![\""Brain](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Brain-in-Jar.jpg\")
<\/a>Manganese oxide gets a lot of attention from the material science crowd these days. It\u2019s good at grabbing other molecules onto its surface and oxidizing (adding oxygen to) them in an environmentally benign way, and researchers are working on using it as a catalyst and in fuel cells. Manganese oxide doped with copper is especially good at encouraging molecules with carbon-carbon triple bonds to\u00a0rearrange\u00a0their electrons, switching into double-single-double bonds instead. This is handy for making all kinds of useful chemicals. When Biswas and Kriz used a SEM to look at some mesoporous copper-doped manganese oxide they\u2019d synthesized using a new technique, the material was clearly in the shape of nano-sized brains. When they heard of the Keramos competition, they decided to have a little fun, and digitally imposed a nanobrain into a picture of a bell jar.<\/p>\n This image shows two droplets of a platinum salt solution that dried into flower blossom-like structures on the plate. The one on the left kept its shape in the SEM, while the one on the right collapsed. The blossom structure was undesirable for what Jain was trying to look at. But sometimes accidents are beautiful. As Jain says, \u201cThis was a bad experiment, but a pretty picture!\u201d<\/p>\n This is a picture of the first sample Deljoo ever collected. It\u2019s octahedral molecular sieve manganese oxide. The sheets of manganese oxide molecules link to make tunnels, a\u00a0very porous structure with a lot of surface area. She took this image just to get practice with the SEM. When you zoom in, the \u2018fur\u2019 on the \u2018sea urchins\u2019 is actually plates or rods of manganese oxide. Each sea urchin contains lots and lots of these plates and nanoparticles, which are huge compared to the actual manganese oxide molecules. \u201cWhy is it blue? I like blue, and it goes with the sea urchins,\u201d Deljoo says.<\/p>\n A Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) uses electrons like an SEM, but it shoots them through an ultra-thin sample. The electrons interact with the sample, altering their amplitude and phase. These changes are then translated into the image we see. In order to work properly, the electrons must be extracted from\u00a0the very tip of the TEM\u2019s filament. But as the filaments age, they start to flake and splinter and electrons start to shoot off erratically, making them useless.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Louis Gambino walked into the TEM lab one day to image some samples, he found the TEM\u2019s lanthanum hexaboride filament in the beginning stages of death. So instead of imaging his sample, he took a picture of the filament itself. He calls it My Moon, My Sun. Why? \u201cBecause the TEM is my moon and my sun,\u201d Gambino said. A more honest statement of the TEM\u2019s contribution to material science research is seldom heard.<\/p>\n Never let it be said that materials scientists get to have all the fun when it comes to microscopy. MCB graduate student Nicholas Legendre took this picture of a muscle fiber from an injured mouse. Everything that\u2019s green in the picture has expressed a gene, MyoD, involved in muscle regeneration. Legendre\u00a0wanted to see if adult muscle stem cells could express MyoD and remain distinct, or whether they would inevitably fuse into the muscle. This picture answers that question with a yes! The pinkish-purplish-yellow cell in this image is an adult muscle stem cell that has expressed\u00a0MyoD after an injury, but still sits separately on the fiber.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>