Winning image: Section of male Ascaris at x200 magnification.
Author: Massimo Brizzi from Italy.
The following post list the winners of WSC 2017.
Comment from the jury: This image is astonishing for its colorful ensemble and neat lines, which is attractive to both children and adults, general audience and scientists. The depiction is clear and scientifically sound, as much as an infographic of a textbook, and as a result, it does not simply capture your attention, but it stimulates good scientific questions. All main organs of Ascaris spp. are visible (e.g. cytoplasmic portion of muscle cells, syncytial epidermis) and clearly defined. It’s, of course, an image that should be part of an encyclopedia for its informative value, but can be used in many other activities.
Comment from the author: I am a self-taught macrophotography expert. Photography has been a passion of mine since I was a child and over the years I have specialized moving my skills to microscopic photography, a technique that extends the range up to 1000 magnification. In my free time, I have modified microscopes to photography as an artisan and I am probably the only one in Italy with such handcraft skills.
I’d like to think I am offering the viewer a good trip in the wonders of the microcosm. My recent research has included arthropods, specifically underwood micro wildlife, and nematodes.
A direct and close observation of the interaction of the micro wildlife in the underwood also allows seeing the evolutive course and the “state of health” of the woodland area. Thanks to the optical microscope I have also photographed microorganisms present in the rivers, streams, and lakes.
Runners-up:
Castle 3D-printed on a pencil tip via multiphoton lithography. Author: Peter Gruber from Austria.
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Ebola virus particles (green) found both as extracellular particles and budding particles from a chronically-infected African Green Monkey kidney cell (blue); 20,000x magnification.
Author: John Bernbaum from the USA.
A thin layer of water ice that is two inches across. The ice was between crossed polarizing filters.
Author: Tom Wagner from the USA.
Glowing lacewing eggs. Each egg is stranded by silk produced by the mother lacewing.
Author: Sutirtha.ray from India.
Processed electron image of titanium dioxide nanotubes obtained by anodization of titanium metal. The diameter of the tube is 70 nm, the length is 1000 nm.
Authors: Robert Kamalov, Irina Dorosheva, Alexander Vokhmintsev, and Ilya Weinstein from Russia.
Indium-gallium nitride semiconductor alloy. A small crystal cluster, that has accidentally grown during the MOVPE process. The image demonstrates that InGaN/GaN structures are highly anisotropic, and so are their cathodoluminescence properties.
Author: FDominec from the Czech Republic.
Images were published under CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 licenses.
