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Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) is a growing technique in photon science. CDI has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for visualizing cells and organelles using synchrotron radiation. X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) with femtosecond 3pulse durations further extends the ability of CDI to achieve spatial resolution beyond the conventional radiation-damage limitation. We performed live cell nano-imaging using a Japanese XFEL facility, SACLA. We employed pulsed coherent X-ray solution scattering (PCXSS), a form of X-ray CDI, developed by our group [1,2]. A unique feature of PCXSS is to keep solution sample under a controlled environment in micro-liquid enclosure array (MLEA) chips. We succeeded in reconstructing a live cell image from a coherent diffraction pattern recorded with a single XFEL shot. The reconstructed image quantitatively revealed the internal structures, e.g. high image intensity structure indicative of dense DNA [2]. PCXSS can also be effectively applied to nano-imaging of materials functional in solution. For example, we successfully imaged gold nanoparticle self-assemblies, developed as drug delivery carriers, in solution [3,4]. We also initiated industrial application of XFEL in collaboration with Toyota Motor Corp [5]. Furthermore, as recent developments in PCXSS, we report on time-resolved pump-probe measurement, temperature-controlled measurement, utilization of ~100-nm focused XFEL, etc.

Three minute talks about STROBE thesis talks, part two.

Three minute talks about STROBE thesis projects, part one.

This hands-on workshop will give students a great taste of modern scientific computing in Python using the Jupyter Notebook environment. Jupyter notebooks are executable documents that interleave narrative (rich text, math equations, figures, links) with code. The notebook workflow ties together high-level descriptions of hte analysis, code and results in a single document that is easy to share or re-run. Even beginners can read and re-run analyses modifying parameters and exploring the effect on teh results, either on the cloud or on personal computers. Int his workshop, we will interacively explore a single-molecule fluorescence microscopy video, performing tasks such as background subtraction, denoising, region of interest extraction, segmentation and analysis of blinking time-trajectories (on-off trajectories) of individual emitters. We will use numpy, scipy, matplotlib, pandas and more. Some basic experience with Python is preferred. The analysis will be performed on a cloud service accessed with own laptop (browser-only, no installation required).

Here is a link to workshop materials: Workshop Materials

Owing to their lack of long-range order, measuring local structural variation in amorphous materials is challenging. Electron microscopy is uniquely able to characterize ordering and symmetry in disordered materials at the 2-5 nm length scale, enabling new insight into this class of materials.