Food for thought: humans born with such a disorder where they feel no pain, the children routinely chew through their fingers and lips because they are unable to determine when to stop...

If you engineer animals who feel no pain you are very likely to see the same picture.

Not having read the actual paper, the following question comes to mind: did they include only the period of time *before* the physicists got their Nobels? Because if they included the citations after that - yeah, I imagine those authors got quite a few citations being Nobel Prize winners and all...

I don't see how this would be a cash cow for Apple - they already replace batteries as often as they can. In fact, it's detrimental to the company since now people will simply replace batteries instead of buying a new iPod. In addition, converting their designs and manufacturing process will to meet this requirement will cost Apple dearly.