scholarly journals Thin Sectioning and Surface Replication of Ice at Low Temperature

1984 ◽  
Vol 30 (105) ◽  
pp. 248-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Daley ◽  
Stephen H. Kirby

AbstractWe have developed a new technique for making thin sections and surface replicas of ice at temperatures well below 273 K. Cyanoacrylate glue forms a strong bond with ice and glass at 245 K, eliminating the need to fix the sample to the thin-section slide by melting and freezing. Surface replicas are made by melting away sample material once the glue has cured. Glue replicas are permanent and highly detailed, making them suitable for microstructural and textural studies at room temperature. Thin sections glued with cyanoacrylate glue are comparable in quality to melted-on sections. The ability to make thin sections without melting sample material is important in textural and microstructural studies of ice deformed at low temperatures because of annealing effects we have observed during conventional section making.

1984 ◽  
Vol 30 (105) ◽  
pp. 248-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Daley ◽  
Stephen H. Kirby

AbstractWe have developed a new technique for making thin sections and surface replicas of ice at temperatures well below 273 K. Cyanoacrylate glue forms a strong bond with ice and glass at 245 K, eliminating the need to fix the sample to the thin-section slide by melting and freezing. Surface replicas are made by melting away sample material once the glue has cured. Glue replicas are permanent and highly detailed, making them suitable for microstructural and textural studiesat room temperature. Thin sections glued with cyanoacrylate glue are comparable in quality to melted-on sections. The ability to make thin sections without melting sample material is important in textural and microstructural studies of ice deformed at low temperatures because of annealing effects we have observed during conventional section making.


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 28-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Hugo ◽  
Sherry L. Cady

The technique of embedding TEM specimens in polymer resins for subsequent ultra-thin sectioning is well established. For geological materials, this protocol prevents specimen damage introduced by ion beam thinning, and is often used for preparing friable or porous materials. However, traditional polymer-based embedding resins may introduce organic carbon contaminants, producing artifacts in carbon analyses. Thus, a carbon-free substitute for traditional embedding media is required to ensure accurate carbon analyses of embedded and ultramicrotomed TEM specimens.A suitable technique that was first reported by Bradley is to embed specimens in pure sultur. In this technique, the specimen is immersed in liquid sulfur, the liquid is solidified, and the resulting block is ultramicrotomed as with traditional resins. Since sulfur has a high vapor pressure at room temperature, the ultra-thin sections are then placed in a separate vacuum chamber to sublimate the sulfur, yielding TEM specimens free of any embedding medium.


Author(s):  
J.R. Walton

In electron microscopy, lead is the metal most widely used for enhancing specimen contrast. Lead citrate requires a pH of 12 to stain thin sections of epoxy-embedded material rapidly and intensively. However, this high alkalinity tends to leach out enzyme reaction products, making lead citrate unsuitable for many cytochemical studies. Substitution of the chelator aspartate for citrate allows staining to be carried out at pH 6 or 7 without apparent effect on cytochemical products. Moreover, due to the low, controlled level of free lead ions, contamination-free staining can be carried out en bloc, prior to dehydration and embedding. En bloc use of lead aspartate permits the grid-staining step to be bypassed, allowing samples to be examined immediately after thin-sectioning.Procedures. To prevent precipitation of lead salts, double- or glass-distilled H20 used in the stain and rinses should be boiled to drive off carbon dioxide and glassware should be carefully rinsed to remove any persisting traces of calcium ion.


Author(s):  
J. D. McLean ◽  
S. J. Singer

The successful application of ferritin labeled antibodies (F-A) to ultrathin sections of biological material has been hampered by two main difficulties. Firstly the normally used procedures for the preparation of material for thin sectioning often result in a loss of antigenicity. Secondly the polymers employed for embedding may non-specifically absorb the F-A. Our earlier use of cross-linked polyampholytes as embedding media partially overcame these problems. However the water-soluble monomers used for this method still extract many lipids from the material.


Author(s):  
T. Baird ◽  
J.R. Fryer ◽  
S.T. Galbraith

Introduction Previously we had suggested (l) that the striations observed in the pod shaped crystals of β FeOOH were an artefact of imaging in the electron microscope. Contrary to this adsorption measurements on bulk material had indicated the presence of some porosity and Gallagher (2) had proposed a model structure - based on the hollandite structure - showing the hollandite rods forming the sides of 30Å pores running the length of the crystal. Low resolution electron microscopy by Watson (3) on sectioned crystals embedded in methylmethacrylate had tended to support the existence of such pores.We have applied modern high resolution techniques to the bulk crystals and thin sections of them without confirming these earlier postulatesExperimental β FeOOH was prepared by room temperature hydrolysis of 0.01M solutions of FeCl3.6H2O, The precipitate was washed, dried in air, and embedded in Scandiplast resin. The sections were out on an LKB III Ultramicrotome to a thickness of about 500Å.


Author(s):  
J.M. Minda ◽  
E. Dessy ◽  
G. G. Pietra

Pulmonary lymphangiomyomatosis (PLAM) is a rare disease occurring exclusively in women of reproductive age. It involves the lungs, lymph nodes and lymphatic ducts. In the lungs, it is characterized by the proliferation of smooth muscle cells around lymphatics in the bronchovascular bundles, lobular septa and pleura The nature of smooth muscle proliferation in PLAM is still unclear. Recently, reactivity of the smooth muscle cells for HMB-45, a melanoma-related antigen has been reported by immunohistochemistry. The purpose of this study was the ultrastructural localization of HMB-45 immunoreactivity in these cells using gold-labeled antibodies.Lung tissue from three cases of PLAM, referred to our Institution for lung transplantation, was embedded in either Poly/Bed 812 post-fixed in 1% osmium tetroxide, or in LR White, without osmication. For the immunogold technique, thin sections were placed on Nickel grids and incubated with affinity purified, monoclonal anti-melanoma antibody HMB-45 (1:1) (Enzo Diag. Co) overnight at 4°C. After extensive washing with PBS, grids were treated with Goat-anti-mouse-IgG-Gold (5nm) (1:10) (Amersham Life Sci) for 1 hour, at room temperature.


Author(s):  
W. P. Wergin ◽  
S. Roy ◽  
E. F. Erbe ◽  
C. A. Murphy ◽  
C. D. Pooley

Larvae of the nematode, Steinernema carpocapsae Weiser strain All, were cryofixed and freezesubstituted for 3 days in acetone containing 2% osmium tetroxide according to established procedures. Following chemical fixation, the nematodes were brought to room temperature, embedded in Spurr's medium and sectioned for observation with a Hitachi S-4100 field emission scanning electron microscope that was equipped with an Oxford CT 1500 Cryotrans System. Thin sections, about 80 nm thick, similar to those generally used in conventional transmission electron microscope (TEM) studies were mounted on copper grids and stained with uranyl acetate for 30 min and lead citrate for 5 min. Sections about 2 μm thick were also mounted and stained in a similar fashion. The grids were mounted on an Oxford grid holder, inserted into the microscope and onto a cryostage that was operated at ambient temperature. Thick and thin sections of the larvae were evaluated and photographed in the SEM at different accelerating voltages. Figs. 4 and 5 have undergone contrast conversion so that the images would resemble transmitted electron micrographs obtained with a TEM.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Julien Eustache ◽  
Antony Plait ◽  
Frédéric Dubas ◽  
Raynal Glises

Compared to conventional vapor-compression refrigeration systems, magnetic refrigeration is a promising and potential alternative technology. The magnetocaloric effect (MCE) is used to produce heat and cold sources through a magnetocaloric material (MCM). The material is submitted to a magnetic field with active magnetic regenerative refrigeration (AMRR) cycles. Initially, this effect was widely used for cryogenic applications to achieve very low temperatures. However, this technology must be improved to replace vapor-compression devices operating around room temperature. Therefore, over the last 30 years, a lot of studies have been done to obtain more efficient devices. Thus, the modeling is a crucial step to perform a preliminary study and optimization. In this paper, after a large introduction on MCE research, a state-of-the-art of multi-physics modeling on the AMRR cycle modeling is made. To end this paper, a suggestion of innovative and advanced modeling solutions to study magnetocaloric regenerator is described.


Introduction .—In nearly all the previous determinations of the ratio of the specific heats of gases, from measurements of the pressures and temperature before and after an adiabatic expansion, large expansion chambers of fror 50 to 130 litres capacity have been used. Professor Callendar first suggests the use of smaller vessels, and in 1914, Mercer (‘Proc. Phys. Soc.,’ vol. 26 p. 155) made some measurements with several gases, but at room temperature only, using volumes of about 300 and 2000 c. c. respectively. He obtained values which indicated that small vessels could be used, and that, with proper corrections, a considerable degree of accuracy might be obtained. The one other experimenter who has used a small expansion chamber, capacity about 1 litre, is M. C. Shields (‘Phys. Rev.,’ 1917), who measured this ratio for air and for hydrogen at room temperature, about 18° C., and its value for hydroger at — 190° C. The chief advantage gained by the use of large expansion chambers is that no correction, or at the most, a very small one, has to be made for any systematic error due to the size of the containing vessels, but it is clear that, in the determinations of the ratio of the specific heats of gases at low temperatures, the use of small vessels becomes a practical necessity in order that uniform and steady temperature conditions may be obtained. Owing, however, to the presence of a systematic error depending upon the dimensions of the expansion chamber, the magnitude of which had not been definitely settled by experiment, the following work was undertaken with the object of investigating the method more fully, especially with regard to it? applicability to the determination of this ratio at low temperatures.


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