The 29th Annual Spring Symposium and workshops were held once again at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) on May 3 and 4, 2012.  This is the second year that we used the format of Thursday afternoon workshops and an all-day meeting on Friday.

For the workshops, participants could choose one of three topics.  The workshops included Advanced SEM use presented by John Yorston (Carl Zeiss Microscopy) and Richard McLaughlin (Oxford Instruments).  The second workshop explored two different optical techniques of laser microdissection and optical tweezers taught by Blair Rossetti (MBL) and live cell imaging on a spinning disc confocal system taught by Jim McIlvain (Carl Zeiss Microscopy).  The final workshop was an introduction to confocal, two-photon imaging presented by Trevor Wardill (MBL) and spectral imaging using a specially configured confocal system, presented by Blair Rossetti (MBL).  Twenty participants took advantage of this opportunity utilizing instrumentation in the MBL Central Microscopy Facility.

The meeting on Friday combined platform presentations, our corporate vendor presentations and a friendly time for lunch.  About 80 members were present for the meeting. We heard about new ways to image muscle using super-resolution techniques by Elizabeth Brainerd, Brown University.  Amazing to see that there continue to be different ways to image something so much studied like mammalian muscle.  We then moved onto how various microscopy techniques and expert analysis can help discern origins from forgery in art, presented by Richard Newman, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Our corporate vendors showed us the interesting and helpful items they can provide to make our microscopy tasks better.  About 20 vendors set up tabletop exhibits that were available throughout the meeting.  The MBL Swope Center provided a full lunch during which time we could talk with new and old friends.

The afternoon session began with Barry Carter, University of Connecticut, presenting on how TEM has been and continues to be an important tool in the nanotechnology field.  Barry is a past president of the Microscopy Society of America (MSA).  Brian Monteleone from just up the street at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) gave us an introduction to ion microbe analyses used to better understand global scale processes.  Brian manages the Northeast National Ion Microprobe Facility at WHOI.  We then heard about endocytosis and cell signaling by Justin Topp, Gordon College.  The meeting concluded with a talk by Trevor Wardill, MBL, talking about improvements he and others have made to activity indicators in neuronal systems.  He is among a new generation of scientists at the MBL looking at all aspects of the neuronal systems.

Louie Kerr
2012 Interim Treasurer

 


0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder