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Thread: My new hobby - microscopy

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    Default My new hobby - microscopy

    Have been disappointed with astronomy lately. If it's not bad weather, the mosquitoes eat you alive. So thought I'd get into a hobby I can do in any weather at any time. Cells, bacteria and micro-organisms are what I mainly want to view at this stage. I bought an Omax not so cheap Chinese scope with plan phase contrast objectives and LED illumination. It will do brightfield, phase and darkfield at low power. Phase contrast and darkfield it seems are superior for viewing bacteria. I have so much to learn.



    I've only had it for 2 weeks but find myself glued to the eyepiece. It is so much better than the crappy Tasco I had at school it's not funny. I believe the name brand Nikon, Olympus etc are better, but more expensive also. This will do for now until I find how far I want to take the hobby.

    Living organisms move so fast it's hard to take stills, so I've been shooting video. I only have a couple of videos uploaded so far. So this is what a drop of water from the dam looks like.



    These little organisms are rotifers. They have wheel like parts that suck in the food.



    This is a bacteria culture from... me. Scary. Probably a UTI that's been plaguing me for months.



    And this is... Hehheh. All in the name of science of course.



    Blood flowing between the coverslip and slide.



    Particles in the blood plasma. I am having trouble finding a name for these. Anyone know?


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    Default My new hobby - microscopy

    Amazing!!!!
    If u want to go on an expedition get a Land Rover, if u want to come home from an expedition get a Landcruiser!

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    So ...is your sperm count up or down ?

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    Cool What a mundane pre-occupation with the inevitable?

    2012 Aug;14(4):641-9. doi: 10.1007/s10544-012-9642-y.
    Determination of the size distribution of blood microparticles directly in plasma using atomic force microscopy and microfluidics.

    , , , , , , .
    Source

    Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden, The Netherlands.

    Abstract

    Microparticles, also known as microvesicles, found in blood plasma, urine, and most other body fluids, may serve as valuable biomarkers of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, systemic inflammatory disease, thrombosis, and cancer. Unfortunately, the detection and quantification of microparticles are hampered by the microscopic size of these particles and their relatively low abundance in blood plasma. The use of a combination of microfluidics and atomic force microscopy to detect microparticles in blood plasma circumvents both problems. In this study, capture of a specific subset of microparticles directly from blood plasma on antibody-coated mica surface is demonstrated. The described method excludes isolation and washing steps to prepare microparticles, improves the detection sensitivity, and yields the size distribution of the captured particles. The majority of the captured particles have a size ranging from 30 to 90 nm, which is in good agreement with prior results obtained with microparticles immediately isolated from fresh plasma. Furthermore, the qualitative shape of the size distribution of microparticles is shown not to be affected by high-speed centrifugation or the use of the microfluidic circuit, demonstrating the relative stable nature of microparticles ex vivo.
    [img]
    [/img]

    Way out of my League I'm afraid.







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    Yikes, I just checked the price on Ebay. I will never be allowed to have that.
    The only relic that has survived from my child hood is my microscope (apart from my clarinette which I hated because I was forced to play it). I think it is now 48 years old. The only plastic on it is the LED that I added for ilumination much later.
    Last time I used it was 8 years ago when I checked if I had enough to make more kids.
    I had to build a bigger house soon after that.
    Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
    Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
    Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...

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    Yep BFL I did come across that link in my search. But it suggests that micro-particles in the plasma are difficult to see, mine are quite easy so they must be something common. I did see them in a mate's blood also but not as many. I wish I knew someone in pathology that works with a microscope. Doctors themselves don't use microscopes anymore.

    I must admit I did also get this to see if I could find what the hell is wrong with me where the doctors have failed, to see if I can correlate what I see with how I feel. I can actually see inside the white cells for toxic granulation of neutrophils that was reported, and I was not expecting the urine culture to grow bacteria as as large and fast as it did. When I checked the slide after 24 hours I nearly fell of the chair seeing three large bacteria colonies.

    As for sperm count, dunno if they are more or less than normal. I didn't count em. Not a good idea for me to reproduce anyway with an autoimmune disease + immonosuppressants = mutations. I did see one sperm tail swimming along by itself without a head lol.

    I'll upload some more videos in time. The white cells get up to very weird behavior. I can't believe I can actually see the guts inside cells. Like the hive of activity inside this white cell. The 100x phase objective uses oil immersion for a clearer view. Normally this would be 1000x magnification with 10x eyepieces or 2000x with 20x eyepieces. The scope is trinocular so I can view and video at the same time.


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    I see what you mean with the hive of activity inside that white blood cell, looks like quite some party going on there.
    Interesting new hobby mate but now I have visions of you sperm farming wanking over a glass slide
    make sure the mrs don't catch you in the act, you might have a hard time explaining that lol

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    I'm interested to know how you captured the images to video?
    “There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary – and those who don’t”

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    Quote Originally Posted by GavinSV View Post
    I'm interested to know how you captured the images to video?
    The microscope is a trinocular type with an inbuilt beam splitter so that one path of light goes to the binocular eyepieces and the other to the top photo tube. At the end of the top tube is a camera adapter with 2x relay lens. I either use my DSLR in video mode or a security type video camera. The white cell video was taken with the security camera and the rest with the DSLR.

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    I bought a new "low" power objective to view small plants and insects, which just arrived today from China. But it can also be used for other stuff. So since I have this awesome microscope, do you guys have any requests (within reason) for something you'd like to see? It could be almost anything really. Like my mouse mat, complete with micro dirt, and this old transistor's legs that was sitting in the drawer for 30 years.





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    I've always wondered if yoghurt really has bacteria in it. Well, it does.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Learjet View Post

    I was not expecting the urine culture to grow bacteria as as large and fast as it did. When I checked the slide after 24 hours I nearly fell of the chair seeing three large bacteria colonies.
    Positive urine culture is often meaningless unless it is collected correctly


    Midstream Clean Catch Specimen This is the preferred type of specimen for culture and sensitivity testing because of the reduced incidence of cellular and microbial contamination. Patients are required to first cleanse the urethral area with a castile soap towelette. The patient should then void the first portion of the urine stream into the toilet. These first steps significantly reduce the opportunities for contaminants to enter into the urine stream. The urine midstream is then collected into a clean sterile container (any excess urine should be voided into the toilet). This method of collection can be conducted at any time of day or night."
    http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume14Number2/

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    That's how it was done.

    Since then I've prepared something like a dozen cultures. I even conned my cousin into contributing. The cat volunteered also. The results were interesting. Out of 3 cultures from my cousin, one from the cat and one from plain tap water, they all produced no bacteria colonies after 5 days of incubation. Out of the 9 or so from me, they all produced multiple colonies. So I went to the doctor and am getting a urine culture done. The results will be back next week sometime.

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    Very interesting stuff.I'll pullout my USB microscope I bought a few years ago from Aldi.It has 10-60 and 200X magnification which can be recorded on the computer.

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    Wow great stuff. Though for some reason my feet and ears are a little itchy. I can't say that I'm afraid of micro-organisms but they unnerve me when I'm just sitting here and trying to think about how many of them are out there.

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    Found a pretty little fungus growing on one of my slides.

    This piccy in darkfield with the low power 2.5x objective.



    This pic in bright field.



    Close up at high power using a 60x objective, individual oval cells can be seen making up the strand of fungus.




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