Introduction

The following papers are samples of ongoing Portuguese contributions to the field of microscopy research. They were first communicated at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Microscopy (Sociedade Portuguesa de Microscopia, SPMicros) held in Porto, October 30–31, 2008, and, together with most of the other communications, were published as extended abstracts in the Proceedings of the meeting (Microsc. Microanal. 16, Suppl. S3). This was the second time that the abstracts of the SPMicros Annual Meetings were made available worldwide through our collaborations with Microscopy and Microanalysis; although throughout its long history, the society has always kept Portuguese and English records of the communications either in abstract books or as journal supplements.