The first 3,000 run will cost 29800 Yen ($328), and you get five cartridges for 3150 Yen ($34), which makes it cost ineffective if you're talking about practical charging. But if you really need power on the go and you don't have time to charge up traditionally, this is the future—so long as you're part of the first 3,000 that they'll test this out on before going on a wider release. [Toshiba Japan via Engadget]

Methane is becoming a prized source of green energy—in fact, we are already harvesting it from alternative sources like landfills and cow manure to meet our energy needs. Along those lines, Professor Bruce Logan at Pennsylvania State University has developed an electronic fart machine that can collect and store energy from gassy single-celled microbes with 80% efficiency.

It works like this: giving small jolts of electricity to single-celled microorganisms known as archea prompts them to remove C02 from the air and turn it into methane, released as tiny "farts." The methane, in turn, can be used to power fuel cells or to store the electrical energy chemically until it's needed.

Thanks Professor Logan. Your knowledge, dedication, and willingness to come home night after night smelling of farts will lead to a brighter future for all of us. . [Discovery via Treehugger via DVICE]

Apparently, a year's worth of human excrement is equal to a measly 2.1 gallons of diesel, but when you collect an entire city's worth of crap, you get a decent amount of fuel. The poop of 250,000 people is enough to operate 80 busses for 62,000 miles each, which is no small thing. So in Norway, they're going to start collecting it and running public transportation on it. Because hey, why not? [Slate via Technabob]

If this method of powdering methane gets commercialized, other gases may also get similar treatment. For instance, storing CO2 as a powder could finally make carbon sequestration viable and hydrogen as a powder would do wonders for fuel cell technology. [Discovery]

The amount of gas they collected went from 8,000- to 1,000-litre emissions in a day, and the conclusions are clearly indicative on how dangerous farts can be, especially if your partner raises the bedsheets at the wrong time in the middle of the night (cue laughing track here). Knowing that methane traps 23 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, I won't be surprised if some activists start demanding fart tanks for everyone on the planet. [Daily Telegraph]