joining us now is joe atkin president of a company called gold zero. mr. atkin what is old zero? >> guest: we are polar -- portable solar manufacturer from cell phones to laptops, refrigerators and we were started in africa but we are here in the u.s. now. >> host: how did you get started? >> guest: a humanitarian effort. our founder was over in africa finding ways to help people create jobs and looking for needs in one of the first nita came up with everyone has cell phones but no one has power so we said if i can get you some power can you guys sell it? yeah so that is what started creating the jobs in africa. >> host: are your products on the market? >> guest: they are and we are releasing new products as we typically do at ces but you can find them a great retailers costco, rei best buy, bass pro-shops. >> host: shoah some of your products. >> guest: we have a small, medium large but here's a small one right here. this is a seven-watt solar panel with a very packs of this? of power and you can charge your iphone, cell phone and that kind of sucked directly or if you want you

. >> host: joe atkin, what if you're in a place where there's no sun sign? >> guest: -- sunshine? >> guest: they also charge off the wall and car chargers. so i guess there's no sun, a pretty dark place because they also charge off cloudy conditions or if it's rainy, so even like our users in europe, london or u.k. or whatever, they can power it up no problem. so it doesn't have to be totally sunny like it is right now. it just, it can charge in cloudy conditions as well. >> host: how long will it hold a power charge? let's say you charge it for three hours in the sunshine and then you travel? >> guest: yeah. so typically rechargeable batteries like this will last 4-6 months just on the shelf. so it's kind of like a battery in your car that you want to be using it. but this will, this will power a laptop for a couple hours, it'll recharge an ipad a couple times, or if you have, like, a smartphone, two to four times it will recharge it off of one charge. so if you're traveling around, you could charge this up from your house like a wall plug and take it with you on a plane or an ev

. >> host: joe atkin is the president of gold zero. would assure web site? >> guest: www.goalzero.com. >> host: "the communicators" is here at the consumer electronics show in las vegas, nevada. one of the exhibitors here at the consumer electronics show is a group called life technologies and we are joined by one of their directors, graham scott. dr. scott, what is life technologies and what do you do? >> guest: we are leading provider of technology for biomedical research, people who are actively working performing research to sell governmental ads and pharmaceutical companies. primarily researchers. >> host: first of all how long have you been in business? >> guest: well, life technologies as an entity has been in business for a little over two years. that is the genesis of 25 years because two major companies that came together to form technologies so over two decades. >> host: how do you use technology in your work? >> guest: so technology is used by scientists who are posing questions about disease. they want to understand the biology of disease. typic