Well, from my point of view this chip is simply a very sensitive protein quantification device. You can measure a wide range of proteins (related to cardiac disease, allergies, Alzheimer's, and many more), not just "cancer biomarkers", i.e. proteins which are suspected/proven to have a link to cancer.

How reliably can one really diagnose cancer from a blood protein test? In my opinion, cancer has so many different forms (it mutates constantly) that it is harder to find a common and highly reliable diagnostic marker for it than it is for many other diseases.

For that reason, right now a definite cancer diagnosis is still made by physically finding the tumor tissues, I think. However, there will probably be enough data to perform a high confidence diagnosis from blood tests in the near future.

The chip mentioned here could speed up research and adoption of protein tests into general medicine.

As a little mini-overview over biomarkers:

Mostly Established:

Pregnancy: hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) is a high-confidence biomarker
Cancer: CEA (cancer embryonic antigen) was used in the mouse model in the Nature paper
Prostate Cancer: PSA (prostate-specific antigen) used to be highly regarded, now somewhat disputed
Heart disease: Troponin-I is a very specific marker of heart tissue damage

Upcoming (i.e. prospective biomarkers have been identified but need to be validated):

Alzheimers
Autoimmune Diseases
Etc. (Lots of research going on).

P.S. Here is an older publication which has been open-sourced (open access) and which shows the technology:

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/52/20637.abstract

I'm part of this research and I'm pleasantly surprised someone posted it on Slashdot. To answer some questions: The device is indeed a concentration-measuring chip (not just positive / negative, which would be simpler), and in a just-posted Nature Medicine paper it shows that the signal vs. concentration curve goes 1000x farther on the low end (and the high end too, i.e. more dynamic range) before blending in with the background than the same assay (and antibodies) used on ELISA. Plus, it is a simple device that performs identically in saliva, urine, different pH and temperatures, and which is generally rugged and not too picky about the experimental conditions. This is quite helpful too.

Another point of the publication is that this device can measure small but slowly increasing tumor marker concentrations in lab mice which are known to have cancer. The key is that these tumor markers can be measured with this chip, but are too small in concentration for the traditional platforms such as ELISA. This means you can (in mice, at least) get important early cancer growth trend information (from a blood test) which you probably wouldn't have been able to obtain before.

Just published in Nature Medicine Advanced Online publications (unfortunately requires subscription):

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm.2032.html

Technical Report abstract

Nature Medicine

Published online: 11 October 2009 | doi:10.1038/nm.2032

Matrix-insensitive protein assays push the limits of biosensors in medicine

Brother doesn't put kill chips in their cartridges, plus they often have a good duplex unit. I could easily re-fill and re-set the counter. I think Brother is better than Ricoh, HP, or Samsung, which I have used in the past.

I would love to connect my landline *IF* it could deliver fast, reasonably priced DSL service. However, as it stands, I would barely get 1Mbps down, and less up.

It just doesn't seem to be worth my time and money. Why didn't they upgrade their infrastructure years ago?

It's really simple:

1.) You have to disclose all your potentially embarrassing misdeeds of the past.
2.) The government stores this information on a poorly guarded unecrypted hard drive.
3.) The government then "accidentally" loses this unencrypted hard drive.
4.) What you thought was a confidential disclosure is now in the public domain.

Result: Blackmail opportunity eliminated (possibly job change opportunity too). Profit!!


The UK utilizes this method quite often, most recently with its air force pilots, see here: Data Breach Exposes RAF Staff To Blackmail

Well, this is what I use: One-Dollar rentals from the DVD rental vending machine at the local grocery store. They even have a couple of Blu-Rays in that machine for the same price.

Only downside: The selection isn't so great, and you actually have to physically go to the store twice for each movie (rent and return). But overall, this is a price that I find totally acceptable.

This is what I have found too: I don't like MS Office 2007, where many features are too hidden away compared to what I am used to. For example, if you need to change the line thicknesses on a chart. Simple things like that.

For that reason, I've been sticking to MS Office 2003. It's clear, it's reasonably simple, and most importantly, it's the way I expect things to work. So if OpenOffice actually maintains this style of GUI, and MS doesn't, then this is one of the most convincing reasons yet to use OpenOffice.

And yes, thanks for Anti-Aliasing of figures, this is great. One of the worst things about MS Office is the horrible integration of EPS files into MS Word documents: They only show up as a horrible preview, which appears to be just the opposite of anti-aliased: Extra-crude and jagged. I don't know why they did that (licensing, I presume), but it makes it annoying to work with EPS files, which publishers often request in the authoring process for printed media. Here, the horrible rendering quality and lack of anti-alias is an obvious weak spot in MS software.

Similarly, I like Adobe Illustrator very much for two simple reasons: it uses anti-aliasing during the drawing process, and it has "intelligent" snap-to guides and points. This makes the on-screen work pleasant to look at and intuitive to interact with. Compared to that, many 2D CAD programs suck because they don't use anti-alias during the creation/drawing process, and your work looks "crude" by comparison.

An pleasant-looking GUI and intuitive interaction are major usability factors. In the 3D world, I like Alibre Design for that reason, which has snap-to and click-select-edit abilities in 3D similar to Illustrator in 2D, and yet still makes it easy to work with precision: You create your rough shape(s) with the mouse in a few clicks, and then fine-tune things like exact dimensions, chamfers, etc. with a combination of mouse and keyboard. All the while, your piece of work is pleasantly rendered, drag- and rotate-able in single 3D window.

OpenOffice with good object rendering (full anti-alias, hopefully also good EPS support) and intuitive interaction (classic menus, transparent shapes for dragging, etc.) sounds like a very attractive package.

My God, so much potential, so much risk. Close to 20 years of work, and billions of dollars, and then it'll be sent to the L2 point, millions of miles away from earth, where no one can ever go to fix it. And once it arrives, it'll have to self-assemble. The Mars rovers seemed like high stakes, but there were two of them, and we've had similar landers before and after. But compared to the JWS, I don't think there's anything comparable... or is there?

I sure hope this works right the first time.

So much energy in so little time... whose idea was this?

Was it Sony?

BOOM!

That's right. The article implies that because of Craigslist, prostitution has come under much closer scrutiny than before, to the tune of $100k/year in Cook County alone. Some would call this a success.

Yes, plasma displays have the same issue. I think *all* digital displays have this issue - the incoming data is buffered and processed, and then (after some delay) finally displayed. The time lag between receiving the data and displaying it is used to add post-processing and to determine the optimal pixel driving strategy, given the sequence of colors to be displayed.

Car analogy: The further you can see ahead, the better you can drive your car. A digital display without an input buffer would be like driving a car in the fog, never knowing what is next - this only works if you have extremely fast response times (like a CRT). A display with an input buffer can afford to be a little slow to respond, because as long as you can plan ahead, you can still travel the road quite well.

Conclusion: Any display that uses data processing or that needs to map out an optimal pixel driving strategy in advance will feature a delay of several image frames between receiving and displaying the data.

I totally agree with this poster:

I'd much rather have control over my information, just the same way I dislike DRM because I prefer to have control over the DVDs I buy.

Not having a right to privacy would suck just as much as not having the right to buy property, or not having the right to work. It would make you more of a sucker, who is less in control of his own life, and who is more dependent on the goodwill of those who are more powerful than you.

On the other hand, I think the right to privacy could be revocable. For example, if someone has committed a *major* crime, I think it would be fair to openly strip them and their associates of the right to privacy for an appropriate number of years, so that additional crimes from that general group of people can be better prevented.

In that sense, what has been done to these MIT students should be a prophylactic punishment that is reserved for individuals who are highly likely to commit serious crimes. Call it the 24-hour virtual citizen's watch.