The EM Outreach Program was originally funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the Biological Computation Grant of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Our original source materials were lecture notes from a course taught by one of us (Timothy.S.Baker) at Purdue University for more than ten years. The continuation and further development of this project is part of the directive of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research and is supported by NIH grant RR04050 to Mark H. Ellisman. Development and maintenance of this web site and resource is supported by NIH grant RR08605 (National Biomedical Computation Resource and NSF grant ASC 97-5249 (National Partnership for Advanced Computational Intrastructure). Timothy S.Baker was supported by NIH grant GM33050. We thank Drs. Maryann Martone and Steve Young for comments and suggestions and Millicent Sturgeon for help in organizing the Web-based course notes.

We are developing tutorials, documentation and sample data to aid investigators in understanding and utilizing the software. Some of the software listed already has these as part of the current release. A second edition of the Web course will incorporate animations and advanced Web technology. Examples of advanced Web technology include interactive graphics, the use of JAVA applets for specific applications and VRML. The improved Web course will include exercises and animations that go along with the textual material and links to bibliographic databases. We will include links in the image analysis section about appropriate software and where to access these packages or programs. We will also solicit sections from leading researchers on other types of biological microscopic techniques, e.g. immunocytochemistry, confocal microscopy and scanning probe microscopies (SPM/AFM), which will expand the information already present in the course.

Figures in this course are courtesy of the following scientists and publishers: Figures presented in this course are subject to copyright permissions and may not be reproduced without the consent of either the publishers or authors of the original articles and books.