Latest news with #ACSSensors
India Today
09-05-2025
- Health
- India Today
This face mask can detect kidney disease with just your breath
While regular surgical face masks can help prevent spread of airborne pathogens, a new modified mask could also protect the wearer by detecting health conditions, including chronic kidney remove waste products made by the body's metabolic processes. But in the case of chronic kidney disease, these organs have become damaged and lose function over time, which can have wide-ranging implications on a person's medical professionals diagnose the condition by measuring metabolites in blood or urine, but low-cost, low-tech systems could make the process easier. Published in ACS Sensors, the study showed that the smart mask uses a tiny sensor placed between its layers to detect small molecules in a person's breath. These molecules, called metabolites, are linked to chronic kidney disease. In early tests, the mask was able to identify people with the disease with high accuracy. The smart mask uses a tiny sensor placed between its layers to detect small molecules in a person's breath. (Photo: ACS Sensors) Kidney patients are known to exhale more ammonia than healthy individuals. But ammonia can also appear in other illnesses. So, researchers led by Corrado Di Natale, an Italy-based electrical engineer, wanted to create a sensor that could detect ammonia along with other chemicals linked specifically to chronic kidney do this, they coated tiny silver electrodes with a polymer commonly used in chemical sensors. This polymer was further enhanced with porphyrins, molecules that react with gases in coated electrodes were then added to the mask and connected to a small electronic someone wearing the mask breathes out, the gases interact with the sensor. This causes changes in electrical resistance, which helps detect chemicals like ammonia, ethanol, propanol and aceton, all linked to chronic kidney disease. The smart mask can detect metabolites in the breath to reveal information about kidney disease. (Photo: ACS Sensor) The team tested the sensor on 100 people, half with the kidney disease and half without. The mask correctly identified chronic kidney disease in 84% of the cases and correctly ruled it out in 88% of people who were healthy. It also showed promise in estimating the stage of chronic kidney to the researchers, this kind of breath-based, wearable sensor could make diagnosing and monitoring kidney disease easier, faster and more affordable.
South China Morning Post
15-04-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Questions remain 5 years after death in US of celebrated Chinese scientist Nongjian Tao
Shaopeng Wang, a biomedical nanoscientist at Arizona State University, went into shock in March 2020 when he was told that his postdoctoral mentor and long-time collaborator, Nongjian Tao, had been found dead outside a four-storey parking garage on campus after an apparent fall. Advertisement Just hours earlier, Tao had emailed Wang and other team members about candidates for a new faculty position at the Centre for Bioelectronics and Biosensors, which Tao had led since 2008. Everything had seemed normal. A highly cited, award-winning academic and entrepreneur, Tao was best known for inventing a powerful technique called the scanning tunnelling microscopy break junction. The method allowed scientists to measure the behaviour of individual molecules and helped launch entirely new fields in nanoscience, according to a commemorative issue of ACS Sensors dedicated to him. 08:30 Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China? Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China? In the months after his death, Tao's colleagues published a series of tributes honouring his scientific legacy and personal warmth. Stuart Lindsay, a Regents Professor at Arizona State University (ASU) and Tao's PhD adviser in the 1980s, called him 'the brightest and hardest working student' he had ever had. Wang described Tao as an inspiring and generous mentor who hosted graduation parties each year at his home in Fountain Hills. 'I simply couldn't believe it,' Wang said. He and many others were told that 56-year-old Tao had had a heart condition and had slipped while exercising in the garage building after gyms were closed in the Covid-19 outbreak. Advertisement According to a report obtained by the Post from the university's police department, Tao died by suicide and had been under significant work-related stress before his death.
