Ryan writes:

> I read about this earlier today on tech-report.com...  IBM busts drive
>  barrier with "pixie dust" (and as tech-report humorously mentions, no,
>  they're not snorting it, it's a thin layer (3 atoms thick) of the precious
>  metal ruthenium).

On a second and completely unrelated subject, other than for its
remarkability, Agilent announced just a day or so ago its partnering with a
group at Harvard that may eventually lead to the development of machinery
that will allow the complete sequencing of an individual human's DNA in just
a matter of hours, instead of the 20 years the first sequences required.

A Bloomberg summary of the NYTimes article that carried the original
announcement is included here:

=======================================

Agilent Studying Speedy Gene-Reading Technique, NYT Reports

Palo Alto, California, May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Agilent Technologies Inc. will
fund research at Harvard University on an experimental technique that could
reduce the amount of time needed to sequence a person's genetic code to
several hours, the New York Times reported.

Terms of the agreement, which will give Agilent the commercial rights to the
process, weren't disclosed, the paper said. The technique reads the parts of
DNA strands as they are forced one at a time through a tiny hole, the paper
said.

Researchers haven't been able to read the strands with the method yet because
the DNA passes through the hole too fast to measure, the paper said, citing
Harvard professor Daniel Branton. It could take about 10 years before the
technique can read an individual's complete genetic map, Branton said.

========================================

The method works by creating a very tiny "read head" that reads the
characteristic electrostatic fields of the nucleic acid bases as they stream
under the head, classifying them "on the fly," as they fly by. Indeed, that
seems to be the primary problem at the moment: they fly by too quickly, but
that's always a problem that is amenable to a technological solution.

Wirt Atmar

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