The methods of manufacturing and compressing hydrogen gas require great amounts of energy. To overcome these challenges, scientists have been tinkering with the biological powers of everything from common yeast to mysterious bacteria living on the ocean floor. At the University of California at Berkeley, mechanical engineering professor Liwei Lin is busy developing a microbial fuel cell that runs off the digestive activity of baker's yeast. The yeast feed on glucose, a simple sugar, and digest it in a process called aerobic metabolism. "We extract electrons from the yeast cells where the aerobic metabolism process happens," Lin explains. Controlling the movement of electrons to harness a renewable source of fuel remains the target for scientists designing fuel cells, which extract power from electrochemical reactions. The advantage of Lin's mechanism is that it runs on glucose, a naturally abundant resource produced by plants.

The day after I returned to New York, reunited with my cable modem, I checked out a friend's blog that linked to an Austrian interview with Salam Pax. I clicked to it. Salam Pax mentioned an NGO he had worked for, CIVIC, and this caught my attention. I knew the woman who was in charge of CIVIC; she stayed at my Baghdad hotel, the Hamra. Salam Pax mentioned that he had done some work for foreign journalists. We traveled in the same circles, apparently. He also mentioned that he had studied in Vienna. This really caught my attention, because I knew an Iraqi who had worked for CIVIC, hung out with foreign journalists, and studied in Vienna. I clicked over to his blog.

His latest post mentioned an afternoon he spent at the Hamra Hotel pool, reading a borrowed copy of The New Yorker. I laughed out loud. He then mentioned an escapade in which he helped deliver 24 pizzas to American soldiers. I howled. Salam Pax, the most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter. The New Yorker he had been reading—mine. Poolside at the Hamra—with me. The 24 pizzas—we had taken them to a unit of 82nd Airborne soldiers I was writing about.

"Ya Allah have mercy on our souls. The old state owned Internet center in Adil district has been taken over by anarchists and they are offering internet access for FREE. You just need to dial up a number, no password, no special settings. Whoever heard of anyone doing that?

About week ago a rumor spread that the Adil center has put up a sat dish and will be using the setup the Iraqi government used to have to provide the service. [Uruklink.net] is back. The people who used to work there opened the center 4 days ago; you can have an hour of internet for as little as 2000dinars. Take that you greedy sharks. The center is very well equipped, they put together 30 of their best computers and have a very good connection (ok so 30 computers in a city of 5 million is nothing, but it is a start). They even got military protection. The people who work there got a couple of soldiers from the nearest army checkpoint to take a look, the officer asked if it was OK for his men to check on their emails and stuff. The reaction the first couple of guys who came in was a very amazed “Wow!”.

Yesterday they put up a piece of paper that said: “we are happy to announce that you can get free internet access by dialing up this number”. A small little paper on the notice board. The telephone network is not fully operational, certain districts don’t have phones at all, but as I wrote earlier many of the exchanges that have not been destroyed or looted have been linked together. You will need to keep dialing for an hour to get thru but it works, I tried it.

Not a million bad things could have wiped the grin off my face when I read that little note."

COPENHAGEN, Jan 27 (AFP) - Monkeys at Copenhagen Zoo are going ape over organic bananas and other fruits, rejecting traditional foods left in their cages, zookeepers said Monday.

"For one reason or another, the tapirs and chimpanzees are choosing organically grown bananas over the others," keeper Niels Melchiorsen told the magazine Oekologisk Jordbrug (Ecological Agriculture).

"Maybe they are able to instinctively tell the difference, and their choice is not at all random," he suggested.

"The chimpanzees are able to tell the difference between the organic and the regular fruit," Melchiorsen reported: "If we give them organic and traditional bananas, they systematically choose the organic bananas, which they eat with the skin on."

"But they peel the traditional bananas before eating them," he added.

Copenhagen Zoo, which hopes to be awarded a "green label" as an environmental zoo, began last year feeding its animals at least 10 percent organic products.