  We investigate electron transport through a mono-atomic wire which is tunnel
coupled to two electrodes and also to the underlying substrate. The setup is
modeled by a tight-binding Hamiltonian and can be realized with a scanning
tunnel microscope (STM). The transmission of the wire is obtained from the
corresponding Green's function. If the wire is scanned by the contacting STM
tip, the conductance as a function of the tip position exhibits oscillations
which may change significantly upon increasing the number of wire atoms. Our
numerical studies reveal that the conductance depends strongly on whether or
not the substrate electrons are localized. As a further ubiquitous feature, we
observe the formation of charge oscillations.
