This special issue of Microscopy Today is devoted to light microscopy. Light microscopy is microscopy that employs light as a medium, or so I thought. Every week I see “optical microscopy” used as a synonym for light microscopy. I cannot understand the popularity of this confusing term. For people outside our field, the term “optical microscopy” must be perplexing: does it mean electron optical or light optical? My point is that we should present the techniques we use in clear unambiguous language: light microscopy, electron microscopy, scanned probe microscopy, etc. Regardless of logic, there are still strong adherents to the term “optical microscopy.”

Since transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was developed about 80 years ago, numerous strategies have been attempted to visualize living cells at high resolution. The harsh environment within the TEM (mostly the vacuum and damage from a fixed beam of electrons) presents challenges. Some approaches have been to fabricate chambers within the TEM that provide a more “friendly” environment for living cells (that is, less stringent vacuum), but they have limitations. Impressive images have been generated with various cryogenic techniques, but frozen cells are not alive or in their native state in the traditional sense. Nihar Mohanty, Monica Fahrenholtz, Ashvin Nagaraja, Daniel Boyle, and Vikas Berry have developed an ingenious solution to the problem by “wrapping” cells with modified graphene.

Fluorescence microscopy is an essential and flexible tool for the study of biology, chemistry, and physics. It can provide information on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. However, since the inception of light microscopy, diffraction has limited the size of the smallest details that could be imaged in any sample using light. Because much of biology occurs on molecular length scales, interest in circumventing the diffraction limit has been high for many years. Recently, several techniques have been introduced that can bend or break the diffraction limit. Localization-based methods introduced in 2006 have reached this goal and are now rapidly growing in popularity.

Light microscopes in laboratories and hospitals are used for examining many different types of samples—from industrial research to life-science research and clinical screening. These procedures use conventional bright-field, differential phase contrast (DIC), and fluorescence microscopy among other techniques. In all cases, the light source on the microscope has a crucial influence on the quality of images viewed and the conclusions reached.

The push in consumer electronics over past decades has been toward smaller, faster, and cheaper products but with same or improved capabilities. The consumer imaging world has been no exception with the integration, for example, of functional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) cameras into ever smaller cellular phones. The CMOS sensors have continued to develop and improve with increasing numbers of smaller, more sensitive pixels with larger photo-response capacity providing higher dynamic range. This technological expansion has inevitably spilled over into even the scientific imaging world, such as in biological light microscopy. This advancement of consumer CMOS digital camera technology invites comparison of CMOS cameras with the current standard charge coupled device (CCD) cameras in scientific imaging.

The intersection of nanopositioning and light microscopy is expanding and deepening rapidly. Evolving disciplines as diverse as single-molecule biophysics, super-resolution microscopy, and automated microassay scanning share several common themes: higher throughput, reduced resolution tolerances, and dynamic (on-the-fly) techniques. These combine to increase the prevalence of piezo-based positioning systems added to or integrated into microscope setups.

The night before I'm scheduled to volunteer on the Biobus, Dr. Ben Dubin-Thaler—the bus's owner and educational director—calls to give me directions: Take the 5 train to the Bronx, get off at the second-to-last stop. Make two rights and then a left on Baychester Avenue. Walk to John Philip Sousa Middle School. “We'll be parked out front,” Dubin-Thaler tells me. I hesitate, imagining picking my way through a sea of frenzied children and identical school buses. “You'll see us,” says Dubin-Thaler.

Four successive generations of the Becquerel family were educated at the prestigious French scientific institution of higher learning, the École Polytechnique, and became physics professors at the French Museum of Natural History. Alexandre Edmond Becquerel was the son of Antoine César (1788– 1878), discoverer of piezoelectricity; father of Antoine Henri (1852– 1908), who discovered radioactivity; and the grandfather of Jean Antoine (1878–1953), who is best known for his work on relativity and the discovery of polarization rotation in the presence of a magnetic field. Though all of these notable scientists carried out a variety of experiments related to optics, it was Alexandre Edmond Becquerel who made the greatest contributions to the field.

In Microscopy Today, January 2011, Piper and Chmela published an article called “Advanced Techniques for Observation and Photomicrography of Subcellular Structures in Diatom Shells.” This paper clamors for some comments of a fundamental nature.

Unfortunately, the letter from Mr. Sterrenburg contains some passages that seem to be rather polemical and not very objective. Nevertheless, we hereby give our comments to his letter.

Selected postings from the Microscopy Listserver from March 1, 2011 to May 1, 2011. Complete listings and subscription information can be obtained at http://www.microscopy.com. Postings may have been edited to conserve space or for clarity.

We hear daily in the media about disasters, large and small, natural and man-made. We witness injury, loss of life, and destruction of homes and businesses. We get estimates of the economic consequences from the loss of property and income. We empathize as we watch the efforts of victims to recover and return to normal lives. And yes, we all hope that it never happens to us.