Microfluidics

Researchers find bees get the sweetest nectar by dipping their tongues into the viscous syrup. Pictured is a bumblebee drinking from a sucrose-soaked surface.

Sugar high for bees

Bees, and similar nectar feeders, get sweeter juice with dipping tongues.

October 12, 2011

Color map showing the distribution of pressure across the gel region (between the two rows of semi-circular posts) containing the cancer cells.

Tumor cells go against the flow

Microfluidic model helps explain how fluid’s flow in bodily tissue influences tumor cell migration.

July 22, 2011

Snapshot of the concentration field during the unstable displacement of a more viscous fluid (dark) by a fully-miscible, less viscous fluid (light).

In the mix

Research finds ‘viscous fingers’ can induce efficient mixing of fluids in tight spaces.

May 19, 2011

Researchers say ocean currents cause microbes to filter light

The same phenomenon occurs in the ocean, in a flask and in the art of Paul Matisse.

March 16, 2011

In this artist’s rendering of the new system, polymers flow through a microfluidic channel as they are formed into spherical nanoparticles. An organic solvent called acetonitrile helps keep the particles away from the walls and prevent clumping.

Going with the flow

New 3-D microfluidic system offers greater control over production of drug-delivering nanoparticles.

March 8, 2011

An image of the ventral face of <em>Oxyrrhis marina</em>, a micro-organism whose behavior was studied by an international team of scientists led by Professor Roman Stocker of the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Laws of attraction

Ocean micro-organisms are shown to behave like larger animals in the presence of sulfur. Might this offer clues about the roles they play in regulating Earth’s climate?

November 2, 2010

MIT engineers have developed a way to rapidly perform surgery on single nerve cells in the worm C. elegans. The white lines represent axons — long extensions of nerve cells that carry messages to other cells.

Nerve-cell regeneration quest is fast tracked

Microchip technology rapidly identifies compounds for regrowing nerves, in live animals.

October 12, 2010

New computational techniques developed at MIT confirmed that the complex quantum effects known as Casimir forces would cause tiny objects with the shapes shown here to repel each other rather than attract.

Mysterious quantum forces unraveled

MIT researchers find a way to calculate the effects of Casimir forces, offering a way to keep micromachines’ parts from sticking together.

May 11, 2010

Chains of superparamagnetic colloidal particles rotate to produce flows on length scales much larger than the chain dimensions, allowing them to behave like "micro-ants" that can move large particles.

‘Micro-ants’: Tiny conveyor belts for the 21st century

A new method of moving tiny particles using magnetic polymer beads and magnetic fields could find uses in microchips and in medicine

December 15, 2009

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