Gallery: Scientists capture small worlds in Nikon competition
It's been a year since the last Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, and since then, the world has gotten a lot smaller. Or a lot bigger. Whichever way things are going, Nikon has collected a whole bunch of spectacular new pictures of it, and we've got a gallery of all of the winners.
These are just the top twenty images: there are lots more, including honorable mentions and images of distinction. The final five in this gallery are our personal favorites from that bunch, but if you like this sort of thing, it's more than worth your time to browse through all of them, especially if you have something else that you really should be doing, since there's like a hundred to check out. See them all at the link below, and see just the best in our gallery right below that.
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1st Place: The blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo at 20x. By Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee.
2nd Place: Live newborn lynx spiderlings at 16x. By Walter Piorkowski, South Beloit, Illinois.
3rd Place: Human bone cancer (osteosarcoma) showing actin filaments (purple), mitochondria (yellow), and DNA (blue) at 83x. By Dylan Burnette, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
4th Place: Drosophila melanogaster visual system halfway through pupal development, showing retina (gold), photoreceptor axons (blue), and brain (green) at 1,500x. By W. Ryan Williamson, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Virginia.
5th Place: Cacoxenite (mineral) from La Paloma Mine, Spain at 18x. By Honorio Cócera, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
6th Place: Cosmarium sp. (desmid) near a Sphagnum sp. leaf, at 100x. By Marek Mis, Marek Mis Photography, Suwalki, Poland.
7th Place: Eye organ of a Drosophila melanogaster (third-instar larvae), at 60x. By Michael Bridge, HSC Core Research Facilities - Cell Imaging Lab, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
8th Place: Pleurobrachia sp. (sea gooseberry) larva, at 500x. By Gerd A.Guenther, Düsseldorf, Germany.
9th Place: Myrmica sp. (ant) carrying its larva, at 5x. By Geir Drange, Borgen, Norway.
10th Place: Brittle star, at 8x. By Alvaro Migotto, University of São Paulo, Centro de Biologia Marinha, São Paulo Brazil.
11th Place: Single optical section through the tip of the gut of a Drosophila melanogaster larva expressing a reporter for Notch signaling pathway activity (green), and stained with cytoskeletal (red) and nuclear (blue) markers, at 25x. By Jessica Von Stetina, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
12th Place: 3D lymphangiogenesis assay. Cells sprout from dextran beads embedded in fibrin gel, at 200x. By Esra Guc, Ãcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
13th Place: Sonderia sp. (a ciliate that preys upon various algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria), at 400x. By Diana Lipscomb, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
14th Place: Pistil of the flower of Adenium obesum, at 10x. By José R. Almodovar Rivera, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
15th Place: Section of a Coccinella (ladybug) leg, at 10x. By Andrea Genre, Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Italy.
16th Place: Fossilized Turitella agate containing Elimia tenera (freshwater snails) and ostracods (seed shrimp), at 7x. By Douglas Moore, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point.
17th Place: Stinging nettle trichome on leaf vein, at 100x. By Charles Krebs, Charles Krebs Photography, Issaquah, Washington.
18th Place: Coral sand, at 100x. By David Maitland, Feltwell, United Kingdom.
19th Place: Floral primordia of Allium sativum (garlic). By Somayeh Naghiloo, Department of Plant Biology, University of Tabriz, Iran.
20th Place: Molossus rufu (black mastiff bat) embryos. By Dorit Hockman, University of Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Image of Distinction: Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae (parasitic wasp), at 21.2x. By Nikola Rahme, Budapest, Hungary.
Image of Distinction: Snowflake resin impression preparation, at 20x. By Daphne Zbaeren-Colbourn, Bern, Switzerland.
Image of Distinction: Caffeine crystals, at 25x. By Stefan Eberhard, University of Georgia Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, Athens, Georgia, USA.
Image of Distinction: Soap bubbles, at 10x. By Haris Antonopoulos, Athens, Greece.
Image of Distinction: Live mouse gut organoid. Fragments of gut tissue can be grown in vitro and images taken while they are alive to study cell motility. The cell nuclei are blue. At 850x. By Dr. Paul Appleton, University of Dundee College of Life Sciences Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom.
