Tuesday, August 30, 2005

A Few Goodies (or not) From National Geographic

  • Urine Battery Turns Pee Into Power - Apparently it's not just urine but many of our body fluids that can power these little batteries. Now the scientists are working on enlarging the size of the batteries so that they could charge cell phones, MP3s or laptops.
    Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology created the credit card-size battery as a disposable power source for medical test kits.
    ...
    Urine contains many ions (electrically charged atoms), which allows the electricity-producing chemical reaction to take place in the urine battery, said UC Berkeley's Kammen. Other bodily fluids, such as tears, blood, and semen, would work easily as well to activate the battery.
  • And what movie was it in? The 6th Day I think, where Arnold (yes, the governor) clones the family dog after the dog died. Now it's a reality - Dog Cloned by South Korean Scientists. These kind of news items always excite me yet give me the shivers at the same time. Notwithstanding stem cell research (I still hope scientists to find a different way of doing that), it's just plain that this is playing with fire. The dog is cute though - Photogallery. So was Dolly.

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    2 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    I've had a couple of devices that didn't work very well, but I never thought about peeing on them for improved performance.
    I suppose you'd just have to hope your batteries didn't run out in public.

    Melly said...

    LOL Lee.
    Either that or you would start seeing people spitting into their cell phone, or rubbing it under their armpits to collect sweat.