The αScreen sensor promotes food safety, is generally awesome.

Yalies have created some pretty exceptional things—bladderball and the Wenzel among them. Now a new invention stands on the shoulders of these giants. A team of Yale students and professors, spearheaded by SEAS graduate student Monika Weber, has developed a “device that quickly and cheaply tests food for salmonella, E. coli, and other toxic microbes.” The harmonica-looking contraption is ridiculously (and conveniently) tiny, and it’s able to detect gross bacteria in food samples for about a dollar per test. NASA even awarded Weber and her crew the $20,000 grand prize in its “Create the Future” design contest. The Bullblog, for one, welcomes a future defined by food safety, which is universally a pretty awesome thing to have. And while the device is specifically intended for use in processing plants to promote preemptive consumer welfare, we see its potential served well elsewhere, too, re: that one sketch dish from your summer internship abroad, and the hot food bar at GHeav.