Day 1 at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2009

I arrived in Richmond, VA around noon today and checked in with the Microscopy and Analysis staff. I'm providing blog coverage of the conference for the M&A journal's web site. The staff was very nice and made sure I had everything I needed while giving me the space to do my own thing. I got the opportunity to use a Flip camera for a little video blogging, but decided to listen to talks instead today. 

The show seemed a little quiet, but I think it is just because it is a smaller niche show being in held in a rather large conference center. It has been a few years since I had been to this show and I had forgotten how centered on electron microscopy the exhibit floor is. This always struck me as strange since the research presented here is more evenly divided among microscopy techniques. 

I had planned to do some live twittering from the show, but was disappointed that the free wireless promised by the conference center web site was only in certain spots (actually, I only found one spot). This meant to even e-mail in my blog posts, I had to walk across the street. It wasn't that far, but it caused me to miss at least one talk and made it impossible to Tweet throughout the day. 

I think I'll have a better pace set for tomorrow. For today, I covered two presentations. Click on the descriptions below to read the full blog post.

R. A. Carlton from GlaxoSmithKline in King of Prussia, PA, took a closer look at whether newer silicon-drift detectors (SDD) are better than the traditionally used lithium-drifted silicon detectors (SiLi) for energy dispersive spectrometry of pharmaceutical samples.

Craig A.J. Kemp and Michael J. Skibic of Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, Indiana, turned to several microanalytical techniques to get to the bottom of a problem that was occurring in one form of a drug.