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Two high school students, Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li, both living in Hong Kong have designed and built a door handle that kills germs, thus preventing the spread of disease through hand contact. They demonstrated their handle at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair held last month in Pittsburgh—taking second place in the materials science category.
One of the ways that ailments such as cold and flu are passed is via contact, and one of the main avenues is via door handles—a sick person coughs into their hand then uses the handle to enter a bathroom, office, or other location, depositing germs. Others that enter the same room pick up the germs from the door handle and invite the germs into their own bodies by touching their eyes or noses. Door handles that kill such germs on contact would stop them from spreading—that is what Wong and Li set out to build.
The pair started by noting that a mineral called titanium dioxide is quite toxic to germs, but it hasn't been used as an antibacterial agent much because it requires the presence of UV light. To get around this problem, the team ground some of the mineral and then used it to coat a glass tube, they then affixed a LED onto one end of the tube—it shines UV light onto the insides of the glass tube—any germs that land on the outer side are then killed by the mineral (testing showed it to be 99.8% effective). Putting the glass tube onto brackets allowed for it to be used as a door handle.
Read More at PHYS.ORG
[Source]: Society for Science & the Public
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:03PM
This, like the hand-sanitizer dispensers in every hallway, is exactly why your immune systems are shit and it's exactly why you're still getting sick for weeks at a time every flu season even though you received the flu vaccine, while I haven't received any vaccine in years and all I get is a day of light sniffles -- Although you useful morons did provide me plenty of good cover to call out "sick" from work from hangovers every flu season.
Your immune system is like any other part of your body -- you must exercise it under real-world conditions for it to me most effective. If you are a sickling it doesn't mean that you need the vaccines more, it means that you need to train your immune system more by not using antibacterial soaps or carrying bottles or showering in hand sanitizer everywhere you go.
The idea might make sense as part of a germ-security setup in the basement of some level-4 [wikipedia.org] CDC laboratory, the kind where the germs there can make you shit your guts out in an hour's timespan. Otherwise, you're doing it all wrong.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:09PM
If it is bullshit must we also say fucking bullshit. Crass and unseeded...Makes you sound irrational and off the handle.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:50PM
> irrational and off the handle
Well, duh!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @08:03PM
> Makes you sound irrational and off the handle.
You must be new here and therefore congratulations on figuring out E-fueled's true nature so quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2015, @09:07PM
He's a classy guy; don't let it surprise you.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:55PM
Yup. By killing off all the germs, we are killing off our ability to fight any germs we come into contact with.
So until mass immunization against every strain of rhinovirus, norovirus, rotovirus, etc. is possible, we might as we just get over our germophobia and use a $1 stainless steel or plastic or whatever door handle.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Joe on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:57PM
I don't really have time to go into the details, but your post shows that you do not understand the immune system and it is unfortunate that perpetuating misconceptions gets an Insightful moderation.
hand-sanitizer dispensers in every hallway, is exactly why your immune systems are shit and it's exactly why you're still getting sick for weeks at a time every flu season even though you received the flu vaccine
No, vaccines and hand-sanitizers are not why people get symptomatic infections from influenza.
Despite whatever anecdotes you provide, influenza vaccines provide some protection (which varies widely in some populations and is never 100%) from disease. I don't know the public health data on hand-sanitizers, but the concept makes sense: the influenza virus is enveloped in a lipid membrane and high concentrations of alcohol can inactivate the virus.
Your immune system is like any other part of your body
No, it is not.
you must exercise it under real-world conditions for it to me most effective
Proper development of the immune system is a lot more complicated than that. Before you bring it up, I am aware of the hygiene hypothesis and what you say is not adequately supported by that either.
If you are a sickling it doesn't mean that you need the vaccines more
I really hope that you are in no position to give medical or public health advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Effectiveness [wikipedia.org]
- Joe