Sick Day

[Editors note: This got stuck in my draft queue and didn't get uploaded. I'm feeling better today, but am still having some stomach issues. Hopefully I'll be okay by the weekend.]

Been at home clutching my stomach for most of the morning, but I'm now sitting upright and eating cereal, and think I might be able to go into the lab in the afternoon. Meanwhile, I share with you: Acoustically driven programmable liquid motion using resonance cavities, in PNAS.

One of the problems with microfluidics is that, no matter how micro you make the fluidics, you still need big computer controlled pumps to run everything. The above paper has attempted to solve this problem in a very elegant fashion, using resonant cavities to apply pressure, with the pressure controlled by externally generated sound waves, allow you to control your microfluid device with a veritable symphony:



Of course, if you had six or eight of these things in your lab, it might quickly turn into a cacophony, a la the acoustic memory scene in Cryptonomicon.