Brains Now Grow in Petri Dishes

That doughnut shape decorated with bright green spots, some connected by red pathways, amidst sky blue neighbors could be an artist's creation, but is the result of a creative scientific attempt to grow an active brain in a dish, complete with memories. Really.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh published this stunning study in the journal Lab on a Chip {the full paper can be accessed here.} When I first learned how to grow cells in a lab, the technique of tissue culture, the idea of even growing brain cells was a far-fetched dream, much less brain cells capable of forming networks, complete with biological signals.

How did they do it?

 To produce the models, the Pitt team stamped adhesive proteins onto silicon discs. Once the proteins were cultured and dried, cultured hippocampus cells from embryonic rats were fused to the proteins and then given time to grow and connect to form a natural network. The researchers disabled the cells' inhibitory response and then excited the neurons with an electrical pulse.

Zeringue and his colleagues were able to sustain the resulting burst of network activity for up to what in neuronal time is 12 long seconds. Compared to the natural duration of .25 seconds at most, the model's 12 seconds permitted an extensive observation of how the neurons transmitted and held the electrical charge, Zeringue said.

From the paper's Abstract: {excerpted for clarity}

 Persistent activity in the brain is involved in working memory and motor planning. The ability of the brain to hold information 'online' long after an initiating stimulus is a hallmark of brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex. Recurrent network loops such as the thalamocortical loop and reciprocal loops in the cortex are potential substrates that can support such activity. However, native brain circuitry makes it difficult to study mechanisms underlying such persistent activity. Here we propose a platform to study synaptic mechanisms of such persistent activity by constraining neuronal networks to a recurrent loop like geometry. Using a polymer stamping technique, adhesive proteins are transferred onto glass substrates in a precise ring shape. Primary rat hippocampal cultures were capable of forming ring-shaped networks containing 40-60 neurons. Calcium imaging of these networks show evoked persistent activity in an all-or-none manner. Blocking inhibition leads to an increase in the duration of persistent activity. These persistent phases were abolished by blockade of asynchronous neurotransmitter release by ethylene glycol tetraacetic acid.

This is amazing. I wonder what the "memory" could be - could be a good subject for a science fiction story.

Source: Scienceblogs

World record 26 terabits per second data transmission achieved

With video content consuming ever more bandwidth, the need for faster data transmission rates has never been greater. Now a team of scientists at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are claiming a world record in data transmission with the successful encoding of data at a rate of 26 terabits per second on a single laser beam and transmitting it over a distance of 50 km (31 miles). The scientists claim this is the largest data volume ever transported on a laser beam and enables the transmission of 700 DVD's worth of content in just one second.

With no electronic processing methods available for a data rate of 26 terabits per second, the team developed a new opto-electric data decoding process. This process relies on purely optical calculations to break down the initial high data rate into smaller bit rates that can then be processed electrically. The record-breaking data encoding also employed the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM) scheme based on Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) mathematical routines that is commonly used in mobile communications networks including digital TV and audio broadcasts.

Because energy is required for the laser and a few process steps only, the team says the new method is not only extremely fast, but also very energy efficient.

"Our result shows that physical limits are not yet exceeded even at extremely high data rates," says Professor Jürg Leuthold, who led the KIT experiment. "A few years ago, data rates of 26 terabits per second were deemed utopian even for systems with many lasers and there would not have been any applications. With 26 terabits per second, it would have been possible to transmit up to 400 million telephone calls at the same time. Nobody needed this at that time. Today, the situation is different."

The latest breakthrough follows on from the previous high-speed data transmission record set by the KIT scientists in 2010, when they successfully exceeded the data rate of 10 terabits (or 10,000 billion bits) per second.

The KIT experiment involved companies and scientists from all over Europe, including members of the staff of Agilent and Micram Deutschland, Time-Bandwidth Switzerland, Finisar Israel, and the University of Southampton in Great Britain. The experiment is detailed in the journal Nature Photonics.

Source: Gizmag

Nanofiber patch could regenerate dead areas of heart

When someone has a heart attack, the cells in the affected area of the heart die off, and the damage can't be repaired. In the not-so-distant future, however, that may not be the case. Engineers from Rhode Island's Brown University, working with colleagues in India, have created a carbon nanofiber patch that has been shown to regenerate heart cells. It is hoped that such patches could eventually be placed on the heart, like a Band-Aid, to regrow dead areas.

The patch itself is 22 millimeters long, 15 microns thick, has a scaffold-like structure, and can expand and contract like heart tissue. It is made from a government-approved polymer and carbon nanofibers. The fibers are said to be excellent conductors of electrons, and so are able to transmit the electrical impulses that the heart uses in order to maintain a steady beat.

The Brown team laid the patch on a glass substrate, then seeded its nanofibers with heart cells known as cardiomyocytes. After four hours, five times as many cells had colonized the nanofiber patch, than a control patch that consisted of the polymer only. This figure rose to six times the cell density, after five days. Additionally, after four days, the density of neurons on the nanofiber patch had doubled.

According to the engineers, the elasticity of the scaffolding and the electrical qualities of the nanofibers are what makes it such an ideal spawning ground for the cardiomyocytes and neurons.

There is still work to be done, however. The team now wants to alter the pattern of the scaffolding in order to better mimic the heart's electrical current, along with placing a patch in a live subject to see how it handles the heart's voltage and beat regime. They also want to confirm that the cardiomyocytes which grow on the patch are able to function in the same ways as regular heart cells.

The research, which was conducted in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, was recently published in the journal Acta Biomaterialia.

Source: Gizmag

Paralyzed man regains voluntary leg movement with electrode array implant

In a move that gives cautious hope to the millions of people suffering some form of paralysis, a team of researchers from UCLA, Caltech and the University of Louisville has given a man rendered paralyzed from the chest down after a hit-and-run accident in 2006 the ability to stand and take his first tentative steps in four years. The team used a stimulating electrode array implanted into the man's body to provide continual direct electrical stimulation to the lower part of the spinal cord that controls movement of the hips, knees, ankles and toes, to mimic the signals the brain usually sends to initiate movement.



Instead of bypassing the nervous system to directly stimulate the leg muscles, the electrical signals provided by the array stimulate the spinal cord's own neural network so it can use the sensory input derived from the legs to direct muscle and joint movements. The stimulation therefore doesn't induce movement, but taps into a network of spinal cord nerves that are capable of initiating movement on their own without the help of the brain, which then work together with cues from the legs to direct muscle movement.


The research team's work builds on previous research at UCLA that showed animals with spinal-cord injuries could stand, balance, bear weight and take coordinated steps while the outermost part of the spinal canal - or epidural space - is stimulated.

Thanks to the breakthrough the test subject, 25 year old Rob Summers, is able to supply the muscular push required to stand up and remain standing for up to four minutes at a time. With periodic assistance, Summers is able to stand for up to an hour, and with the aid of a harness support and some assistance from a therapist he is able to take steps on a treadmill.

Prior to implantation with the epidural stimulating array, Summers, who suffered a complete motor injury at the C7/T1 level of the spinal cord, was unable to move even his toes. But after implantation he was able to not only stand and make repeated stepping motions on a treadmill with the assistance of a harness, but also regained the ability to voluntarily move his toes, ankles, knees, and hips on command. However, once the stimulation is turned off, Summers loses the voluntary control of his limbs.

Over time, Summers also experienced improvements in several types of autonomic function, including bladder and bowel control and temperature regulation. The researchers say these autonomic functions began to return before there was any sign of voluntary movement, which took around seven months after he began receiving epidural stimulation to emerge.

Although the researchers still aren't yet fully sure how these autonomic functions were regained, the results indicate the treatment could help improve the quality of life of spinal cord injury sufferers other than those with the strength to undergo the rigorous physical training Summers did as part of his treatment. The researchers say the relief from secondary complications of complete spinal cord injury - including impairment or loss of bladder control, sphincter control and sexual response - could even prove to be ultimately as, or more important in terms of improving the quality of life of such patients.

While obviously encouraged by the results, the researchers are quick to point out that the study represents just one case and that there's no way to tell how other patients may react. They also point out that Summers, who was an athlete in comparatively excellent physical condition before his accident, retained some sensation in his lower extremities after his injury indicating his spinal cord was not completely severed, which may have played a part in the level of success he was able to attain.

However, the researchers are hopeful that their work could one day provide some individuals suffering spinal cord injuries with the ability to stand independently, maintain balance and take effective steps through the use of a portable stimulation unit and the assistance of a walker. Additionally, the researchers believe the approach could potentially also help in the treatment of stroke, Parkinson's, and other disorders affecting motor function.

The team has received approval from the FDA to test five spinal-cord injury patients and will next try and replicate their initial results with a patient that matches Summers in terms of age, injury, and physical ability. They will then turn to patients who have no sensation to see how that influences the outcome.

Interestingly, the device implanted into Summers is FDA-approved for back pain only and its use was meant only as a test to see if the researcher's concepts would work. As a result, the researchers say the current implants have many limitations and that further advances in the technology should lead to better control of the standing and stepping process. They are also looking at whether it might be possible to move the array higher up on the spinal column to see if it could also be used to affect the arms and hands.

The UCLA, Caltech and University of Louisville researcher's work is detailed in the paper, "Epidural stimulation of the lumbosacral spinal cord enables voluntary movement, standing, and assisted stepping in a paraplegic human," which is published in The Lancet.

Source: Gizmag

DNA-Based Computing Could Replace Silicon !

 

DNA is the future of computing,” Jian-Jun Shu tells PhysOrg. And why not? Silicon is slow by comparison, computes in a binary system, creates waste heat, and is not particularly easy on the environment. DNA-based computing can perform better than silicon in several respects, Shu says, and he and a few of his students at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore have set out to prove it.

The general idea: the human body performs computations all of the time, and does so far faster than even the fastest silicon-based supercomputer. Moreover, it does so in a parallel fashion, working with more breadth, speed, and agility than the ones and zeros of silicon computation. For massive parallel problems, artificial intelligence problems, and combinatorial problems, DNA-based computing could be far more efficient.

How does it work? Shu and company are just starting to scratch the surface of what DNA computing could do, he admits, but in the lab he and his students have manipulated strands of DNA to do all kinds of things. They have fused strands together, broken them apart, snipped them, and otherwise affected them to a certain goal or end like storing information in DNA molecules that can be later retrieved for computational purposes.

The operations right now are simple: addition or subtraction mainly, nothing as complex as what silicon computers can do on their worst days. The potential for that equation to be flipped is there, but first there are several obstacles that need to be overcome. For one, there is no real interface for DNA-based computing through which humans can interact with and display data. There also exists no equivalent to the CPU--something that can facilitate these complex operations without human interference.

But that will change, Shu says, with increases in technology and more time in the lab. Just don’t expect to be computing with nucleotides anytime in the near term.

Source: PopSci Via PhysOrg

Solar plane's first international flight a success

Solar Impulse during flight tests earlier this year / Image: Solar Impulse

Solar Impulse has successfully completed its first international flight. After spending most of last week on standby waiting for favorable weather conditions, the Swiss solar powered aircraft made the run from Payerne to Brussels on Friday May 13 in a flight that lasted 12 hours 59 minutes. Hats-off to the Solar Impulse team!

Solar Impulse is an astonishing feat of engineering. It has a wingspan of over 200 feet (61 m) yet it weighs only 1600 kg (3,527 lb) and carries almost 12,000 solar cells which supply all of the energy required to keep it aloft.

The plane has actually flown for a longer duration than Friday's 12 hours 59 minute flight, setting a mark of more than 26 hours in an overnight flight last summer. The achievement of its first international flight is as much about the logistics of civil aviation as it is about performance. Solar Impulse is a slow moving aircraft – during the latest flight it flew at around 31 mph (50 km/h) – and this makes for some unique challenges when it comes to flight planning as Solar Impulse Air Traffic Control manager Niklaus Gerber explains on the Solar Impulse Blog:

"HB-SIA is an obstacle for civil and military aviation because it is not very mobile, and rather inflexible. It is slow (31 mph/50 km/h) and does not really show up on radar (you see it as a point that hardly moves). Now, alongside it, there are aircraft that are traveling at between 400 and 900 km/h. So the other aircraft are the ones that have to make adjustments to avoid it. But this scenario is theoretical because we have done everything to avoid it in planning the flight. Usually, the separation distance between aircraft is 300 meters (984 ft) vertically and 8 kilometers (5 miles) when flying at the same height. In the case of Solar Impulse, our margin of safety is much greater. And an aircraft that passes above it needs to be at least 900 meters (2,953 ft) higher, due to the turbulence it creates which descends for about 5 minutes at a rate of 150 meters (492 ft) per minute before dissipating."

Successfully negotiating these constraints in the flight from Switzerland to Belgium is therefore a big milestone in the build up towards the planned round-the-world journey.

A new future for aviation?

The project founded by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg (who was at the controls during the first international flight) is not geared towards producing a commercial product but instead aims to demonstrate just how much can be achieved with renewable technology. Even without the round the world trip that the team plans to undertake in 2013, it's arguable that the achievements of the past year which began with the aircraft's maiden flight in April 2010 have already gone a long way to proving the point. We could well be looking back on this period as a "Wright brothers moment" in the history of aviation.

In the flight from Payerne to Brussels, Solar Impulse covered around 390 miles (628 km) using no fuel. A rough calculation tells us that a Boeing 747 would have used around 2,000 gallons (7,570 L) of fuel to make the same trip.* Of course it's not much of a comparison when you consider that a commercial airliner can carry hundreds of people, but one can't help but think that the seeds of a new era are being sewn. Solar Impulse is powered by 4 x 10 horsepower electric engines, the Wright Brothers had 12 horsepower at their disposal when they flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Food for thought.

Watch the majestic landing at Brussels in the Solar Impulse video below:

* A 747-400 that flies 3,500 statute miles (5,630 km) and carries 126,000 pounds (56,700 kg) of fuel will consume an average of five gallons (19 L) per mile (Boeing.com).

Revolutionary 'blood' HBOC-201 saves Tamara Coakley

A REVOLUTIONARY synthetic blood - straight out of science fiction - has saved the life of a Victorian woman.

Doctors at The Alfred brought Tamara Coakley, 33, back from the brink of death after a horrific car crash left her with severe blood loss and dangerously close to heart failure.

This was the first reported case of the synthetic blood reversing cardiac hypoxia and anaemia in a trauma patient.

A last-ditch effort to save Mrs Coakley's life led to 10 units of the haemoglobin-based oxygen carrier, called HBOC-201 to be flown in from the US.

It contains a molecule derived from cow's blood and restored the level of haemoglobin in her blood, which carries oxygen to the tissues.

Trauma service director Dr Mark Fitzgerald said it marked an important step in developing a viable blood alternative to address world blood supply shortages.

Unlike donor blood it does not require matching and can be stored without refrigeration for up to three years- making it suitable for use in a rural settings or on the battlefield.

"It's a bit of science fiction," Dr Fitzgerald said.

"Currently only one in 30 people give blood, but one in three will need it.

"What we would eventually like to see is synthetic blood products to be available in remote areas of Australia and in the Defence Forces when people don't have any other option."

As a Jehovah's Witness, Mrs Coakley was unable to have whole blood transfusions, but was permitted to accept blood substitutes.

Dr Fitzgerald was familiar with the product, which is being developed by the US Navy, because he gave independent advice on a proposed research project five years ago.

Working through the night he negotiated with the drug's manufacturer, OPK Biotech, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service and airline carriers.

The Alfred's ethics committee approved the import, permission was granted under the TGA's special access scheme and the manufacturer picked up the tab.

Within 48 hours, the blood product had arrived in Melbourne and five units (2350ml) were painstakingly administered over two days.

Despite a few close calls, including high temperatures and pneumonia, Mrs Coakley's haemoglobin levels more than doubled.

HBOC-201 is one of several blood substitutes being developed around the world.

University of Melbourne Paediatrics Department head Prof Paul Monagle said synthetic blood could relieve donor supply issues and give people in remote areas access to life-saving treatment.

"The other issue is storage," he said.

"If you could make a synthetic blood with a long shelf life and it was portable you could carry it with you."

But any synthetic blood product would have to be rigorously tested before it moved from working prototype to routine practice.

Mrs Coakley, who was in an induced coma during the medical procedure, knows how close she came to death in the October crash.

She was overwhelmed by the lengths to which Dr Fitzgerald went to save her life and respect her personal choices.

"In a hospital setting you wouldn't get a person in this situation where they are forced to try something new," Mrs Coakley said.

"I'm glad something positive could come out of it. They did everything they could. I am so grateful for that."

Source: HeraldSun

Thin-film flexible 'Paperphone' created

Researchers from the Human Media Lab at Canada's Queen's University have created a fully-functioning floppy E-Ink smartphone, which they also refer to as a paper computer. Like its thicker, rigid-bodied counterparts, the Paperphone can do things like making and receiving calls, storing e-books, and playing music. Unlike them, however, it conforms to the shape of its user's pocket or purse, and can even be operated through bending actions.

"This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper," said its creator, Roel Vertegaal, who is also the director of the Human Media Lab. "You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen."

The device has a 9.5-cm (3.74-inch) thin film flexible E-Ink display, underneath which is a flexible printed circuit incorporating resistive bend sensors. Those sensors allow it to be programmed to recognize different types of bending gestures, which will subsequently result in it doing things such as navigating menus, making calls, selecting songs, or any other function. A built-in Wacom tablet also allows users to draw on its screen – making it even more paper-like.

When not actually being operated, the Paperphone consumes no electricity. Vertegaal's team have also created a similar device, the Snaplet, which can be worn like a wristband. It operates as a watch when in a convex state, becomes a PDA when flat, and can be used as a phone when turned concave.

The technology is the result of a collaboration between Queen's University and Arizona State University, and will be officially presented on May 10th at the CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver.

"This is the future," said Vertegaal. "Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years."

Source: Gizmag

Cotton candy-like material used to heal difficult wounds

DermaFuse, a glass nanofiber material that looks like cotton candy, has been shown to speed healing in difficult-to-treat wounds

Many diabetics suffer from a condition known as venous stasis, which can result in wounds on their extremities that remain unhealed for up to several years – if infection sets in, amputation of the limb is sometimes even necessary. Such wounds can sometimes be treated with vacuum-assisted systems, but the equipment required is expensive, and must be carried by the patient at all times. In clinical trials conducted last year, however, human venous stasis wounds were quickly and thoroughly healed with an inexpensive new glass nanofiber material, that looks like cotton candy.

Known as "DermaFuse," the material is made from borate glass by the Mo-Sci Corporation in Rolla, Missouri. Similar "bioglass" materials do already exist, but they are made from silica and are used in the regeneration of hard tissues, such as bone. Boron has been shown to react to body fluids considerably faster than silica,and to be effective against harmful bacteria, which is why Mo-Sci chose to use it in DermaFuse.

The material is designed to mimic the microstructure of fibrin, which is one of the main components of blood clots. Like fibrin, the glass fibers trap blood platelets, and provide a scaffolding for the wound covering to form across. DermaFuse is also rich in calcium, which has been shown to speed healing by assisting the migration of epidermal cells to the wound site.

As the wound heals, the fibers are absorbed by the patient's body – little if any scarring results, and no bandages or sutures need to be removed.

After initial animal trials, DermaFuse was tried out on a group of 12 human venous stasis patients in 2010. Venous stasis is caused by poor blood circulation in the extremities, which results in fluid pooling in those areas (especially the lower legs) and creating pressure on the skin. When the skin cracks or receives a small wound and the fluid weeps out, an enzyme within the fluid erodes the skin and makes the wound larger, while also making healing difficult.

In the human trials, a nurse packed the material into the patients' wounds, then added a protective secondary covering. After a few months, the wounds on eight of the patients were fully healed, while the other four were reportedly progressing well.

Mo-Sci is now planning on expanded human trials in the coming months. It is hoped that DermaFuse could eventually also be used to treat injuries such as burns, or used as a field dressing by ambulance crews and army medics.

The research was just published in the bulletin of The American Ceramic Society.

Source: Gizmag

Few Things About ThunderBolt Technology

Thunderbolt is a revolutionary I/O technology that supports high-resolution displays andhigh-performance data devices through a single, compact port. It sets new standards for speed, flexibility, and simplicity. And it’s on the new MacBook Pro and the new iMac.

Thunderbolt in dot points

• Built from the ground up for audio and video professionals
• Two bi-directional channels of up to 10Gbps (that's 1.25 gigabytes per second)
• 10Gbps of usable bandwidth, not a theoretical maximum or burst speed
• Intel aims to increase this to 100Gbps within a decade
• Up to seven devices can be daisy chained to a single Thunderbolt port
• Low latency, time synchronized (to within eight nanoseconds) transfers down the entire seven-device chain
• Connected peripherals appear as PCI Express or DisplayPort devices to the operating system, avoiding potential driver issues
• Uses copper cables with a maximum length of 3 metres, with a switch to backwards-compatible optical technology on the horizon
• 10 watts of power per port available to connected peripherals (versus USB's 5 watts)
• Powered devices in the daisy chain can pass another 10 watts down the chain
• Uses the Mini DisplayPort connector
• Compatible with existing DisplayPort monitors and adapters (HDMI, DVI and VGA)
• Compatible with USB, FireWire, eSATA and other existing PCI Express-based protocols via adapters
• No licensing fees for peripherals (unlike FireWire)

Why this is important

There's already a choir of commentators saying there's no use cases for this technology and how hardly anyone is going to use it. They seem to have forgotten that we're talking about a MacBook Pro here, and not a MacBook.

Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music's choice of headline for his article about this hardware refresh says it all: "FireWire800, ExpressCard Survive MacBook Pro Revision, So You Can Relax" (emphasis mine).

There are many professional users of Apple products who rely on expensive external peripherals to do their jobs, and since 2008, they've all been watching Apple slowly remove the ports they need to connect those peripherals. The fastest I/O available on a 2010 MacBook Pro 15" was an eight-year-old FireWire 800 port, while PC users enjoyed ExpressCard/34, eSATA and USB 3.0 - each several times faster than FireWire 800. People developed genuine concerns that Apple was drunk on the massive profits of its iOS business and would let its professional business (including its Final Cut and Logic software packages) die a slow death while it chased the mass market dollar.

Thunderbolt is the antidote. It's a sign that that pros still matter, it's superior in every conceivable way, and it's compatible with all that existing gear. There's no existing use case that can completely saturate that 10Gbps link and that is exactly the point. An I/O interface shouldn't be the bottleneck in your system.

And it's not just for professionals. In an era of 10+ megapixel point-and-shoot cameras, 1080p camcorders and multi-terabyte collections of pirated media, I think you'd be crazy to suggest that only A/V professionals will benefit from blazingly fast I/O.

Thunderbolt devices are already being announced, such as LaCie's Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt, and several high-profile A/V and storage companies have voiced support for the new interface including Aja, Apogee, Avid, Blackmagic, LaCie, Promise, Universal Audio and Western Digital.
Source: Gizmag Via Apple

'Artificial nose' designed to detect bacterial infections

A chemist has developed an 'artificial nose' system, that can identify infectious bacteria based on the airborne chemicals that they produce

Being able to quickly confirm the presence of infectious bacteria in a patient's bloodstream, and then identifying the specific species and strain, can make the difference between life and death for that patient. While traditional detection and identification methods are fairly accurate, they can also take too long to perform. A chemist from the University of Illinois, however, has developed an inexpensive new system that is much quicker – and it works by sniffing out the harmful bacteria.

Hospitals typically test for infectious bacteria by incubating blood samples in vials for 24 to 48 hours, at which point a carbon dioxide sensor in the vial indicates whether or not bacteria is present. After that, however, it is still necessary to determine what type of bacteria it is, and that process can take up to one more day. "In 72 hours they may have diagnosed the problem, but the patient may already have died of sepsis," said U Illinois' Prof. Ken Suslick.

To address the problem, Suslick developed a so-called "artificial nose." More specifically, it's a system incorporating cards printed with an array of 36 cross-reactive pigment dots, that change color as they detect chemicals in the surrounding air – chemicals such as those produced by metabolizing bacteria, which some microbiologists can distinguish between simply using their sense of smell.

To test the system, blood samples were applied to growth gels in Petri dishes, each dish having one of the arrays attached to the inside of its lid. The arrays were checked every half-hour, and the changes in the color of each dot were noted. Based on that data, all ten of the tested bacteria could subsequently be identified with 98.8 percent accuracy, by observing the unique sequence in which each of the dots changed color over time.

"We don't have an upper limit. We haven't yet found any bacteria that we can't detect and distinguish from other bacteria," said Suslick. "We picked out a sampling of human pathogenic bacteria as a starting point."

Not only does the system only take a few hours to produce results, while simplifying things by combining detection and identification into one step, but it is also able to indicate antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

The technology is now being improved, and will be commercialized through iSense, a company that Suslick co-founded.

Source: Gizmag