Thursday 31 May 2012

How to connect with people : Hachi to the rescue

A Bangalore based startup called Hachi can give you the best possible route to connect to a person you're not friends with.

Wednesday 30 May 2012

Virus used to create electricity

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists have successfully discovered a way to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy using a harmless virus.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Pedal operated washing machine

Remya's pedal operated washing machine. Source-http://tilz.tearfund.org/

An ingenious pedal operated washing machine that is eco-friendly, energy efficient, doesn't require electricity to function and is very cheap.

Japanese pot that self-stirs and boils water quicker

Kuru Kuru Nabe
A Japanese dentist Hideki Watanabe has invented an ingenious sculpted pot which helps to heat the pot's contents more efficiently while stirring the contents by itself.

Monday 28 May 2012

The Humanure Power Project

The idea is to provide sanitation and electricity to rural India by building community toilets and harnessing human waste to produce methane and electricity that will be distributed to the community via 12-V batteries.

Sunday 27 May 2012

Charge your phone with your cotton T-shirt!

The activated carbon textile. Image credit: http://www.futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com
Engineers have successfully transformed cotton into a flexible, highly conductive component, which means it could charge devices.

Saturday 26 May 2012

Living snail as a source of electricity

Implanted biofuel cell. Photo credit: Clarkson University.
For the first time in history, a living snail has been implanted with a biofuel cell, which is producing electricity for a long period of time!

Friday 25 May 2012

New metamaterial has negative compressibility

A system to demonstrate who the ends can be stretched while the subsystem compresses
Firstly, let me define a term:

Metamaterial: Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature.

Get rid of needles!

The device fires a jet of the drug which breaches the skin.
Image courtesy of the MIT BioInstrumentation Lab
There are many among us who are scared of needles. Your woes may end in the near future.

Thursday 24 May 2012

Load carrier for labour

A push cart as well as a backpack which can pick-up heavy loads
Here is a real grass root innovation. It is meant to improve the working condition of labourers and workers at many places globally like construction site, factories, ports, railway stations, etc.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Stiffer road surface implies reduced fuel consumption


Credit - MIT
Study by civil engineers at MIT has revealed that building stiffer road surfaces can bring down the vehicle fuel consumption by as much as 3%.