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In a major scientific leap, University of Queensland researchers have created a quantum microscope that can reveal biological structures that would otherwise be impossible to see. This paves the way for applications in biotechnology, and could extend far beyond this into areas ranging from navigation to medical imaging. The microscope is powered by the science of quantum entanglement, an effect Einstein described as “spooky interactions at a distance.” Quantum Microscope Up Close UQ’s quantum microscope, ready to zero in on previously impossible-to-see biology. Credit: The University of Queensland Professor Warwick Bowen, from UQ’s Quantum Optics Lab and the ARC Centre...

Some spectacular images of the microscopic world

Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists examining the intricate network of brain cells that underlie sight, thought, and psychiatric disease had a running joke in the laboratory: let’s just make everything bigger. If they could simply enlarge brain cells, they reasoned, the task of mapping the circuits would be easier. Now, they have found a way to do just that, using a technique that has shades of a 1950s science fiction movie. But instead of spawning killer ants or a 50-foot giantess, the researchers have found a controlled way to cause a tissue sample swell to roughly four and a half...

Imagine if clinics in developing countries were equipped with an inexpensive yet durable tool that could help medical personnel identify and diagnose a variety of deadly diseases like Malaria...

Matches performance of expensive lab gear in diagnosing TBA compact microscope invented at Rice University is proving its potential to impact global health. In a paper published online today in the journal PLoS ONE, Rice alumnus Andrew Miller and co-authors show that his portable, battery-operated fluorescence microscope, which costs $240, stacks up nicely against devices that retail for as much as $40,000 in diagnosing signs of tuberculosis. Miller and colleagues at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) analyzed samples from 19 patients suspected of having TB, an infectious disease that usually attacks the lungs and can be fatal if not...

MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive. An engineer at U.C.L.A. has adapted cellphones to do the work of microscopes in screening for diseases. Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes. “We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases,” said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices....

San Jose, Calif - 13 Jan 2009: IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI. This result, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale. By extending MRI to such fine resolution, the scientists have created a microscope that, with further development, may ultimately be powerful enough...

(CNET) Researchers have come up with a microscopic microscope, tiny enough to fit on a fingertip, that can be cheaply mass-produced and used to scan blood and water for pathogens. The high-resolution microscope functions without the large and expensive lenses usually associated with such imaging devices. Instead, it combines the chip technology found in digital cameras with "microfluidics," the science of channeling liquid at scales far smaller than a common droplet. "The whole thing is truly compact -- it could be put in a cell phone -- and it can use just sunlight for illumination, which makes it very appealing...

So that's what the Clinton Legacy looks like! Tiny thing , ISn't it?

LONDON (Reuters) - Microscopic imaging techniques have enabled scientists to delve deep into the brain of a living animal to see how visual circuitry works. By combining two imaging methods, researchers at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts produced time-lapse images that gave them a close-up look at the inner workings of the brain -- an achievement that could improve understanding of complex illnesses like epilepsy, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. "Put simply, this technique allows us to see the brain seeing," R. Clay Reid, professor of neurobiology and the lead researcher said Wednesday. "It's an entirely new way of looking at...

Link post, providing a link to the thread in the FR "chat" section, where any discussion and comments should be posted: Geology Pictures of the Week(s), April 11-24, 2004: Microgeology

<p>A rare Martian meteorite seen through a microscope forms a collage of vivid colors and jagged shapes that is out of this world.</p> <p>But whatever you magnify -- beer, gems, even gunpowder -- most objects just end up looking like the psychedelic swirls in a funky tie-dyed T-shirt.</p>

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists are lobbying to build the world's most powerful microscope, an instrument so advanced that it can see individual atoms moving. The European Spallation Source (ESS) -- a type of instrument known as a matterscope -- would allow them to look at the growth of protein molecules in living human tissue or at the stresses deep within the wheel of a train or the wing of an aircraft. "This is on par with the Hubble telescope, but it's for looking at inner space," said Professor Bob Cywinski of Leeds University, which is backing the one billion...