#scanning electron microscopy

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Intricate silk helps net-casting spiders trap prey in webs

Looped structures in the silk make webs that are both stretchy and strong

Most spiders wait for insects to wander into their webs. Some spiders instead fling their webs at prey. Called net-casting spiders, they need extra-sturdy webs. Now, a close look at the silk of one net-casting spider has revealed the secret to that strength. Scientists used a scanning electron microscope to peer at the webs of rufous net-casting spiders (Asianopis subrufa). Looping strands surround a stretchy silk core, these images showed. This allows the spiders’ silk to stretch a long way without snapping. Researchers shared these findings on February 3. Their work appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more.

[bpod-bpod]

Tick Off

Have you ever been put off using an insect repellant because of the toxic chemicals it contains? This, plus growing fears of resistance to chemical repellents, has prompted interest in plant-derived repellants to ward off ticks and suppress the tick-borne diseases that threaten human and animal health. Ticks make up for limited vision and hearing with a strong sense of smell, but the mechanisms of tick olfaction aren’t well understood. Researchers have discovered the Haller’s organ (pictured under scanning electron microscopy), a sensory organ on their front legs with protruding sensory hairs and two openings, is the key organ for detecting cinnamaldehyde, a component of cinnamon oil known to repel ticks. The team identified a receptor and binding site that specifically responds to cinnamaldehyde, triggering a response through Haller’s organs. Understanding this process is key to developing naturally-derived repellants to help cross ticks off the list of problems.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Ceyan Kuang and colleagues

Key Laboratory of Animal Parasitology of Ministry of Agriculture, Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai, China

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, March 2025

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[silicontrivance]

“Silicontrivance”

A collage I made of various photos I took and drawings I made in my senior year, inspired by my time in my school’s nanofabrication facility. I wanted to make something to commemorate how special of an experience it was

From top left to bottom right:

TOP ROW

Objective lens of an ASML PAS5500 stepper

nMOS transistors my lab partners and I made

Waveguide entity + ASML alignment mark

MS Paint drawing of a dry etching tool I was trained on first

MIDDLE

ASML PAS5500 stepper + a wafer I made on it + a sketch of the SEM

Probe tips

Plasma porthole I drew

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image I took

BOTTOM

Another wafer I made

My favorite JEOL SEM

Me in my bunnysuit with a vacuum chamber head

Danger sign

[microbes-in-hats]

Vibrio fischeri

These bacteria are bioluminescent, and their symbiotic relationship with certain marine animals, such as the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid, is what gives the animals their bioluminescence.

Photo credit: Dennis Kunkel (Microscopy/Science Photo Library)

[wolframcarbide]

[nanofabrication]

Shellac 78 RPM record, stacked image SEM

[mymodernmet]

Colored Micrographs Reveal the Incredible Intricacies of Pollen, Seeds, and Fruit

[panicinthestudio]

How images of coronavirus are made, April 14, 2020

Seeing the virus up close helps us understand it.

Vox