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UC San Diego researchers introduce Multi-Scale Integrated Cell (MuSIC), a technique that combines microscopy, biochemistry and artificial intelligence, revealing previously unknown cell components that may provide new clues to human development and disease. (Artist’s conceptual rendering.)Most human diseases can be traced to malfunctioning parts of a cell—a tumor is able to grow because a gene wasn't accurately translated into a particular protein or a metabolic disease arises because mitochondria aren't firing properly, for example. But to understand what parts of a cell can go wrong in a disease, scientists first need to have a complete list of parts.By combining...

Fluorescence microscopy is widely used in biochemistry and life sciences because it allows scientists to directly observe cells and certain compounds in and around them. Fluorescent molecules absorb light within a specific wavelength range and then re-emit it at the longer wavelength range. However, the major limitation of conventional fluorescence microscopy techniques is that the results are very difficult to evaluate quantitatively; fluorescence intensity is significantly affected by both experimental conditions and the concentration of the fluorescent substance. Now, a new study by scientists from Japan is set to revolutionize the field of fluorescence lifetime microscopy. A way around the...

"Something fun for everyone and yet another microscopic evidence for Young Earth - Proteins/tissues in petrified wood GLOWING under UV light - a phenomena called autofluorescence." MHA quote

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...

Professor Philip Moriarty expresses his displeasure with oft-repeated belief that atoms do no physically touch each other.

Raman spectroscopy souped up with scanning tunnelling microscopy hones in on individual atoms and bonds. Prepare to take flight across the surface of a molecule. An unprecedented window on the nanoscale world lets you feel the heft of the atoms beneath and test the strength of the chemical bonds that hold them together. This vision is now a reality, thanks to a system reported in this week's Nature1 that combines the best features of two imaging techniques: Raman spectroscopy and the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). “It enables you to look at the guts of a molecule,” says Joanna Atkin, a...

Antibiotics are used regularly for treating bacterial infections, but there is currently no quick and simple test to determine the most effective type or dose of antibiotic for a specific patient infection. As a result, it’s estimated that around 30% of all antibiotic prescriptions are not the optimum choice. This can lead to the formation of drug-resistant bacteria, delayed recovery, and in some cases death from an infection.Tests for the most appropriate antibiotic choice are performed for life-threatening patient infections. However, microbes have to be grown on agar plates from a very small patient sample which delays results for a...

The assembly includes a cell-stretching device, an atomic force microscopy head and an objective of the inverted microscopeAn analytical platform that imposes controlled mechanical strain onto live cells whilst monitoring changes in cell morphology and molecular signalling has been developed by scientists in Germany. Cellular processes induced by mechanical forces are crucial for bone healing and lung function. Understanding these processes could help to prevent and aid the development of therapies for mechanically induced lung and cardiovascular diseases and injuries.Christine Kranz and colleagues from the University of Ulm combined fluorescence microscopy with atomic force microscopy to analyse the cells. They...

Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine have breathed new life into a forgotten technique and so succeeded in detecting resistant tuberculosis in circumstances where so far this was hardly feasible. Tuberculosis bacilli that have become resistant against our major antibiotics are a serious threat to world health. If we do not take efficient and fast action, 'multiresistant tuberculosis' may become a worldwide epidemic, wiping out all medical achievements of the last decades. A century ago tuberculosis was a lugubrious word, more terrifying than 'cancer' is today. And rightly so. Over the nineteenth and twentieth century it took a...

By blending optical and atomic force microscope technologies, Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory researchers have found a way to complete 3-D measurements of single biological molecules with unprecedented accuracy and precision. Existing technologies allow researchers to measure single molecules on the x and y axes of a 2-D plane. The new technology allows researchers to make height measurements (the z axis) down to the nanometer -- just a billionth of a meter -- without custom optics or special surfaces for the samples. "This is a completely new type of measurement that can be used to determine the z position...

Enlarge Image Shadow of the orbitals. The pictures on the left show the highest occupied molecular orbital (top) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (bottom) of pentacene, as mapped by the STM. The pictures on the right show the same orbital structures, calculated mathematically. Credit: Adapted from L. Gross et al., PRL, 107 (2011) If you took high school chemistry, then you undoubtedly recall the bizarre drawings of the "orbitals" that describe where in an atom or a molecule an electron is likely to be found. Resembling strange clouds with multiple lobes, the shapes and orientation of the orbitals...

Charges build up due to exchange of material, study suggests A balloon rubbed against the head can be both a hair-raising and a hair-tearing experience, a new study suggests. Clumps of balloon and hair invisible to the naked eye may break off each object during contact and stick to the other. The existence of this exchange could challenge traditional theories about how static electricity builds up, a process known as contact electrification. “The basic assumptions people have made about contact electrification are wrong,” says Bartosz Grzybowski, a physical chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He and his colleagues describe...

Molecular mechanism driving the immune response identified for the first timeUsing the only microscope of its kind in Australia, medical scientists have been able for the first time to see the inner workings of T-cells, the front-line troops that alert our immune system to go on the defensive against germs and other invaders in our bloodstream. The discovery overturns prevailing understanding, identifying the exact molecular 'switch' that spurs T-cells into action — a breakthrough that could lead to treatments for a range of conditions from auto-immune diseases to cancer. The findings, by researchers at the University of New South Wales...

SAN FRANCISCO — I.B.M. scientists have modified a scanning-tunneling microscope, making it possible to observe dynamic processes inside individual atoms on a time scale one million times faster than has previously been possible. The researchers have perfected a measurement technique in which they use an extremely short voltage pulse to excite an individual atom and then follow with a lower voltage to read the atom’s magnetic state, or spin, shortly afterward. The resulting data produces the equivalent of a high-resolution, high-speed movie of the atom’s behavior. The advance, reported Thursday in the journal Science, has potential applications in fields including...

> They are developing a microscope incorporating two cutting-edge fluorescence techniques that give researchers the ability to observe and track individual protein molecules. UMass Amherst is the second university in the country to use one of these, called Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM). >

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....

There's a tour at the source from the history of microscopes to the present with nine images and captions.

Scientists have zoomed in on mimivirus, the enormous virus with the delicate name that has perplexed scientists since 1992, when it was found living in an amoeba in a water tower in England. “This is like landing on the moon,” says Michael Rossmann of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Rossmann and an international team of scientists report the results of their reconnaissance online April 27 in PLoS Biology. Mimivirus, full name Acanthamoeba polyphaga Mimivirus, is the largest known virus in the world. Its mass is more than 100 times that of the virus that causes the common cold, says...

Ultra-sensitive microscope reveals DNA processes     * 14:02 15 November 2005     * NewScientist.com news service     * Gaia Vince A new microscope sensitive enough to track the real-time motion of a single protein, right down to the scale of its individual atoms, has revealed how genes are copied from DNA – a process essential to life. The novel device allows users to achieve the highest-resolution measurements ever, equivalent to the diameter of a single hydrogen atom, says Steven Block, who designed it with colleagues at Stanford University in California. Block was able to use the microscope to track a molecule of DNA...