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

国家科学基金会主要研究仪器奖将允许购买NanoSurf II Pro （NanoFocus公司）白光共聚焦显微镜，用于阿肯色大学的牙齿微磨损分析和其他研究活动。牙齿微磨损分析是研究牙齿的微观使用-磨损模式，以推断饮食。从牙齿微磨损中重建饮食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过去人类和化石物种的生物学和生态学提供了关键。虽然已经对许多活体和化石群体进行了牙齿微磨损研究，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。这既降低了研究中解决饮食相关差异的能力，也限制了研究之间比较结果的能力。测量误差源于两个问题。1)大多数此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。由于扫描电镜通过表面和电子束之间的复杂相互作用形成图像，不同的仪器设置可以对单个表面产生不同的图像。因为一个表面可能有数百个微小的划痕和坑，这些划痕和坑的边界不规则且重叠，所以很难识别和测量这些特征。Ungar， Brown和Walker将使用Nanosurf II Pro仪器来解决这两个问题。该仪器可生成磨损表面的3d真实渲染，为量化磨损模式提供可重复的自动化过程。显微镜在固定的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，更可重复的方法来表征牙齿微磨损，这将导致对过去人类和化石物种饮食的新见解。这台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。该仪器具有高分辨率、长景深和大视场的特点，可以在以下方面进行新的研究：1)植物病理学（昆虫捕食后受损叶片的研究）；2)机械工程（研究切削工具和电子封装系统的影响）；3)化学（芯片实验室设备的图案化材料的测量）；4)生物工程（用于开发生物传感器的微生物测量和分析）；5)食品科学（评价加工对食品表面结构的影响）；6)地球科学（基岩表面风化变化的测量和分析）。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技术环境。许多学生离开阿肯色州求学和就业，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招募和培训来自地理上代表性不足的群体的学生。

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.