This special issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis contains selected papers related to contributions presented during the 1st International Conference on Environmental, Industrial, and Applied Microbiology (BioMicroWorld-2005), held March 15–18, 2005 in Badajoz, Spain (http://www.formatex.org/biomicroworld2005).

Cation exchange capacity (CEC) characterizes the number of fixed negative charges of plant cell walls and is an important parameter in studies dealing with the uptake of ions into plant tissues, especially in roots. Conventional methods of CEC determination use bulk tissue, the results are the mean of many cells, and differences in the CEC of different tissue types are masked. Energy-dispersive microanalysis (EDX) in the transmission electron microscope allows CEC determinations on much finer scales. Shoot and fine root tissue of Picea abies was acid washed to remove exchangeable cations. Tissue blocks or semithin tissue sections were loaded with 0.2 mM CaCl2, AlCl3, or Pb(NO3)2 at pH 4.0. The amount of Ca, Al, or Pb adsorbed to the exchange sites of cell walls was determined by EDX. The CEC of cell walls of different tissue types was highly different, ranging in shoot tissues from 0 to 856 mM Ca and 5.8 to 1463 mM Al (block loading) or 4.3 to 1116 mM Ca and 0 to 2830 mM Al (section loading). In root tissue, Pb adsorption to semithin sections yielded CEC values between 29.1 and 954 mM Pb. In most P. abies shoot tissues, the binding capacity was clearly higher for Al than for Ca.

In February 2006, in conjunction with the 19th Australian Conference on Microscopy and Microanalysis held in Sydney, the 2nd Australian Workshop on Atom Probe Tomography was convened by S.P. Ringer, M.K. Miller, D.A. Saxey, and R. Zheng at the Australian Key Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis at The University of Sydney. The topics covered at that workshop included specimen preparation; data acquisition and data analysis methods for atom probe tomography; applications to spinodal alloys, phase transformations, light metals, atomic clustering, and detection methods, as well as future directions of the science and technology of atom probe tomography. The presentations and discussions that took place at this workshop, which was attended by more than 30 people, provided the inspiration for this special issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis.

Our web submission system, Manuscript Central by ScholarOne, has been in operation since September 1, 2006. The present issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis contains the first paper to appear in print after traversing this system electronically (see the paper by Fuseler et al.). The time elapsed from submission to print publication was under seven months. This is a significant improvement over the old paper-based methods where a manuscript often took more than a year to appear in print.

Calendar of events.

This issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis contains papers from the Seventh Regional Workshop of the European Microbeam Analysis Society (EMAS) on Electron Probe Microanalysis of Materials Today—Practical Aspects that took place May 13–16, 2006 in Karlsruhe, Germany. The meeting was organized in collaboration with the Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU) of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2007 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, August 5 – August 9, 2007

Extended abstract of a paper presented at MC 2007, 33rd DGE Conference in Saarbrücken, Germany, September 2 – September 7, 2007

The Impact Factor data for 2006 is in, and we are pleased to announce that Microscopy and Microanalysis is ranked #2 among microscopy journals by the ISI Web of Science (Thomson Scientific). This ranking is based on the 2006 Impact Factor of 2.11 (an increase from the 2005 Impact Factor of 1.88).

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2007 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, August 5 – August 9, 2007

Because of its applicability to biological specimens (nonconductors), a single-molecule-imaging technique, atomic force microscopy (AFM), has been particularly powerful for visualizing and analyzing complex biological processes. Comparative analyses based on AFM observation revealed that the bacterial nucleoids and human chromatin were constituted by a detergent/salt-resistant 30–40-nm fiber that turned into thicker fibers with beads of 70–80 nm diameter. AFM observations of the 14-kbp plasmid and 110-kbp F plasmid purified from Escherichia coli demonstrated that the 70–80-nm fiber did not contain a eukaryotic nucleosome-like “beads-on-a-string” structure. Chloroplast nucleoid (that lacks bacterial-type nucleoid proteins and eukaryotic histones) also exhibited the 70–80-nm structural units. Interestingly, naked DNA appeared when the nucleoids from E. coli and chloroplast were treated with RNase, whereas only 30-nm chromatin fiber was released from the human nucleus with the same treatment. These observations suggest that the 30–40-nm nucleoid fiber is formed with a help of nucleoid proteins and RNA in E. coli and chroloplast, and that the eukaryotic 30-nm chromatin fiber is formed without RNA. On the other hand, the 70–80-nm beaded structures in both E. coli and human are dependent on RNA.

In this article a method for determining errors of the strain values when applying strain mapping techniques has been devised. This methodology starts with the generation of a thickness/defocus series of simulated high-resolution transmission electron microscopy images of InAsxP1−x/InP heterostructures and the application of geometric phase. To obtain optimal defocusing conditions, a comparison of different defocus values is carried out by the calculation of the strain profile standard deviations among different specimen thicknesses. Finally, based on the analogy of real state strain to a step response, a characterization of strain mapping error near an interface is proposed.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at MC 2007, 33rd DGE Conference in Saarbrücken, Germany, September 2 – September 7, 2007

Among the microanalytical techniques, electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) is one of the most powerful. Its performances can be used to provide an accurate characterization. In the present article the differences between the EPMA of highly irradiated materials and standard EPMA are highlighted. It focuses on the shielded EPMA specificities. Then, the article presents the difficulties encountered during the sample preparation and the analysis (mainly due to the radioactive background). In spite of these difficulties, some valuable results can be provided by a shielded EPMA on the in-pile behavior of nuclear irradiated fuel. Some results of specific examples analyzed by EPMA in nuclear fuel research are presented.

Greater Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center.

For this analytical TEM study, nonmagnetic oxygen-rich boundaries were introduced into Co-Pt-alloy perpendicular recording media by cosputtering Co and Pt with TiO2. Increasing the TiO2 content resulted in changes to the microstructure and elemental distribution within grains and boundaries in these films. EFTEM imaging was used to generate composition maps spanning many tens of grains, thereby giving an overall depiction of the changes in elemental distribution occurring with increasing TiO2 content. Comparing EFTEM with spectrum-imaging maps created by high-resolution STEM with EDXS and EELS enabled both corroboration of EFTEM results and quantification of the chemical composition within individual grain boundary areas. The difficulty of interpreting data from EDXS for these extremely thin films is discussed. Increasing the TiO2 content of the media was found to create more uniformly wide Ti- and O-rich grain boundaries as well as Ti- and O-rich regions within grains.

The regular periodontal practice of scaling and root planing produces a smear layer on the root surface that is detrimental to the readhesion of tissues during subsequent regeneration therapy. Although it has been demonstrated that gels containing the chelating agent ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) can assist in the removal of this contaminating layer, no quantitative method is yet available by which to evaluate the efficiency of the treatment. In this article, the power of atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a technique for monitoring and mapping the surfaces of dentinal roots is demonstrated. Roughness parameters of teeth that had been scaled and root planed were determined from AFM images acquired both before and after treatment with EDTA. The results confirmed that EDTA is an efficient cleaning agent and that dentinal samples free from a smear layer are significantly rougher than the same samples covered by a contaminating layer. AFM analysis is superior to alternative methods involving scanning electron microscopy because the same sample section can be analyzed many times, thus permitting it to be used as both the control and the treatment surface.

Over the last few years there have been significant developments in the field of three-dimensional atom probe (3DAP) analysis. This article reviews some of the technical compromises that have led to different instrument designs and the recent improvements in performance. An instrument has now been developed, based around a novel reflectron configuration combining both energy compensation and focusing elements, that yields a large field of view and very high mass resolution. The use of laser pulsing in the 3DAP, together with developments in specimen preparation methods using a focused ion-beam instrument, have led to a significant widening in the range of materials science problems that can be addressed with the 3DAP. Recent studies of semiconductor materials and devices are described.

The performance of the pulsed-laser atom probe can be limited by both instrument and specimen factors. The experiments described in this article were designed to identify these factors so as to provide direction for further instrument and specimen development. Good agreement between voltage-pulsed and laser-pulsed data is found when the effective pulse fraction is less than 0.2 for pulsed-laser mode. Under the conditions reported in this article, the thermal tails of the peaks in the mass spectra did not show any significant change when produced with either a 10-ps or a 120-fs pulsed-laser source. Mass resolving power generally improves as the laser spot size and laser wavelength are decreased and as the specimen tip radius, specimen taper angle, and thermal diffusivity of the specimen material are increased. However, it is shown that two of the materials used in this study, aluminum and stainless steel, depend on these factors differently. A one-dimensional heat flow model is explored to explain these differences. The model correctly predicts the behavior of the aluminum samples, but breaks down for the stainless steel samples when the tip radius is large. A more accurate three-dimensional model is needed to overcome these discrepancies.

Environmental sampling (ES) is a powerful technique used by safeguards inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Safeguards Office for the detection of undeclared nuclear activities. Since its implementation in the 1990s, ES has proven to be very sensitive and effective. Considering the consequences, the measurements should be carried out under a quality management programme. At the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements, a new production method is under development for the preparation of reference uranium particles from well-certified UF6, allowing uranium particles with certified isotopic abundances to be prepared that are representative of those found in uranium enrichment facilities. Using an aerosol deposition chamber designed and built for the purpose, particles are formed by the hydrolysis of UF6 and their morphology and (isotopic) composition measured using SEM-EDX and SIMS. The SEM measurements show that by varying the relative humidity of the air in the reaction chamber, the morphology of the particles can be changed. By making a distribution map of the chemical composition of the particles, the relationship between fluorine and uranium as main constituents of the particle could be established. The presence of fluorine is a valuable indicator for the occurrence of nondeclared enrichment activities.