages for emotional loss. A parent can sue for emotional damage from the loss of a child, but a grandparent cannot for the loss of a grandchild under Vermont law, Blythe said.

"If the court carved out this exception in the common law, it would put pet owners in a position that grandparents are not in terms of recovering emotional-distress damages," Blythe said.

The court earlier this year ruled against a plaintiff seeking to collect for emotional distress when a cat's death resulted from a veterinarian's medication error.

One of the Scheeles' lawyers, Heidi Groff, said this case is different because Dustin acted with intent and malice when he shot Shadow.

"All previous (Vermont) cases that have presented this issue have involved negligence," Groff said, "and we have something that we think is a great deal more serious than that."

The Scheeles are particularly devoted pet owners. They feed their dogs human food, brush the dogs' teeth and dress them in raincoats when it's wet outside.

On a Web site devoted to Shadow's memory, they wrote, "Every day without you running and playing and cuddling with us is more difficult than the day before. The loss of your presence in our every moment is unbelievably painful. Not a moment passes that you are not in our thoughts, our hearts and our prayers."

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Pt Deaux!!

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well, OK then... Here's some OTHER goodies form the net..

R.I.P Oral Roberts- who dies last night at age 91.

Tiger Woods has been voted Top Athlete of the Decade. With all those women coming out of the woodwork, I'd have to agree...

Sigourney Weaver has told the BBC she expects the next Ghostbusters fil to be about her character and Peter Venkman's son, Oscar. Bill Murray played Peter Venkman. She tells the BBC she expects she and Bill to be in the movie- stating that Bill "may be a ghost in the picture." WOW!!

Seth Rogen tells IESB they've been busily "shooting away" on the new 'Green Hornet' movie scheduled for 2011. IESB caught some snaps of the Black Beauty, the Green Hornet's sweet ride, being towed down the highway. From the bullet holes, crushed sides and scraped body work, it looks like someone had a good time wrecking one of the many duplicate cars made for the production.

Scarlett Johansen talks with The Daily Record about playing Black Widow in "Iron Man 2," but mentions her hope to appear in "The Avengers. "I hope it will happen. I don't know if that's where it's going go but she's definitely a big part of the Avengers." Being the last film in the current cycle, "The Avengers" is the least formed. There isn't a script as such and without that, all Johansen can say is there is an option and a hope.


Roy E. Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney whose powerful behind-the-scenes influence on The Walt Disney Co. led to the departure of former chief Michael Eisner, has died. He was 79. The company announced that Disney died Wednesday in Newport Beach, Calif., after a yearlong bout with stomach cancer.

The body of an elderly Wilmington, NC woman remained in her bed for up to eight months even though caretakers paid daily visits to the house and kept it tidy, authorities said Wednesday. New Hanover County Deputy Charles Smith said Roth likely died in May, before her 88th birthday in September. Her body was found after the 911 caller, whose identity was being withheld by authorities, reported that an elderly woman in the home was unconscious and not breathing. Smith said caretakers had been going in and out of the house on a quiet cul-de-sac on a daily basis. He would not specify if the caretakers were family members but said they were not nurses. At least four other people also lived in the house, a neighbor said. Failure to report a death is a felony in North Carolina.

below are a coupel of really interesting news stories- CIAO!!


Surprised WE haven’t done this yet…

Britain bounces checks after 300 years
By Elizabeth Fullerton
Wed Dec 16, 10:56 am ET

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – After more than three centuries, the humble check is set to become a historic relic after British banks voted to phase it out in favor of more modern payment methods.

The board of the UK Payments Council, the body for setting payment strategy in Britain, agreed on Wednesday to set a target date of October 31, 2018 for winding up the check clearing system. The board is largely made up of Britain's leading banks.

"There are many more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century, and the time is ripe for the economy as a whole to reap the benefits of its replacement," Paul Smee, the council chief executive, said in a statement.

The use of checks has fallen drastically in the past 10 years as more consumers transfer money electronically, by direct debit or with debit and credit cards. Last year, around 3.8 million checks were written every day in Britain, compared to a peak of 10.9 million in 1990, the council said.

It costs about one pound to process every check.

"The next generation probably won't even have a checkbook," said Addy Frederick, a spokeswoman at the payments council.

But while many UK supermarkets, high street retailers and petrol stations have stopped accepting checks, they are still a popular form of payment among elderly people, many of whom find the idea of using automated cash machines intimidating.

"Chip and pin is problematic for many older and housebound people and we know 6.4 million over 65s have never used the internet," said Vicky Smith, a spokeswoman for the charity Age Concern.

"Without checks, we are very concerned people will be forced to keep large amounts of cash in their home, leaving them vulnerable to theft and financial abuse."

Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the ruling Labour Party, said on Wednesday the authorities must take care not to discriminate against the elderly in making their decision.

"We need to look to the future but make sure that older people don't suffer as a result," she told parliament.

The council said checks would be phased out gradually, making sure consumers had access to user-friendly alternatives and that the needs of elderly and vulnerable groups were met. A review will take place in 2016 before checks are finally abolished.

The Federation of Small Businesses said it was disappointed by the decision. "It's something that's going to impact heavily on small businesses and their customers," said spokeswoman Sophie Kummer.

Checks have all but disappeared in high-tech countries like Sweden and Norway and their use is under review in Ireland, South Africa and Australia, Frederick at the council said.

The oldest surviving check in Britain was written in 1659, according to the council and made out for 400 pounds (equivalent to around 42,000 pounds today). It was signed by Nicholas Vanacker, made payable to a Mr Delboe and drawn on Messrs Morris and Clayton, scriveners and bankers of the City of London.

In those days, checks would have been exchanged informally in coffee houses. It was not until 1833 that the first clearing house was built in London to exchange checks.

(Editing by Steve Addison)
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White Americans' majority to end by mid-century
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 16, 11:08 am ET

WASHINGTON – The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years — to 2050 — because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S.

Census Bureau projections released Wednesday update last year's prediction that white children would become a minority in 2023 and the overall white population would follow in 2042. The earlier estimate did not take into account a drop in the number of people moving into the U.S. because of the economic crisis and the immigration policies imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The United States has 308 million people today; two-thirds are non-Hispanic whites.

The total population should climb to 399 million by 2050, under the new projections, with whites making up 49.9 percent of the population. Blacks will make up 12.2 percent, virtually unchanged from today. Hispanics, currently 15 percent of the population, will rise to 28 percent in 2050.

Asians are expected to increase from 4.4 percent of the population to 6 percent.


The projections are based on rates for births and deaths and a scenario in which immigration continues its more recent, slower pace of adding nearly 1 million new foreigners each year.

The point when minority children become the majority is expected to have a similar delay of roughly eight years, moving from 2023 to 2031.

The population 85 and older is projected to more than triple by 2050, to 18.6 million.

The actual shift in demographics will be influenced by a host of factors that can't be accurately forecast — the pace of the economic recovery, cultural changes, natural or manmade disasters, as well as an overhaul of immigration law, which may be debated in Congress as early as next year.

As a result, the Census Bureau said the projections should used mostly as a guide.

The agency also released numbers showing projections based on "high" rates of immigration — more likely if more-flexible government policies and a booming U.S. economy attract large numbers of foreigners — as well as "low" immigration, a possible scenario if U.S. policies don't change much while the economy substantially improves.

_With high immigration, the minority "tipping point" is moved up to 2040, two years earlier than the previous estimate. At that time, Asians would have a much larger share, at 8 percent, since their population growth is more dependent on immigration than birth rates.

_With low immigration, the "tipping point" arrives by 2045.

Under a purely theoretical "zero immigration" scenario in which the U.S. effectively does not take in any immigrants, whites would remain the majority in 2050, making up a solid 58 percent of the U.S. population. In such a case, the share of Hispanics would increase to 21 percent because of high fertility rates and a younger population.

On the Net: Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

Wednesday, December 16th

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Not so busy here at work today.......

Here is some stuff I saw on the internet today...

Today is National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day,

Ex Kurt Cobain wife Courtney Love has lost custody of her 17-year-old daughter, Frances Bean. Frances wants to live with her grandmother.

Ben Bernanke has been named Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year.' - YAWN!

The book returned to the New Bedford Public Library in Massachusetts this week wasn't overdue by a week, a month or even a year. It was nearly a century overdue, and the fine came to $361.35. The overdue book fine was a penny a day in 1910. But Dudek wasn't asked to pay it. The library plans to display the book in its special collection...

A 13-year-old teen was probably in hot water with his father after running up a cell phone bill of nearly $22,000. Ted Estarija said he was expecting his bill to be higher this month after adding his son to his plan, but wasn't expecting a bill of $21,917 in data usage charges. The Hayward man said his Verizon Wireless bill soared after his son apparently downloaded about 1.4 million kilobytes of data last month. Estarija said after the first media reports, Verizon said they would credit his account for the entire amount. He has also suspended his son's account...

A man who spent 28 years behind bars for a rape and murder he said he didn't commit walked out of a federal prison in Arizona on Tuesday with $75 and a bus ticket to Ohio after DNA testing showed he was innocent. The conviction of Donald Eugene Gates, 58, was based largely on the testimony of an FBI forensic analyst whose work later came under fire and a hair analysis technique that has been discredited. Later, at a stop in Phoenix, Gates said he wasn't ready to talk about his conviction, his years in prison or the justice system. He did say he wanted to see America's countryside on the bus ride home. "I'm going to go back to my family and start my life over," he said

A Couple Of Studies Involving CT's/ Coffee & Tea

There's a couple of new studies out..

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Tea, Coffee May Protect Against Diabetes
Drinking Coffee, Tea Daily May Guard Against Metabolic Syndrome
By KRISTINA FIORE
MedPage Today
Dec. 15, 2009—


Drinking lots of coffee and tea every day -- even decaf -- might keep diabetes away, new research shows.

In a review of 18 studies, researchers found that drinking three to four cups of coffee per day was associated with a 25 percent lower risk of diabetes than drinking two cups or less per day, according to Dr. Rachel Huxley of the George Institute for International Health in Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues.

There were similar results for decaf coffee and tea.

"If such beneficial effects were observed in interventional trials to be real, the implications for the millions of individuals who have diabetes, or who are at future risk of developing it, would be substantial," the researchers concluded in the latest issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Over the years, a variety of investigators have reported that coffee and tea consumption are inversely associated with type 2 diabetes. To sort out the data, Huxley and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis -- a review of past research -- that looked at 18 studies conducted between 1966 and July 2009 with information on 457,922 patients.

The researchers found that as coffee consumption rose, the risk of diabetes fell. Each additional cup of coffee consumed in a day was associated with a 7 percent reduction in the excess risk of diabetes.

The researchers said the results across studies were independent of effects involving gender, geographic region, or diagnosis versus self-reporting. Moreover, six of the studies reported on the association between drinking decaffeinated coffee and subsequent risk of diabetes.

A pooled summary estimated that those who drank more than three to four cups of decaf coffee per day had about a third lower risk of diabetes than those who didn't drink any decaf.

Seven studies also looked at the association between tea and diabetes risk. Again, pooled summaries showed that patients who drank more than three to four cups of tea per day had about a 20 percent lower risk of diabetes than those who drank no tea.

The researchers noted that the coffee findings may be an overestimate due to "small-study bias," and cautioned that any possibility that the association between coffee and diabetes risk is age-dependent warrants further investigation.

The findings suggest that the protective effects of tea and coffee may not be solely related to the effects of caffeine, but rather involve a broader range of chemical constituents in the drinks including magnesium, lignans, and chlorogenic acids, the researchers wrote. Substances in tea called catechins, for example, may decrease glucose production in the gastrointestinal system, leading to lower levels of glucose and insulin, and green tea in particular may prevent damage to pancreatic beta cells.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

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Overuse of CT scans will lead to new cancer deaths, a study shows
Each year that today's scanners are used, 14,500 deaths could result, researchers say. When healthy people are exposed to the radiation, the imaging may create more problems than it solves.
By Thomas H. Maugh II

December 15, 2009

Widespread overuse of CT scans and variations in radiation doses caused by different machines -- operated by technicians following an array of procedures -- are subjecting patients to high radiation doses that will ultimately lead to tens of thousands of new cancer cases and deaths, researchers reported today.

Several recent studies have suggested that patients have been unnecessarily exposed to radiation from CTs or have received excessive amounts, but two new studies published Tuesday in the Archives of Internal Medicine are the first to quantify the extent of exposure and the related risks.

Each year that current scanners are used, researchers reported, 14,500 deaths could result.

In one study, researchers from UC San Francisco found that the same imaging procedure performed at different institutions -- or even on different machines at the same hospital -- can yield a 13-fold difference in radiation dose, potentially exposing some patients to inordinately high risk.

While a normal CT scan of the chest is the equivalent of about 100 chest X-rays, the team found that some scanners were giving the equivalent of 440 conventional X-rays. The absolute risk may be small for any single patient, but the sheer number of CT scans -- more than 70 million per year, 23 times the number in 1980 -- will produce a sharp increase in cancers and deaths, experts said.

"The articles in this issue make clear that there is far more radiation from medical CT scans than has been recognized previously," Dr. Rita F. Redberg of UC San Francisco, editor of the journal, wrote in an editorial accompanying the reports. Even many otherwise healthy patients are being subjected to the radiation, she said, because emergency rooms are often sending patients to the CT scanner before they see a doctor.

Whole body scans of healthy patients looking for hidden tumors or other illnesses are also becoming more common, even though they rarely find anything wrong. The irony is that, by exposing healthy people to radiation, the scans may be creating more problems than they solve.

CT scans, short for computed tomography, provide exceptionally clear views of internal organs by combining data from multiple X-ray images. But the price for that clarity is increased exposure to X-rays, which cause mutations in DNA that can lead to cancer. When the screening is used for diagnostic purposes, the benefits outweigh the risks, most experts agree, though the toll increasingly can't be ignored.

Scanner manufacturers are designing instruments that use lower doses of radiation, but many older machines rely on higher doses. Machine settings for particular procedures, furthermore, are not standardized, and individual radiologists use the technology differently for different patients, leading to wide variance in doses delivered to the subjects.

The recent episodes of unusually high radiation doses delivered to patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Glendale Adventist Medical Center were particularly egregious examples that involved inadvertently inappropriate settings on the instruments, and such cases were not included in the new analyses.

The highest doses of radiation are routinely used for coronary angiography, in which cardiologists image the heart and its major blood vessels to look for blockages or other abnormalities. Under the normal dosages of radiation for the procedure, about 1 in 270 women and 1 in 600 men who receive it at age 40 will develop cancer as a result, reported Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a professor of radiology and epidemiology at UC San Francisco, and her colleagues.

Surprisingly, according to Dr. Michael S. Lauer of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, there are no clinical trials that show such imaging saves lives.

For a routine head scan, one in 8,100 women who undergo the scans and one in 11,080 men will develop a tumor.

"For 20-year-old patients, the risks were approximately doubled, and for 60-year-old patients, they were approximately 50% lower," the researchers wrote.

"This study is being taken very seriously by radiologists," Dr. Alec Megibow, a professor of radiology at NYU Langone Medical Center said in a statement. He cautioned that careless use of scanners can lead to high doses of radiation, but argued that, with proper use, "the benefits of a CT scan far outweigh the risks."

In a separate paper, epidemiologist Amy Berrington de Gonzales and her colleagues at the National Cancer Institute constructed a computer program to estimate the risks associated with CT scans. They concluded that about 29,000 future cancers could be related to CT scans performed in the United States in 2007 alone. That includes 14,000 cases resulting from scans of the abdomen and pelvis, 4,100 from chest scans and 2,700 from heart scans.

Taking into account the cancer mortality rate from radiation exposure, plus the age of the population undergoing such scans, the researchers estimated that the cases would result in 14,500 deaths per year.

Two-thirds of the cancers would be in women, who are more vulnerable to radiation. And the younger a patient is at the time of the scan, the higher the risk of cancer eventually developing.

Researchers' conclusions are based on the assumption that the patients receive a normal dose of radiation, but that is not necessarily a good assumption. Smith-Bindman and her colleagues studied the radiation doses received by 1,119 adult patients at four San Francisco Bay Area hospitals between Jan. 1 and May 30 of 2008.

Estimating the amount of radiation received by the patients, they concluded that dosing was highly variable both between institutions and within them as well. Some patients got below-normal doses.

There is little that individual patients can do about the vagaries of doses delivered by different machines.

But they do need to be their own advocates, said Dr. Rosaleen Parsons, chair of the department of diagnostic imaging at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Patients should keep their own records of the number of scans they have received, question why repeat studies are necessary and argue for other types of imaging, such as magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to minimize exposure to radiation, she said.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Famous Miranda rights warning could get rewrite

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer
Mon Dec 7, 4:59 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday seemed headed toward telling police they must explicitly advise criminal suspects that their lawyer can be present during any interrogation.

The arguments in front of the justices were the latest over how explicit the Miranda warning rights have to be, as justices debated whether the warnings police gave Kevin Dwayne Powell made clear to him that he could have a lawyer present while being interrogated by police.

Powell was convicted of illegally possessing a firearm after telling police he bought the weapon "off the street" for $150 for his protection. Before his confession, Powell signed a Miranda statement that included the statements "You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview."

The Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction on grounds the Tampa police didn't adequately convey to Powell that he was allowed to have a lawyer with him during questioning.

Joseph W. Jacquot, Florida deputy attorney general, argued that the warning given Powell "expresses all the rights required under Miranda."

Justice Stephen Breyer clearly disagreed.

"Aren't you supposed to tell this person, that unlike a grand jury, you have a right to have the lawyer with you during interrogation?" Breyer said. "I mean, it isn't as if that was said in passing in Miranda. They wrote eight paragraphs about it. And I just wonder, where does it say in this warning, you have the right to have the lawyer with you during the interrogation?"

Different courts have came down on different sides on what exactly should be said, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

"We've got a split of circuit courts and state courts on whether this reasonably conveys or not. Shouldn't that be enough of an ambiguity for us to conclude it can't reasonably convey, if there's this many courts holding that it doesn't?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

Powell's lawyer, Deborah K. Brueckheimer, said that the warning Powell was given from Tampa, Fla., police gave him the impression that "once questioning starts, that he has no right to consult with a lawyer anymore, and it certainly doesn't tell him that he has the right to the presence of an attorney with him in an interrogation room, where the coercion takes on a highly new meaning."

Justice Scalia called Brueckheimer's argument "angels dancing on the head of a pin."

"You are saying, 'Oh, if he had only known. Oh, if I knew that I could have an attorney present during the interview, well, that would have been a different kettle of fish and I would never have confessed,'" Scalia said. "I mean, doesn't that seem to you quite fantastic?"

Miranda rights have been litigated since they first came into being in 1966. The courts require police to tell suspects they have the right to remain silent and the right to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one. But those requirements likely will continue to be parsed by lawyers and judges.

For example, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that most police start off Miranda rights by saying "You have the right to remain silent." But, Alito said, what happens if someone begins talking to the police and then decides that they want to be silent?

"Once you break your silence, there is nothing in there that says you have the right to resume your silence," Alito said.

"We could write that down. It could be the next case," Justice Anthony Kennedy said to laughter.

This is the third Miranda case the court has heard this year. The justices heard arguments earlier over whether officers can interrogate a suspect who said he understood his rights but didn't invoke them, and whether a request for a lawyer during interrogation can expire after a lengthy period of time.

Decisions in all three cases are expected next year.

The case argued Monday is Florida v. Powell, 08-1175.

___

On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov

Scientists say paper battery could be in the works

Scientists say paper battery could be in the works
Mon Dec 7, 4:28 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ordinary paper could one day be used as a lightweight battery to power the devices that are now enabling the printed word to be eclipsed by e-mail, e-books and online news.

Scientists at Stanford University in California reported on Monday they have successfully turned paper coated with ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials into a "paper battery" that holds promise for new types of lightweight, high-performance energy storage.

The same feature that helps ink adhere to paper allows it to hold onto the single-walled carbon nanotubes and silver nanowire films. Earlier research found that silicon nanowires could be used to make batteries 10 times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries now used to power devices such as laplop computers.

"Taking advantage of the mature paper technology, low cost, light and high-performance energy-storage are realized by using conductive paper as current collectors and electrodes," the scientists said in research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This type of battery could be useful in powering electric or hybrid vehicles, would make electronics lighter weight and longer lasting, and might even lead someday to paper electronics, the scientists said. Battery weight and life have been an obstacle to commercial viability of electric-powered cars and trucks.

"Society really needs a low-cost, high-performance energy storage device, such as batteries and simple supercapacitors," Stanford assistant professor of materials science and engineering and paper co-author Yi Cui said.

Cui said in an e-mail that in addition to being useful for portable electronics and wearable electronics, "Our paper supercapacitors can be used for all kinds of applications that require instant high power."

"Since our paper batteries and supercapacitors can be very low cost, they are also good for grid-connected energy storage," he said.

Peidong Yang, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley, said the technology could be commercialized within a short time.

(Writing by Jackie Frank; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

SO FREAKING BUSY TODAY!

ARRRRRGH!!!!!