Behind the hype
Back in July 2009, at the Functional Optical Imaging conference we organised at work, I met someone from Oxford University who was using a very interesting technique to do some high speed imaging. This led to a lot of excitement because it was obvious that we could make a camera to do the same thing much more easily and make the system a lot easier to use. Our two groups have since been working towards putting grant applications together – they are interested in imaging cardiac cells and whole hearts and we hope to design cameras that will make previously impossible things possible. It’s fair to say there’s still a lot of excitement both ends and there’s a good chance a lot of good science will come out of it.
To further flesh out ideas for grants, and for everybody in Oxford to see Nottingham, today was their first visit as a group to see us. This was great – very useful day, fixed some problems with the camera they already have, generated more enthusiasm, made plans for further grant applications and more. Now the slightly odd bit is that they had an article accepted in Nature Methods last week. This is a pretty good thing in its own right, but New Scientist got wind of it and decided to write a press release and other press organisations did the same. This was all under embargo until 6pm yesterday, when the article was published under the Advance Online Publication scheme. This made for an interesting day, because as we were sat talking, someone would periodically note the different publications that the press release had made it to and the ridiculousness of the headline (the award for most ridiculous goes to all those that herald the end of photography as we know it, e.g. the telegraph – I wonder who they think they’re quoting in the headline?)
I’m especially interested in this because we’re going to be developing the chip based version of this technology (which I realise I haven’t explained). We even get a small mention in a lot of the articles – nothing like a bit of reflected glory! :)
So, some links: