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DNA Detectors for Hazardous Metals
ddillman writes "EETimes.com has a story about new DNA-based sensor chips that can detect any of a range of hazardous metals such as lead and mercury in real time. Previously, this had required lengthy and expensive testing in batches for specific elements. When the sensors detect the metal for which they're testing, they emit light into a fiber optic line. They've already got a range of three orders of magnitude in sensitivity, and expect to be able to refine this considerably."
I live in Ithaca, NY, and there are a bunch of _really hyper_ environmentalists here (it's a university town attatched to an apparent mecca for old hippies turned yuppie). In any case, there used to be a gun factory here (Ithaca Gun... more than 30% of the surving guns made here are still in use by the CIA. They made damn good sniper rifles. Made a Springfield look mundane.) They also made shotguns (even pump-action repeaters. Hold down the trigger and just pump through all 9 rounds. Makes even a Mossberg 590 pale in comparison...) In any case, there is a piece of land next to one of the gorges that is immediately adjacent to the gun factory that was at one point (almost 100 years ago) used for a test-firing range. There is a shitload of buckshot and rifle bullets sitting around in the woods there.
The city of Ithaca just recently decided to buy that little chunk of land from Cornell, or some thing like that, but in the process the EPA came in and took a look at it, and it said in their report that some of the surface soil samples contained upwards of 250,000 PPM of lead! This set all the environmentalists off. That's 25% lead, 75% soil. The trick is that the creek that runs through that spot, when sampled downstream of this shocking and dangerous environmental hazard, has the same lead concentration as it does upsteam. The lead is in the form of very non-water-soluble slugs of metallic lead. No powdered oxides like in paint. It's not going anywhere. Now there are a bunch of environmental nuts going apeshit about this, but it's really a minor problem. It's sat there for over 100 years and isn't even getting into the fucking water.
If they dig up that spot to get rid of all this contaminated siol, i may go and shoot them myself. It would be ruining the _best_ laser-tag obstacle course in the world...
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Biological detection should be possible (after all that's what our immune systems do every day) but might be harder with their process (pure DNA strands selected with massively sped-up evolution).
;-)
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#include "disclaim.h"
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#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Lead and MTBE are both noxious gasoline additives used to increase octane rating, which allows higher compression ratios, which are more efficient. Ratios as high as 11:1 or so are feasible this way.
Since it is stupid to use a gasoline engine in the first place, it is pointless to spew EITHER of these into the environment.
My car has a turbo diesel engine. It has a compression ratio of 19.5:1, and gets about 50% higher mpg than a gasoline engine of similar performance in the same car. And only ordinary #2 diesel fuel is needed, with no additives whatsoever beyond a modicum (2 oz per 10 gal) of anti-gel when it gets really cold.
This modern diesel engine makes next to no smoke, emits practically no aromatic hydrocarbons, and has levels of other pollutants comparable to gasoline engines. Believe it. It pulls way more torque at lower rpm than a gasoline engine. Its fuel requires less energy to refine than gasoline, and there are no evaporative emissions. Or it will happily and efficiently burn bio-diesel when/if available.
If the choice is between gasoline and diesel, all cars except maybe a few super high performance models should be diesels. In the long run there may be other choices, but this is vast improvement we could make instantly.
I tend to agree that fear of asbestos has reached irrational levels, but not for the reason you state. Rust particles if inhaled in large quantities might harm you, but not by giving you cancer.
The rap is that asbestos particles inhaled even in tiny concentrations can cause cancer. This is sort of true.
The surprise is that the form of asbestos most used for insulation is not the form that is highly carcinogenic. Something to do with the size of the particles created if pulverized.
This is a little like the furor over particulates in exhaust emissions. Guess what? The particles in diesel exhaust emissions is not of a size which is very carcinogenic. Particulates in gasoline engine exhaust are much finer, and more carcinogenic. It is stupid to just measure the quantity; you have to assess the qualities as well. But that is too hard for knee-jerk environmentalists (as which I class the EPA). Sigh.
...will they be able to turn lead into gold? :]
Or even be able to find gold deposits underground with a simple handheld device? Maybe something wireless, for the handspring, and open source...
> When safety is involved, and when health is an issue, it is good to have an agency in the loop
Government regulation is useful at times, but it can lead to unnecessary price hikes. Airline safety regulation, for example, is entirely unnecessary. Airlines don't want to be spending $100+ million for a jet, only to see it go down. If they did business that way, they'd be losing money right and left, to say nothing about the lawsuits that would follow. Where government regulation is important is in industries where the companies wouldn't be able to be found to be clearly at fault. Medicinal corporations, for instance, marketing a drug that causes long-term cancer would probably not be found guilty in any suit against them due to the fact that research would be sparse, with little time for it during the suit. For monitoring for harmful chemicals, that sort of thing is iffy. If private individuals/corporations can do it, I'd say have them be responsible for it (including "missing" a warning from the systems) rather than using our tax money. That way, there'd be more to fund research for things like this.
Perhaps in the future, if they can create DNA that can detect all the water-borne nasties like nitrogen, tri-chloroethylene (TCE), etc... you could attach an array of these to your drinking fountain and get a real-time measure of the quality of the water you just poured yourself from the tap? Cadmium is one of the known bad guys in water, so you can already catch that.
In industrial workplaces I am sure they have a need for this. I think they subject workers to periodic testing for exposure; by then it is a little later than you would prefer, you would rather catch it before it entered your system; perhaps with a device like this you could.
And canaries around the world are rejoicing at the news.
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Press releases and slashdot articles are notoriously inaccurate in describing patents and patent applications.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
"Unless you're stupid enough to eat it, in which case you deserve what you get."
In that case, it is unfortunate that there's a lot of people out there stupid enough to eat it.
The problem is, as an element, lead is neither created or destroyed, and so must be left over after the gasoline is burned. In leaded gasoline, this means about 0.15 to 0.8 g/L (0.02 to 0.11 oz/gallon). Let's say I drive about 12,000 miles a year, and get an average of 30 mpg (I drive a compact). That works out to 0.5 to 2.7 pounds of lead a year, just for me. Multiply that by the tens of millions of cars on the road in the US, and you get a lot of lead that has to go somewhere.
In the short term, a little of this is retained in the engine (Leaded gasoline actually contains additives to prevent lead build-up), and some is retained in the motor oil. But most of this lead is exhausted into the atmosphere. From there, it can be directly inhaled, or settle into water supplies, agricultural land, etc, where part of it will be bound up by soil and plants, and part of it will gradually work it's way to the sea. In rural areas, this is not so much of a problem, where there's more space and fewer cars ("The Solution to Pollution is Dilution"). In urban areas, the lead is much more concentrated.
It's not so harmful to adults, who can adsorb quite a bit of lead without any serious effects, but dangerous to children, where it stunts mental development. And stupidity is the one thing in the world that we definitely do not need more of.
This URL describes how belgian scientists engineered a bacteria which emits light in the presence of certain metallic ions. From this bacteria they took the genes which did this. About the same as described in the article...only here a more intelligent way of finding the genes was used. The document was written in april 1997. That quite some time before professor Li Yu did this! I wish the professor good luck with his patent:) I fear he will get it since the patent office in the USA has already shown time after time that they do not know what they are talking about...
0x or or snor perron?!
"That capability has become a high priority at the National Institutes of Health, which provided the funding for Lu's experiments. The NIH has specifically targeted health applications for the technology, including environmental monitoring, clinical toxicology, wastewater treatment and industrial process monitoring."
I like it when governments are involved with this kind of thing. When safety is involved, and when health is an issue, it is good to have an agency in the loop. I'm glad that the NIH has targeted these applications. It is a reasonable application of tax money. What do you think?
John S. Rhodes
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I can see a use for this in homes and businesses (schools, organizations, etc.). People drink water every day, but occasionally, it's contaminated. Because checks aren't performed every day (for time/economic reasons), contaminations can slip by unnoticed for weeks or even months. This could provide a real-time testing (maybe once a day or something) for dangerous metals and set off a warning if there's a problem, kind of like carbon monoxide/smoke detectors. It would probably be more useful, though, if it detected for biological contaminants (due to the fact that biological contamination is far more common). Just a thought.