Researchers say the electricity generated by mud-dwelling bacteria from a lump of sugar could power a mobile phone for four days. According to a report in October's Nature Biotechnology Magazine, searchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have persuaded mud-dwelling bacteria to generate electricity from sugar. Fuelled by this unfashionable high-carb diet, the recently identified bacterium, Rhodoferax ferrireducens, releases the energy in sugar molecules by removing electrons. In their natural habitat of Vancouver bay sediment, the bacteria pass on the electrons to iron compounds, but in the lab the bacteria have been persuaded to donate them to an electrode as...