Producing hydrogen from urine
You do two things at motorway services: fill up one tank and empty another. US chemists have combined refuelling your car and relieving yourself by creating a new catalyst that can extract hydrogen from urine.

Overall Winner: The Swimming City — András Gyõrfi
The Seasteading Institute, committed to the ongoing development of ocean communities, has just announced the winners of their first annual design content. Could people really end up living in these hypothetical off-shore communities? (Pics)

Can’t Touch This…
Korean designer Rhea Jeong says she’s been astounded by the amount of interest in her conceptual Void LP record player. One look at the design and you can see why it’s made so much noise without even uttering a sound. Close your eyes and imagine a little red globe spinning around on top [...]

Oops I dropped my iPod…
 Staff at a design and marketing company in Newcastle spent a day working together naked after being told it would improve their morale. David Taylor, a business psychologist, told workers at design and marketing onebestway, in Newcastle upon Tyne, that a Naked Friday idea would boost their team spirit.

Artist’s impression of the new source HLX-1
A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers.

How much light is reflected and how much is absorbed depends on two factors
It appears to be a paradox: ultra-thin material that absorbs all the incident light. Nonetheless, it does exist.

Mice fed on a diet high in polyunsaturated fatty acids can sprint faster
Between the 1932 and 2008 Olympic Games, world record times of the men’s 100m sprint improved by 0.6 seconds due to improved training techniques and technological advances. Imagine if this improvement could be achieved by a simple change in diet. Scientists at the [...]

The Transporter TW
With concept designers crafting their fantasies into a consumable form, we believe that the era of tomorrow would be completely different than present days. Harsha Vardhan, a car designer, thinks that apart from the cities, cars too would be completely different and powered by technologies no car manufacturer has tried till date. He [...]

The Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) lives a very long life compared to closely related animals such as mice
Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of [...]

An illustration of a dust storm on Mars.
For the first time, direct evidence of lightning has been detected on Mars, say University of Michigan researchers who found signs of electrical discharges during dust storms on the Red Planet.

Eeek is that hissing sound a snake? No its your headphones
French accessories company HOON has teamed up with audio company The Perfect Unison for a line of python skin skinned headphones.

 flowers show signs of evolution.
Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have zeroed in on the genes responsible for changing flower color, an area of research that began with Gregor Mendel’s studies of the garden pea in the 1850’s.

Here swiney swiney!

Throwing “swine flu parties” in an attempt to get immunity against the virus while it is a fairly mild form is not a good idea, doctors say. Reports have emerged of people intentionally mixing with friends who have flu.
Their reasoning is that it is best to be infected before the winter when the [...]

Glorified Glasses

Residents of Stourbridge, West Midlands, and surrounding villages were having a pleasant surprise when they took in their milk bottles; they would find pictures of animals, often cows or mice, carefully carved onto the glass in astonishing detail.
An artist, known as ‘bottle Banksy’, would take the used milk bottles from doorsteps and then return [...]

Tweet frickin’ tweet!

–>
Everyone in Iran uses it, BBC radio presenters bang on about it incessantly and mega celebs use it to throw crumbs to their adoring fans. Yep there seems no stopping the rise of Twitter.
Well soon you’ll be able to get a degree based around the microblogging sensation (BA Hons Twit IIi?) as City [...]

Sardines may be more comfortable…

A private airline in China is submitting plans for journeys where passengers can opt to stand to save money. Spring Airlines first initiated the standing ticket idea earlier this year.
It is now considering officially submitting it to the aviation regulator before the year is out. The airline has been trying to [...]

The two-qubit processor is the first solid-state quantum processor that resembles a conventional computer chip and is able to run simple algorithms
A team led by Yale University researchers has created the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, taking another step toward the ultimate dream of building a quantum computer.

New research sheds light on how alcohol alters the way brain cells work.
Alcohol’s inebriating effects are familiar to everyone. But the molecular details of alcohol’s impact on brain activity remain a mystery. A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies brings us closer to understanding how alcohol alters the way brain [...]

apply skin cream in order to stimulate the gene into action
Vaseline, a known molecule from apples and a gene network encapsulated in algal gelatin are the components of a possible gene therapy which literally gets under the skin.

Nematode
Caltech researchers studying the nervous control of nematode mating behavior have produced video footage of a male worm preparing to mate with a hermaphrodite.

Two Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins swimming off the coast of Oahu.
We can only marvel at the way that dolphins, whales and porpoises scythe through water. Their finlike flippers seem perfectly adapted for maximum aquatic agility. However, no one had ever analysed how the animals’ flippers interact with water; the hydrodynamic lift that they generate, the drag [...]

Wheelchair with real-time control using brain waves 
Japan’s BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center has successfully developed a system that controls a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds.

[Skip the intro to mark 1:00 for the good stuff!]
 
Being paralyzed shouldn’t stop someone from engaging in a sport lovingly described by Mark Twain as “a good walk, ruined,” thanks to the Paragolfer machine by Parabasetec.
Check out the paragolfer in action (yes, it’s a promo video, but it’s amazing nonetheless)…

A Model of the Inside
Pregnant women are being given the chance to hold life-size models of their unborn babies, thanks to an invention that converts data from ultrasound and MRI scans.
Jorge Lopes, a Brazilian designer, uses 3-D printing technology to create the plaster models, which go on show today at an exhibition at the Royal [...]