Two major types of modern technological equipment have been presented by their creators, Vietnamese researchers in overseas universities, at a recent technology conference in Ho Chi Minh City.

The first was a wireless air quality sensor designed by Vo Bich Hien, a PhD who is working at the Vietnamese-German University in the southern metropolis and used to study at MIT.

The low-cost small device can be placed in houses or mounted on private motorcycles as mobile air monitoring stations to track the pollution in Ho Chi Minh City’s areas, Hien said at the event held at Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University.

The prototype is also able to detect airborne particulates under 2.5 micrometers in diameter, vanishingly tiny pieces related to respiration diseases and cancer.

He bases the idea on models currently in application in Chicago and the Swiss city of Zurich and has received assistance from Vietnamese fellows at the University of Southampton.

The government can deploy the data garnered from its citizens’ sensors for urban planning and pollution management purposes, he added.

The second device introduced at the conference was an uncompleted hand-held pesticide residue sensor by Tran Thi Thanh Thoa, a researcher from Korea University.

“Despite their accuracy, traditional methods of detecting pesticide involve cumbersome, expensive machines and highly qualified technicians,” Thoa said.

“But nanomaterials used in biology hold a lot of promise for developing portable, accurate devices in measuring pesticide residues.”

Her research group has selected six types of complex molecules known as aptamers, which she said have been used chiefly in diagnosis and medical treatment.

She allows aptamers to interact with certain anti-pest chemicals and measure the reaction’s results by some method.

The study, which is funded by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics for a decade, has lasted for three years.

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