Silent flight

Why can an owl fly almost silently? The owl hunts at night and wants to make as little noise as possible in order not to frighten his prey.

Selecting the right microscope

AE Series

Category: Advanced Inverted Microscopes for Transmitted light

Target specimen: Cell cultures from microbiology, in flasks or petri dishes, on agar or in fluids; water samples from biology

Target customer: Lab technicians, advanced students

This comparison is an approach for classifying different Inverted microscopes in a defined performance range. Here we are talking about Motic’s AE series, meant for routine work in the microbiology lab of universities and related labs of industrial companies.

The following chart is based on the specifications of the basic outfit of both AE models and its available options. Within this series of publications, our rating always rests upon an individual understanding and validation of the actual numerical values.

AE SERIES - Comparison Chart

Inverted but also ‘upright’

The photos show a cross section of a leaf stalk or petiole of the mahogany tree. A Motic inverted microscope with a fluorescence attachment is used for this. The attachment is equipped with a DAPI long pass filter (excitation at 375 nm).

It’s time for a Biology class!!

Cells are studied with a microscope and after learning about the differences between eukaryotic plant and animal cells and looking at prepared slides of cells and understanding the reason for staining, the subject of cells becomes more interesting. Why you might ask? Cells don’t all look the same, there are different structures and functions to understand and the reasons for why cells can become specialised. In order for cells to develop and survive they divide and this ability to divide is controlled by a series of stages called the cell cycle. There are two main stages of the cell cycle which are ‘Growth and Replication’ which is followed by ‘Mitosis’.

The process of mitosis enables a cell to divide into two exact copies which are identical to the original cell. When the cell is ready to divide as controlled by the cell cycle, the process of mitosis begins and proceeds in stages. These stages are in an order of Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase and finally Cytokinesis.