Last month, the most exciting news was from UCLA, where a small team of researchers developed a micro-scale graphene-based supercapacitor that can charge and discharge a hundred to a thousand times faster than current batteries.

FORBES: Forget The Sequester: Entrepreneurs Are Saving The Future

Xtreme, which has attracted backing from venture capital firms and corporate investors like Dow Chemical, Fluor and BP Alternative Energy, is developing large-scale digital power systems for renewable energy and micro-grid applications.

FORBES: Duke Energy Bets Big on Better Batteries

Working at the scale of molecules, these micro-machines are taking their cues from bacteria and the way in which they find their way around the human body.

CNN: Nanobots get to the heart of the matter

Ordinary rotors do not work on such a small scale, so Friend's micro-robot project has a special flagellated propeller, mimicking the swimming behaviour of E.coli bacteria.

CNN: Nanobots get to the heart of the matter

Unlike the first model, which required you to hook the scale to your computer with a micro-USB cable and set it from there, this version can be set up from a smartphone.

ENGADGET: Withings WS-30 WiFi bathroom scale hands-on Hands-on

In Africa, the corporate citizenship programs for companies like Shell, De Beers and Monsanto consist mostly of small-scale social projects like health clinics or micro-credit schemes.

FORBES: Microsoft's 4Afrika Initiative is Good Business

Whole Foods has the Whole Planet Foundation which run campaigns and a micro-lending program to inject cash into needy communities on an international scale.

FORBES: Net Impact's Army for Good and the Rise of the Enlightened Merchant

Although he shows enthusiasm for the battery project, Gambarota, who now spends much of his time developing micro wind turbines, is sceptical about the future of human-power on a mass-scale.

CNN: Are we heading for a human-powered future?

In another view, a system of micro-tasking rather than a full-time job means that it is too small a scale to really price out the cost of these benefits on a per task level.

FORBES: Do Flexible Social Businesses Still Need Employees?