These urine-powered socks could supply enough juice to send a text

For once, having socks full of urine and bacteria is a good thing. A pair of sock-like generators, designed by robotics professor Ioannis Ieropoulos's team at the University of the West of England in Bristol, U.K., are able to turn human waste and locomotion into electrical power with a bit of help from microbes.

James Urquhart, reporting for New Scientist, has the details:

"Walking in the socks forces a bladder's worth (roughly 648 millilitres) of urine to circulate through integrated tubes towards microbial fuels cells (MFCs), which contain bacteria that guzzle nutrients and create electricity." Read more...