Eideard

While other scientists successfully shrank beakers, tubes and centrifuges into diagnostic laboratories that fit into aluminum boxes that cost $50,000, George Whitesides had smaller dreams. The diagnostic tests designed in Dr. Whitesides’s Harvard University chemistry laboratory fit on a postage stamp and cost less than a penny.

His secret? Paper.

His colleagues miniaturized diagnostic tests so they could move into the field with tiny pumps and thread-thin tubes. Dr. Whitesides opted for a more novel approach, reasoning that a drop of blood or urine could wick its way through a square of filter paper without any help.

And if the paper could be etched with tiny channels so that the drop followed a path, and if that path were mined with dried proteins and chemically triggered dyes, the thumbnail-size square could be a mini-laboratory — one that could be run off by the thousands on a Xerox machine.

Diagnostics for All, the private company Dr. Whitesides founded four years ago here in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood to commercialize his inspirations, has already created such a test for liver damage. It requires a single drop of blood, takes 15 minutes and can be read by an untrained eye: If a round spot the size of a sesame seed on the paper changes to pink from purple, the patient is probably in danger.

Using paper in diagnostic tests is not entirely new. It soaks up urine in home pregnancy kits and blood in home diabetes kits. But Dr. Whitesides has patented ways to control the flow through multiple layers for ever-more-complex diagnoses. His test has proved more than 90 percent accurate on blood samples previously screened by the laboratory of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard teaching hospital, said Una S. Ryan, chief executive of Diagnostics for All…

The initial target audience is AIDS patients with tuberculosis who must take powerful cocktails of seven or more drugs. Some drugs damage the liver, and deaths from liver failure are 12 times as common among African AIDS patients as among American ones, Dr. Ryan said, because current liver tests are expensive and require tubes of blood…

RTFA. Truly worthwhile effort, starting with grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and carrying through to government assistance both sides of the pond.

Taking the cost of tests from dollars to pennies makes them affordable in the 3rd World – as well as the growing pool of poverty in the industrial West. Many examples, many goals already met. The sort of medical research that doesn’t make billions for pharmaceutical giants; but, helps human beings worldwide.

What appears to be French customs officers catching a smuggler with hummingbirds in his pants!

In 2010, French customs officers at the Rochambeau airport in Cayenne, French Guiana after noticing some suspicious bulges, conducted an intimate pat-down of a Dutch tourist and found some tiny parcels in some very personal space.

The tale and photos are making the round and finchwench has interesting commentary about why and more…

Thanks, Ursarodina

Thanks, Eric

 
Same as it ever was.

Though I have obvious reasons to remember a few coppers who beat and attacked demonstrators – scars – I always smile remembering the state troopers assigned to follow the car I was in in a southern border state on the way to a sit-in in 1959 who pulled alongside to offer directions to the town while we were gazing blankly at a road map by the side of the road.

The wreck of a British cargo ship carrying 7 million ounces of silver that was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1941 has been identified. Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., announced Monday that it had located and verified the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa approximately 300 miles west of the Irish coast. The ship lies approximately 3 miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic.

The Gairsoppa, a 412-foot steel-hulled cargo ship, was in transit from Calcutta to London on February 17, 1941 with 85 people on board when it strayed from a convoy. A German submarine attacked, sinking the ship. Lifeboats were launched, but only the second officer, who washed ashore, survived.

The ship’s manifest included 2,600 tons of pig iron, and 1,765 tons of tea — and a cargo of silver ingots — which was valued then at 600,000 pounds. At today’s prices the silver would be valued at about 150 million pounds, or more than $210 million.

Because the silver shipment was insured by the U.K. government, bids were solicited for locating and salvaging the wreck. If recovered, the silver would represent the largest known precious metal cargo ever salvaged from the sea.

Under its agreement with the U.K. government, Odyssey will retain 80% of the net salved value of the silver bullion recovered.

My favorite kind of deep-sea fishing.

A black ASPCA employee who found a noose in the organization’s Queens garage claims officials blew off her complaint and told her the hanging rope was for “operational purposes.”

Sanoy Fleming, a part-time clerk in the records department, made the shocking discovery on Sept. 11 and used her phone to snap a photo.

Fleming, who has hired a lawyer, said a black colleague told her the noose had been hanging for several days in the garage of the spay and neuter clinic, which opened last June in Glendale.

“I was very upset, and it made me uncomfortable that no one thought it was inappropriate,” Fleming, 40, told the Daily News.

“I explained to my supervisor that nooses were used to hang slaves, and I explained how insulting that is to African-Americans.”

Fleming’s supervisor apparently reported the incident to ASPCA higher-ups – four days later she was put on a conference call with the human resources department.

A man who identified himself as “George” warned Fleming that her work was not up to par.

“At the end of the conversation, he said, ‘I heard you were upset about a rope found in the garage,’ and he said that it was used for ‘operational purposes’ to lift things,” the Brooklyn woman recalled.

New York City, eh? So, if someone working at City Hall wore a swastika to a meeting chaired by Mike Bloomberg it would go unnoticed? Hogwash!

Symbols of racist lynchings are brought to the workplace for only one reason. To intimidate Black workers. The culprit may be a white dodo-bird. More likely the culprit is a bigot who enjoys the racism game to prop up his tiny, limp self-image.

Chinese municipal contest: guess which cooking oil is counterfeit?
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

China has detained more than 2,000 people, seized tonnes of tainted products and closed more than 5,000 companies in a five-month crackdown on food safety problems, but the road ahead remains tough, state media said on Monday.

“Our recent campaign has achieved notable success. But this is just a beginning,” an unnamed official from the cabinet’s food safety task force told Xinhua news agency.

“The campaign should not be given an excessively high appraisal. We cannot lower our guard or rest up, and must be aware of the complex, long-term nature of the food safety problem and remain on high alert,” the official added…

China has struggled to rein in health safety violations in the unruly and vast food sector despite harsh punishments and repeated vows to deal with the problem.

Since July, Chinese courts have sentenced at least a dozen people to jail, including one person who received a suspended death sentence, for their roles in producing or selling pork tainted with toxic chemicals.

In the latest scandal, authorities detained 32 people for making and selling tonnes of cooking oil dredged from gutters and repackaged for sale as new.

Overdue.

I believe the Chinese government is aware of the task. Especially if they intend to grow their international commerce in foodstuffs. But, like anything else involving human beings and corruption, sometimes you need more than good intentions to resolve corruption. Like a lot of people with badges!

A Port St. Lucie woman remained in the St. Lucie County jail Sunday after sheriff’s deputies say she placed drugs and used syringes under her baby’s daughter’s dress to avoid being searched by a female St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputy.

Deanna Marie Angelico, 31, of the 800 block of Southeast Sweetbay Avenue, was charged with felony child neglect without great harm, felony drug possession and misdemeanor possession of drug equipment.

According to arrest reports, she and Michael G. Angelico, 23, were in a vehicle stopped by deputies in the 800 block of Prima Vista Boulevard after witnesses reported seeing two people shooting up drugs.

Michael Angelico…was charged with felony drug possession and misdemeanor possession of drug equipment. He was released Sunday on $5,500 bond; Deanna Angelico was held in lieu of $8,000 bond.

There probably was a word like “scumbag” used even in pre-biblical times for the behavior of people who enrolled in the addict’s lifestyle.

New Zealand police arrested and strip searched a black South African rugby journalist drinking with white colleagues in a pub because he “fitted the profile of a drug dealer”.

Vata Ngobeni, who works for the Pretoria News newspaper and acts as an analyst for South Africa’s national broadcaster SABC, was arrested in the early hours of Monday morning and taken to a police station where he was strip searched.

When he tried to explain that he was a journalist on tour covering the Springboks’s performance in the Rugby World Cup, which New Zealand is hosting, he was told they were following standard procedure when they spot someone who fits “the profile of a drug dealer”.

Colleagues in the bar with him confirmed he was the only black person present.

“I have never been so embarrassed in my life,” he told a South African newspaper after being released. “I have never experienced this kind of treatment in all my travels around the world, so to be singled out as a common criminal in front of so many people is something I will never forget.”

Here in the United States we have so many politicians and populist pimps rationalizing away the possible effects of police profiling – we tend to forget that other nations from Israel to New Zealand have already established such foolishness as standard operating procedures.

Some are on their way out of official racism – which I hope would be the case in New Zealand – while others like Israel are baking institutionalized bigotry into daily life.

In the hours after the 2008 election of the country’s first African-American president, three white men crept up to a predominantly African-American church being built here in Springfield, Massachusetts, blessed it corruptly with gasoline — and faded into the fresh November night.

Soon the church’s pastor, Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr., was at the crime scene’s flickering edge, weary, saddened. Moments before, he had been anticipating a new chapter in American history, and now here was one page, stuck. He didn’t need an investigation to tell him this was a racist act of arson. He is a black man with snow in his hair; he knew.

As he watched the new home for the Macedonia Church of God in Christ burn to the ground, Bishop Robinson imagined only one response: Rebuild.

Now, nearly three years later, that election night’s crisp air of possibility has all but faded in Washington, where the first African-American president, Barack Obama, struggles with grinding wars, a broken economy and spirit-killing partisanship. But here in Springfield, the smoke has lifted to reveal a new, 20,000-square-foot church standing on top of an old crime scene, its sanctuary walls painted the color of a clear blue sky.

Resting in one of its pews the other day, a silver cane by his side, Bishop Robinson, 74, said that this building on Tinkham Road reflects the ever-unfolding American story of race, in Washington, Springfield, everywhere. “The hatred in our country,” he said. “And the goodness in our country.”

The election night burning of a New England church became national news…Two months after the fire, three white men in their 20s were charged with burning down the church to express their rage at the thought of a black president. Two pleaded guilty, and the third was convicted after trial, in a case that The Republican newspaper of Springfield described as a “blot on the whole city.”

“Unfortunately, it was a confirmation of my experiences as an African-American,” Bishop Robinson said, adding: “My faith teaches me to forgive, and I forgive them. But I cannot be accepting of their behavior. I cannot be victimized by hatred. So I have to move forward.”

How many Americans have not “moved forward”?

I’d rather you RTFA and study the courage and spirit of Bishop Robinson. I’m certain I’d find a number of issues to debate with the gentleman. I’m equally certain I’d be honored to welcome him under my roof.