This issue showcases the winners of the third annual Microscopy Today Innovation Awards competition. These awards were established to honor innovative microscopy-related products and methods that appeared in the previous year.

One of the largest freshwater fish (2 to 2.5 meters long, over 150 kg) lives in the Amazonian rivers and lakes. It is well known that these waters are populated with piranhas that swarm and devour almost anything that moves. The lungfish Arapaima gigas coexists with piranhas by virtue of an armor-like plating of scales. Y.S. Lin, C.T. Wei, E.A. Olevsky, and Marc Meyers examined the microscopic structure and mechanical properties of these scales to discover what provided this protection.

Over the past fifty years the scanning electron microscope (SEM) has established itself as the most versatile and productive tool for imaging and microanalysis in many areas of science and technology, and some seventy-thousand instruments generate millions of micrographs every day. Scanning electron microscopes do, however, have one fundamental limitation in that the only experimental variable available to the operator is the choice of the accelerating voltage. Although the ability to vary beam energy is both necessary and important, it is an unfortunate fact that changing the beam energy also alters many aspects of performance: imaging resolution, relative strength of different signal components, depth of beam penetration, capabilities of the various analytical systems, and the severity of charging and beam-induced damage. This makes it difficult or impossible to optimize the interaction of interest.

From the nearly mass-less electron to massive ions, charged particle microscopes have diversified over the last few decades. At present, a broad range of available charged particles with varying masses fulfill many applications: from imaging to analysis to nanofabrication.

There are relatively few technologies for measurement at the single-molecule scale. Fluorescent imaging, for example, can be used to directly visualize molecules and their interactions, but diffraction limitations and labeling requirements may push the system from its native state. Although recent advances in super-resolution imaging have been able to break this resolution barrier, important challenges remain. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is capable of imaging molecules at high resolution and at high speed. However, AFM imaging is a surface technique, requiring sample preparation and some immobilization. Other technologies such as optical tweezers and magnetic tweezers are capable of molecular manipulation and spectroscopy to great effect but require a significant apparatus and have limited inherent analytical capabilities.

Many industrial companies do not have the expertise, experience, or in-house analytical instrumentation to conduct routine laboratory testing. As such, selecting a contract analytical services provider is a common task. Outsourcing is a cost-effective alternative that can allow companies to increase analytical information available for timely decisions regarding product development and production (see Figure 1).

The promise of stem cell therapy offers hope for the treatment of many human diseases and injuries. Spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries can cause the loss of neurons and glial cells. These lost cells may be partially replaced by transplanting multipotent human neural stem cells (hNSCs), which can differentiate into specialized neural cell types. The potential for these remarkable cells to promote recovery of neural function has made them a strong focus of researchers in this field.

The development of laser-assisted atom probe tomography (APT) and specimen preparation techniques using a focused ion beam equipped with high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has significantly advanced the characterization of semiconductor devices by APT. The capability of APT to map out elements in devices at the atomic scale with high sensitivity meets the characterization requirements of semiconductor devices such as the determination of elemental distributions for each device region.

Microscopy Today congratulates the third annual group of Innovation Award winners. The ten innovations described below move several microscopy techniques forward: atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, light microscopy, scanning probe microscopy, electron microscopy, and analytical microscopy. These innovations will make imaging and analysis more powerful, more flexible, more productive, and easier to accomplish.

When electrons pass through the electromagnetic lenses in a transmission electron microscope (TEM), they follow a spiral path that results in image rotation. In many TEMs, the image or diffraction pattern that appears at the final imaging plane has therefore suffered a significant rotation compared to the actual specimen. The extent of the rotation is equal to the sum of the contributions from each lens. In some recent instruments an extra lens is built into the column to compensate for these rotations. In the case of a scanning TEM (STEM), where the image is created by scanning a focused beam on the specimen, the orientation of the image to the specimen is fixed but can be controlled electronically by the computer processor.

On August 9, 1927, in New York City, Marvin Lee Minsky was born to Dr. Henry Minsky, an eye surgeon, and Fannie Resier, an active participant in the Zionist movement. At an early age he developed an interest in science, a characteristic that was encouraged at the private schools he attended as a child. Nevertheless, after high school he joined the United States Navy. Following his two years of service, Minsky entered Harvard University, where he pursued a variety of subjects, including psychology, physics, neurophysiology, and mathematics. After graduation in 1950, he transferred to Princeton University to pursue his doctorate in mathematics, and during his first year there he constructed the first neural network simulator. Subsequent to receiving his PhD in 1954, he revisited Harvard, but this time as part of the renowned group of scholars known as the Society of Fellows.

Lord Rayleigh was a British physicist and mathematician who worked in many disciplines including electromagnetics, physical optics, and sound wave theory. The criteria he defined still act as the limits of resolution of a diffraction-limited optical instrument. Rayleigh wrote over 446 scientific papers but is perhaps best known for his discovery of the inert gas argon, which earned him a Nobel Prize.

My name is Reza Shabhazian-Yassar, and I am currently an assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Tech. I am a junior faculty member and have gained some experience with MRI NSF proposals. Fortunately, I have been funded in one of these grants, and also I have served as the reviewer in MRI panels. When Debby was talking about the reviewers' comments for the previous proposal, fortunately, I was not among those who provided those kinds of comments. I am going to share a little of my experience. I see a number of young faces and newer junior faculty who may benefit from what I am about to say. When I started at Michigan Tech, I didn't have much experience with proposal writing, so it was very difficult for me to figure out what sort of discussions I should include in my proposal. I read the solicitation and program description, but some of the details you gain by actually writing the proposal. It's something like writing a paper, you just need to practice writing, and you will be good at it. Please note that following my recommendations does not mean that 100 percent of you are going to get funded (I am not a Superman!). Rather, I intend to help you write a more efficient proposal. What I report complements Debby's point of view. Debby mentioned a general overview of the review process. Here, I will give you steps on how proposals are reviewed and how to write a more competitive proposal. Since I will talk about NSF, I will cover the MRI goals. In NIH or other agencies, there may be different goals.

Selected postings from the Microscopy Listserver from May 1, 2012 to July 1, 2012. Complete listings and subscription information can be obtained at http://www.microscopy.com. Postings may have been edited to conserve space or for clarity.

Following is a list of microscopy related meetings and courses. The editors would greatly appreciate input to this list via the electronic submission form under “events/other microscopy events” at the MSA webpage: www.microscopy.org. We will gladly add hypertext links to the notice on the web and insert a listing of the meeting in the next issue.

I have been having difficulty getting some of my recent papers accepted in top-tier journals. The editors say that my research is solid but that it is just not very exciting. One even said my work was not “sexy.” Do you have any advice as to how I can jazz up my manuscripts?