If it's September it must be Plymouth...
September finds Martin and Andrew at Plymouth once again, teaching at what is now the thirty-sixth Cell Physiology workshop. It turns out that Andrew saved the day by insisting on bringing a Photometrics camera with us as a backup, as the Andor camera that we were expecting to use turned up late, and even now we’re fighting to get the right drivers for it. To be fair, Andor have been very good in the past, but if it hadn’t been for Andrew we would have been rather stuck this year! Also this year, there is increasing concern about permissions for use of any sort of data, including photographs, so instead of showing you what this year’s crop of students look like (a truly hideous sight in any case of course!), we’re playing safe by showing you a photo of the crops on Cairn’s nice little farm instead.
Martin gave his usual talk on fluorescent indicators, and Andrew, also as usual, helped teach on the electronics day, where the students build and test some standard amplifier configurations. For the practical classes, we provided both our well-established Optoscan monochromator, and also our newer dual-LED FuraLED system. That’s not as versatile as the Optoscan, but it is somewhat cheaper, and also very bright, so it’s well worth checking out. Cairn is currently very active on the LED development front, but as to what we’re actually doing, we’re afraid that we’re going to keep you guessing about that for a little while longer. So do keep an eye on our website for future announcements if LED illumination is something that may be of interest to you!
