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Battery-Powered Plasma Flashlight Makes Short Work of Bacteria
cylonlover writes "An international team of scientists has created a handheld, battery powered device that has been shown to effectively rid skin of bacteria in an instant by blasting it with plasma. The plasma flashlight, which shouldn't be confused with a plasma torch that will damage much more than bacteria if used on the skin, could provide a convenient way for paramedics and military personnel to deal with harmful bacteria in the field. The self-contained device is powered by a 12 V battery and doesn't require any external gas feed or handling system. The plume of plasma it generates is between 20-23C (68-73.4F), so it won't damage the skin. It is also fitted with resistors to stop it heating up and becoming too hot to touch. Its creators say it can also be easily manufactured at a cost of less than US$100 per unit."
I like the bacteria that live on my body.. we have a relationship, once in a while a renegade causes some mayhem but otherwise its a very healthy existance that we've agreed to. Keep your death lights away, I dont need them.
With the prevalence of MSRA I've wondered why portable/handheld ozone generators have not become prevalent for hospital/clinical use. If this system is as effective it would eliminate the need for liquid suspension of ozone to prevent inhalation hazards. In fact, I wonder how long before other industries requiring sanitation abandon ozone systems in favor this plasma light system.
For those with interest in the subject :
http://ceee.hust.edu.cn/plasma/about.htm#jet
#1 - Ow! My sperm! ...
#2 - Hmm. Didn't hurt that time.
I won't penetrate the paywall, so I didn't RTFA. From the looks of the photo, there's a lot of UV, and also a lot of ozone.
"It is also fitted with resistors to stop it heating up and becoming too hot to touch."
Um. What? Whoever wrote this clearly has no electronics knowledge. This is Slashdot. We have real engineers and scientists around here. Could we have real science reporting, please? Not only is that sentence moronic, the entire article fails to explain how this device operates, even in the most basic terms. It's shaped like a flashlight, but that seems to be where the similarity ends. It is not a light source whatsoever. From the actual scientific publication, it appears that this is a high voltage pulse generator that produces a discharge between the device and the patient. A series of 100ns pulses at 20KHz repetition rate ionizes the air between the device and the patient, thus producing the ions that kill the bacteria. The peak current is 6mA, but the average current (and thus average power) is very low so heating is minimal. This is a relatively low-tech device electronically, and could easily be replicated by many hobbyists.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Anybody else read that as fleshlight?
Quick, where's the laser wrench? And the fusion shovel?
It is the CSIRO again!
Wonder if it works on solid surfaces as well. Just imagine, use it on your face a few times a day and eliminate acne. Of course you'll probably get really tan really quickly, but yeah. No more Yellowish Brown splotches as you leave after donating blood, they can sanitize you with a quick brush of a plasma flashlight. If places replaced the costly paper towel dispensers and soap dispensers with one of these, (a heavy duty plugin version) you could sanitize the hands of a hundred people in like a minute! No more soap and wasteful paper towels that are almost never recycled after use as a hand towel. No more costly hot air hand dryers that take hundreds of watts to run.
I don't know, but this sounds more like a lightsaber. Just crank up the power a little bit.
Actually that is precise how the laser flashlights in Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970) operated. On a low setting they were pretty much flashlights. They were designed to be covert, non-obvious weapons. However if the power was dialed up you had a powerful energy weapon for slicing things at a distance.
.... I cannot wait for the anti-patent crowd to say how they are being prevented from being able to kill bacteria on this skin because of this and that this needs to be open sourced.
Something fishy about this. "Fitted with resistors to stop it heating up". Is that a joke? As I remember, resistors are about turning unwanted current flow into heat. Also - from the article, the way I interpret it, it seems it takes tens of seconds of exposure to kill the bacteria.
They sell this hand held battery powered bacteria killing U.V. light at Fry's electronics. As shown on T.V.!!!
Ironic, my captcha is 'emitted'.
Based on what little information is in the article it just looks like a "corona discharge" generator. Basically just a high voltage source leaking small amounts of charge into the surrounding air, and ionizing it in the process. You can make one from the flyback transformer in an CRT tv/monitor, so the total cost for the homemade variant would be the cost of looking for a junk tv on the roadside.
Still, the device would also be good for experiments such as moving small objects without touching them, and accumulating a HV potential on leyden jar capacitors, etc.
Old Dominion University did this nearly a decade ago and filed a patent for it. I see no reference to them in the article.
http://www.odu.edu/ao/research/ip/PlasmaPencil.pdf
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I can see these replacing all those tedious hand-dryers in public toilets now - blast your bacteria and virii away in seconds!
Which means with enough middlemen, the standard good old boy networking, and the proper paperwork, the US Military will be paying somewhere between $7000-$9000USD each in large quantities.
Yeah for the 1%er's!
Have gnu, will travel.
I wonder if it would work on walls? We have some persistent fungus in parts of our house. Bleach the bastard and in a few weeks it's back.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I wonder if the bacteria that live on my skin stop more germs than my immune system. I suspect so since they have the numbers. It is sad that I can't find a bar of soap that does not have anti bacterial stuff in it. Germophobes have come down with some nasty fungal infections after ridding their skin of bacteria. It sounds useful for treating that missing patch of skin that time I left it on the goose poop decorated bike path. That one started to show sign of blood poisoning.
Hmmm thanks, but I'd prefer to sit tight until we know exactly how it does this. I know it has probably gone through rigourous testing etc., but if we've no idea how it works we've no idea how it could be causing other damage. We used to think throwing antibiotics at every possible problem was a great idea until we discovered transmissible resistance genes.
So this is a flashlight whose sole purpose is to shine on your flesh. I'm pretty sure there's already a product called a Fleshlight.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
and can it do 3D? :p
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
I could build several UVC-LED flashlights for that much and get the same effects with better lifetime, durability, and portability.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In my Universe[1], I would let you slide on the muffler bearings, BUT the bacon stretcher is just taking things too far! ;-)
Repent your evil ways and use a bacon condenser instead.
Just think, put in 10 kilos of bacon, and get a handful of bullion cube sized bacon bites!
Density FTW! (just ask my bathroom scales!)
All hyperbolic humour/sarcasm aside......a 'bacon stretcher'? :-)
That's a new one for me, first time I've encountered that one...Thanks!
[1] I am the Emperor of my fantasy Universe, so I get to make the rules!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Antibacterials like simple alcohols or hydrogen peroxide are small molecules, and small molecules can't generate an immune response directly. However, small molecules can act as haptens: They bind to some protein and the combination generates such a response. Urushiol is the best example of a hapten - it's the "active ingredient" in poison ivy, oak, and sumac.
That said, I've never heard of an allergic reaction to either a simple alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. Skin irritation, sure, but not an allergic reaction.
Iodine is another matter. Antibacterial iodine is usually povidone-iodine, and it definitely is possible to have a severe allergic reaction to it. Various sources disagree as to why this happens, but it definitely does.
It's also possible, although rare, to have an allergic reaction to iodine-based contrast dyes. My mother nearly died from an injection some of this stuff, as a matter of fact.
So, for scabies and similar sufferers, will this device kill mites?
welcome our future plasma-resistant bacterial overlords!
The bacteria probably aren't too excited about the news of the humans creating yet another new weapon of mass genocide and perhaps they are ramping up some new strain so they can attack humans first.
Slashdot always has such a human bias to it, even with the new ownership.
MRSA is no the product of a total war on bacteria, but the product of a careless war.
Our use of antibiotics is like sending a single policeman with a single gun to every incident reporting and not caring if they return. In most cases it will be enough, but in the long run there will be many criminals with police guns in their hands
(and even if they do not need the new guns, they still get fresh ammo all the time).
Hospitals are then favelas handled like that, i.e. sending one or two policemen with automatic guns into areas where everyone already has guns, perhaps sending them in until they return and bring back all the weapons in one house, but not counting all the weapons you lost, not looking if anyone leaves the house with some of your weapons and hides somewhere else, not caring for people walking around with your weapons in the streets and so on.
The big weapons against MRSA are basic hygiene and checking your employes. Just regularily testing your employees and getting rid of any MRSA they carry around helps a lot. Teaching people to wash your hands between touching patients instead of between touching sterile items is also said to help a lot.
When it grows up, it will be a light saber.
Why is Snark Required?
Can't we just start zapping bacteria with lasers so we can teach them English?
COME ON PEOPLE, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Should be called the Fleshlight! Yeah, since it's a flashlight to be used on the flesh, right? ;-) I wonder if it feels real good....
For when soap is just too simple...
You evilutionists can't fool me! Everyone knows diseases and infections aren't caused by "invisible tiny creatures", but by demons! You are just trying to fool everyone into buying your useless devices so you can raise more money to promote your atheist-satanic-Muslim agenda! Admit it! [/tongueincheek]
The thing produces free radicals, which are molecules with unpaired electrons. Since electron really prefer to be paired, a free radical will catch an electron from any nearby molecule, turning the later into another free radical. Each time a molecule from a cell is touched by this chain reactions, it is damaged and will need repair. This is true for microbes, but for human cells as well
Cells have defenses. Molecules such as Vitamin C and E, Glutathione, or the SuperOxyde Dismutase enzyme, will be able to extinct the radical chain reactions, by pairing two free radicals together. Of course if there are too many free radicals, defenses can be overwhelmed and the cell will be destroyed. Another way to get destroyed is when free radical alter DNA and cause a mutation. If this is detected, the cell will self destruct in a process known as apoptosis.
If mutation is undetected, the cell may exhibit original behavior. If you are unlucky, mutations reactivate enzyme telomerase, which will allow the cell to divide without limits. If you are even more unlucky, the p53 gene, which controls how fast cell divides is also affected. And it you do not have any luckl, this happens without making the cell strange enough to be detected and attacked by the immune system. You got a cancer.
Now the question for which I do not have an answer is: does this thing cause more harm to bacteria than to human cells. It seems to be the case, but I assume this is because bacteria sit on the skin and are on first line when you light up this toy : they are the first to get the damage.
I could build several UVC-LED flashlights for that much and get the same effects with better lifetime, durability, and portability.
why is formatting ruined when posting? I would like to point out that some time ago i converted a USB ionizer which cost about £2 from ebay here:- http://www.ebay.co.uk/ [ebay.co.uk] This device generates a high voltage and a stream of ions.I opened it and by removing/adjusting the output resistor could make it produce a spark from 1 mm to 6 mm in length and by attaching electrodes to 2 parallel glass plates or parallel bits of plastic from a toys packaging generate a plasma between the two parallel plates. Also by holding one electrode and bringing the second electrode with a parallel plate near to the skin produced a similar plasma as above with a slight tingling depending on the distance from the skin. Also I could run this device from a battery down to 1.2 volts up to 12 volts.The strength of the plasma being in direct proportion to the voltage.I mean a 1.2 volts supply produced a 1mm continuous spark but 12 volts produced nearly 1.5 cm long spark.The plasma strength varied in a similar fashion.If anyone wants to do more experiments I suggest you purchase this very cheap device. I have used this device to stop pimples and boils from growing and to reduce swelling from same by zapping it with the device.Only takes a few seconds of use 2 or 3 times a day. Also you can use it to neutralize insect/snake bites as well.There is a website devoted to this subject from a practical view point. http://venomshock.wikidot.com/#toc1 [wikidot.com] As the device only costs £2 it would be very easy to mass produce this plasma device cheaply by the Chinese for everyday use to eliminate infections on or near the surface of the skin.
why is formatting ruined when posting?
Go to the Settings and change the posting mode to Plain Old Text.