Science & Tech Vidéos

How to Dig Up Dirt on Your Date - The funniest movie is here. Find it

The energy crisis has given rise to a new source of fuel – the Styrofoam cup. Mechanical engineers at Iowa State University in Ames have demonstrated how to boost the power output of biodiesel simply by adding waste plastic to the fuel.
Song-Charng Kong, a co-author of the study, says the experiment – funded in part by the Department of Defense – was conducted to find a way to dispose of trash and generate power under battlefield conditions.
"One can recycle any kind of plastic, but if you are camped in a remote area, recycling is not an option," Kong says. "Turning plastic into fuel is a way to get rid of garbage and generate electricity."
Kong and colleagues dissolved polystyrene – a polymer used to make disposable foam plates and cups – into biodiesel at concentrations ranging from 2 to 20% polystyrene by weight. "A polystyrene cup will dissolve almost instantly in biodiesel, like a snowflake in water," Kong says, although the plastic doesn't break down as well in petroleum-based diesel and other liquid fuels.

Thicker juice

Tests of the mixed fuel in a tractor engine used for electricity generation showed that as polystyrene concentrations increased to 5%, power output increased at roughly the same rate. However, there was a drop off in output for plastic concentrations above 5%.
Kong thinks the change is due to the fuel's increasing viscosity as more and more polystyrene is added. Initially, he says, the thicker fluid creates greater pressure inside the generator's fuel injector causing earlier injection of fuel into the engine and increasing its output.
But eventually the fluid gets so viscous that it doesn't completely combust in the engine and power output decreases. At 15% polystyrene, the fuel is so thick the fuel injection pump overheats.
The new fuel mix is not without its problems, however – as the concentration of polystyrene increases, so do emissions of carbon monoxide, soot, and nitrous oxides.
"You are putting large polymer compounds in, it's hard to burn them completely," Kong says, adding that he hopes to now work on refining the engine's fuel injection system to yield a more complete burn with fewer emissions.

Bulky problem

Robert Malloy of the University of Massachusetts Lowell says as long as emissions can be brought back into line, adding polystyrene into fuel makes sense.
A recent report suggests it's over three times as energy efficient to recycle trash rather than convert it to fuel, but Malloy points out that polystyrene is a special case.
"I think we should try to recycle as much as we can, but there are certain materials that don't lend themselves to recycling in an economic way," he says. Polystyrene is so lightweight and bulky that it's uneconomical to ship to recycling plants. "Technologies like this where you get energy back would be preferable to landfilling," Malloy says.

There are tons of ways to download files, be it pictures of last Christmas party, or that new cinema flick. Amongst them are the conventional direct download, FTP, and of course Peer-to-Peer.

BitTorrent, an example of P2P, is a great, perhaps even the best way to download files, both in concept as in use - that is, once you’ve got the hang of it.

Because all of it seems pretty abstract to innitiates, many people experience difficulties at the start. Even those that would call themselves ‘advanced users’ often don’t know even half of what’s possible.

MakeUseOf proudly presents to you The Big Book of BitTorrent. All you think you should know, and more.


In 28 illustrated pages, Saikat Basu from The Things I Do takes newcomers by the hand and guides them in their first steps. Initiates, but also the more experienced users get their fair share of information.

Read how to start, and advance is the world of BitTorrent. Download The Big Book of BitTorrent here for free, in PDF.

Please pass this manual around and help us spread the word.

Youtube - You know that site with videos and all. Yeah! It turns out that its quite popular and you happen to visit and use it quite often. Instead of just searching and playing here are some top Youtube URL tricks that you should know about:

1. View high quality videos

Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality.

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed hig quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ to the embed url.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.

5. Embed only a part of Video

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

Publishing your content in the form of Youtube video? Don’t want people to see other people’s content that may be related but may as well be in competition to you? Just add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= to http://www.youtube.com/v/

10. Download Video

Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

Do you know of some similar Youtube URL tricks and hacks? Fire them in comments!