Prototype of Ebola diagnosing on paper substrate

Scientists have developed prototype testing strips that don’t need to use cultures to check for infection. They use paper with genetic material built into the fibers to do cell-like processes that normally take days down to 90 minutes. Some saliva or a drop of blood is all this system needs to work. They already have a prototype that detects Ebola. This is kind of like a computer that uses genes as the program, and paper as the operating system.

Since this is in the prototype stage, there is a lot of work still to be done before this technology can become available.

Seeing other universes

In an interesting article at New Scientist, they briefly talk about 4 different ways we can observe the multiverse. That is, we can kind of see other universes. The four methods are:

  1. The wave function – via wave function collapse. See also: Schrödinger’s Cat.
  2. Wave/particle duality – evidently the interference patterns come from photons in our universe reacting with those in another universe.
  3. Quantum computing – quantum computers may work by doing parallel processing across universes.
  4. Quantum Russian roulette – don’t think you’re immortal after not being killed by a quantum gun.