But building a giant battery using dry-cell technology would require thousands of individual cells - about the size of a soft drinks can - to be strung together in a massive installation.

BBC: Liquid metal promise for future batteries

During the last decade, the Finnish cell-phone giant reached the peak of its success, producing at one point more than 40% of all the handsets sold around the globe.

FORBES: Don't Count Nokia Out Yet

The idea behind the efforts to make an artificial bacterium was, in essence, to treat a large synthetic genome as a giant version of Phi-X174 and use it to hijack a cell which had had all its DNA removed.

ECONOMIST: Artificial lifeforms

After screening dozens of U.S.-traded China stocks against the model, one that stood out was cell phone giant China Mobile Ltd. (CHL) , which I featured in my most recent Forbes.com article. (Click here for that article.) But I also found a couple other smaller China plays that get solid marks from my Buffett-based strategy.

FORBES: China Picks Buffett Might Like