Copied from Email from Brent on 28 January 2010:

At LabAutomation 2010,
Juan Santiago of Stanford presented a talk called:
   Rapid Chemical Detection and Identification with a Hand Held Device
Tuesday at 3:30 in the Evolving Apps of Lab Automation Track

The device was indeed small and powered by a USB port (<2.5 watts)

It detected pathogens in (aqueous) environmental samples via
isotachophoresis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotachophoresis

Those molecules whose isotachophoresis separations would be similar could be
uniquely identified by their characteristic pKa values by repeating the
short (15 second or so) assay in buffers of differing pHs.

I thought the device might make a great "nose" for our ESP 3.

http://microfluidics.stanford.edu/
http://microfluidics.stanford.edu/Publications/Publications.html
http://microfluidics.stanford.edu/Publications/ElectrokineticFlows/schoch%20et%20al%20LoC%20extraction%20of%20RNA%20from%20lysate%202009.pdf

Is this worth pursuing further?