Light Microscopy – News and Features

Vesicles filled with neurotransmitters touch the cell membrane, thereby enabling their rapid-fire release While neurons rapidly propagate information in their interior via electrical signals, they communicate with each other at special contact points known as the synapses.

Tiny diamonds provide new possibilities for accurate measurements of processes inside living cells with potential to improve drug delivery and cancer therapeutics.

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have used graphene- a two-dimensional form of carbon only one atom thick- to fabricate a new type of microelectrode that solves a major problem for investigators looking to understand the intricate circuitry of the brain.

New building blocks take microfluidics from flat to 3-D quickly and easily.

ZEISS and the Janelia Research Campus sign an exclusive license agreement for commercialization.

JPK Instruments have reported on the use of the NanoTracker™ Optical Tweezers system in the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics in the Leiden Institute of Chemistry at Leiden University.

It may look like fresh blood and flow like fresh blood, but the longer blood is stored, the less it can carry oxygen into the tiny microcapillaries of the body.

A new method for measuring and imaging how quickly blood flows in the brain could help doctors and researchers better understand how drug abuse affects the brain, which may aid in improving brain-cancer surgery and tissue engineering, and lead to better treatment options for recovering drug addicts.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have mapped the sound-processing part of the mouse brain in a way that keeps both the proverbial forest and the trees in view. Their imaging technique allows zooming in and out on views of brain activity within mice, and it enabled the team to watch brain cells light up as mice "called" to each other.

In an age of "big data," a single computer cannot always find the solution a user wants. Computational tasks must instead be distributed across a cluster of computers that analyze a massive data set together.