New Ingestible Pill Can Track Your Farts In Real Time (arstechnica.com) 76
A group of Australian researchers have developed an ingestible electronic capsule to monitor gas levels in the human gut. "When it's paired with a pocket-sized receiver and a mobile phone app, the pill reports tail-wind conditions in real time as it passes from the stomach to the colon," reports Ars Technica. The invention has been reported in the journal Nature Electronics. From the report: The authors are optimistic that the capsule's gas readings can help clear the air over the inner workings of our intricate innards and the multitudes of microbes they contain. Such fume data could clarify the conditions of each section of the gut, what microbes are up to, and which foods may cause problems in the system. Until now, collecting such data has been a challenge. The capsule is 26mm in length, with a 9.8mm external diameter -- like a large vitamin. Its polymer shell surrounds sensors for temperature, CO2, H2, and O2, as well as a button-size silver oxide battery and a transmission system. One end of the capsule contains a gas-permeable membrane that allows for fast diffusion of gut gases.
Grunthos the Flatulent (Score:5, Funny)
The main utility of such a pill + phone app would be to let everyone else around me know when I'm about to fart. I will know anyway.
Also, it would make excuses like "It wasn't me!" completely moot.
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You can also automatically post each bottom burp on Facebook so your friends don't miss a thing.
Ah, just like the early days of Twitter, when I always knew when people were taking a shit.
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So... you're saying this story is a bunch of hot air?
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In other news, GoPro has developed a miniature Bluetooth fingernail-cam, so you can share your pickings close-up on Facetime.
Re:Grunthos the Flatulent (Score:5, Funny)
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My wife has been detecting my farts in real time for YEARS now.
This "Fantastic Voyage" Flatulence Nano Submarine may help scientists to develop medicines that will make your farts smell Tutti Fruitti.
And also add a gas to our farts that will capture carbon dioxide in the air. Thus, curing Global Warming.
Eat beans! It's good for the planet climate!
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Re:Grunthos the Flatulent (Score:4, Interesting)
The main utility of such a pill + phone app would be to let everyone else around me know when I'm about to fart. I will know anyway.
The marketing of mass amounts of telemetry has reeked of bullshit for years now. This is just another crappy data metric to put a price tag on. And yes, it will sell.
Also, it would make excuses like "It wasn't me!" completely moot.
Perhaps that's the entire point. We'll be able to pinpoint who farted in a crowd with precise accuracy using a combination of Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS triangulation. Just when we've started to conquer harassment, someone pulls a new way to do it out of their ass.
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What would be useful would be to detect who farted in an elevator. That ranks near the top of non-codified crimes along with leaving a single square of toilet paper, or leaving the pub before their round is up.
Re:Grunthos the Flatulent (Score:5, Funny)
The main utility of such a pill + phone app would be to let everyone else around me know when I'm about to fart. I will know anyway.
Also, it would make excuses like "It wasn't me!" completely moot.
The main utility of such a pill is to give you enough notice to move closer to the dog.
Besides, I can usually track my farts based on the sounds emitting from my arse... if not the smell.
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Besides, I can usually track my farts based on the sounds emitting from my arse... if not the smell.
When are you not able to track the farts from your own arse?
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This is probably one of the biggest laments that happened when planes switched from 3 pilots in the cockpit to two. After all, with three, should the lower pressure environment cause one of them to make an emission, no one is quite sure who did it. With two pilots though...
Of course, things are worse since 9/11 forced the cockpit door to remain shut at all times. Now you know why pilots sometimes left the door open!
arsetechnica (Score:4, Funny)
Naturally the article is on arstechnica!
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Stephen Green had what may be the best comment possible on this at Instapundit the other day [pjmedia.com] (He's edging on @Iowahawk quality snark here):
Please keep this technology out of the hands of my young sons, who would undoubtedly ingest several of these along with Pop Rocks and a two-liter bottle of Coke.
Great "Related Links" (Score:1)
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We're Creating a Perfect Storm of Unprecedented Global Warming
Well the kids these days do like their avocado hummus...
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I thought it was because they were using pH to which would be affected by H2 and CO2. But it turns out they're actually interested in H2, O2 and CO2
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Researches have previously shown that the microbial community of the intestine can be rapidly and reproducibly modulated by food19. Our data are complemented by the analysis of the microbial community of the faecal samples and metabolomic analysis of faecal short chain fatty acids (SCFA). The focus of our discussion is on the O2, H2 and, to some extent, CO2 profiles. O2 is chosen due to the fact that different segments of the gut have very different O2 concentration levels. Furthermore, and because the movement of the capsules through the gut is governed by the type of dietary intake, we examined whether the O2 profile can be used to identify the location of the capsule and the speed of food passage through each segment. This process of localizing the position of the capsule in the gastrointestinal tract is benchmarked with ultrasound31.
To investigate fermentation of the food intake in the gut both CO2 and H2 profiles were obtained. However, the H2 profiles are of more interest here, as CO2 profile can still be interfered with the respiratory production. H2 plays an important role in understanding the microbial fermentation of the food in the gut as it appears in their metabolic pathways. Gut fermentation is the anaerobic process by which most small bowel and colonic microbes gain energy from unabsorbed food. From previous flatus and measurements in vitro, it is known that H2 excretion varies markedly with different food substrates. H2 by-production is critical for initiating and continuous fermentation, while excessive H2 is thermodynamically counterproductive, restricting further fermentation. This is naturally mitigated as H2 concentration is regulated by its simultaneous oxidation, which is conducted by three main groups of H2-utilizing microbes: reductive acetogens, methanogens and sulphate-reducing bacteria10. These microbes, together with flatus and breath excretion, dynamically reduce H2 concentration. Overall, the first step to understand the food fermentation in the gut is measuring the dynamics of H2 in situ, which has so far not been possible. The capabilities of our gas capsule in measuring H2 are explored in this work through modulating the dietary fibre content (excluding readily fermentable carbohydrates) of the food intake of the subjects in various scenarios.
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What surprises me is they don't include a sensor that picks up sulfide gases like H2S.
Sounds like (Score:2)
It is news because.. (Score:2)
old tech (Score:3)
Good news everyone! (Score:2)
It's a suppository!
Does it have all the interfaces? (Score:2)
What a time to be alive! (Score:2)
What a time to be alive!
26mm by 9.8mm? What a joke. (Score:2)
Like a large vitamin? Have you even seen a vitamin 1cm in diameter? If this is what you call a "large" vitamin, call me when they make a device the size of a regular vitamin.
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"A vitamin"? You mean a molecule?
If you mean a pill, write a pill. And yeah, this horse pill would be a big pill to swallow, but it's actually a standard size for capsules.
Needed for cows! No really! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually if they could make a version of this for cows (and "persuade" the cows not to chew it on the way down) it might be able to retrieve some important data on their methane production.
For those who don't know, methane is a much (20x) "stronger" greenhouse gas (and that's not even counting the smell). Ruminants are supposedly a large source of the gas (and I guess leaks from oil production and distribution) and so if a way to reduce their "emissions" were found that still allowed them to digest their food that could play a small but not insignificant role in reducing climate change. Perhaps genetically engineering the microbes so that they are not so methanogenic or adding some methane consuming microbes to their intestinal flora would do the trick.
Or perhaps either 1) reducing the amount of "meat" eaten (not for me) or 2) perhaps growing the meat in tissue cultures or 3) making really good substitute "meat" using genetically engineered plants that taste like meat (through the inclusion of hemoglobin like iron associated proteins that give meat its taste).
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Cows get all the blame but termites emit more methane than cows [quora.com].
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methane itself is odorless.
While it's described as odorless, and that the odor in most cases is due to an additive to make it smell for safety reasons, methane gas has a faint smell because a small amount of it will create methyl inside your nostrils, which in turn reacts in the carbon and sulphur rich moist environment, turning into all sorts of fun compounds.
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Methane doesn't smell.
Farts smell because of the organosulfur compounds that go along with them.
Natural gas smells because the utility adds stinky mercaptans (also organosulfur compounds, like most smelly stuff) so you can smell dangerous gas leaks.
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Yeah, for those who don't know:
Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle? [slashdot.org]
Carbon, Methane Emissions and the Dairy Cow [psu.edu]
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The scatological is still the highest humor (Score:3)
Underneath all of our fancy gadgets, clothing, titles, money, and neurosis, we are still giggling monkeys in the bush, lighting our farts and hoping that the resulting glee will somehow diminish the pain of eternal darkness after death. No wonder our society is so neurotic.
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There's nothing dignified about cutting a turd loose. There's nothing elegant about removing shit stuck to your body.
We all know that from the smallest baby to the most gorgeous supermodel: all must go through the humiliation of giving birth to a politician.
If there's one thing that unites all of humanity, it's the knowledge that we all must check our egos at the door, and rendezvous with last night's supper.
Strange Brew (Score:1)
Years (Score:2)
Of course its from Australia (Score:2)
Has its own soundtrack:
I go to your land down under
Where wind blows and then chunders
Definitely prizeworthy (Score:1)
It's like scientists are now TRYING to win Ignobel Prizes.
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It certainly qualifies: Makes you laugh at first, but then you think.
It's not about farts so much as modeling the gut.
I've got a niece who can't eat without debilitating pain once the food hits her stomach, so having a better idea why may be very useful.
Vegeta! (Score:2)
"Vegeta, what does the pill say about his flatulence level!?"
"It's over NINE THOUSAAAAND!!!"
What happens if... (Score:2)
...Someone blows smoke up your ass?
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Last time I used the word fart was in the 3rd grade.
What do you say now, two years later?
Or have you become so repressed that you pretend it does not happen and that there's never a reason to talk about it?
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Or have you become so repressed that you pretend it does not happen and that there's never a reason to talk about it?
I'd mod you up if I could.
Fecal humor exists in every human culture for a reason: We can't escape our biology.
Humanity is united in knowing that even Emperors and Kings can't escape it. It doesn't take much of a Google search to see the POTUS doing it. (I don't think it matters which POTUS...)
Appropriate news source (Score:1)
It's April already? (Score:2)
The one who tracked it... (Score:2)
Tweets... (Score:2)
For you.