Category: Tips

Advice for responding to reviewers

I was taught that when responding to reviewer criticism, there are two valid strategies: (1) new data, or (2) references to papers. When reviewers stray from these two strategies, they are…



Practice your talk

“I know I’m over time, I just have one more thing I want to tell you about, I think, …”

I practice my talks and try to nail the timing. I use the presenter display…



Specifications for new lab space

The Diesel2p.

Setting up some new lab space? Need some plans and specifications for renovations? Here are some notes that are relevant for setting up rooms for 2-photon microscopes and/or electrophysiology to be used with animals. If your target is something different from that, then maybe there are at…



Guidance for designing an objective from scratch

Several people have reached out for guidance on designing and building an objective from scratch, when they have little-to-no background in custom optics. Here are some notes on the topic, in broad strokes, focused on the practicalities.



Cleaning and storing lenses and optics

The easy ways aren’t usually the best ways. This might be an exception. Check out the video.

This is an interesting product for cleaning and storing lenses. It’s called “First Contact”, and is made…



Postdoc position at Imperial College London – optics, holography, neuroscience, optogenetics

Post by Amanda Foust

Applications are invited for the above post to work with Dr. Amanda Foust (Bioengineering department) and Prof. Pier Luigi Dragotti (Electrical and Electronic Engineering department) on a BBSRC funded project…



Server space – cloud or on-campus?


Cloud storage is not the cure-all it is sometimes proposed to be. On-campus servers have some advantages in transmission speed and cost, especially as storage requirements grow considerably. Talk to your campus IT services before…



Actually useful comments on scientific blogging

I came across Rachel Thomas’ comments on blogging in the context of machine learning, and they’re good. I’ve been telling people things like this for awhile now and Rachel distills them better than I do….



Series resistance in patch clamp experiments

For teaching electrophysiology, there’s still a lack of comprehensive references. In particular, it can be difficult to impart to students an intuitive feel for the quality or fidelity of electrophysiological recordings. How close to the truth…



Imaging course at Max Planck Florida

Max Planck Florida is running their imaging course again and there’s still time to apply. They’ve got great faculty including Na Ji, Ryohei Yasuda, Yi Zuo, Chris Xu, Jeff Lichtman, Naomi Kamasawa, and…



Tons of 2p spectra – twophotondyes.com

 

Daniel Fiole is curating a nice resource for 2p cross sections: twophotondyes.com

There’s a lot here. It’s not just dyes, he has links for fluorescent proteins as well, and there’s …



Checking PMT performance over time

PMT performance can degrade over time. A friend asked mine recently ask for suggestions on how to check PMT performance. In a prior post, I mentioned that the Hamamatsu PMT Handbook talks a…



Ripple noise on PMTs in 2-photon imaging – Part 2

The recent post on ripple noise generated some comments and additional discussion. Go check out the comments on that post. For example, Peter Rupprecht shared some snapshots an oscilloscope display showing the signal from…



Ripple noise on PMTs in 2-photon imaging

Andrew Lim wrote in to discuss strategies on dealing with ripple noise in 2-photon imaging systems, particularly when using resonant scanners. He writes:

This isn’t so much a tip as a problem with resonant two-photon scopes…



Slack software for labs

Slack is very useful team coordination software. It’s been such a help in my own lab, that I suspect that given a properly configured Slack account, I could simultaneously run GE, Google, Intel, and the…