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Comments: 125 +- Science: An Electron Microscope For Your Home? on Sunday October 11, @08:28AM
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CuteSteveJobs writes "Could microscopy be in for a new golden age? Wired previewed the desktop-sized Hitachi TM-1000 Electron Microscope a while back. Light microscopes can magnify up to 400X (1,000X at lower quality) — just enough to see bacteria as shapes — but this one offers 20X to 10,000X, giving some amazing pictures. Unlike traditional electron microscopes, this one plugs into a domestic power socket and specimens don't need any special preparation; it's point-and-shoot, much like your typical digital camera. So easy a grade-schooler could use it, and earlier this year that's what happened: The kids at Iwanuma Elementary School in Miyagi, Japan got their own electron microscope. At $60,000, you'll have to give up on the BMW, but the hope is with economy of scale (so far 1,000 have sold) and miniaturization, the price will continue to drop. The only bad news? It runs XP."
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Wish they had this at my school (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about home users, but this is something a university could justify purchasing several of for an undergraduate lab. Biology could have been even more interesting.
Re:Wish they had this at my school (Score:5, Informative)
FYI Slashdot, one of this decade's genuine breakthroughs in science has been finally breaking the diffraction limit for visible light microscopy. The results in the past couple years alone have been nothing short of stunning. Specifically the techniques which are capable of doing this are confocal microscopy, near-field scanning microscopy, stimulated emission depletion microscopy, stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy and structured illumination microscopy [arstechnica.com]. All of these techniques use visible light and can image at below the diffraction limit of ~250nm resolution, but most use complicated techniques using lasers etc. to do so. Except that last one, structured illumination. This technology is going to literally revolutionize microscopy and probably biology as a whole in the coming years. It is a very clever technique and produces unbefuckingleivably amazing [wikipedia.org] images [wikipedia.org]. With it, full 3D reconstructions of individual living cells with ~10 nanometer resolution, at frame rates in the several Hz range can be taken using a relatively simple LCD retrofit to a high quality transmission light microscope which is installed between the light source and the stage. Look at some of these movies taken [nature.com] of cell processes using the technique and try to keep your jaw off the floor. While the resolution may be higher, none of this is possible with SEM or TEMs due to the necessity of imaging in vacuo.
Parent
Re:Wish they had this at my school (Score:5, Informative)
Since I seem to oscillate between looking at TEM images and doing confocal microscopy these days, allow me to chime in here.
Apart from resolution, there are two factors that make EM useful in a way that light microscopy techniques never will be. Namely, that they allow you to look at an entire specimen at once and at the same time see things you weren't looking for. The pretty color images confocal images are made by tagging particular structures in the cell with fluorescent molecules. This is done either with fluorochrome labeled antibodies or by expressing proteins fused to fluorescent proteins. Therefore, you have to know what you're looking for in order to make a picture of it. Furthermore due to the overlap in the emission spectra of the fluorescent tracers, you can generally only look at about 3 things simultaneously. So if you want to see all the structures in a cell at once or you're looking for something, like a virus, but don't know which one or don't have an antibody for it, EM is still the tool of choice.
Parent
Not all that bad! (Score:5, Funny)
Otherwise, an interesting development.
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Yo dawg, we heard you likes viruses, so we put a virus on your microscope, so you can get phished while you observe viruses though your microscope, dawg.
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would it have xp downgrade rights then ?
on a more serious note... microscope ? run by windows ? really, hitachi, how could you come up with something like that ?
such suggestion before the product would get quite some funny mods not only on slashdot.
Indeed amazing pictures (Score:2)
About it running on XP, cheer up it could have been Vista...
Re:Indeed amazing pictures (Score:5, Funny)
No, I believe Vista's EULA limits magnification to 3000X.
Parent
Re:Indeed amazing pictures (Score:5, Funny)
About it running on XP, cheer up it could have been Vista...
The drawback is that once MSFT folks drop their XP support, you will have to be extra careful when microscoping viruses (and very small wooden horses).
Parent
Using XP is not that bad... (Score:2, Insightful)
... as long as you don't have to use some locked-down, proprietary software to read the images. I hope they don't use some closed image format for the output.
On the other hand, I'm sure some guys would like to take the effort putting $YOUR_FAVORITE_OS in it...
Re:Using XP is not that bad... (Score:5, Informative)
The PDF file linked shows that it generates images in BMP, JPEG and TIFF format.
Parent
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I get pretty upset at work when people save freaking .BMP files onto FLOPPY disks from oscilloscopes. Two formats that should be dead dead dead by now. PNG please!
For Your Home? (Score:3, Interesting)
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At 60,000USD, thats not for your home, its just a worktop Electron microscope for labs.
I also wonder if that includes the price of sputter coating, critical point dryer and all the other stuff you might want to be able to see biological stuff.
The summary did mention though that economies of scale might bring that down. The article points out that $60k is already a significant drop from the hundreds of thousands other SEMs cost. Size is also an issue, this rig won't take up half a room, making it more "for the home" than others. Then again if you're willing to spend that much on your own mi
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Security implications (Score:3, Interesting)
I am curious what this would imply as far as security involving micro-controllers goes. Some companies (particularly cable/sat providers would be hit the worst) use technologies like smart cards as a means of access controls. One of the biggest barriers to breaking these is how expensive it is to be able to reverse engineer one of these cards by means of a SEM. This would dramatically undermine that particular barrier.
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That's possibly the best example of security through obscurity falling flat on its face I've ever seen.
Hey, we have the TM-1000 (Score:5, Informative)
It's a lot of fun mostly because of its ease of use. I'm pretty sure a 7-year old would have no problems using it correctly after only an hour or two of training. Another plus is that it can be configured with an EDS device for (relatively speaking) peanuts. And it is just as easy to operate as the TM-1000.
But don't kid yourself: the quality of the images trails far behind the more serious equipment like, for instance, the Zeiss SUPRA series [zeiss.com]. I'm not saying this to be a dick; the difference is striking. With the TM-1000 you really do get what you pay for, and on bad days it seems only marginally better than an optical microscope.
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It's a lot of fun mostly because of its ease of use. I'm pretty sure a 7-year old would have no problems using it correctly after only an hour or two of training
My 7-year-old self would've orgasmed if he knew what having an orgasm meant.
Really, I'm thinking 60k is "payable" if you're really into the stuff.
(Well, at least after the BMW is safely in the garage)
Re:Hey, we have the TM-1000 (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, I'm thinking 60k is "payable" if you're really into the stuff.
I have some knowledge of the microscopy hobby. Also ham radio. Both are similar in that ultra high cost options are available, and similar in that prices don't drop, at least not like prices in the computer/electronics hobby.
It is considered "normal" to buy a $1000 radio or microscope, use it for a few years, sell for about $800, upgrade to the $2000 model, use it a few years, sell for maybe $1800, buy the $3000 model ... repeat for a few decades, next thing you know, "old" people of rather average income are operating $10000 of radio gear, $20000 telescopes, cameras, microscopes, etc.
This is very difficult for computer people to wrap their heads around, since last years video card is merely a paperweight today, etc. And vice versa, good luck convincing a ham radio guy that his five old PC will not sell for even 50% of its new price.
If computer prices were this stable, I'm sure I would easily have a $60K computer system by now.
Parent
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I really liked your answer. Mine was an under $100 kid's microscope (went up to x400 but still)
Also worth mentioning are the people that have more than 60k worth of stuff in their car (yo! dog I heard you like...), people who are in the lightweight aircraft hobby, etc, etc
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Not quite true. I don't know in which country you live, but in the USA you have a very lively and healthy market for used laboratory equipment of top quality. Perfectly usable, excellent quality SEM equipment can be had for 1/3rd to 1/4th of the price of new equipment of same quality.
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The computer sitting on my desk right now has 8GB of RAM, 4x2.4GHz cores, and 1TB of disk space -- build-out was about $1,600.
In 1995, I picked up a system with a Pentium @ 60MHz with 8MB of RAM for $2,000. Not that much can be added (I think the max RAM for this system was 16MB...maybe 32MB), but RAM was running about $200 for a 4MB stick at the time.
Based upon the RAM alone, I am running a $410,000 computer system in 1995 terms.
Let's look at the CPU...a P120 was about $400 at the time...strictly based up
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If you are really interested in SEM microscopes, why don't you look into 2nd hand devices? At least in the USA, you have a thriving 2nd hand market for laboratory equipment - something we in Finland don't have (here used equipment is discarded, even if it is 100% usable. At best, specialized companies disassemble and resell some of the components. It's a crying shame.).
Most of the used SEM equipment in the USA can be had for 1/4th of the price of new, and this is ture also for stuff such as gas chromatograp
thr real question (Score:2, Funny)
The real question is:
Is it easy enough that a caveman can do it?
Bah! (Score:2, Funny)
In my day, we didn't have electron microscopes at school! We had to squint! And we were grateful!
-jcr
Bashing for the sake of Bashing... (Score:4, Informative)
"...The only bad news? It runs XP."
OK, don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good old fashioned bashing against the almighty iSteve with my Ballmer signature series chair thrower, but c'mon, seriously? Do we have to consider every damn application that runs XP a bad thing?
Seems the "damned" OS has managed to survive in the corporate world years past Vista (we're STILL ordering brand-new systems with XP), and Netbooks have seen their own resurgence of support for the aging yet stable and predictable OS.
I run a Macbook for school. What do I have loaded on Fusion? Yup, you guessed it. XP, for when I MUST run a Windows app. Every student comes marching in every year with a new Vista or OSX-loaded laptop, yet my entire computer lab is still running...yup, right again. Good ol' XP. Old, yet functional.
And rounding out this volley back to the subject at hand, some simple applications (like a microscope) I would rather NOT have to worry about the bullshit bloat of some other OS, especially when you consider your target audience is USED to seeing XP.
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I won't speculate about the intent of the original poster, but I found it somewhat interesting (and maybe even disappointing?) that it required a regular computer OS to function AT ALL?!
If I spent $60K on a single purpose device like this, I'd wonder why it doesn't just have an integrated, dedicated operating system in flash memory or something? It wouldn't negate its ability to show up on a network (if that was needed/wanted), nor its ability to save images or videos in standard file formats.
It seems like
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This is an electron scanning microscope, not a toaster. Why would you use some proprietary OS on an embedded system? Even a lot of new oscilloscopes are running Windows now and work quite well. Good luck getting all your proprietary commercial scientific libraries to compile on some random dedicated operating system in flash memory.
Looking forward to fine print from hell (Score:3, Funny)
There are a lot of other things to consider (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a lot of considerations that go into making and operating an electron microscope. For one thing, they usually require a pretty high vacuum which always has to be on causing some pretty how power costs.
Plus they also have to be isolated from vibrations in the ground, so even if it's not that sensitive, it still probably would only work if installed in the basement of a suburban house; operating that thing near the top of a multi-story apartment complex probably would cause some sort of calibration errors. The TEMs that I've seen were built on top of some huge concrete blocks (at least 10 feet deep) that were isolated from the surrounding so trucks could pass by without disturbing them.
Don't see why it's worth $60,000 when you can give an entire class of about 100 a regular compound light microscope for everyone to use, as long as it's purely for educational purposes. Nevertheless, it's a pretty cool engineering feat, and I guess someone somewhere could find it practical.
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The purpose in me being there for was to
Re:There are a lot of other things to consider (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the big deal here is that this one (the TM-1000) fits on a table top, weighs 200 pounds, and doesn't require liquid nitrogen. BTW, the EDS detector available for this unit is pretty lame and is only able to detect elements from sodium up.
Parent
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Don't see why it's worth $60,000 when you can give an entire class of about 100 a regular compound light microscope for everyone to use, as long as it's purely for educational purposes. Nevertheless, it's a pretty cool engineering feat, and I guess someone somewhere could find it practical.
Interesting thought process. Personally, I wouldn't want to have to maintain a class of 100. They wouldn't fit in my basement and probably require daily feedings. And as pointed out elsewhere, the maximum resolution of optical microscopes is a bit less (at least a factor of five). The computer interface for the TM-1000 might be a considerable portion of the value of the microscope. Still doesn't sound that exciting to me either.
As for vibrations, it depends on the magnifying power. This particular micros
the summary is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
On a research grade light microscope, the maximum magnification one can get without loss of resolution is roughly 1500x - 1600x, not 400x as the summary suggests. Also, resolution of the image has nothing to do with magnification; the numerical aperture (N.A.) of the objective lens determines the resolution.
Bit pricy. I'm looking for cheap biohacker labs (Score:2)
The above microsc
Hitachi S-6180 for $5k (Score:2)
Bidding is open for a Hitachi S-6180 from the University of Wisconsin... mds.bussvc.wisc.edu [wisc.edu]
Five grand (and a the winning bid) and it can be yours.
The electron microscope I used to use ran on OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
The electron microscope I used to use ran on OS/2 Warp. Acquired images had to be transferred off the computer using Zip drives. Its still in service. I have a fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) machines that runs on OS9 exclusively.
The thing is, being that some scientific equipment can easily be six-figures, the computers that are connected to those machines are dedicated to it and run one piece of software exclusively. Many scientist aren't in-depth computer people, most labs with won't allow those computers to have any other software that isn't necessary to be installed, or be used to surf the net, or be upgraded if its working. Any downtime associated with such an expensive machine can be costly, and the software that runs it is usually finicky and filled with bugs (being that the userbase is miniscule).
The fact that its on XP isn't much of an issue, in fact, it seems a lot more progressive then other equipment out there. I know equipment that will on run on Windows 95/98/Me, and let me tell you it's a NIGHTMARE!
FEI (Score:2)
FEI has a much better one that can do 24000X max [fei.com]. At 70000 it's a bit more expensive than the Hitachi but then you have soemthing you can really work with. Trust me, 10000X is not nearly enough to see anything interesting :). I saw a demonstration of one of those at a conference once. I wish I had the money to get one of those things for myself.
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That's 70000 euros. Bloody hell /., when are you going to go with the times and use a correct character set?
Uh... (Score:3, Informative)
"It runs XP."
No it doesn't. Perhaps submitters should start looking at what they're submitting. I know it's a lot to ask.
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They probably didn't want to discriminate against transgender slashdot users.
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"They" was used here as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. It's weird but, yes, "they" can be singular.
it doesn't run xp (Score:2)
it has a USB 2.0 connector to attach to PC which is recommended to run XP. Probably not a big deal to get it to work with Linux or BSD or Mac OSX
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Damn good point. I went to read TFA and left immediately!
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I know its asking a lot to bother reading the summary, let alone non-/. information on the device.. but no. You don't need nasty solvents and sputter coating with this particular model.
and specimens don't need any special preparation (Score:2)
I know, I know, silly me for reading the actual summary.