Volume 20, Issue 2 (March 2006)

Confocal laser scanning microscopy and indirect immunofluorescence were used to visualise cell nuclei and gap-junction proteins in equine tendon specimens. Gap junctions (GJ) are localised intercellular channels connecting the cytoplasm of neighbouring cells; the junctions are made from transmembrane proteins termed connexins (Cx) and allow the transport of ions and small molecules...

We describe the development and operation of a high resolution projection X-ray microscope based on an SEM host. Through advances in source, detector technology and software we are able to overcome many of the earlier performance limitations of this technique...

A method is presented for the determination of high refractive indices in gemstones such as diamond and diamond substitutes, above the limit of 1.8 that can be measured by a conventional refractometer. Measurement requires access to only a microscopically small area of a facet, with an accuracy of 60.05 in refractive index...

A major limitation of atomic force microscopy is the speed of operation, requiring tens of seconds to acquire a single image. This article introduces a high-speed AFM which is based on an alternative approach to conventional AFM and is capable of providing 15 or 25 images per second, i.e. at video rates...

Over the past ten years the atomic force microscope has developed more and more into a spectroscopic tool rather than a simple microscope. Still, for most non-expert users coming from fields other than physics, such as biomedical scientists, dealing with the advanced spectroscopic AFM techniques beyond imaging is not so simple...

This article describes the results obtained with a surface micromachined probe for scanning thermal microscopy. The probe uses polyimide as the structural material and an embedded thin-film metal resistor as the sensing element...