Reduce, reuse, and recycle: Shedding light on shedding cells

Shedding Light on Light*

There are four books describing early studies and views on light, optics and vision that are considered to be landmarks in this branch of science. The first of these is Euclid’s Optica, published about 300BC, in which he postulated that light travelled in straight lines; he described the laws of reflection and described them mathematically. The second is by Ptolemy. He is best known for his 15 ...

Recycle, Reduce, Reuse

Shedding light on biology of bacterial cells

To understand basic principles of living organisms one has to know many different properties of all cellular components, their mutual interactions but also their amounts and spatial organization. Live-cell imaging is one possible approach to obtain such data. To get multiple snapshots of a cellular process, the imaging approach has to be gentle enough to not disrupt basic functions of the cell ...

Shedding light on NSOM.

I took patience and hard work. Now, finally, researchers are seeing some sunshine break through what was once a cloudy beginning for near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM). Paul Barbara of the University of Texas–Austin (UT– Austin) is among a group of analytical chemists who have a deep respect for this tool and see it as a technique ripe with potential, ranging from chemistry to physic...

Shedding Light on Adaptation

One of the most remarkable features of the vertebrate retina is its ability to adapt to ambient illumination. One can read from this page by candlelight or one can read from it on a sunny afternoon, but the page always appears white and the letters black. It is the molecular trickery of light adaptation that enables photoreceptors to evade saturation and accurately report relative contrast even...