Posted on 12/06/2022 11:31:00 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
A small toilet-based sound sensor that can tell the difference between peeing, pooping and diarrhea may one day help prevent cholera outbreaks.
"The hope is that this sensor, which is small in footprint and noninvasive in approach, could be deployed to areas where cholera outbreaks are a persistent risk," said researcher Maia Gatlin of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease that can kill within hours if untreated, according to the World Health Organization.
So Gatlin and her team wanted to see if they could identify bowel sounds. They tested the idea in a way that might seem a little stomach-turning: They used audio data of people on the toilet after gathering the sounds from online sources.
Each sound bite was turned into a spectrogram, which captures the sound in an image. Urine creates a consistent tone, the researchers found. Poop may have a singular tone. Diarrhea sounds more random.
The researchers fed the sound images into a machine learning algorithm, which learned to recognize the sound of each bathroom activity. The team then tested the algorithm's performance against data with and without background noises to make sure it was learning correctly.
The researchers plan to gather real-world acoustic data to help their machine learning model adapt to work in a variety of bathroom environments. The sensor doesn't identify a specific person.
The findings were scheduled for presentation Monday at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Nashville, Tenn. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
Reminds be of a scene from one of those Police Squad movies.
I’ll bet calibration is a bit messy.
The last bastion of privacy has been invaded.
1984 was not a work of fiction, it was a non-fiction.
It sound like Maia is having a chitty day!
A small toilet-based sound sensor that can tell the difference between peeing, pooping and diarrhea
= = =
OK!
I need one of these. Will it be a TV Only $19.99 offer?
And some for Christmas presents for special relatives.
Can I get the WiFi option with Smartphone notification?
You know the Secret Service already has these.
They are ‘recent scientific developments, just now being released to the public’
Will they be installing them in Taco Bell restrooms? Could be interesting. How about truck stops?
It got me thinking of Lord Windesmear and the Farting contest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPplyQWf-u4
You have no life it belongs to them and they’re very dangerous
most people getting cholora don’t have toilets.
Uhmm...I’ll pass.
Let me re-phrase that!
It could detect a cholera outbreak, or the local presence of a Taco Bell restaurant.
I hate to tell the geniuses at Georgia Tech that developed this technology but most of the cholera outbreaks in the past have occurred where the population had no F’ing flush toilets. Where they gonna stick their sensor?
Lol! How about some more beans Mr. Taggart?
Don’t forget the scene in Blazing Saddles.
No, Taco Bell is where they will be installing the three sea shells.
Playing it for this toilet sensor could lead to hilarious results.
And no one to this day knows how to use the damn things. That’s why it’s just better to swear a lot, and use the tickets.
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