I tell audiences that the day is coming when nanotechnology will be able to tell what they ate or smoked. That day is coming closer, according to Nanowerk News:
To this day, fingerprints are just the thing when a perpetrator needs to be arrested or a person needs to be identified. British scientists working with David A. Russell also want to make it possible to use fingerprints to reveal drug and doping transgressions and to diagnose diseases. As the team from the University of East Anglia in Norwich and King’s College in London report in the journal Angewandte Chemie (” “Intelligent” Fingerprinting: Simultaneous Identification of Drug Metabolites and Individuals by Using Antibody-Functionalized Nanoparticles”), they have now been able to use specific antibodies to differentiate between the fingerprints of smokers and nonsmokers.
Of course, there are positive and negative uses of this kind of powerful technology, and Foresight hopes to play a role in steering toward the former and away from the latter. Give us a hand! —Christine
