The strangest (toilet) tech to come out of Utah: May edition: On smart toilet seats, Utah's claim to toilet fame, and ... biomarker mapping toilets?

• Author: Stone, Zara

AS WE HEAD INTO another sizzling summer and Jen Shah's "not guilty" merch drops--not to mention the inevitable strange sightings over at Skinwalker Ranch--sit back, relax, and take a minute to embrace the ridiculousness that is reality.

Speaking of which, can BYU students please, please, stop cooking up homemade rocket fuel in their dorms? BYU police were summoned when a stove-top batch of rocket fuel "exploded into a fireball," and campus police were not happy. "Keep your experiments in the lab," they warned.

On the less explosive side of things, startup summer reading is now available with a side of fanfiction. Everyone's favorite eccentric VC, Scott Paul, landed the starring role in an NFT novel cooked up by Elle Griffin, a.k.a. The Novelleist, a.k.a editor-in-chief of Utah Business. Zingers like, "SafeMoon was melting like Dali's clocks," add a new layer of #meta. See you in Decentraland.

Seeing as Utahns are chill with being the butt of the joke, this month's Two Truths And A Lie, The Utah Tech Edition stays with the potty theme. Out of the following three toilet startups, which is the fake one?

* A startup that uses motion detection and LED lights to get you to the bowl at night

* A startup that analyzes pet poop to police bad pet owner behavior

* A startup that auto-plays pleasant music to cover noisy ablutions

SIT IN JUDGMENT ON THE Al MEDIC LAV SMART TOILET

Next time you head to the restroom for a much-needed Wordle break, be warned that you may be weighed, scanned, and assessed by the Medic Lav smart toilet. You can thank Provo-based Medic.life for this Al-assisted experience--their sensor-laden seat and bowl records users' weight, body fat, and blood pressure.

The smart toilet is equipped with a bidet and fume extractor, plus a super-duper biosensor field-effect transistor that measures proteins, antigens, DNA, RNA, and microRNA in urine. It's sensitive enough to map thousands of biomarkers related to infections and diseases, including COVID. Back-to-work urine test or nose swab--to each their own, I guess.

The reason for this bowl invasion is early prevention: a staggering amount of Americans are walking around with undiagnosed kidney disease and hypertension. These health issues could easily be caught and addressed via a simple urine analysis. This feels like a smart, non-invasive way to get help early--a win-win all around. Data is collected and sent to Medic.life's encrypted app, which can also be shared with family or health...