In the last few years Microscopy Today has published dozens of articles about the capabilities of new instrumentation for microscopy and microanalysis. However, our readers tell me that they would like to see more applications articles and more how-to articles like those in Microscopy 101. While our editors search through conference proceedings and peer-reviewed journals to find such articles, our readers are an important source of contributed applications articles.

The editors congratulate the winners of the fourth annual Microscopy Today Innovation Awards competition. These awards were established to honor innovative microscopy-related products and methods that appeared in the previous year.

The Microscopy & Microanalysis (M&M) meeting is known as the largest annual microscopy meeting with the largest annual exhibition of microscopy instruments and supplies. One regular feature of the exhibition is the Microscopy Society of America's own booth called the MegaBooth, which is visible from the far reaches of the hall because of the huge circular banner above it. This large booth, planned and implemented by volunteers, acts as a central meeting place for many MSA activities at the meeting.

Using X rays to produce magnified images of objects has been a goal for 150 years. Ever since Ernst Abbe declared in 1873 that light microscope resolution was limited by the wavelength of light, the search was on for a microscopy medium with a wavelength shorter than visible light (<500 nm). When Roentgen discovered X rays in 1895, it was thought that the new medium may have been found. Soon it was clear, however, that it was not easy to construct a physical lens for X rays because the rays penetrated all lens construction materials. X-ray “radiography images” of a few times magnification were possible but only as projection images, formed as X rays from millimeter-sized sources traveled in straight lines through the specimen to be captured on film. Unfortunately, even in the best cases, useful magnification was limited by the relatively large “point source” of X rays and the large grain size of X-ray film (both about 0.1–1.0 mm).

Many researchers view microanalysis as the determination of composition and structure of individual phases at a spatial resolution of 1 μm or better. It is remarkable to me that much of what we know about the phases shown in equilibrium phase diagrams was determined using bulk analysis techniques like powder X-ray diffraction in combination with light microscopy of flat-polished sections of materials. The identities and amounts of phases were deduced from systematic experiments because there was no way to analyze micrometer-sized phases in situ.

The Microscopy Society of America (MSA) has a number of awards to honor achievements in microscopy. The series of Distinguished Scientist Awards and Burton Medal Awards began in 1975. For Distinguished Scientists, awards are made to individuals in both biological sciences and physical sciences who have had a long-standing career in microscopy or microanalysis. The Burton Medal recognizes scientists under the age of 40. Taken together there have been 117 awardees in these three categories.

The guide is published in print and online at www.microscopy-today.com. For such a guide to be truly useful, it must be comprehensive. Thus, the editors have assembled an index identifying hundreds of products listed under more than 300 categories.

The Bruker name has become synonymous with the excellence, innovation and quality that characterize our comprehensive range of scientific instrumentation. Our trusted solutions encompass a wide number of analytical techniques ranging from Magnetic Resonance to Mass Spectrometry and Gas Chromatography, to Microanalysis, Optical and X-Ray Spectroscopy. These market and technology leading products are driving and facilitating many key application areas such as life science research, pharmaceutical analysis, applied analytical chemistry applications, materials research, and nanotechnology, clinical research, molecular diagnostics and homeland defense.

Actin filament assembly occurs in all eukaryotic cells and involves a delicate balance between factors that promote assembly and factors that inhibit assembly. Filament assembly begins with a process of nucleation and then proceeds via elongation. Filament assembly in vivo requires nucleation and elongation factors to overcome barriers that could either bind actin monomers to inhibit nucleation or “cap” the ends of elongating filaments. The formation of most cellular actin structures depends on two or more such factors, which may interact directly. The interaction between two factors that initiate nucleation and promote assembly has recently been demonstrated by Dennis Breitsprecher, Richa Jaiswal, Jeffrey Bombardier, Christopher Gould, Jeff Gelles, and Bruce Goode. Interestingly, the model of these factors in action (Figure 1) resembles a rocket launcher!

The rocky intertidal zone is an extreme environment with high, variable forces from crashing waves and strong ocean currents. A family of fishes, including the northern clingfish (Gobiesox maeandricus), has evolved an adhesive disc that allows them to adhere to rocks in the intertidal zone and even launch predatory attacks on molluscs that are attached to the rocks (Figure 1). Dylan Wainwright, Thomas Kleinteich, Anja Kleinteich, Stanislav Gorb, and Adam Summers studied the morphology of this fish disc to understand the properties of a reversibly adhesive disc that has a strong tenacity to stick to irregular, slippery, and wet surfaces.

It has been known for decades that clathrin- and dynamin-mediated endocytosis is the major pathway for recycling the components of vesicle membranes after strong stimulation and high rates of exocytosis in secretory cells. This pathway occurs over tens of seconds to minutes after fusion of the secretory vesicle membrane with the plasma membrane. It resembles classical receptor-mediated endocytosis, but it has a trigger that is unique to secretion: the sudden appearance of the secretory vesicle membrane on the surface of the cell. However, the spatial localization, the relationship to individual fusion events, the nature of the cargo, and the timing and nature of nucleation events have been unknown. An elegant study by Mary Bittner, Rachel Aikman, and Ronald Holz has addressed these issues.

The ability to determine the age of commercially important aquatic species is important to managing their populations. Whereas the age of most aquatic animals can be found by counting annual growth bands in hard structures, such as the fish otoliths (stone-like structures in the ear that are important for balance and orientation) and bivalves' shells, a technique to directly and accurately age individual crustaceans does not exist. At least it didn't until the recent study by Raouf Kilada, Bernard Sainte-Marie, Rémy Rochette, Neill Davis, Caroline Vanier, and Steven Campana. This is a bit of surprise because nothing equivalent to the hard structures of fish or bivalves had been found, or even expected to exist, in crustaceans. This is simply because this group of animals grow by molting or by shedding off their skins. Not only does molting frequency vary considerably among species of crustaceans, but molting individuals are assumed to lose and replace all calcified structures, including the cuticle (exoskeleton), that might record annual growth.

In nature, color can be imparted to a feature either by a pigment or a structure that selectively reflects a part of the visible spectrum. The latter is called structural color, and it may be brighter than a pigment. Structural color is often used by animals for signaling, mimicry, and/or mate choice. In plants, mainly fruits, structural color is probably used for mimicry. Silvia Vignolini, Paula Rudall, Alice Rowland, Alison Reed, Edwidge Moyroud, Robert Faden, Jeremy Baumberg, Beverley Glover, and Ullrich Steiner described the anatomical arrangement within the outer layers (epicarp) of a blue fruit found in equatorial Africa that results in a blue color more intense than that of any previously described biological material! Although this fruit (Figure 1) has no nutritional value, by imitating the appearance of a fresh nutritious fruit, it avoids the energy cost of producing pulp yet can be dispersed by birds. And not only can it imitate a food source, it is probably also dispersed by birds who use it to decorate their nests in order to attract mates.

There are certainly “big movies” such as Gone with the Wind and “small movies” such as Beasts of the Southern Wild, but Andreas Heinrich, Chris Lutz, Susanne Baumann, and Ileana Rau at IBM literally have set a new Guinness World Record™ for the smallest movie ever made. Heinrich et al. used a remotely operated two-ton scanning tunneling microscope to manipulate carbon monoxide molecules into a pattern, then capture the image (at a magnification of about 100,000,000×!), then move a few atoms and capture another image, and so on. This was done at 268 degrees below zero Celsius. Then approximately 250 images were assembled into a stop-action movie accompanied by cute music that lasts a little over a minute. The “boy” appears to be composed of 88 individual atoms. He bounces a “ball” (a single atom) off a wall in a minuscule game of “handatom,” which is reminiscent of the early video game “Pong.” Then he bounces on a tiny trampoline. The movie concludes with a tasteful mention of IBM.

Fluorescence stereo microscopes are a great and wondrous technology with light sources and optics that can be configured to illuminate a wide array of fluorophors with high sensitivity. There are many applications, however, where a user does not really need all of the power and versatility of a specialized integrated instrument: a simple system that excites just one or two classes of fluorophors will suffice.

X rays are universally valued for their ability to penetrate opaque objects. It is only within the past few decades that their short wavelengths have also been exploited to provide 3D imaging of the objects' interiors with resolution well beyond that of light microscopy (LM) in a wide variety of applications. This article explores X-ray imaging as a quantitative sub-micron nanoscale microscopy technique, and specifically its emergent role within the context of the central microscopy laboratory.

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Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been recognized since the mid-eighties as an excellent technique to image a wide range of samples in their near-natural environment. Although the primary function of AFM is to generate three-dimensional (3D) profiles of the scanned surface, much more information can be delivered via this technique. In 1993, TappingMode was developed, which prevents tip and sample damage due to friction and shear forces and allows qualitative mechanical property mapping through phase imaging. About the same time, force spectroscopy and force volume (FV) were developed to study tip-sample forces at a point or over an area, respectively. To date, force spectroscopy and FV are the most commonly used AFM modes for measuring nanometer-scale mechanical forces in a quantitative manner. Unfortunately, force spectroscopy and FV suffer from slow acquisition speed and a lack of automated tools; these operating characteristics limit their use because of the hundreds or thousands of curves that are required for good statistics.

The electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) provides quantitative analysis for nearly all chemical elements with a spatial resolution of analysis about ~1 μm, which is relevant to microstructures in a wide variety of materials and mineral specimens. Recent implementation of the Schottky emitter field-emission gun (FEG) electron source in the EPMA has significantly improved the spatial resolution and detectability of the EPMA technique.

Researchers have long sought to visualize neural projections and other features of animal brains by imaging them using light microscopes. Connectomics studies strive to elucidate the connections among nerve cells, but brain is dense, and gray matter is tremendously light-scattering. So scientists have not been able to peer as deeply into brain tissue as is necessary to view its complex connections and structures without cutting brain tissue into thin sections. The slicing causes damage that makes it even more difficult to reconstruct exactly how nervous system structures are interconnected. Issues with light scattering have also limited studies of microvasculature, developmental structures, and other features in mouse embryos and other tissues. Traditional methods of retrograde or anterograde labeling have been able to provide high specificity of connection circuitry, but at the price of losing the organizational context of the network. In addition, there is a limit to the practical number of labels that can be used at once. Even multicolor methods have required serial section reconstruction.