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[Xvareon]

CHECK. THIS. OUT. Some people at a college managed to develop a paper microscope or something, that can fit into your pocket! The cost to manufacture is only about $1 USD, too! They're saying this will be a Godsend for poorly-developed countries without access to expensive microscopic equipment, as it will allow doctors to identify all manner of bacteria and viruses without needing so much money. Discuss.

http://www.foldscope.com/
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2014/03/10/stanford-bioengineer-develops-a-50-cent-paper-microscope/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldscope

Wikipedia article:
"A Foldscope is an optical microscope that can be assembled from a sheet of paper. It is built using a punched sheet of cardstock, a spherical lens, an LED, and a diffuser panel, along with a watch battery that powers it. It can magnify up to 2000 times and weighs 8 grams. The magnification power is enough to enable the spotting of organisms such as Leishmania donovani, and Escherichia coli, as well as Plasmodium malarial parasites. A Foldscope can be printed on a standard A4 sheet of paper and assembled in seven minutes.

The Foldscope was developed by a team led by Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the Stanford School of Medicine. The project was funded by several organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who gave a grant of $US 100,000 for research in November 2012. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded the "Ten Thousand Microscopes" project under which Prakash plans to give away 10,000 Foldscope kits to interested parties, including students for research. Foldscope sets will also be produced and tested in Kenya, India and Uganda.

Twelve Foldscope variants are available, each designed to aid the identification of a particular disease-causing organism. To enable several people to use them at once, each microscope can project images with a built-in projector. The Foldscope is designed to be assembled by the end user, and hence is colour-coded to help with the assembly. Each unit costs less than one US dollar to build, with estimates varying from 50 cents to 97 cents."

[smirk]

Gah; I would swear you were a spambot =P


Very cool if true, but this should probably go in the Science! thread. No real need for a separate topic.

[Xvareon]

Oh, I didn't know there was a 'Science!' thread... I just saw that 'News' went under 'General Discussion', so I did this. Oh, well. If you want me to delete it or whatever, I can try that.

[smirk]

No worries! Science thread is over here.


The assembly video for this thing is kinda awesome. I'm guessing the non-paper components aren't readily available, or I would definitely try building one of these. Don't want to sign up for their beta test since I don't have a relevant job =P

[Eagleon]

There's a TED talk for it, too, which is how I heard of it. Very cool, I'd love to see other equipment (SEMs in particular) brought down to a similar price scale. Science!

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I would so love to have one of these. I was reading a thing about them, they were saying they hoped every kid would be carrying one in his backpack ... which would be wonderful. Am I alone in that I was the kind of kid who would have just used that thing to death?