John Mills fiddles with the knobs on a microscope, but instead of looking into the eyepiece, he stares at a sphere displayed on a laptop's screen. The laptop is connected to a video feed coming from the microscope, and Mills watches as fluids on a slide flow past the sphere, a tiny silica bead. After a few seconds, something that looks like a dented doughnut appears on the screen. It's a red blood cell, and Mills quickly adjusts the microscope's knobs until the bead "catches" the cell. He turns the knobs again, and a second silica bead appears and attaches to the cell. Then Mills slowly maneuvers the silica beads, which are coated with proteins that stick to the blood cell, so that the cell stretches out into the shape of a cigar.

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