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Alexander McPherson's group has done some interesting work watching crystals grow under an atomic force microscope. I particularly remember a poster at WCPCW a 4 or 6 years ago comparing two crystal forms of a virus. One form had nice, well-ordered looking lattice planes and diffracted like crap, the other form had big holes and voids in the crystal lattice (that is, nanometer-scale regions with no unit cells) and diffracted 1A better. ... hmm.
Also, Elspeth Garman's group just published a paper (Acta Cryst. D (2005) *61*, 130-140.) about predicting diffraction quality with polarized light. They have also pioneered the use of protons for measuring the precise elemental composition of crystals (http://biop.ox.ac.uk/www/garman/publications.html).
There are a number of people using UV microscopes now to differentiate between protein and salt crystals.
That's all that leaps to mind right now. Sorry if I left anybody out. -James Holton MAD Scientist
