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Bacteria-killing Pencil
kahrytan writes "Mounir Laroussi, a researcher at Old Dominion University has invented a hand-held device that is dubbed a plasma pencil. The pencil generates a "cold plasma," which can be used to kill germs that contaminate surfaces, infect wounds and rot your teeth. In the future, it might be used to destroy tumors without damaging surrounding tissue. When he turns the pencil on, it blows a high pitched whistle as a glowing, blue-violet beam about 2 inches long instantly appears at one end. Stick your finger in its path and you only feel a cool breeze, but the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin. Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing a lot of good. Disinfecting surgery tools, keeping open wounds open in hospitals, destroying tumors in hard to operate areas like brains, and even treating that simple paper cut. The story can be read at dailypress and old dominion university."
``Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing allot of good.''
Even if not patented, it could do a lot of good. Possibly even more.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
before we see light sabers.
now I can kill these annoying crabs at home without risk of serious injury
A light sabre for sanitation freaks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If he really wants to give it a workout, he could always try it on whatever that sluggishly-flowing brown stuff is in the Elizabeth River on the west side of campus...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I don't understand how this can blow apart bacteria but not blow apart your skin cells. Can anyone explain? Also, why call it a pencil? It doesn't write anything. Might as well call it a stick, rod, or magic wand perhaps.
Hey, that's pretty good these days, actually.
CNN has an article about a sea turtle that was returned to a New Orleans aquarium. According to the caption, it's now swimming "with other fish"...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
It must be really sharp! I mean, those bacteria are pretty small.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm being nostalgic, of course, but in the olden days a patent required the publication of documentation on how a novel device worked and was constructed. This dissemination of knowlege was considered one of the benefits of a patent system.
I am not a crackpot.
basically, this device produces a bleach like gas that chemically inactivates surfaces; it inactivates the outer layer of your skin just as much as the bacteria, but since the outer layer is dead skin cells it does not matter
...lots of other uses
fta, it produces highly reactive oxygen spiecies.
If such chemicals, such as peroxy radical, superoxide, etc are in fact produced, then to the extent that they get past your outer skin and react with live cells, the chemicals will produce cancerous and mutagenic lesions. If the chemcals get to the layer of living cells which is continously gowing and dividing to produce new skin, you would have to worry about skin cancers......
Cold plasmas are of great use in modifiying surfaces, eg this pen might be perfact for grafitti removal, activating plastic so paint will stick (the activation of polyolefins like polypropylene is a big business)
what has held back the cold plasma industry is the lack of cheap devices to play with; i have had to pay hundreds of dollars to have small (mouse sized) objects treated for a few minutes
... the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin.
Good news if it blasts 100% of the bacteria, 100% of the time.
Potentially bad news if it only blasts 99.999999% of the bacteria, thus selecting for super-tough microbes.
-kgj
-kgj
The article claims it can be used to "mop up bioterror agents". Is anyone else sick of how every new invention is measured by it's usefulness to fight terrorism?
While it's easy to focus on the positives, what would be the long term ramifications for such a device? The end of the summary mentions using this 'pencil' on a paper cut, which I find rather disturbing. Seriously, it seems as if bacteria (or, more rhetorically, GERMS) are replacing paedophiles in terms of evoking hysteria for protecting THE CHILDREN (OMG). If you watch any soap or bleach advert on TV, they tend to anthropomorphise bacteria as gruff-voiced killers that will strike your toddler in his highchair the minute your back is turned. The companies also make enthusiastic claims that they KILL ALL KNOWN GERMS DEAD. FOREVER. TO DEATH. KILLED. How 'killing something dead' is not at all redundant, I do not know.
Our immune system is like a muscle, it needs to be worked to improve its strength. And, like a muscle, it can cope fine with reasonably sized loads. This doesn't mean you should go round feasting on raw burgers, but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud. Actually, by keeping them inside your sanitised bubble you put them more at risk of developing asthma and other allergies, as studies have shown. In the same way that morons can't realise we got on OK without mobile phones at the movie theatre, we also got on OK without Carex Bacteria Assassination soap. Doctors prescribing all sorts of drugs to shut up hypochondriacs just exacerbates the problem further.
Slashdotters, do your duty and eat those nose pickings!
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Who is going to spend that kind of money if the minute they get approval, some other company can sell these devices without the clinical testing costs? The company that performed the tests will need to add $25 to $200 to the price of the device (in addition to manufacturing costs), assuming they sell a million of them. And the competitor will be able to undercut the first company on price.
The math is even worse on a risk-adjusted basis because so many promising products fail during testing. Thus, the costs of developing several failed devices must be paid for by each successful device.
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
The point is that without a patent, nobody will pay for testing, the device will sit on a shelf, and it will do no one any good. This is why pharma and medical devices will never be like OSS -- the invention of the first instance is an extremely minor part of the cost of development. Building a better medical mousetrap is nothing. Proving it is safe and effective and gaining govt approval is everything.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Isn't that the main problem with radiation therapy? It's why you need a 'radiation planner' who essentially surveys a tumor, then plans a series of beams from different angles, that are calculated to deliver as much radiation as possible to a tumor, whilst minimising the effects on surrounding tissues.
See here for a link. Good radiation planning is a big selling point for hospitals.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
"Killing something dead" is completely redundant. That's one of the things that makes it such a great slogan for advertisments.
But overall, you're definitely right. My old roommate would eat just about anything off the floor, and our kitchen floor was not anything resembling clean. It was pretty gross to watch him eat that stuff, but his immune system must be close to bulletproof by now. He and his girlfriend had their house flooded during Katrina. When they went in to check it out, the house was trashed, mold everywhere, etc. Every time they've gone there since the flooding, the girlfriend has spent the next couple days sick as all hell, while he was no worse for wear.
Although it's easy to take it too far, the saying "whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" has some truth in it.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The words pencil and penicillin both derive from the same word penicillum, which is a double diminutive of the latin word for tail. I will not name that word, else I'll be modded Troll ;-)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Actually it has the same exact problem. Antibiotics are things that kill germs, but don't kill human cells. Similarly this cold plasma kills germs, but doesn't harm people. That means it isn't very strong. There are bound to be germs that survive and those germs will live on to form strains more resistant to cold pasma.
but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud
I'm reminded of an aunt & uncle of mine who were beyond neat freaks, but were absolute germaholics going back to when they had their son in the late 1960s. Neither of their kids was allowed outside otherwise they'd get dirty, and everything in the house was regularly bleached, dry cleaned, vacuumed or just renewed if it had even the hint of dirt. It was a pain going to their house, both of them as OCD as you could get. Last time I was there the toilet was bleached by my aunt after I used it. If there was even a hint of illness at school, both cousins just simply weren't allowed to go until it was all-clear.
In the end one cousin did get gravel rash on the elbow running out the school gate when he was 10, and had to be hospitalised for weeks, because he near died from the resulting infection. The first flu that his sister got when she was 13 also almost killed her. Both now (in their 30s) have the most intense asthma, find difficulty putting on normal weight and have regularly come down with weeks-long illnesses needing hospital stays from things that would give a normal person the sniffles & sneezes for a couple of days.
I'm not a bio major or anything (yet) but here's how I assume it works: The stream of 'cold plasma' is just energized oxygen and helium, packing extra electrons. When it comes into contact with a bacteria, it oxidizes the bacterias cell wall, causing them to lyse. Bam, no more bacteria. There isn't any real danger of the bacteria evolving an immunity, as we've been throwing similar tactics at them for a long time, and you probably have some in your home: Hydrogen Peroxide functions on basically the same principals.
As for the cancer element, I'm a little skeptical. It could be used to take out cancers, but you would need to cut the patient open, locate the cancer, and spray the tumor with magic cold plasma for a couple minutes, and then you get a dead and rotting tumor inside the patient's body. It's better just to remove the damn thing. For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidizer
The difference is, antibiotics kill the weakest germs first so if you stop too soon, you're breeding stronger germs.
This would most likely kill the most accessible germs first or if nothing else, just kill the ones it was used on. ("Hey Doc, I think you missed a spot"). I suppose it's also possible that germs with stronger outsides might be given an advantage but it doesn't seem quite as obvious as with drugs.
cheers,
Kris
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
I doubt this will sit on the shelf long. A big dumb company might spend that much money testing out something that costs far more than this does. A cheap gadget like this will quickly be tested in every conceivable way by hungry graduate students at every University in existence like TLDs were. The results should start pouring out soon unless some jackass gets a pattent and demands fees which eliminate any price advantage the device has over mercury vapor lamps. In that case, we will have to wait another seventeen years and then some.
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
There's enough red tape as it is. Please don't make me go Federal for everything. Let them compile, analyze and publish statistics other people generate. Laws protecting patient privacy are fine. Making every institution apply for a Federal Grant just to buy a $50 device would be really stupid.
There may indeed be some non-obvious and inventive tricks in this device that deserve a patent. If so, we can hope the inventor licenses things out at a price that will insure widespread adoption and great riches for himself. If not, we can only hope that they don't get any patent and everyone can start testing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing... Governments do not have money to foot the bill for anything. God, I really wish people everywhere would realize that ALL governments operate with TAXPAYER money. In the U.S., if you ask people around you how much they paid in taxes last year the majority will say something along the lines of "I didn't pay anything, they payed me X dollars." Everyone everywhere should get the mindset that every single dollar, pound, yen, or whatever monetary unit they use, spent by thier government is their money. Just in the cleanup and recovery from this years hurricane Katrina and Rita billions of MY FAVORITE DOLLARS have been utterly wasted. Just in Alabama, FEMA has paid millions to move unoccupied travel trailers around, and put them into $19 a day trailer spots at various state parks where they remain unoccupied. Why unoccupied? Maily because most of the people who need them didn't come to Alabama and because only a small percentage of travel trailer parking spots in Alabama state parks have sewer hookups. Most travel trailers have gray and black water storage tanks on board and they empty those at designated terminals at the various interstate rest stops. FEMA will not let anyone occupy one of thier trailers unless the parking spot is equipped with it's own sewer tap. So they pay millions to park unoccupied trailers in the state parks, instead of parking them in the many large unused parking lots that abound around the state where large stores, such as Winn Dixie, have closed, and tow them around from place to place. That's one example of MY F'ING MONEY going to waste. Can you tell I'm p'd? I don't mind the government using tax money to help with such disasters. I don't even mind, much, when that money is used overseas because such aid to other nations is one way of making friends and alies in the region. However, USE IT WISELY. Stepping off my soapbox... I went into that little tirade to say this: It's the "it's the governments money" attitude that leads to such egregious waste and overspending being tolerated. If the people would just shed that attitude things would be much better, not only ih the U.S. but everywhere.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." --Pericles
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
Governments (i.e., tax payers) effectively already foot the bill for a lot of drug and medical device development, even development that leads to proprietary, patented, commercial products. Furthermore, since the monopoly prices that result from patents end up being paid by government-supported health-care plans, they end up paying the rest of it, too, many times over.
In addition, the market is doing a piss poor job in creating incentives for companies to create the drugs that people actually need; companies have an incentive to create useless variations on medicines that treat symptoms of common diseases but don't cure them. What we actually need are medicines for currently untreatable diseases and medicines that cure.
Finally, a lot of the costly approval process is only in place because of the commercial development model; for many reasons, private companies are prone to bringing dangerous drugs to market without close government supervision. For drugs and devices developed with public funds, the approval process can be greatly simplified.
Overall, it would almost certainly be more cost effective for everybody to abolish drug and medical device patents altogether, have government and scientists set the goals for what to develop, and have all research, development, and testing of such devices paid for by the tax payer. Private companies can still get involved through contract work and work-for-hire.
I'm really scared by America's 'antibiotic culture'. In my office alone (twelve people), there are seven currently taking antibiotics, most for non-bacterial or non-serious conditions. Some are taking them for what I know are allergies, some to 'prevent' getting sick, some because they have a viral cold, and one for a sinus infection that I know is fungal in nature.
Three people have 'stockpiles' of antibiotics they keep from when they get prescriptions in their desk, and they share their different meds with each other.
Doctors prescribe antibiotics as a cure-all to get whining patients out of the office, and if they do try to suggest real cures that are less appealing to their patients they can kiss their revenue stream goodbye.
I stopped going to my doctor when he prescribed me Arithromycin(sp?) for a fungal ear and sinus infection. Any idiot who knows some biology knows that you can't fix a fungal problem with antibacterial agents, it will hurt more than it helps. American patients won't stand for 'eat a healthy low-carb diet for a week and get plenty of rest' when they can go next door and get 'take these antibiotics and call me if it gets worse, we'll give you a CAT scan and suggest surgery.' Your body's indigenous bacteria are a tremendously important part of your digestive and immune systems, killing them only clears the path for viral and fungal agents.
I gave up antibiotics about eight years ago, and my immune system is rock-solid. Sure, I get the occasional sinus infection or cold, but I change my diet and pamper my immune system and it usually clears up in a day or so. Every start-of-school the whole office gets sick, most people were totally out-of-commission for a week; I was sick for only two nights. I had a fever, so I drank an assload of salty chicken soup and wrapped myself up in a bigass blanket to 'burn off' for the night.
What REALLY burns me, besides that my friends and coworkers are happily skipping down the path to superbugs, is that the whole thing is subsidised by my health insurance payment. There's nothing like paying $350/month for everyone around you to abuse the system while you never need a doctor.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Conversation over holophone. Mother: Jimmy got suspend suspended again.. Father: God dammit WHY ? Mother: He's sprayed the #2 Plasma pencil on little Roberts 3th eye. He lost it so we have to pay for the growth of a new one. Father: OMFG. Mother: It's gonna cost 893748934 credits Father: Im gonna send that kid to earth... blah blah.
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
I make wine and my wife makes beer in our home. The current sterilization procedure for bacteria prevention involves the following:
1) Rinse out container with hot water
2) Soap out container (dishwasher soap) with awkward brush. Get all surfaces well wetted.
3) Rinse 3x to remove soap residue
4) Bleach container to 1% in hot water and let sit for 1 hour (massive headaches- bleach fumes- vent out the window)
5) Rinse container 4x to remove bleach residue
6) Mix Sodium Metabisulfite and Citric Acid in 1:1 ratio and coat all surfaces inside container for 30 sec - 1 minute. Fumes are nose + throat searing
7) Rinse 4x to guarantee removal.
8) Cap with plastic.
Takes about 1.5 hours for 2 jugs to go through the entire procedure.
Give me a portable plasma generator that can do the entire surface and I've just increased my productivity significantly as well as having less time downstairs and more time drinking the 'fruits' of the labor.
Seriously, it seems as if bacteria (or, more rhetorically, GERMS) are replacing paedophiles in terms of evoking hysteria for protecting THE CHILDREN (OMG).
"This is a recorded message from Your County Sherrif department. This is to notify you that a GERM has moved into the 2300 block of Pleasanview Drive and has complied with state and federal regulations notifying us of his residence."
Had B made an exact copy of company A's implementation then they would be infringing on A's copyright (or some other similar law.)
Copyright does not apply to processes. "Some other similar law" in this case would in fact be patent law. For example, one way to "evergreen" (extend a useful lifetime of) a drug patent is to patent the chemical once it works in rats and rabbits, patent an improved invention incorporating the chemical a few years later, and then submit the improved invention in the New Drug Application. This was used in the case of Prilosec® (omeprazole) and its popcorn-style kernels-within-a-capsule, which AstraZeneca managed to con(vince) the FDA into thinking was better than the more common enteric double coating.
And even if they created an exact copy wouldn't they still need to go through testing to get their copy approved?
Yes, but there isn't nearly as much testing. A generic version of an existing medication is associated with an Abbreviated New Drug Application. For instance, the makers of Prilosec had to prove that omeprazole itself is safe and effective, but a maker of generic omeprazole would have to prove only that its product is as good as Prilosec. It's less difficult than getting a new chemical approved from scratch, but until AstraZeneca's patent on "enteric popcorn" expires, it'll still be more difficult than the typical generic app.
We already have devices that sterilize inert medical instruments quite efficiently-way more efficiently than waving a tiny beam across their entire surface area. It may have a niche for sterilizing items that are temperature sensitive (and not overly sensitive to highly reactive charged particles). But it clearly won't be a "miracle beam" that can kill bacteria in a wound while leaving healthy tissue unaffected.
I dunno about other applications, but if they can make this efficiently clean larger areas, my employer would probably employ them for the rest of their lives to do nothing but make these things. You see, we make medical devices, implants. They have to be made carefully for a bazillion reasons, but each added bit of care drives up the cost. A big engineering constraint on their design is the fact that they must be able to withstand heat, fully assembled, for long enough to be permanently sterilized. If you can sterilize them cold, not only can you make designing them easier, but you can use a whole set of materials that actually works BETTER than what we use now... we just couldn't use them before because they couldn't be sterilized.
So despite what you may think about cold sterilization not being an improvement, it is. A big one.
Erik
PS: Malda, get Kupu.
(I still can't believe nobody has said it yet - is it because it's saturday?)
/. cliché jokes, welcome our new bacteria-killing overlords.
I, for the honor of the underrated
(Applause)
Thank you.
I had to reply to this as it makes absolute sense to me. Years ago I did a basic food handlers course, the instructor asked for our opinions as to why cases of food poisoning were on the increase. At a time when food hygeane regulations and enforcement were on the increase. My reply was that our natural ability to resist infection was being eroded. I passed the course but got rogered by the instuctor for my reply.
24C is 75F. I'm betting it was just a typo.
The potential dangers of Atkins have been greatly overstressed. The major "risks" that are touted are complete lies or misunderstandings.
1)A high fat diet is bad for your heart.
FalseThe majority of people who go on the Atkins plan experience greatly improved blood lipid levels. That is because the fat you are eating is being burned as energy rather than stored.
2)Atkins puts the body in a state of Ketosis which acidifies the blood, leading to leached minerals from bones and other things.
FALSEThis comes from a confusion of the terms ketosis and ketoacidosis. Ketones ARE produced in the body whenever fat is burned, regardless of whether the person is on a low carb or "traditional" diet regimen. A properly functioning body can get rid of these ketones quite efficiently through urine, sweat and breathing. Ketoacidosis arises when there is a problem with the body, such as liver failure due to alcoholism or other disorders. This will then allow the buildup of the Ketones created in the burning of fat (or alcohols) to such a great extent that the blood does become acidic. However, barring the well known (to doctors) conditions which cause ketoacidosis, the body can quite efficiently regulate blood acid levels through regulation of CO2 levels. Hyperventilation will do more to change your blood pH than going on Atkins.
3)The Atkins plan calls for a dangerously low amount of vegetables in the diet.
BLATANTLY FALSE The Atkins plan is essentially centered around first making sure that you get enough healthy vegetables in your diet. By choosing proper vegetables, one gets far more servings of vegetables than the average diet. Many vegetables are very high in nutrient content and low in carbohydrates. In induction, the most carbohydrate restricted phase, carbohydrates are generally restricted to 20 grams per day (not including fiber.) This would allow for 100 cups of spinach every day, which has 0.2grams of sugars and starch. Granted the vegetables you eat should be varied, so a wide variety of vegetables is eaten including brocolli, asparagus, peppers, zucchini, baby corn, many other leafy vegetables, turnips, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, tomatoes, various squashes, radishes, onions, mushrooms, jicama, fenel, endive, egplant, cucumbers, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, etc. And this is just a list of some of the veggies with under 4 grams of net carbohydrates which means you could have five servings of them daily DURING INDUCTION. There are a whole lot more which can be added when the very low carb (spinach, other leafy greans, etc) vegetables are used. After the first two weeks of induction, more and more vegetables can be added to the diet.
After you make sure that you get enough vegetables in your diet, then meats, eggs, etc are added untill you are no longer hungry.
Oh, and do me a favor. find me one controlled scientific study which shows that a low fat/high carbohydrate diet increases health. And I'm not talking about a study which also has the low fat group exercising more than the other group. Those are the studies always pointed to, and using multi factor studies is simply bad science. If you really want, I can point you to many studies that show that a low carb diet improves health for the majority of people who go on it. Saying that the long term effects of a low carb lifestyle have not been properly studies is misleading, as ketogenic diets (very similar to Atkin's plan) have been used to help keep cerebral palsy and epilepsy under control for over 80 years. The Ketogenic diet is far more restrictive than the Atkin's plan, and that makes sense as it is used to treat a different problem than obesity.
BTW, the Atkins plan or any low carb diet is not meant for everyone. Consulting a doctor and having them monitor your health is very important for any drastic lifestyle change. Certain health conditions (such as those which prevent the
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman