Cocaine Biosensor 180
Aaron Rowe writes "The MIT Technology review reports that a lab at UC Santa Barbara has created a biosensor by attaching a special type of DNA called an aptamer to a gold electrode. When cocaine is present, the aptamer tightly hugs a cocaine molecule and leans over so that a metal tag can touch the gold surface. This causes a spike in a plot of current versus voltage when the electrode is attached to a machine called a cyclic voltmeter."
Gold? (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the reasons for gold being used in these situations? I'm very familiar with gold's uniqueness, but it surprises me that it is becoming such a popular metal again -- even beyond the computer and audio industry. Is it really unique for these applications, or is it just a great way for the manufacturers to pad their bottom lines?
Re:Gold? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
One thing though -- I was often told that gold is not as good of a conductor as copper, but the reason it is considered better is strictly because copper corrodes so quickly, and can then reduce the effectiveness of copper over gold.
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Over a given run of wire, you'll get less of a voltage drop with copper.
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
If I remeber right Silver only has 1 in the outer circle thus can pass the most electrons from atom to atom.
I state this completely out of my arse and relying on 15 year old high school education so someone please come by and correct me. I think I'm pretty close though from what I remeber.
Re:The Relentless March of Science (Score:2)
Newton, Galileo et al cared enough. Lucky for us. I have other things I care about. This wasn't one of them.
Re: Gold? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm interested in economic applications, but unfortunately I don't have as much as I need for some of the experiments I'd like to try.
Re: Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gold? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gold? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:4, Informative)
There are several properties that make gold suitable for these medicinal applications. I'll give a few that I took from chem rev 2005, 105, 1103 [acs.org](*).:
There are alternatives available, e.g. Palladium, Platinum, but gold is so versatile that it will be the mostly used metal for quite some time I would say.
(*) the article is mostly about self-assembled monolayers, so not very general and most of it will not be useful to you, but it contains a very good explanation of the reason why people choose gold in any of these applications.
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
I don't understand you. If the world (or just the US) were to go on the gold standard, then the gold supply would be artificially scarce, since governments would have to hoard it. That would make industrial use of gold impractical, and gold would cease being useful for many things. Perhaps in the light of medical uses, it would result in the deaths of people to
Re:Gold? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a drug user by any means (other than tobacco on rare occasions and good quality liquor infrequently), but I also don't shop at stores with an open no-drug policy. Home Depot doesn't get my business anymore, and I openly let them know that I think their policy is ridiculous.
That being said, I have penalized employees for coming to work still drunk or high. I haven't fired anyone, but I have openly reprimanded them as business IS affected if you're a mess. On the other hand, I had an employee once come to work high on Xanax or some other anti-depressent, and I was stuck as to what to do about it. Lucky for me we found her a better job elsewhere and that was off my back completely.
Re:Gold? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just a thought: isn't boycotting these stores going to hurt the employees too? Losing a few thousand dollars will put more pressure on jobs than it will on the no-drug policy.
(Disclaimer: I'm not condoning either drug testing or
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Hmm....experiments like this seem like a HUGE waste of cocaine...
Da da da da......Da DAAAAHHHH
Re:Gold? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gold? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Although honestly, the greater concern is really addiction. Although it is claimed that Xanax in particular has a low addiction potential, I find this dubious at best. Any drug which actually does have Anxiolytic properties is an addiction risk.
Re:Gold? (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel the same way about employer's rights... I'm sick hearing about "affirmative action" and such to "balance" a workplace. Race/gender/etc should not be a factor in getting a job, only job related functions should have any kind of impact.
However, I have had the misfortune of being a co-worker of more than one drug user, and that experience has influenced me so that I will not work at a company that does not have a zero-tolerance drug policy. While you may choose what companies to support, I find a st
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
I like this idea. Any clue where I might be able to find a list of stores that drug test their employees (or a list of stores that don't)?
you could dig around (Score:2)
http://www.hightimes.com/ht/news/content.php?bid=
And there's a pretty good chance you're eventually going to have to take a drug test. According to a 2004 American Management Association (AMA) study, 61.8 percent of companies surveyed said they test employees for illegal substances.
Here's a list of some who DON'T... (Score:2)
The only urine sample an employer would ever get out of me would be for a taste test!
Re:Here's a list of some who DON'T... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't do drugs and I hate the effects of even recreational use of drugs on people. I don't even like most prescription drugs.
I have suffered because of the idiots trying to stop drug use by this detection and repression regime. So has everyone else. I cannot get Pseudopedrine for my allergies without going through the hoops and hurdles of their system. I am limited to 20 pills a month. It gets worse when you consider the high cost of getting needed medicines going through the Rx system with the MD's. I take synthroid and am on total replacement therapy. My dosage is never going to change. I have been on the same dose for 8 years now. Why can't I just buy it at the pharmacy and forget the $150 a year going to the MD and the $75 lab fees to validate my dose? The drug for a year only costs about $50 and that price is 10 times higher because of this system.
We are headed into a police state where every micro droplet from our body could cause loss of job, family and freedom forever. Worse yet this could be a form of sabotage where someone could sneek a few micrograms of dust onto us and destroy our lives.
None of this addresses drug abuse. The Pseudoephedrine issue was over Meth-labs. There are less meth labs but now the Mexican imports of the drug have more than made up for the supply that was being produced locally. The problem is not gone, it is just moved. Drug abuse is not the result of access to drugs. It is only the result of the desires of people and these are related to other factors we do nothing about using such invasive technology.
Having worked on work sites where people did drugs, I hate the effects. But the problem is that we will not deal with our DRUNKS. I mean drunk on anything that makes them drunk. The US Problem with drugs is not in Mexico and it isn't in Columbia. It is entirely in our own population.
I am painfully aware of the causes of our drug abuse problem. It is mostly a problem of our society raising a bunch of "useless people." We raise our children prohibiting them access to useful occupations and valuable jobs at a young age and making sure they stay away from work which makes them valuable to others for such a long period of time that they never become useful and they destroy their lives because they know they are worthless and useless. This is particularly a disease of our "modern" society where we trash occupations and trash people in the name of progress. This is only going to get worse with the march of technology as we reneder almost all work obsolete. As we permit industrialists to trash entire communities of people saying their skills are "obsolete" etc while not providing for their adjustment and usefulness this problem is going to become universal. I am not against progress and technology but unless it is required (I MEAN WITH LAW) to accomidate people the temptation to dump people is going to be impossible to resist. With the globalism and "free trade" we now see going on, the avoidance of these costs will be simply to shift trade from one nation to another. As it happens all nations will be trashed this way. This is a threat to all hunanity.
Re:Here's a list of some who DON'T... (Score:3, Funny)
Geez...so, now we're outsourcing our illegal drug manufacturing????
Good Lord, we just can't keep any good jobs in the US anymore....
Re:Gold? (Score:2)
But then you use just your eyes to judge their soberness. They can probably be quite intoxicated and escape your attention, if they are clever. In most work, this isn't much of a problem, but in driving it is. If this invention allows an easier way to detect cocaine in the system of drivers it would be great.
Re:Torn & Amused (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is, the kind of drug testing employers do--analysis of urine to find the metabolites of illegal drugs--won't catch this at all. They can only detect past use, and for some drugs (e.g. marijuana) "past use" can go back several weeks.
There are other methods that can test whether someone is
Lowe's makes their employees pee in a bottle, too (Score:2)
Re:Mod down parent - Answer to his question is... (Score:4, Interesting)
The answer I was looking for was why gold specifically for this application and medical applications in general, above and beyond the typical electronic applications.
god DAMNIT (Score:4, Funny)
Where can I get one? (Score:2, Funny)
What about Aspartame? (Score:2)
Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2, Funny)
um... officer, it's for "medical research"
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on Schedule (Score:2)
Sechedule I substances (such as pot and lsd) have (paraphrase) "extreme danger of addiction with no medical or scientific uses", and as such licenses may *not* be obtained for these substances (please correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure i'm not)
obviously, some states are trying to use local legislation to get
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:5, Informative)
It's simple. Somebody whips out a twenty dollar bill out of their pocket, because ten out of eleven [tafkac.org] bills have cocaine on them.
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:4, Funny)
So how do you explain Nuremburg and Barcelona? (Score:2)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:4, Informative)
Currently, the medicinal use of cocaine is limited to topical anesthesia of the upper respiratory tract and eye because the vasoconstrictive properties of cocaine are desirable during procedures.
Ref [emedicine.com]
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Hmm, looking back at what I just wrote, I guess it's not clear which side of the law he was working for. =)
(Yeah, it was a legit pharmaceutical compounding lab. Apparently there's a wide variety of drugs you can make out of cocaine.)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2, Informative)
Fun fact: The drug "DXM", found in many cough syrups, is a stereoisomer to levomethorphan, an opioid.
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Coca-Cola became completely cocaine-free in 1929. Even at that point there was barely 0.06 oz of cocaine in the entire year's supply of ~25 million gallons.
Ref [snopes.com]
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Re:Posession of a controlled substance (Score:2)
Yep. 100 (or so) years ago you could get Cocaine in a bottle mixed with Liquor and Caffeine advertised with such catchy slogans as:
"an intellectual brain tonic"
"a most wonderful invigorator of the sexual organs"
"sustains and refreshes both the body and brain"
The most famous products were Vin Mariani and French Wine Coca (a copy of Vin Mariani by John Pemberton, the pharmacist who brought us Coca-Cola, which came about about when Pemberton had to take the
Other uses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Other uses? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other uses? - a people tracer (Score:2)
Vik
UCSB (Score:5, Funny)
Re:UCSB (Score:2)
I got my Ph.D. at UCSB, and I had to laugh when I read this.
Adam Sandler played some live shows at UCSB during my years there. The live recordings of at least the first couple of versions of the Chanukah/Hanukkah Song were recorded there, and inside the album What The Hell Happened To Me?, you can see pictures of Sandler at one of those shows, wearing a UCSB cap.
So I tell people: "Y'know that part of the Han
kinky (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds kinky. Makes me regret not listening during chemistry class.
Competetive technology (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Competetive technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but it's like using pigs to hunt truffles -- you have to ensure the pig doesn't get a chance to eat the truffles, or it's just a waste of time. =)
Big deal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Funny)
That's an interesting garden you have. How might I go about planting my own?
cocaine? (Score:4, Funny)
Dogs out of work? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Dogs out of work? (Score:2)
Much more than cocaine (Score:5, Interesting)
This is, of course, a very hypothetical future - it might not work out this well.
Re:Much more than cocaine (Score:3, Insightful)
See more here Palladium Books [palladiumbooks.com]
sounds fragile (Score:2)
I think there is enough dust and grime to mess up this sort of tech in real-world usage.
Re:Much more than cocaine (Score:2)
Seriously, I have to wonder where they get it. They could get it from a drug company, as they have substantial amounts of it, most of which is used to create the various "-ain" drugs, but they might also have simply gone to the source, depending on how much they needed. For those not aware, "the source" in the U.S. is generally Coca Cola. According to the
Sweet!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Go nuts around money-counters (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Go nuts around money-counters (Score:2)
Re:Go nuts around money-counters (Score:2)
testing (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course if you look at the history of the CIA in the 80's, one might hypothesize that the government has no interest in stopping cocaine consumption.
At least we all know marijuana is very bad.....there's this new movie out, Reefer Madness......really informative.
Re:testing (Score:2)
Re:testing (Score:2)
Re:testing (Score:2)
Re:testing (Score:2)
Re:testing (Score:2)
Re:testing (Score:2)
If This Thing Short Circuits (Score:3, Funny)
big surprise (Score:4, Funny)
All the right, strapping sensual buzzwords... (Score:2)
heheh Funny... slash imageword: "straps"
Obligatory (Score:2)
The difficult bit was persuading George W Bush to swap the silver spoon for a gold one.
Convience (Score:2, Funny)
The real trick is.... (Score:5, Funny)
The real challenge is getting the corse to pee on the stick. I suggest the 'old hand in the warm water' trick.
This is it! (Score:3, Funny)
Extensive research, measured in kilos (Score:5, Funny)
Univeristy officials confirmed the long nights. Security guard Paul Costas remakred "Yeah, those guys were going at it for days on end. I helped them smuggle chicks into their parti..ahh *research*."
"We feel that with another couple of years we will have similar sensors for crystal meth, heroin, and extasy." said Dr. Placky, who is currently applying for federal grants to fund the research, as well as provide sufficient quantities of the substances for thorough research.
Addendum (Score:3, Funny)
Only at UCSB (Score:2)
I'm sure they had all the coke they needed for testing.
Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)
Cocaine has a plasma half-life of 90 minutes. Current cocaine drug tests detect metabolites, not the drug itself, and even those only work within 24-48 hours after using.
You'd best not flush (Score:2)
Re:In related news (Score:2)
Oh dear God... (Score:2)
This from a high school senior? What is wrong with teenagers today? I'm appalled by this clear decline in standards. A high school senior is... happy... to be helping... the Man... crack down on drugs? FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Someone get this kid to a fucking party already!
I weep for the future if this is typical of kids today. It's horrifying.
Re:Watch Out, Coca Cola (Score:2)
Contrary to popular belief, the coca leaf extract cocaine was never added to Coca-Cola, per se. Because cocaine is naturally present in untreated coca leaves, small amounts of cocaine were also present in the beverage. Today's Coca-Cola uses "spent" coca leaves, those that have been through a cocaine extraction process, to flavor the beverage. Since this process cannot extract the cocaine alkaloids at a molecular level, the drink still contains trace amounts of the stimulant[5]. The United States