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E-nose Sniffs Out Nasty Resistant Bacteria
geekroot's dad writes "There have been several tries for an Electronic nose that seek out various airborne elements - they can find cancer, monitor recycled air for NASA and
find nasty bacteria better than lab tests. Now as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSRA) becomes a problem not only in hospitals but in everyday life some British scientist have built a super nose to find the 'little buggers'."
They may be better off building super teeth, rather than super noses.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Imagine the applications in everyday cubicle's life: A smell map of the office to answer the eternal question: The more you smell, the better you code ?
they can finding cancer
Good for they's finds.
This sort of thing lends itself to non-intrusive search and what civil libertarians call "violation of privacy."
A similar technique is looking at heat, and using it to identify folks growing things in their houses: fly over with a helicopter looking at heat signatures -- the growers' houses light up. The court had to decide if this was an illegal search or not.
Already there have been cases where cops had drug dogs sniff folks on a bus and identify smugglers. The court had to decide if the cop searched people (illegally) just by walking by them with a dog, or if the cop was innocently walking by folks, and when his dog aletered, the cop became the probable cause to search further.
Electronic noses, with their reduced cost and targeted nature, will lead to many similar cases. A cop's e-nose might alert. He'd followup with a search, find contraband and so on. The question is, was it OK for him to have an e-nose sniffing in the first place? Or did he need a search warrant to use the e-nose?
One can imagine an e-nose built to sniff explosives, but that also sniffs out everything else. In that case, the cops have a legit purpose to search (national security), but the effect is that they'll be busting folks for all sorts of other violations.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Maybe someone would be kind enough to create a hack to allow it to sniff out the BS from our politicians. Only down side is that people would think it was malfunctioning since it would go off every time any of them utter a word.
Yup. Working a new invention, a Smelloscope.
Gonna win Inventor Of The Year with it.
Apparently, it can't find the proper conjugation of "to find."
...famous cereal toucan gets new job extolling the wonders of following electronic noses, and rumors surface that the chair of Kellogg's has thrown a bowl in angry response to said toucan's career move.
Thank you for watching; we'll see you Monday.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
the only thing coming out of my nose is Cola when i read your comment
Finally it can be proven that girls do indeed fart.
Do you think bacteria could evolve to disguise or alter their "smell" to avoid extermination?
I read recently that there are bacteria that have evolved to consume nylon. We know they evolved recently because nylon is manufactured and does not appear in nature.
It's apparently a pretty crappy food though. I'm not suprised.
I wonder if that would mean you could engineer deodorant bacteria to selectively mask the detectability of certain other chemicals?
Damn it, just when I was about to leave and find an actual date.
How dare you ruin my fantasy with your electronasal findings...*sob*
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
...but nothing can overload my 64-bit-integer-using Java-based ServoSniffSystem®!
Nope, it doesn't just have garbage collection, it's got GarbageLikeYouRejection®!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but dogs have been trained to find cancers, so it's not that out of reach.
*not guaranteed, results may wildly vary
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
As is often the case, e-nose researchers tend to focus more on detection than discrimination. If this thing generates too many false alarms, it'll be useless.
Staph bacteria is something that's very common on the outside of people. The article itself places the number at 30%, and that number is much higher for kids who handle unsanitary things all the time don't wash their hands as often as they should. It's not an epidemic because it has to enter your blood through an open wound. Most adults simply don't cut themselves very often (with the exception of shaving, but that's sanitized anyhow), so the majority of staph infections are in kids.
The problem with this device is when would you use it? Either you're waiting for mom to bring in the kid after you already think she has a staff infection, or you're sniffing everyone at random. If mom thinks it's a staff infection, the kid probably does have staph bacteria on him, but that doesn't get you any closer to knowing if that's the infection. If you're sniffing everyone at random, you're really only picking out the people that don't wash their hands enough and making them pay for it with extra (almost certainly unnecessary) testing.
In either case, who's celebrating this as some kind of new breakthrough that's going to revolutionize the health care industry? This really makes me wonder if this device is more for revenue than for health screening. "Hey, it looks like you tested positive for a possible staff infection. I'm sure your insurance will cover some extra tests."
Seriously.
Zzz Zzz Zzz...
surely a car load of C4 would have a special scent to it.
This is my sig.
we can't allow you to bring Taco Bell into the hospital. We have sensitive equipment around here.
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.
"I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but dogs have been trained to find cancers, so it's not that out of reach."
;)
Nar, I was joking about the use of the word 'finding' in that sentence. Unfortunately I posted about 30 seconds too late for it to be funny.
"Derp de derp."
Looks like we are going to outsource smelling to some machine.
The thing would willingly short circuit in my apartment.
Years ago one of my med school teachers taught us to sniff wounds for infection. He said that with a bit of practice you could quickly learn to discriminate infections and it's true.
Even now I often sniff dressings for infection and I'm right most of the time. The odour of different infections are quite characteristic and you can easily tell if it's light or heavy.
Gets some funny looks at times, but I can usually beat the labs by 24 hours. My students think I'm a bit odd, but I notice that now they too take a surreptitious sniff and then pronouce wisely!
Long live the Mark I nose.....
The current theories on the cause of antibiotic resistant bacteria place the blame on antibiotics and their overuse or under use. These theories utterly fail to explain one simple fact: most people don't come into the hospital with cases of drug resistant bacteria, they acquire those infections while in the hospitals. Some where in the hospital there are conditions which are breeding drug resistant bacteria.
I believe that the real cause of antibiotic resistant bacteria is far more prosaic than anyone has suspected. Before Doctors and Nurses give people injections they are quite properly taught to point the needle up, tap the syringe to force air bubbles to the top of the syringe, then squirt enough of the fluid out of the syringe to insure that the air is cleared from the device and the needle. This is utterly necessary to prevent the injection of air into the patient's blood system where it could cause a fatal embolism.
The antibiotic squirted out of the needle simply falls to the floor and creates a splatter. This splatter kills bacteria on the floor where it is intense enough to do so, but around the edges of the splatter surviving bacteria can breed resistant strains to every type of injectable antibiotic being used in the hospital.
When antibiotic splatter is combined with the modern janitorial practice of a one step floor cleaner, the floor becomes a giant Petri dish for the breeding of drug resistant bacteria. One step floor 'cleaners' can't possibly clean floors; they make the floor look clean and shiny, but since many of them are made of glycerin compounds they simply serve as a growth medium for the Petri dish.
So how do you solve the problem of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria? You do two things: first, keep splatters of antibiotics off of the floor by performing the air clearing of the syringes while the needle is still in the bottle of antibiotics - immediately after filling the syringe- and by using a spillage overflow catcher pan under the syringe while it is being filled. Second, sterilize the hospital floors with bleach and intense ultra violet light sources mounted on the undersides of push broom like devices.
These two simple things will prevent the Petri dish conditions on floors which breed drug resistant bacteria. Both of these steps have very low costs while having very large benefits. They are similar in importance to the now standard practice of surgeons washing their hands before surgery, which was adapted in the 19th century, and which has saved countless lives since.
The economic justification for all of these things is obvious, reducing drug resistant bacteria cases will save insurance companies far more money than the slightly greater costs of better floor cleaning and splatter prevention protocols would cost them.
... and when that bionic noese gets bionic fingers so it can flick its bionic boogers - LOOK OUT!
Police get positive signal from dog, indicating drugs, and they search your car. They find a body inside or something else which is evidence to remove you from society for a long time.
Let's say (as impossible as it likely is) that you can prove, without a doubt, that there was not one molecule in or on your car that could have indicated to the dog that you had drugs, and that the area where your car was stopped at the time didn't likewise have any such molecules. I.e. I'm saying that you can prove scientifically, without a doubt, that the dog malfunctioned - gave a false positive.
I'd guess, athough I'm not sure, the evidence would be completely admissible in court since the police had probable cause at the time. I know for example that evidence seized on an invalid warrent is admissible in court if the police didn't know the warrant was invalid.
We all know that mechanical devices can be gamed. In this case, the device would have to be calibrated. The police could just set the threshold very low, allowing false positives. Whee! Instant probable cause for any situation.
In another discussion a while back, someoone posted a link to a guy who rails against MADD and breathalizers (however you spell it) - as it goes, scotus has upheld that police are under no duty to preserve breath samples for later testing by the defense, although this would be easy to do. Malfunctioning or miscalibrated breathalizer? Too bad, your conviction stands. I'm sure a similar analysis would apply to a miscalibrated enose.