That's One Fancy Piece of Paper

The Guardian reports on Harvard's George Whitesides and his advances in making microfluidic paper that may be used as diagnostics that will "revolutionise third-world medical testing," the article says. The paper includes polymer-lined channels that direct minute volumes of blood to reagent-filled wells. Whitesides is quoted as saying, "I think it's going to be possible to do sophisticated biological chemistry and cell biology using these methods." The story notes that Whitesides is a co-founder of Diagnostics for All, a nonprofit group that "plans to deploy paper-based liver-function tests in Africa."