New Flu Test From UGA

Scientists from the University of Georgia developed a new flu test that is fast an accurate. The test first coats gold nanoparticles with antibodies. These bind to certain strains of the flu virus. Then, it measures how the nanoparticles scatter laser light. This allows the test to find influenza quickly.
The scientists came up with this test by knowing that antibodies can capture viruses and that nanoparticles have different traits based on their size. They combined these two to make a test that is sensitive and fast. An engineer in the UGA Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center linked antibodies and immune system proteins with gold nano particles. These bond with any flu virus by measuring the intensity with which light is scattered by the solutio.
This is an inexpensive teset because the amount of gold used per test is just 100th of a cent. These scientists are also working on ways poultry producers can use this type of test to detect salmonella. They don't wanna stop just at influenza because the test offers great advantages.
http://athens.patch.com/articles/new-flu-test-from-uga

New Genetic Test Leads to Exposure of Incest

An article was published in the journal Lancet on February 11, 2011 about the exposure of incest cases from genetic tests. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have been studying child birth defects and developmental delays, and have been performing a new type of genetic test, called single nucleotide polymorphism-based arrays, to plot out a person's genetic makeup. The tests enable them to locate missing or duplicated genes by mapping out a child's genetic code. Often, the inconsistencies found in these tests can explain the child's disability. In several cases, however, scientists found large, duplicate pieces of DNA believed to be inherited from an inappropraite relationship between two relatives. The main concern that stems from this discovery is the possibility of evidence of child sexual abuse, most often girls between ages twelve and sixteen. Doctors now have routine tests to check if a child's disability is caused by incest. If a case does involve incest, doctors are obligated to tell authorities about cases of suspected child abuse.

This discovery of incest cases from new genetic tests has left teams of researchers with an abundance of legal and ethical questions. Dr. Arthur Beaudet, chairman of molecular and human genetics at Baylor, says, "The concern mainly stems from the possibility of children being sexually abused in the home." I think this discovery could turn out to be extremely helpful in court cases of child sexual abuse where no other evidence is available. It may expose some dark family secrets, but it may also provide closure for the victims of this type of abuse. What do you think?

Even silent videos excite the listening brain

Have you ever peered through a window at a sight that, from your experiences, holds the expectations of making a certain sound, and causing, within you, a certain reaction for that matter. Kaspar Meyer, of the University of Southern California, and colleagues used a serious of tests to show that the human brain will react in the same way to a sight whether or not the expected sounds accompany it. After observing the brain activity of a few volunteers who looked at a series of video clips, including people playing violins, a dog howling and chainsaws cutting into trees, Meyers and his colleagues were then able to determine which of this clips other volunteers were watching based solely on their brain activity responses. This was possible because the tests showed patterns in brain activity among the test subjects based upon the particular clip in which they were watching.

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