Oil Droplets turn Cells into Tiny Lasers

by
in science on (#10FMD)
Scientists have turned individual cells into miniature lasers by injecting them with droplets of oil or fat mixed with a fluorescent dye that can be activated by short pulses of light. This finding could help to broaden how light is used for both medical diagnosis and treatment. The system was devised by Harvard Medical School scientiest, and it uses droplets of fat or oil within a cell to reflect and amplify light, generating a laser. Conventional luminescent probes, which include fluorescent dyes and proteins, have relatively broad emission spectra. This limits the number of probes that can be used simultaneously, because it is often difficult to distinguish these sources of luminescence from the broad background emissions of naturally occurring molecules in tissue.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/494474/oil-droplets-turn-cells-tiny.html
Reply 10 comments

Coincidence (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-13 07:52 (#10GS9)

Anything to do with a very similar sounding technology that has had a recent rise in popularity for mobile phone photography fans?

Need to download videos while using Tor? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-15 13:13 (#10S5K)

What you should try is:

youtube-dl

http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl

A lot of people post here [at the Official Tor Blog] saying with each new TBB release, "Flash still doesn't work!" No kidding? We don't know that already?

Check youtube-dl's list of supported sites at their website. You don't need a browser plugin/addon/extension for this.

I don't know if torify/torsocks is included in the TBB*, but in TAILS I run at the command line (after downloading youtube-dl and a quick verify of the md5/sha1 or sha256 checksums):

chmod a+rx youtube-dl

^ the chmod command only once, then:

torsocks ./youtube-dl URLtovideoorpagewithvideo

Easy. There are other options such as the "User Agent" you may wish to use.

Again, if you use TBB instead of TAILS, programs like youtube-dl may need an additional option, the website for youtube-dl explains it very well.

Best viewed with Netscape? (Score: 1)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-13 11:42 (#10HA0)

Site loads, complains I have JS disable and suggests I might like to download NETSCAPE... how old is that site???

Re: Best viewed with Netscape? (Score: 2, Informative)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2016-01-13 14:52 (#10HX9)

complains I have JS disable
For Firefox, go into about:config and set:
accessibility.blockautorefresh to true

Lots of sites are doing nasty stuff with meta redirects, so changing that setting is a good idea. You can still click on the pop-up notice if you want to follow it.
suggests I might like to download NETSCAPE... how old is that site???
They have a banner for Netscape 7.1, which was released in 2003-2004. Yeah, the site is a bit crufty, but I'll take that over the likes of Forbes' shiny new site that breaks if you have ad blocking enabled.

Can't Load on Mobile (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-14 02:58 (#10M1W)

"Not Found"

Re: Can't Load on Mobile (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-14 06:17 (#10MDS)

Please accept my sincere apologies. Usually I check submitted URLs with mobile, hence why this was not a Forbes link.

Re: Can't Load on Mobile (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2016-01-14 18:09 (#10PG7)

Re: Can't Load on Mobile (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-15 02:49 (#10QS6)

Yeah that's where it was going, and that web site was returning a branded "Not Found" page.

And yet today it works. Beats me. Carry on!

(Stock Android Browser, KitKat)

Laser-equipped droids (and shiny soldier stink bugs) (Score: 1)

by jdagius@pipedot.org on 2016-01-14 11:29 (#10N29)

Very interesting. The article suggests to me that it would be possible, some day, to engineer living, flesh-driven laser beams. Just have to figure out how to generate that initial flash of light to start the amplification process. So, maybe we can start this research with lightning bugs, and create some soldier bugs that can shoot laser beams out of their butt.

At least that's what I thought of when I read the second sentence in paragraph five, which begins "The eggs of the spined soldier stink bug vary in colour depending on how much light is reflecting from the surface"

Then I realized that this and the remaining lines of TFA were part of a misplaced article on stink bugs that can manipulate the colors of their eggs.

Re: Laser-equipped droids (and shiny soldier stink bugs) (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-01-14 20:54 (#10Q12)

Yeah, I read it and got really confused because of that bit. Seems like a class act, that site.