Coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena is an important feature of functional inorganic materials and biological systems alike. The applications of electromechanically active materials include sonar, ultrasonic and medical imaging, sensors, actuators, and energy-harvesting technologies, as well as non-volatile computer memories. Electromechanical coupling in electromotor proteins and cellular membranes is the universal basis for biological functionalities from hearing to cardiac activity. The future will undoubtedly see the emergence of broad arrays of piezoelectric, biological, and molecular-based electromechanical systems to allow mankind the capability not only to “think” but also “act” on the nanoscale. The need for probing electromechanical functionalities has led to the development of Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) as a tool for local nanoscale imaging (Figures 1 and 2), spectroscopy, and manipulation of piezoelectric and ferroelectric materials.

Many infectious diseases prevalent in the developing world, including malaria and tuberculosis, are difficult to diagnose on the basis of symptoms alone but can be accurately detected using microscope examination. Currently the expense, size, and fragility of optical microscopes impede their widespread use in resource-limited settings. Addressing these obstacles facing microscopy in the developing world is a pressing need; over 800,000 people, primarily children in Africa, die annually of malaria, and more than 1,500,000 people die annually of tuberculosis [1][2]. The aim of this study is to design and validate a microscope for use in the developing world that combines high-resolution imaging, extreme affordability, and long-term durability.

Focused ion beam (FIB) instrumentation has proven to be extremely useful for preparing cross-sectional samples for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations. The two most widely used methods involve milling a trench on either side of an electron-transparent window: the “H-bar” and the “lift-out” methods [1]. Although these two methods are very powerful in their versatility and ability to make site-specific TEM samples, they rely on using a sacrificial layer to protect the surface of the sample as well as the removal of a relatively large amount of material, depending on the size of the initial sample. In this article we describe a technique for making thin film cross-sections with the FIB, known as Shadow FIBing, that does not require the use of a sacrificial layer or long milling times [2].

Biological composites have attracted increasing interest because of their outstanding properties and versatility. Crustaceans are interesting models for the study of these materials. They have a mineralized exoskeleton (cuticle) that provides support and protection. The structural organization of the cuticle is ubiquitous in arthropods: a hierarchically structured organic matrix composed of planes of parallel chitin-protein fibers that are stacked in a twisted plywood organization [1] associated with various amounts of minerals. The land-dwelling crustacean Porcellioscaber (P. scaber) is a well-established model organism for the study of the bio-mineralization processes [2, 3].

The most prominent vector-transmitted diseases in the first and third world are Lyme disease and malaria, respectively. In both cases the transmitted agents are introduced into the skin from where they eventually disseminate into the blood using active motility. We are interested in deciphering the molecular mechanisms underlying the motility of these pathogens and how they relate to the ultrastructure of the pathogens. Here we provide an overview of the microscopy techniques that we use to achieve these goals.

Rapid advances in fluorescence probe and imaging technologies now provide easily accessible tools for biologists to perform highly detailed analysis of molecular interactions in living cells. However it can be difficult to extract accurate parameters from these experiments because of the complex interplay of diffusion-reaction events with the morphology of the cell. As a result, only a small fraction of the available spatiotemporal information is utilized, and in many cases analysis remains at a qualitative level. The Virtual Cell (VCell, http://vcell.org) simulation environment is uniquely suited to analyzing these types of fluorescence imaging experiments because it is designed to solve reaction-diffusion equations within any given geometry [1]