InBerkeley

The East Bay Express has just published its annual Best of the East Bay issue. There’s a lot of Berkeley content, as you might expect.

Some things I heartily agree with. Best bookstore for really smart people? Yes, it’s University Press Books. Best place to let kids bang things with a hammer? Definitely the Adventure Playground. Best thing to happen in Berkeley this millennium? Well, they might be right that it’s Berkeley Bowl West. (Editor’s note: What about InBerkeley?)

But some of the judgments had me scratching my head. Nabolom may be a storied counter-cultural institution, but it’s not remotely the best bakery.

Clearly, InBerkeley needs to delve into this “best of” business and produce its own list. Watch this space, and then let the brickbats fly.

Food, Retail, restaurants

Many parts of the world where there is the most urgent need for tools to diagnose and screen infectious diseases are also areas where there is a dearth of scientific equipment. But some Berkeley scientists recognized that mobile phone networks are ubiquitous even in the poorest regions of the world. Hence the CellScope — a mobile phone-mounted light microscope for diagnostic imaging and telemedicine.

Details of the CellScope were published yesterday in the peer-reviewed online PoSONE. Microscope lenses are arranged in a holder which is fitted to a camera-equipped cellphone. UC Berkeley News reports:

Using samples of infected blood and sputum, the researchers were able to use the camera phone to capture bright field images of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria in humans, and sickle-shaped red blood cells. They were also able to take fluorescent images of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterial culprit that causes TB in humans. Moreover, the researchers showed that the TB bacteria could be automatically counted using image analysis software…

The researchers pointed out that while fluorescent microscopes include additional parts, less training is needed to interpret fluorescent images. Instead of sorting out pathogens from normal cells in the images from standard light microscopes, health workers simply need to look for something the right size and shape to light up on the screen.

“Viewing fluorescent images is a bit like looking at stars at night,” said [co-lead author David] Breslauer. “The bright green fluorescent light stands out clearly from the dark background. It’s this contrast in fluorescent imaging that allowed us to use standard computer algorithms to analyze the sample containing TB bacteria.”

Breslauer added that these software programs can be easily installed onto a typical cell phone, turning the mobile phone into a self-contained field lab and a “good platform for epidemiological monitoring.”

In addition to Breslauer, a graduate student in the UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley Bioengineering Graduate Group, the researchers were Robi Maamari, Neil Switz, Wilbur Lam and Daniel Fletcher.

UC Berkeley