Mapping of recent brachiopod microstructure: A tool for environmental studies.

Shells of brachiopods are excellent archives for environmental reconstructions in the recent and distant past as their microstructure and geochemistry respond to climate and environmental forcings. We studied the morphology and size of the basic structural unit, the secondary layer fibre, of the shells of several extant brachiopod taxa to derive a model correlating microstructural patterns to environmental conditions. Twenty-one adult specimens of six recent brachiopod species adapted to different environmental conditions, from Antarctica, to New Zealand, to the Mediterranean Sea, were chosen for microstructural analysis using SEM, TEM and EBSD.

A practical method to detect and correct for lens distortion in the TEM.

A practical, offline method for experimental detection and correction for projector lens distortion in the transmission electron microscope (TEM) operating in high-resolution (HR) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) modes is described. Typical TEM works show that, in the simplest case, the distortion transforms on the recording device, which would be a circle into an ellipse. The first goal of the procedure described here is to determine the elongation and orientation of the ellipse.