What wonderful times we live in. If you've got some funky stuff going on down below, a good way to diagnose exactly what's happening is to swallow a pill-sized camera robot to have a looksie. Only problem is, those things have trouble swimming upstream, if you will, to stay near the specific trouble spot. Carnegie Mellon university researchers have potentially solved that problem with a new capsule bot that uses tiny feet covered in hairlike adhesive projections to anchor the 'bot at a specific point, without damaging sensitive tissues when it's time to get unstuck. All the same, I really just don't know if I want anything anchoring to my intestines, ever. More including a quick video over at: [Technology Review]

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Fact: After years of too much pizza and beer, every time I exhale, my oesophagus plays Merry Had a Little Lamb. Now PillCams have seen a major upgrade that will allow scientists--who've long been wanting to study my ravaged GI tract in hopes of developing a superior race of competitive eaters--to check out my oesophagus and stomach for far longer than the four seconds it usually takes to swallow a pill.

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