Taking a stroll may soon be enough to re-charge your mobile phone, after US researchers developed a way to generate electricity from human motion.
Placed in a shoe, the device captures the energy of moving micro droplets and converts it into electrical current. Kinetic charging is already used in some low power devices such as watches and sensors. The University of Wisconsin team published its study in the journal Nature Communications.
“Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy-producing machines,” said Professor Tom Krupenkin from the university’s mechanical engineering department.
There ought to be more schools doing stuff like this. The free online classes include Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Introduction to Databases, Stanford Engineering Everywhere and a handful of others.
Those who always wanted to tell people they studied at Stanford but lacked the grades or money to apply are in luck, because professors there have made some classes available online for free. Anyone can watch lectures and view class materials, submit assignments and receive feedback. Those who make the grade can receive “statements of accomplishments” from the instructor.
Eighty years after it sank in the Canadian Arctic, explorer Roald Amundsen’s three-mast ship Maud may once again sail across the Atlantic to become the centerpiece of a new museum in Norway.
Canada, however, must still agree to the repatriation plan hatched by Norwegian investors, amid strong opposition from locals in the Canadian territory of Nunavut who want the ship to stay for tourists to admire from shore.
The wreck now sits at the bottom of Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, but its hulk is partly visible above the frigid waters that preserved it for decades.
