NASA's Mars Rover Makes Successful First Drill

For the first time ever, people have drilled into a rock on Mars, collecting the powdered remains from the hole for analysis.

Images sent back from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Wednesday confirmed that the precious sample is being held by the rover's scoop, and will soon be delivered to two miniature chemical labs to undergo an unprecedented analysis. (Related: "Mars Rover Curiosity Completes First Full Drill.")

To the delight of the scientists, the rock powder has come up gray and not the ubiquitous red of the dust that covers the planet. The gray rock, they believe, holds a lot of potential to glean information about conditions on an early Mars. (See more Mars pictures.)

"We're drilling into rock that's a time capsule, rocks that are potentially ancient," said sampling-system scientist Joel Hurowitz during a teleconference from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

A Place to Drill

The site features flat bedrock, often segmented into squares, with soil between the sections and many round gray nodules and white mineral veins.

Hurowitz said that the team did not attempt to drill into the minerals or the gray balls, but the nodules are so common that they likely hit some as they drilled down 2.5 inches (6.3 centimeters).

In keeping with the hypothesis that the area was once under water, Hurowitz said the sample "has the potential of telling us about multiple interactions of water and rock."

The drill, located at the end of a seven-foot (two-meter) arm, requires precision maneuvering in its placement and movement, and so its successful initial use was an exciting and welcome relief. The rover has been on Mars since August, and it took six months to find the right spot for that first drill. (Watch video of the Mars rover Curiosity.)

The flat drilling area is in the lower section of Yellowknife Bay, which Curiosity has been exploring for more than a month. What was previously identified by Curiosity scientists as the dry bed of a once-flowing river or stream appears to fan out into the Yellowknife area.

The bedrock of the site—named after deceased Curiosity deputy project manager John Klein—is believed to be siltstone or mudstone. Scientists said the veins of white minerals are probably calcium sulfate or gypsum, but the grey nodules remain something of a mystery.

Triumph

To the team that designed and operates the drill, the results were a triumph, as great as the much-heralded landing of Curiosity on the red planet. With more than a hundred maneuvers in its repertoire, the drill is unique in its capabilities and complexities. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

Sample system chief engineer Louise Jandura, who has worked on the drill for eight years, said the Curosity team had made eight different drills before settling on the one now on the rover. The team tested each drill by boring 1,200 holes on 20 types of rock on Earth.

She called the successful drilling "historic" because it gives scientists unprecedented access to material that has not been exposed to the intense weathering and radiation processes that affect the Martian surface.

Mini-laboratories

The gray powder will be routed to the two most sophisticated instruments on Curiosity—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin).

SAM, the largest and most complex instrument onboard, operates with two ovens that can heat the sample up to 1,800°F (982°C), turning the elements and compounds in the rock into gases that can then be identified. SAM can also determine whether any carbon-based organic material is present.

Organics are the chemical building blocks of life on Earth. They are known to regularly land on Mars via meteorites and finer material that rains down on all planets.

But researchers suspect the intense radiation on the Martian surface destroys any organics on the surface. Scientists hope that organics within Martian rocks are protected from that radiation.

CheMin shoots an X-ray beam at its sample and can analyze the mineral content of the rock. Minerals provide a durable record of environmental conditions over the eons, including information about possible ingredients and energy sources for life.

Both SAM and CheMin received samples of sandy soil scooped from the nearby Rocknest outcrop in October. SAM identified organic material, but scientists are still trying to determine whether any of it is Martian or the byproduct of organics inadvertently brought to Mars by the rover. (See "Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds.")

In the next few days, CheMin will be the first to receive samples of the powdered rock, and then SAM. Given the complexity of the analysis, and the track record seen with other samples, it will likely be weeks before results are announced.

The process of drilling and collecting the results was delayed by several glitches that required study and work-arounds. One involved drill software and the other involved a test-bed problem with a sieve that is part of the process of delivering samples to the instruments.

Lead systems engineer Daniel Limonadi said that while there was no indication the sieve on Mars was malfunctioning, they had become more conservative in its use because of the test bed results. (Related: "A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?")

Author of the National Geographic e-book Mars Landing 2012, Marc Kaufman has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including the past 12 as a science and space writer, foreign correspondent, and editor for the Washington Post. He is also author of First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, published in 2011, and has spoken extensively to crowds across the United States and abroad about astrobiology. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, Lynn Litterine.

Read More..

Lead Pistorius Cop Facing Attempted Murder Charge

Hilton Botha, the detective at the center of the Oscar Pistorius murder case, is facing his own attempted murder charges in connection with a 2011 shooting in which he and other police officers allegedly fired a gun at passengers in a vehicle.

Botha is scheduled to appear in court in May on seven counts of attempted murder in connection to the October 2011 incident in which he and two other officers allegedly fired shots at a minibus they were attempting to stop. It's unclear whether any of the passengers were injured.

Botha has been outlining details this week at the Olympic runner's bail hearing of his investigation into the Feb. 14 shooting death of Reeva Steenkamp at Pistorius' home in Pretoria, South Africa. Botha was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene, where Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, was found fatally shot three times.

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

Pistorius, a double-amputee who walks on carbon fiber blades, says he killed his girlfriend accidentally.

Prosecutors say they were unaware of the charges against the detective when he took the stand this week, according to The Associated Press.

Oscar Pistorius Bail Hearing: New Evidence Revealed Watch Video

Oscar Pistorius: Defense Presents New Evidence Watch Video

"The prosecutors were not aware of those charges [against Botha]," Medupe Simasiku of the National Prosecution Agency said. "We are calling up the information so we can get the details of the case. From there, we can take action and see if we remove him from the investigation or if he stays."

FULL COVERAGE: Oscar Pistorius Case

Botha muddled testimony and eventually admitted Wednesday at Pistorius' bail hearing that the suspect's account of the Valentine's Day shooting did not contradict the police's version of events.

A spokesman for the NPA admitted today that charges pending against Botha were not helpful for the credibility of the prosecution's case, but that the case would hinge on forensic evidence, not the testimony of a police officer.

Pistorius has argued in court that he was closing his balcony doors when he heard a noise from the bathroom. Fearing an intruder, and without his prosthetic legs on, he grabbed a gun from under his bed and fired through the closed bathroom door, he told the court.

But prosecutors say that's implausible, that the gun's holster was found under the side of the bed where Steenkamp slept, and that Pistorius would have seen she wasn't there. Prosecutors also say the angle at which the shots were fired shows Pistorius was already wearing his prosthetics when he fired.

Defense attorneys representing Pistorius tore into investigators Wednesday, accusing them of sloppy police work and saying the substance that police identified as testosterone, which they found in his bathroom, was an herbal supplement.

In a statement overnight, Pistorius' family said the new testimony brought "more clarity" to the hearing.

Meanwhile, Steenkamp's cousin told CNN that she wants to believe Pistorius' story.

"That is what in my heart, I hope and wish is the truth, because I would not like to think my cousin suffered," Kim Martin, Steenkamp's cousin, told CNN's Piers Morgan. "I would not like to think that she was scared."

Steenkamp's brother Adam Steenkamp said the family is trying to focus on better days.

"We're remembering the positive," he said. "We're remembering the good."

Pistorius today was dropped by two of his sponsors, Nike and Thierry Mugler.

Read More..

Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks

Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task

Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht

Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun

LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy

Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency

3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly

We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?

A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?

Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife

Read More..

Football: Manchester Utd chief executive David Gill to step down

LONDON: David Gill is to step down as chief executive of Manchester United on June 30, the English football giants announced on Wednesday.

In a statement on the club's official website, the 55-year-old Gill said his post-season exit would allow the Premier League leaders to "refresh themselves with new management and ideas".

United added that executive vice chairman Ed Woodward would replace Gill.

Gill is a vice-chairman of England's governing Football Association and one of his country's most highly regarded football administrators.

United co-chairman Joel Glazer said Gill, who will remain on the board at Old Trafford, was stepping down in part to advance his bid for election to the executive committee of European football's governing body, UEFA.

Gill himself made no comment about his post-United future in the statement, saying only it had been a hard decision to end 16 years of day-to-day involvement at Old Trafford, having joined the club as financial director in 1997 before becoming chief executive in September 2003.

"I've experienced some incredible highs, such as the Treble in 1999 and the League and Champions League double in 2008, and lows, like losing the title with the last kick of the season last year," he said.

"But that is what makes this club and this sport so compelling. It has been a very hard decision because I love this club and, as the fans' banner says, it is, 'more than a religion'.

"However, I have always been conscious of the fact that, as a member of staff, I was always just a temporary custodian of this marvellous institution.

"I am also of the view that all businesses need to refresh themselves with new management and ideas and after 10 years in charge, I believe it is appropriate for someone new to pick up the baton."

United manager Alex Ferguson, who has been at Old Trafford since 1986, paid tribute to Gill.

"I have been at United for over 26 years and for 23 of those years, my boss has been one of only two men: Martin Edwards, who brought me to the club, and David Gill," he said. "I have enjoyed working with both.

"Him stepping down is a big loss to me but the fact that he is staying on the board encourages me that the reason for his departure is heartfelt, that he believes it is time for the club to move on."

Glazer gave his backing to Gill's attempt to be elected to UEFA's executive committee.

"I hope that the decision he has made will be to the benefit of the game in Europe as a whole, as he seeks election to UEFA's executive committee," he said.

- AFP/de

Read More..

Google's electronic eyewear gets 'OK Glass' voice commands

A Google glass video, taken without the need to hold a camera, that's part of a video-chat hangout.

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

"OK Glass."

Those are the two words that Google showed today will initiate a variety of commands for its Glass computerized eyewear.

In the Google Glass "How it feels" video, people speak the words "OK Glass" to send a message, record a video, take a photo, launch a video-chat hangout, conduct a search, check the weather, and get driving directions.

The demo is a concrete illustration of how Google is evolving its technology from a mere search engine to a constant personal companion that augments your own mind.

When Microsoft introduced Windows 95, its Start menu became the gateway for just about anything you could do with the operating system. Google, hoping to advance computing beyond the era of PCs and even smartphones, no doubt hopes "OK Glass" will become as familiar.

The Glass eyewear perches a screen just above a person's ordinary field of view; the device itself is equipped with a processor, camera, head-tracking orientation sensors, and other electronics drawn from the smartphone industry. Google began selling Glass developer prototypes called Explorer last year for $1,500 that are due to ship this year.

Google's site shows off Glass's GoPro-like videocamera abilities, showing first-person views of table tennis, swordplay, trapeze acrobatics, jumping rope, sculpture carving, hot-air ballooning, and more. The company is trying to show it as a sort of real-time video Facebook you can use to share life with others as you experience what's going on.

Google's video and "what-it-does" explanation is very much from a first-person perspective, showing what it's like to wear the device. It makes for a very personal experience, reproducing what a person would see and adding an unobtrusive transparent Glass interface in the upper right.

But that's not the whole story of Glass, of course. Wearing the devices might be very personal for the user, but wearing Glass makes you look a bit cyborg. Surely many folks talking to a Glass-wearing person will be put off by the knowledge that there's a microphone and camera pointed right at them. Think of how differently people behave when the camera comes out for a photo op.

In time, people will adjust, as they have to people talking on phones as they walk down the street, especially if Glass becomes more mainstream, as Google expects Glass will be ready for consumers in 2014.

Google also announced a Glass promotion in which people who share interesting ideas about what to do with the device will get the Explorer model.

Google's Project Glass electronic eyewear is "strong and light," Google said.

(Credit:
Google)

Read More..

Florida Python Hunt Captures 68 Invasive Snakes

It's a wrap—the 2013 Python Challenge has nabbed 68 invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, organizers say. And experts are surprised so many of the elusive giants were caught.

Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states—most of them inexperienced hunters—registered for the chance to track down one of the animals, many of which descend from snakes that either escaped or were dumped into the wild.

Since being introduced, these Asian behemoths have flourished in Florida's swamps while also squeezing out local populations of the state's native mammals, especially in the Everglades. (See Everglades pictures.)

To highlight the python problem, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and its partners launched the 2013 Python Challenge, which encouraged registered participants to catch as many pythons as they could between January 12 and February 10 in state wildlife-management areas within the Everglades.

The commission gave cash prizes to those who harvested the most and longest pythons.

Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida and scientific leader for the challenge, said before the hunt that he would consider a harvest of 70 animals a success—and 68 is close enough to say the event met its goals.

It's unknown just how many Burmese pythons live in Florida, but catching 68 snakes is an "exceptional" number, added Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Snakes in the Grass

Finding 68 snakes is impressive, experts say, since it's so hard to find pythons. For one, it's been unusually warm lately in Florida, which means the reptiles—which normally sun themselves to regulate their body temperature—are staying in the brush, making them harder to detect, Krysko said.

On top of that, Burmese pythons are notoriously hard to locate, experts say.

The animals are so well camouflaged that people can stand right next to one and not notice it. "It's rare that you get to see them stretched out—most of the time they're blending in," said Cheryl Millett, a biologist at the Nature Conservancy, a Python Challenge partner.

What's more, the reptiles are ambush hunters, which means they spend much of their time lying in wait in dense vegetation, not moving, she said.

That's why Millett gave the hunters some tips, such as looking along the water's edge, where the snakes like to hang out, and also simply listening for "something big moving through the vegetation."

Even so, catching 68 snakes is "actually is a little more than I expected," said Millett.

No Walk in the Park

Ruben Ramirez, founder of the company Florida Python Hunters, won two prizes in the competition: First place for the most snakes captured—18—and second place for the largest python, which he said was close to 11 feet (3.4 meters) long. The biggest Burmese python caught in Florida, nabbed in 2012, measured 17.7 feet (5.4 meters).

"They're there, but they're not as easy to find as people think," said Ramirez. "You're not going to be stumbling over pythons in Miami." (Related blog post: "What It's Like to Be a Florida Python Hunter.")

All participants, some of whom had never hunted a python before, were trained to identify the difference between a Burmese python and Florida's native snakes, said Millett. No native snakes were accidentally killed, she said.

Hunters were also told to kill the snakes by either putting a bolt or a bullet through their heads, or decapitating them-all humane methods that result "in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the brain," according to the Python Challenge website.

Ramirez added that some of the first-time or amateur hunters had different expectations. "I think they were expecting to walk down a canal and see a 10-foot [3-meter], 15-foot [4.5-meter] Burmese python. They thought it'd be a walk in the park."

Stopping the Spread

Completely removing these snakes from the wild isn't easy, and some scientists see the Python Challenge as helping to achieve part of that goal. (Read an opposing view on the Python Challenge: "Opinion: Florida's Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt.")

"You're talking about 68 more animals removed from the population that shouldn't be there—that's 68 more mouths that aren't being fed," said the Florida museum's Krysko. (Read about giant Burmese python meals that went bust.)

"I support any kind of event or program that not only informs the general public about introduced species, but also gets the public involved in removing these nonnative animals that don't belong there."

The Nature Conservancy's Millett said the challenge had two positive outcomes: boosting knowledge for both science and the public.

People who didn't want to hunt or touch the snakes could still help, she said, by reporting sightings of exotic species to 888-IVE-GOT-1, through free IveGot1 apps, or www.ivegot1.org.

Millett runs a public-private Nature Conservancy partnership called Python Patrol that the Florida wildlife commission will take on in the fall. The program focuses not only on eradicating invasive pythons but on preventing the snake from moving to ecologically sensitive areas, such as Key West.

Necropsies on the captured snakes will reveal what pythons are eating, and location data from the hunters will help scientists figure out where the snakes are living—valuable data for researchers working to stop their spread.

"This is the most [number of] pythons that have been caught in this short of a period of time in such an extensive area," said the University of Florida's Mazzotti.

"It's an unprecedented sample, and we're going to get a lot of information out of that."

Read More..

Pistorius Shots Said to Come From High Angle

At the second day of a bail hearing for Olympian Oscar Pistorius, a South African investigator who arrived at the scene of the Feb. 14 fatal shooting said that Reeva Steenkamp was shot from a high angle, which prosecutors say contradicts the runner's account that he was not wearing his prosthetics when he shot his girlfriend to death.

Pistorius, a double-amputee who runs on carbon-fiber blades, appeared in court for the second day in a row after his arrest in the death of girlfriend Steenkamp at his gated home in Pretoria, South Africa.

Read Oscar Pistorius' Full Statement to the Court

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

Arresting officer Hilton Botha told the court today that the 26-year-old was standing in the master bathroom when he shot the supermodel, who was crouched in a defensive position behind a locked door in a smaller powder room. He also said that the bullets that were fired had been fired from high up, and the bullets seemed to be coming in a downward direction.

"[The angle] seems to me down. Fired down," Botha told the court.

Pistorius said Tuesday that he went to the bathroom and fired through the door before putting on his prosthetic legs.

'Blade Runner' Appears in Court to Hear Murder Charges Watch Video

Oscar Pistorius Charged With Premeditated Murder Watch Video

Oscar Pistorius: Was Shooting Premeditated? Watch Video

He said he mistakenly shot his girlfriend, thinking she was an intruder.

Prosecutors also said that they found two boxes of testosterone in the bedroom, although the defense disputes that, saying it's just herbal supplements.

The court also heard that a witness, a neighbor who lives about 2,000 feet away from Pistorius' home, heard nonstop fighting the morning of the shooting.
"We have a witness who says she heard non-stop shouting and fighting between 2 and 3 a.m.," said prosecutor Gerrie Nel, who added that another witness saw lights on at the time of the gunshots.

Pistorius says he spent a quiet night with Steenkamp before the shooting.

Nel said that Pistorius' actions and phone calls on the night indicate pre-planning, and that there was a "deliberate aiming of shots at the toilet from about 1.5 meters [about 5 feet]."

He says Steenkamp was shot on the right side of her body.

Officer Botha also said Pistorius should be considered a flight risk because investigators discovered that he has offshore bank accounts and a house in Italy.

"I think it would be hard to get him back," Botha told the court. "This is a very serious crime, shooting an unarmed woman behind closed door."

Prosecutors also say they may file more charges for unlicensed ammunition, after a special-caliber .38 round was found in a safe in Pistorius' home.

Botha told the court today that he arrived at Pistorius' home at 4:15 a.m. Valentine's Day to find Steenkamp already dead, dressed in a white shorts and a black vest, and covered in towels. The only thing that Pistorius said was, 'I thought it was a burglar,'" according to Botha.

The 26-year-old sprinter Tuesday denied that he willfully killed Steenkamp, telling the court that he shot the woman through his bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.

Botha said today that he attended Steenkamp's postmortem, and that she had three entrance wounds: one on the head, one in the elbow and one in the hip.

Describing the scene to the court, Botha said that the shots fired into the bathroom were aimed at the toilet bowl.

The shooter "would have to walk into the bathroom and turn directly at the door to shoot at the toilet the way the bullets went," he said.

Read More..

Insert real news events into your mobile game

Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent

(Image: MultiPlay.io)

Seen it in the news? Now play it: a mobile-game programming system allows 3D depictions of news events to be introduced into the action. It's been developed by MultiPlay.io, a British start-up that says the technology could make gameplay more current and provide new ways for designers and coders to make cash - perhaps selling "news injection" rights to news agencies, TV stations or newspapers.

The firm's HTML5 games creator, also called MultiPlay.io, lets users import 3D animations during gameplay, allowing, for instance, last week's meteor explosion over Russia to be pasted in above the game action, says one of the company's founders, Ashraf Samy Hegab. Similarly, he says, if a millionaire footballer hits the news in, say, a fight with a nightclub bouncer, lookalike avatars could engage in just such a fracas as you motor by in a driving game.

The system creates games for Apple iOS, Google Android and Windows Phone devices. Changes to games need to be made in a browser on a PC or Mac, but can be made in real time without you having to download an app update.

"We're using a clever way of splitting the game logic that lets you change the game on the fly, as easy as a drag-and-drop task in a browser," says Hegab. "You don't need to know anything about servers or 3D programming using our engine." The idea also lets you extend the game's virtual playing area by expanding the game map, or add 3D vehicles you've designed yourself, such as glitzy spacecraft or cars. You could even add a model of yourself.

But news injection is MultiPlay.io's main aim - and its founders are hoping to interest news agencies when Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona, Spain, later this month. They are not alone: adding news to make games more relevant is becoming popular, with some websites beginning to offer games with news-related activities built in, such as the fascinating Game The News, which "creates its own twists on news events in a playable form".

Read More..

Companies paying more bills on time

SINGAPORE: Companies are paying more bills on time, according to the Commercial Credit Bureau.

The bureau said the number of prompt commercial payments rose to 51.59 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year. That is up by a moderate 2.29 percentage points from 49.3 per cent in the previous quarter.

Prompt payment means a company has paid at least 90 per cent of its total bills within agreed upon payment terms.

It was the first time in two years that 50 per cent of prompt commercial payment transactions were recorded. This comes on the heels of a slight economic uptick in the fourth quarter last year. The Ministry of Trade and Industry estimates the economy grew by 1.1 per cent year-on-year in Q4 2012.

Year-on-year payment promptness also increased 12.09 per cent per cent from 39.5 per cent last year. Payment promptness was at its peak in Q3 2012 when it made up 61.2 per cent of all commercial transactions in Singapore.

But the number of slow payments (when a company pays less than 50 per cent of its bills on time) increased slightly last quarter, up 0.79 percentage points to 40.99 per cent.

The construction industry saw the biggest drop in defaults. Slow payments fell 8.24 percentage points to 41.19 per cent quarter-on-quarter. A year-on-year comparison shows a decline of 17.11 percentage points in payment defaults.

With heavy government investments in industrial projects and a strong pipeline of nationwide rail transit and road infrastructure projects, the downward trend in slow payments is likely to continue into the next quarter.

The retail industry - traditionally the worst paymaster - also saw defaults fall on the back of strong seasonal sales in December.

The retail sector registered 54.73 per cent slow payments, a decrease of 4.98 percentage points from Q3 2012.

The wholesale sector registered the lowest proportion of slow payments at 35.7 per cent a 4.68 percentage point increase from the previous quarter.

- CNA/fa

Read More..

For an iWatch to kick butt, Apple must innovate in batteries

If Apple is hard at work on an "iWatch," it will have to overcome battery issues bedeviling existing smartwatch makers.

This new crop of wrist devices has a lot more in common with smartphones than your old Timex. They have increasingly large displays, and can ferry over notifications and other data, acting as a second screen of sorts for your smartphone. For many of the latest models, that extra utility is not without a compromise: You've got to plug it in at the end of the day.

Charging a smartphone every day can be an annoyance, but most people are used to it. Watches are a different beast. Today's digital watches are designed much the same way they were 20 years ago, to last years at a time between battery replacements. That's held true for so long because they do little besides tell time.

While companies are doing all they can to reduce the power consumption of chips and screens, the fact remains that batteries haven't undergone the same technological sea change as other major portable device components. There haven't been the kind of advances in capacity that would let devices be used for days or even weeks on a single charge while keeping things small.

Bigger is better
On the smartphone front, manufacturers have responded to the power problem by increasing the capacity of the batteries that are shipped in phones, said Satoru Rick Oyama, a principal analyst at IHS Global. Companies have gone from 1,000mAh batteries to 1,500mAh, and will soon go with 2,000mAh as the standard, Oyama said. These higher-capacity batteries come at a price -- the packs often are larger.

That capacity ramp-up has worked out because manufacturers like Samsung have started making their smartphones bigger, providing more room inside for batteries. There are also extremes like Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx, which comes with a 3,300mAh battery, an 85 percent increase over the battery that shipped with the standard Droid Razr. That's been fine for something that can go into a pocket or purse, but there's a limit when it comes to a limb on the human body.

Pebble's smartwatch extends its battery time by using an e-paper display.

(Credit:
CNET)

One of the clearest examples of how well that works when scaled down is Apple's sixth-generation iPod Nano, which the company actually marketed as a watch, with built-in watch faces. Inside was a tiny 105mAh battery that was geared for 24 hours of music playback. But in day-to-day use, that ended up being just a few days if you used features like the built-in FM radio and pedometer. The latest model, released last October, did away with the watch idea completely.

Smartwatch upstarts like the Pebble, which raised more than $10 million on Kickstarter, got around this issue by going with a different screen technology that uses less power. Instead of a backlit LCD panel, Pebble went with an e-paper display and low-power Bluetooth, which together require less juice and mean that the watch can be used for up to a week between charges.

In other words, if we're expecting a large, bright LCD screen, constant connectivity, and some of the same capable innards we're getting in iPhones and iPods, we can't ignore the issue of integrating a battery large enough to keep things running.

What's now; what's next
In the world of batteries, lithium ion and lithium polymer remain the most commonly used technologies, though lithium polymer is becoming more popular.

The two technologies are similar, but the polymer version has certain benefits that have made it increasingly attractive for use in portable gadgets. Lithium polymer is more expensive than lithium ion, but is safer, and can be manufactured into a variety of different shapes. By comparison, lithium ion has been limited to cylinders or flat, rectangular boxes. This attribute has led to some of the advances in the types of form factors manufacturers have made.

"For now, the go-to for the foreseeable future will still be lithium polymer batteries," said Allan Yogasingam, a technical research manager at UBM Tech Insights. "The reason for that is that li-polymer has a strong flexibility that allows products like
tablets and notebooks and now ultrabooks to feature lighter and slimmer designs. After that, it's a bit of an 'arms race' to see which battery technology will have the most appeal to consumer electronic manufacturers."

Among the frontrunners in battery technology is lithium imide, Yogasingam said. It has higher density than the lithium polymer batteries, is more durable, and is better at recharging -- two major benefits for something that will be on the go. (Find out more about lithium imide here.)

Down the road there's also the promise of lithium air batteries. IBM has been developing lithium air batteries chiefly to power electric
cars, but such batteries should work in mobile devices after being scaled down, said Michael Karasick, vice president and director of IBM's Almaden Research Lab in San Jose, Calif. He noted that such technology will allow batteries to either be one-tenth their current size or last 10 times as long. The rub? It could take years before they're available, Karasick said.

Further on the horizon are silicon-based batteries and fuel cells, which promise to improve how batteries are built into mobile devices. Both have limitations, but researchers are working to advance the technologies enough that they can eventually be embedded into devices.

Also not to be ignored is a recent effort out of Silicon Valley called CalCharge, an accelerator of sorts that's hooking up companies that make batteries with universities working on battery technologies to come up with breakthroughs. Last week, the nearly year-old group announced plans (PDF) with San Jose State University to offer courses in battery-related technologies.

Changing how we charge
Apple's been an innovator in battery technology before. The company was aggressive in the use of nonremovable batteries in its products, beginning with the iPod, and leading to its use in notebooks, phones, and tablets. The payoff there, the company noted when unveiling its first
MacBook Pro with an integrated battery, was that it could put a larger battery pack into the same amount of space as before. And even though users were no longer able to swap it out, the 40 percent larger battery could keep the machine running longer.

Apple's done the same thing on its smartphones, choosing to make its battery packs nonremovable in the name of saving space. Its latest model, the iPhone 5, is slightly taller and ships with a 1,440mAh battery that's just a hair bigger than the 1,432mAh battery found in the smaller-screened iPhone 4S. Yet, the iPhone 5's ratings for 3G talk time and browsing over Wi-Fi are close to what they were two generations ago.

The company has shown signs of wanting to change that. In the last few years, it's filed a variety of noteworthy, battery-related patents, from hydrogen cells to a universal puck that could be used to juice up both phones and computers alike. Like all patents, it's unclear whether they'll ever end up in products, though it shows Apple is at least investigating the possibility.

The fact remains that there's only so much Apple can do with current battery technology. Industry researchers say new battery types should help extend the life of devices, but it's still likely years before those advancements hit the market.

Apple has an opportunity to do better than other smartwatches if its battery life is spectacular. The company has a track record of thinking outside the box when it comes to powering its devices, something that could help it stand apart from other wearable tech. But if it can't make that happen in time, there's a plan B.

"It's almost more about marketing and retraining the consumer than it is about improving battery life," said Donald Saxman, project analyst at Massachusetts-based tech market research firm BCC Research. "With every technology, we get incremental improvements...but any order of magnitude improvement where there's a double or 10-times improvement in battery life means we have to come up with a new approach."

Read More..