Roger the Tall One, at http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/inventors-geim-and-novoselov-h… … Geim and Novoselov of the University of Manchester were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on the development of graphene. Now, in 2013, Lockheed think they have found a way to remove salt from sea water which has the potential to provide cheap drinking water for all the people of the world. This of course is one of those Green scare stories – humans running out of water. Too many people in the world, they claim. Water is high on the doomsaying list but sadly for them the problem seems about to be solved (see also www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-desalination-idUSBRE92C0572013…
Over at http://phys.org/print283070634.html … news of the development of a 'nuclear battery' which may provide a million times more energy than a conventional battery. Just think of all those childrens toys. A battery for years rather than days. The research is focussed on the properties of matter so we might have to wait for the batteries – published in Physical Review Letters, http://prl.aps.org/toc/PRL/v110/i12#letters-nuclear-physics
Meanwhile, Japan has found rare earth deposits on the sea bed in enormous quantities. The problem is they are 19,000 feet below the surface and getting them up into daylight will be a problem – see http://phys.org/print283063810.html.