Software called Micropilot may help researchers struggling to pinpoint particular cells in their microscopes. The technology, developed by European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) scientists, searches for cells with specific features.

After detecting the cells that a researcher is interested in, the software can initiate experiments, automatically recording time-lapse videos, for example, or using lasers to mark fluorescently tagged proteins and record their movement.

This looked interesting to me, but what do you think? Will this EMBL software cut down an experienced microscopist’s workload and search time?

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a nickel-size, curvilinear camera with a 3.5x optical zoom. Or, to put it simply, an eyeball camera.

The lens and photodetectors are on flexible substrates. A hydraulic system then changes the shape of the substrates, allowing the zoom capability.

Beneath both the membranes of the detector and the simple lens are water-filled chambers. By extracting water from, or injecting water into, the chambers, the detector surface or thin membrane can become a convex or concave hemisphere. Northwestern Engineering provides the details.

According to the research team, the device could have uses in night-vision surveillance, endoscopic imaging, and consumer electronics. And, of course, the development is great news for any near-sighted robots!

Photoelectrochemical cells convert sunlight into electricity, but their light-absorbing dyes, called chromophores, eventually degrade because of sunlight exposure. For plant cells, the degradation of chromophores isn’t a big deal – they simply self-regenerate.

Now, Purdue researchers are in the early stages of creating a solar cell that self-repairs in a way that is similar to a plant’s natural photosynthetic systems. Single-wall carbon nanotubes, anchored to strands of DNA, act as the “molecular wires” in the light harvesting cells. The DNA is engineered to have specific nucleotides that recognize chromophores and attach to them. Photo-damaged chromophores then may be removed by using chemical processes or by adding new DNA strands with different nucleotide sequences.

The work looks very interesting and could ultimately lead to a photoelectrochemical cell that operates at full capacity indefinitely.