A team of researchers may have come up with a golden idea for diagnosing lung cancer. By coating tiny nuggets of gold with a thin layer of organic material, the researchers have developed an "electronic nose" that, with some additional work, could spot lung cancer instantly by analyzing someone's breath.
Hossam Haick and colleagues at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa embedded the 5-nanometer-long gold nanoparticles in a silicon wafer and then collected exhaled air from 40 cancer patients and 56 people with healthy lungs.
All the subjects had to breathe deeply through a purifying filter for 5 minutes. After this "lung washout," they filled five 750-milliliter Mylar bags with air. A machine blew this air over the silicon-gold circuit, and the electrical resistance of the gold nanoparticles rose or fell depending on the presence or absence of certain compounds.
Cancer cells exude different compounds than healthy cells do, Haick explains, and the circuit picks up this difference. Tumor growth causes stress in cells, leading to a build up of free radical molecules that attack the lipids in cell walls, tearing out molecules with long chains of carbon atoms.
The sensors respond rapidly and are completely reusable. The breath diagnosis is especially promising for detecting lung cancers early, before they show up on x-rays.
Source: ScienceMag
2 comments:
Ya know.. as crazy as this may sound right now... If anyone can and should attempt to write the 'Bible of Hip Hop'. I can think of no one better suited. Even in the brief excerpt, he makes a valid point. Is a 'middle-man' really needed to communicate with god. Even given best intentions.. we've all played 'telephone' as children and have seen 1st hand what happens to a message.
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