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First Taiwan AFM Bioworkshop

aszerdi — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:00:03 +0000

Asylum Research, in conjunction with the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), will host the first Taiwan AFM Bioworkshop to be held July 30-31, 2009 at NHRI, Zhunan Campus, in Taiwan. The workshop will combine talks from leading researchers and industry experts on atomic force microscopy for life science applications, as well as instructional AFM demonstrations. Topics covered include principles of AFM, biological imaging, force spectroscopy, integration of AFM and optical microscopy, sample preparation, application examples and future directions in AFM. The event is free to all researchers in the field of AFM.
www.asylumresearch.com/bioworkshop

4th CeBiTec Symposium: BioImaging

aszerdi — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:12:39 +0000

Microscopy has contributed immensely to the development of modern biology since 1665 when Robert Hooke published his book “Micrographia” depicting a large number of microscopical sketches. In our days a major breakthrough in biology is the discovery of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). Another important innovation was found by the german scientist Stefan Hell from Göttingen. He received for example the “Leibniz Preis” of the German research community (DFG) for “light microscopy with unknown clarity”. These methods enable the visualization of nanoscopic structures in living cells.

Similar high magnification microscopic plus latest electronmicroscopic techniques are also being developed in the department of physics at the University of Bielefeld. A third building block will lead from August 25-28, 2009 from microscopy to imaging.

The topics include:

- Beyond Optical Microscopy
- High Resolution Microscopy in Biology
- From Life Cell Imaging to Systems Biology
- Bioimaging Informatics

The registration is open until July 11, 2009.

www.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/symposium/bioimaging

bioImaging 2009

Molecular Light Switches for Higher Resolution

aszerdi — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:02:09 +0000

The “Superresolution” research network, founded by the German Ministry of Education and Sciences, demonstrated a new widefield microscopy technology with resolutions better than 20 nanometers. The method is based on special dyes, which’s fluorescence can be optically and reversibly switched on and off in aqueous solutions. The dyes are bond to cellular structures by using a functional group. By switching the dyes on and off, the fluorescence emission is separated in time until only those dye molecules fluoresce that have enough distance to allow their localization as single molecules. After several thousand switching cycles, a total image is constructed (dSTORM – direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy). Involved in the project were the work groups of Prof. Dr. M. Sauer and Prof. Dr. J. Mattay (University of Bielefeld, Germany ), Prof. Dr. K.-H. Drexhage (University of Siegen, Germany), Prof. Dr. J. Enderlein (University of Goettingen, Germany), and Prof. Dr. S. Hell (Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen, Germany).
www.biophotonik.org

Cytoskeleton of a fixed cell. Left: Fluorescence image at standard conditions. Right: dSTORM image using molecular switches.

Lasers and Electro-Optics in Baltimore

aszerdi — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:01:29 +0000

The 2009 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) and The International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC) will come to Baltimore Convention Center, US from May 31 to June 5, 2009. The 5-day event features high-quality, cutting-edge optics and photonics programming, tutorials, special symposia, short courses and a full program of networking and social events. PhotonXpo – the exhibit at CLEO, also debuting this year, will feature 350 participating companies showcasing every facet of the optics and photonics industry.
www.cleoconference.org

The Baltimore Convention Center

New Cloaking Technology

aszerdi — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:29:15 +0000

Researchers of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, US announced that they have created a new type of invisibility cloak which works for all colors of the visible spectrum. This new technology, based on a tapered optical waveguide, is simpler than previous designs and makes it possible to cloak objects of about 50 microns in diameter – roughly the width of a human hair. “All previous attempts at optical cloaking have involved very complicated nanofabrication of metamaterials containing many elements, which makes it very difficult to cloak large objects,” said Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University’s Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical Engineering. “Here, we showed that if a waveguide is tapered properly it acts like a sophisticated nanostructured material.” Previous experiments with metamaterials have been limited to cloaking regions only a few times larger than the wavelengths of visible light. This findings could lead to advances in e.g. cloaking; powerful “hyperlenses” resulting in microscopes 10 times more powerful than today’s; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; advanced sensors; and more efficient solar collectors. Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing May, 29 in Physical Review Letters.
www.purdue.edu

New Technique to Receive Sharper Images

aszerdi — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:45:20 +0000

A new imaging method that could help to build more powerful microscopes and other optical devices by producing sharper images and a wider field of view has been developed by Princeton researches. The research was led by Jason Fleischer, assistant professor of electrical engineering and co-written with two graduate students Christopher Barsi and Wenjie Wan. The new method takes advantage of the unusual properties of nonlinear optical materials in which light rays mix with each other in complex ways. Thanks to the mixing of rays, information that would otherwise be lost manages to reach the detector. Therefore this picture would be rich in detail but it would also be distorted. To capture this otherwise lost visual information, the researchers used a hologram. The hologram is a special type of photograph which records “phase” – a light property which measures the time and location of a wave peak. They also combined data from a normal camera. Then they created a simplified flow of light through a nonlinear material and developed a computer algorithm that takes the distorted image and works backwards to calculate the visual information at every point in space between the image and the object.
www.princeton.edu

An object illuminated by light reflects rays in many different directions (gray arrows). Left: With a normal lens, some rays are captured and refract towards a camera while others are missed, resulting in a blurry image with a limited field of view. Right: The new method uses a nonlinear material. The original rays are altered and new rays (red) are generated. The resulting picture is scrambled, but a computer algorithm can undo the mixing and yield a sharp, wide-field image. (Image: Christopher Barsi)

SPIE Europe Optics and Optoelectronics

aszerdi — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:16:18 +0000

New applications for EUV, VUV, and x-ray technologies and other topics in photonics will be among highlights of SPIE Europe Optics and Optoelectronics to be held April 20-23, 2009 in Prague, Czech Republic. Approximately 450 papers will be presented in 10 technical conferences on:

- Harnessing Relativistic Plasma Waves as Novel Radiation Sources from Terahertz to X-rays and Beyond
- EUV and X-ray Optics: Synergy between Laboratory and Space
- Damage to VUV, EUV, and X-ray Optics
- Metamaterials
- Nonlinear Optics and Applications
- Photon Counting Applications
- Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Transfer and Processing
- Optical Sensors
- Photonic Crystal Fibres
- Holography: Advances in Classical Holography and Modern Trends

www.spie.org/optics-optoelectronics.xml

Prague, Czech Republic (source: pixelio.de)

Distinguishing Single Cells With Nothing But Light

aszerdi — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:00:34 +0000

Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a novel optical technique that permits rapid analysis of single human immune cells using only light. Andrew Berger, associate professor of optics and his graduate student Zachary Smith integrated Raman and angular-scattering microscopy into a single system, which they call IRAM. This is the first time clear differences between two types of immune cells have been seen using a microscopy system that gathers chemical and structural information by combining two previously distinct optical techniques, according to Berger. “Conceptually it’s pretty straightforward – you shine a specified wavelength of light onto your sample and you get back a large number of peaks spread out like a rainbow,” says Berger. “The peaks tell you how the molecules you’re studying vibrate and together the vibrations give you the chemical information.” Until now scientists have not had a non-invasive way to see how human cells, like T cells or cancer cells, activate individually and evolve over time.
www.rochester.edu

IRAM scattering data from a single granulocyte.

IRAM scattering data from a single lymphocyte. Clear differences are visible when compared to data from a granulocyte.

International Optoelectronics Expo

aszerdi — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:48:53 +0000

From Sep. 6-9, 2009 the 11^th China International Optoelectronics Expo (CIOE) will take place in the Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center in Shenzhen, China. It address to representatives working in the fields of optoelectronics manufacturing, automotive and aerospace, microelectronics manufacturing, semiconductors, mechanical engineering and processing, biotechnology, pharmaceutical technology as well as in research, science and government institutions. The 2009 CIOE will present the three sub-expositions on 70,000 m²:
- Optical communications, sensors, lasers and infrared applications expo
- Precision optics expo
- LED expo

www.opto-china.com

3D Single Molecule Imaging

aszerdi — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:02:35 +0000

A team of researchers led by professor Rafael Piestun of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado and William E. Moerner, professor of chemistry at Stanford University, have demonstrated for the first time a method for three-dimensional optical imaging of objects smaller than 20 nanometers over a wide spatial range. Optical imaging at these scales is of great interest in biomedical sciences and nanotechnology. The new findings, which provide a powerful tool for the super resolution of single molecules, have implications for characterizing defects in materials, the characterization of nanostructures, and the three-dimensional, biophysical and biomedical imaging of tagged molecules inside and outside of cells.
www.stanford.edu
www.colorado.edu

3D single molecule imaging