Marine Scotland Scientists have sampled the foam and seawater around Footdee, using a microscope to examine the phytoplankton - very small algae - present.

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In addition to using the living system as artwork, Brown made a series of images with a scanning electron microscope, and using the techniques to create illuminated manuscripts, he applied gold leaf to the regions of the prints where the bacterial gold deposits were found.

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Looked at through an electron microscope, processors built using the new transistors look like waffles.

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The slice itself can be discarded, so the process is much faster than using a transmission microscope.

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Moreover, using a stain in this way meant they could automate the process by attaching a camera to the microscope, taking photographs of all 384 wells, and feeding the images into a computer that had been programmed to measure the area of orange in a well and contrast that with the total area occupied by worms.

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