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Point-of-care (POC) tests for the diagnosis of diseases are critical to the improvement of the standard of living, especially for resource-limited areas or countries. In recent years, nanobiosensors based on noble metal nanoparticles (NM NPs) have emerged as a class of effective and versatile POC testing technology. The unique features of NM NPs ensure great performance of associated POC nanobiosensors. In particular, NM NPs offer various signal transduction principles, such as plasmonics, catalysis, photothermal effect, and so on. Significantly, the detectable signal from NM NPs can be tuned and optimized by controlling the physicochemical parameters (e.g., size, shape, and elemental composition) of NPs. In this article, we introduce the inherent merits of NM NPs that make them attractive for POC testing, discuss recent advancement of NM NPs-based POC tests, highlight their social impacts, and provide perspectives on challenges and opportunities in the field. We hope the review and insights provided in this article can inspire new fundamental and applied research in this emerging field. 

Abstract The generation of medium‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) in the mid‐latitude F region ionosphere, particularly in the presence of sporadic E (Es) layers or geomagnetically conjugate features, has been the focus of extensive investigation using both observational and numerical modeling approaches. Recent observations have revealed the occurrence of nighttime MSTIDs over the continental US during storm conditions even without invoking the Es instability. While this phenomenon is considered to be electrified and likely associated with the Perkins instability, the influences of storm‐enhanced density (SED), electric fields, and winds on the excitation of nighttime MSTIDs remain a complicated issue and require further quantitative analysis. In this study, we develop a two‐dimensional numerical model of the nighttime ionospheric electrodynamics at midlatitudes using the ionospheric ion continuity equation and the electric field Poisson equation to investigate the characteristics of MSTIDs in the SED base region during storm conditions. We demonstrate that the magnetic inclination effect can explain the lower latitude preference of the MSTIDs during magnetic storms, while the development of MSTIDs is primarily influenced by intense storm electric fields under the background ionospheric condition of large density gradients associated with SED. However, the impact of neutral winds on the MSTIDs growth varies, depending on their specific direction determined by the strongly dynamic spatiotemporal variation of the thermosphere and ionosphere during storms. Therefore, the MSTIDs stormtime scenario results from a combination of multiple important factors.