News around the world

A cow on the roof

A cow owned by a Swiss farmer Dieter Mueller decided she would a-moo-se herself by climbing on to the roof of his farmhouse instead of walking around it to look for fresh pasture.

It is believed that she was walking on a road behind the house when she decided that the grass may be greener on the other side and, instead of walking around, decided to climb on to the house. Needless to say, the grass was not greener on the other side. Mueller tried to coax her and even put a ladder up to the roof, but realised that she could fall and crush him, if she even tried to use it.

"She would have stayed up there for a long time if she had wanted to. I tried to coax her off when I first saw her, but she wouldn't budge," he said.

Eventually she grew tired of the view from the farmhouse roof and figured out how to get down herself. "She just had to do things in her own sweet time," said Mueller.

-Internet

Phone-charging shoes!

Most 15-year-olds are getting excited to learn how to drive; Angelo Casimiro is walking – and charging his cell phone at the same time. Casimiro has invented a device that charges your cell phone as you walk!

When the user runs, jumps, or walks the pressure to a pair of discs inside the shoes produces energy, which can be used to charge your phone or any other device that has a USB port!

People on the go and those living in remote areas who don’t have regular access to electricity are going to love this invention.

Unfortunately, it needs a lot of movement to power most devices.

It takes about eight hours of running to charge a lithium-ion battery and two hours of playing basketball will only give the average cell phone about 10 minutes of charge.

To compare, a device called Solepower, another insole that charges electronic devices, can fully charge a cell phone over a four-kilometre (two-and-a-half-mile) walk.

-Internet

Vitamin A-enriched bananas

Vitamin A-enriched bananas undergo testing. A genetically-engineered banana that could help improve the lives of millions of Africans will soon start its first trial.

Every year up to 700,000 children around the world die from not eating enough vitamin A. At least 300,000 go blind every year for the same reason. Vitamin A helps eyes stay sharp, keeps your skin and immune system healthy, and helps your body grow and develop like it should as you get older. It is found in sweet potatoes, carrots, kale, squash, and other vegetables.

Four-to-eight-year-olds need about 400 micrograms of vitamin A. African children have a higher risk of eating less than two-thirds –about 145 micrograms– of vitamin A per day because they have limited access to healthy foods because of poverty.

Bananas are a staple food in Uganda, but they don't have very high levels of micronutrients. If this project is successful, the specially enriched bananas will replace the less nutritional ones and be growing on their own in Uganda by the year 2020.

The bananas are currently being sent to the United States where they will undergo a six-week trial to measure if they boost vitamin A levels well enough. “Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food,” said project leader Professor James Dale. They look just like a normal banana on the outside, but inside they are slightly more orange in colour. In order to get vitamin A, there has to be beta-carotene. Our bodies convert beta-carotene into vitamin A. If someone eats too much beta-carotene, their skin may turn slightly orange in colour as a side effect.

-Internet