Sensitivity is a factor but selectivity is much more crucial to any such analysis. Without physically separating the constituent materials as part of an analysis, "signatures" will overlap and obscure each other. Anyhow, I'm not pooh-poohing this technology, just trying to add some balance to the conversation, which (around here) trends towards science fiction more than science.

The problem is that the spectroscopic techniques capable amenable to implemention on a small device can only give some general information about a material or mixture. This may be enough to select one option from a narrow set of possibilities (eg: is that drain pipe PVC or ABS plastic?). However, it is not going to identify the presence of a toxin in a bowl of soup or tell you that your gold watch is only gold-plated.

Without reading TFA I can assert that this area of work is not going to let the consumer unambiguously determine the composition of anything. Right now the chemical analytical techniques to figure out what the composition of a substance require huge machines and significant training in spectroscopy and there's no way of miniaturizing those techniques and automating the interpretation of the data. I'm sure you can get some information but not enough to say anything for-sure :-)

So you're a kidney?

I guess you weren't looking for > 50% price reductions like I was :-)

Actually it was pretty hard to get them to beat each other's prices. I'd generally have to make an embarassment of myself to make it happen. The mangers always argued that since they are the same company, they couldn't beat their "own price."

This is an improvement. Cluelss people would compare prices between those two retailers assuming they were competitors in order to assess whether a price was good.

Compounds containing these elements, or pure (elemental) forms of the elements? What happens to the phosphorous, alchemically transmuted?

What sound does a "platinum bomb" make? Pt

Buy it for its resale value (as an antique).

Accidentally modded this down, replying to erase the damage and point it it's a funny comment!

*comparatively

Rape is infuriatingly common in our world, while reporting and/or prosecution for the offense are comparitively rare. So, this probably isn't the first time this has happened. For the survivor's sake and for the sake of setting a precedent (Uber must find a way to stop this from happening), I hope the lawsuit is successful.

add -slashdot to the search terms and google will exclude pages related to slashdot

Well, the system of execution is often different from the system of compilation. So, you'd want to have the compiler-user specify that a CUDA-specific binary should be compiled alongside (afaik cuda/x86 fat binaries aren't a thing right now). And that falls into the realm of build system, not compiler. From what I've seen the build system (make in this case) relies on nvidia's compiler to builld the cuda libraries subsequent linking into the cuda executable along with the c* and fortran code.