Volume 24 Issue 4 May 2010

Robert W. Tarff,¹ and Simon J. Day ² 1. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. 2. Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, UK
Co-ordinate mapping provides a rapid, accurateand repeatable method of locating target points in rectangular rock thin  sections for X-ray microanalysis with, for example, an electron microprobe. Each target point receives a permanent  grid-reference co-ordinate measured relative to a fixed point on the thin section. Grid-reference points provide a  permanent record of the location of target grains...

Clément Riedel,^1,2,3 Richard Arinero,¹ Philippe Tordjeman,⁴ Gérard Lévêque,¹ Gustavo Schwartz, ⁵ Angel. Alegria, ^5,3 and Juan Colmenero ^5,2,3
1. Institut d’Electronique du Sud, Université Montpellier 2, France. 2. Donostia International Physics Center, San Sebastián, Spain. 3. Departamento de Física de Materiales, Facultad de Química, UPV/EHU, San Sebastian, Spain. 4. Institut de Mécanique des fluides, INPT–CNRS, Université de Toulouse, France. 5. Centro de Física de Materiales (CSIC-UPV/EHU)- Materials Physics Center, San Sebastian, Spain.
We present a simple method to quantitatively image the dielectric permittivity of soft materials at nanoscale using electrostatic force microscopy by means of the double pass method. The EFM experiments are based on the measurement of the frequency shifts of the oscillating tip biased at two different voltages. A numerical treatment based on the equivalent  charge method allows extracting the values of the dielectric permittivity at each image point...

Marco Cantoni,¹ Christel Genoud,² Cécile Hébert¹ and Graham Knott¹ 1. Centre Interdisciplinaire de Microscopie Électronique, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. 2. Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland.
Focused ion-beam tomography is able to generate serial images through a range of different samples. Here we show how this can be used in life sciences research, and give two examples. We show how mammalian cells grown on a ceramic-coated medical steel wire can be imaged in 3D, to assess how well they attach to its surface. Milling and imaging perpendicular to the wire’s surface shows the cell’s ultrastructure as well as cross-sections through the wire...