Tuesday, 21 May, 2013

2011 Cool Science Image Contest

• Winner

  This image shows a small portion of a cotton flower magnified more than 500 times. The spiky orbs are cotton pollen grains stuck to the stigma, a sticky surface with finger-like projections. The stigma is located at the top of the pistil, which is the female reproductive structure of the flower. Photographer: Sarah Swanson, director, Plant Imaging Center, Botany
           

• Winner

  Caenorhabditis elegans is a one-millimeter-long soil roundworm and an insightful model organism for research in molecular and developmental biology. This picture of a hermaphrodite, a worm of two sexes, shows its extruded gonad, which contains many germ cells (blue) including sperm (red) and eggs (green). Photographer: Kyung Won Kim and Judith Kimble, biochemistry and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
           

• Winner

  This muscle cell was derived from human embryonic stem cells. The cell’s alpha smooth muscle actin is stained red and its nucleus blue. Photographer: Samira Musah, graduate student, chemistry
           

• Winner

  In glaucoma, retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons, which make up the optic nerve and serve as cables to pass information from our eyes to our brains, are damaged and unable to regenerate. After being cultured in a mixture of growth factors and hormones for one week, this mouse retina is sprouting new putative axons from the RGCs. Photographer: Kimberly Toops, Ph.D. student, biomolecular chemistry
           

• Winner

  Despite being merely microns thick, these impurity crystals jut like skyscrapers from the surface of NF616 cast stainless steel, an engineering material. Photographer: Thomas Eiden, junior, nuclear engineering
           

• Honorable Mention

  Recently hatched spined solder bug (Podisus maculiventris) nymphs investigate eggs of their siblings after a rain. Photographer: Christine Buhl, Ph.D. student, entomology
           

• Honorable Mention

  This ant’s leg is stuck in a slit on the flower of a Sullivant’s milkweed, a threatened prairie species in Wisconsin. This little mishap actually helps the plant pollinate. Once the ant escapes with a leg covered in pollen, it may fall into the same trap in another flower and thus pollinate it. Photographer: Evan Eifler, sophomore
           

• Finalist

  A layer of gel is imprinted with wells in which bacterial biofilms grow. Each biofilm chemically communicates with biofilms in adjacent wells by secreting cell-growth-controlling molecules that then diffuse through the gel. Photographer: Robin Davies, artist and media specialist, biochemistry
           

• Finalist

  Portrait of a green tree python (Morelia viridis) taken during its annual wellness examination at the Special Species Health Service of UW’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Photographer: Christoph Mans, resident in zoological medicine, veterinary medicine
           

• Finalist

  Stained glass or seaweed? Neither! It is three chemical compounds, each with its own crystal shape and color. Photographer: James H. Maynard, senior instructional specialist, chemistry
           

• Finalist

  Microscopes enhance the wonder of chemical reactions -- the transformation of one substance into another. This image shows what happens when a small crystal of potassium iodide is pushed into a single drop of water in which mercury(II) chloride has been dissolved. Photographer: James H. Maynard, senior instructional specialist, chemistry
           

• Finalist

  This five-day-old zebrafish eye is illuminated with labeling fluorescents. Photographer: Jessica Plavicki, post-doctoral fellow, pharmacy
           

• Finalist

  This praying mantis camouflages itself as a stick as it waits to take its prey by surprise. This ability to avoid detection and/or predation by other organisms is called crypsis. Photographer: Missy Setz, senior, geological engineering