Technology lends science a helping hand

New techniques leading the way to discovery

By Dr. Jon

Smaller and faster technologies surround us everyday. From the purse-sized computing power that used to take up a whole room to speedy downloads from remote locations, scientists and engineers continue to push the envelope, and in some cases, create their own envelopes.

The ear of science

Scientists have been looking at tiny things through curved pieces of glass for over 400 years, but no one has tried cupping their ear, leaning in real close, and listening to the microscopic pieces of our world. That is, until now.

A collaborative push from UK researchers appears to be driven by the fact that if seeing really is believing, then hearing must just add to that belief.

The new technology employs optical tweezers – kind of like the metal set you used to pluck those unsightly hairs this morning, except equipped with a high-power laser – to hold several glass beads 100 times smaller than those plucked hairs in precise locations. The idea is arranging the beads in a ring around a cell or another object of interest.

Sound from the object, like the spinning flagellum that propels many bacteria, causes the beads to wobble like the diaphragm in a common microphone.

These wobbling glass beads are the tiny ears we need to listen in on the sounds of the cell; what they’re saying remains to be heard.

Medical mini-bots

Unfortunately, we still haven’t perfected shrinkage. You know, the ability to shrink a nuclear submarine along with a crew of doctors to navigate its way through the intricacies of the human body, repair any damage, and escape unharmed by the body’s natural defences.

Instead of shrinkage, scientists are taking a different approach: Building tiny motors from the ground up.

Micro-sized motors have been a little hard to come by, mainly due to the difficulty in powering the little devils. Carnegie Mellon University researchers have used piezoelectric materials, which expand under applied voltage, to create a rotating motor the size of a couple of hairs.

The hope is that these motors will be used in future surgical procedures in difficult to reach places like blood vessels. Consider this fair warning that the stage is set for itty-bitty robots.

High-speed gets a turbo-boost

The long-lost older brother of that high-speed camera used to capture all those golden moments throughout Vancouver 2010 just showed up to flex his muscles.

A typical video flashes 30 images a second to fool us into thinking the actions we’re seeing are continuous. Recording more frames-per-second helps us see faster motions like a figure skater’s flapping cheeks as they spin on a dime.

Now the fastest imaging system ever, based on extremely short laser pulses, has been demonstrated by UCLA physicists. The camera can record more than 6 million images in just one second, which means you’d better have a lot of memory cards on hand.

It’s fast enough to watch potentially harmful cells whiz by as they’re carried through fast-moving blood, which could lead to the detection of just a few abnormal cells among millions of others. Technology is no stranger these days, showing up so frequently in our daily lives that it goes unnoticed most of the time.

Research labs around the world are no different, using the latest technologies to answer questions we only dreamed of answering a decade ago, and just as importantly, allowing us to come up with new questions we hadn’t even thought of asking.

Share