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.

For the first time, ETH Zurich researchers have built micro-robots as small as bacteria. Their purpose is to help cure human beings.

Artificial bacterial flagella are about half as long as the thickness of a human hair. They can swim at a speed of up to one body length per second. This means that they already resemble their natural role models very closely.

They look like spirals with tiny heads, and screw through the liquid like miniature corkscrews. When moving, they resemble rather ungainly bacteria with long whip-like tails. They can only be observed under a microscope because, at a total length of 25 to 60 µm, they are almost as small as natural flagellated bacteria. Most are between 5 and 15 µm long, a few are more than 20 µm.

The tiny spiral-shaped, nature-mimicking lookalikes of E. coli and similar bacteria. are called “Artificial Bacterial Flagella” (ABFs), the “flagella” referring to their whip-like tails. They were invented, manufactured and enabled to swim in a controllable way by researchers in the group led by Bradley Nelson, Professor at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich. In contrast to their natural role model, some of which cause diseases, the ABFs are intended to help cure diseases in the future.

RTFA. This is a trip! One of those early moments when and where something as new as nano-tech begins to get exciting.

Engineers have made a new tiny DelFly Micro air vehicle. This successor to the DelFly I and II weighs barely 3 grams, and with its flapping wings is very similar to a dragonfly. Ultra-small, remote-controlled micro aircraft with cameras, such as this DelFly, may well be used in the future for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas.

The DelFly Micro is a ‘Micro Air Vehicle’, an exceptionally small remote-controlled aircraft with camera and image recognition software. The Micro, weighing just 3 grams and measuring 10 cm (wingtip to wingtip) is the considerably smaller successor to the successful DelFly I and DelFly II. The DelFly Micro, with its minuscule battery weighing just 1 gram, can fly for approximately three minutes and has a maximum speed of 5 m/s.

The ‘dragonfly’ has a tiny camera (about 0.5 grams) on board that transmits its signals to a ground station. With software developed by TU Delft itself, objects can then be recognised independently. The camera transmits TV quality images, and therefore allows the DelFly II to be operated from the computer. It can be manoeuvred using a joystick as if the operator was actually in the cockpit of the aircraft. The aim is to be able to do this with the DelFly Micro too.

Big Brother will be flying through your picnic – and you won’t even notice.