A plastic widget that floats around in milk, soup or fruit juice cartons could tell you if it contains food poisoning bacteria – without you having to open them. A scanner at the supermarket checkout would simply sound an alarm if the pathogens are present.
The idea is the brainchild of Craig Grimes at Pennsylvania State University and Qingyun Cai at Hunan University in Changsha, China. The technology uses a novel mechanism to detect the food bug Staphylococcus aureus in milk which has not been properly refrigerated.
The key component of the widget is a strip of iron, nickel, molybdenum and…
