SAMPLING THE MICROBIOME ON A MACRO LEVEL: Smart Sewers Will Reveal What’s in Cambridge Citizens’ Guts. “Eventually, with robotic samplers placed below the streets, Cambridge may have a ‘smart sewer’ that will let public health officials study the city’s collective microbiome—the communities of microorganisms that live in humans’ guts…. The MIT team will also test for drugs—both illicit and pharmaceutical—but they plan to go much further. Led by Eric Alm, a computational microbiologist, and Carlo Ratti, an architect and engineer, the Underworlders will screen for viruses, such as influenza and norovirus, to detect incipient outbreaks in Cambridge. They will sequence the DNA of bacteria to identify food-borne pathogens. And they will search for biomarkers, or biochemical indicators of various aspects of human health and disease.”

I’ll be interested to learn about the levels of estrogens from birth-control pills. I assume they’ll test for that, too.