MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

MIT engineers have just introduced an element of fun into microfluidics. The field of microfluidics involves minute devices that precisely manipulate fluids at submillimeter scales. Such devices typically take the form of flat, two-dimensional chips, etched with tiny channels and ports that are arranged to perform various operations, such as mixing, sorting, pumping, and storing fluids as they flow.

When a truck rumbles by a building, vibrations can travel up to the structure’s roof and down again, generating transient tremors through the intervening floors and beams. Now researchers at MIT have developed a computational model that makes sense of such ambient vibrations, picking out key features in the noise that give indications of a building’s stability. The model may be used to monitor a building over time for signs of damage or mechanical stress.

Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an experimental technique to simulate friction at the nanoscale. Using their technique, the researchers are able to directly observe individual atoms at the interface of two surfaces and manipulate their arrangement, tuning the amount of friction between the surfaces. By changing the spacing of atoms on one surface, they observed a point at which friction disappears.