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| RESEARCHERS CREATE POTENTIAL TOXIC SENSOR CHIP BY COMBINING ELECTRONICS WITH LIVING CELL |
| In experiments conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers have found a way to tap into the telltale electrical signals that mark cell death, opening the door to the creation of a "canary on a chip" that can be used to sound the alarm of a biochemical attack or test drug toxicity on human tissue. |
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| BETTER THAN BARCODES |
| That bar code on your cereal box holds information read by a laser scanner. It's not much information, but it's enough to let the supermarket take your money, keep track of inventory, follow trends in customer preference, and restock its shelves. Scanners and bar codes speed up checkout, but they've got a few limitations. The scanning laser needs a direct line of sight to the bar code, and the bar code itself needs to be reasonably clean and undamaged – one reason your cashier might have to swipe that bag of spuds four or five times before the scanner reads it. |
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| TIME FOR NEEDLE-FREE DIABETES MANAGEMENT |
| Diabetics are one step closer to blood-free glucose testing, with new developments to a wrist device that can 'suck' fluid through the skin presented to a British conference this week.
Professor Richard Guy and colleagues, from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, announced a new calibration method for the device, called 'GlucoWatch'. |
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| ENGINEERS DEVELOP NEW CHEMICAL SENSOR BASED ON EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS BREAKTHROUGH |
| For the first time, scientists have found evidence of a long-suspected phenomenon; tiny electrical currents produced when molecules interact with metal surfaces. The discovery may usher in a new generation of chemical detectors, and reveals details about catalytic processes used to produce more than half of the chemicals manufactured worldwide. |
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| SENSOR, MOLECULAR DEVICE DEVELOPMENT FOCUS OF NSF FUNDED RESEARCH |
| Two Virginia Tech research projects -- to develop new sensors for detecting pathogens and DNA, and to improve molecular devices in electronic applications -- received Nanoscale Exploratory Research (NER) grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). |
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| A NEW CLASS OF CHEMICAL TRANSDUCERS BASED ON LIGHT-EMITTING DIODES HAS BEEN DEVELOPED |
| Scientists from Wisconsine-Madison University have once again proved that light-emitting diodes used in thousands of electronic home appliances are a universal material which has various fields of application. The same technology of application of small lighting lamps, reminding people of the state of an appliance (on/off) and which is also used in traffic lights, now can be used a chemical transducer. In the research published on January 25, scientists illustrate the way chemical substances could change a surface structure of light-emitting diode materials, forcing to bring in fluctuations in the light intensity. This mechanism can be applied for simple, but highly sensitive systems which warn of the existence of certain chemical compositions in the air or water. |
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