Oh, This? Just Some Teenage Girls From Africa Who Invented A Urine-powered Generator. (via Io9)

Oh, this? Just some teenage girls from Africa who invented a urine-powered generator. (via io9)

Robert T. Gonzales

How's this for an innovative startup: four African girls — the eldest of which is just fifteen years old — have worked together to invent a generator that's powered by urine. The group presented their creation at this year's Maker Faire Africa, and it's so freaking brilliant it makes me want travel back in time and punch 15-year-old me right in the solar plexus.

The Next Web lays out how it works:

Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.

The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

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.

1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.

Here's hoping these girls can get the funding they need to take this idea to new heights. Even if they don't, we've got a feeling they're going places.

Read more over at The Next Web and the Maker Faire Africa website.

Ph.D. students explaining their research using interpretive dance!

This year’s crop of Dance Your Ph.D. contest have really upped the ante! The contest asks doctoral students to deliver their research in the form of dance, and it’s awesome to see how they translate scientific ideas into choreography.

The chemistry (and Grand Prize) winner above tells the story of creating a super alloy using a Vaudevillian silent movie circus. 

Put on your dancing shoes and check out more winners at io9!

Located at the Prince Street station on the N and R line, Carrying On, installed in 2004, is composed of almost two hundred 6-inch high silhouettes of people hauling “stuff” as they walk the city streets. Artists Janet Zweig and Edward Del Rosario worked from thousands of photographs they took of real-life New Yorkers moving in and around the city. According to the artists, the title Carrying On can be read in a variety of ways: “People on the streets of New York are almost always carrying something, sometimes something huge and outlandish… After tragedy, New Yorkers felt that they must carry on with their lives; they really do ‘carry on.’” The result is a narrative work spanning more than 200 linear feet on each side of the station, representing the diverse community that makes up our city and featuring miniature figures, each with their own quotidian story of hope and survival.  

Above:  Janet Zweig and Edward del Rosario, Carrying On. 2004.

PSY vs. Walter Murphy - A Fifth of Gangnam

Best thing ever! xD