Engineers have made a tiny engine a few micrometers wide, or roughly the size of a water droplet found in fog.

The device is both confined and powered by a “trap” of laser light, and it sputters a bit. The fact that it works at all, however, may push the boundary of what’s possible in engineering microscopic machines.

“The machine is so small that its motion is hindered by microscopic processes which are of no consequence in the macroworld,” said physicist Clemens Bechinger of the University of Stuttgart in a press release. A study about the microscopic Stirling engine was published...

Thai floodwaters soak the PC supply chain. (Photo: Flickr/wiserbailey)

The slow-motion supply-chain tsunami caused by the Thailand flood has reached Intel.

On Monday, the dominant microprocessor maker revised its earnings estimates for the fourth quarter, dropping them from $14.7 billion to $13.7 billion. The company said the revenue shortfall is due to the hard disk drive shortage caused by the October flood. A large portion of the world’s hard disk drive manufacturing base is in the part of Thailand that was largely underwater for several weeks this fall.

“The floods in Thailand have had an i...