Urine-Fueled Generator

Pee power! African teens create urine-fueled generator.In a stroke of ingenuity that could have proven handy during Hurricane Sandy, four teenage African girls have come up with a urine-powered generator.
Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola

, and Faleke Oluwatoyin, all 14, and Bello Eniola, 15, collaborated on the invention, which they claim generates one hour of electricity from one liter (about a quart) of urine.
The pee-powered product made its debut at Maker Faire Africa in Lagos, Nigeria, this week. A post on the Maker Faire Africa blog describes the generator's workings in the following words:
Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.
The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
Hydrogen, of course, carries explosive risks, so the girls used one-way valves as a security measure (whether that is safety precaution enough is unclear). But don't start saving your bladder output just yet. The blog doesn't mention where the energy needed to power the electrolytic cell comes from, or whether the electrolytic cell uses more power than the machine generates.
While many commenters on the Maker Faire Africa blog are applauding the girls' work, others have expressed skepticism of their contraption. On one science-minded blog, believers and not-so-believers are currently engaged in a lively and thorough deconstruction of its various components. The girls will probably be famous chemists one day, in any case, but they aren't the first to propose urine (or more solid human and animal waste) as a possible alternative fuel.

Last year, in one example, researchers from Ohio University came up with their own technology for extracting hydrogen from urine. Doing so, they say, requires less power than plucking it from water, as hydrogen can be separated more easily from the ammonia and urea chemical compounds present in pee.
The four African teens likely are the youngest researchers yet to dabble in pee as power. Skepticism aside, can we all just agree that the foursome should be lauded for their efforts to find alternative power sources on a continent that could really use them? Sheesh. When I was 14, I'm pretty sure I was too busy watching TV to concern myself with hydrogen extraction.

Samsung Galaxy S3 overtakes the iPhone 4S as the world’s best-selling smartphone

Samsung Galaxy S3 overtakes the iPhone 4S as the world’s best-selling smartphone in Q3.After becoming the top OEM in the U.S., after selling three million Galaxy Note 2s in a month, and after selling more than 30 million Galaxy S3s worldwide in five months, Samsung is at the top of the food chain. But the winning streak doesn’t stop there. According to market research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has overtook Apple’s equally hot-selling iPhone 4S to become the world’s best-selling smartphone for the third quarter of this year.

The firm notes that this is the first time for Samsung to achieve such feat and that its large touchscreen, extensive distribution, and generous operator subsidies have propelled the device to make it to the top. The data from Strategy Analytics reveals that the sales of the Galaxy S3 in Q2 were nothing but short compared to the iPhone 4S. But when Q3 came, the tables began to turn in favor of Samsung. But now that the iPhone 5 is out, we’re wondering if Samsung will still manage to keep the spot.

Strategy Analytics Executive Director, Neil Mawston, thinks that the position as the world’s best-selling smartphone model is likely to be short-lived. “The Apple iPhone 5 has gotten off to a solid start already with an estimated 6.0 million units shipped globally during Q3 2012. We expect the new iPhone 5 to out-ship Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the coming fourth quarter of 2012 and Apple should soon reclaim the title of the world’s most popular smartphone model,” he adds.

Cloning Endangered Animals

Brazil begins cloning endangered animals.Earth is running out of animals. Or rather, Earth is suffering from an overabundance of some animals (namely humans and cows) and a serious lack of others. Brazil is taking some initiative by starting a program to clone animals from species at risk of going extinct, including black lion tamarins, maned wolves, and jaguars.

World's First Solar-Powered Territory

Tiny Island Chain Becomes World's First Solar-Powered Territory

The remote islands of Tokelau have become the first territory in the world to be powered by the sun, officials say. The move is expected to save money and ease the environmental burden of relying on imported fossil fuels.

“The Tokelau Renewable Energy Project is a world first. Tokelau’s three main atolls now have enough solar capaci

ty, on average, to meet electricity needs,” said New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister Murray McCully in a statement. “Until now, Tokelau has been 100 percent dependent upon diesel for electricity generation, with heavy economic and environmental costs.”

The group of islands situated in the South Pacific between New Zealand and Hawaii are administered by New Zealand, which estimated the cost of the project to build three solar grids at around $7 million.

It is estimated that oil imports account for up to 30 percent of national income in some isolated parts of the Pacific, and the move to solar power could save Tokelau about $1 million per year.

Tokelau is comprised of three atolls Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo, and has about 1,500 inhabitants.

The island nations of Samoa and Tuvalu are aiming to get all of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The Cook Islands plans to start converting to solar panels and wind turbines, while most houses in the South Pacific archipelago will begin to use solar water heaters.

East Timor's government has promised that no households in the capital, Dili, would be using firewood for cooking by 2015 and said 50 percent of the country's electricity would be from renewable sources by the end of the decade.

“Building on the success of clean and affordable energy solutions for Tokelau, Tonga, and the Cook Islands, New Zealand will co-host a Pacific energy summit in March next year,” said McCully.

Habitable Exoplanet

Astronomers Find Tantalizing Hints of a Potentially Habitable Exoplanet

Located 43 light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor, the orange-colored dwarf star HD 40307 has previously been found to hold three “super-Earth” exoplanets in close orbit. Now, a team of researchers poring over data from ESO’s HARPS planet-hunting instrument are suggesting that there are likely at least six super-Earth exoplanets orbiting HD 40307 — with one of them appearing to be tucked neatly into the star’s water-friendly “Goldilocks” zone.

HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) on ESO’s La Silla 3.6m telescope is a dedicated exoplanet hunter, able to detect the oh-so-slight wobble of a star caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. Led by Mikko Tuomi of the UK’s University of Hertfordshire Centre for Astrophysics Research, a team of researchers reviewed publicly-available data from HARPS and has identified what seems to be three new exoplanets in the HD 40307 systems. The candidates, designated with the letters e, f, and g, all appear to be “super Earth” worlds… but the last one, HD 40307 g, is what’s getting people excited, as the team has calculated it to be orbiting well within the region where liquid water could exist on its surface — this particular star’s habitable zone.
In addition, HD 40307 g is located far enough away from its star to likely not be tidally locked, according to the team’s paper. This means it wouldn’t have one side subject to constant heat and radiation while its other “far side” remains cold and dark, thus avoiding the intense variations in global climate, weather and winds that would come as a result.
“The star HD 40307, is a perfectly quiet old dwarf star, so there is no reason why such a planet could not sustain an Earth-like climate.”– Guillem Anglada-Escudé, co-author.
“If the signal corresponding to HD 40307 g is a genuine Doppler signal of planetary origin, this candidate planet might be capable of supporting liquid water on its surface according to the current definition of the liquid water habitable zone around a star and is not likely to suffer from tidal locking.”

Human Barbie Is Real

Fashion Magazine Confirms Human Barbie Is A Real Person.Valeria Lukyonova became a viral sensation in the U.S. when Jezebel posted a video about the alleged surgery she underwent to look this way. V magazine managed to book the Ukrainian, who calls herself "the most famous Russian woman on the Russian-speaking internet" for a feature in the new "Girl Power" issue hitting newsstands November 15.

New smooth Suspension System

Bart Gysen, a researcher at Eindhoven University in the Netherlands made an active electromagnetic suspension system.Gysen's design is a simple one in appearance. Inside the suspension spring that keeps the car levitated is an aluminum cylinder containing high-powered magnets. The cylinder also acts as a passive suspension system as a safety backup. The active system uses only 75 watts of energy, about the amount needed to power a car's air conditioner. The cylinder also regenerates energy, using the bumps in the road to power itself. If Gysen, or an auto manufacturer, were willing to discard the passive portion of the system, the active suspension would power itself 100%.
There are three sensors on the front of the car that measure the wheels' movement in relation to the road and the body of the car. It takes only milliseconds for the information to be translated into a reactive force from the magnets. The result is a ride that cuts down on jolts by 60%.
That percentage would be even higher if the road and its undulations could be measured before they got to the wheels, perhaps with lasers that read the terrain in front of the car. Somehow, though, the system would have to know the material of the road, be it ice, pavement, wet leaves, or cream cheese. For now, Gysen is sticking with his trio of sensors.
An active suspension has other advantages in addition to comfort. Typically, a car taking a sharp turn (or even a dull one) has a weight shift from one side to the other. The two inner wheels end up taking the lion's share of the force and lose a percentage of their traction. This can result in a loss of control or worse, a tipping or flipping of the car. Gysen's system can keep the weight of the car evenly distributed over all four wheels, so that the vehicle remains parallel to the ground throughout a turn. "You can put the gravity back in the center of the car, and get a better grip on the road," says Gysen.

At the moment, the only prototype resides on the test vehicle, a BMW 530. While including the system on future vehicles might seem like a no-brain er, the automotive industry is currently guarding its coffers and is less than willing to lighten them for the research and development needed to put Gysen's invention on pavement.