In our fascinating 21st century, patterns not just of people are emerging in importance and being managed in new ways. In the image with this post, acoustic tweezers are positioning samples for tissue engineering without damaging cells the way other sorts of tiny tweezers might. A Highlights in Chemical Technology article, “Sound waves push particles,” explains.

. . . Tony Jun Huang and colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, made the tweezers by placing two energy conversion devices called interdigital transducers (IDTs) on the outside of a microfluidic channel. They added a microparticle solution to the channel and then applied a radio frequency signal to the IDTs. The IDTs converted the signal into sound waves called surface acoustic waves (SAWs), which pushed the microparticles into precise patterns in the channel. . . .