OCTOBER COUNTRY – NEUROSCIENCE MEETING

By 21st October 2019Cairn News, Uncategorised

Yes, for Martin and Gareth the October country is the USA, as we’re currently over here for this year’s neuroscience meeting, which is taking place in Chicago. The title of this piece is also a homage to the science fantasy writer Ray Bradbury, who hailed from Waukegan, just a little way further up the lake shore, and who had one of his story collections published under this very title. But even his extraordinarily inventive mind could surely not have envisaged the increasingly fantastical attempts of the British government to escape the clutches of our European friends, so it’s been a great relief to leave that madness behind for a few days!

So here we are once again with our international friends, especially Chroma and 89north, Crest, Rapp OptoElectronic, Redshirt Imaging and Scimeasure, to name but several.  As before, we’re guesting on the Chroma and 89north booth, where we are showing the latest versions of our Aura phase contrast illuminator and OptoTIRF motorised TIRF system, both proudly displaying their new V2 badges.  They are being kept company by our Multisplit fourway image splitter and our now well-established Optospin filter wheels, with our now “standard” demonstration of how using two wheels together can greatly reduce the vibration that the stepping of a single wheel inevitably causes. 

Another new development that we have here is our “bit on the side” microscope accessory, which we’re provisionally calling the Optoflip.  As it’s possible name suggests, it has a flippable mirror that can fit into the space between a microscope’s sideport and its camera connection in place of the microscope’s Cmount adapter, allowing a second camera to be connected at the 90 degree position.  It’s potentially useful for many things, but the configuration we’re showing here is fitted with a Bertrand lens to allow the second camera to view an image of the back focal plane of the microscope objective.  Every lab should have a few of these (we say hopefully)!  We’re also showing some 3D CAD renderings of some of our latest LED developments, but reality isn’t far behind, as the physical versions arrived from our machinists just before we left.  More news about that to follow soon!