From Scienceblog:

The Micro-western array opens up a new horizon of mass-analysis for proteins.

innovation | technology | histology | microscopy

From BoingBoing

The Olympus Bioscapes International Digital Imaging Competition is an annual biological microscopy competition. First Prize is a selection of Olympus camera and microscope equipment worth $5,000. The contest is closed for this year, and the winners have been announced. The images are brilliant fluorescent miniature landscapes and portraits. 

The image shown is a water flea, photographed by  Dr. Jan Michels, from the University of Kiel in Germany.

You can view the full gallery here.

If any of our customers have their own images they would love to share with the world, submit them in the comments of this post.

photography | art | microscopy | histology

From UCSD

The brain of famous amnesiac patient H.M. is currently being sliced into 3,000 giant histological sections to be mounted and stained on glass plates. The entire process is being broadcast live at "The Brain Observatory", a site hosted by UC San Diego.

Doctors at UCSD are performing a massive 30-hour microtome session in order to section the entire brain. The brain has been frozen into a gelatin medium for the process as opposed to embedded in paraffin.

H.M. was an amnesiac patient who developed severe anterograde amnesia at the age of 16, after a surgery intended to cure his lifelong epilepsy. This meant he was incapable of forming new long-term memories, though he retained the ability to learn certain types of new information and skills. The study of his condition helped develop a number of theories in the field of cognitive neuropsychology,  a branch of psychology that aims to correlate physical structures of the brain to psychological functions.

microscopy | news | medical

From the New York Times article:

"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.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

... In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection..."

An amazing development for field work, and for care in less developed areas. This tool is even more useful because of the cellular phone it is built on. A doctor in the field can use the phone to send their microscopic imagery back to a lab, and then use it to receive results from a lab, without ever having to bring physical samples to a lab, or return to pick up results.

This technology uses light interference to create a 3-D hologram of the cells on a slide rather than passing light through it, so it reveals different features than a normal microscope. It seems from the article that the interior details of a cell are not visible with this type of microscope. The invention could still become an invaluable tool for early screening of parasitic diseases, spikes or decreases in blood cell count, and other diseases that affect the shape or quantity of cell structures.

Have any of our readers had any experience with this type of holographic blood scan? How about any training opportunities to study similar techniques?

innovation | technology | microscopy | histology

Wired Science™ and Nikon™ hold an annual contest for the world's best microscopic photography, and this year's winners are truly amazing. There is a heavy slant towards flourescent or color enhanced microscopy for the vivid colors they produce, but there are some very nicely stained images in the historical winners categories.

From the Wired Science article:

" Winning the popular vote online out of 137 finalists was [this image]... by Dennis Breitsprecher of the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School." 

Read More at Wired Science

Do any of our readers enter this contest or have their own images they'd like to share with HistoWorld? Post them in the comments here!

microscopy | contest | news | art | photography