When (Microscopic) Blood Vessels Explode

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:00:00 PDT

The Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity, has just announced the winners of its 2008 imaging contest. Above is my favorite, a picture of a microscopic blood vessel that has ruptured. You can see single red blood cells slowly leaking out. This was taken by Anne Weston, with a scanning electron micrograph. She says the rupture "is due to a mutation in the ephrin-B2 gene that causes the blood vessels to be more fragile than normal leading to an increased rate of haemorrhaging . . . This kind of leaky blood vessel is frequently found in tumours and in certain other human diseases. " Below, we've got a couple more of the winners.

Hello to my new desktop wallpaper. Annie Cavanaugh took this with a scanning electron micrograph. "Red blood cells clearly showing their biconcave disc shape," is how she describes it. I just want to dive in! They look so puffy and soft.

Yirui Sun took this outer-space-looking picture of stem cells implanted into a mouse brain with a confocal micrograph. He says these are "Mouse neural stem cells, labelled with green fluorescent protein [that] have been transplanted into the brain of a newborn mouse and are developing into oligodendrocytes and astrocytes." In other words, those stem cells are acclimating and turning into brain cells.

Check out the Wellcome site for more images.

Wellcome Image Awards [via Bioephemera]

Atomic Structures Captured by New, Ultra-Powerful Microscope

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:20:38 PST

This image shows the precise arrangement of atoms that form a bridge between two gold crystals. Until yesterday, you would not have been able to see that image — at least, not with such clarity and color. It's the product one of the world's most powerful transmission electron microscopes, installed yesterday at UC Berkeley, which can deliver crisp images of objects that are less than half the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Want to see the microscope?

Microscopy nerds and beam geeks, rejoice! It's TEAM, the coolest damn microscope you'll ever see. A beam of energy pulses through it and, with new error-correcting tech, is able to reduce image noise normally associated with electron microscopes that measure atomic structures. Images courtesy of DOE's National Center for Electron Microscopy.

Debut of TEAM 0.5 [Eurekalert]

io9: mad microscopy

When (Microscopic) Blood Vessels Explode

Atomic Structures Captured by New, Ultra-Powerful Microscope