Demand a toilet AND underpants in one handy device? The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has got it covered!

The clichéd slightly wacky Japanese scientists have built the amazing below gadget, which could eliminate toilet trips for good. Poo and wee are sucked out by a pump, with a built-in washer/dryer system cleaning up the resulting mess, leaving you relaxed, fresh and dry. It's genius. Especially if the suction pump also comes with optional 'entertainment' attachments.

Might not be the most comfortable thing to wear about the place, but it'll definitely find itself a niche among Warcraft players, where abandoning your guild members to take a toilet break is a sign of weakness and dishonour.

(Via Akihabara)

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Apple needs Steve! The world needs Steve! Steve Jobs says he's a little bit sick, but technology can keep him going for longer, just like Steven Hawking.

Here's how Steve Jobs can ensure he lives to be 100 - or more - thanks to the modern technology he loves and has helped shape, guaranteeing peace of mind for all Apple fans and the company's panicking shareholders.

1. PORTABLE DEFIBRILLATOR The worst case scenario can be averted. Steve needs to employ a nurse to be with him at all times, ready to pounce with the Philips HeartStart Home Defibrillator should he collapse while ordering the Coffeee of the Day from the local Starbucks. Pay her minimum wage and you've got 24-hour-a-day Steve reassurance for less than 20k a year.

2. BLOOD PRESSURE MONITOR A cheap, standard high street blood pressure monitor would reassure us all of Steve's health. An Apple engineer could add a wi-fi adaptor and have it feed data to the Apple web site, letting the world see a reassuring count of Steve's current blood pressure in real time.

3. SHOEI X-SPIRIT CRASH HELMET If Steve was to fall over and bump his head, the results for Apple, its shareholders and fans would be devastating. We therefore propose that Steve encases his precious brain in a Shoei X-Spirit Helmet, the finest cranium-padding money can buy. You can't put a price on Steve's brain stem and frontal lobe! The matte black will also match his outfits.

Steve Jobs' health has long been a topic of discussion among both tech sites, and people who own stock in Apple. It's no secret that Jobs, to all intents and purposes, IS Apple, and investors know this, such that every time there's a rumour about his health, Apple's stock takes a nosedive.

Well, Jobs has come out and set the record straight, blaming a "hormone imbalance" for his weight loss. In an open letter on the Apple website, Steve has laid out the reasons why he's been looking a little peaky. He's undergoing treatment for his 'mystery illness', and says he reckons he'll be back to normal by late Spring. The full text of the letter is over the jump.

Who says we're not in touch with women's issues here on Tech Digest?

Over 80,000 users have joined a Facebook group called "Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is not Obscene," after the site started deleting innocent photos of women breastfeeding their newly hatched, soft-headed, screaming, purple-faced spawn. Here's how Facebook defines an offensive nipple photo...

"Photos containing a fully exposed breast - as defined by showing the nipple or areola - do violate those terms on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material and may be removed"

Christmas greetings to one and all! You're probably all a bit financially ruined from spending so much money on Christmas food and presents right now, even with Woolworths virtually giving away all of its stock - and I'm here to help!

Christmas Day is one of the most energy-intensive days of the year, what with demand for power from cooking equipment, entertaining the family and the like, so here are a few tips on how to have an efficient Christmas. You can have a happy holiday AND save energy while doing so...

And my energy saving tip for New Year's Eve? Drink a small bottle of vodka at home, on your own, and ensure you've collapsed asleep in a heap on the carpet in the lounge by 10.30pm, avoiding expensive "ticket only" club nights and their over-priced drinks.

Remember to turn the lights and TV off before you lose consciousness, though! See you in 2009 for more energy saving advice.

Related posts: E&E 11 | E&E 12

So, go on then, guess how a mobile phone app can tell if you're driving or not? Speed of texting? Pauses while texting? More errors than usual? Drastic directional adjustments detected by the iPhone's accelerometer as you hastily steer away from the bus stop, off the pavement and back onto the road?

Nope - Texecution uses GPS to locate the position of your phone, and therefore you, deactivating the phone's SMS features when you seem to be moving at more than 10mph.

There is, of course, an override function for when you're a passenger, on buses and trains, or running really fast to catch a bus or train and trying to text the driver to alert him to your presence, with users able to request authorisation from the phone administrator (er, probably you) to send a text while in motion.

So it's a bit pointless, really, and messing about with authorisation and overrides while driving will actually make sending a sneaky text harder and therefore more likely to cause a pile-up and series of fatalities. But its heart is in the right place. Buy it here for $9.99, should you (a) live in America and (b) own a T-Mobile G1.

(Via Techcrunch)

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You know when you think of a great idea, then realise someone's already thought of it and done it before? And better? Back in 2006?

That's what's happened here. Doctors at the British Society for Surgery of the Hand and Leeds Teaching Hospital have teamed up to say they expect Wii-related injuries to rise, as the UK continues to go Nintendo Wii MAD.

Calling the invented symptom "Wii Knee," the boffins expect to see an increase in patients suffering from joint problems in the new year, all caused by enthusiastic Wii Bowling sessions. It's almost as if Nintendo's Wii is the first invention to have ever required a man to stand up and move about...

A survey conducted by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People discovered that two-thirds of us are listening to MP3 players at dangerously loud volume levels that could break our earholes for good.

The RNID accosted 246 people in the streets of Edinburgh and plugged listening gadgets into the headphone sockets of their MP3 players, testing the volume output levels. The level considered safe for blasting music into the human head is an equivalent output of 85 decibels - but the RNID found that 22% of the people it asked had their 'phones cranked up to more than 100.

By simply making a few changes to how we live our daily lives, it's possible to save energy - and therefore also money and the world.

In a system I'm calling The Modern Energy Efficient Lifestyle (2.0) I shall outline two simple techniques designed to get mankind more in synch with the planet and therefore assure the survival of both man and environment. Here's how.

To summarise - go to bed at 4.30pm tonight so you don't have to sit around with the light on all evening. This advice will work best if you're unemployed or a student and don't have a girlfriend who wants to watch TV tonight.

Related posts: E&E8 | E&E9

You wouldn't think people would ever be pleased to hear they can start drinking their own urine - but the astronauts on the International Space Station are currently over the moon about it.

"There will be dancing later," Mission Control said, after ISS commander Mike Fincke told Earth the orbiting station's faulty water processor - which turns space wee, condensation and SWEAT into lovely drinking water - was fixed.

This raises two important questions - how do you dance in zero gravity? And before the urine-processor was fixed, were the poor astronauts forced to drink raw, unprocessed urine? Our boyhood dreams of going into space have been RUINED, regardless.

Hopefully the machine that turns poo into Mars bars won't break.

(Via USA Today)

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Winter. A terrible time for energy waste, thanks to women always being cold and needing the heating on, plus it's dark so the only things to do are watching TV and going on the internet. AND you have to have the lights on. It's a terrifying period of BIG SPENDING on utility bills. If only there was some way to SAVE MONEY and ENERGY during the winter months...

There is! Allow me to introduce the concept of Human Hibernation. It's insanity that we bother being awake during the boring winter, so I propose a Human Hibernation period from November to March. It's worked successfully in the animal kingdom for decades - so let's follow their example and activate hibernate.

Christmas will have to be moved to Easter to accommodate human hibernation, but that's the only downside I can see. Who's going to hibernate with me? Well, not actually with me. You'll need your own wardrobe and toilet roll.

Related posts: E&E #7 | E&E #8

San Francisco-based artist Tanya Vlach lost an eye in a car accident in 2006 - now she's planning to replace her standard-issue fake eye with a webcam. Preferably wireless - and with a 3x zoom. And infra-red support so she can see what she does in the dark.

Here's what Tanya asked for in an advert she placed for a suitable technician for the job...

"I am attempting to recreate my eye with the help of a miniature camera implant in my prosthetic / artificial eye. The intraocular installation of an eye-cam will substitute for the field of vision of my left eye that I lost in 2005 from a car accident. While my prosthetic is an excellent aesthetic replacement, I am interested in capitalizing on the current advancement of technology to enhance the abilities of my prosthesis for an augmented reality."

One of her crazier requests is for the eye-cam to include support for taking photos by recognising her blinking patterns, with a built-in miniSD card slot for storage. Consider us Day One subscribers to TanyaCam's Flickr feed.

(Via LikeCool)

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Okay - I've seen some stupid inventions in my time, but this really takes the biscuit. It's a treadmill that - get this - moves along the road as you run on it. Like the treadmills-in-World of Warcraft video, but in real life. Your fake running gets translated to real movement. How's that for a waste of time, energy and the planet's precious natural resources?

(via Burbia)

Related YouTube videos: French bloke chain-surfing | Running through World of Warcraft on a treadmill

Sit down by the fire, grandchildren, and let me explain to you why getting hooked on an MMO isn't a good idea. Enter Hu Ange, a 22-year-old Chinese gent, who developed a rather nasty addiction to Legend - a browser-based MMO. He's now on death row, and has just tried to claim 'insanity' as an excuse for his crimes.

What were those crimes? Well, it started when his parents gave him 50,000 yuan (£4.8k or so) to support his seafood business in March 07. He spent it ALL on the game, which allows you to buy virtual weapons and equipment with cash. On July 14 2007, he bought 20 packs of Tetramine, a rat poison, which he then used to poison his father.

Dr William Maisel, a cardiologist at the Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, caused heart-murmurs across the internet this weekend thanks to his claim that music player headphones could break pacemakers - and stop defibrillators restarting dodgy hearts.

It's all because of the magnets in headphones, which could, possibly, if held very close to them, make pacemakers and other "embedded" medical devices stop working.

Good at filtering information but only have pretend friends you've never met in real life? That's good! That means you have evolved. You are better than other people. You are the next level of mankind.

That is according to neuroscientist Gary Small, who reckons that our brains are already changing and evolving thanks to modern technology. 24/7 access to facts, trivia about Star Trek, text messages and weather forecasts is making People 2.0 better at filtering out rubbish data from useful fact, making us all much better at instantly deciding what to keep/remember and what to bin/forget.

The evolutionary change will make people like us the leaders of the new world order, as the technically astute rise to dominance over people who can't set up POP3 email accounts on all their mobile devices without having to seek help...

If you've just been caught doing something by a mouse, science has come up with a useful way to get you off the hook - it can now erase the memories of mice.

This would also mean you could tell a mouse a joke, erase its memory, then tell it the joke again. A mouse could also watch "Total Recall" and be amazed, then erase its own memory of ever having watched "Total Recall" and be amazed by it all over again. Plus you could buy your mouse the same present for Christmas every year and it would never know. The real-world applications for this technology are boundless.

It's probably one of the oldest dilemmas mankind has faced. You need to get your guns from your gun cabinet, but you just can't be bothered to put in the combination and waste precious seconds when you could be wasting precious people instead.

As luck would have it, one inventor has come up with an ingenious solution: chipping himself with an RFID chip, so he only has to wave his hands in front of the safe to open it.

Philips is currently researching into a less invasive procedure for treating patients with cancer and other conditions, using drug-loaded microbubbles.

These bubbles are about the same size as red blood cells, and can be injected into a patient's bloodstream and then tracked via ultrasound imaging.

Drugs would only be released once they reached the required place - a tumour growth, for example. Not only might this increase the effectiveness of the drug, but cut down on unpleasant side-effects.

According to some scientist, humans have stopped evolving. This means we're not going to get any better - at least not naturally.

So I propose science steps in to make us better, seeing as Mother Nature can't be bothered any more. Here's how. These are the evolutionary steps scientists need to introduce to our gene pool ASAP.

1. SIDE EYES Seeing as our ears are always in use listening to MP3s of 1980s cover versions, it's hard to hear cars, bicycles and lorries coming toward you. I therefore suggest moving our eyes to the sides of our heads, like horses, so we're less likely to step out in front of buses because we can't hear them coming. You never hear about horses getting run over because they're too busy listening to the new Oasis album to listen out for cars, do you?

2. WIDER EAR CANALS Dunno about you, but my ear holes are never big enough to accommodate all these so-called "in ear" earphones. You know, the ones you're supposed to ram right in. I ram them in so hard it hurts and my brain pops, yet they still fall out after three minutes when the cable snags on my shirt. I therefore suggest scientists develop wider ear holes for better audio clarity and comfort "on the go."