Scientists at Cornell University have developed a suitcase sized detector for anthrax. Work done by Nate Cady who is now a professor at University of Albany began almost seven years ago when he first set out to make a lab on a chip that could extract DNA and then inspect it for different kinds of deadly bugs. That chip was less than a postage stamp in size. From there it was a matter of getting all the other stuff into a suitcase that you might be able to lug around to detect anthrax (or Salmonella or anything). The biggest pain was making pumps that could move around liquids. "while we are really good at making nanometer-scale electronics, we aren't so good at making things to pump liquids".
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