Onthefly
Onthefly's Journal'Smart underwear' measures how often humans fart
Science News, By Tina Hesman Saey
MARCH 10, 2026 AT 11:00 AM
Everybody farts. The question is how often? And how much gas is too much gas to pass?
Those are questions that arose from frustration with a piece of lab equipment.
To see the fart sensor in action, make sure to check out the video at the end!
Microbiologist Brantley Hall of the University of Maryland in College Park and colleagues study the metabolism of gut microbes. They tried unsuccessfully to measure hydrogen production from gut microbes with a sensor in an oxygen-free chamber. Frustrated, “we took the sensor out of the chamber, and we were like, ‘Screw it. We’re going to try to measure a fart.’” So Hall stuck the device down his own pants and let rip. “And the signal was enormous.”
Inspired by that incident, the team devised “smart underwear” that can track toots, specifically the hydrogen part of farts. Hall and colleagues described their device — a small hydrogen sensor about as big around as a quarter that snaps to people’s regular underwear — in the December 2025 Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X.
In a test of the device, healthy college-age volunteers who wore sensors farted an average of 32 times a day. But that figure varied from a minimum of four flatus daily to a maximum of 59. Eating high fiber gumdrops caused 36 of 38 participants to break wind more often, the researchers found.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/smart-underwear-human-fart-frequency
Homo Sapiens fossils dated about 773,000 years ago in Morocco
Human fossils dating to about 773,000 years ago have been identified in a cave in Casablanca, with researchers saying the remains may come from an archaic population close to the deep ancestry of Homo sapiens and potentially near the lineage that later produced Neanderthals and Denisovans, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature.
The fossils were excavated at Grotte à Hominidés at the Thomas I quarry site and include lower jawbones from two adults and a young child, along with teeth and other bone fragments, according to the research team.
https://en.hespress.com/128934-128934.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09914-y
These female divers spend more time underwater than any other humans
The way Korea’s Haenyeo divers push human physiology to extremes is surprising
By Brianna Randall
AUGUST 18, 2025 AT 2:00 PM
The Haenyeo women who dive deep into the East China Sea to harvest sea urchins and shellfish spend the most time underwater of any humans ever studied — one to five hours a day, researchers report August 18 in Current Biology.
“It’s as close as you get to studying a mermaid,” says Chris McKnight, a marine mammal biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
McKnight and colleagues worked with seven Haenyeo divers who live on Jeju Island in South Korea. Over 1,786 dives, the women wore devices that measured how long they stayed underwater and how deep they dove. The devices also tracked oxygen levels in the women’s brains and muscles.
The women dove repeatedly for two to 10 hours each day and spent an average of 56 percent of the time beneath the surface — more underwater time than many aquatic mammals, including beavers, polar bears and sea otters, the researchers say.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/female-divers-underwater-haenyeo-korea
From Tech Lords to Dr. Who Villains,
Digby’s Hullabaloo, Published by Tom Sullivan on July 21, 2025
Paul Krugman this morning considers that because “we live in a corrupted democracy in which wealth buys power,” our political discourse is driven by “crazy ideas.” One source of those crazy ideas — the sitting president’s name appears nowhere in Krugman’s comments — is Silicon Valley. Once upon a time, the public saw tech gurus as benificent. But that has changed. They have changed. Wealth that buys political power changed them. Once pro-Democrat tech scions have swung hard right as their public images sank.
Krugman references Wall Street’s post-financial collapse “Obama rage” as an analog:
Were the Masters of the Universe really that angry over Obama calling them “fat cats”? Or was their outrage performative, aimed at heading off tighter financial regulation? Yes.
The antipathy toward Obama came even as Obama’s team foamed the runway for banks in crisis. Their anger at being called out was strategic but also real, Krugman argues, suggesting “nothing makes a privileged man angrier than criticism of his privilege.”
https://digbysblog.net/2025/07/21/from-tech-lords-to-dr-who-villains/
Man who jumped from edge of space dies paragliding
Source: BBC World News
Felix Baumgartner, who once broke the world record for the highest skydive by jumping from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident in Italy.
The 56-year-old fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel while flying over the village of Porto Sant'Elpidio in the eastern Marche region.
The Austrian daredevil made headlines in 2012 when he broke the world record for the highest-ever skydive, jumping from a balloon more than 39km (128,000 ft) up in the stratosphere.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2k7094e8xo
Bedbugs may have been one of the first urban pests
By Jake Buehler
MAY 27, 2025 AT 7:01 PM
The earliest cities may have had plenty of parasitic, six-legged tenants.
Common bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) experienced a dramatic jump in population size around the time humans congregated in the first cities. The wee bloodsuckers were probably the first insect pests to flourish in a city environment and possibly one of the first urban pests overall, researchers report May 28 in Biology Letters.
Originally, bedbugs fed on bats. But around 245,000 years ago, one lineage took up a human diet (probably starting with Neandertals) and never looked back. About a decade ago, urban entomologist Warren Booth of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and his colleagues extracted and analyzed the genomes of bedbugs from both lineages to aid future research on the insects’ evolutionary history. The team was interested in how organisms adapt to urban life, and bedbugs, as widespread indoor insects today, were a good example to study.
About a year ago, when Lindsay Miles — also at Virginia Tech — analyzed the genetic data to estimate past changes in bedbug population size, there were some surprises, Booth says. The team expected to see population drops about 19,000 years ago around the end of the last expansion of Ice Age glaciers due to environmental changes like habitat loss. While both lineages declined, the human lineage took a sharp upswing around 13,000 years ago, plateaued and then spiked again 7,000 years ago. In contrast, the bat lineage is still declining.
“Something different happened with human-associated bedbugs that caused that increase,” Booth says.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bedbugs-first-urban-pests
Important interview with Dr Brandy X Lee
Mindsite News
‘A Public Health Emergency’: The Crusade to Assess Trump’s Mental Fitness for Office
Dr. Bandy X. Lee says Trump has deteriorated, and the level of danger has vastly increased — especially because his symptoms have spread.
BY DIANA HEMBREE ● ESSAYS & INTERVIEWS ● APRIL 21, 2025
https://mindsitenews.org/2025/04/21/trump-and-dementia/
I can breathe! Just had my sinus splints removed.
I had endoscopic sinus surgery one week ago to treat chronic sinusitis.
Feeling better now.
Reporters call Medicaid a popular program
Medicaid is not a popular program for most people. It is a lifeline and the only viable option for low income people or people with disabilities. Calling it a popular program waters down the necessity of health care that Medicaid provides. Calling it a popular program is like saying you can choose between Cancun and Disney World. No. Medicaid is required.
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