In today’s Bulldog wrapup of science, life science and technology news:

  • Czechs open production of batteries based on nanotechnology
  • Scientists get antimatter excited, see first light
  • US FDA clears ovarian cancer drug for hard-to-treat disease
  • Apple appeals EU order to collect $14B in back taxes

The details:

  • Czechs open production of batteries based on nanotechnology

​A Czech company opened on Monday a production line for batteries based on nanotechnology, which uses tiny parts invisible to human eyes. The batteries are touted as potentially more efficient, longer-lasting, cheaper, lighter and above all safer.

The automatic line will operate for several months to get all necessary certifications. Then, Prague-based company HE3DA said Monday it is ready to launch other lines in a new plant built in eastern Czech Republic, and at a factory in Slovakia.

Nanotechnology can increase the size and surface of batteries electrodes, making them sponge-like so that they can absorb more energy during charging and ultimately increasing the energy storage capacity.

There’s an appetite for batteries that would hold more energy, last longer, be cheaper and safer, a crucial step key for the development and success of many technologies, from solar and wind energy to electric cars.

Several ways are being explored by researchers around the globe on how to achieve that. Tesla Motors has also been building a “gigafactory” to produce conventional lithium-ion batteries for use in its electric cars and potentially to store electricity for homes.

HE3DA president Jan Prochazka said he was confident his invention provides a solution other current products can’t offer.

  • Scientists get antimatter excited, see first light

Scientists have used a laser to tickle atoms of antimatter and make them shine, a key step toward answering one of the great riddles of the universe.

Theory predicts that the Big Bang produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Since they cancel each other out, scientists have been trying to find out why a relatively small amount of matter remained — allowing the stars, planets and ultimately life as we know it to come about — and antimatter vanished.

It took researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, decades to figure out how to create an antimatter version of the most basic atom — hydrogen — and trap it for long enough to perform tests.

In a paper published online Monday by the journal Nature, they reported the first cautious result from an experiment with antihydrogen. It turns out that when it’s stimulated with a laser, antihydrogen appears to produce light on the same ultraviolet frequency as its nemesis in the world of matter, hydrogen.

Adding energy — in this case with a laser — to atoms to see what light they absorb and emit is known as spectroscopy. It is a commonly used tool in physics, chemistry and even astronomy, to determine the atomic composition of substances in a lab or even far-away galaxies. The results can be presented as rainbow-like panels or as graphs showing the distribution of certain colors.

“What we have is one color,” said Jeffrey Hangst, a leading member of the team working on the ALPHA experiment at CERN , which is located on the Swiss-French border. “But it’s kind of the most fundamental one because it’s the one that we can measure most accurately.”

Hangst and his colleagues now plan to refine the experiment, using techniques developed for hydrogen over the past 200 years, to map in precise detail the atomic spectrum of antihydrogen.

  • US FDA clears ovarian cancer drug for hard-to-treat disease

U.S. health officials have approved a new option for some women battling ovarian cancer: a drug that targets a genetic mutation seen in a subset of hard-to-treat tumors.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared the drug, Rubraca, from Clovis Oncology Inc. for women in advanced stages of the disease who have already tried at least two chemotherapy drugs. The Clovis medication targets a mutation found in 15 to 20 percent of patients with ovarian cancer. Women with the variation, known as BRCA, face much higher risks of breast cancer and ovarian cancer compared with other women.

  • Apple appeals EU order to collect $14B in back taxes

Apple is appealing a European Union order to collect a record 13 billion euros ($14 billion) in back taxes based on the way it reports European-wide profits through Ireland.

The move follows a similar appeal Sunday by Ireland.

Ireland charges the Cupertino, California-based company only for sales within Ireland. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the arrangement let Apple use two shell companies incorporated in Ireland to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1 percent.

In a statement Monday, Apple said the EU took “unilateral action and retroactively changed the rules, disregarding decades of Irish tax law, U.S. tax law as well as global consensus on tax policy.”

“If their opinion is allowed to stand, Apple would pay 40 percent of all the corporate income tax collected in Ireland, which is unprecedented and, far from leveling the playing field, selectively targets Apple,” Apple said. “This has no basis in fact or law and we’re confident the ruling will be overturned.”

Apple says it has a worldwide income tax rate of around 26 percent.