APRIL 1998 REPORT FOR

W. CHARLES SYMONS, III

The first week of March was spent preparing for and attending the 1998 Pittsburgh Conference where the talk entitled NEAR-FIELD SCANNING OPTICAL MICROSCOPIC IMAGING FROM X-BAND TO NEAR-IR was presented. One week following the Pittsburgh Conference, a talk entitled SIMULATING THE NEAR-FIELD ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING PHENOMENA OF A NEAR FIELD SCANNING OPTICAL MICROSCOPE was presented at the University of Kentucky Computational Sciences brown bag seminar. Finally, a third presentation entitled Electromagnetic Scattering Analysis of Sample Objects Within the Near-Field of a Subwavelength Aperture Utilizing FDTD Methods was accepted to the 1998 IEEE AP-S International Symposium and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting being held in Atlanta, Georgia in June.

In addition to conference and presentation news, a preliminary optical feedback circuit was designed for the laser dermatome project. This circuit is currently being breadboarded for testing with the CO2 laser. Furthermore, the progress of the NSOM instrument has been hindered by the inability of LabView 5 for Windows 95 to utilize the 16-bit dll piezo stage drivers obtained from Melles Griot. At this time, Melles Griot has been contacted regarding the availability of 32-bit software with no definitive response. Therefore, other options, including thunking the dll, are being explored.