christopher booker
Can studying sewage reveal new insights about public health?
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER: The most unpleasant job in all of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Boston next door neighbor, may well belong to a robot named Luigi. These researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lower Luigi into the city's sewer system to collect samples of human wastewater. More than two-feet long this robot is on the cutting edge of data collection and public health research. He was created by M.I.T.'s Senseable City lab, which innovates new approaches to study urban environments. ERIC ALM: It's a great way to get behavioral data that would be very difficult to get on a person-by-person basis.