M&M99 in Portland
MSNO FALL MEETING
March Meeting Dedicated to Memory of Helga Beegan
NOMINATIONS FOR SPRING ELECTIONS
Joint Meeting with Local SAS in May
Photo Pages
By Jeanette Killius
The joint meeting of the Microscopy Society of America and the Microbeam Analysis Society will be held in the City of Roses, Portland, Oregon, August 1-5, 1999. Several interesting pre-meeting short courses will be offered on July 31 and August 1, including Basic TEM for Materials Science, Gold labeling, Practical Digital Imaging, the Digital Darkroom and Cryofixation and Freeze Substitution. A special additional 2 day Congress on "Optical Microscopy in the next Millennium" is being organized by Brian Herman and will be held prior to the start of M&M 99 on July 31-August 1. This congress will provide an open forum for the discussion of new technologies and applications of optical microscopy and how these will impact on our understanding of biological structure and function in the 21st century. A separate registration fee ($70) is required to attend this event.
Preview the
M&M 99 opens Sunday night with a visit to the Oregon Zoo. Entertainment and a buffet dinner will be provided. Your complimentary ticket to the zoo is good all Sunday so you can take advantage of the city's new MAX lightrail system and stop out earlier. Additional tickets at $45/adult or $12/child may be ordered on the registration form. Enjoy views of the Rose City Wednesday night while sailing along the Willamette River aboard a luxury cruise ship. Tickets for this dinner cruise may be purchased for $42/person along with your registration.
A varied and exciting program is planned for the week. Symposia (and this is by no means a complete list) range from magnetic imaging, quantitative and low voltage X-ray microanalysis, environmental SEM, scanned probe microscopy and electron diffraction for the SEM and TEM to biomaterials, digital imaging, confocal microscopy (chaired by MSNO's own Judy Drazba) and cryo EM and immunocytochemistry. MAS will be celebrating 50 years of electron probe microanalysis with a symposium dedicated to Prof. Raymond Castaing, the father of instrumental microanalysis who passed away last April 10th. In addition, a 2 day Celebration of Pioneering Electron Microscopy will be held to honor Prof. Archie Howie and highlight the many fields to which he has contributed, among them amorphous materials, valence EELS, environmental EM and dynamical electron diffraction.
Returning to the program are the popular Presidential Happenings. MSA and MAS presidents will host special events Monday and Tuesday evening of interest to all members. The topics for this year's interactive "Problem Solving with the Experts" are "Safe Management of Infectious and Biohazardous Agents" and "Specimen Preparation in the Physical Sciences". Bring your questions! In addition, as always, Nestor Zaluzec and John Mansfield will have a computer workshop and software exchange running on the exhibit floor throughout the meeting. Come view the library of public domain software available for copying.
The Technologists' Forum will have a full schedule at M&M99. The Roundtable discussion will focus on Funding in the 90's, a very important topic for academicians. Areas covered will be grantsmanship, creative funding for new instrumentation and federal cost accounting standards. Wednesday's Tech Forum symposium will feature "Technology from the Pacific Northwest" and showcase speakers from the region. Be sure to catch presentations by the 1999 Outstanding Technologist award winners: John Basgen (biological) and John Wheatley (physical). In addition, don't forget to check out the TF booth on the exhibit floor.
For all the latest in electron microscopes and accessory equipment, look no further than the Exhibit Floor at M&M99. Over 150 vendors will be present and available to show off their company's newest products. Make time to visit the exhibits and see what's new, evaluate instruments or just chat with the sales reps.
As a special added attraction, the Pacific Northwestern EM Society is hosting a post-convention cruise to Alaska, Aug. 7-14. Reduced fares are available to M&M99 attendees and their families for a one week trip aboard a luxury liner to three ports and Glacier Bay. Enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the wilderness of Alaska. For more information, call Cruise Masters at 800-848-7120. Be sure to mention the M&M99 conference to receive the discounted fares.
A note to those who were at M&M98 in Atlanta: if you stopped by the Portland LAC booth and picked up a vial of Mt. St. Helens ash, now is your chance to show it off. They are sponsoring a "Show Us Your Ash" photo contest. The only rule is the picture must be of the ash. Image processing is allowed. Let your imagination run free! If you need ash, send a self addressed stamped envelope to Doug Keene, Shriners Hospital for Children, Electron Microscopy Facility, 3101 S. W. Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97201.
If you need updated information about M&M99, use
Many different microscopes are out there for the investigator to choose among for supporting his/her research. Often the impulse is to use only one method to provide a descriptive picture for publication, ignoring the potential for these various microscopes to supply useful data. Dr. Albrecht discussed the concept of examining parallel processed samples, or, ideally, the same cell in "The Use of Correlative Microscopy in Biological Problem Solving".
This technique, used moderately in the past, is now more successful because imaging capabilities have caught up with instrumentation. Recent advances in the development of high-resolution video cameras and computer reconstruction and analysis software have made image digitization the way to go. Taken together with new microscopy instrumentation, such as confocal and 2- and 3- photon LM, and you have a number of approaches to gain information about the structure and physiology of a cellular system. On the cutting edge is near field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM), which will potentially allow photon-based imaging of living tissue at almost EM or AFM resolution.
Antibody-labeling techniques have improved lately, making the addition of inert colloidal metal markers to a cell much easier. These markers con be visualized with bright field, dark field, phase, interference reflectance, and confocal light microscopes. Then the tagged cell can be take to the SEM, FE-SEM, ESEM, IVEM, HVEM to look at position, shape and amount of colloidal metal present. This information can be used to solve several biological questions as well as provide interesting visual images for publication.
We wish to thank JEOL for providing our wine and cheese reception and MSA for making Dr. Albrecht's participation at our fall meeting possible.
Following last year's popular theme, the topic for the March 22nd presentation at B.F. Goodrich will again be Digital Imaging. Today's software makes image processing easier for the investigator by eliminating the tedious darkroom step. Not only is it possible to remove artifacts and other flaws, but one can create "perfect" images. In his first presentation, Prof. John C. Kinnamon of the University of Denver will discuss the ethics involved with image manipulation.
After dinner, Dr. Kinnamon will present a workshop entitled "Adobe PhotoShop™ 101", wherein he will take you from a TEM negative to a publication quality digital image. If you are new to PhotoShop or want to see some hints on how to improve your images for presentations and publication, be sure to attend this workshop. Dr. Kinnamon's appearance at our society meeting is due to the generosity of MSA's Speaker's Bureau.
In addition to the above posts, the Board is also looking for a new Newsletter Editor. This will be the last newsletter for the current editor. It is helpful to have good command of a word processing program to handle the position. While this is an appointed post, nominations are being accepted at this time to be forwarded to the Board.
Elections will be held at the May meeting. Please nominate a bright, enthusiastic fellow member (or yourself!) for one of these important positions by April 15, 1999. Call Bob Duff at 216-421-8078 and suggest a friend today.
---UP DATE The list of candidates for the election of MSNO officers is:
MSNO and SAS will share the speaker support. MSNO will provide a keynote speaker after lunch and host an afternoon program featuring our members presenting talks, in a meeting-in-miniature format. A dinner, business meeting and elections will conclude the day's events. Cost of the dinner is projected to be around $20. MSNO will pick up the nominal registration for its members.
While this program is still being developed, the May 19 date is firm. Mark it on your calendar and watch you mail for future announcements regarding this exciting symposium.
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by J. Killius
On Wednesday, November 4, 1998, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation hosted the opening program of MSNO's 1998-99 year. MSA President Dr. Ralph Albrecht of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, appeared courtesy of MSA Speaker's Bureau.
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by J. Killius
Helga Beegan, longtime MSNO member, passed away last November from complications due to a stroke. As teenagers, Helga and her sister survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden at the close of World War II. She emigrated to the US in the early 1960's to serve as a maid in the household of a well-to-do German woman living in Detroit. Her chemistry background came in handy in 1965 when a friend persuaded her to apply for a job at Diamond Alkali (later Diamond Shamrock) in Painesville. She started work in biological EM at Case Western Reserve University in 1970 and joined MSNO the same year, participating in the rebirth of the organization at that time. Helga served as Trustee on MSNO's board from 1977-79 and worked behind the scenes for GLEMA '91 and M&M97. Helga remained active in MSNO and at CWRU, continuing long after her contemporaries had retired. She will be missed. It is to her memory that MSNO dedicates this meeting.
by J. Killius
We need your input! MSNO officer elections are coming up. A nominations committee, headed by Bob Duff, is looking for people to fill the following positions on the Board:
President-elect (Biological), 3 year term
Secretary, 3 year term
Trustee, 3 year term
The Board meets 3-4 times a year, usually just before MSNO meetings, to plan the year's programs.
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By Jeanette Killius
The Cleveland Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS) and MSNO will host a first-ever joint meeting on Wednesday, May 19. The site of the conference will tentatively be at Notre Dame College. In keeping with the customary program for SAS, this meeting will be a daylong symposium. A turnout of about 75 people is expected for this unique collaborative venture.
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