“Nano is quite small,…”“… but small is beautiful and its perspec-tives infinite.” Heinrich Rohrer presented this axiom during his presentation dur-ing the opening session of the 1st Inter-national Conference on Nanoscience and Technology (ICN+T 2006) in Basel, Swit-zerland. This is how the 1986 Nobel Prize winner for physics and co-developer of scanning tunnelling microscopy de-scribed the fascination and potential of modern nanosciences. Almost 1600 del-egates, including three further Nobel lau-reates (Gerd Binning, John C. Polanyi and Jean-Marie Lehn), met in the week Swiss national holiday in the tri-border region of France-Switzerland-Germany to present and discuss current results and insights in physics, chemistry and bi-ology/medicine. The large number of nearly 1500 scientific contributions sub-mitted led the organizers to arrange seven parallel sessions and to run the program from 8.30 am to 8.30 pm on the first three days. If you have a choice, you have a dilemma. Participants were over-whelmed by the interesting and exciting subjects on offer. Expressed mathemati-cally: the dilemma of choice is propor-tional to the degree of scientific compe-tence. And there was a great deal represented in Basel between 30 July and 4 August. Belated congratulations on this achievement!

It was a smart move to combine the two traditional conferences “STM” and “Nano” giving rise to a new, larger an-nual conference – the ICN+T. Not only were the experts delighted with this year’s premier – from what I have heard, the praise of the delegates was also tre-mendous – but the ICN+T 2006 also suc-

ceeded in informing interested public on nanosciences and nanotechnology. The high of media interest for this international congress and the large number of visitors to the ‘Nanorama’ stand with its great educa-tional value serve to il-lustrate the strong interest of the local public.

At the accompanying industrial exhi-bition, almost 60 companies presented their latest developments in the field of instrumentation and accessories for scanning probe microscopy. The re-sponse of the company representatives to the question of the demands placed by users on measuring instruments, could be summarised as follows: the scientist’s interest lies in observing, manipulating and structuring a specimen. The instru-ments provided should be easier to oper-ate, attain faster measuring times, are applicable for various applications and, of course, they should be cost-efficient. The circle of potential purchasers has widened in recent years. The develop-ment of modern scanning probe micros-copy systems now means that instru-ments no longer only have to be operated and understood by physicists; the spec-trum of applications is also expanding steadily.

Finally, I would also like to say that we, as the official media partner, were

also very pleased to have experienced the ICN+T at first hand and that our handy information brochure ‘The ICN+T Pocket Guide 2006’ was so well accepted. Perhaps you will encounter the practical format with information on the scientific program, new products and venue some-where else in the future. Incidentally, I did not intend to present an exhaustive report on the ICN+T with this introduc-tion. This was not possible to do with so little time between the end of the confer-ence and the deadline for this issue. But I wanted to give you a small insights of what awaits you in the next issue: the ICN+T 2006 Event Report.

Enjoy reading this issue

Martin Friedrich

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G.I.T. Imaging & Microscopy 3/2006 • �