Topic
Microfluidics is the science of controlling small fluid volumes in micro-scale channels for diagnostics, synthesis, and cell manipulation.
Yale researchers built a microfluidic chip whose flexible fibers switch between two stable states, so each one can hold a bit of flow history. The Physical Review X study points to all-fluid controllers for soft robots, though the account of it describes only a chip.
Reality
Macquarie University researchers used high-speed video to show that a honey bee's 2-millimeter stinger pumps venom with two collapsible pistons. Each lancet carries a valve, and the pair pump in opposite directions to give a continuous flow.
Reality
ISTA and Crick researchers found tumour cell clusters split more often among randomly placed pillars than in an even 9-micrometre grid. The chip lets metastasis research test how tissue geometry around a tumour, apart from its genetics, can push cells to break away.
Reality
University of the Basque Country researchers led by Lourdes Basabe-Desmonts built a paper test that flags scopolamine in drinks in about 10 minutes. They call it a laboratory-level prototype whose detection ranges and color changes still need optimizing.
Reality
A microfluidic experiment held the present identical and varied the past. That design is what separates a reaction from a memory. A mathematical model then placed that memory in ribosomes, though no one watched a ribosome directly.
Reality
DTU's mAxialtrode packs a light-guiding core and eight liquid channels into a fiber thinner than half a millimetre. It worked in mice, and its developers say routine clinical use needs much more testing and regulatory approval.
Reality
The Brazilian group's platform grows 3D cell models under continuous flow and opens afterward so the tissue can be recovered intact, with plans to offer it to outside labs as shared infrastructure early next year.
Reality
A degree at each end of the channel decides which blood fractions come out where. The fixed critical diameter that has defined deterministic lateral displacement becomes a setpoint.
Reality