Microchip detects Malaria in minutes

Scientists from Glasgow University claim they have created a device which can detect malaria within minutes. Doctors have welcomed the development as more travellers go abroad without taking proper precautions against the disease. The flu-like symptoms can be missed until the patient is critically ill.

Scientists at the university have announced an electronic microchip that can detect the type of malaria infecting a patient and find out whether the malaria is resistant to first line drugs. Blood samples are placed in the microchip, which is designed to detect the strain of disease. This means the best drug can be used to treat it.

The university claims that it is the only malaria study of its kind in the U.K. to use the technology. Those with malaria suffer from flu-like symptoms that can go unnoticed until they are critically ill.

“Since 2000, an average of 1700 Britons have been diagnosed with the disease every year, although the number of actual cases is thought to be much higher through under reporting,” the statement from the university said.

Dr. Lisa Ranford-Cartwright is leading the team working on the project by using the new lab-on-a-chip technology that is expected to help doctors treat the disease more quickly as more number of incidences are being reported by the health professionals.

At present, the diagnostic test takes up to 48 hours to determine whether a patient has malaria and even then, doctors are unable to tell whether the parasite is drug resistant, according to her.

“In certain cases, a malaria diagnosis has to be confirmed by DNA amplification which can take another one to two days. The only current way to test for drug resistance is to give patients certain drugs and wait to see if they work,” Ranford-Cartwright said in a statement.

She added, “Our malaria chip should be able to do the whole process in less than 60 minutes, and we hope that by the end of our development project we will have reduced this time further.”

According to the World Health Organization, almost half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria, and an estimated 247 million cases led to nearly 881,000 deaths in 2006.

Malaria is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of south-east Asia and it claims the life of a child every 30 seconds. Its symptoms include a fever and chronic exhaustion, which can turn in to a severe form called cerebral malaria that is caused by Plasmodium falciparum and is considered to be fatal mainly due to late diagnosis.

Malaria transmission in the United States was successfully thwarted in the 1950s. There were 1,505 reported cases of malaria in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year a study revealed more cases of the most dangerous type of malaria than ever before are being brought back to the UK from trips abroad. The Health Protection Agency study identified 6,753 cases of falciparum malaria diagnosed between 2002 and 2006. Experts said many of the cases arose from visits to west Africa made by people visiting relatives and friends.

Project leader Dr Lisa Ranford-Cartwright said: “The current way of diagnosing is using a blood smear on a slide and examining it on a microscope. That will take a good microscopist a good hour to reach a diagnosis, it’s extremely difficult to make that diagnosis accurately. The chip can give us a result in as little as half an hour.”

Dr Heather Ferguson, a malaria researcher, picked up the disease in southern Kenya and it was only spotted by chance when she was giving a blood sample. She said: “Had I not been diagnosed at that moment and caught it within the next 24 hours all those millions of parasites would have replicated one more time, making eight times as many as there had been before, which could very easily have been lethal.”

via BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Doctors welcome malaria microchip and http://www.vitabeat.com/scientists-develop-microchip-to-detect-malaria-within-minutes/v/10017/

Welcome to the Human Future Website !

Human Future has a website which provides a database of ideas examining the future of humanity. Visit the site and check out the specific topics below to explore how science, technology and evolution may shape our common future. http://www.humansfuture.org/ From Human Future Website: Predicting the future is by no means an easy task, it requires considerable erudition, creativity, imagination and wisdom. In this site there is a vast database of ideas pertaining to human future which include genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, emerging technologies, life extension, human evolution and enhancement. The main sections of the site are all listed below, choose whatever you like to start with.

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Google voice search mobile applications

Analysts believe accurate voice search could boost Google’s business

The company’s VP Engineering made indicative comments at a discussion during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

“We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business,” said Vic Gundotra.

While voice search as a concept is not exactly a new form of search (see my 3 year old Sony Ericsson mobile) the accuracy and effectiveness of processing voice inputs may be at last achieving relevance as a software application. SearchEngineLand editor Greg Sterling agreed: “If done right, it could be a valuable strategic feature for Google.”

Mr Gundotra acknowledged to the audience that “voice recognition in the early days was a nice trick but not very usable”.

There were early complaints that Google’s offering could not understand a broad range of accents (other than ‘Californian’) and that results were often garbled.

“Look how far we have come. I get the advantage of looking at daily voice queries coming in and it’s amazing. It’s working. It’s reached a tipping point. It’s growing and growing very, very fast and we are thrilled about it,” said Mr Gundotra.

He declined to share figures about just how many queries the company deals with via voice search.

However, Mr Gundotra did say: “It’s one of those technologies we think gets better with usage.

“We launched it on the iPhone and have seen a 15% jump in accuracy because, as more people use it, we collect more data and our accuracy gets better.”

‘Queen’s English’

In 2002, Google Labs introduced a service that allowed users to search with a simple phone call. The company admitted it “wasn’t very useful because the results were displayed on your computer and Google discontinued it”.

Six years later, the search giant introduced an improved feature under the Google Mobile App for the iPhone.

Vic Gundotra says “voice search is core” to Google’s future mobile plans

It is also available on the Android based T-Mobile G1 and last month was introduced on the BlackBerry as a free download. The New York Times’s Gadgetwise blog rated the BlackBerry version the “App of the Week” earlier this week.

Early iterations that worked best with North American accents had problems understanding other accents, including British. BBC technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones reported in November last year that his attempts to use it were “pure gibberish”.

For example, his query about the next train, West Ealing to Paddington “delivered some useful information about ‘neck strain’ - but no train times”.

Those problems have since been largely ironed out and Google said it was continuing to work on improving the accuracy of the service. This, Mr Sterling said, is crucial if the company wants it to give them the edge in the marketplace.

“My view is voice search could be a strategic differentiator if it works well. It depends on how much better Google’s system is compared to, say, Yahoo’s or Microsoft’s.

“If they come up with a really great version that is really accurate, it could retain users and likely increase search usage for Google,” said Mr Sterling.

“Stay tuned”

At Web 2.0, Mr Gundotra also talked about a web-based version of Google’s e-mail service, Gmail.

Google’s “technical prototype”, coming soon to the public

He demonstrated a “technical prototype” on the iPhone and the G1 and said “Stay tuned” for a release date.

Mr Gundotra said the prototype used HTML 5, an as-yet incomplete version of mark up language of the world wide web.

He revealed that Google would create a whole suite of offline apps using HTML 5 and that “we are going to be leaders in taking advantage of HTML 5″.

Mr Gundotra also said that engineers were working hard to bring the Chrome browser to the Mac and that while there was no date for delivery, “we are making progress to get it out as fast as we can”.

Thanks to Maggie Shiels - Technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco- who, really, wrote about 90% of this article