Gizmorama - June 10, 2015

Good Morning,

The journal Science has published new research that says a DNA-based blood test has been developed that reveal every single virus that has ever invaded your body. What? So if you can remember the last time you were sick just have the doctor give you a blood test.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Stanford scientists build water-powered computer --*
PALO ALTO, Calif. (UPI) - A water-powered clock -- it sounds like a gimmick. But Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, says he and his students are aiming to build a whole new class of computers.

Prakesh isn't building a computer recognizable to consumers. It's a synchronous computer, or computerized clock. But what makes it special is that it can manipulate and process both information and physical material -- that and it operates using the physics of water droplets.

"We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this," Prakash said in a press release. "Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter."

"Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed but physical matter is algorithmically manipulated as well," he added.

The fluid-powered computer uses a rotating motherboard made of glass slides and tiny iron bars. Each time the motherboard turns, the electromagnetic field flips, pulling tiny water droplets infused with magnetic nanoparticles. As the clock continues to turn, the water droplets march along one step at a time, following the predetermined logic of the computer system.

"Following these rules, we've demonstrated that we can make all the universal logic gates used in electronics, simply by changing the layout of the bars on the chip," said Georgios Katsikis, a grad student Prakesh recruited to help him build the computer. "The actual design space in our platform is incredibly rich. Give us any Boolean logic circuit in the world, and we can build it with these little magnetic droplets moving around."

Because their computer system is so small, and their clock mechanism so simple and seemingly error-free, researchers believe their work is infinitely scalable.

"We can keep making it smaller and smaller so that it can do more operations per time, so that it can work with smaller droplet sizes and do more number of operations on a chip," explained graduate student and co-author Jim Cybulski. "That lends itself very well to a variety of applications."

The researchers are now making the motherboards available to the public, with the hope that other science teams can find new applications for their water clock and build new types of physical computers.

The work was detailed this week in the journal Nature Physics.


*-- DNA blood test can identify every virus you have ever had --*
WASHINGTON (UPI) - New research has developed a DNA-based blood test that can reveal every single virus that has ever invaded your body, the journal Science published Thursday.

Scientists had been working on the test hoping that it will lead to early detection of various medical conditions and eventually help explain what triggers certain diseases and cancers.

The test, called VirScan, takes a person's blood and scans it for antibodies for any of the 200-plus viruses known to infect humans, the Science report said. By detecting these trace markers, scientists would know that at one time the body produced them to fight off the corresponding virus.

The research says antibodies can stay in the human body for decades after the virus subsides, thus giving scientists an idea of the viral threats any given body encountered long ago.

"The approach is clever and a technological tour de force," Ian Lipkin, the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, said. "It has the potential to reveal viruses people have encountered recently or many years earlier.

"This is a powerful new research tool."

Scientists performed the VirScan test on more than 500 people and found that on average they acquired 10 of the 206 viruses susceptible to humans. However, it's possible to be infected with multiple strains of a given virus and leave only one set of antibodies, researchers indicated -- meaning a patient's body can encounter similar viruses on a number of additional occasions than the blood test may indicate.

"You could be infected with many strains of rhinovirus over the course of your life, for instance, and it would show up as one hit," Harvard University professor of genetics Stephen Elledge said.

The VirScan analysis presently costs about $25, the Washington Post reported, but that price may rise if the test becomes available commercially. The initial results can be determined in about three days, scientists said.

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