I ♥ γ's

I'm a sucker for new ways to get more photons out of your sample, so this one struck me as pretty neat. Metal-enhanced fluorescence has some huge advantages, and this looks like a great way to improve your fluorescence yield a lot without having to change your assay around too much: just deposit a monolayer of silver nanoparticles on the coverslip surface, and presto! Instant gratification. It doesn't sound like a huge chore to make the coverslips, although it's not a walk in the park either. But hopefully somebody will start selling something like this soon, and you can just buy it off the shelf.