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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.
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.
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).