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Clothes That Kill
StriderA writes "Robert Engel, of Queens College at The City University of New York, and colleagues have developed a new defence against bacteria and fungi. It seems that they have created tiny molecular daggers that actually seek and destroy the fatty bacteria. Applications to include battling athletes foot to military uniforms that kill anthrax."
Are you sure it's not still April 1st in some dusty part of the world?
Could I wear these and lose weight?
Still in my pyro...still in the mines! {POF}LrdDragoon
such random failures as gouging of the eyeballs, slicing of the seminal vesicles, and puncturing of the lungs. Yes, the scientists were quoted as saying they havn't quite got all the kinks out.
this is not a sig.
Is the only way a new biotechnological development can be 'marketed' is through it's use against bioterrorism? It would be nice to see more support of how this works.
How does this affect our own natural microflora? What is the mode of specificity for these 'blades'? Killing off our own bacteria can make us more susceptible all the other pathogens floating around.
And I didn't think that all bacteria had a fatty coating. What about those which have high carbohydrate coatings? I thought the coat was part of the cause of their pathogenicity.
The concept's cool, but I'd like a little more data.
This could be used not only for fabrics but for any surfaces that can have the "daggers" bonded to them, creating long-lasting antiseptic surfaces.
However, for clothing I have a question - how would the oils in sweat affect the surface? Would they occupy all the "daggers" and prevent the microbes from being penetrated?
www.eFax.com are spammers
6 Comments? /. readers
3 Hours?
I think the clothes killed
EOU
I've got a T-shirt and I'm not afraid to use it!
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Rejoice Geeks!
You may never have to shower again!
(Not that you do now.)
In other news, the "killer clothes" also absorb Dorito dust and Mountaion Dew, turning these compounds into comparitively harmless carbon monoxide.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Why does it seem that everywhere you look there's another antibacterial product?
As though antibiotics are the key to healthier living or something.
There are lots of benign bacteria out there, who inhibit the growth of more dangerous strains by consuming their resources. (Competitive inhibition is the 'real' term.) Add to the fact that the antibacterial agents are leaching into the environment, thereby ensuring that only resistant bacteria thrive.
What we're ending up with is a world in which the only bacteria are resistant to anything we can throw at them - making it harder and harder to treat the problems that they cause.
In addition, exposure to immunological challenges like benign bacteria helps to keep our immune systems strong.
I can see where these fabrics can be useful in military or hospital situations, but society's obsession with antibacterial wipes and soaps and gels (and now clothing) is only going to harm us long-term.
What about non-bacterial illnesses (i.e., viruses, microplasms)
Do these molecules ever come unanchored, becoming little fat-seeking molecules of death?
How fast does a person die if they swallow a scrap of it, or some of those suddenly un-anchored molecules?
How do you clean these garments?
Will dead-bacteria buildup eventually render the garment useless?
How do you dispose of these garments at that point?
this piece was woefully short on facts, and context, and i'd love to hear more if anybody's got some other perspective on this new 'fabric of doom'...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
at this point is to say: in the Phillippenes they hand out Penicillin like aspirin, OTC.
It's that sort of cavalier attitude towards broad-spectrum antibiotics that's going to one day give us a plague.
Not that that would be a bad thing, but it isn't going to be pretty.
Maybe it'll take out some of the trolls.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Works for government funding, or VC funding as well... Find out what the hot topic of the day is... Storage Area Networks, Killing Anthrax... Find a way of writting those things into your proposal regardless of whether it makes sense ??? Profit Interestingly enough Anthrax doesn't do much damage to skin contact, you have to BREATH it into your lungs, a fancy set of clothes won't stop that unless you are wearing it as a mask, and if you are doing that I'd just assume wear a NBC suit that will protect me from the really dangerous stuff on the battlefield
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I think some people are already wearing a variant of this that can kill at a distance. I was down at the local university the other day and I saw this ungodly sexy girl. Man, my heart started being so hard and fast I thought I was gonna have a heart attack! You can laugh, but if you had seen what she was wearing you probably would've dropped to your knees clutching your chest and gasping for breath, too!
GMD
watch this
I read an article recently on Yahoo Science News.
Apparently a laboratory was wondering why so many of their lab rat offspring were being born deformed. The only different with this batch of mice is that their cages seemed to show more wear than the other mice.
Apparently the "harsh" cleaning agents used to sterilize the cages were breaking down (softening) the polymers in the plastics of the cage. The mice would then gnaw the softer plastic. On further examination, once in the body, the chemically-altered plastic had a negative effect on chromosome ordering during cellular division, leading to an equivalent of "down syndrome" for mice.
What makes it worse is that this same type of plastic "bisphenol A" is common in many human products, including many baby toys & bottles. Combine that with the disease-paranoid parents who scrub their homes with ever-increasing-strength cleaning agents, then look at the increase in childhood asthma and autism in recent years, and you have to wonder...
SARS is a virus.
Antibiotics don't affect virii.
Thus, SARS (and HIV, for that matter) haven't "evolved" because we're using too many antibiotics.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
We can now market our products as methods against Tourism! Yes, folks. As of today, we can prevent those annoying and obnoxious tourists from visiting your cities.
Our first offering is the exploding camera. Guaranteed to take out only the tourist and not the surrounding pedestrians.
Ok. That's tasteless. Sorry.
this.
They call it Spandex. And when fat people wear it, you just want to lay down and die...