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Human-Powered Car Would Make Fred Flintstone Jealous

You’ve no doubt heard of electric hybrid cars, but a human-powered hybrid? Not only is it real and most likely coveted by the Flintstone family, but you may be able to own one as soon as next year.

With four passengers cranking the handles, the HumanCar can run on kinetic energy alone, and with fewer participants it relies partially on electricity.

How much more fun (and social!) would highway driving be if everyone used a car like this? Can we get a Yabba-Dabba-Doo?!

Video after the jump.

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New Charging Station for Electric Cars

Switching to electric cars has a lot of advantages: it would reduce city pollution, decrease our dependence on oil, and save us money from rising gas prices.

And now there is Blink, an electric charging station that will hopefully pave the way of an electric vehicle revolution.

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Oil-Eating Microbes Clean Up BP Spill

The oil-eating microorganism Alcanivorax borkumensis

Nearly two weeks after BP capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the millions of gallons that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico are disappearing, and oil is no longer washing up on the beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast.

This reversal, which may seem surprising, can actually be explained by a number of different factors, including the presence of microbes that break down oil in order to grow and reproduce.

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Algae Farmer

Cynthia Warner used to be head of global refining for BP, which made her one of Big Oil’s highest-ranking woman executives.

Now she is president of Sapphire Energy, an energy company that produces oil made from algae.

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The Power of Flushing

Bathrooms may dispose of waste, but they create it, too: The average person flushes the toilet five times a day, using between 8 and 35 gallons of water.  Not only that, but Americans each use about 50 pounds of toilet paper every year.

Now, thanks to Tom Broadbent, an industrial design graduate from De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, bathrooms may start impacting the environment in more positive ways by becoming power generators.

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