Got some mysterious white powder sitting on your coffee table? A new, suitcase-sized device can tell you whether you've got dandruff, or anthrax. Developed by researchers at Cornell and the University of Albany, the detector uses a microfluidic chip (pictured on the left) to collect and purify the DNA on a given sample, before conducting a series of polymerase chain reactions -- processes that can quickly identify biological materials. The machine, which has been in the works for seven years, is powerful enough to deliver test results in just one hour (requiring a sample of only 40 microscopic spores), but is slim enough to fit in an airline's overhead luggage bin. Scientis
