Slashdot Mirror
New Ingestible Pill Can Track Your Farts In Real Time (arstechnica.com)
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.
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.
Naturally the article is on arstechnica!
We're Creating a Perfect Storm of Unprecedented Global Warming
it detects H2, CO2, and O2 but not CH4?
SNL already did this:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/df1dcc6e64/ashton-kutcher-tooter
I have an idea for a Black Mirror episode.
sounds like a load of guff to me.
it is about fats, am I right? I bet if it was measuring temperature, acidity, pressure, anything other than farts.. it would not have made it on the front page.
I have been able to track mine in real time for most of my life, the only exceptions being when I had particularly bad colds.
It's a suppository!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He almost always does the deed exactly moments before he steps out of the elevator; that is evil incarnate.
The two devices has been nicknamed Terrance and Phillip. Also the pill has been wisely shaped into the form of a bean.
Someone post this:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news...
Haynes: "So, what we can do on our side is actually very terrifying."
PV Journalist: "Why? What could be terrifying?"
Haynes: "We have full access to every single person's account, every single direct message, deleted direct messages, deleted tweets. I can tell you exactly who logged in from where, what username and password, when they changed their password."
PV Journalist: "Why do you keep it (user data)? I guess I don't get that. I'm not in this field, so I don't get why you keep it. Like, who cares?"
Haynes: "Mostly law enforcement and it also helps us detect a pattern of history. It's very, very dangerous. Also, very, very, creepy Big Brother-ish."
Makes me wonder about how it would be deactivated...
Unless the tracking data can be auto posted to facebook, twitter, snapchat, instagram and blogger it is useless.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What a time to be alive!
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.
Will this pill give me gas?
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).
Strapping a blow torch to the back side could achieve the same result.
Have just read a couple of articles during lunch from Stewart Lee's "Content Provider" Selected Short Prose Pieces 2011-2016 book (original article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/19/stewart-lee-bbc-witch-hunters-reform-panel-culture-secretary), which included a suggestion to Andrew Fisher of Shazam, and then came across this shortly after.
They just call them news these days.
Because it would save laundry expenses if I knew ahead of time.
Perhaps this will confirm for my vegan wife that her farts are both self-aware and malevolent!
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.
Alternative Right.
Didn't the McKenzie brothers have prior art: "It wasn't me, eh. It was the chair"; "Check the machine, he's lying, eh?"; "He's lying alright!"
Cows get all the blame but termites emit more methane than cows.
I have been reading Slashdot for years in the hopes of a real, practical, cutting edge technology with real world applications. FINALLY!
Has its own soundtrack:
I go to your land down under
Where wind blows and then chunders
It's like scientists are now TRYING to win Ignobel Prizes.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
damn thing overloaded.
methane is a much (20x) "stronger" greenhouse gas (and that's not even counting the smell).
While the part about methane being a stronger greenhouse gas is correct, the part about the smell isn't: methane itself is odorless. Flatulence only smells because of additional compounds that are released, not because of the methane.
The reason you can smell natural gas from gas lines or bottles is that additives are added to natural gas so that if there ever is a leak somewhere people are able to smell it. Pure methane is actually really dangerous because of the lack of odor and the potential for explosions.
"Vegeta, what does the pill say about his flatulence level!?"
"It's over NINE THOUSAAAAND!!!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...Someone blows smoke up your ass?
Last time I used the word fart was in the 3rd grade. I think the brain cells of these writers is about 3rd grade level.
Seems to me that Arstechnica really earned their name with this article...
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.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Jeez, I need to get out more.
Yeah, for those who don't know:
Can We Reduce Cow Methane Emissions By Breeding Low-Emission Cattle?
Carbon, Methane Emissions and the Dairy Cow
Here's an idea. Let's invent a small device that measures water, and then toss it into the nearest lake, to see what it finds.
Man, that's a lot of water!
There are journals these days that would even publish your final report.
The one who tracked it.. cracked it.
Are very fart smellers. Give them the prize!
Human farts can be added to the carbon credit system.
For you.
Cows don't generate most of their methane from farts, it comes out of their mouths as burps. We also already have massive information about their methane production and even ways to massive reduce it through feed, however those feeding methods tend to only be viable in feedlots where you can control what they eat.