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Photonic Breakthrough Allows 'Lab-on-a-Chip'
Roland Piquepaille writes "Georgia Tech researchers have shrunk an optical device called wavelength demultiplier (WD) by combining into one crystal three unique properties of photonics crystals. This optical discovery opens the way to sophisticated and cheap bio-sensors mounted on 'lab-on-a-chip' devices -- sensors to run blood tests, detect chemicals in water supplies or for drug testing. Their new WD is less than a millimeter in all dimensions rather than the several centimeters of other currently available WDs. And it should not cost more to produce."
Makes me wonder about using an array of them in a camera in order to record colour images in terms of their actual spectral content instead of approximating down to red, green and blue. Then just run them in reverse (I assume the optical demux can be used in reverse) to re-create the display.
o matic vision.
;-)
:-(
This would make a convincing display even for those with colour blindness or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromattetrachr
As an aside, it has been mentioned that humans with tetrachromatic vision can see through various types of man-made textiles
Sadly, human tetrachromatic vision occurs only in females
Only trouble with that is that scientific journalism isn't aimed at scientists; it's aimed at the generally-educated layman, who outnumber scientists hundreds to one. And so the average reader isn't going to be very impressed by "this new device could allow the integration of another optical component onto the chip rather than the reader, reducing the cost of the reader and the risk of carryover" -- or at least, he'll find "will allow 'lab on a chip' devices" a lot more impressive. There's already plenty of literature aimed at scientists.
Scientific journalism really *is* PR; the reason universities and "Scientific American"-type magazines publish these things is to show people what science is doing lately... and why you should encourage your kids to grow up to be scientists, why you should write to your Congressman to support the NIH, why you should make a generous bequest to your alma mater, etc.
That said, it really isn't correct to report an incremental advance as more than that. (And not even one actually ready yet for micro-TAS systems; they demonstrate a device optimized for 24 channels over 1.5-1.6 um.) Not to say that it's not an impressive bit of work.
Great! So now I should be able to get a little lab on a chip that analyzes the air and water around me, wherever I go, for pollutants and toxins. Am I glad that we've got the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act that keep my personal environment clean.
Wait, my old chips are telling me that those "clean" Acts are really "dirty". And since the police will arrest you when you photograph them, it's going to be tough on people getting the dirt on polluters.
Or maybe these little LabMans on every allergic person's mobile phones will force a change on all that. Will the government be able to lie to us about our pollution laws being "Clean" laws when our phones are chirping whenever we leave our oxygen tents?
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make install -not war
I'm sorry, but anytime I see some new invention (bet it instrumentation, drugs, etc) related to healthcare, and they talk about how cheap it will be, I can't help but thing "yeah, right". Maybe it's cheap to produce, but by the time this patent is grabbed up by a money grubbing corporation, then endures the expensive and drawn out FDA approval process, and finally the owner determines the maximum that Medicaid and other insurers are willing to pay for the test, it will hardly be cheap. By cheap they really mean "greater profit margin than with existing technologies".
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Put some small, fast phototransistors into silicon. Use glass tubes (glass = Si) to propagate the signal to the next point, free of capacitance; maybe we can even tune the permittivity of the glass so the light can propagate faster. Build these crystals and tie them into the silicon to sense the signal and turn it back into a logic level.
Ideal for long hauls where the capacitance is a major factor in the switching speed, or clock distribution trees. The lowered capacitance, and possible increased permittivity, would definitely lead to less skew as well.
All assuming that this technology can switch sufficiently fast.
:(){
Of course they're looking for more grant funding. Everyone is, always. :)
At least at my school (and apparently at Georgia Tech as well), there's a separate "news office" that does the reports like this -- an internal "journalist" (or half reporter, half PR person) comes to the lab and interviews the professor when they get wind of something impressive/marketable. They write the article, based on background and specifics given by the professor. They distribute it, via the university's website and alumni magazine and possibly the student newspaper (if it's big enough).
That's why the "article" is credited to "Institute Communications & Public Affairs" rather than the individual lab, and why the "article" describes it as a "wavelength demultiplier". If the academics had prepared it, or even had approval on the final copy, they surely would've caught the mistake. (The question of why such "reputable" science bloggers as Roland Piquepaille didn't catch it is easily answered -- paraphrasing the PR is easier than condensing the actual article.)