In the election platform of Britain's Monster Raving Loony Party (never won, always fun), there used to be a proposal to get electric power from gyms -- hook up all those steppers and runners-in-place to the grid.
Once a joke, now an earnest research question. Can we, Matrix-style, get electricity from people's muscles as they do the wave at a stadium, run around the playground at recess, shift from foot to foot as they chat at a party? Some nanotechnologists, including the inventors of the ``crowd farm'' at MIT, say yes, we can.
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