proceeding clockwise from the top, samples containing one mole each of copper, aluminium, iron, sulfur, iodine and (in the centre) mercury.
Lab-on-a-chip technology:The image conjures up visions of microprocessors whipping through complex sample prep, separation, detection, and spectrum analysis tasks at unheard of speeds while analysts need only wait milliseconds for the results. In fact, unreal as it seems, that is exactly what is happening, right now. And that's just the beginning. Because when the first analytical task is done, the analyst then replaces instrument's central microchip with a new one designed to perform a different task, and throws the old chip away. Disposable microchips. Not even Intel has managed that trick.
What we're talking about here is microfluidics, an idea whose time has definitely arrived.
Applying ideas originally explored at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the University of Alberta, and Ciba Geigy, among other places, Caliper Technologies has developed a series of practical applications for microfluidics technology. Taken together, these will enable the first major advance in lab practice since Louis Pasteur first started puddling around with test tubes and beakers just like the ones you're using today.
Using miniature, integrated biochemical processing systems etched into glass, silion, quartz or plastic, Caliper's lab chips allow the same steps customarily performed in conventional instruments to be done in minute quantities at small fractions of the usual elapsed time.
The "micro" in microfluidics refers not only to lab chip dimensions, but to the quantities being manipulated. Microchip channels are on the order of 80 microns wide and 10 microns deep. The fluids move through at nanoliter/second rates.
By applying voltages to various channel intersections, the chip moves an analyte through the system, adjusting its concentration across three orders of magnitude, mixing it with buffers, separating out the constituents, adding fluorescent tags and directing the sample past detection devices.
"It's really a micro-robot," observes Caliper's Mike Knapp. "It's actually doing the experiment. It's not a real-time replacement for a pipette, it's a robotic system working on a nano scale."
Like its microprocessor counterpart, the microfluidic chip's output is digital. As a result of lab chip instrumentation, says marketing guru Regis McKenna, "the bioinformation database becomes a font of knowledge for leveraging drug discovery, biochemical tests and other types of chemical and biochemical experiments and tests."
"We think a combination of microfluidics technology and micro- electromechanical (MEM) sensor technology, applied over time, will enable the individual researcher to have an entire synthesis-analysis- screening facility on their desktop," HP's Vince Dauciunas predicts. "We think it has the power to speed things up exponentially."
Both Caliper and Hewlett-Packard are excited about the synergy generated by their collaboration. Caliper will manufacture the actual microfluidics chip sets themselves and supply them exclusively to HP for insertion into the instrumentation systems. HP will take responsibility for the manufacturing of the instrumentation, the marketing, the distribution and the support of the entire system product.
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All types of night vision equipment are electro-optical devices that amplify existing light. A lens collects light and focuses it on an image intensifier. The image intensifier is based on the photoelectric effect. Night vision intensifiers use semiconductor-based materials to produce large numbers of electrons for a given input of photons. The emited electrons are then directed onto a screen covered with compounds that phosphoresce (glow when struck by electrons) While television tubes use phospors to produce color pictures, night vision devices use green, because the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any color.
Current night vision devices use gallium arsenide (GaAs) that amplifies light as much as 50 000 times.
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