A regatta of tiny paddleboats delivering medicine will soon be coursing throughout your body:

A MICROSCOPIC swimming machine that works like a paddle steamer could help deliver drugs inside the body and move chemicals around inside miniaturised labs. The device is the first artificial microswimmer to move without using chemical propulsion or bending itself into different shapes.

For microscale swimmers, the viscosity of water presents a much bigger barrier to motion than we are used to on everyday scales. It is like swimming through honey for a human: any forward movement during one half of a swimming stroke would be negated by an opposite backwards motion in the second half, with the result that the swimmer goes nowhere. “In a stiff fluid, what you achieve in half of your swimming cycle you undo in the next half-cycle,” says Ramin Golestanian, a physicist at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

We love the idea of tiny/micro/nano swimming machines delivering drugs inside us.

We only wonder if it will tickle.

4 Comments

  2. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
    David W. Boles says:

    Me, too, Gordon! Aren’t there several movies about traveling through the body in a tiny spaceship?

  3. Indeed there are. Most of them are meant for children, and it shows – actually there was a funny Family Guy episode where one character goes into the body of another. There was a ride at Walt Disney World called Body Wars where you could explore the human body from the inside.

  4. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
    David W. Boles says:

    That’s funny, Gordon. I’ll have to look for that episode.
    “Meet Dave” is one current version on the theme, but there are better others.
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765476/synopsis

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