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W engineers designed microscopic probes that dip into a fluid sample – saliva, sputum or blood – and apply an electric field within the liquid. That draws particles to concentrate around the surface of the tiny probe. Larger particles hit the tip and swerve away, but DNA-sized molecules stick to the probe and are trapped on the surface.

I read through the entire article link, and didn't learn a whole lot about how it actually performs. The above paragraph was the only technical information included. From what I can see, neither really tests performance against really challenging samples with a lot of crud or difficult-to-extract material. We only have the PR blurb's claim that it's better than a typical Miniprep column.

Found a couple of papers that might be more relevant:
Size-Specific Concentration of DNA to a Nanostructured Tip Using Dielectrophoresis and Capillary Action (Has downloadable PDF)
Nanotips for single-step preparation of DNA for qPCR analysis (Paywall)

Ok, from the first paper, we find out what this is really for:

Extracellular DNA is of great interest in the fields of disease diagnostics and environmental molecular biology. Unlike the genomic DNA in normal cells, extracellular DNA is the free DNA released from dead cells. Thus, extracellular DNA circulating in body fluids can be used as an early indicator for various acute diseases such as cancer. For example, the concentration of extracellular DNA for a normal person is 30ng/mL, but the concentration is increased to 300 ng/mL for a cancer patient. When the issue comes to environmental monitoring, extracellular DNA dissolved in lakes and soil is an indicator for environmental quality because the dissolved DNA is generated from cell lysis and excretion. In spite of such a great potential, the study of extracellular DNA is limited by the standard sample preparation methods.

The conventional methods begin with filtering, centrifuging, and collecting DNA from a raw sample. In aggressive experimental protocols, genomic DNA from normal cells is released and mixed with extracellular DNA. In addition, a few hours is required for the sample preparation process, which can degrade and mutate extracellular DNA.6 As a result, the original information of extracellular DNA is partially or completely lost. Therefore, a rapid process that can concentrate extracellular DNA is very important for identifying pathogenic information. This paper presents a size-specific concentration mechanism directly extracting extracellular DNA from a sample mixture using a nanostructured tip. The concentration process is performed with two sequences: (1) an alternating current (AC) electric field is applied to attract DNA and other bioparticles in the vicinity of a nanotip; (2) only the DNA is size-selectively captured onto the nanotip by the combination of dielectrophoresis and capillary action. In the analytical section, the forces involved in the concentration are estimated to investigate the capturing process. An analytical model is presented for capillary induced size-selectivity that is described as the function of the ratio of a particle to a tip diameter.

Basically, this is a special purpose method for concentrating extra-cellular DNA while leaving whole cell material intact. It's not meant to compete against a Miniprep, but analyze a whole different type of sample material; you are trying to fish out what genetic material is already floating around outside of your cells. Really a niche kind of research thing, I don't know if this will make a whole lot of impact, either practically, academically, or economically.

"Excep that HCFC turns out to be more of a problem
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/September/25090702.asp [rsc.org]"
So where in the article you linked does it say that HCFCs are more of a problem than CFCs? All I could find was the following, "They replaced the older and even more ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the 1990s, but were never meant to be permanent substitutes." No matter what happens with the HCFCs, it seems we are better off without the CFCs. Going to HCFCs seems to have at least bought us more time to implement truly benign substitutes.

> CFCs were replaced with hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) ...
> the problem was economically solved for the most part.

Excep that HCFC turns out to be more of a problem
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/September/25090702.asp

HCFC Phaseout Schedule | Ozone Layer Protection - Regulatory ...
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/phaseout/hcfc.html
To learn more about the HCFC phaseout, including frequently asked questions, please visit this link.

Producing HCFC-22 also produces, as a byproduct, HCF-23.

Oops. oversight in the initial protocol? Or clever loophole-drafting?
China gets paid for destroying HCF-23.
And it hasn't been against the rules to produce more, to get paid more to destroy more of the stuff.
So they ramped up HCFC-22 production instead of going with alternatives that didn't make money quite so fast.

"China is, in fact, gaming the system today as we speak by
producing harmful HCFC-22 for the sole reason of destroying
HCF-23 by-product ..."
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg44428/html/CHRG-110hhrg44428.htm

China was very happy with that situation, but is quite unhappy with the next step, stopping the production completely:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/17/content_15761265.htm
read down the text beyond the self-congratulations to the part where they say the next step is, well, very, very difficult.

Yeah, giving up free money is always hard. Read the fine print -- more carefully ....

As a guy who also likes chemistry, I have to say Slashdot really isn't the place to go for that. When it says "news for nerds", they mean "news for *tech* nerds". If you can't connect it to linux, computer chips or anime, it's not really interesting to the general Slashdot audience(*). There's been a couple of abortive attempts to do a "Slashdot for Science Nerds", but they never really got traction.

If you're looking for cool chemistry news, your best bet isn't Slashdot, and it isn't even the science sections of major news organizations (like the New York Times or the BBC), or the news sections of major science publishers (like Science and Nature), or even the news section of the American Chemical Society. Rather, it's probably the Royal Society of Chemistry's news page (Chemistry World) that I've found to have the best coverage of chemistry news, albeit without the corresponding discussion that a Slashdot article might bring.

*) Please note that I said *general* Slashdot audience. The subset of people with moderator points, of course, have more refined and varied tastes.

and have you seen how much of that is chemicals? well over 90% of it.

10% is not material? I thought bread was 100% chemicals, like everything else. If you have something which is not 100% chemical, you may be on track to winning 1 million GBP

Here's a citation regarding non-planar silicon resonance structures which the discoverers have labelled 'aromatic'. You may wish to classify it as an abuse of terminology. :)

Out of the alternative backbones, only TNA has been demonstrated to be easier to generate spontaneously than RNA; GNA in particular is known to be more complicated than RNA. TNA also has the advantage of a similar gap between nucleotides with RNA, making hybrids or mixtures possible. But if RNA is present, a DNA backbone, to me at least, seems inevitable, largely because deoxyribose is chemically easy to synthesize from ribose. For other backbone systems to really be viable, I believe topics such as catalytic potential (can it cut itself like RNA? what about other molecules?), EM mutability (what kind of changes do various frequencies of light cause? are they different from in DNA?), helix geometry (does it form an accessible groove in H2O or NH3 solution? would a non-curved backbone be fragile?), and annotatability (e.g. can methylation or something akin to it be easily detected by interacting molecules?) would need to be explored.

Given that some oligomers of RNA have already been found spontaneously forming, other backbones don't seem like they would, again, be very competitive.

...that all being said, I have nothing against alternatives to Watson-Crick base pairs, although a good source for making an argument from natural abundance currently escapes me.

Another example of overblown novelty... AFM is nothing new, and "olympicene" is also nothing new.. it's been made before... at least as early as 1965.. and possibly earlier still (haven't looked deeply in the scifinder databases).

Here's a literature citation (something the parent article sorely lacks) with proof. You know.. the stuff science is supposedly made of ?

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/1965/JR/jr9650005920

... for a chemical-free substance. See: http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/ChemicalFree.asp

This isn't a new idea. "Lab on a disc" systems have been used for analysis for years. They use little disposable plastic discs with complex patterns of channels, some of which have been pre-filled with reagents. The disk is injected with a sample, and then placed in a machine which can rotate it (for mixing) and spin it fast (for centrifuging).

Even smaller are lab on a chip systems, where the device is made by IC fab techniques. These are usually mass-produced for medical applications. The machines used with these consumable components are usually desktop devices, with hand-held portable ones becoming available.

These microfluidic systems are for analysis, and maybe some biosynthesis. They work on tiny amounts of fluid. Nobody is going to make a chemical manufacturing plant this way.

The new thing here is making such devices as one-offs for researchers, rather than in quantity.

As seems depressingly common in science journalism, they vaguely mentioned the existence of a paper, but don't actually give the title or (dare we hope) a hyperlink to the paper. At least they did mention the name of the journal it was published in.

In any case, the paper is "Solar energy generation in three dimensions." If you're at a university with a subscription the official version (not open-access) is here. There is also an open-access preprint version at the arXiv.

This is a gold mine of resources. There are a lot of great things going on with methane studies, from fuel cells to low energy conversion methods.

Sen and postdoctoral associate Minren Lin announced a breakthrough. By dissolving a powder of rhodium chloride in water, along with carbon monoxide and oxygen, they had produced acetic acid from methane directly. The reaction took place at a relatively low temperature (100 degrees centigrade), required little energy, and left no environmentally harmful solvents to throw away. http://www.rps.psu.edu/sep98/methane.html

Colleagues of ours created a highly porous carbon-nitrogen polymer, which we realised had very similar structural motifs to the Periana catalyst,' Schüth says, 'so we wondered if we could incorporate platinum into the structure.
If the mixture is then pressurised in an autoclave with methane, the methane is consumed and methanol formed at conversion rates comparable to Periana-based systems but with the solid catalyst easily recoverable at the end of the reaction. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/August/10080902.asp

You don't need to go to the Anarchist's Cookbook for nitrogen triiodide. I covered it at school.

Here are instructions for teachers to prepare NI3 and demonstrate the explosion.

(I don't think my teacher did that demonstration, though the other class did. We did something else... I can't remember what.)

Just a minor nitpick, they have been arguing for more than a century.

http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k32227/f808.image.r=memoires+de+l'academie+des+sciences.langEN

But I admit these were cutting edge people, like early adopters or something. The best is that Arrhenius estimates are close to contemporary simulations. You would think that making people understand the paper should be easier than one of these complicated computer models.

Ugh, the level to which this has been mis-quoted shows a lack of understanding by the TPM authors bordering on idiocy.

The previously made sheet of graphene was cited to be 76 centimeters square. but the original article http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/June/20061001.asp notes that the sheet was 76 Centimeters on the diagonal which would be 54 centimeters on a side if it was a perfect square: 2916 square centimeters.

So if we were to use their own retarded logic system, the claim of attempting a sheet that was one kilometer square, that would actually mean one kilometer on the diagonal. so a centimeter wide and just under a kilometer long would suffice to satisfy the claim.

Given the amount of fraud in Chinese science it makes a lot of sense to wait for confirmation from a more credible source.

And even if Chinese science were whiter than white, your blind-acceptance is decidedly un-scientific.

You're assuming the article is true. Chinese scientists have a reputation for making stuff up.

If everything is going so well, why are incomes falling?

We've allowed ourselves to be placed into competition with disposable Asian workers and unregulated foreign industry. We ratchet up our domestic regulations while simultaneously removing trade barriers, so capital evacuates the US.

Clear air, low low walmart prices and Johnny plays video games in the basement till 35.

Isn't the chlorine the material that is exchanged? Not the actual electrodes?

Indeed, you are right. Both electrodes absorb salt ions: chlorine is taken up by the silver electrode and sodium is taken up by the manganese dioxide electrode.

Hmmm, impressive how the manganese dioxide can stabilize the sodium, hehe...

From this 2008 article...

The scientists took the bacteria back to the laboratory, and found they were extracting electrons from arsenite by photosynthetic oxidation, in order to help convert CO2 to biomass. Green plants, by contrast, use water as their electron supply in photosynthesis. After splitting water, conventional photosynthesis emits oxygen; the Mono Lake microbes produced arsenate species instead.

This 2008 article points out that these organisms use Arsenic in the photosynthesis reaction (as opposed to water used by plants), to extract the free electron. The new information is that they use Arsenic in their DNA instead of Phosphorus and can also do some metabolism with ATA (although these bacteria can also use ATP when Phosphorus was available which is not surprizing as ATP reactions are more energetic).

Although it was observed, the bacteria seemed to grow better in an all arsenic environment, at least some phosphorus use remained and it is unclear if there was some critical role for the phosphorus that remained (outside the ATP path).

As you point out, there is some general speculation, that these cells have a pathway similar to glycosis that uses ATA instead of ATP when in a phosphorus-poor environement. Normally, if arsenic replaces the "free" phosphate in the glycosis process, no net ATP is formed, but nobody knows what this glycosis-like arsenic pathway is yet and if it actualy uses A-di-arsenate (in a similar way to ADP) or not... The chemistry (as you point out) may be significantly different.

The only article on Pubmed (after 2001, which is the time of the event discussed in OP) on "red rain":

http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayArticleForFree.cfm?doi=b309636j&JournalCode=EM

seems to be referring to a different phenomenon (inorganic particles of red color).

Also, the author does not have any publications that could be found on Pubmed (though he has some physics related work published).

So, the answer is "most likely - no"

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/March/21031001.asp

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/February/14021001.asp

'We have shown the optical absorption efficiency and charge carrier collection efficiency of a silicon wire array cell is comparable to a conventional silicon cell, but a wire array cell uses up to 100 times less silicon due to enhanced light-trapping effects,' says Atwater. Significantly, the wire arrays absorb infrared light more efficiently that conventional silicon surfaces, further improving the performance of the new device.

So the gist is that it's more efficient because it converts infrared, uses some type of clear polymer with alumina "reflector particles" in place of 99% of the expensive (doped) silicon, and is flexible and therefore easier to manufacture.

Like the other replies to this post, I completely agree -- I wish more teachers thought like this (and not *just* in chemistry). Teaching chemistry using "theory only" is like teaching programming using pen and paper (which I'm old enough to remember, and greatly resent).

This is about mnemonics. Associate formulas, tables, ratios and reactions with visual memory -- seeing is remembering. Sometimes you don't even have to do the experiment in class -- if something is either dangerous or expensive, there's probably plenty of videos online of the process. This is actually a subject matter in which youtube is a "good resource" (for the visuals, anyway).

Here are a few sites that either give examples of practical/cheap experiments or provide videos of all sorts of chemistry-related material:
thenakedscientists.com
http://www.rsc.org/education/teachers/learnnet/videoclips.htm
http://www.planet-scicast.com/experiments.cfm

Here are a few additional online chemistry resources (the more visual information, the better):
webelements.com
chemicool.com
periodictable.com
periodicvideos.com
practicalchemistry.org
mindat.org

It's like any other subject -- get the students *interested* in _topic_, and they'll teach themselves.

Talk to these guys.

You may find the density a little lacking; but I suspect that they don't even notice EMP.

More broadly, a lot of the early analog computers were hydraulic(presumably this was easier than pneumatic, since water is more or less incompressible under standard conditions); but there would be nothing stopping the suitably enthusiastic individual from building pneumatic analog computers. Or, for that matter, digital ones. The cool kids in microfluidics have done some poking at the idea. pneumatic logic gates.

The major advantage of proton treatment over conventional radiation, however, is that the energy distribution of protons can be directed and deposited in tissue volumes designated by the physicians-in a three-dimensional pattern from each beam used.

and Antimatter Therapy:

While an x-ray beam deposits energy along its entire path through the body, a beam of charged particles does damage only after electrical interactions have slowed it sufficiently to create a high chance of collision with atomic nuclei. This means that proton beams deposit most of their energy over a focused area, such as a collection of tumour cells, in the last millimetre of their journey.

Yep, when they have 60year LED bulbs that use 7W(equivalent to 60W) for a couple bucks, we will all grab them. Until that time, focus on something that can actually make a difference.

There is some research that may lead to 60year LED bulbs for a couple bucks in a couple years! http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/January/30010901.asp

• There is no mercury(unlike CFLs)
• The manufacturing process is clean enough that it is happening in developed nations(unlike CFLs)
• LED bulbs currently last 2 times as long as the best CFLs, so there is less garbage. There is work that should extend the life of LED bulbs to 6 times as long as CFL, while bringing the costs down

The cost of LED bulbs is still plummeting, so in a couple years they will be a no-brainer.

"I don't think Google has _ever_ even threatened to sue."

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/June/02060603.asp

The summary links to Wired, which in turn links to the real article with the interesting details: http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=LC&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b905832j&Iss=Advance_Article

This book is what I would recommend for those who want to delve into the science behind pyrotechnics.

This article details what happened. What burned and how the handling mistake was made.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/January/23010903.asp

Try knowing what you are talking about before you comment. First result for "taste in the gut" gives you this:

Taste receptors, the taste G-protein gustducin, and downstream signaling elements known to underlie the detection and transduction of bitter, sweet, and umami (monosodium glutamateâ"containing) compounds in taste buds of the tongue are present also in specific endocrine cells of the gut: the enteroendocrine K and L cells. Glucose in the gut activates sweet taste receptors and gustducin present in the intestineâ(TM)s enteroendocrine L cells, leading to secretion of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) from these cells. GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) are incretin hormones, which augment insulin release from the beta cells of the pancreas. GLP-1, GIP, and other gut hormones released from the K and L cells affect insulin secretion, glucose homeostasis, nutrient absorption and other gut functions. Glucose transport into enterocytes via Na+,glucose cotransporter 1 (SGLT1) and GLUT2 appears to be regulated by the gustducin- and sweet receptor-expressing enteroendocrine cells. In response to sugar ingestion, knockout mice lacking gustducin show deficits in the release of GLP-1 and insulin, in glucose homeostasis, and in upregulation of SGLT1. Apparently, the gut "tastes" sugars and sweeteners in much the same way as does the tongue and by using many of the same signaling elements. Taste receptors and other taste signaling elements in gut may be contributors to obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and other diet-related disorders. Gut-expressed taste elements are attractive targets for therapeutic intervention.

The same sweetners that fool your sweet receptors on your tongue fool the sweet receptors in you gut messing with you insulin release amongst other things. We had a professor from OSU give a talk about it a few months ago.

Heres another link from the Royal Society of Chemistry:

A sugar-sensing receptor in the intestine could explain why drinking diet cola may hinder obese people who hope to lose weight1,2 and lead to new ways of treating obesity and diabetes.

This explains why humans and animals fail to lose weight with low-calorie artificial sweeteners: they stimulate increased glucose absorption from carbohydrate breakdown in the gut,' said Soraya Shirazi-Beechey, who led the Liverpool team.

An article that provides a little more technical detail is Chemists edge closer to recreating early life. In particular, it mentions that the complexity of the system is only about 140 nucleotides, which I find quite amazing. By contrast, the simplest known independently self-reproducing organism (i.e. not a virus, etc. dependent on a host and using the host's reproduction machinery) is the Mycoplasma genitalium with 582970 base pairs of DNA. So this new system shows that independent self-reproduction is possible with dramatically reduced complexity.

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about how this thing works. I can only assume the misinformation comes from the wired article which I can not read (slashdotted?).

Anyhow here are some links I found on google;
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=3045
http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/AN/article.asp?doi=b705672a
http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=LC&Year=2008&ManuscriptID=b811158h&Iss=Advance_Article
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.bioeng.10.061807.160524

I googled 'Washington university blood analyzer DxBox'

The research is lead from Washington University, with grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is apparently 'Open technology', and is currently called DxBox (a play on Microsoft xbox since BillG is funding a lot of the work).

hmm, I again suggest that you carefully read some of the recent articles on lucas before stating a misleading argument.
these issues are all discussed in a scientific setting regarding the feasibility of lucas for various applications that you commented.

especially check these links:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121401991/abstract
http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/LC/article.asp?doi=B813943A

i am not going to repeat the same arguments listed in these papers.
i hope it clarifies/clears your misunderstanding/bias.

I suggest you read some recent articles on lucas technology.
it yields much more information than just the size of the cell.
the recorded quantities are transmission holograms of the cells, which contain the phase and the amplitude information of the cells.
so it is quite powerful to even detect small bacteria such as e. coli.
I am not sure where you got the impression that it can not do any better than 15 um.
it can easily go down to a micron. FYI.
http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/LC/article.asp?doi=B813943A
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/21439/
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121401991/abstract

I"m wondering if their evaluation of nukes..was based on the current 'laws and regulations' in the US (encacted by Carter I think?), that pretty much prohibit things like breeder reactors, that 'can' be used to manufacture weapons grade stuff, but, also can allow the fuel to be used much more efficiently, leaving much less waste than the first run we currently do?

From my limited understanding, if we repealed those laws...we could really stretch the nuclear fuel in a massive way, and have much, much less radioactive waste to have to manage, that has a much lower half life, etc.

THey do assume that. (that's the "HTML article" in the second story link, in case they don't like direct links like this).

They also try to calculate how much use of nuclear electric plants would increase the chance of a nuclear war (by giving more groups access to various nuclear technologies), and the environmental impact such a war might have.

This turns out to be rather insignificant, at least as far a carbon emissions are concerned (table 3). "Lifecycle" emissions for nuclear are "9-70" which is about equivalent to Solar PV or Geothermal, and somewhat worse than the 10-20-ish range of most others. Wind is significantly better at <10. They also calculate an "Opportunity cost", which they have much higher for nuclear because it takes so long to build (partly regulatory issues again).

I think centralization/concentration also works out as a negative, even if not counted directly.

Hydro plants scored about the same as nuclear, only wind/sun/ocean powered systems came out ahead.

Take a closer look at this table in the paper, since it reveals a more nuanced approach toward quantifying the potential impact from terrorism. It seems that from the paper, the main reason why nuclear is pooh-poohed is because of the opportunity cost due to time-to-implementation (59â"106 lifecycle CO2e emission per kWh of electricity generated). Relatively speaking, the impact from a potential terrorism activity is quite low (0 to 4.1 lifecycle CO2e emission per kWh of electricity generated). The 0-4.1 is based on a probability of 0% to 100% of a single terrorist attack within the next 30 years. Later in the paper, they estimate that "the overall time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant ranges from 10â"19 yr". Based on how long the government takes to do relatively simple things (highway expansions, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if it took a looong time to get more nuclear power online.

... microfluidic Shrinky-dinks! All you need is a laser printer, shrinky dinks, and a toaster oven. :-)

Yeah, but -I- didn't get to make those. Anyway, you forgot one: the eastern blot.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/May/04050701.asp

Forgiveable, as it points out in the article cited that the eastern blot is rather pointless with LC/MS. But it also points out that Ed Southern gave it the thumbs up, so you should include it.

Yay, we finally got to the personal attack and the accusation of a drug-induced altered mental state!

Now, if you've never read anything about tokamak reactors or the NIF (or other intertial confinement research), I suggest you do so.

Several different research projects are working toward using HTE of water or HTE of water + CO2 (to produce methane gas), so it's not exactly pixie dust.

my cheap microfluidics project...

"For one, professors have to get grants to do their research, so they are sometimes given to overstatement to that end. They are, after all, only human which means that not all of them are honest. Also, some are simply unrealistic. They think they can do something, so they announce it, even though they have no idea how to get there, and then maybe never end up doing so. Finally sometimes shit just ends up being impossible. "

I think this is for real, they've reduced the Voltage needed to split water down to 1.29V.. very impressive..

This RCS article (free) is somewhat more descriptive.

They use a solution of Cobalt and Phosphate Salts.. Ph of 7. (Now that's a real breakthrough.)
Anode is made of Indium Tin oxide (ITO) and a Cathode plated with Platinum??

It would be interesting to see how this apparatus operates @ 10 and 20 atm.. (self pressurizing storage??) and elevated temps.(Maybe reduce the voltage needed by using a thermal energy component)..

Long story short, the new thing is much cheaper and efficient than platinum.

From an article listed below this post, it talks about only having done 10 cycles so far. Borrowed Link So there is still work to do, but the science is promising.

A short but more technical story found here.

Lab on a Chip

However this image:

http://www.rsc.org/ej/LC/2008/b711622e/b711622e-f4.gif

Is quite impressive. It is a excellent demonstration of what you can build with these channels. Quite cool.

Now where can I find a hand-held corona discharger?

Microfluidic Logic Gates

Parent comment selectively presents evidence which itself is selective.

This study found greatly reduced touch sensitivity in circumcised men. This study differs methodologically in that it did not ignore sensitivity in the parts removed by circumcision. It also included many more participants.

The "tissue that acts as an easy point of entry" has actually been shown to have a special quality: "Langerin-bound HIV-1 is taken up by the Langerhans cell and destroyed inside - it's a bit like the cell eating the bound virus".

Objectively, there is not sufficient evidence to claim that circumcision has potential benefits in excess of the risks. Even the conservative medical societies all agree on this.