image: This is a computer illustration of streams of matter delineating the network of cosmic voids, each tens of millions of light years across. Matter accumulates where the voids meet, forming a cosmic web of walls, filaments, and clusters of galaxies. This illustration was awarded first place in the informational graphics category in the 2011 Science/NSF International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. The winning entries are featured in a special section starting on page 525 and at www.sciencemag.org/site/special/vis2011/. view more
Credit: Miguel A. Aragon Calvo, Julieta Aguilera, Mark Subbarao
This press release is available in Japanese, French, Spanish and Chinese on EurekAlert! Chinese.
A colorful computer illustration that depicts the emergence of structure in the Universe, spanning 240 million light years of galactic growth, is among the the winners of the 2011 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, which is sponsored jointly by journal Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).
"The Cosmic Web" explores luminous galaxies and traces invisible dark matter that shape a vast network of voids, walls, filaments and clusters, explained cosmologist Miguel Angel Aragon-Calvo of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The colorful arresting visual, winner of the award’s Informational Posters & Graphics category, will be featured on the cover of the 3 February issue of Science.
"The talent of these award winners is remarkable," said Monica M. Bradford, executive editor of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS, the nonprofit international science society. "These winners communicate science in a manner that not only captures your attention but in many instances strives to look at different ways to solve scientific problems through their varied art forms."
The international competition, currently in its ninth year, honors recipients who use visual media to promote understanding of scientific research. The criteria for judging this year's 212 entries from 33 countries included visual impact, effective communication, freshness and originality.
The NSF made significant enhancements to the 2011 Challenge, where participants are now able to submit their entries online and judges are able to view material electronically. The competition also allows the public to select their favorite image as a People's Choice award and share their favorite entries via the social media sites Facebook and Twitter.
The annual challenge showcases spectacular photographs, illustrations, graphics, videos, and interactive games that engage viewers by conveying the complex substance of science through arts. Some highlights include:
Solve the Protein Puzzle: A multiplayer online computer game puzzle, called "Foldit" allows users to bend and fold amino acids into realistic proteins. The game, developed by Seth Cooper of the University of Washington, Seattle and his team, gives insights into how diseases can arise when proteins are improperly folded in a cell.
"We strove to make the visualizations in folding both fun to look at and informative about where there are problems with the protein that players might be able to fix," said Cooper, a first-place winner in the Interactive Games category. "We tried to make the visualizations clear and approachable, so the game can be played by people who don't have a scientific background."
View a Cell in 3D: The movie "Rapid Visual Inventory & Comparison of Complex 3D Structures" depicts a novel, three-dimensional model view of a whole cell in minute detail and helps biologists better explain complex visual data for a general audience. The video was the judges’ winner as well as the People’s Choice in the video category.
"Morphing the cell from the complicated native model to the simplified version and back gets general audiences excited about the subject matter and reminds even expert audiences of the complex interplay of randomness and specific interaction that enables life to exist," said winning animator Graham T. Johnson of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, who is now at the University of California San Francisco.
See the Beauty of a Mouse's Eye: The first-place photograph, “Metabolomic Eye,” is a metabolic snapshot of the diversity of cells in a mouse eye retina, derived from a technique called computational molecular phenotyping. Neuroscientist Bryan William Jones of the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City said the image shows a unique view of normal tissue functioning and reveals complex metabolic signals while preserving the anatomical context of a tissue.
Build a Human Body: “Build a Body is a great way to virtually learn about human anatomy,” designer Jeremy Friedberg of Spongelab Interactive said of his educational science game, which won an Honorable Mention in the Interactive Games Category. It allows users to use drag-and-drop tools to learn about organs of the human body. “Our free, open platform fosters a global science community by stitching together educational content, teaching tools and powerful data surrounding class and student performance,” Friedberg said.
Zoom into Human Tissue: Another interactive science game, “In Powers of Minus Ten,” allows players to view the human hand and look at individual cells. The game, which also won an Honorable Mention, was developed by Laura Lynn of Green-Eye Visualization. She originally conceived it as an iPad app with the power to zoom into the human body and magnify tissue at the atomic level.
Control Nanotubes in 3D: A three-dimensional illustration that depicts a laser-based technique that controls the length, diameter and characteristics of carbon nanotubes with precision received an Honorable Mention in the Illustration category. Graphic artist Joel Brehm of the University of Nebraska Lincoln portrayed the work of his colleague, Yongfeng Lu, an electrical engineering professor, who developed the laser based production techniques.
“This illustration helps visualize the resulting variable diameter nanotubes, which could be customized for specific uses to improve electrical devices and reduce their energy consumption,” said Brehm.
Magnify a Cucumber's Skin:: A colorful polarizing microscopic photograph of closely arranged trichomes on the outer skin of a cucumber was magnified 800 times by Dr. Robert Belliveau, a pathologist from Las Vegas, Nevada. The image captures the sharp distal points of the trichomes which are 40 times thinner than a sewing needle and perforate the mouthparts of herbivores. The globular base contains toxic cucurbitacins, the most bitter substances known, which can be detected by humans when diluted to one part in a billion.
Other winning entries include a cutting-edge colored scanning electron micrograph of two-dimensional sheets of titanium carbide, or MXene, that reveals the beauty of the nanoworld; a dramatic illustration, using three-dimensional software, that shows tumor death-cell receptors on breast cancer cell surfaces and green monoclonal antibody TRA-8 molecular structures; an illustration of domain coloring, a modern color plot technique, to visualize different shades of complex math functions; a People’s Choice-winning three-dimensional visualization of a cell undergoing division shown with the use of a special new fluorescent protein called MiniSOG that looks at the fine details of a cell’s chromosomes; and an eye-catching three-dimensional view of the Ebola virus’ supramolecular structure. A special news feature in this issue presents each of the winning entries.
The 3 February 2012 issue of Science will include the winning entries, in a special news feature, which will also be available to the public without registration at www.sciencemag.org/special/vis2011/ and the NSF's website at http://www.nsf.gov/news/scivis/. In addition, a slideshow narrated by some of the winners will be available at http://www.aaas.org.
The 2011 winning entries are listed in five categories:
PHOTOGRAPHY
First Place:
Bryan William Jones
University of Utah, Moran Eye Center
Metabolomic Eye
Honorable Mention:
Robert Rock Belliveau
Las Vegas, Nevada
Microscopic Image of Trichomes on the Skin of an Immature Cucumber
People's Choice:
Babak Anasori, Michael Naguib, Yury Gogotsi, and Michel W. Barsoum
Drexel University
The Cliff of the Two-Dimensional World
ILLUSTRATION
Honorable Mentions (3-way tie):
Emiko Paul and Quade Paul (Echo Medical Media); Ron Gamble (UAB Insight)
Tumor Death-Cell Receptors on Breast Cancer Cell
Joel Brehm
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Office of Research & Economic Development
Variable-Diameter Carbon Nanotubes
Konstantin Poelke and Konrad Polthier
Free University Berlin
Exploring Complex Functions using Domain Coloring
People's Choice:
Andrew Noske and Thomas Deerinck (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego); Horng Ou and Clodagh O'Shea (Salk Institute)
Separation of a Cell
INFORMATIONAL POSTERS & GRAPHICS
First Place:
Miguel Angel Aragon-Calvo (Johns Hopkins University), Julieta Aguilera and Mark SubbaRao (Adler Planetarium)
The Cosmic Web
Honorable Mention:
Ivan Konstantinov, Yury Stefanov, Alexander Kovalevsky, and Anastasya Bakulina
Visual Science
The Ebola Virus
People's Choice:
Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Victoria Wahl-Jensen, and Laura Bollinger
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases IRF
Transmission Electron Microscopy: Structure, Function & 3D Reconstruction
INTERACTIVE GAMES
First Place:
Seth Cooper, David Baker, Zoran Popović, Firas Khatib, Jeff Flatten, Kefan Xu, Dun-Yu Hsiao, and Riley Adams
Center for Game Science at the University of Washington
Foldit
Honorable Mentions (3-way tie):
W. Schneller, P.J. Campbell, M. Stenerson, D. Bassham, and E.S. Wurtele
Iowa State University
Meta!Blast 3D Interactive Application for Cell and Metabolic Biology. Level 1: The Cell
Jeremy Friedberg, Nicole Husain, Ian Wood, Genevieve Brydson, Wensi Sheng, Lorraine Trecroce, Kariane St-Denis, David Rowe, Ruby Pajares, Arij Al Chawaf, Shaun Rana, and Nancy Reilly
Spongelab Interactive
Build-a-Body
Laura Lynn Gonzalez
Green-Eye Visualization
Powers of Minus Ten
People's Choice:
Muralitharan Vengadasalam, Ganesh Venkat, Vignesh Palanimuthu, Fabian Herrera, and Ashok Maharaja
Tata Consultancy Services
Velu the Welder
VIDEO
First Place & People's Choice:
Graham T. Johnson (The Scripps Research Institute, and grahamj.com), Andrew Noske (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research), and Bradley Marsh (Institute for
Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland)
Rapid Visual Inventory & Comparison of Complex 3D Structures
Honorable Mentions (2-way tie):
Christopher E. Wilmer, Omar K. Farha, and Patrick E. Fuller
Northwestern University
High Density Energy Storage Using Self-Assembled Materials
Steven Haddock and Susan Von Thun
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute & jellywatch.org
There's No Such Thing as a Jellyfish
Further information about the 2011 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge is available at http://www.nsf.gov/news/scivis/. Please contact Tarri Joyner at +1-703-292-7742 (phone) or tjoyner@nsf.gov (email).
Reporters may request copies of the Science feature, which describes the winning entries, from the AAAS Office of Public Programs' Science Press Package team at +1-202-326-6440 (phone) +1-202-789-0455 (fax) or scipak@aaas.org (email).
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