TA Sessions

Nielsen’s new Connected Devices study is out:

Social Media — 44% of 18-24 year olds and close to 50% of 25-34 year olds are visiting social networking sites on their smartphones during both commercials and programs while watching TV.

Seeking Information — 36% of people 35-54 and 44% of people 55-64 use their tablets to dive deeper into the TV program they are currently watching.

So you know, how to make invisible ink. Complement with the grown-up history of invisible ink and pre-Internet privacy hacking.

Online Courses Put Pressure on Universities in Poorer Nations

How a teacher in El Salvador became an advocate of massive open online courses, and why hardly anyone listens to him yet.

See on Scoop.it - Educational Technology News

Scientists discover living power cables made from bacteria

If someone told you that the shallow seabeds of Northern Europe were full of buried electrical wiring, you might say “Yeah, internet and phone and stuff. So what?” But what if that person told you that the wiring was alive?

Don’t worry. They aren’t crazy. Danish scientists have described a bacterium that can assemble itself into filaments many centimeters long (which is cool by itself), and use those filaments to conduct electrical currents! One square meter of seabed can have kilometers of bacterial cable beneath it!! So how does it work?

Decomposing materials deep in the mud are digested by all kinds of microorganisms and create “sulphide” compounds. These sulphides transfer electrons to one buried end of the bacterial chain, who then transfer it up to the water-exposed end where those electrons can be used to harvest oxygen for metabolism. Just like we do in our cells!

Only they do it via a way cooler method than we do. I really don’t know what’s more interesting, that these are multicellular bacteria (for all intents and purposes), or that they are basically living electrical wires. 

Here’s the paper in Nature, if you have access.

A Urine Powered Generator. An amazing accomplishment by four brilliant girls. The girls are are Duro-Aina Adebola (14), Akindele Abiola (14), Faleke Oluwatoyin (14) and Bello Eniola (15).

1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.

The system works like this:

Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.

The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.

The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.

How and Why We Read: Crash Course English Literature #1