Acquisition of a white light confocal microscope for quantitative characterization of dental microwear surfaces.

国家科学基金会重大研究仪器奖将允许购买一台NanoSurf II Pro(Nanofocus Corp)白光共焦显微镜，用于阿肯色大学的牙齿微磨损分析和其他研究活动。牙齿微磨损分析是对牙齿微观使用磨损模式的研究，以推断饮食。从牙齿微磨损重建食物的能力对生物考古学家和古生物学家都很重要，因为食物偏好为理解前人和化石物种的生物学和生态学提供了关键。虽然许多生物和化石群体都对牙齿微磨损进行了研究，但目前的技术已经达到了极限。微磨损特征测量误差大，重复性低。这既降低了解决研究中与饮食相关的差异的能力，也限制了在研究之间比较结果的能力。测量误差源于两个问题。1)大多数这类研究中使用的扫描电子显微镜(SEM)对于微磨损分析并不理想。由于扫描电子显微镜通过表面和电子束之间的复杂相互作用形成图像，因此不同的仪器设置可以为单个表面生成不同的图像。2)由于表面可能有数百个具有不规则和重叠边界的微观划痕和凹坑，因此很难识别和测量这些特征。昂加、布朗和沃克将使用Nanosurf II Pro仪器来解决这两个问题。该仪器在3-D中创建磨损表面的真实渲染，以提供可重复的自动化程序来量化磨损模式。显微镜以固定的x，y间隔测量z值，并计算一系列属性，如微磨损表面的粗糙度和各向异性。这项工作很重要，因为它将为研究人员提供一种新的、更可重复的方式来表征牙齿微磨损，这应该会导致对前人和化石物种饮食的新见解。这款NanoSurf II Pro也将被阿肯色大学校园内其他学科的研究人员和学生使用。该仪器的高分辨率、长景深和大视场的结合将使新的研究得以开展：1)植物病理学(研究虫害后受损的叶子)；2)机械工程(研究切割工具和电子包装系统的影响)；3)化学(测量芯片上的实验室设备中的图案化材料)；4)生物工程(测量和分析微生物，以开发生物传感器)；5)食品科学(评估加工对食品表面结构的影响)；6)地球科学(风化引起的基岩表面变化的测量和分析)。阿肯色州大学有限的研究基础设施造成了该州有限的科学和技术环境。许多学生离开阿肯色州接受教育和就业，导致该州拥有大学学位的人口比例在全国垫底。获得最先进的主要研究仪器，如NanoSurf II Pro，将有助于在广泛的科学和技术学科中从地理代表性较低的群体中招收和培训学生。

A National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation award will allow the purchase a NanoSurf II Pro (NanoFocus Corp) white light confocal microscope for use in dental microwear analysis and other research activities at the University of Arkansas. Dental microwear analysis is the study of microscopic use-wear patterns in teeth to infer diet. The ability to reconstruct diet from dental microwear is important to both bioarcheologists and paleontologists because food preferences provide a key to understanding the biology and ecology of past peoples and fossil species.While dental microwear has been studied for many living and fossil groups, current techniques are stretched to their limits. Microwear feature measurement error is high, and repeatability is low. This both reduces the power to resolve diet-related differences within studies and limits the ability to compare results among studies. Measurement errors stem from two problems. 1) The scanning electron microscope (SEM) used in most such studies is not ideal for microwear analysis. Because the SEM forms an image by a complex interaction between a surface and an electron beam, different instrument settings can produce different images for a single surface. 2) Because a surface can have hundreds of microscopic scratches and pits with irregular and overlapping boundaries, it can be difficult to identify and measure those features.Drs. Ungar, Brown and Walker will use the Nanosurf II Pro instrument to solve both problems. This instrument creates a true rendering of a wear surface in 3-D to provide a repeatable, automated procedure to quantify patterns of wear. The microscope measures z-values at fixed x,y intervals and calculates a series of attributes, such as roughness and anisotropy for a microwear surface. This work is important because it will give researchers a new, more repeatable way to characterize dental microwear that should lead to new insights into the diets of past peoples and fossil species. This NanoSurf II Pro will also be used by researchers and students in other disciplines on the campus of the University of Arkansas. The combination of high resolution, long depth of field and large field of view of this instrument will allow new research in: 1) plant pathology (study of damaged leaves following insect predation); 2) mechanical engineering (study of impact of cutting tools and electronic packaging systems); 3) chemistry (measurement of patterned materials for lab-on-a-chip devices); 4) biological engineering (measurement and analysis of microorganisms for development of biosensors); 5) food science (assessment of effects of processing on food surface structure); and 6) geosciences (measurement and analysis of bedrock surface modifications due to weathering). Limited research infrastructure at Arkansas' universities contributes to a limited science and technology environment in the state. Many students leave Arkansas for their education and employment, contributing to the fact that the state is last in the nation in percentage of its population with a college degree. Access to state-of-the-art major research instrumentation, such as the NanoSurf II Pro, will contribute toward recruiting and training students from geographically underrepresented groups in a broad range of science and technology disciplines.