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Speaker 1: Welcome to How Stuff Works. Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,

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Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here at How Stuff Works. Every week,

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Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the

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Speaker 1: weird and wondrous developments we've seen in science, technology, and culture.

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Speaker 1: This week. Given some recent headlines from Vietnam and Iraq,

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Speaker 1: we exploil a question of whether internet access is a

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Speaker 1: human right, and given a headline from here in the

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Speaker 1: United States, we report on the second ever successful penis transplant.

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Speaker 1: Yes but first. Senior writer Robert Lamb brings us the

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Speaker 1: story of a research team that managed to make a

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Speaker 1: functioning super capacitor out of food products. The team says

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Speaker 1: their university gave them a hard time with the expense reports.

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Speaker 1: They saw barbecue, sauce and energy drinks and assumed that

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Speaker 1: they were throwing parties. That's right, eat a motherboard sandwich

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Speaker 1: mcg ivor. Because engineering professor Dr Han Queen Young and

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Speaker 1: his team made a super capacitor out of food stuffs.

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Speaker 1: They combined water act the dated charcoal pellets, egg white

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Speaker 1: gold foil, gelatine, cheddar cheese, seaweed, and Monster energy drink

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Speaker 1: into a sandwich the size of a soy sauce packet,

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Speaker 1: all of this resembling across between ravioli and shark eggs.

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Speaker 1: This tight little package of edible materials can travel the

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Speaker 1: human digestive highway with ease. But more importantly, you can

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Speaker 1: hook the thing up to an electric current and store

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Speaker 1: a temporary charge on it prior to ingestion. And yes,

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Speaker 1: since the device is casing is cheddar cheese, the supercapacitor

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Speaker 1: itself tastes like cheese and is the world's first non

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Speaker 1: vegan electronic components. So sorry vegans. Now, seeing as we

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Speaker 1: don't live in a David Cronenberg film, you're probably wondering

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Speaker 1: why a human would want to swallow an organic electrical

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Speaker 1: capacitor to begin with. Well, for starters, the researchers demonstrated

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Speaker 1: this little spark Ravioli's ability to kill disease causing bacteria

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Speaker 1: like a coli in vitro. Even more important, however, is

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Speaker 1: its potential to power the tiny wireless cameras used in

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Speaker 1: capsule into scopy with no worries about contamination if the

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Speaker 1: capsule breaks. A whole host of biomedical devices could benefit

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Speaker 1: from the technology, especially if three D printers could be

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Speaker 1: outfitted to create even smaller edible supercapacitors cheaply and on demand.

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Speaker 1: Next up, senior writer Jonathan Strickland explains two recent cases

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Speaker 1: of a government restricting its citizens access to the Internet

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Speaker 1: over seemingly strange issues, dead fish and school exams. The

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Speaker 1: Internet is still a relatively young technology, and yet it's

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Speaker 1: hard to imagine our world without it. So how would

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Speaker 1: you feel if your country's government restricted your access to

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Speaker 1: the Internet. It's something that has happened several times in

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Speaker 1: the past, despite the United Nations declaring that Internet access

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Speaker 1: should be unrestricted except in a few cases prescribed by

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Speaker 1: international human rights law, and it may have happened recently

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Speaker 1: in Vietnam, where it all has to do with pollution

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Speaker 1: and fish. Since April, dead fish have been turning up

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Speaker 1: in rivers and on shorelines. Many in Vietnam blame a

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Speaker 1: Taiwanese company called Formosa Plastics. It turns out Formosa had

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Speaker 1: an illegal waste pipe, but the company maintains it isn't

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Speaker 1: responsible for the fish dying. The Vietnamese government required Formosa

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Speaker 1: to dig up and remove the pipe. According to city

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Speaker 1: government officials, the real culprit might be a polluted canal

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Speaker 1: system coupled with heavy rains. But for two weeks protesters

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Speaker 1: used Facebook to organize rallies in major cities calling for

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Speaker 1: Formosa to admit responsibility for the dead fish. Then, mysteriously,

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Speaker 1: people in Vietnam discovered they couldn't access Facebook or Instagram.

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Speaker 1: Did the government shut down access to Facebook to prevent

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Speaker 1: further protests as we record this episode? The answer is unclear,

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Speaker 1: but many are assuming as much. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the

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Speaker 1: Ministry of Communication shut down all access to the Internet

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Speaker 1: three times for three hours each why to stop students

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Speaker 1: from cheating on exams. Apparently Iraqi schools have a problem

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Speaker 1: with students bringing mobile devices into exam rooms. Cutting off

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Speaker 1: Internet access nationally wasn't effective if excessive solution. Perhaps this

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Speaker 1: will mean the return of the old reliable method of

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Speaker 1: writing answers down on the palm of your hand, or

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Speaker 1: maybe it will even lead to students studying harder for exams.

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Speaker 1: But jokes aside, this policy impacts everyone in i Rock,

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Speaker 1: not just students, and human rights advocacy groups like Access

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Speaker 1: Now have spoken out against the strategy. Is it ever

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Speaker 1: okay for a government to limit or remove Internet access?

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Speaker 1: We've seen it happen during contentious elections in Uganda, during

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Speaker 1: the Arab Spring uprisings in eleven and as a matter

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Speaker 1: of general policy in China. And finally, today, I've got

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Speaker 1: the story of the world second successful penis transplant from

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Speaker 1: a deceased organ donor. I spent two days researching this, y'all.

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Speaker 1: It's a crazy dream job. I mean it is. But

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Speaker 1: all jokes aside, why are we reporting on the second instance?

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Speaker 1: Lots of the time, we as science reporters aren't too

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Speaker 1: concerned with the second instance of anything, but well, first

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Speaker 1: of all, we should be because that means the science

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Speaker 1: behind the first instance is working. That's rad Secondly, in

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Speaker 1: this case, it's more than just a salacious headline. Penal

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Speaker 1: cancer is relatively rare, affecting between one and four men

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Speaker 1: out of every one hundred thousand in different populations around

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Speaker 1: the world. Still, in the U S alone, some two

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Speaker 1: thousand new cases will be diagnosed in that's according to

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Speaker 1: the American Cancer Society. The most common treatment is penectomy

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Speaker 1: and at least partial removal of the penis to prevent

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Speaker 1: the disease from spreading and becoming fatal. That's what happened

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Speaker 1: to Thomas Manning, the sixty four year old recipient of

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Speaker 1: the world's second successful penis transplant. Three years ago, a

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Speaker 1: work accident led him to a hospitalization during which his

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Speaker 1: aggressive and potentially fatal cancer was detected. One lucky accident

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Speaker 1: after a partial penoctomy left him with a one inch stump.

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Speaker 1: Manning reported such a decreased quality of life that he

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Speaker 1: convinced a medical team to develop a transplant plan. Transplanting

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Speaker 1: any organ is a massive undertaking. The first such surgery

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Speaker 1: that actually worked, a kidney transplant among identical twins, didn't

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Speaker 1: happen until nineteen fifty four. Now thousands of kidney, liver,

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Speaker 1: and lung transplants are conducted each year in the U

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Speaker 1: S alone, but the first successful penis transplant didn't happen

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Speaker 1: until in South Africa. It restored urological and sexual function

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Speaker 1: to a twenty one year old had had a penectomy

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Speaker 1: after his ritual circumcision went poorly and Gang Green sent in.

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Speaker 1: Following in that team's footsteps, Manning's twelve surgeon team performed

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Speaker 1: the procedure over fifteen hours. They say they're cautiously optimistic

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Speaker 1: that Manning will regain seventy of his former function, and

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Speaker 1: Manning himself is in good spirits. That last part maybe

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Speaker 1: the least scientific factor in the surgery, but it's still important.

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Speaker 1: The first attempted penis transplant, conducted in China in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and six, went physically well, but ended in the

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Speaker 1: removal of the transplanted organ, reportedly due to the patients

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Speaker 1: and his wife's psychological distress and quality of life is,

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Speaker 1: after all, the point of penile transplants. Manning's team and

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Speaker 1: others like them are hoping to apply these results not

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Speaker 1: only to other cancer patients, but also to combat veterans

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Speaker 1: and other men with severe pelvic injuries. And that's our

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Speaker 1: show for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: Subscribe now for more of the latest and strangest science news,

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Speaker 1: and Hey, send us your ideas for new stories, plus

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Speaker 1: any snack suggestions. I'm really hungry. Shoot us an email

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Speaker 1: at now podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and

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Speaker 1: to access thousands of other stories like these, check out

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Speaker 1: our home planet now dot haustuff works dot com. M

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Speaker 1: m HM