The numbers are becoming nearly as clear as information about starting salaries in traditional professions (last I heard, half a million per good engineer is the going rate, which would make sense if viewed as a few years worth of premium back-wages for a talented engineer, being hired a couple of levels above entry-level).

FORBES: Entrepreneurs are the New Labor: Part III

In addition to charging standard batteries, the Battery Engineer also charges rechargeable batteries and includes a battery tester to inform the consumer of the charge level of any battery.

ENGADGET: Digital Works' ReZap recharges disposable batteries, coming to North America in May

We've seen ideas at the nano level before, but IBM thinks its latest research might be so difficult to reverse engineer, that it's impossible for forgers to reproduce.

ENGADGET: IBM brings the fight to counterfeiters with nano-sized authentication methods (video)