New particle-sorting method breaks speed records

Researchers compare the processing of biological fluid samples with searching for a needle in a haystack—only in this case, the haystack could be diagnostic samples, and the needle might be tumor cells present in just parts-per-million ...

Researchers explain emergence of bacterial vortex

When a bunch of B. subtilis bacteria are confined within a droplet of water, a very strange thing happens. The chaotic motion of all those individual swimmers spontaneously organizes into a swirling vortex, with bacteria ...

Sitting still or going hunting: Which works better?

For the kinds of animals that are most familiar to us—ones that are big enough to see—it's a no-brainer: Is it better to sit around and wait for food to come to you, or to move around and find it? Larger animals that ...

Supercomputing on a cell phone

Many engineering disciplines rely on supercomputers to simulate complicated physical phenomena — how cracks form in building materials, for instance, or fluids flow through irregular channels. Now, researchers in MIT’s ...

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