Hand-held detector promises instant diagnosis
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28 August 2010 | NewScientist | 19 For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology FACEBOOK Places, launched last week, is the latest indicator that location services are becoming integral to social networks. Not everyone with a GPS-enabled smartphone wants to broadcast their whereabouts, but navigating settings menus to adjust the privacy levels is often laborious. A new phone app promises to give users a quick and easy way to change what they divulge. Privacy Shake, developed by Lukasz Jedrzejczyk at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and colleagues, lets users adjust their privacy settings by shaking the phone, an easy way to interact with hand-held gadgets. A sideways shake hides the user’s location, while an up-down shake broadcasts it. The work will be presented at the Mobile Human Computer Interaction conference in Lisbon, Portugal, next month. Frog cells help e-nose smell GENETIC modification of egg cells from frogs has led to the development of a supersensitive artificial nose. Shoji Takeuchi at the University of Tokyo, Japan, says that today’s electronic noses, used to sniff for rotten food in production lines, lack accuracy. Such e-noses contain quartz rods designed to vibrate at a different frequency when they bind to a target substance. But this is not a foolproof system, as subtly different substances with similar molecular weights may bind to the rod, producing a false positive. Instead, Takeuchi believes there is nothing quite as good as biology for distinguishing between different biomolecules, such as disease markers in our breath. To this end, his team has developed a living smell sensor. First, immature eggs, or oocytes, from the African clawed frog PETER ARNOLD/ALAMY TECHNOLOGY Perfect privacy in a few shakes Xenopus laevis were genetically modified to express the proteins known to act as smell receptors. The team then placed the modified cells between electrodes and measured the telltale currents generated when different molecules bound to the receptors. They say that this method can distinguish between nearly identical biomolecules (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004334107). As a proof of concept, Takeuchi has built a robot that shakes its head when moth pheromones are sensed by the nose. FAMILY doctors could instantly detect a range of diseases – from breast cancer to MRSA – using a hand-held device being developed by the UK-based R&D company Cambridge Consultants. The CliniHub, now in its early stages of development in partnership with Xen Biofluidix of San Diego, California, centres on a detector that senses a telltale glow produced by each disease. Credit-card-sized sample trays hold polystyrene beads that contain fluorescent labels and have antibody coatings, for which patent applications have been Portable detector pinpoints disease filed. The antibodies interact with specific disease markers, causing the beads to clump together and produce a strong fluorescence under UV light from an LED. That glow is picked up by a built-in light detector. Simon Burnell of Cambridge Consultants would not disclose any details of the antibody coatings or disease markers the system will utilise. But he claims one version will allow doctors to test for breast cancer, enabling them to prioritise which patients go for mammogram screenings. Burnell says a later domestic version of CliniHub will allow people to swab a sore throat to see if it is a viral infection, or a bacterial infection requiring antibiotics. –The secret to artificial noses– tonnes of power cable is being laid on the seabed off Cornwall, UK, to link four wave farms to land for the Wave Hub project 1300 Search engine consultant and blogger Rob Ousbey has stumbled across an experimental function offered to some Google users that generates a stream of search results which are continually updated and refined as the user types in their search term (Ousbey.com, 21 August) “You don’t even hit the Search button any more” “There is nothing quite as good as biology for distinguishing between biomolecules”
Transcript of Hand-held detector promises instant diagnosis
28 August 2010 | NewScientist | 19
For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology
FACEBOOK Places, launched last week, is the latest indicator that location services are becoming integral to social networks. Not everyone with a GPS-enabled smartphone wants to broadcast their whereabouts, but navigating settings menus to adjust the privacy levels is often laborious. A new phone app promises to give users a quick and easy way to change what they divulge.
Privacy Shake, developed by Lukasz Jedrzejczyk at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and colleagues, lets users adjust their privacy settings by shaking the phone, an easy way to interact with hand-held gadgets. A sideways shake hides the user’s location, while an up-down shake broadcasts it. The work will be presented at the Mobile Human Computer Interaction conference in Lisbon, Portugal, next month.
Frog cells help e-nose smellGENETIC modification of egg cells from frogs has led to the development of a supersensitive artificial nose.
Shoji Takeuchi at the University of Tokyo, Japan, says that today’s electronic noses, used to sniff for rotten food in production lines, lack accuracy. Such e-noses contain quartz rods designed to vibrate at a different frequency when they bind to a target substance. But this is not a foolproof system, as subtly different substances with similar molecular weights may bind to the rod, producing a false positive.
Instead, Takeuchi believes there is nothing quite as good as biology for distinguishing between different biomolecules, such as disease markers in our breath. To this end, his team has developed a living smell sensor.
First, immature eggs, or oocytes, from the African clawed frog
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perfect privacy in a few shakes
Xenopus laevis were genetically modified to express the proteins known to act as smell receptors. The team then placed the modified cells between electrodes and measured the telltale currents generated when different molecules bound to the receptors. They say
that this method can distinguish between nearly identical biomolecules (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004334107).
As a proof of concept, Takeuchi has built a robot that shakes its head when moth pheromones are sensed by the nose.
FAMILY doctors could instantly detect a range of diseases – from breast cancer to MRSA – using a hand-held device being developed by the UK-based R&D company Cambridge Consultants.
The CliniHub, now in its early stages of development in partnership with Xen Biofluidix of San Diego, California, centres on a detector that senses a telltale glow produced by each disease.
Credit-card-sized sample trays hold polystyrene beads that contain fluorescent labels and have antibody coatings, for which patent applications have been
portable detector pinpoints disease
filed. The antibodies interact with specific disease markers, causing the beads to clump together and produce a strong fluorescence under UV light from an LED. That glow is picked up by a built-in light detector.
Simon Burnell of Cambridge Consultants would not disclose any details of the antibody coatings or disease markers the system will utilise. But he claims one version will allow doctors to test for breast cancer, enabling them to prioritise which patients go for mammogram screenings.
Burnell says a later domestic version of CliniHub will allow people to swab a sore throat to see if it is a viral infection, or a bacterial infection requiring antibiotics.
–The secret to artificial noses–
tonnes of power cable is being laid on the seabed off Cornwall, UK, to link four wave farms to land for the Wave Hub project
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Search engine consultant and blogger Rob Ousbey has stumbled across an experimental function offered to some Google users that generates a stream of search results which are continually updated and refined as the user types in their search term (Ousbey.com, 21 August)
“you don’t even hit the Search button any more”
“There is nothing quite as good as biology for distinguishing between biomolecules”
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