{"id":659988,"date":"2013-05-23T18:36:58","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T22:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=648925"},"modified":"2013-05-23T18:36:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T22:36:58","slug":"byod-is-for-amateurs-try-bring-your-own-laboratory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/659988","title":{"rendered":"BYOD is for amateurs. Try bring-your-own-laboratory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smartphones never cease to amaze me. I\u2019m still impressed by how productive I\u2019m able to be on my Android device no matter where I am (often to the chagrin of my wife), and I\u2019m still surprised every time I see someone pull out a Square when it comes time to pay (like happened last night at Fat Choy in Las Vegas, a way-off-strip place you should totally check out if you\u2019re in town). But neither of those situations really compare with busting out a phone in order to detect the levels of toxins in the air.<\/p>\n

Yet that\u2019s exactly what a group of researchers at the University of Illinois have created<\/a> \u2014 a cradle that wraps around an iPhone and turns it into a biosensor that can detect, according to a university press release, \u201ctoxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.\u201d Inside that cradle are about $200 worth of mirrors, lenses and a photonic crystal that the researchers claim can identify these substances as accurately as a $50,000 spectrophotometer in the lab.<\/p>\n

The cradle is essentially there for support, though, while the phone\u2019s camera and processor do the real work. With everything firmly aligned in front of the camera, a scientist would simply snaps a photo and the CPU processes the result. What it\u2019s processing is the difference in wavelength that the photonic crystal, primed to react to a specific molecule, reflects. The team demonstrates the device and app in the video embedded below.<\/p>\n