Engineering graduate student, Yushun Zeng from the University of Southern California recently developed a device that traps and compresses cells through the use of acoustic waves, otherwise called "sound."
Zeng is squishing cancer cells in a petri dish at work, but not with his uncoordinated "macrospcopic fingers," according to a Wired report.
The main objective of this experiment is to test a theory that cancer cells are softer compared to the healthy ones, explained Zeng. Past investigations have proposed cancer cells are deforming more easily, enabling them to migrate and metastasize throughout the body.
If that's the case, he added, these experiments could help researchers develop treatments that stiffen cancer cells to make them more difficult to spread in the human body.
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Acoustic Tweezer
Essentially, the use of sound to squish objects is making a perfect sense when one remembers what a sound is-a vibration that's traveling through matter, whether it's through water, air, or a tin can that's pressed to the air.
Technically, this engineering graduate student is using ultrasound, acoustic frequencies that are extremely high ot be audible to humans. His device is known as an "acoustic tweezer."
The tweezer is deforming the cancer cells through the use of sound as a pressure wave, and it is an example of the manner scientists expand the uses of sound as a tool.
The so-called "science of sound" or acoustics, is an old and extremely established field, explained the New York-based City University's Andrea Alù.
Optical Tweezer
For instance, the acoustic tweezer was inspired by a tool called the optical tweezer, created in the 1980s, which is basically "a laser-focused to a tight point,' a similar Globalnews24 report specified.
An object placed in a laser beam is feeling a push from the photons pelting it. Moreover, engineers are shaping the beam so that the object feels a balance of forces at the focus of the laser.
This apparatus is described as "handy" for gripping the ultra-small. Scientists have trapped and manipulated individual atoms and molecules in optical tweezers, and even used them to gauge the springiness of the double helix of DNA.
Rather than a laser generating a train of photons, acoustic tweezers are vibrating like an object like a bell, generating a train of sound waves in a medium.
This produces pockets of high and low pressures. Similar to focusing on a laser, Zeng has engineered the sound waves' shape to regulate the location of such pressure pockets.
By placing a low-pressure zone over a cluster of cancer cells, for instance, Zeng can squish them by causing the fluid around from a high-pressure zone to rush in.
Sound Waves
According to a related True Viral News report, sound waves can steer objects, as well, inside organisms. Switzerland-based ETH Zurich engineer Daniel Ahmed recently utilized ultrasound to move hollow plastic beads inside a live zebrafish embryo.
By carrying out such experiments, Ahmed aims to demonstrate the possibility of using sound to guide drugs to a target area within an animal like a tumor.
The ultrasound which is similar to the acoustic tweezer creates a repeating pattern of low-and high-pressure sites within the embryo, enabling Ahmed to use the pressure pockets to push the beads around.
Other researchers have examined the sound's steering capability in treating kidney stones. For instance, a study conducted in 2020, used ultrasound to move the sounds around in the living pigs' bladders.
Acoustic Hologram
Other researchers have developed a technology called "acoustic holography" to form sound waves, in order to more accurately design the site and shape of the pressure zones in a medium.
Researchers have projected sound waves through a patterned plate identified as an "acoustic hologram" which is frequently 3D-printed and computer-designed.
It's shaping the sound waves in an intricate and predefined manner, just like an optical hologram is doing for the light.
Related information about acoustic waves is shown on Oshova's YouTube video below:
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