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Did you know about 2.6 billion people (~40% of the world's population) do not have access to a toilet? Although this is a problem you hopefully don't encounter, it is a major health concern since untreated human feces contaminate the water supply and cause deaths from diarrhea. A Swedish company has a developed a new disposable toilet that it believes will help combat this problem by providing toilets to people at a price point they may be able to afford. The Peepoo is a biodegradable plastic bag that contains an inner gauze that has been coated with a film of urea. A person uses the Peepoo, ties up the bag, and then buries it. According to a New York Times article, the urea crystals kill the pathogens and break the waste into a safe fertilizer. The bags will sell for around 2-3 cents, which is about the same cost as an ordinary plastic bag. Anders Wilhelmson, inventor of the Peepoo, has tested the bags in India and Kenya, where slum dwellers dispose of waste by collecting i...

 If I asked you to name a liquid element, you'd probably say 'mercury', which is liquid at room temperature. So are a few other elements, plus just about any element can turn into a liquid if the temperature and pressure are right. Do you know which element is pictured here, yellow as a solid and melting into a red liquid?

March 9th is Stanley Thompson's birthday. Thompson was an American nuclear chemist when nuclear chemistry was a brand new subject. In the early days of the Manhattan Project plutonium was produced in very small quantities, typically on the order of micrograms. Thompson was the chemist who developed the process that allowed the refining of plutonium on an industrial scale to amounts that would enable practical applications.

Did you know bananas are slightly radioactive? Bananas contain high levels of potassium. Radioactive K-40 has an isotopic abundance of 0.01% and a half-life of 1.25 billion years.

ScienceDaily reports that University of Florida engineers have made a flat surface that is so hydrophobic that it basically won't get wet. The water-repellent surface was formed by arranging microscopic plastic fibers such that they mimic the the hairs of spiders. The hairs of water spiders are both long and short, with varying degrees of curvature, and arranged chaotically over the spider's body, enabling the spider to trap air bubbles so that it can breathe underwater.

It's not very often scientists get to say they have found a new way to generate electricity, but that's exactly what researchers at MIT have done. An Inhabit.com article and PhysOrg.com article describe the discovery of thermopower. MIT chemical engineer Michael Strano and mechanical engineering student Wonjoon Choi and their team produced thermopower waves by coating a carbon nanotube with a fuel and igniting the fuel.

March 7th is the English astronomer, Sir John Frederick William Herschel's birthday. He was one of the better known English scientists of the time and made several contributions to astronomy. One contribution he was credited for was the discovery of life on the Moon. Starting on August 25, 1835, six articles were published by the New York Sun newspaper describing Herschel's observation of Moon creatures such as unicorns, bipedal beavers and bat-winged humanoids. The Great Moon Hoax was written by Richard A. Locke to increase circulation for the New York Sun. It wasn't exposed as a hoax for two weeks and no retraction was ever made. Herschel was initially amused by the stories, but grew tired of trying to explain to people he had nothing to do with it or denying the observations to people who believed the hoax. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.