They are not on the cutting edge, they are the cutting edge. As you can imagine, we had to come back several times to scratch the surface of what they are doing. After that, the Conservatory, where, you guessed it, there were a lot of plants. We decided we just couldn't get enough of Dr. Farkas' hospitality, so we went back. This time, the phase contrast scope was demonstrated with mouse epithelial cells as the specimen.
Phase contrast changes incidental angles of the light to produce a three-dimensional image.
It couldn't have gotten any better, except maybe if George Clooney was there. This chance was made possible by Dr. Kate Fiori, Director of the Pitt Medical Center. Friday afternoon we said good-bye to Dr. Farkas, thanked him for his time, and got in one more lab tour, this time the dark field scope was demonstrated. The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center was next on our list, and we were quite impressed with the images presented by Dr. Adler Tonekon. Barely on our feet, we stopped at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.