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Cool Stuff - incorporate into your stories

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Kristine:
Maybe I just get more excited about this medical stuff than I should but I thought the implications of this were tremendous for science fiction stories or if you combine it with micro-magic (don't know if that's a word but it is now)

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/20406/


"A new nanovalve that opens in response to pH changes could serve as the basis of a targeted drug delivery system. By filling a tiny, porous silica sphere with a drug and then plugging the pores with the valves, researchers can use pH changes to control the drug's release.

The pH of healthy and diseased tissues often differs, meaning the spheres could be designed to release the drug in diseased tissue only, says J. Fraser Stoddart, professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. Stoddart, along with UCLA chemistry professor Jeffrey Zink, led the development of the new nanovalve; their findings were announced in last week's issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Previous versions of the valve functioned only in organic solvents and were activated by elaborate oxidation reactions....

Kristine:
Okay I can see both good and bad uses in sci fi for 'Mood Clothes' - if put on inmates, asylum patients, soldiers, or maybe 'important' scientist, a system could tell if they had taken drugs, or whatever their mood was - and if it needed to be altered.   On the up side, maybe in a near distant future organ replacement patients could be better monitored without interrupting their life, or a way to have an automatic insulin system (with the article about the nanodevice in the post above) that would release insulin when a diabetic needed it  - though the example they talk about in the article (your clothes sensors alerting you doctor and sending you text messages) seems more like a type of medical 'big brother' - another down side if your health insurance could get a hold of the data your clothes are producing. 

http://www.physorg.com/news125588562.html

Smart clothes: textiles that track your health

 Garments that can measure a wearer's body temperature or trace their heart activity are just entering the market, but the European project BIOTEX weaves new functions into smart textiles. Miniaturised biosensors in a textile patch can now analyse body fluids, even a tiny drop of sweat, and provide a much better assessment of someone's health...

These biosensors are not just scaled-down versions of existing technology, Luprano is keen to point out. “Many of the chemical or biochemical reactions used in sample assays are non-reversible and some part of the biosensor has to be replaced. When you monitor continuously you can't do that – you need a sensor that binds your substrate reversibly. Also, the BIOTEX sensors work on tiny volumes of liquid, so we had to come up with innovative designs and materials that would make it possible to miniaturise the sensors and make them compatible with fabrics.”

Several of the BIOTEX probes, including the pH sensor, use colour changes or other optical measurements. For example, as sweat passes through the pH sensor it causes an indicator to change colour which is detected by a portable spectrometer device. The immunosensor technology works in a similar fashion. Plastic optical fibres (POFs) are woven into the fabric so that light can be supplied to the optical sensors and the reflected light directed to the spectrometer.

Having an array of biosensors in a textile patch is one thing, but how do you get fluids to them in the first place?

The solution uses a combination of hydrophilic (water-loving) and hydrophobic (water-repellent) yarns. It is possible to weave these two threads to direct the sweat through fabric channels to the sensor array. It is a passive system using no power, thereby reducing the power demands of the BIOTEX system (and the weight of a battery pack that the wearer would have to carry).

In the first BIOTEX trials, the smart patches will be worn in clothes by people with obesity and diabetes, as well as athletes.

Kristine:
okay - this is just funny to me.

http://www.flyaboveall.com/dogs.htm

There has to be a story in that somewhere.

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