Feb. 28, 2013

Microscopy Conference 2013 - Abstract Submission Open!

The Microscopy Conference 2013 will be held at the University of Regensburg (Germany) from August 25-30, 2013. The scientific program will include plenary talks, sessions with short talks, poster sessions, workshops, and ample time for discussions. The conference will bring together scientists from all over Europe, and the organizers are confident that well over 900 participants will contribute to the success of the meeting.
moreFeb. 27, 2013

Focus On Microscopy 2013

The next Focus on Microscopy conference (FOM2013) will take place in Maastricht, the Netherlands in the week before Easter from Sunday March 24 to Wednesday March 27, 2013. Focus on Microscopy 2013 is the continuation of a yearly interdisciplinary conference series running now for well over two decades. It presents the latest innovations and new trends in multi-dimensional light microscopy and image processing together with their application in biology, medicine and material sciences.
moreFeb. 25, 2013

Luminescent Concentrator: Capturing Images on a Polymer Sheet

Digital cameras, medical scanners, and other imaging technologies have advanced considerably during the past decade. Continuing this pace of innovation, an Austrian research team has developed an entirely new way of capturing images based on a flat, flexible, transparent, and potentially disposable polymer sheet. The team describes their new device and its possible applications in a paper published in the open-access journal Optics Express.
moreFeb. 19, 2013

Ptychography-Tomography: 3D Visualisation of Anti-Corrosion Paint

Researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) have revealed detailed 3D images of an important industrial coating that is used to reduce corrosion of ship hulls. The work, carried out in collaboration with international paints and coatings company Akzo-Nobel, allows the automatic identification of aluminium, talc, pigment and remaining filler components in the image, based solely on X-ray refractive data.
moreFeb. 13, 2013

Peering into Living Cells

Two young EPFL scientists have developed a device that can create 3D images of living cells and track their reaction to various stimuli without the use of contrast dyes or fluorophores. In the world of microscopy, this advance is almost comparable to the leap from photography to live television. The EPFL researchers, Yann Cotte and Fatih Toy, have designed a device that combines holographic microscopy and computational image processing to observe living biological tissues at the nanoscale. Their research is being done under the supervision of Christian Depeursinge, head of the Microvision and Microdiagnostics Group in EPFL's School of Engineering. The results were pulished in Nature Photonics.
moreFeb. 12, 2013

Nanoprecision Imaging: Guiding Single Quantom Dots with Nanometer Accuracy

Finding ways to see, position, measure, and accurately manipulate nanoscale objects is an ongoing challenge for researchers developing the next generation of ultra-compact electronics, sensors and optical devices. Even the most advanced conventional microscopes are limited by diffraction of the shortest wavelength of visible light, about 400 nanometers, rendering them unable to produce images or measurements of objects that are significantly smaller than this threshold.
moreFeb. 12, 2013

4D Electron Microscopy: Visualizing Biological Networks

A 4D electron microscope invented at Caltech captures the motion of DNA structures in space and time: Every great structure, from the Empire State Building to the Golden Gate Bridge, depends on specific mechanical properties to remain strong and reliable. Rigidity-a material's stiffness-is of particular importance for maintaining the robust functionality of everything from colossal edifices to the tiniest of nanoscale structures. In biological nanostructures, like DNA networks, it has been difficult to measure this stiffness, which is essential to their properties and functions. But scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have recently developed techniques for visualizing the behavior of biological nanostructures in both space and time, allowing them to directly measure stiffness and map its variation throughout the network. The new method is outlined in the February 4 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
moreFeb. 07, 2013

X-Ray Microscopy: Visualizing Fluctuations Inside Materials

X-ray microscopy requires radiation of extremely high quality. In order to obtain sharp images instrument and sample must stay absolutely immobile even at the nanometer scale during the recording. Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen (Switzerland), have now developed a method that relaxes these hard restrictions. Even fluctuations in the material can be visualized. Results are published in Nature.
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