Detecting diseases such as HIV and malaria in third-world countries is often a costly process, but that might soon change because a team from the University of Texas at Austin has designed a three-dimensional sensor crafted from paper that could make diagnosis simple and cheap. Clearly using origami as an inspiration, the Paper Analytical Devices, or oPADs cost less than 10 cents each – and they stand to revolutionize how doctors work in labs where equipment is scarce. ”This is about medicine for everybody,” says Richard Crooks, the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry. “Anybody can fold them up. You don’t need a specialist, so you could easily imagine an NGO with some volunteers folding these things up and passing them out. They’re easy to produce, so the production could be shifted to the clientèle as well. They don’t need to be made in the developed world.”
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(Via INHABITAT.)