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A 'sweet' National Chemistry Week: Glucose on the research drawing board
This week, in celebration of National Chemistry Week and its theme of the Sweet Side of Chemistry: Candy, NSF salutes sugar molecules that can be far more than just "sweet." We start with the simplest sugar, glucose, which is found in plants and is absorbed into bloodstreams during digestion. While most of us can be blissfully ignorant of our exact blood sugar levels after scarfing a Snickers, people who have diabetes or physicians with seriously injured patients need technology that provides accurate blood glucose data.
Gymama Slaughter, an NSF-funded engineer at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has created a new wireless, implantable sensor to monitor blood sugar levels. The sensor has a sweetly simple power source--it runs on energy from the glucose itself.
Credit: NSF
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