Advanced imaging core facilities are critical pillars of modern life sciences research, providing access to complex technologies, specialised expertise, and training. At the heart of these facilities are Imaging Scientists, whose work spans technology development, operations, training, data stewardship, and community coordination. Despite their central role, Imaging Scientists have rarely been the focus of coordinated funding at scale. Here, we evaluate the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Imaging Scientist program-to our knowledge, one of the first large-scale efforts to support this workforce-through an anonymous survey and selected case profiles across diverse institutional, technical, and geographic contexts. Survey responses highlight the program's value in enabling structurally underfunded activities such as technology integration, scalable training, leadership, and community building. By abstracting across cases, we identify recurring impact themes, showing how support for Imaging Scientists strengthens core facility foundations, accelerates adoption of new technologies, and fosters national and international networks. These findings illustrate that investing in Imaging Scientists generates measurable scientific-, institutional-, and community-level returns, complementing technology-focused funding and maximising the impact of research investments.

We present BIOMERO 2.0, a major evolution of the BIOMERO framework that transforms OMERO into a FAIR-compliant (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable), provenance-aware bioimaging platform. BIOMERO 2.0 integrates data import, preprocessing, analysis, and workflow monitoring through an OMERO.web plugin and containerised components. The importer subsystem facilitates in-place import using containerised preprocessing and metadata enrichment via forms, while the analyser subsystem coordinates and tracks containerised analyses on high-performance computing systems via the BIOMERO Python library. All imports and analyses are recorded with parameters, versions, and results, ensuring real-time provenance accessible through integrated dashboards. This dual approach places OMERO at the heart of the bioimaging analysis process: the importer ensures provenance from image acquisition through preprocessing and import into OMERO, while the analyser records it for downstream processing. These integrated layers enhance OMERO's FAIRification, supporting traceable, reusable workflows for image analysis that bridge the gap between data import, analysis, and sharing.

As part of two open international core facility surveys focused on microscopy and flow cytometry, we obtained an in-depth snapshot of their state-of-play. Here we focus on microscopy cores across 'the Americas', 'Asia Pacific' and 'Europe and Africa' with responses from 241 facilities. We compared instrument types and numbers, staffing, user fees, funding, etc. This revealed both remarkable similarities and notable differences. For example, the staff/instrument ratio in Europe and Africa was smaller compared to other regions World View and Asia Pacific had a larger proportion of electron microscopes. Importantly, we want to emphasise that the anonymised raw data is made available for anyone to do their own further mining and analysis, including cross-correlations and constrained groupings. This survey will serve as an essential baseline for future longitudinal studies following trends across all metrics as our facilities evolve.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has transcended its role as a mere provider of high-resolution imaging in medical research, catalysing a paradigm shift from 'morphological observation' to 'quantitative mechanics' and 'single molecule manipulation'. AFM enables us to directly decipher the 'mechanical language' of living systems, acquiring information on sample topography, mechanical properties, and molecular interactions under near physiological conditions with nanoscale resolution. This review systematically elaborates on how AFM, by providing quantitative, functional, and dynamic nanoscale data, is reshaping the understanding of disease mechanisms. It is also fostering novel precision medicine strategies guided by 'mechanobiology' in areas such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and pathogen recognition. AFM not only expands the dimensions of medical research but also provides unprecedented tools and perspectives for disease diagnosis, drug development, and cellular intervention.

While conflict management is a well-known challenge for people working in the service sector, this topic remains largely unexplored in scientific imaging core facilities, despite frequent interactions with diverse users in environments with complex service demands. To address this gap, we conducted a survey to assess staff experiences, challenges, and the availability of institutional support. The 38-question survey, completed anonymously, covered three areas: (1) respondent background; (2) assessment of stress in core facilities and coping mechanisms and stress management resources; and (3) work environment challenges such as user interactions and overall work atmosphere. The results highlight the need for more awareness, targeted training, and organisational strategies to improve staff well-being and foster a collaborative work culture. By raising awareness and providing actionable insights, we aim to inform best practices for conflict de-escalation and, when necessary, conflict management in research infrastructure settings. While exemplified with scientific imaging facilities, we believe our survey results are easily transferable to other scientific cores and infrastructures with similar service and user interactions. In addition, the dataset is available to other researchers on figshare. Information concerning the data records, usage notes, code availability, and technical validation is presented.

The global microscopy community has made wide efforts in imaging technology dissemination, especially to lower- and middle-income countries. Yet, many efforts have not fully realised their aim of increased, sustained microscopy utilisation. To guide future outreach initiatives towards more positive results, we analysed over 2300 unique applications across seven recent international microscopy workshops. We found significant differences in research priorities, as well as in microscopy experience and applications between lower- and higher-income regions. We discuss the importance of tailoring technology dissemination, training curricula, and capacity-building to these regional variations.

Friction plays a crucial role in both natural phenomena, from the flow of blood cells to earthquakes, and technological applications, from car engines to wind turbines. One of the most fundamental aspects of tribology is friction anisotropy, that is, the dependence of the friction force vector on the direction of sliding. Even when two identical surfaces slide against each other, differences in sliding direction can lead to significantly different friction forces. While atomistic and semi-empirical models provide a good understanding of friction and friction anisotropy at the molecular and macroscale levels, a comprehensive understanding at the nano- and microscale remains elusive. Unravelling the mechanisms of friction anisotropy at these intermediate length scales is crucial for bridging the gap between the current atomistic and macroscale models, as well as for advancing technological applications, such as nano-/micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS). One experimental technique which has significantly contributed to the study of nano- and micro-scale friction anisotropy is scanning probe microscopy, particularly the form of atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM enables investigations at the nanometre-scale resolution, providing at equilibrium topographical, physical, and chemical information of interfaces with atomic precision. AFM can also measure friction forces with pN-level sensitivity while operating in vacuum, air or fluid environments. The versatility of AFM and its applicability to both soft and hard materials have made it an indispensable tool for understanding the nano- and microscale mechanisms of friction. In this review, we examine the contributions of AFM-based techniques to the study of friction anisotropy. First, we summarise key AFM findings on friction anisotropy arising from the periodic corrugation of atomically flat crystals, quasicrystals, 2D materials and organic materials. In the second part, we explore friction anisotropy mechanisms influenced by the presence of solid or fluid adsorbates, such as polymers or liquid lubricants. By synthesising insights from the last 30 years of research, our review contributes to a deeper understanding of friction anisotropy, identifying common mechanisms across the diverse systems. This knowledge will not only refine theoretical models but also drive technological advancements, in a wide range of applications from biomedical devices and 3D printing to engines and advanced lubricant formulations.

Wide-field fluorescence microscopy is fundamentally limited by out-of-focus background haze, which degrades image contrast and obscures subcellular details. To overcome these limitations without the complexity of specialised hardware, we present a high-performance computational sectioning framework based on a physics-informed variational model. By modelling the observed image as an additive superposition of high-frequency in-focus signals and a low-frequency defocused background, we employ a penalised least-squares optimisation to achieve precise signal-background separation. To bridge the gap between rigorous baseline estimation theory and real-time imaging requirements, we introduce a Gaussian-equivalent regularisation strategy. This approach replaces traditional implicit penalty operators with explicit Gaussian smoothing convolutions, significantly enhancing computational efficiency while maintaining the deterministic nature of the iterative optimisation. Quantitative evaluation against confocal ground truth demonstrates that our method increases the Resolution Scale Pearson (RSP) coefficient by 1.5-fold and reduces the Resolution Scale Error (RSE) by a factor of six. Benchmarked against DeepMRA and HiLo techniques, our framework provides a robust, physically interpretable, and low-cost solution for high-contrast deep-tissue imaging.

We herein investigate the effects of varying the main experimental variables in one of the most used protocols for extracellular vesicle (EV) immobilisation on substrates for subsequent atomic force microscopy (AFM) quantitative morphometry and nanoindentation performed in liquid. We introduce the parameter Q as a quantitative measure of total adsorbed material and show how it can be used as an estimator of relative sample concentrations across multiple AFM imaging experiments. We show how Q is logarithmically dependent on substrate charge density, whereas the EV contact angle (CA) surprisingly does not follow the same dependence. Finally, we propose an optimised protocol for AFM quantitative morphometry in air that yields the same EV size distributions obtained in liquid.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are promising two-dimensional materials whose properties are strongly influenced by substrate interactions. While conventional Raman spectroscopy probes these effects, its diffraction-limited resolution often averages out local variations such as strain, masking intrinsic behaviours. Here, we employ tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) to investigate the vibrational properties of monolayer and on top of glass and glass/hBN substrates. TERS offers nanometric spatial resolution, allowing direct correlation between Raman features and topographical inhomogeneities. Our results reveal that local variations in strain, doping, and dielectric screening that vary across the substrate interface are often accompanied by nanoscale structural features such as wrinkles, which locally modulate the vibrationalresponse.